Fic: descent
Title: descent
Length: approx 3500 [12 in 2012: 1/12]
Rating: PG13
Summary: [Sif/Loki, Jane/Thor; post-film] Thor and Jane Foster have a question for Loki. To find him, they must visit one of his children. Sif leads the way.
Notes: This is a fusion of two different Norse interpretations: Thor the mighty Avenger 2011 film & the book Ragnarok by AS Byatt (Canongate, 2012). As such, some spellings might not be as you expect. I’ve elected to stick to AS Byatt’s chosen spellings for consistency.
hariboo_smirks has a birthday! I’m sneaking this in before the day is over because she is amazing. hope you like!
*
‘Where are we going?’
‘Might I remind you that you insisted.’
‘Yes, but- ‘
‘Did she not insist, Thor?’
‘Sif speaks truly, Jane. You did insist.’
‘-in helping with the search for Loki, who has our answers. I didn’t anticipate - this.’
Sif stops and regards Jane Foster, one foot on the curve of a fallen branch. The branch would pass for the thickest part of a tree trunk on Midgard, Sif knows. ‘And will this stop you?’
Jane adjusts the strap on her Aesir leather satchel. ‘No.’
‘Then I suggest we continue.’ Sif turns back to the path ahead, or rather, her memories of the path from centuries before. It’s long overgrown. Sif thinks that she and Tyr must be its only remaining adherents.
The only adherents who use the path, in any case. Some have eyes that range so that their steps need not; others, wings.
Later, after following the path into the oldest and deepest part of the wood, Sif, Thor and Jane stop in front of a cave entrance. Sif notes that Jane is adjusting to her Aesir garb admirably, with not an audible complaint in the length of their walk.
‘I am glad of your choice, Sif,’ Thor says quietly. ‘Of our paths - well.’
Sif tries to make his sincerity a balm on her own irritation. If Thor had felt able to confide the question to which Loki alone held the answer, they would have had three choices. If Jane had felt able to entrust the errand to an Aesir, they would have had two choices. But alas.
‘I don’t doubt Jane Foster’s commitment to our quest,’ Sif replies as Jane examines branches moving without wind - these trees are old enough to remember and retell stories among themselves. ‘However, I know you would rather not risk irritating Hel and her not permitting the return of a moral from her realm, despite the proverbial expression Midgardians are so fond of.’
‘And even if Jörmungandr were a choice -’ Thor begins.
Sif levels an eyebrow at him. ‘It is you she will not abide.’
Thor purposefully does not meet her gaze. ‘- there is the matter of the fishing expedition.’
‘We’re fishing now?’ Jane interjects, finished with her botanical introductions.
‘Thor fished, many years ago,’ Sif ignores Thor’s hurried hand gestures indicating that this tale should remain untold, as if this has previously stopped her. ‘He chose the wrong pull on the line to be stubborn in chasing. It did not end well for Thor, his companion, or indeed, the boat.’
Sif looks between them as Jane laughs brightly, a sound that has the trees whispering and leaning towards the sounds of young life. She looks between the mortal scientist and the dark cave. Her look to Thor is both approval of Jane Foster’s courage and a protestation of her right to know what awaits. It is avowedly not an apology. ‘It was also the first of Thor’s interactions with Loki’s children, and she has never forgotten it.’
Jane blinks. ‘Loki has children. Actual - but.’ Her words tumble out faster and faster, ‘but I thought Hel, Jörmungandr and Fenris were metaphorical - tales heavily symbolised to explain natural or supernatural phenomena.’
Sif grins, ‘You have read our tales.’
‘And I thought they were tales,’ Jane replies, ‘what exactly are we here to do?’
Thor pushes his hair back from his forehead, the damp air of the forest causing it to stick, his hand finding Jane’s arm on its descent. ‘And some are as they appear to be.’
Jane takes a long and slow drink of her water bottle and gulps. ‘Okay. I can handle this. Lead on.’
*
Sif remembers Thor, halfway in his cups at the banquet for Jane and Darcy.
(‘Five minutes ago you all wanted to throw me back across the rainbow bridge I fixed for you, now you want to give me a loaner for a party you’re throwing us?’
‘Jane, hush. Gods. Go-ods. Partying with gods.’
‘They were angry that you did what they could not.’
‘They have accepted you are here, however the method, hence-’
‘- drinking. You mean drinking. Whatever else it is you’re about to say, you mean drinking.’
‘Woot!’
‘....Yes.’)
