fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: 3.

[mekosuchinae]

3.

i: loki dreaming.

Loki walked the palace. The corridors were empty, and a silence like death swaddled him. Thick roots, wider around than his shoulders, burst through the walls; they arched and twisted, and they knotted together. He stepped over one such root, which rose in a little hump to catch him. Wet soil crumbled underfoot.

He looked for the throne room but could not remember how to find it. He would seek an audience with the Allfather. For what? His breath fogged the air. Winter whitened the way. Lines of ice hung from the roots, and snow crunched where he walked. He cast no shadow, and when he passed a mirror, no reflection paced him. Loki licked his teeth and tasted ice.

Doors rose before him, frost like feathers and flakes spattered in a lacework pattern over the metal. In the darkness, the gold gleamed like brass. He came to them and they opened for him without his touch, without a word, silent on their hinges as the doors to his father's sacred room had never been silent. Loki entered the throne room. A sheet of ice fell from one of the doors at his back.

Odin did not sit on the throne. Who sat there, he could not tell, for a great, shining tree stood before it, and its trunk was vast and its branches twined endlessly about each other as they opened to the ceiling so high above. Silver light fell cold against his face as he ascended the dais. The tree was still, its leaves unchanging, like a thing carved of ice and planted into the earth to grow as frost grew: in unwatched increments.

He knew the tree. He knew, too, the figure who stepped out from behind it. Loki stared up into his own face, terrible and thin and laughing. With deliberate, lazy slowness the other Loki descended first one step then the next. Where he walked the frost receded and pricks of green peeked through, the metal turned to soil.

"Never looked in a mirror before?" the second Loki asked. He smiled. "I'm afraid I'm not blue enough to be your mirror."

In the shimmering surface of the tree, Loki saw a distorted echo of his jaw, his throat: blue skin, dark. The frost giant bared. He turned on the other.

"Who are you?" He held still, assessing, watching as the other passed him. "Where is my father?"

"Laufey lies dead," said the other, "at your hands, I believe. Dead at the hand of Odinson. Was that it?" He laughed.

He remembered then: Odin sleeping dreamless in a cloud of gold, and the monster bent over him.

"Laufey is not my father," said Loki. His breath gusted white, delicate as melting frost. "I am Loki Odinson. Laufey was never my father." The words were vile on his tongue. "I am not Laufey's son."

"Loki Silvertongue," said the other. "Loki Liar's-tongue. Lie, lie, lie to everyone. Lie to yourself. Why should you be exempt from the lashings of your tongue?"

"My father is Odin, king of Asgard!" Loki shouted at him. "My mother is Frigg, queen of Asgard, and I am their son. I am æsir!"

"You were never æsir," said the other quietly. He smiled still. His eyes were pale, green as moss, and in them Loki saw his own eyes red. "You always suspected. How Odin feared you, the monster in his house. How Frigg must have shuddered as you suckled at her breast. You saw it in their eyes."

"Stop it," Loki whispered or shouted; he could not tell. "You have no right to speak of my mother."

The other circled him. Its eyes were sharp, narrow; it did not blink. The tree blinded Loki. He looked away.

"But she isn't your mother. Who was her son? Thor. And she loved him best, as Odin loved him best. Why would she care for the son of Laufey, given to her by Odin as a tool for the future of Asgard?"

"Shut up!" Loki screamed, and he threw his hands out to catch it round its throat.

An awful, consuming light washed over him; it drowned him. The tree shook and in its shaking it rang like a curtain of bells set to chiming again and again. The light bore him into the wall and struck him again as he made to fall to his knees.

"That wasn't very clever," his voice said to him. "I expected better of you."

"I am the son of Odin," he said again, though it hurt him to speak into that endless pealing. "I have proven myself time and again."

"And you have always come up wanting." Scorn, then. "You could not even destroy the birthplace of Laufey."

"I would have," he whispered, "if it had not been for Thor," but his heart ached to say it. He was tired, so very tired. He could find neither hate nor vengeance in his breast. He wanted only to curl into a ball there on that cold floor as the tree sang its alien chorus and sleep and dream of nothing.

"I would have ended them," he said. "I would have killed all of them. For Father. For Odin. That he would know me as his son and-" His throat closed. He forced his mouth open again. "And love me."

