“Stop,” he said, and his tone cut through her protest like a blade. “Euthalia, please—are we not happy? Don’t I love you, and you me? Can we not continue this way?”
She hesitated. “I do love you.” She had not said it before, and she was unhappy to have first said it now, in this conflicted conversation.
“Then let us be content with what we have. Do not light a lamp while I am here. Wait for the winter, when we will have more hours together. And let us be content with our happiness.”
There was a strain to his voice, an urgency he tried to hide. “Vidar, what is it? What are you hiding?”
They still lay together, but there was a cool distance to him now. His voice grated. “Can you not grant me this single request, this one favor? For your love of me?”
“That’s not fair,” she returned. “It is for love of you that I ask.”
They pulled apart, half-sitting in the low compartment, facing one another unseen. Cold air slapped at Euthalia’s flesh where the sheepskins fell away.
His voice, always deep, rumbled now like an angry dragon’s. “Do not look upon me. Ever. We will speak in the dark, we will eat in the dark, we will love in the dark, and we will be happy in the dark. That is my final word on the matter.”
For just an instant Euthalia thought of her father, threatening his household in what she knew now was fear for his precious and precarious status, and her blood flooded hot through her. “Then if that is your word, you had better command also that the sun should not rise and the moon not shine, lest a beam come through this knot in the wall and illuminate whatever it is I am not to see. In fact, as a good wife, I should go and patch it now.” She pushed herself out of the bed and into the cooler main room.
“Euthalia!”
She drew on her clothing and seized the bearskin she’d been given on the boat. She shoved her feet into her shoes.
“Euthalia, stop.”
She pushed out the door and went around the side of the house, snatching up a loose handful of crumbly dirt bound with grass roots. She found the knot by the light of the slivered moon and crammed the handful into it, sending showers of dirt down the wall.
His voice came through the wall. “Euthalia, stop.”
But he did not come out of the house, fearful even of the thin moon.
Euthalia turned away from the house and went across to the baking oven, curling herself against the warm clay and wrapping the bearskin against the cold.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She woke in the morning light, stiff with huddling to the oven and her residual anger. The sun hung over the horizon, slanting beams beneath the baking hut’s low roof to pierce her sleep. She rose, pulling the bearskin about her, and started back to the house.
She hesitated at the door, wondering for a moment if he might have stayed, and then pushed it back. But there was no one inside.
She went to the sleeping compartment, finding the sheepskins spread smooth and flat. He had gone. And when he had gone, he had passed by the oven, and he had not stopped for her.
She climbed into the skins with her bearskin, clenching her fists in the anger she needed to bury her fears. If she offended her husband in this place, what would become of her? Would she be returned to the human world to live as a thrall among the raiders, or would she live alone in the empty village with only Birna?
If he so feared being seen, even in the faint light of a crescent moon, what did he hide?
She fell asleep again and woke only when Birna entered. “Still abed, Euthalia? It must have been quite a night.”
Euthalia did not have the humor to tolerate such jests. “Birna—you did not see my husband leave, did you?”
The thrall shook her head. “Oh, no. I sleep too far from here.” There were plenty of empty houses in the village.
“Do you ever see him go?”
“Of course not—I would not watch you at night!”
“I didn’t mean that you did. I only…. Have you ever seen him?”
“What?”
“Seen him! Have you ever just—seen him? With your own eyes?”
Birna tipped her head as if considering Euthalia’s reason. “Yes. But I am not the bride. I have no place in the world of the gods, save to serve you here. What does it matter if I look upon a god?”
Euthalia’s breath ran out of her in a stream. “Oh.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you believe he is real? Doesn’t he come to you?”
“He does, but—why can’t I see him?”
Birna’s eyes went wide. “Has he no form when he is here? How is he husband to you?”
Euthalia shook her head. “No, he’s real, he has a body, he is really here, but I cannot see him. He comes only by night, and he will not enter if there is a light. He forbade me to look at him. What is he hiding?”
Birna shrugged. “It seems to me you would have discovered any deformity or defect by now.”
Euthalia felt herself blush. “His body is complete in every way, yes.”
“Then why question? You are the wife of a god, Euthalia—you must expect it to be different than to be the wife of a man. And you have advantages over many unhappy women. It may be ingratitude to question them as you enjoy them.”
Euthalia bit her lip. If nothing else, Birna was right that she could not expect marriage to a god to be without surprise. And perhaps she should not question.
If she offended her husband here, what would become of her?
She nodded. “If it is a quirk of his preference, then it is a far milder one than many wives must suffer. Show me how to weave the flax.”
The sliver of moon was a bit thinner that night, edging toward complete darkness. Euthalia curled within the sleeping compartment, wrapped in comforting sheepskin, and waited for the sun to disappear below the horizon.
He knocked once and then entered, calling from the threshold. “Euthalia?”
“I’m here.”
He stepped inside. “I thought you’d be near the fire. It’s brisk tonight.”
“It’s darker in here.”
