Angrboda had a plan, though. First she would bargain with Loki, and if he accepted and agreed to go to Hel for her, she would free him. If he declined, she’d find some other way to reach Hel, and she would leave him to rot until . . . well, he was fated to be freed eventually in any case, and Skadi was right: it might as well be by Angrboda’s hand in exchange for what she wanted.
But when she reached the heart of the cave, the scene that awaited her was even worse than she had seen in her visions—in a way she wasn’t prepared for.
By the dim light of a handful of nearly empty oil braziers strewn about the interior, she could see Loki: kneeling in the center, painfully thin, knees bloody from scraping against the rocky ground, arms secured by iron bonds that stretched out to embed themselves in the cave walls. Similar fetters wrapped around his shoulders and chest, binding him to the cave floor. He was unconscious, dressed in only a dirty pair of pants ripped off midthigh, his chest barely rising and falling, ribs standing out with every breath.
But that was not the worst part.
His face. It was all Angrboda could do not to recoil in horror at the fresh blood and the blisters, layers upon layers of old scars, starting at the bridge of his nose and stretching across both cheeks, all the way to his ears. She could see almost every spot where the snake’s venom fell and dripped down his face like tears, gouging rivers of red in their wake. Some drops had even trickled onto his chest. She had never before seen him with a beard because he’d always shape-shifted it away; now that he lacked the energy to do so, the venom had sloughed entire chunks of hair from his face, and skin with it.
She finally raised her white eyes to the snake above his head. It stared her down, amber-eyed and hateful, and opened its mouth wide, two huge drops of venom ready to drip from its exposed fangs.
The witch glared back at it with all the force of her rage; she willed its head to twist sharply sideways, and it fell to the ground, dead.
The resulting thunk did not rouse Loki from his unconscious state—but it did cause someone to stir in the shadows just to Angrboda’s right, and she turned to see Sigyn crawling into the glow of one of the braziers. The woman’s face was a mask of exhaustion and grief as she grappled about in the darkness before finding her bowl—the one she’d been holding above Loki’s head to catch the venom from the snake, to give him some respite from his pain.
For the entire length of Fimbulwinter, she’s been doing this, Angrboda thought. Almost three long years.
“I was only asleep for a second,” she croaked, her voice seeming long unused, and she clutched the bowl and began to stand—but froze when she noticed just who their visitor was.
Angrboda moved closer to Loki and regarded her warily. Having had only one other interaction with Sigyn, Angrboda expected screams, sobs, accusations.
But what she got was calm resignation.
Sigyn struggled to her feet, not taking her eyes off the witch. When she was fully upright, she straightened her spine and cleared her throat, and Angrboda realized with a start that she was at least three inches taller than Sigyn; the other woman was smaller than she had seemed from across the river an age and a half ago.
“You were right,” Sigyn said at last. “What you showed me that night. My sons . . . I tried to hide them once Loki disappeared, but the gods found them anyway, and they . . . they . . .”
“I know,” Angrboda said with a sideways glance at Loki’s bonds. Though they were made of iron, she knew them to have been magicked from something far more sinister.
“I shouldn’t have told you what I did,” said Angrboda, looking back to Sigyn. “It was wrong of me to put this knowledge on your shoulders, and for that I am truly sorry.”
“I provoked you,” Sigyn said, staring down at the clay bowl in her hands. “I was just so angry.”
“But I should have known better. I lost my temper. I thought of the worst possible way to get back at you for what you—for what you said about my children, and I went through with it when I should have taken a step back and thought things through—”
“It was bad for the two of us to meet the way we did.” Sigyn closed her eyes. “We both lost our children in the end. But the difference is that I was the cause for you losing yours. I thought I was doing the right thing. I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Angrboda. “You were not the cause. Ultimately, it was the Aesir alone who were responsible for their crimes against our families.”
She realized the truth of these words as soon as she spoke them. She’d accused Loki of being the one who’d wronged her and their children, and he’d made some inarguably terrible decisions—but at the end of the day, he was no more responsible for Angrboda’s fate than Sigyn or Gerd had been.
One way or another, she would have lost her children.
One way or another, Odin was going to get what he wanted.
And Loki had suffered enough for it. Angrboda’s entire family had.
A sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob escaped Sigyn’s throat before she whispered, “ ‘Despair, Sigyn, for your gods will forsake you in the end . . .’ I should have believed you. I should have taken your warning more seriously.”
“It wasn’t a warning,” said Angrboda sadly. “It was my revenge. You had no reason to trust what I made you see.”
“But still, if I could have prevented—”
“There was no preventing this. Any of it. Do not blame yourself.”
Sigyn looked down at her bowl again. Then at the dead snake on the ground. And suddenly, viciously, she hurled the bowl at the cave wall, where it shattered into a million pieces.
Loki still did not wake.
“He wouldn’t even talk to me,” said Sigyn with a strangled cry. “He has not uttered a word since they left us here. Do you know what that’s like? I loved him so. I love him still. I am loyal. I have stood by him until this very moment.”