The light faded. The other stood above him. He smiled no longer. It wore his face and yet Loki could not read the expression: it was distant, strange, as peculiar a thing as the last delicate chime of the great tree's leaves fading now from the highest arches of Odin's throne room.

"He will never love you," it said, not unkindly. "Not as you wish he would."

"There is always hope," Frigg had said as she gave her hand to Loki.

Loki looked to his hands. His flesh was blue. Deep lines ran along the backs of his hands, his wrists, creases in his skin which he did not know. The inky darkness of his fingernails was strange to him.

"There's always hope," he said.

"Is the hope for Odin's love greater to you than the existence of Frigg's love?" asked the other. "Is it more to you than Thor's love?"

Deep in Loki, the old spite flared, a spark struck off a stone. Through his teeth he said, "Thor-"

"And what of Sif?" asked the other.

Loki looked up. The being's face shone, silver as the tree, and in its eyes he saw the shadow of leaves, eyes green as grass, green as trees, and his own red like blood-red like Sif's formal undercoat.

"Who will come for you?" it asked. "Odin, who knows you as his great failure? Frigg, who knows you as her son? Thor, who knows you as his brother?

"Or Sif," it said last, "who knows you as her friend?"

Frigg's hand, warm beneath his. "There is always hope," she said.

"Who will come?" asked the tree.

ii: memory: loki.

Loki fled again to the copse of trees at the heart of Frigg's garden. By law the garden in its entirety belonged to the queen and the queen alone, but he thought of that wooded thicket as his. The sunlight, harsh and hot, vanished. The little forest swallowed him.

Cool shadows speckled the one trail Frigg allowed. His heels sounded off the paved path. Bits of jewel winked up at him.

"Loki! Show your face!"

Foolish to stay upon the trail. He shed his shoes and, that they wouldn't betray him, he threw them into the brush and thought: lark, lark, dove, lark. Sif shouted again, nearer. He hadn't time to check if the charm stuck.

Loki darted between the trees. Unswept leaves whispered beneath his toes. The shadows thickened; daylight receded behind him. A tree with particularly high branches caught his eye, and Loki threw his arms about it. Digging his toes into the ridged bark, he shimmied up it; and right on time, for Sif had followed him into the forest.

Breathless, smiling, he crept back upon the thin branch till his shoulders pressed to the trunk. Sif's knife distended his jacket. The blade lay hard against his breast; the tip pushed at his ribs.

"Loki!" she bellowed. "Give me back my knife!"

He thought of shouting, "What's the fun in that?" Her lips would bunch, and Sif would turn sharply to the sound of his voice; her hair would fan through the air. Loki adjusted the knife, then leapt to another tree. A mistake: the branch he pushed off of cracked.

The brush crackled. Sif left the path. She'd taken her shoes off as well-when she moved, she did so softly and high on her toes. She did not speak. A tense sort of quiet filled the spaces between the trees. Sif hunted him, and he'd her hunting knife. The thought amused him.

Loki swung about the trunk till he found a branch which, in its jutting, ran alongside another tree. The branches of this next tree were set lower than he would have liked, but the leaves grew more thickly on them and, perhaps most importantly, Sif neared. Loki slipped from the one tree to the other. There, he stilled and thought himself a shadow, a spot in the foliage where the sun dared not reach.

Sif passed beneath him. She turned her head, and she was near enough he might touch her ear if he wished. Her jaw showed, set. Her lips had pursed, and the crooked humor, the easy confidence, inherent to the shape of her eyebrows was nearly forgotten. She'd tied her hair up with a plain green ribbon. Her hair cascaded dark and gleaming down the back of her long neck, over her strong shoulders. She turned again. A ripple ran through her hair. A strand snagged, wound about the little finger a bush below held out to her.

Loki's hands itched. If she caught him, she would drag her vengeance out of his skin; he would have to fight to run again. The faintest suggestion of sunlight played across her crown, drawing red out of the chestnut brown.

He drew the knife from his pocket. The edge was fine, the blade balanced. Sif tended to her tools as Thor did not his. Loki smoothed his thumb down the center of it. The metal was polished; his thumb glided easily over it. Sif began to move again.

Loki hooked his knees about the branch and dropped silently. He slipped the knife beneath her ribbon and split it in a single, quick motion. The ribbon and a little hank of her hair came away in his other hand. Her dark locks tumbled freely down her back in a glorious, shining tangle.

