Ylir
Odin’s Month
November
Despite my tired legs, I trekked to the practice field. It was the only place I could think of to be alone. I’d left without my cloak, and the sharp wind made the hairs stand up on my arms. The field looked bigger and emptier without my men and when the dim winter light elongated all the shadows.
I knelt in the grass, thinking that Loki might respond better to an attempt at piety. Unlike Ersel, I was a vár child. The God of Lies had no innate affinity for children born in my season. Ersel was of haustr. The Trickster’s changeable autumn nature was in her blood. The damp earth soaked through my trousers. I rested my hand and hook in my lap. At first, the markings didn’t move, but when I brought my wrists together, the map stretched on my skin, showing a more detailed view of the city farther down the mountain.
I glanced at the purple dusk sky. I didn’t have a lot of experience in praying to the gods. I’d prayed a few times at sea to Aegir or Ran, but that had been fear talking. Nobody in my family was very religious. Mama, certainly, had never prayed. We were beyond the gods’ reach, she had told me, smoothing back my hair, when I’d asked why we never made offerings like the other families’ in the town. And they are no less flawed than we are.
Even then, Mama had refused to tell me the whole story. Heimdallr had fallen in love with my ancestor and had left her, cursing both to a life of sadness and want. The gods were selfish, calculating beings. They would only help me if they thought I could offer them something. According to Mama, that was all I needed to know.
My stepfather had been more pious and had told us some of the gods’ legends. He had kept a statue of Frigg in his workshop and had sometimes kissed it while he murmured his prayers. Of all the gods, I knew, Loki interacted most readily with humans. Sometimes they bestowed blessings—incalculable wealth and prestige—on the worthy. At other times, they played with their human supplicants, pitting them against each other and stirring the embers of conflicts that lasted for centuries. More than one war had begun because of the Trickster’s meddling.
I whispered a prayer to the wind. Ersel thought of Loki as malice made divine. As I knelt in the field, I wondered which version of the god would come to me. Would the god bless me or curse me? Why had they trailed our ship?
I expected a grand entry. When Loki had first come to Ersel, they had appeared in the form of a sea turtle, then dramatically shapeshifted into a human. But instead of a magnificent appearance, the god just left me to wait. I knelt until my knees cramped, with only the sound of the wind and the distant murmur of the city for company. I sat, crossed my legs, and plucked absently at a blade of grass.
Maybe the jarl had been wrong. Maybe the Trickster had no stake in this at all, and their pursuit of our ship had been all about reclaiming the mermaid. Loki had tried to break Ersel, and she had beaten them. Impressed, they had offered her greater magic and a role as their agent. Ersel had refused, but she still bore their magic in the talisman she wore around her neck. Maybe the god simply could not bear the idea that they had lost to a mortal.
“What are you doing alone up here?” asked a child’s voice. “It’s late.”
I turned to see a servant girl running toward me. She wore a faded green tunic with the jarl’s sigil embroidered on the sleeve. It was so large for her that it hung past her knees. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else,” she whispered.
“It’s fine,” I started to say, but her eyes had rested on my hook and the markings on my arms. I’d thought to display them, so the Trickster would know me, but now I was just cold and in no mood to be stared at. “Why are you here? Can’t you see I’m praying?”
She cocked her head, blonde curls blowing everyway in the wind. “Praying for what?” She pointed to my markings with one of her slender fingers. “Is that a map?”
I clasped my arms behind my back, out of sight. “Don’t you have work to be getting on with? I don’t want to be disturbed.”
She peered down at me with wide, unblinking green eyes. “I thought the whole point of coming here alone was that you were waiting to meet someone.”
“What?” I demanded. But then I stopped and processed what the little girl had said. Her eyes brightened, the color intensifying every second until they matched the cyan waves that had tried to capsize my ship.
For a second, I contemplated prostrating myself at the god’s feet. But Loki was already playing tricks on me, testing me. In all the stories, the people blessed by the Trickster had been strong and smart, worthy of a god’s respect. If I wanted help, real help, I had to prove I was worth it too.
I stood and raised my eyebrow just a fraction. My heart beat wildly. “You took long enough.”
Loki laughed in a child’s high pitch. “I was busy with a believer in the city.” They twirled around, letting me get a full look at them. “This girl, Aelin, died last night. She had the sweating sickness, as did her whole family, but she offered me her voice if I would help her brother to live. The boy will remain on the earth for now. I have a soft spot for the selfless.”
I nodded, but I couldn’t help wondering what they were insinuating with their words. I was far from selfless. I had ambitions and had done things I wasn’t proud of to fulfill them. “Why not save the girl too,” I asked, “if it was within your power to cure?”
