“It’s been years since a new soul came to Asgard. Midgard has changed, become something I don’t recognize. I…I am afraid.”
—Archives of Asgard, Daily Records
The breeze was cool but the sun was warm, beating down on our skin like we were next to a fire. Lying in the grass, droplets of morning dew glistening onto our skin, it was the most peaceful I’d felt in an eternity.
I rolled onto my stomach so I could look at her more closely. Her straw-blonde hair draped over her bare shoulders, the porcelain of her skin, the cool grey of her eyes. She bit her lip and took a cherry from the picnic we’d brought. It dripped pink down her hand, and I plucked it from her fingers with my teeth, stopping to lick the juice from her skin. She shivered, gooseflesh running down her arms, her stomach quivering. I leaned in to kiss her, and the ground began to shake.
I blinked and the meadow faded away, another waking dream gone. All that was there was stone and sulphur and suffering. If the cave was shaking, then Loki—
But he was sleeping. Chest rising and falling, shallow breaths. And the room kept shaking. Humming, raising the hairs on my arms like standing too close to lightning.
I shook my head, but the noise didn’t leave. It was growing, like a hive of bees stuck in my skull. I thought it might be madness finally sinking its claws deeper into me, but dirt was shaking loose from the ceiling, getting in my lungs. Coughing, I shook Loki with the hand I could spare.
“Wake up! Something’s happening.”
His eyes fluttered open, one emerald and one milky white. For just a moment, I thought he would scold me, and then he saw it too. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
A thick, thunderous crack echoed through the cave. Whatever had broken was invisible, but it hit the floor and shattered like glass. A chill breeze rushed into the cavern, and the torches flickered in the wind.
A clatter of metal. The chains binding Loki had fallen to the ground, clanging against the stone and disintegrating. What clung to his limbs slowly cracked and fell apart, like a thousand years had passed in a moment.
We stared at each other for a long time, waiting for it to be a clever trick, some shared hallucination, but nothing else happened. Slowly, Loki pulled one of his hands downward, toward his face. His joints cracked and popped. How long had it been since he’d used them?
I kept my place above his head, holding the bowl until he could move away from the snake bound above him. “Are we…free?”
“There was only one way out.” Loki moved in small, deliberate motions. Flexing each finger, each toe. He managed to bring his hands down from above his head, working out the stiffness of his limbs.
“It can’t be…”
“Odin said we’d be free at Ragnarok, technically speaking. I wonder if he meant it that way...” He huffed. “For all the years of taking the blame for it, it looks like we’re late to the party.”
The green in his living eye glimmered, alight with something sinister that I didn’t like. “You don’t know what’s out there. We need to be careful. We need to think.”
He sat up slowly, reaching for my hand to help him. Odin’s seidr had worked. We hadn’t shrivelled and wasted away with time and neglect. Our bodies were weak, hungry, defeated, but whole. The only lasting things were the scars the venom had made on my fingers and Loki’s face.
I put the bowl aside and helped him stand. We supported each other to stretch out, to awaken our limbs. Finally, I could move without being punished for it.
I took his hand and pulled him along with me. “Come here.”
“I can’t.” He looked toward the tunnel to the surface. “There are things I have to do.”
I hushed him. “It can wait a little longer. Sit with me.” I helped him lower himself onto the stone ledge next to the hot spring. When we were settled, I dipped my hands in and pulled out a scoop of warm water. It was indescribable. The first tangible comfort I’d had since we’d set foot in the cave. My hands were bronze, glistening wet, while everything above the waterline was so thick with dirt that it made my skin grey. An eternity of filth.
I slipped my feet in, little by little, basking in the ecstasy of the water on my skin. My head tilted back, a sigh escaping my lips. It felt like the first day of spring after being shut away all winter. The warmth soothed the ache in my muscles and the screaming of my bones. I took a breath and slid all the way in, letting the water engulf me. I stayed there for a moment, the dull bubbling of the spring muffled.
When I surfaced, Loki was smiling. It was perhaps the only genuine smile he’d shown in a long time. I held my hands out. “Come in. The bottom is shallow here.”
He painstakingly stretched his legs into the pool. The relief swept over his face as he sunk into the water.
Small blessings in desperate times.
I reached up and slid a thumb across his cheek. The grey streaked away, leaving a glimpse of the pale Jotun skin that lay underneath. “There you are,” I whispered, continuing to wipe away the dirt. Bit by bit, the filth disappeared and before long, his face was clean. It would never be the same though. No amount of water could wash away the melted-wax scars that ran on his cheek or the milky white of his eye.