Sif gasped and rounded on him. Her hair, so thick and wild in its unbinding, flared. Her eyes were huge, a hazel brown in the mingled light and shade of the trees, and she was beautifully, ferociously angry. Too late Loki realized he still hung from the branch, head, shoulders, and weighted hands out of the cover the leaves and his spell offered. The ribbon twisted between his fingers.

"Oh," he said, "hello, Sif. Were you looking for me?"

"Yes," she said, then she grabbed him by his collar and dragged him out of the tree.

Loki tossed the knife aside before he drove it by accident into either Sif or himself. He cracked his head on her shoulder, and Sif tumbled with him to the ground. The jolt jarred him and he curled against the blow. His lips brushed her collar. Sif, unwilling, had caught him-and he was suddenly, hotly aware of: how lean she was beneath him, how her thighs tensed under his hands, how her knee pressed between his legs. His mind emptied. He could not think of what to do.

Then Sif grabbed his tunic and rolled him over. His head struck an exposed root. His vision blacked then cleared again, and Sif filled his sight; she towered above him. Her fingers knotted in his collar. Like the branches of a tree, her hair surrounded her. Light haloed her. Her passion suffused her, and Loki knew it was because of him. He clutched the ribbon tightly in his hand. The strands of her hair drew tight about his fingers, tight so they pinched.

"Caught you," Sif said.

"You would think so, wouldn't you," he said.

Then he brought his legs up and twisted. His elbow planted in her side. Sif gasped and fell, and he flew out from under her. He turned ‘round. Furious, she lifted her head. Her hair, that wondrous dark cloud, spilled across her shoulders, her back, the feral slope of her throat. He smiled.

"You'll have to be cleverer than that to catch me," Loki said.

Rising, she said, "When I'm through with you-"

"You have to start first.” He held his hand high, that she might see the ribbon, how it spun between his fingers. "I think this will make a nice prize."

"It isn't yours," she snapped.

"It is now," Loki said, and he ran.

iii: the norns.

In the mountainous shadow of her blessed roots, three sisters worked their cloth. Two of the sisters knew the shadow as a cool thing reminiscent of their youth. The third, if she had not lost her eye, would have known it for what it was.

"Oh, no!" said Skuld, youngest, in dismay. She left off her weaving. "I've lost my eye."

Verðandi, middle eldest, looked up from her spinning. The folds where her eyes had been creased deeply.

"You've lost what?" she asked dangerously. "What is it precisely you've lost?"

"My eye," said Skuld. "I can't find it!" Then her mouth flattened out.

"You mean you've lost our eye," said Verðandi, in a tone of voice which threatened to pick Skuld up and toss her down the well which sat in the juncture of two roots and assured her that once it had done so, Verðandi would happily throw rocks down at her.

Skuld shrank back and tried her best to be silent as she patted at her lap, her blouse, her nose, her unbrushed hair. Of the sisters, Verðandi's ears were best.

Verðandi went on: "How did you lose it? Were you playing ball with it? Were you throwing it in the air? Did you miss?"

"Oh, here it is," Skuld said feebly. "I found it. No need to fuss now."

The middle eldest sister drew herself upright. Verðandi turned her face to Skuld, and her face was terrible as only an elder sister's face could be terrible.

"And where," she enunciated with admirable care, "was it?"

Skuld stuck her fingers in her weaving and pretended she hadn't heard.

Urðr, eldest and wisest and slowest, said, "Tell her where you found it," and Skuld kicked her feet, for she did not want to tell. Urðr picked tufts out of her handful of wool and said, "If you don't, you know she'll kick you."

"Right in your old, wrinkled leg," said Verðandi.

Skuld sighed. Morosely, she picked at her weaving.

"In my hair," she said.

Verðandi threw aside her spinning and shouted, "You found it where? You put our eye, our one eye, in your hair?"

"I didn't know where else to put it," Skuld protested.

"Anywhere else!" said Verðandi. "You could have given it to one of us! We aren't so stupid as you."

"But I need it for my weaving!"

"Obviously you don't," Verðandi said witheringly, "or you wouldn't have put it in your hair!"

They would have gone on like so for years, as they had done so before, had Urðr not pulled a particular burr from the wool and said, "Ah. Loki."

Her two younger sisters raised their heads to her, the one of them sightless, the other bearing their one eye in her right socket. Verðandi leaned forward most eagerly.