At the banquet, Thor tells her, ‘You must cease to be surprised when they prove more perceptive than expected, Sif.’
Sif forgives Thor the indelicacy he knows not he is committing as he says it. Such is a friendship of ages. With the quest ahead weighing on her, she wonders if she will return without further betraying that knowledge which Jane Foster first perceived in her.
*
‘So do you say niece or step- or -’ Jane asks, eternal curiosity in mortal form, as they navigate the dim path through the caves. At least, Sif thinks, she is not asking where the light comes from. The thought brings with it unexpected warmth for Jane and an expected tightening of her shoulders.
The light glinting from the ice on the ceiling is a spell: one of the very few she knows. Another era saw her seated at the cave mouth learning it for days on end, for what are days when you believe in eons and probable bliss? She had been young; Loki had not been young for some time.
‘We call them by their names,’ Sif answers quietly. Her voice echoes back to her in the cave tunnel. ‘They are of a time in which we had names enough for all things and will to make more at need.’
‘This stone we walk through is Thviti,’ Thor takes up the lesson, voice smooth and even. When he continues, the words are not his own. ‘Names are powerful objects in their own right, though it’s not for us to start naming names.’
Nor are the words those of their childhood tutor.
*
Thor stops at a landing as the tunnel begins to twist into a desert.
‘We eat.’
Sif does not feel tired or in need of sustenance, but she appreciates the momentary respite: the chance to breathe in the tunnel air, to assimilate her senses to the many hours she once spent in this place - and the many hours since.
They unpack the food in silence, until Jane says, ‘We call them stalactites.’ She points to the ceiling with one hand and snatches a cheese sandwich with the other, almost in the same breath. As someone who grew up at a table with the Odinsons and Heimdall amongst others, Sif salutes her instinctive ingenuity. ‘If they grow from the ground up, we call them stalagmites,’ Jane continues and tears into the sandwich with a muttered curse upon the five course meal Darcy will be enjoying at Frigg’s table.
Thor takes a selection from their food and frowns at her. ‘They sound quite similar. How do you distinguish them if not in name?’
‘Slight difference,’ Jane smiles at him, ‘Stalactites - c for ceiling. Stalagmites - g for ground.’ She pats the space next to her and Thor grins and falls into it. It’s not a typical Aesir campfire tale, but the rhythm of speech with the meal eases Sif’s shoulders.
Silence falls again among the small group. Sif thinks of what Jane said - g for ground - and focuses. A small cluster of stalagmites grows from the ground in the middle and glows with an orange light: a cold fire. She exhales as Thor puts an arm and his cloak around Jane.
‘Thviti is his memorial,’ Sif finds saying. She knows not why she defends Loki from an accusation no one aired. ‘Or, his fealty. The tunnel is in the form of Jörmungandr. It descends, as Hel did, and as Baldur was forced to. He was not Loki’s child, but his role is of his making, ultimately.’
Thor passes her a stoppered earthenware bottle of mead. ‘It is also a tomb for those who yet live, albeit shackled, if that is to be called life. You are certain we will find him here?’
’Certain? Never,’ Sif responds, ‘but he may be, and he will be.’
‘Fenris is here, isn’t he?’ Jane asks quietly, breaking off cheese as if to feed it to an absent pet under a table they do not sit at. ‘But not Jörmungandr or Hel.’
‘Hel I hope you never have cause to see, Jane,’ Thor answers, ‘Or perhaps -’
Thor breaks off. Jane moves closer to him as Sif ducks her head to allow them a measure of privacy. Privacy - a consideration she would never have made for Thor in the Host. Were it not an unthinkable betrayal, Sif would like to show this moment to all Aesir who doubt Thor’s feelings for Jane; Aesir consider death in battle and eternal life in Valhalla their highest honour. To wish for anything else, any other death, is to question all they are, and it is Jane who has caused him to do so. Theirs, she thinks, is not a tale shaped to end well, and with both of them able to discern it from a distance.
‘Jörmungandr would not be contained by Thviti,’ Sif states into the quiet, hoping the distraction of new information will serve. ‘You will never see or sense Jörmungandr, Jane. She is only an outline to me, albeit one who tolerates my presence nearby.’ Thor huffs.
Jane looks aghast. ‘Never? But if she is real, then- ‘ she narrows her eyes and focuses where her ankles cross on the cave floor. ‘Real isn’t a very useful word in this time and place, is it?’
