Gilded

by Kendall Grey

  I pat myself down to ensure I’m still in one piece. Nothing ate me. Things are looking up.

  I exhale with relief, stand, and continue my trek north. A sweeping snow drift to my left buttresses a macabre forest. Giant centipedes’ exoskeletons glisten under the dim light. Snake scales glint. Forked tongues flick, tasting the air. Bats with glowing white eyes screech and swoop toward me without warning, tipping my failing control into a tizzy. A conspiracy between the creepy animals and the darkness unfolds. They converge on me, moving as one. I scurry past, a terrified dormouse under hungry cat’s paw.

  After an eternity of jerky starts and stops, I run into a sprawling stone wall. I angle my head to follow its lines upward until the structure behind it comes into view.

  Welcome to Hel, the realm of the dead and home of the goddess of the same name, aka my monstrous daughter who presides over those whose lives ended not in glorious battle, but in the clutches of sickness or old age.

  Hunched and shivering, I follow the wall until I reach a colossal gate with two imposing iron filigree doors that swing inward. I reach to push open the metal but stop myself when I remember something Hermod said after his trip here. Passing through the gate gives one’s death permanency. As I’m not dead and don’t wish to be, I dig my slim fingers into its chinks and jab my toes into its crevices to scale the wall.

  Moments later, I land neatly in a snow drift on the other side. Teeth chattering like mad, I spot a huge hall in the distance. I head toward it, hacking at the spider-webbed blackness with frantic windmills. Something is going to get me. I know it.

  Taunting whispers from the forest.

  Clicking teeth.

  Snapping wings.

  Someone darting behind me.

  I spin around and see nothing.

  I’m going mad.

  Where am I?

  Is that hall Eljudnir, my daughter’s home?

  I must focus.

  I pull Gunnar Magnusson’s flannel tightly around me and scan the area. The entire realm bears a cape of darkness and pock marks of despair carved from lashing blizzards, endless night, and subzero temperatures. White and black rule with little in between. The trees stretch like wooden skeletons, pointing their branchy fingers with accusation at the ever-present new moon, spearing the shadowy sky. Gray mist creeps along the ground, nipping at my frozen feet and ice-damp legs.

  Hel is where the weak and diseased end up. Their path to the underworld is not an honorable one. Their names are not remembered. If I die here, I’ll be deprived of my immorality twice.

  Perhaps that’s the crux of the issue Laguz was trying to illuminate for me earlier. When one is immortal, his legacy—good or bad—is guaranteed. Only death can take away a person’s name. Eventually, loved ones’ memories of the deceased fade. Names and deeds are forgotten a few generations later. Without a contribution of weighty consequence to the larger world, death is the great eraser. It’s a thief of the worst sort.

  Then it hits me. Death is what I fear most. The threat of death is why I’m so intent on finding my runes. My deeds thus far have condemned me to be remembered as a bringer of war and destruction. I was hated in my past and will continue to be hated in my future.

  Unless you change. Laguz’s sudden reappearance in my thoughts takes me aback. Sometimes I forget it’s there. Sometimes I wish it wasn’t there.

  “Maybe I don’t want to change. I like who I am,” I fire back.

  Another lie. You don’t like yourself much at all. If you did, you wouldn’t spend so much time whining about how awful everyone was to you or how the world is so unfair. People who leave marks must suffer pain and challenge at every turn. If winning was easy, everyone would be doing it. Things that are worth keeping are worth fighting for. So, what will you fight for, Loki, son of Laufey and Farbauti? Yourself? Your immortality? Your friends? The wife you cheated on who loved you anyway? What matters to you?

  “Those are questions for another time,” I say.

  An approaching figure turns the air colder than before. My exhalations curl in wispy plumes as a thin blanket of frost wraps around my ears. “Hel,” I breathe, admiring the intense anxiety her presence elicits. This is some next-level intimidation. As her father, I couldn’t be prouder.

  She stops several feet away from me, the pale half of her face shining as if kissed by the moon while the other half fades into the darkness like a smudge of coal. A white eye watches me on the black side; a black eye stares frighteningly from the white. Everything about my daughter is a paradox of darkness and light.

  The corners of her lips pull back to reveal stunning pearl teeth, elongated and sharpened like the fangs of a wolf. “Pabbi.” The fatherly term of affection ghosts across my skin like a winter gust, conjuring painful goosebumps. Her voice scrapes like broken glass.

  I step into the light, hold out a hand to her, and pretend to have my shite together. “Hel. My beautiful girl. You’re as terrifying as ever.”