"What of Loki? Has he woken?"

Skuld's face ran over with fog. "Too soon," she sighed. "He has many dreams left to him." Then she roused and looked over to Verðandi, who frowned. "And anyway, if he'd woken you would have known of it."

"I only wondered," Verðandi snapped.

But Skuld had lapsed again. She ran her fingers dreamily across her loom and said, "He would have been a great king, Loki Laufeyson. He would have opened Jötunheimr to the stars, and Jötunheimr would have known the peace of Asgard."

"No more," said Urðr. "That is in the past now."

"Odin," said Verðandi, and his name was a curse forced through her teeth.

"Odin," said Skuld. Sadness weighed her. She pulled at the weaving folded by her feet and if she remembered a pattern unwoven and thread lost, her sisters could only imagine it. Her hands slowed and stilled.

Skuld said, "Loki will never be king."

"But will he be happy?" asked Verðandi, urgent.

"I cannot tell," said Skuld. "The pattern is strange to me."

Verðandi sat back and made noise of disgust in her nose. "Then what good are you?"

Urðr turned the burr over and over between her fingers. Her skin, so old, had softened like leather, and the teeth picked at her fingertips.

"Ah," she said again. "A new dream. Is it Sif?"

"Oh, Sif!" said Skuld. "I like her. She will do great things for all the realms in her own name, and-"

"Oh, shut up," said Verðandi. "What is it Loki dreams?"

"Lend us our eye, Skuld," said Urðr, "and we will see."

Skuld clapped a hand over her eye, and Verðandi said, "Oh, for Yggdrasill's undying sake, will you just hand it over? You've had it for three centuries."

"But I need it most," she whined.

"Lend us our eye," said Urðr again.

Skuld sighed again, most aggrieved, but she stuck her finger and her thumb in the socket and pulled the eye out. It popped wetly, then it was in her hand, and she rose to present it to Urðr as Verðandi, too, rose to join them. She unfurled her fingers, and the eye stared unblinking and unthinking up at the sisters with their folded faces and their dried and closed eye sockets. Scars ran out the corners of their eyes, faded but never fading.

Urðr set her fingers to the side of the eye and Verðandi set her fingers to the other side. Skuld held it steady in her palm. As one, the sisters leaned over the little ball and looked down into the shadows, into the place where Yggdrasill's roots met and Loki slept uneasy.

"What is it?" Skuld whispered. "Why does he look so upset?"

"Don't be daft," said Verðandi. "You know full well why."

"Shh," said Urðr, and they were quiet.

Loki dreamed.

iv: loki dreaming.

Wreathed in silver, Loki ascended to the Allfather's throne. He carried the moon in his hands, and as he climbed the steps its light spilled out from his fingers. The sun set at the back of Odin's throne, its red glare dying. The stink of ash enveloped him. Fire burned in Asgard.

Out of the seat of his father's throne, a sapling sprouted. Its branches opened as a flower blooming. Frost fell from the gaunt fingers. Loki turned the moon over in his pale hands. His flesh showed blue with cold. The crisp metallic tang of a brutal winter drove out the scent of smelting metal and thickening ash. His heart was empty, the edges brittle. If he carried it in his hands he thought it would break. He found he did not care.

The tree grew and grew, a sapling and then a youngling tree. The branches twisted about each other and splintered, again. Again. Leaves rose as pimples then unfurled, and they shone clear as ice. Loki breathed out. In the corners, snow began to fall. The tree pressed into the ceiling, but the ceiling was no longer there. Loki held the moon white in his hands; the moon showed black in the sky.

A dark hollow opened in the trunk before him. Loki set the moon into it.

The doors opened at his back. Loki turned from his father's throne. The moon winked out.

Sif came at him, wreathed in gold. Sunlight glinted oddly in her dark hair, but it was not sunlight. Ash spotted her skin. Blood streaked diagonal across her cheek, a red smear that bisected her lips and curled to die at her throat. Light shone at her back, a fierce, hot light.

"Loki," she said, "what have you done with the king?"

No. He tipped his head. What she said was:

"Loki!"

He turned to Sif as she broke through the doors. Fire poured in around the edges; it limned her skin. She carried with her a blade in her hand and another across her shoulders. His fingers chilled. He bore the box of ice between his palms.