‘It seems to mean definitively present in both time and place,’ Sif frowns and tilts her head to Jane. ‘We cannot guarantee the relevance or certainty of either, here,’ she smiles, ‘or now.’
Thor shakes his head. ‘I understand it perfectly well until one of you explains it.’
Sif laughs, and it rings in the tunnel. Loki, she thinks, suddenly and sharply. He is here, she knows. She hears his shade in Thor’s fond exasperation. He is not here, but he is called by her laugh as so many times before. He is here, but not now.
‘Jörmungandr,’ Jane repeats, and this time pokes Sif’s knee. ‘I’ll never see her - why?’
Sif blinks and forces her shoulders down: she had tensed as if for battle. And why ever would it not be? She thinks of the tales, but they will not answer Jane for her, however much else of the Aesir’s lives they accomplish.
‘She is ever and always around you,’ Sif states. ‘Her head met her tail and encircled the known worlds; she gives Midgard its very shape. For those born after the spring of the world,’ Sif looks at Thor, who is as ageless as the storms after the long apprenticeship of his youth, ‘Jörmungandr is in the spaces between the known things, not known.’
‘Here, but not here,’ Jane murmurs, ‘dark matter and magic, one and the same thing in this place- ‘ She scrabbles in her bag for a battered notebook and scribbles. Sif cannot decipher the rest, but it is apparent Jane comprehends the scale, at least. ‘And now, ever and will be,’ she finishes, grinning, and shrugs at them. ‘Time is a variable. It varies.’
Sif laughs. Someday, she will cease to be surprised. At the moment she is still enjoying the precious novelty. There are few when time is, as Jane puts it, a variable with with a definite end.
*
They reach the bridge between Thviti and Fenris’s prison some hours after breaking camp at the landing.
‘Gioll is the rock in which Fenris is imprisoned. The river around Hel is named for it,’ Thor explains.
Sif remembers a time when Fenris’s imprisonment - a feat of trickery by the Aesir - was a deed he told with heart and pride in the hall of his father, not a quietly distanced fact of the past.
‘This rope is Gelgia,’ Sif adds. They stand at the ledge jutting from Thviti. The rope reaches between the hollows in the rocks and stretches above a raging torrent of a river, waters neither still nor shallow. ‘This river is Hope.’
Jane starts at that. ‘The hope of what, exactly?’
‘An end,’ Thor replies. Jane threads a hand through his. ‘Some say of all things.’
‘What do we do?’ Jane’s mouth is set in a hard line.
*
Once, Sif fell into the same error as she sees Jane make on the ledge. It is a lesson Thor will never learn; a lesson Sif learned only for the gaining of time more valuable, which changed only how she faced things to come, not the things to come.
Sif is Aesir and a warrior of the Host. She stands for life and existence. The river Hope, with its dark waters and darker wish, is made of the tears and saliva of the captured Fenris, expressing a hope and hunger for an end - to torture, to all things if not this. Sif considered Fenris opposed to her in being until she considered who stood on the ledge with her.
Fenris’s father, Loki.
Sif has learned that the end will always be and she will always fight it; she cannot accept Ragnarok with peace in her heart, nor a role in its happening as Loki will and has done. Though in the world where Jörmungandr’s tail was swallowed by her mouth long ago, and yet she encircles ever more tightly in search of symmetry, Sif knows that to resist the Wolf Time may be her role.
*
‘Gelgia,’ she explains, while checking her garb and gear are secured to her body - it would not do to lost her weapons to Hope - ‘Gelgia is a part of Gleipnir. Gelgia is the rope threaded through the rock; the rope attached to the shackles holding Fenris. Gleipnir is the shackles.’
Jane nods - Sif reads her as she would any comrade. She knows Jane is drawing a mental diagram of Fenris’s containment to keep the names in order. It reminds her of Loki’s fascination with maps and their scale and detail; and their fixed nature, an insult and curiosity to his own.
‘I’ll go across first,’ Sif orders, ‘You may follow when I signal.’
Thor balks at this. Sif waits out his objections before adding, ‘Of course, Fenris doesn’t like you either. It took Tyr’s arm to put his in the trap. I won’t give one of mine to get you out.’
Thor gives in. Sif removes the scabbard for the short sword buckled to her side. Grabbing the hilt in one hand and the covered blade in the other above Gelgia, she looks back to Thor and Jane. ‘It will do you no favours to pass the river slowly. Each pull on Gelgia drives a sword point into Fenris’s mouth: Odin’s price for him to listen or be heard.’