“I have to get something out of it, don’t I?” Loki asked, curling their legs and sitting on the ground. They patted the earth beside them. They wore a patronizing smile that did not belong on their child’s face. “I have a soft spot for them because they are something I am not. They fascinate me. But my help never comes for free.”
I reluctantly sat beside them. “Do you know why I called on you?”
“I expect it has something to do with your dying mermaid.” Loki pointed down the hill toward the guesthouse. “We gods can be in more than one place at a time. Even now, I’m watching her through the window.”
“What did you do to her?”
Loki sighed. “What’s happening with Ersel has nothing to do with me. Whatever form she takes, she is a mermaid. Rán’s children can’t venture too far from the sea. The ocean is their lifeblood.”
“Then how do I help her?” I asked, even though I thought I already knew the answer. If I wanted Ersel to live, I had to take her to the sea, maybe even all the way to her people. She was too sick to just abandon at the shore. And to do that, I might have to give up the chance to win Honor’s allegiance and free Yarra. I wasn’t sure I could make that choice.
Loki watched my face intently. “I might be able to help.”
I braced myself. I had no intention of making a deal with them, but I did want to know what they thought I had to barter with. “What is it that you want?”
Loki looked down at their lap; full eyelashes swept down to curtain their emotions. Then the god’s fingers brushed over their lips. A green mist erupted from their hand and washed the glamor of magic away. The girl’s freckles and bright smile faded, replaced by Loki’s own face. The god’s eyes were that same shocking, unnatural cyan, and their cheeks were sharp like chiseled stone, but it was the threads binding their true lips that held my stare. Blood crusted the black string and open sores covered their mouth. I’d never imagined a god bleeding.
“To be heard,” Loki said softly.
I swallowed. The sight of the strings binding their mouth was making me feel sick. What would I do to free myself from centuries of suffering? My amputated limb ached almost every day, and while I did not regret the decisions that had led to my injury, if someone offered me the chance to get rid of the pain, I would take it. “And you think I can help you with that?”
Jarl Honor had said that Loki’s creature guarded the fortress where the children were being kept. I had told Haakon’s men that the navigator’s marks could show up at any time, and they had believed me. What bargain had those men already struck with the Trickster god? If there was something the god needed us to find, then it made sense for them to help guard Heimdallr’s other descendants. But Loki was a god. They had to know what the warriors did not: that I was the only one still living in our generation who would ever bear the marks.
Loki nodded. “You are of Heimdallr’s blood. His magic conceals pieces of a dagger that can break these ties. It’s bloodbound magic. He’ll never forgive me, but his kin can set things right.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. The god moved closer to me. Their gaze focused on the exposed skin of my arms. Self-consciously, I crossed them over my chest.
“What do you know of your family’s story?”
Admitting my ignorance was dangerous. Loki could spin my family’s history however they chose. If they lied, I would be none the wiser. But Mama had taken the secret to her death, and I was tired of other people knowing more about my family—more about me—than I did.
“Not much,” I whispered. “Only that the god Heimdallr had a child with my ancestor, a girl with red hair, and then left her.”
“A girl?” Loki gave a delighted cackle. “If Sigrid could hear you, I’m sure she would have something to say about that.”
“Sigrid?” It was the same name that Honor had mentioned. “The jarl?”
“She was at sea,” the god said. “She was returning from a battle in the North that had claimed most of her most trusted thegns. A plague claimed the others. She was alone, ferrying their bodies back to their families when Heimdallr found her.”
My eyes bulged. My ancestor had been a jarl. It seemed so outlandish that I struggled to believe it. And yet… if our ancestor really had been a simple peasant girl, why had Mama always shut down when I asked for more of the story? She had hated the idea of me following in my uncle’s footsteps. How much more persistent might I have been, had I known my ancestor had been a such an acclaimed warrior?
“And they made love?”
“Worse. He fell in love with her.” Some feeling—was it sadness?—tugged at their lips, causing the threads to tighten. “We gods do not control our own hearts. They belong to the Norns, mothers of fate. They gave Heimdallr’s hjarta to Sigrid. So he accompanied her to her people. He lived with her, fought beside her. They had children together.”
It seemed so cruel, for the mothers of fate to pledge a god to a mortal, whose years would be so short in comparison to his own. “And she died?”
Loki shook their head. “No. Heimdallr has a special place among the gods. It is his responsibility to guard Odin. When Asgard found him, Odin demanded that Heimdallr return.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “So he left her?”
Loki’s eyes shone with a glassy brightness I couldn’t quite read. “Yes,” they said. “And Sigrid was a proud woman. After he left her and broke her heart, she wanted to make sure he couldn’t return on a whim.”