"Everyone is dead," she said. "Asgard is in ruins. The king has fallen. Thor is lost. What have you done?"

No.

The doors opened. Loki lifted his head to the tree. The moon turned in its hollow, and as it turned it passed from full to waning to crescent to new. Behind his throne, the sentinel woke. Fire glimmered in its metal slots.

"Loki," Sif said.

She was at the steps. She was at his shoulder. Her hand closed on his arm then she swore and drew back as if hurt.

He turned to her. His father's crown weighed heavily upon his brow. He looked down into her face. Her eyes were dark and wide, and her mouth was smeared with ash and blood. Her hand had blackened, frostbitten.

"Loki," she said again. "What is this?"

Loki set the scepter that marked his sovereignty hard upon the dais. The sentinel stirred again. Fire rose at his back.

"Loki, please," she said. She reached for him again.

Loki stepped back.

"Loki! You must come with me," she said. "Loki, damn you, will you listen to me?"

The sentinel dwarfed him. He withdrew into its shadow. Sif stared up at him, frustration flickering hotly over her face. Fire twisted at her back. Fire twisted at his. Fire, fire, everywhere. Still his breath froze in the air.

"As I am the king," he said, "I must obey no orders but my own. You forget yourself, Sif. Would you treat your king as you would a second son? Inconsequential? Yours to command?"

"You were never without consequence," she shouted. "Loki, the only one who ever thought you expendable was you. Thor-"

"Thor," he spat. "He was ever your favorite. Ever Asgard's favorite. Well, who is king? Thor or Loki?"

"Is that why you did it?" she asked.

He blinked, and in the sweep of his lashes the world changed. A hot sun bore on his back. Desert sprawled out around him, interrupted only by strange buildings whose purpose he did not know. The sentinel waited.

Sif rose from a crouch. Dirt darkened her shirt. Her leathers had torn across her shoulders.

Again, she asked him, "Is that why you did it?"

The tree bloomed between them. In its shining surface he saw: Sif driving her lance into the sentinel's throat. The sentinel turned, opening to offer her its cleansing fires.

The throne room was cold and still about him. He watched as the sentinel turned and as Sif pulled and pulled and pulled at the lance but could not free it. He watched as fear ran over Sif, fearless. She would not abdicate her lance. She would not admit defeat. He watched.

Sif stepped through the tree. The moon stopped its spinning in the hollow: a waxing crescent. It echoed in her face, half shadow, half light. Loki stood from the throne as she came for him, her hands empty, her mouth set. In her eyes he reflected, pale and dark, draped in silver and green. At his shoulder, a fire burned.

"Tell me why you did it," she pleaded. "You would have killed Thor. You would have killed our friends-Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun. You heard us. You saw us. Why did you do it?"

"They were never my friends," he said. "Who was I to them but Thor's little shadow?"

Sif ascended. The sentinel stood silent and ready at his back. He felt its breath hot on his neck. She spread her hands, the one whole, the other wretched with frost.

"Loki," she said, "you were never his shadow."

His breath came quickly. In a moment she would be upon him. Sif would touch him. Sif would catch him. He would not flee. He was king; it was not his lot to run.

"The moon can only ever reflect the sun's light," he said.

She looked at him as if he were simple.

"You aren't a moon," she said. "You're Loki. You're infuriating and smug and unbearable."

The desert sun beat upon him. In Sif's face, the moon shone ever bright.

"I wonder that you should bear me," he said.

"Because you're my friend," said Sif. "You were always my friend. Loki."

She reached for him.

"You were never mine," he said.

The sentinel opened.

v: memory: loki.

Rain had visited Asgard the night before and though the clouds had long since cleared, the gardens were still wet. A cool sun rose over the horizon. Loki liked the early days of spring nearly as much as he liked the late days of autumn. He curled beneath a tall tree that had only just begun to green.

"Aren't you wet?" Sif called. "You'll have a big spot on your seat."

Thor fell over laughing at the thought. He landed at Sif's feet. She rolled her eyes.

"Not so great a spot as the one Thor will have on his back," Loki shouted.

"Or what Sif will have on her front," Thor said cheerfully before he yanked her legs out from under her.

Of course, Loki had charmed the grass dry before he'd sat upon it; he'd done the same to the tree. It was an easy spell, one of the first he'd learned, easy enough he thought even Thor, who had no head for magics, could learn it. Loki kept it to himself.