With a war cry she kicks off and glides down the rope until she reaches the lower ledge of Gioll and the mouth of Fenris’s cavern. She rolls to her feet, sword in her right hand and scabbard wielded as a blocking tool in her left.
She is met by silence and still air.
*
The air inside Gioll is warmer. The lights burn brightly and are not of her making. She walks on.
Fenris rages. Sif stands.
She does not bare her palms or her neck: empty-handed submission will gain her no advantage. She has never seen Fenris unfettered but suspects such obeisance would be met with a laugh and a suitably contemptuous death. It s a ruthlessness she can respect, as is Fenris’s rage to be respected; Sif knows something of fetters, too.
Fenris’s rage subsides - Sif cannot say after how long. He regards her coolly with an eye, were it a window, Sif could sit in the pupil and her head would not touch the top.
I have removed warriors from my teeth with trees larger than your weapon.
‘And you will again,’ Sif responds, sheathing her blade. ‘But not this day, ancient one.’
Fenris appears to bow his head, but it is only an illusion: he is laughing. Not this day, Lady Sif.
‘If he’s ancient, I’d hate to hear what you say about me.’
Sif spins, blade drawn in the turning despite the futility of the gesture. She used to have the trick of it.
This time Sif does let her blade sink slowly to the ground. She holds one hand up, palm flat. She seeks out - warmth. Coolness. A combination of the two impossible to voice.
Loki glimmers - no. This is an old lesson. Loki is never but what he is; Sif has simply learned to look directly at him. Loki sits on Fenris’s vast paw, beneath his ear.
He is as she has never seen him.
By the time of the younger gods, forms had been shaped by their environs and classified rather than names. Useful rotas of arms and legs decided. In the time of Loki’s origin, no such constraints were permitted, and he alone of the gods had maintained such malleability, preferring chaos and seeking to bring others of his kin from the ether. Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged steed, had been his mischief. For the sake of being Odinson, Loki had adopted a more frequent form.
His familiar form was what Sif missed least of him: as yawning as Ginnungagap were the absences of his wit, his shadow, his hollow in her bed and the books beneath her feet.
To see him now, shimmering with blue skin or black hair, feathers even - Sif cannot pretend surprise but finds wonder within her reach, though she’s never been other than what she is and has no desire to be.
‘Well, get on with it.’ Loki stands and raises an eyebrow. ‘Call in the Host’s swiftest. I will beat them away, I assure you.’
‘Well met, and I am the quickest of the Host. But this you knew,’ Sif says plainly, ‘Your brother, Jane Foster and me.’
Fenris watches them with interest. Loki winces at the mention of Thor.
‘They have questions,’ Sif continues, then takes a quick breath before saying, ‘as you are alive to answer them.’
Loki laughs. Sif wishes she could punch him, but it’s too far to try in one leap - he’ll only dart away.
‘I am Jotunn and a murderer or Jotunn. I am Aesir and a murderer of Aesir. Who am I to answer to?’
‘You are a murderer of comrades,’ Sif holds her gaze steady as his form changes before her, ‘and yet here I stand.’
That gives him pause, as much as he is capable of pausing. He never did fit his skin, but now it’s there for all to see who look upon him. Though if he has only been visiting with his progeny, that would mean Hel, the creatures of the deepest oceans, and Fenris’s ever sharp eyes: a most accepting company, and Sif. He is not fond of being looked upon.
‘And come Ragnarok over a bridge you will ride to the battle plain and I will not be at your side,’ Loki answers, voice echoing and form indistinct.
Sif speaks at a perfectly civil level for quiet conversation, not rising to the temptation to fill the nooks and cracks of the room with her voice until he emerges. ‘No,’ she says, ‘as you have never been. But I will have words with you before the end.’
His voice is in her ear, his breath on her neck. ‘I don’t doubt it. But forgive me if I hope it’s not our next private conversation.’
Before Sif can respond to him or his sincerity - as unexpected as the grief in his voice - she hears, ‘Thor! Are you going to stand out there all day? If you’ve come this far to find what didn’t want to be found, I suggest you get on with it.’
Fenris hears the name Thor and growls, rising with a gleam in his eye. Loki grins wildly.
As changeable as a winter day and wrapping any apprehension in clever confidence. This, Sif thinks, is Loki. Whether Jotunn or Aesir, he remains here and not here, changed and unchanged, past and future. Enduring as she will, till Ragnarok come.
Theirs is not a tale shaped to end well.