After I was finished, he did the same for me. His fingers sparked life into my skin. No one had touched me for all those years, and I was starved of it. His hands slid along my shoulders, my collar bone, my back. He scrubbed the sand from the tangles of my hair. He was thorough. Delicate.
“There.” He cupped my face in his hands. “As beautiful as ever.”
When he bent his neck to kiss me, I let him. If Ragnarok was coming, whatever was waiting outside would be harsh and destructive; there was no escaping that. I’d had enough pain. For one moment, I took the kindness.
“Thank you for everything.” He touched his forehead to mine. “I can’t ever repay this. But you know what I need to do.”
I held his hands against my cheeks. “You don’t have to do anything. We can just walk away. You and I can just sit back and watch everything burn. Loki, please. I have nothing left but you. Come with me.”
He shook his head. “I have debts to pay. I promised them.”
“Promised who?” I dropped his hands, my lip quivering. “There’s been no one here but us. This whole time, it was me beside you. The only one. You’re going to wager whatever you have left for some kind of vengeance, but I’m the only thing left, and you won’t come back this time. None of us will. You’re going to leave me to die alone.”
“You could come too.” One hand lingered on my face while the other travelled to the back of my neck. “We could do this together, for our sons. You and I. You could be my queen again. Together, like we were always supposed to be.”
“I’m not going to burn the realms with you.” I put my hands on his stomach. “I just want to rest. Please.”
“I’ll find you when it’s done.” He sunk his head down again, another kiss, and I fell into it. If I gave him everything I had, maybe it would be enough. Maybe I could make him stay. Maybe he would feel it and change his mind. I would be enough.
But I wasn’t. Even with my body pressed against his, my arms around his neck, he still pulled away in the end. He pried off my fingers and waded past me.
I scrambled to pull him back, grasping for what was left of his shirt and missing. He pulled himself out of the hot spring. He turned back for a moment, wringing the water from the flame of his hair. “I’m doing this for us, Sig. Wait for me.” And then his words fell silent, his lips moving in rhythmic patterns.
“Loki, no—”
The air shimmered and distorted, forcing me to look away. A bird shrieked, that familiar hawk screech. I caught a glimpse of it as it flew into the tunnel, out toward the world.
“Damn you, Loki!” I crawled out of the water and ran on my wobbling knees toward the exit. I tore one of the torches from the wall and stumbled up the jagged tunnel after him, into the dim light above.
It was dusk but still bright enough to burn my eyes. I shielded them and looked up to the horizon. The shadow of a bird flew toward the sunset. I screamed after him for all the good it would do. And then I started to shiver. The ground was covered in snow, the trees blanketed in white. How many winters had passed? What time had I emerged into?
Another shiver, this one deeper in my core. The water on my skin was turning cold. It would soon become ice and what little remained of my tattered dress would freeze to my skin. I’d die of exposure before morning, without a doubt. I held myself, bringing the torch as close to my skin as I dared. My breath rose like smoke in the air. I needed to find warmth.
I turned back to look into the cavern.
I couldn’t step foot in there, not again. Not for one more second. I’d rather die free than spend one more moment in that prison.
The trees around the cavern were bare. I stepped carefully, snow seeping into my broken leather shoes, and I picked up whatever branches were small enough to carry. I could make a fire. Dry off. Survive.
The thought surprised me. I’d spent so much time wishing I were dead that the will to live seemed foreign. But still, it was there, burning like the smallest ember.
My stomach rumbled, begging me for something to eat, but I could only solve one life-threatening problem at time. With enough wood in my hands for a tiny fire, I knelt over the base of a tree stump and started to brush away the snow. The cold pierced my skin, and I wondered if anything I was doing would work. My mind felt dull. From the cold or from the captivity? Both.
As I was pulling together enough focus to summon wildfire, a rustle caught my attention. The bushes next to me were moving. I held out the torch, hoping it would be enough to deter whatever lay on the other side. A squirrel or a hare, maybe a—
The bushes burst open. A hulking grey blur leapt out from the leaves and tackled me to the ground. The weight of it bore down on me. Snarling white teeth, rancid breath, dripping spittle. It barked, so close to my face that my ears rang. I scrambled for the torch that had fallen just out of my reach. There was no time. I began to whisper runes, praying the wildfire would come to me quickly.
Hot slobber dragged across my cheek. I cringed, waiting for the teeth to bite down and tear me open, but they never came. The wolf yipped and bounced off, its tail wagging as it jumped in circles. When I didn’t get up, it laid down beside me, its playful emerald eyes glittering in the torch light.
Those eyes.
