“First will come the Fimbulwinter, three long winters, one after the other. Kin will kill kin out of greed and survival, and the people will forsake the gods. And then the end is nigh.”
—Unnamed Scholar, Prophetic Musings
Though I still had no idea where we’d been kept, we knew exactly where to find Asgard. The World Tree loomed in the distance, and we walked toward it at as steady a clip as we could manage. The new clothes made it easier, but the boots left blisters on my feet and eventually callouses. We reached it at sundown on the third day.
I’d expected to find the city empty. If the chains had broken and Ragnarok was coming, why was Asgard full of torches, candles, and citizens going about their daily business in the snow? Why hadn’t they gone to war? Had no one told them?
We approached the gate in silence. It wouldn’t do us any good to be seen. It was simplest to stay off the road, following the inside of the wall. Our path wasn’t entirely accurate, and we found ourselves coming too close to busy taverns and well-lit kitchens that hadn’t been there before. I pulled my hood up and kept my head down, Váli not straying from my side, staying on small streets until finally we came to Valaskjálf, the centre of everything. And next to it, our hall.
It was a shameful sight. A piece of the roof had fallen in toward the front. Bushes had sprung up wildly around it, and the walls were warped with age. They could’ve torn it down, but instead, a bind rune had been painted on the door, something to keep any evil inside. Our poor home. Forgotten, cursed, and left to rot.
The door squealed as I pushed it open. Váli ran into the dark, his nose to the ground. Snow was piled up in the kitchen where the roof had fallen in. There were no footsteps on the ground, nothing that seemed freshly moved or out of place. No one had been here in a long time, let alone Loki.
I held my palm out, letting a fresh spark of wildfire light my way to the bedroom. The door was still intact, still open. Inside, the bed was unmade. Had I left it that way the night we ran off? The furniture was covered in rune etchings, names carved by daring kids to prove they’d been inside. Crumpled next to the bed were a pair of lady’s underthings that weren’t mine.
I sighed. At least most of the roof still held, and the hearth was still piled with kindling and wood. I bent down and lit the fire, letting the warmth seep into my bones.
I sat there, waiting for Váli, but he didn’t come back. Concerned, I went looking for him. He wasn’t in the kitchen and a quick peek into the study found it filthy but empty. The door to his bedroom was open, and there was a rustling coming from inside. When I peeked in, I found Váli with his muzzle in a pile of old laundry.
“What are you doing?”
He startled and jumped back, that whine on his voice again. He squirmed for a moment, and it looked to me as if he might be considering his options. His bed had been stripped bare and his things were thrown around his room, so I cleared a spot on the moulding mattress and waited. Could a wolf look embarrassed?
After a moment, he sunk his head back into the pile of tunics and rustled through them until he found what he’d wanted. With a crumpled piece of clothing in his teeth, he jumped up onto the bed and set it down on my knee.
“What’s this?” I held it up and stretched it out. It was a large tunic. “This isn’t yours, is it?” Váli’s ears sunk, and he laid his head on my lap. Of course it wasn’t.
“You miss him, don’t you?” He nodded his snout against my leg. I ran my hand down the fur on his neck. “Did you find him?” He let out two soft yips, a no. “Oh my darling, I’m sorry…You know, I used to think that love would be easy. That once you went through the excruciating pain of waiting and finding each other, everything else would be simple. And maybe that’s true for someone, but not for us. We both loved so deeply that it burned, but it didn’t help. But even if we don’t get to keep the one we love, they brought us happiness, and maybe that needs to be enough.”
Váli looked up at me, answering with an unimpressed groan.
“I know, I could hear the bullshit even as it came out of my mouth.” I nudged him up. “Come, let’s find those notes. I’m tired of talking to myself.”
Váli hopped down and padded off to Narvi’s room. The door stood ajar enough to push open with his nose. Breathing deeply, I followed. A sliver of moonlight lit the floor. I summoned up a lantern and tossed it in the air above my head.
His room was a mess; it always had been. For all Loki’s tidiness and Váli’s military precision, Narvi had never learned anything from them. His furs laid in a pile next to his bed, stray pieces of clothing hanging from the bedpost. The clay pots along the walls had once held Narvi’s collection of healing herbs. There was nothing left but brittle, shrivelled twigs.
The writing desk sat directly under the window. A row of candles lined the top of the desk, melted to varying heights, wax pooling at their feet. Stray paper, books, and quills were strewn across the surface in a state of disorder only Narvi had been able to follow. He’d loved to sit there until the break of dawn, lost in his work.