He slid open the door, blocking the light so that he appeared as a black bulk. “I did not mean that you could not enjoy the fire.”
She kept her eyes away from him. “I love you, Vidar. But I also know I cannot afford to anger you, and that can make it difficult to discern if an action is rooted in love or fear. On both counts, I wish to honor your request that I not look upon you.” She laid a subtle emphasis on the word request.
He took a breath, waiting in the entrance. “I will endeavor to make my request in a reasonable and compassionate manner. And I will remember to appreciate your gracious accommodation of my particular oddity.” He looked up, his face invisible against the faint firelight. “Is that acceptable?”
Euthalia rolled onto her knees and crawled to meet him. “I suppose it will be.”
They kissed, gently, and then he crawled into the sleeping compartment. She wrapped him in the sheepskins with her, and they lay close together in the dark.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Tell me of Loki the Jötunn,” Euthalia said one night.
“Loki?” Vidar repeated. “Why do you ask about Loki?”
“I know his wife,” she said. “She is a friend to me here—and while I look forward to my talks with you, and while my days here with Birna are pleasant, I am lonely, too, and she is a comfort to me.”
“Hm. I had forgotten Loki had taken a wife,” he mused.
No one will recall your name or your deeds, not human bard nor gods themselves, Sigyn had warned. “Her name is Sigyn. I don’t know if she might have been a sacrifice like myself.”
He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You are no sacrifice,” he said, “though you were intended to be. But I love you for yourself.” He sat back against the wall. “Loki is a sworn brother of Odin, but he is not trustworthy, not like one of us. He can be helpful, and we owe him much, but he can also be cruel in his tricks or pranks and yes, even malic
ious. Do not treat with him, not ever, for it is like bargaining with the sea, which rolls backward and forward at once without ever appearing to contradict itself.”
She nodded, though he could not see her. “I will keep that in mind. Sigyn said the Jötnar are forces of chaos.”
He laughed. “Loki is, certainly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Loki has great power,” he said, more thoughtfully, “but also great pride. He fancies himself put upon when things go against him, even if it was his own doing. His mind is clever, very clever, but he is as likely to spin a clever lie as to forge a clever solution.” He hesitated. “And he has a furious temper, when it is roused, and a long memory.”
There was an edge to his voice, and Euthalia wanted to ask for an example but shied away. “Do they have children?”
“Loki and Sigyn? Yes, though I have not thought of them for years. And Loki has other children as well. He fathered Hel and Jörmungandr and Fenrir, all with another Jötunn. And of course he is the mother of Sleipnir, Odin’s horse.”
Euthalia wondered if the magic of their shared language were slipping. “You mean father.”
“Er, no, I mean mother. It is an awkward thing to explain, but when we were in danger of losing a wager which would have cost us dear, we tasked Loki with distracting a powerful stallion to keep him from his work. Loki accomplished this by becoming a mare—and quite a fetching one, to judge from the stallion’s reaction. In due time, Loki gave birth to a grey colt, with eight legs, and that is the steed which Odin now rides up and down Yggdrasill to travel between the worlds.”
Euthalia took a moment to try to fold this revelation into her comprehension. “He—then—and Odin rides him?”
“Sleipnir is a horse,” he assured her. “Just a horse, although an unusual one, with more legs and more bravery than most. But he does not have a mind or speech like Fenrir.”
“Who—what—is Fenrir?”
“Fenrir is a wolf, though that is the same as to say that Yggdrasill is a tree. He is a mighty beast, and fearsome, and one day he will kill Odin, in the time of Ragnarok. And then I will fight him.”
He said this in such a matter-of-fact manner that she did not instantly recognize the awful meaning. “But if Loki is his father, then Odin is sworn family, and why should he kill him?”
“Ah, gentle Euthalia, Ragnarok is all about the destruction of the ties which bind the world. If Odin himself were his father, then Fenrir would hesitate not a heartbeat longer.”
She thought a moment, but one thought occurred to her and pressed the others aside. If the children of such beings could be such dangerous beasts, what might she bear, if she were to conceive? “Are all the children of the gods so terrible?”
“What? Oh, no. No, Fenrir is not the child of a god, but the offspring of a Jötunn with another Jötunn. Hel and Jörmungandr are the same. And Sleipnir is the product of a Jötunn with a horse. No, none of them are the product of the gods.” His voice warmed. “You need have no concern on that point.”
She felt herself flush warm and was grateful he could not see her so plainly in the dark. “And his other sons?”
“Nari and Narfi? They are not like the others, but take after their mother, the woman you know. She came long ago, I cannot remember how.”
“Was she a sacrifice like me?”
He shook his head. “I really can’t say. There cannot be so many who would offer a gift to Loki, for he is a treacherous slope and few would petition him. He might have won her in a gamble, or taken her in a trick, or even wooed her himself somehow—though I cannot imagine that, to be honest.”
She had to agree with his skepticism. “I don’t see how a woman would be wooed by a husband who becomes a mare to bear children with a horse. But you said that was to save a wager. What bet was that?”