It was impossible, but the name slipped off my tongue before I could stop myself from hoping. “Váli?”
The wolf barked, springing up like an excited child. It stopped and nuzzled its snout into my side, whining and barking.
I grabbed him around the middle and tackled him into the snow. “I thought I’d never see you again!” I pushed my face into his fur and sobbed, each pull of breath a desperate cry. He kept nuzzling against me until I could smell nothing but the wild, musty scent of his fur, his body warm against my skin.
We stayed there until I started to shudder from the cold. When I drew my hands away, the tips of my fingers were turning purple. The sun was gone, leaving us to the long dark of the night ahead. “Is there somewhere we can go? Somewhere warm?”
Váli squirmed out of my arms and waited for me to stand, wiggling his hind quarters. I struggled to my feet and followed him as he plodded into the trees. I tried to distract myself from the numbness in my fingers, the burning in my feet. “Have you been here the whole time? Waiting?”
He started yapping, a series of unintelligible growls and barks. He clearly had a lot to say, but there wasn’t a word of it that I understood. “Darling, I don’t speak wolf. Your brother was going to teach us—” Narvi’s body flashed into my vision, Váli ripping out his innards—No. Not now. “Give me one bark for yes, two for no.”
He gave me a soft bark, just one.
“Are you alright?” One bark.
“Can you turn back into yourself?” Two barks.
“How are you not dead?” An annoyed whine.
“Is it Odin’s seidr?” A hesitant bark.
“Are you alone?” A pause. One bark.
I ducked under a tree branch. Váli was leading me deep into the forest. In the distance, long, flowing shadows moved between the trees like wraiths. The sight chilled my bones, but Váli kept on. As we drew closer, I saw them for what they were: furs, harvested with jagged teeth and left to cure in the branches.
“Did you do this?” One bark.
I reached out to touch a thick reindeer hide, feeling the inside. It was still quite fresh, still wet. Nowhere near ready for use. I moved to the next, a steely grey wolf pelt. It’d been there much longer. The inside was rough, the old meat gnawed and clawed away as raggedly as could be expected from a wolf with no tools. There were small holes where he’d torn too far.
Váli leapt up and took the pelt in his teeth, pulling it down. He looked up at me expectantly.
“For me?” One muffled bark.
I took it from him. It smelled like old, sour meat and some pungent musk, but that didn’t matter. The warmth did. I couldn’t feel anything anymore.
Váli trotted along ahead, pulling down fur after fur, selecting them on some hidden criteria I couldn’t discern. He must’ve been working on the pelts for a very long time.
Ahead were a collection of bushy fir trees. They grew closely together but at their base was a shallow hole between the branches. Váli hunched down and crawled beneath them. With no other choice, I got on my hands and knees and crawled through, dragging my new collection of furs behind me.
Inside, the cold lessened. The air was still and dark. I fumbled with runes until at last I was able to summon a small flicker of wildfire in my palm to light the space. The trees we sat between had grown so closely together that they blocked out most of the wind. The inside branches had been torn away, leaving enough room for a wolf to live comfortably, though it was a bit cramped for the two of us.
I sat and wrapped the furs around my shoulders and over my legs. Váli busied himself digging a small hole in the dry dirt and filled it with twigs. When he was finished, he nudged it with his nose and whined.
I reached forward and let the fire roll off my palm and into the sticks. It crackled and flickered, and before long, the tiny fire was warming the space as best it could. I drew Váli close, pressing my face into his fur. “You can’t know how much I’ve missed you. I love you so much.”
He turned his face up to me, his teeth bared in a wolfish smile, and I jumped.
Those teeth chewing Narvi’s flesh. Swallowing it. Blood on his muzzle.
Váli whimpered, pressing his head against my skin.
“I know. There’s a lot that needs to be said. And I’m afraid, I am. But I also know the real you would never…I’ll try, I will. I love you.” I scratched behind his ear and held him to me. “We’ll figure it out, promise.”
The plan was ridiculous, but there was nothing else to do.
After a fitful sleep pressed into Váli’s fur, I spent the early hours fashioning fur into clothing, as best I could. He brought me fresh meat to cook and rabbit pelts for the insides of my shoes, to block the holes. We needed to get to Asgard, and I needed to do it without losing my toes. We fashioned a crude skirt and cloak with the bigger pelts and a collection of metal treasures Váli had hidden away in his den.
Afterward, Váli led me into the woods. The walking was difficult. Snow and cold found its way into every corner of the pelts, but we couldn’t afford to slow down. The longer I was exposed to the elements, the worse things would get for me.