---
Length: approx 3500 [12 in 2012: 1/12]
Rating: PG13
Summary: [Sif/Loki, Jane/Thor; post-film] Thor and Jane Foster have a question for Loki. To find him, they must visit one of his children. Sif leads the way.
Notes: This is a fusion of two different Norse interpretations: Thor the mighty Avenger 2011 film & the book Ragnarok by AS Byatt (Canongate, 2012). As such, some spellings might not be as you expect. I’ve elected to stick to AS Byatt’s chosen spellings for consistency.
hariboo_smirks has a birthday! I’m sneaking this in before the day is over because she is amazing. hope you like!
*
‘Where are we going?’
‘Might I remind you that you insisted.’
‘Yes, but- ‘
‘Did she not insist, Thor?’
‘Sif speaks truly, Jane. You did insist.’
‘-in helping with the search for Loki, who has our answers. I didn’t anticipate - this.’
Sif stops and regards Jane Foster, one foot on the curve of a fallen branch. The branch would pass for the thickest part of a tree trunk on Midgard, Sif knows. ‘And will this stop you?’
Jane adjusts the strap on her Aesir leather satchel. ‘No.’
‘Then I suggest we continue.’ Sif turns back to the path ahead, or rather, her memories of the path from centuries before. It’s long overgrown. Sif thinks that she and Tyr must be its only remaining adherents.
The only adherents who use the path, in any case. Some have eyes that range so that their steps need not; others, wings.
Later, after following the path into the oldest and deepest part of the wood, Sif, Thor and Jane stop in front of a cave entrance. Sif notes that Jane is adjusting to her Aesir garb admirably, with not an audible complaint in the length of their walk.
‘I am glad of your choice, Sif,’ Thor says quietly. ‘Of our paths - well.’
Sif tries to make his sincerity a balm on her own irritation. If Thor had felt able to confide the question to which Loki alone held the answer, they would have had three choices. If Jane had felt able to entrust the errand to an Aesir, they would have had two choices. But alas.
‘I don’t doubt Jane Foster’s commitment to our quest,’ Sif replies as Jane examines branches moving without wind - these trees are old enough to remember and retell stories among themselves. ‘However, I know you would rather not risk irritating Hel and her not permitting the return of a moral from her realm, despite the proverbial expression Midgardians are so fond of.’
‘And even if Jörmungandr were a choice -’ Thor begins.
Sif levels an eyebrow at him. ‘It is you she will not abide.’
Thor purposefully does not meet her gaze. ‘- there is the matter of the fishing expedition.’
‘We’re fishing now?’ Jane interjects, finished with her botanical introductions.
‘Thor fished, many years ago,’ Sif ignores Thor’s hurried hand gestures indicating that this tale should remain untold, as if this has previously stopped her. ‘He chose the wrong pull on the line to be stubborn in chasing. It did not end well for Thor, his companion, or indeed, the boat.’
Sif looks between them as Jane laughs brightly, a sound that has the trees whispering and leaning towards the sounds of young life. She looks between the mortal scientist and the dark cave. Her look to Thor is both approval of Jane Foster’s courage and a protestation of her right to know what awaits. It is avowedly not an apology. ‘It was also the first of Thor’s interactions with Loki’s children, and she has never forgotten it.’
Jane blinks. ‘Loki has children. Actual - but.’ Her words tumble out faster and faster, ‘but I thought Hel, Jörmungandr and Fenris were metaphorical - tales heavily symbolised to explain natural or supernatural phenomena.’
Sif grins, ‘You have read our tales.’
‘And I thought they were tales,’ Jane replies, ‘what exactly are we here to do?’
Thor pushes his hair back from his forehead, the damp air of the forest causing it to stick, his hand finding Jane’s arm on its descent. ‘And some are as they appear to be.’
Jane takes a long and slow drink of her water bottle and gulps. ‘Okay. I can handle this. Lead on.’
*
Sif remembers Thor, halfway in his cups at the banquet for Jane and Darcy.
(‘Five minutes ago you all wanted to throw me back across the rainbow bridge I fixed for you, now you want to give me a loaner for a party you’re throwing us?’
‘Jane, hush. Gods. Go-ods. Partying with gods.’
‘They were angry that you did what they could not.’
‘They have accepted you are here, however the method, hence-’
‘- drinking. You mean drinking. Whatever else it is you’re about to say, you mean drinking.’
‘Woot!’
‘....Yes.’)