“And you’ve received nothing but grief in return,” Angrboda said. “I can sympathize. I cannot imagine what it must’ve been like for you. But there is nothing more for you in this cave.”
“There is so long as he’s trapped here,” Sigyn said firmly.
“Which won’t be very much longer.”
Sigyn stared at her. “You mean to free him?”
“I do,” said Angrboda. She knew in her heart that he was in no state to strike a deal with her; she would have to free him first and worry about that later. It was a risk she was willing to take.
“I’ve tried before and gotten nowhere. But if you succeed, I don’t know what that means for me.” Sigyn gestured at the broken shards of her bowl on the ground. “Was this my only purpose? What shall I do now?”
“I don’t know,” Angrboda replied. “But maybe you two can decide that together.”
It took Sigyn a moment to understand what she was getting at—that this was it, a true end to the strife between them—but when she realized it, she nodded once and held out her hand to Angrboda. After a brief hesitation, the witch reached out and the women clasped forearms tightly.
“I must do this final thing,” said Angrboda. “I don’t think we’ll meet again.”
“Then do it,” said Sigyn, “and let us part as friends.”
They released each other, and Sigyn stepped back while Angrboda stepped forward and knelt beside Loki, brought a ghostly hand up to the side of his face. Her cool touch was what finally caused him to stir. His eyelids fluttered for a moment before opening, and Angrboda’s heart dropped into her stomach when she realized that the venom had blinded him in one eye.
He stared at her, bewildered.
“Do you still wonder sometimes,” she whispered, “whether it might have been wrong for you to return my heart to me?”
Comprehension dawned, and he rasped, “Never.”
Angrboda snapped her fingers and his bonds shattered, the sound so
loud that—even in the quiet of the cave—it seemed to echo throughout all the worlds.
Because it had.
Chaos would begin to rage outside the confines of the cave, she knew. But in this moment, she caught Loki in her arms as he fell, and she held him on her lap like a child as he panted and writhed, his body unsure of what to do with itself now that it wasn’t fixed in one awkward, painful position.
“What—what are you doing here?” he asked between deep breaths.
“Well, I came to ask you to deliver a message to Hel on my behalf in exchange for your freedom, and then I saw the state you were in . . .” Her face twisted with sorrow. “This is a terrible thing they’ve done to you. Worse than I had imagined.”
Once Loki’s breathing had steadied, he found the strength to quip, “How kind of you. And here I thought for sure I’d be left to writhe in pain for all eternity.”
Angrboda peered at him. “Do you still not know what is to come?”
Loki shook his head and closed his eyes. “Not the slightest clue. And I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
“Where will you go now, then? What will you do?”
Loki opened his good eye to peer at her. “Why ask me what I’m going to do, if you already know?”
Angrboda gave him a small smile. “Because you make your own way, and you choose your own path. I cannot take that from you. I mustn’t.”
His face twisted with emotion at these words, but naturally he disguised it by clearing his throat. “Hmm. Well, then. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“As you wish,” she said, and helped him to his feet, his arm around her shoulders. Loki seemed confused about this. “Hang on. You’re not even really here. Why can you touch me in this form?”
“Because I’ve willed it so,” said Angrboda. “The Seeress may be a manifestation of my very soul, but right now, I need to be able to touch you. So I can.”
“Huh,” said Loki after a moment, giving her a small pained smile. “I wonder if you’ll ever cease to surprise me, Angrboda Iron-witch.”
As they stumbled toward the mouth of the cave, Loki leaning heavily on her, Sigyn stepped forward out of the shadows without a word and threw his other arm around her shoulders, taking some of the weight off Angrboda.
Loki staggered to a stop and stared at her. Once he’d regained himself, he managed to choke out, “Sigyn? You’re—you’re still here?”
“Until the bitter end,” she replied.
“And bitter it’s been, indeed,” Loki murmured, shaking his head, but his ruined lips still had the same upward quirk as they soldiered forward.
They reached the mouth of the cave and stopped on the ledge, for it would take some time to navigate the perilously narrow path that would take them down to the shore. But the ocean was roiling as fiercely as it did in the worst of storms, though there were no clouds in the sky—and though the sun had just risen, the full moon was still visible as well.
But they were both slowly disappearing, bit by bit. Eclipsing. The sun and moon had a slow, steady, identical shadow moving across each of them, their light disappearing second by second. It would take hours—maybe even a day—for them to be swallowed completely, but once they disappeared, the worlds would be completely dark.
“A double eclipse?” Loki asked with a scowl. “That’s impossible . . .”
“It’s not an eclipse,” Sigyn whispered.
Angrboda slipped his arm from around her shoulders and stepped forward, white eyes wide. “It’s started.”
It started the moment I freed you.
The breaking of your bonds was the breaking of all bonds.
Including our sons’.
“That dream you had,” Loki said quietly behind her, leaning fully on Sigyn to keep himself upright. “This is it, isn’t it? What Odin wanted to know all along. It’s finally happening.”
Angrboda nodded. I saw the sun and moon go dark as the wolves who chase them finally swallow their prey.
I saw . . .