To distract myself, I told Váli what had happened in the cavern. He graced my tales with an appropriate growl or whimper, but it was a one-sided conversation. There were so many things I needed to know. What had happened to him? How much time had passed? How had he survived?
Then the answer came to me. Narvi was dead, but he had always written everything down. He had piles of journals in his room with meticulous notes. If we could get home, if everything was still there, I could learn. I could have one of my sons back.
I explained it to Váli. “If Ragnarok is coming, I’m not going to die in this silence.”
Váli stopped short and whined, pushing at his muzzle as if he were trying to slough off his own skin.
“I don’t know the runes, Váli. If we can find something, maybe I can change you back, but this is a start, isn’t it? We might need to force it out of Odin, and I swear I’ll find a way, but this is what I can give you right now.” I ruffled the fur between his ears and moved on, working my way up the next hill.
Váli ran ahead, up over the top of the hill, and disappeared. I kept climbing, stepping carefully, trying not to slide back down. From the other side, he started to bark. Nervous about what that might mean, I picked up the pace and found him dancing around at the top of the hill, wagging his tail.
Just on the other side was a home. It was hard to say if anyone still lived there. There was no smoke coming from the chimney and no firelight to be seen from the outside. Snow had drifted up over the bottom of the front door, blocking it off. But it was four walls and some shelter, and I was happy to have it.
“Come on.” I started my way down the hill, skidding on my boots when it got too steep. The top of the left boot cracked and opened, snow flooding it. I cursed and kept going. Váli was almost at the house when he stopped and started to sniff the ground. Whatever he smelled led him on a zigzagging path toward the front door. He barked and hopped toward the door, growling as he dug out the snow.
“What is it?” I pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t move at first, but it came open when I threw my shoulder against it. The carnage was immediate. The old, frozen bodies of a man, woman, and three children sat huddled in the far corner. They’d been there a long time, if I had to guess, blue and frozen stiff. The cold had kept them from rotting.
The house had been ransacked. The table was tipped on its side, and the chairs were broken and scattered. There didn’t seem to be much left worth anything. But we didn’t need anything of value. Just a fire, a boiling pot, and some clothes.
I shut the door behind us and approached the pile of bodies. It was truly gruesome, and, in another time, it might have brought me to tears, made me leave. But the truth was that they’d been luckier than many. They had died together and gone to Helheim together. They hadn’t lived to see Ragnarok and whatever came after. Their deaths had been quicker than the slow torture Loki and I had endured.
When other suffering was stacked next to ours, everyone was lucky.
Váli was sniffing the floorboards, exploring every corner of the little house. Memories pushed themselves to the front of my mind, making my hands tremble. Narvi’s scream as Váli tore out his throat. He hadn’t hesitated, not for a second. He was Váli the wolf. The wild beast. The murderer.
His head perked up when he noticed me staring at him. The tips of his ears twitched, his tail dropping between his legs.
I forced my face to loosen, the anger falling away. It wasn’t him.
I closed the distance and dropped to my knees. A new sound escaped him, a low, mournful howl. I took his face in my hands and made him look at me. “What happened wasn’t your fault, alright? It’s everyone else’s fault. Mine and your father’s and your grandfather’s. It’s our fault that Narvi is dead—”
The howl deepened, desperate as he pawed at me, trying to get away from my hands. I hadn’t said it before. And he knew, of course he did, but there was something so final about hearing it. I held him tight.
“Do you hear me? This guilt isn’t for you to carry. This life has turned all of us into things we’d rather not be, but your brother is not your fault.”
The howling abated, and he pawed at my knees. I drew him in, and we sat in that embrace for a while until the numbness was too much to bear. I sighed and let him go. “Do you think you can catch us something to eat?”
Váli yipped once and padded toward the door. I held it open and let him go, watching for a moment as he went bounding across the open field.
While I waited for him to return, I picked up the broken pieces of the chairs and the table and piled them into the hearth. A little wildfire brought the wood to crackling, and gradually the heat spread through the room. I found the boiling pot tucked behind the table, toppled on its side. I stuffed it to the brim with fresh snow and set it over the fire to melt.
And then there was the problem of clothing. Feeling only mildly intrusive, I started to rummage through the family’s belongings. The wife had been a sturdier woman than I. Her dresses hung low over my chest and drug on the ground when I walked. I dug around until I came across the husband’s things. The trousers fit just fine, and I managed to find a tunic that was minimally stained from the labours of hard work.
By the time Váli started scratching at the door, I’d found myself a travelling cloak and had pried a pair of tightly fitting boots off the body of the mother. I opened the door and found Váli sitting proudly, the fresh carcass of a white fox at his side.