At the banquet, Thor tells her, ‘You must cease to be surprised when they prove more perceptive than expected, Sif.’
Sif forgives Thor the indelicacy he knows not he is committing as he says it. Such is a friendship of ages. With the quest ahead weighing on her, she wonders if she will return without further betraying that knowledge which Jane Foster first perceived in her.
*
‘So do you say niece or step- or -’ Jane asks, eternal curiosity in mortal form, as they navigate the dim path through the caves. At least, Sif thinks, she is not asking where the light comes from. The thought brings with it unexpected warmth for Jane and an expected tightening of her shoulders.
The light glinting from the ice on the ceiling is a spell: one of the very few she knows. Another era saw her seated at the cave mouth learning it for days on end, for what are days when you believe in eons and probable bliss? She had been young; Loki had not been young for some time.
‘We call them by their names,’ Sif answers quietly. Her voice echoes back to her in the cave tunnel. ‘They are of a time in which we had names enough for all things and will to make more at need.’
‘This stone we walk through is Thviti,’ Thor takes up the lesson, voice smooth and even. When he continues, the words are not his own. ‘Names are powerful objects in their own right, though it’s not for us to start naming names.’
Nor are the words those of their childhood tutor.
*
Thor stops at a landing as the tunnel begins to twist into a desert.
‘We eat.’
Sif does not feel tired or in need of sustenance, but she appreciates the momentary respite: the chance to breathe in the tunnel air, to assimilate her senses to the many hours she once spent in this place - and the many hours since.
They unpack the food in silence, until Jane says, ‘We call them stalactites.’ She points to the ceiling with one hand and snatches a cheese sandwich with the other, almost in the same breath. As someone who grew up at a table with the Odinsons and Heimdall amongst others, Sif salutes her instinctive ingenuity. ‘If they grow from the ground up, we call them stalagmites,’ Jane continues and tears into the sandwich with a muttered curse upon the five course meal Darcy will be enjoying at Frigg’s table.
Thor takes a selection from their food and frowns at her. ‘They sound quite similar. How do you distinguish them if not in name?’
‘Slight difference,’ Jane smiles at him, ‘Stalactites - c for ceiling. Stalagmites - g for ground.’ She pats the space next to her and Thor grins and falls into it. It’s not a typical Aesir campfire tale, but the rhythm of speech with the meal eases Sif’s shoulders.
Silence falls again among the small group. Sif thinks of what Jane said - g for ground - and focuses. A small cluster of stalagmites grows from the ground in the middle and glows with an orange light: a cold fire. She exhales as Thor puts an arm and his cloak around Jane.
‘Thviti is his memorial,’ Sif finds saying. She knows not why she defends Loki from an accusation no one aired. ‘Or, his fealty. The tunnel is in the form of Jörmungandr. It descends, as Hel did, and as Baldur was forced to. He was not Loki’s child, but his role is of his making, ultimately.’
Thor passes her a stoppered earthenware bottle of mead. ‘It is also a tomb for those who yet live, albeit shackled, if that is to be called life. You are certain we will find him here?’
’Certain? Never,’ Sif responds, ‘but he may be, and he will be.’
‘Fenris is here, isn’t he?’ Jane asks quietly, breaking off cheese as if to feed it to an absent pet under a table they do not sit at. ‘But not Jörmungandr or Hel.’
‘Hel I hope you never have cause to see, Jane,’ Thor answers, ‘Or perhaps -’
Thor breaks off. Jane moves closer to him as Sif ducks her head to allow them a measure of privacy. Privacy - a consideration she would never have made for Thor in the Host. Were it not an unthinkable betrayal, Sif would like to show this moment to all Aesir who doubt Thor’s feelings for Jane; Aesir consider death in battle and eternal life in Valhalla their highest honour. To wish for anything else, any other death, is to question all they are, and it is Jane who has caused him to do so. Theirs, she thinks, is not a tale shaped to end well, and with both of them able to discern it from a distance.
‘Jörmungandr would not be contained by Thviti,’ Sif states into the quiet, hoping the distraction of new information will serve. ‘You will never see or sense Jörmungandr, Jane. She is only an outline to me, albeit one who tolerates my presence nearby.’ Thor huffs.
Jane looks aghast. ‘Never? But if she is real, then- ‘ she narrows her eyes and focuses where her ankles cross on the cave floor. ‘Real isn’t a very useful word in this time and place, is it?’