The cold wind that had been blowing for three years had finally stopped, but the ocean’s churning reached a fever pitch.
Then stopped, very suddenly.
“What’s happening?” Sigyn asked in a shaking voice, but Angrboda and Loki looked at each other and knew.
“Run,” Loki told Sigyn. “Go down the path now. I’ll catch up with you. I swear it.”
“But—”
“Go. Trust me. Please.”
She gave him one last look and then dashed off. She had barely made it to the bottom and into the trees before a creature burst forth from the waves, so massive that—even standing on a ledge several hundred feet above sea level—Loki and Angrboda were already looking up at it before its entire head was even out of the water. Its scales were blue-green, pointed webbed fins running from the top of its head and down its back. It—he—peered down at them with familiar luminous green eyes and bared a mouthful of sharp teeth.
He had been a tiny green snake when Angrboda had birthed him; now his head looked more like that of a dragon.
“I’ll be damned,” Loki breathed. “Jormungand?”
At the name, the creature reared back so that even more of his gargantuan body was out of the water, and he angled his head down toward them, nostrils flaring.
Angrboda was so overcome with emotion that she could not speak. But one emotion was fear, after her earlier confrontation with Hel—for if her youngest bore the same ill will toward her as her eldest, then she would surely be swallowed whole.
And she had too much left to do.
Jormungand regarded them for a moment longer before rearing back and letting out a guttural cry, so loud that it shook the very foundations of the rock beneath their feet, and Angrboda and Loki clung to each other to stay upright as chunks of rock detached themselves from the cliff face around them and toppled into the sea.
The Midgard Serpent’s roar ceased abruptly.
As they cowered on the ledge, Loki said to Angrboda out of the corner of his mouth, “So, this is either going to be a heartwarming family reunion, or he’s going to tear us limb from limb. Please tell me you foresaw this and have a plan?”
“I did have a plan, but it didn’t involve this,” Angrboda replied.
The Serpent seemed to have lost interest in them; he craned his head to the left as if waiting for a response to his roar. When he did, Angrboda was startled to see that the side of Jormungand’s skull bore a craterlike scar similar to her own. She remembered Hymir’s tale of Thor “going fishing” for the Serpent using an ox’s head and dealing the creature a blow from Mjolnir that should have been deadly: much like the one Thor had dealt her the night her children were taken.
Pride and fury swelled in Angrboda’s chest, momentarily pushing the fear aside.
It will take a lot more than that to keep us down for good, won’t it, my son?
None of them spoke. Jormungand didn’t move. And then his call was answered—from all the way down the shoreline, an enormous, shaggy shape rounded the corner and made its way toward them, each step shaking the earth.
Angrboda stepped away from Loki, gaping as her middle child approached them. Fenrir was a hundred times bigger than he’d been the last time she’d seen him, his fur darker, his snout longer, and his teeth . . .
As she neared the cliff’s edge, Jormungand’s head moved toward her until he was mere feet away and their eyes were nearly level, and an infantile voice said in Angrboda’s head, Brother.
Tears sprang to Angrboda’s eyes. She reached out a shaking hand to touch the smooth, wet scales on her son’s snout; his massive eyes slid closed, as if he was savoring the touch of another being after so long at the bottom of the ocean.
All alone.
“You can speak,” Angrboda whispered.
He does his best, said Fenrir, in a voice
much deeper than the child’s voice Angrboda had heard in her head an age ago. Though he was still some ways away from them, she could hear him loud and clear. It’s a good thing we’re strange enough to be able to communicate in our heads, or both of us may have gone mad in confinement.
Mad, Jormungand repeated. Both of us.
“I called out to you both. Did you ever hear me?” Angrboda said weakly. “You never answered. I tried so many times . . .”
We were placed beyond your reach. Beyond anyone’s reach, Fenrir said. It could’ve been some spell or another the gods put in place, or maybe we were just too far.
Fenrir was upon them now, and was large enough to sit upon the rocky shore and still have his head hovering near where his parents were so precariously perched.
It’s been a long time, Mama, he said, blinking his large green eyes once.
Mama, Jormungand echoed.
“I’m sorry,” Angrboda said, tears springing to her eyes. This is it—this is going to be Hel all over again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them.”
A massive pink shape suddenly moved toward her, and before Angrboda knew it, her entire body had been licked by her colossal wolf-son: covered in drool from just one swipe of his tongue. A moment later Jormungand leaned forward and gently butted his enormous head against her, just as he had when he could fit around her neck, only this time it caused her to stumble a bit.
There was nothing you could have done, Fenrir said.
Angrboda very nearly sobbed with relief, but she was too busy wiping drool and seawater from her face and gown.
Fenrir’s gaze drifted toward Loki. And as for you, Father . . .
Angrboda moved in front of Loki, blocking him from their view. “Believe me, my sons. Your father has suffered much as of late. I won’t ask you to forgive him, but at least spare him your wrath.” Although I suppose letting you kill him would be one way for him to reach Hel . . .
We’ll make his a quick death, Fenrir sneered, his upper lip curling over wickedly sharp teeth. He’s not worth our time.
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