  She studies my open palm and flicks her gaze up to my face. “Pabbi, you bear the taint of the living. If I touch you, I’ll have to find permanent accommodations for you here. I doubt you want that.” She tilts her head, and the pale hair framing the dark half of her face falls across the white eye. “Or do you?”

  I glance at my hand with hers hovering near it. When Hel was born to Angrboda, I left as fast as I could and rarely returned except to beg favors from the giantess’s sexual coffers. I never so much as held Hel or her monstrous brothers. I wanted nothing to do with any of them. I cared only for what their mother did to my loins, and once I had my fill of that, I was back in Sigyn’s arms where nights were quieter, and earthquakes were novelties.

  Maybe it’s time I made peace with my estranged daughter. In doing so, I might make peace with myself. With a hug, she could alleviate my anxiety at being forced to live in the body of a woman without the powers of my formerly great station. With a brush of lips at my temple, she could end the humiliation of monthly bleeding and debilitating menstrual cramps. With but a stroke of her thumb over my fingers, she could end my feud with Odin and martyr me in the eyes of Sigyn, Freya, and Thor.

  Hel could be my salvation.

  Just one touch …

  Gazing at my daughter’s face after so many years away from her, I wish I’d been a better father. Not just to her but to all of my children. If I’d been there, if I’d spent time with them, if I hadn’t shirked my responsibilities and left the onus of raising them on Sigyn and Angrboda, how might they have turned out? How might my fate have been altered?

  What if this moment is your chance to change fate? Laguz’s question bears an edge of urgency.

  “You can’t change fate,” I say softly. The Norns have a monopoly on it, and they don’t abide detours or competition. Free will is their only foe, and they’ll fight it for eternity.

  Hel’s smile widens, and she lowers her hand to her side. “No, Pabbi, you cannot. Join me?”

  She turns and gestures behind her. With a flash of lightning, we’re no longer trudging through the bitter snowscape of Hel. The scene transforms into that of a dreary old castle, awash in shadow, scorned by light. A long wooden table glides between Hel and me. Two ornate stone chairs, fit for gods, slide into place at either end, facing each other. Hel nods for me to sit. I do.

  The apparition of an old man floats over, hunched and bearing a pitcher. He lifts his head, revealing two blind, cataract-covered eyes. He offers me a drinking horn. I look to my daughter. Her face is unreadable.

  To drink in the land of the dead or not to drink?

  Something tells me if I want to escape this place, I’d better not. But the smell of the mead is intoxicating. My mouth waters as I peer into the pitcher, called by its exotic aroma. Sharp, fruity. And something else. By the gods, it is sweet.

  It’s the scent of death steeped in obfuscation magic, Laguz says.

  Maybe, but I’m having a hard time resisting.

  The dregs of sand slip through the hourglass,
Loki. Again, Laguz’s “voice” seems off. Hurried. As if downplaying some urgency I’m not aware of.

  I shake out of my reverie and politely decline the brew. The translucent ghost man shuffles away with a limp.

  Hel narrows her black and white eyes on me over the lip of her horn as she drinks. Then she sets the horn aside and wipes her mouth with a sleeve. “To what do I owe this visit from my beloved Pabbi?”

  I lower my head to collect my thoughts, only to be nudged again with a zap to the hip by Laguz. Hurry up.

  Bloody pushy!

  “I woke up after Ragnarok without my runes,” I say. “I found Laguz, but Odin hid the others somewhere at a resort in Midgard.”

  Hel nods as if she already knows.

  “It appears my new body is on the verge of death,” I continue. “Without my immortality rune Ihwaz, I fear I will be seeing you again very soon. Not that I mind visiting my only daughter—”

  “We all come into the world without a choice. No one gives their consent to be born,” Hel says, her disturbing eyes flashing. “Few give their consent to die.”

  “Much as I would enjoy spending eternity with you, I am a selfish god who enjoys living too much.” I’m not sure if those words are accurate anymore. Maybe I have a death wish, and that’s why I’m here. I honestly don’t know.

  Hel gestures casually to the branch-stripped spines of dead birches to her left. “When one plants a tree, he must nourish it with water and sunlight and give it proper care. If any of these necessities are denied, growth halts.

  “Roots tunnel in search of water. Leaves capture the sun’s rays to make food. Bark protects tender places, much like a father does for his children. The tough exterior shelters the soft insides, vulnerable to rot and disease. We all need protection, Pabbi—the oldest trees and scariest monsters alike. Both were once helpless younglings in need of similar attention, guidance, and nurturing.”