His book sat forgotten on his knees. Sif had made a heroic recovery, turning her tumble into a roll which saw Thor flipped once. Thor had thickened some over the winter, though Loki still stood taller than him, but he hadn't yet learned how to use his muscle to his advantage on a smaller opponent; and Sif had ever been quicker.

She'd worn a sleeveless tunic in spite of the chill. Goosepimples stood out on her arms. The lean, strong muscles through her shoulders and upper back tautened. She got her hands under Thor's arms and drove him back. His feet slipped across the wet grass. Stupid, Loki thought. If he'd only brace himself properly she couldn't move him, even with the grass so slick. Thor was already so heavy through the chest.

Sif was laughing as Thor threw his arm around her shoulder and dragged her around. Her teeth flashed. Her hair, loose in its tie, haloed her face. Her chest, soft with the suggestion of breasts, heaved. The sunlight caught on her face; it lit her skin as from within, like a lamp. An uncomfortable tightness settled in Loki's own chest. He did not know why it should. He wished he were fighting Sif.

If he were fighting Sif, he thought. He would not be so stupid or so headstrong as Thor. Sif was quick; she assessed and approached things with a caution others mistook for arrogance. He would need to be quicker. She fought on her toes, weight forward. If he struck for her back instead of attacking her shoulders as Thor did-

He saw it as if it happened then, how Sif would stumble forward, catch herself, and pivot. Hair bright. Lips pulling back in- Not a snarl, but a sneer. Eyes narrow. Her shoulders would straighten and drop. She'd adapt, he thought, putting more weight on her heels. Perhaps she would overcompensate. He would strike low next, for her abdomen or her knees. Would she fall? He thought she wouldn't. She would bend and turn her bending into a blow.

Loki traced it in the way she twisted as she blocked Thor's progress with her arm and wound the other about his neck. His head ached. His stomach pulled. If Thor shone like the sun, Sif shone like a banked fire. His skin crawled as if it were summer, as if he burned. But it was spring, and a chilling breeze rolled through the gardens.

He looked to his book. A History of Asgard's Kings. Out of date by three kings, but- He could not think. Loki sucked on his teeth. He looked up when Sif shouted. Thor threw her to the ground. Her legs bucked. Her arms, bare and reddening with the cool, spread like wings, and her hair pooled.

"Where are you going, brother?" Thor cried as Loki stood. "I would fight you next."

"I'm not beat!"

Sif slammed her fist into the back of Thor's leg. He staggered to one knee, and she fell upon his back.

"If anyone still cares," Loki said when this showed signs of continuing as it had, "I've decided to go some place where I can read without worrying about berserkers tearing me apart."

"Do you mean Sif?" Thor grunted.

"That's half the problem," said Loki.

"He means you're the other half," Sif said to Thor. She kicked at Thor's gut and caught his arm instead.

"Thank you, Sif," Loki said.

He had thought perhaps she would look up at this-he thought briefly of her eyes, that hazel which showed green or brown under certain lights, and wondered which it would be-but Sif did not. Thor had taken her attention.

Loki left them to their squabble and found another tree in the gardens, on the other side of the main path. He could hear them still, how they shouted, the occasional bone-jarring thump sounding as one or the other threw the one or the other. He opened his book. The binding creaked at the violence. Loki breathed out through his nose. What did he care? He didn't care, not even a bit. If Sif wanted to beat Thor senseless, then fine; she was as savage as Thor.

He stared at the page. Tief, second son of Olav, ascended to the throne in- The numbers bled together. He stared at the page some more. The numbers split. A dampness bit at his back. The underside of his legs was wet. He'd forgotten to charm either the grass or the tree. Loki closed the book and thought of throwing it so it struck another tree. He came so far as to raise it to his shoulder before he dropped it to his lap.

The force of his feeling upset him most. Loki drew breath and held it. He let it out in small fractions till his heart had slowed and whatever idiotic fog had filled his head cleared. He laid his head back against the trunk. Sif shouted again, then she laughed. Loki couldn't have possibly cared less.

He read alone till his mother's tread sounded on the trail. Her shadow fell over him. Loki marked the page with his thumb. He turned his face up to the queen and smiled. She knelt beside him in the grass. Her gown dipped, billowing like a bell around her feet.