‘It seems to mean definitively present in both time and place,’ Sif frowns and tilts her head to Jane. ‘We cannot guarantee the relevance or certainty of either, here,’ she smiles, ‘or now.’
Thor shakes his head. ‘I understand it perfectly well until one of you explains it.’
Sif laughs, and it rings in the tunnel. Loki, she thinks, suddenly and sharply. He is here, she knows. She hears his shade in Thor’s fond exasperation. He is not here, but he is called by her laugh as so many times before. He is here, but not now.
‘Jörmungandr,’ Jane repeats, and this time pokes Sif’s knee. ‘I’ll never see her - why?’
Sif blinks and forces her shoulders down: she had tensed as if for battle. And why ever would it not be? She thinks of the tales, but they will not answer Jane for her, however much else of the Aesir’s lives they accomplish.
‘She is ever and always around you,’ Sif states. ‘Her head met her tail and encircled the known worlds; she gives Midgard its very shape. For those born after the spring of the world,’ Sif looks at Thor, who is as ageless as the storms after the long apprenticeship of his youth, ‘Jörmungandr is in the spaces between the known things, not known.’
‘Here, but not here,’ Jane murmurs, ‘dark matter and magic, one and the same thing in this place- ‘ She scrabbles in her bag for a battered notebook and scribbles. Sif cannot decipher the rest, but it is apparent Jane comprehends the scale, at least. ‘And now, ever and will be,’ she finishes, grinning, and shrugs at them. ‘Time is a variable. It varies.’
Sif laughs. Someday, she will cease to be surprised. At the moment she is still enjoying the precious novelty. There are few when time is, as Jane puts it, a variable with with a definite end.
*
They reach the bridge between Thviti and Fenris’s prison some hours after breaking camp at the landing.
‘Gioll is the rock in which Fenris is imprisoned. The river around Hel is named for it,’ Thor explains.
Sif remembers a time when Fenris’s imprisonment - a feat of trickery by the Aesir - was a deed he told with heart and pride in the hall of his father, not a quietly distanced fact of the past.
‘This rope is Gelgia,’ Sif adds. They stand at the ledge jutting from Thviti. The rope reaches between the hollows in the rocks and stretches above a raging torrent of a river, waters neither still nor shallow. ‘This river is Hope.’
Jane starts at that. ‘The hope of what, exactly?’
‘An end,’ Thor replies. Jane threads a hand through his. ‘Some say of all things.’
‘What do we do?’ Jane’s mouth is set in a hard line.
*
Once, Sif fell into the same error as she sees Jane make on the ledge. It is a lesson Thor will never learn; a lesson Sif learned only for the gaining of time more valuable, which changed only how she faced things to come, not the things to come.
Sif is Aesir and a warrior of the Host. She stands for life and existence. The river Hope, with its dark waters and darker wish, is made of the tears and saliva of the captured Fenris, expressing a hope and hunger for an end - to torture, to all things if not this. Sif considered Fenris opposed to her in being until she considered who stood on the ledge with her.
Fenris’s father, Loki.
Sif has learned that the end will always be and she will always fight it; she cannot accept Ragnarok with peace in her heart, nor a role in its happening as Loki will and has done. Though in the world where Jörmungandr’s tail was swallowed by her mouth long ago, and yet she encircles ever more tightly in search of symmetry, Sif knows that to resist the Wolf Time may be her role.
*
‘Gelgia,’ she explains, while checking her garb and gear are secured to her body - it would not do to lost her weapons to Hope - ‘Gelgia is a part of Gleipnir. Gelgia is the rope threaded through the rock; the rope attached to the shackles holding Fenris. Gleipnir is the shackles.’
Jane nods - Sif reads her as she would any comrade. She knows Jane is drawing a mental diagram of Fenris’s containment to keep the names in order. It reminds her of Loki’s fascination with maps and their scale and detail; and their fixed nature, an insult and curiosity to his own.
‘I’ll go across first,’ Sif orders, ‘You may follow when I signal.’
Thor balks at this. Sif waits out his objections before adding, ‘Of course, Fenris doesn’t like you either. It took Tyr’s arm to put his in the trap. I won’t give one of mine to get you out.’
Thor gives in. Sif removes the scabbard for the short sword buckled to her side. Grabbing the hilt in one hand and the covered blade in the other above Gelgia, she looks back to Thor and Jane. ‘It will do you no favours to pass the river slowly. Each pull on Gelgia drives a sword point into Fenris’s mouth: Odin’s price for him to listen or be heard.’