“Ah, Asgard needed strengthening after our war with the Vanir, and a wall was offered to us. The price for the wall was Freyja, who would marry the smith building the wall. We considered the price high, and Freyja flatly refused, but Loki suggested we accept the bargain with the condition that the wall must be completed within a single winter. This seemed safe enough, and so the pact was made.
“But three days before the equinox, the Jötunn builder had only to set the gate to complete his task. He was a far better smith and engineer than we had guessed, and his horse had such strength to haul boulders and set stones that the work had progressed much more quickly than we had supposed possible. And so we turned to Loki, who had suggested the intolerable agreement, and told him if the wall were completed and Freyja consigned to the builder, it would be his death.”
She stared at him open-mouthed in the dark. “You cheated!” she cried. “When it seemed you would lose fairly, you cheated!”
“We did not cheat. Loki distracted the horse, but we did not interfere with his work directly.”
“You did enough. And why threaten Loki?”
“It was Loki who recommended the terms.”
“And did his oath bind you to them? Or was it your own?”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“You agreed, and then you cheated. The lot of you.”
“And would you have had us give Freyja away as a prize?”
“Oh, no.” She pointed a finger at him. “If you felt it was an unfair thing to promise Freyja, then you should never have agreed in the first place. The time to debate terms is before a contract is signed, not when it is due.”
“Spoken like a merchant’s daughter,” he answered with grudging tone. “But we needed the wall, and indeed it has served us well since then. Without the wall, Asgard might be lost.”
“And wasn’t it you who told me that there cannot be heroes without lost causes? That the thing was not to win in safety, but to strive past the point of hope? But here you tell me that when there was a chance to hide behind a wall, you took it at any price, even the price of one of your own, and then you betrayed your word to wriggle out of paying.” She shook her head. “And I will venture that you did not even pay the builder for his work, did you, though he did all the work you asked.”
He hesitated just a moment too long in answering. “No.”
“What do you mean by that? There’s more there, I can tell.”
“The agreement had a penalty by each party,” he said. “If the wall was completed, then we lost Freyja. If the wall was not completed… Thor killed him.”
She opened her mouth, stopped and then closed it sharply.
“No, Euthalia, you are right. It was cruel, and more than a little treacherous. We… are not as great as we were.”
“He must have felt so happy,” she said. “He had done the impossible, pleased the gods, earned the wife of his dreams, an actual goddess, and then abruptly he was foresworn and he was killed.”
“You sound as if you think he should have won Freyja.”
“No,” she said. “But men—many men—think to win women by deeds. No matter what Freyja might think, he would still be happy to think he had succeeded.”
“And you think his happiness should have been fulfilled.”
“I think he should not have been promised what was never possible—Freyja as a prize.”
An owl hooted outside, and Euthalia jumped with the closeness of it. “It must be on the roof!”
“It is hunting close tonight,” he agreed, grateful for the change of subject. “The new moon and the shortening days are giving it fine eating before the winter.”
Euthalia did not bring up Loki or the wager again that night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was a bright day, full of birdsong, and Euthalia had nothing else to demand her attention, and so she walked out upon the empty village.
She had already explored the other buildings, slightly larger than what she seemed to remember and eerily vacant of both people and tools, household objects, personal treasures, all that made them human dwellings. Still, she walked among them, imagining the purpose of
each—this was a metalsmith’s workshop, by the forge in the center, and this a weaver’s—and savoring the crisp air.
She walked outside of the village, curious to see how Asgard stretched beyond it, but remembering Sigyn’s description of deceptive distances, she kept within sight of the buildings.
She circled until she came to the stream, north of where the beast-ships had come into the village. She sat by it a while, tossing grass and leaves to be carried away by the current, and watched two rabbits foraging on the opposite bank. At last she stood and started back toward the village.
She parted the tall grass as she walked, hardly able to see her route but knowing she could not go wrong as long as she followed the water. The wind rustled the grass about her, muffling her steps, and she felt even more than usual that she was alone in this curious fragment of a world.
She was surprised when her next step took her into the offering circle, and more surprised to find a man sitting in its midst.
She pulled back a little, startled, and he whirled on the ground to face her. It was Loki, she recognized, and he was gravely wounded.
He relaxed upon seeing her, and she wondered very briefly whom he had feared to see. But then his expression shifted to embarrassment and resentment. He spoke before she could. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re injured,” she said, thinking that was more important. “What happened? How can I help?”
Loki rolled his eyes at her. “I tripped on a pebble.”
Well, she probably shouldn’t have asked. She stepped into the circle, looking him over. His nose was crooked, broken, with dried blood crusted beneath. One eye was swelling, and the opposite cheekbone seemed to sit lower than it should. By the way he cradled his side, leaning against the offering rock, he had cracked or broken ribs, and the sudden turn at her entrance had abused them freshly.
“It was Thor and Baldr,” she said aloud. “They came for you.”
He started to retort and stopped abruptly, curling an arm about his torso. He tried again, less forcefully and perhaps more truthfully. “It was.”
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