He never would again.
I braced myself against the desk, anguish washing over me like the tide. It was one thing to sit trapped in that cavern, knowing he was gone, and another to see what the world looked like without him in it. All the vibrancy of his world and him missing from it, like a rip in reality. To touch the parchment he’d once touched, to enter a room that would never again have him in it. My little boy who was so brilliant and so free and was no more. Gone.
My tears were falling onto the pages on the desk, the faded ink running across the yellowed parchment. I wiped my cheeks and forced the grief back down. We couldn’t afford to lose a single rune from Narvi’s work. I gathered up each stray paper and piled them on the bed. While I cleared the desk, Váli padded around the room, picking up discarded notebooks gently in his teeth and dropping them next to my own pile. It was already more than I could carry at once.
We returned to the bedroom with everything I could fit in my arms. The fire had made the disused old room almost cosy. While I shook the dust from the musty bed sheets, Váli stoked the fire, one log at a time, tossing each in with a lack of precision that might’ve lit the house on fire if he kept at it. I rummaged through my old clothing until I found a nightdress and traded my trousers for comfort.
Váli hopped up into the bed next to me. For a moment, I felt content, sitting with my son who loved and protected me, warmed by a lavender fire, surrounded by books. But the further my mind wandered, the more I thought of death and Ragnarok. There was too much to be done to enjoy anything for long.
I pulled the stack toward me, scattering the notes across the bed. The loose papers were devoid of order, so I cracked the old leather cover of the most familiar notebook, a violet one Loki had given him for his 15th birthday.
My fingers caressed the browning pages. Each rune was written meticulously, all his efforts concentrated on one thing. I flipped through the pages, blinking away the tears. I’d always tried to look over his shoulder, to catch a glimpse of what he was doing, but he hated anyone watching. Only Loki had been allowed. Sketches of hares and moths filled one page while another labelled an intensely detailed drawing of Alflaug’s Thistle, listing all its practical uses. Narvi’s passion would’ve made him a blessing to the nine realms. If he’d lived.
There was a promising passage toward the back of the book:
My work is starting to pay off. Last month, I was able to communicate with a hare using only seidr and my thoughts, but I hadn’t succeeded in replicating the process with other animals. Today, I was finally able to break into the mind of a crow. We’ve always assumed that crows are fickle and cruel, but this one told me a wonderful story about his mother and brothers. I need to begin compiling my work if I ever want to convince anyone else I can do it.
I left the book open beside me and started to thumb through the loose pages. Sketches, jots, ramblings, home study from Hod. Nothing of use. I picked up the next notebook and found an older entry.
It finally worked! Father told me that animals have an intelligence we don’t bother to account for, and he was right. His ability to speak with Sleipnir and nearly any other horse is because he was one for so long. He learned their language, but he also learned to hear them. I don’t think even he understands the magnitude of that. And now I’ve done it as well. I sat in the stable with Sleipnir every day, and I’ve finally found the runes! Won’t Mother be surprised!
Below was a long list of runes, something significantly more complicated than any seidr I’d taught him. They were sketched out over and over in slightly different iterations. The last one was circled.
“Váli.” I nudged him gently, rousing him from sleep. His ears perked up. “I think I’ve found it.”
He hopped up and shook himself before thumping his paws into my lap, eager for his miracle. I took his face in my palms and pressed my forehead against his, breathing deep. It wouldn’t do to get too excited; I couldn’t handle that kind of heartbreak if it didn’t work.
I whispered the runes against his fur, focusing on my heartbeat, on his breathing, on the heat flowing between us. Each rune was precise and necessary, and I whispered them in long, repeating chants, in desperate prayers. Let me hear his voice. Let me speak to my son.
A whisper rose in the back of my mind, like another consciousness within my own. “...knew...much...missed you, even Loki. It was so hard, Mother. Please hear me.”
“I do! Váli, I’m so sorry!” I wrapped my arms around him, crushing him against my chest.
“You hear me!” His voice came to me in two parts; the one that barked and whimpered, and the words that came to me from the back of my mind, a thought separate from mine. “I waited so long for you. I knew you couldn’t be dead. You never came out, and I couldn’t go in, but why would Odin lock you in if you were dead? I didn’t know what to do, but I had to wait for you. Maybe Hreidulfr was dead, and I just couldn’t…Mother, I had nowhere else to go.”
“I’m here now.” I held him and listened, his fear and loneliness soaking through every single word.