“And you helped her?”
“The Norns also pledged my heart in an… inconvenient fashion.” Loki sighed and looked down. Then, as if suddenly noticing they still wore their child’s attire, they snapped their fingers. A cloud of cyan enveloped them and they shifted into a lean, adult body to match their face.
“I hid Sigrid from Heimdallr, at her behest. But Heimdallr holds that against me.” They traced fingers over the threads binding their lips. “When Odin bound me, he didn’t intend for it to be forever. The only way I can cut these bonds is with a dagger, split in pieces across the world. Odin entrusted it to Heimdallr, who will never help me. You can find it.”
“That’s why you followed me.” I stretched out my legs, seeking a more comfortable position now that my fear of the god was easing. “And you guard the children, because if I can’t help you, maybe one of them can?”
“We both know none of them can.” The Trickster rolled their eyes. “But in fifty years? A few of those children have the blood. Their descendants may bear the marks, so when the leader of Haakon’s men called upon me and alerted me to their whereabouts, I was happy to make a deal with him. But I have been waiting a very long time already.”
Loki reached for me and tilted my chin up to look them in the face. “You remind me of Sigrid. Not in the way you look, but your bearing. Your speech.”
I flushed. Sigrid had commanded one god’s love and another’s respect. I dreamed of becoming a leader like that. “What was she like?”
“Fearless,” Loki admitted. “Talented. She won many battles. Even against my own worshippers.”
They cleared their throat. “So, you know what I want of you. And I know what you want of me. To save your mermaid friend, will you make a deal?”
I pulled away from them. Everything they said had the ring of truth to it, but it was so much to take in. Loki was the Trickster. There had to be an angle to what they were telling me, something I wasn’t seeing. If I died, Loki would have to wait another generation for their salvation. But if I made a deal, I might be trapped by some impossible loophole in the god’s wording, the way Ersel had been. I might spend my life enslaved to the god, never able to get to Yarra. A chasm of guilt opened inside me. Whatever we were to each other, I couldn’t make that sacrifice.
“No. I won’t make a deal with you. But if you help me now, I won’t forget it.”
“You would let her die?” Loki snapped. “I’m watching her now. Her breathing is getting shallower by the minute. I thought you cared about her.”
“Why do you watch her? Is it all about me?” The god’s eyes flickered to the grass, and I pressed on. “I think you still have plans for her. I don’t think you’ll let her die either.”
“You think I care what happens to mortals? I’ve been alive for millennia. Ersel’s entire lifetime is a moment for me.”
“You gave her magic. You wanted her to come back to you.” Part of me expected Loki to kill me where I sat for speaking to them like this, but I continued, voice trembling. “You’re asking me if I can let her die. Can you?”
Loki started silently at me, nostrils flaring. Then they waved their hand, and, in a cyclone of cyan, both of us were transported to my room in the guesthouse. Trygve had fallen asleep in a chair by Ersel’s bed.
“It’ll break her heart, you know,” Loki said as they sat on the bed. “When she realizes the god she hated was more willing to help her than the girl she loves.”
I glanced down at Ersel’s sleeping form. She had settled, for now, between her mermaid and her human form. She had a human body, but her scales covered her hands and feet. Would she ever forgive me for this? Would I forgive myself?
Whatever control I’d had over my emotions disappeared. “You think I want it to be this way?” I hissed at them, as angry tears forged hot trails down my cheeks. “You’re making me choose between my home—my family—and her.”
Leaning forward, Loki collected my tears on their finger. They brushed the tears across Ersel’s lips. “Salt water,” they explained while I stared at them. “A very temporary measure, but that should see us to the coast.”
Their dismissal just made me cry harder. Ersel’s scales receded, and a fraction of her color returned. I reached for her hand. She gripped my fingers as her eyes fluttered open.
Her gaze flitted to the god sitting beside her. She gave a resigned sigh and pulled her hand back. “You summoned them.”
“There wasn’t another choice,” I said, clinging to the small hope that Loki wouldn’t tell her there had been, that the god wouldn’t tell her that I refused to make a deal to keep her safe. I had not been able to do what she had done for me, that day she saved me from being drowned by Havamal. The magnitude of my failure made me feel nauseous.
Ersel nodded. “What did you have to promise them?”
“I—”
“The deal is between us,” Loki interrupted. They bent down and carefully scooped Ersel up in their arms.
“I’ll find you once I’m recovered,” she said.
Loki carried her through the window and into the night. I couldn’t decide what I hoped. To see her again? To stop being too selfish to love her? Or that the god would take her far away, and she would never come back, so I would never have the chance to betray her again.