With a war cry she kicks off and glides down the rope until she reaches the lower ledge of Gioll and the mouth of Fenris’s cavern. She rolls to her feet, sword in her right hand and scabbard wielded as a blocking tool in her left.
She is met by silence and still air.
*
The air inside Gioll is warmer. The lights burn brightly and are not of her making. She walks on.
Fenris rages. Sif stands.
She does not bare her palms or her neck: empty-handed submission will gain her no advantage. She has never seen Fenris unfettered but suspects such obeisance would be met with a laugh and a suitably contemptuous death. It s a ruthlessness she can respect, as is Fenris’s rage to be respected; Sif knows something of fetters, too.
Fenris’s rage subsides - Sif cannot say after how long. He regards her coolly with an eye, were it a window, Sif could sit in the pupil and her head would not touch the top.
I have removed warriors from my teeth with trees larger than your weapon.
‘And you will again,’ Sif responds, sheathing her blade. ‘But not this day, ancient one.’
Fenris appears to bow his head, but it is only an illusion: he is laughing. Not this day, Lady Sif.
‘If he’s ancient, I’d hate to hear what you say about me.’
Sif spins, blade drawn in the turning despite the futility of the gesture. She used to have the trick of it.
This time Sif does let her blade sink slowly to the ground. She holds one hand up, palm flat. She seeks out - warmth. Coolness. A combination of the two impossible to voice.
Loki glimmers - no. This is an old lesson. Loki is never but what he is; Sif has simply learned to look directly at him. Loki sits on Fenris’s vast paw, beneath his ear.
He is as she has never seen him.
By the time of the younger gods, forms had been shaped by their environs and classified rather than names. Useful rotas of arms and legs decided. In the time of Loki’s origin, no such constraints were permitted, and he alone of the gods had maintained such malleability, preferring chaos and seeking to bring others of his kin from the ether. Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged steed, had been his mischief. For the sake of being Odinson, Loki had adopted a more frequent form.
His familiar form was what Sif missed least of him: as yawning as Ginnungagap were the absences of his wit, his shadow, his hollow in her bed and the books beneath her feet.
To see him now, shimmering with blue skin or black hair, feathers even - Sif cannot pretend surprise but finds wonder within her reach, though she’s never been other than what she is and has no desire to be.
‘Well, get on with it.’ Loki stands and raises an eyebrow. ‘Call in the Host’s swiftest. I will beat them away, I assure you.’
‘Well met, and I am the quickest of the Host. But this you knew,’ Sif says plainly, ‘Your brother, Jane Foster and me.’
Fenris watches them with interest. Loki winces at the mention of Thor.
‘They have questions,’ Sif continues, then takes a quick breath before saying, ‘as you are alive to answer them.’
Loki laughs. Sif wishes she could punch him, but it’s too far to try in one leap - he’ll only dart away.
‘I am Jotunn and a murderer or Jotunn. I am Aesir and a murderer of Aesir. Who am I to answer to?’
‘You are a murderer of comrades,’ Sif holds her gaze steady as his form changes before her, ‘and yet here I stand.’
That gives him pause, as much as he is capable of pausing. He never did fit his skin, but now it’s there for all to see who look upon him. Though if he has only been visiting with his progeny, that would mean Hel, the creatures of the deepest oceans, and Fenris’s ever sharp eyes: a most accepting company, and Sif. He is not fond of being looked upon.
‘And come Ragnarok over a bridge you will ride to the battle plain and I will not be at your side,’ Loki answers, voice echoing and form indistinct.
Sif speaks at a perfectly civil level for quiet conversation, not rising to the temptation to fill the nooks and cracks of the room with her voice until he emerges. ‘No,’ she says, ‘as you have never been. But I will have words with you before the end.’
His voice is in her ear, his breath on her neck. ‘I don’t doubt it. But forgive me if I hope it’s not our next private conversation.’
Before Sif can respond to him or his sincerity - as unexpected as the grief in his voice - she hears, ‘Thor! Are you going to stand out there all day? If you’ve come this far to find what didn’t want to be found, I suggest you get on with it.’
Fenris hears the name Thor and growls, rising with a gleam in his eye. Loki grins wildly.
As changeable as a winter day and wrapping any apprehension in clever confidence. This, Sif thinks, is Loki. Whether Jotunn or Aesir, he remains here and not here, changed and unchanged, past and future. Enduring as she will, till Ragnarok come.
Theirs is not a tale shaped to end well.
---