"And why are you here all by yourself?" she asked.

"Sif and Thor are fighting again," he said.

"Are they?" The queen leaned back to look around the tree. "They aren't fighting now."

Loki turned about. He rose to one foot and pressed the fingers of one hand to the ground for balance. In the clearing just beyond Sif and Thor were playing some game of their invention which involved jumping around the path. Sif landed on one foot and, wavering only a moment, she turned and leapt to land on the other foot. Her hair gleamed.

"Sif is a good friend to you, isn't she?" the queen asked lightly.

He looked away from Sif to his mother. Frigg smiled at him as if they shared a secret. Sif laughed. Loki did not turn.

"She's amusing," he said, "and she isn't too thick-headed."

"Oh, high praise," said the queen. She gave her hand to Loki and led him out to meet Thor and Sif.

"There you are!" Thor cried. He left off the game. "I had wondered where you ran off to."

"If you had paid attention," Loki said, long suffering, "you would have known."

Thor persisted, heedless: "Sif wanted to wrestle with you, but you weren't there." He grinned. "So I had to beat her again."

"Oh, shut up with your lies," said Sif, coloring. She turned to Loki. Her shoulders drew back; she pushed her chest forward to boast. "I beat him both times, and the second time he shouted for you to tag in. But you'd gone."

"I did not ask him to tag in!" Thor said. "I said if he wanted to tag in, I would allow him to."

Sif's profile had arrested Loki a moment. Her nose was long and straight, and her mouth curled in a challenge. Loki looked away from her. His mother watched him. Under Frigg's consideration he felt exposed, as if everything twisting inside him were bared before her. He hoped she understood even less than he did and that she would turn her gaze elsewhere.

"Is there a difference?" he asked Thor.

"There is an enormous difference," Thor told him.

Sif sided with Loki. Her shoulder brushed his. She was the taller, still. His brow aligned with her eyes. Her arm was warm against his arm. She smelled faintly of sweat and of wet grass. He had the sudden impression that her tunic had rucked up in the grass and that she'd a stain at the small of her back where she'd slid over it. Loki did not dare look to his mother. He saw her smiling from the corner of his eye. She'd folded her arms in the delicate, dignified way which meant she was greatly enjoying herself.

"There's no difference," Sif said, "and you know it. You're just upset I beat you."

"He hates it when anyone beats him at anything," Loki said to her. "Last week he threw a stone at my head when I bested him at rock skipping."

"Because you cheated!" Thor said, outraged. "I saw you whispering spells!"

Sif and Loki both looked at him as if he'd grown another head. Sif's nose wrinkled.

"Why would Loki cast a spell to beat you at skipping rocks?" she asked.

"Really, Thor," Loki chimed in, "be reasonable. Where would I even find a spell like that? 'How to Charm Rocks So They Skip Over the Water Better Than Thor's Rocks.'"

"I'd like that spell," Sif said.

Thor reddened terrifically. "All right," he said, "so what if you didn't charm the rocks to do what you wanted? You still cheated."

The queen intervened at this. "If Loki says he did not cheat," she said pointedly to Thor, who looked rather like a berry, "then he did not cheat," for Frigg demanded honesty of her sons and had never had reason to think them liars. It was good, then, that Loki had not charmed the rocks. He did not like to disappoint his mother or to deceive her, for his mother believed him.

"I'm afraid both my sons are poor losers," Frigg went on, and she smiled first at Sif then at Loki.

"Thor rages," Sif said thoughtfully, "but Loki sulks."

She made a face at him. Loki made a face back.

"You know them so well," said the queen. Then she gestured to the three of them, urging them ahead of her upon the path. "Now come. It's time for you to eat."

Loki skipped around Thor to take Frigg's arm as he'd seen done in court. Frigg graciously permitted him to help her. She patted his hand and rested her fingers on his wrist. Her sleeves dripped from her arm.

At his back, Sif of no sleeves said, "Now you're sulking."

"I am not," said Thor.

Loki looked over his shoulder at them-at Sif. Her hair was slicked with sweat against her brow, and a bit of dirt speckled her cheek. He smiled obnoxiously at her.

"Now, children," Loki said in his best imitation of Odin, "no fighting."

Sif shook her fist at him. Her mouth screwed up; she stuck her pink tongue out. Smiling still, Loki turned back around.

2. | Masterpost | Interlude.