  I lower my gaze to the nicked stone table, searching for answers or justifications or outright lies to answer her accusations, but I find none. “I’ve never been much of a botanist, daughter. Nor much of a father,” I admit. “For the latter, I apologize. I have no excuse for my behavior as it is inexcusable. I should’ve been there. I wasn’t. That’s on me, and I’ll regret it for as long as I have left.”

  “Not much longer,” she says with some satisfaction.

  I nod grimly and meet her eyes. “Fair enough.”

  I may be as good as dead, but at least I tried to make amends with one of my kids. And surprisingly, I meant it. It felt good to apologize. I exhale a long breath. Some of the guilt weighing on my soul leaves with it.

  Shouts from the distance interrupt our father-daughter dance, jostling my senses to keen awareness. With a furrowed brow and an ear turned toward the sound across the river, I concentrate. I know those voices.

  “Come back, Loki,” Gunnar Magnusson cries. “You have to come back. You’re a god. Start acting like one and breathe, damn it!”

  Trembling at the alarms ringing through me, I push out of my chair and stand. “I have to go.”

  The wind carries an unvoiced word on its back, lays it at my feet, and disappears into the growing tumult from beyond. Wake …

  I frown and shake my head hard, trying to force forgotten memories back to life, but they’re buried beneath miles and miles of rocky confusion.

  “Loki!” Gunnar Magnusson shouts. Warmth brushes my neck, flattens my chest. I reach for whatever it is, but nothing is there. “No, no, no, you gotta come back. Right now. No more tricks. No more swindles. I’ll do anything to hear you say my name one more time. Please!” He chokes over the last word.

  A torrent of confusion spins around me.

  “I’m trying,” I say, covering my ears. The desperation in his voice is too thick and painful to bear.

  Am I asleep?

  “I want to wake up. I want to wake up!” I cry.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Magnusson,” someone else says. “I have to call it.”

  “No,” Gunnar Magnusson snarls like a wounded wolf, haunting and haunted. “Hit her again.” When no one responds, he screams, “Do it!”

  A cell-splitting crush of electricity stuns me, and I fall forward, catching myself on the table.

  “Are you all right?” Hel asks with a grin. She knows I’m not.

  I gasp as Gunnar Magnusson’s tortured howling ravages my soul. I look up at my daughter, and her life, rather than my own, flashes before my eyes. I watch her growing up, shunned and scorned by the Asgardians for being my child. She endures their insults and slander with the grace and poise of a queen. I see her rising above her own circumstances when Odin bestows the realm of the dead upon her. I see all of this through the eyes of a mortal woman instead of those of a pompous god, and I am proud.

  This is what being a parent should’ve been like. This feeling of accomplishment not for oneself but for one’s true gift to the world—his children. I regret not being present for her or Jormundgandr or Fenrir. And I regret my lack of involvement with Narfi and Vali even more.

  “I’m sorry I never said this before, but I’m proud of you, Hel. You took Odin’s curse and transformed it into an empire, which you’ve ruled single-handedly, without help, for hundreds of years. Your parents treated you poorly, yet you prevailed. You are the queen of this domain. I am your humble servant.”

  Hel’s lips part. All pretense bleeds from her expression as she rounds the table to stand at my side. She reaches for the hand I offered earlier. I flinch. For a long moment, neither of us moves, her fingers dangling just above my skin. She opens her mouth to say something but then presses her lips together and turns away.

  The tightness in my chest loosens. Control of my body slips away. I float upward, weightless.

  “Time of death is 12:00 a.m.,” someone says with quiet reverence.

  “The witching hour.” Darryl Donovan’s low voice sounds sad.

  “No,” Gunnar Magnusson mumbles over and over.

  I try to call out to him, to tell him he’ll be fine without me and maybe one day, he’ll join me here with my daughter in the land of the dead. By then, she and I will have made amends, and the three of us could have a goat-eating contest. Or, even better, a burping contest. That might be fun. He’ll just have to carry on until then and know I’m with him, wherever he is.

  Hel resumes her seat, which has transformed into a throne made of bones and rusted, broken weapons stacked high above a sea of ghostly apparitions going about their business in the trenches below. All traces of empathy vacate her face as she watches me drift away. Her monochrome lips spread into a wide, cunning smile that elicits an avalanche of shivers from my nape to my heels. “I’ll see you soon, Pabbi.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A blast of air inflates my lungs, and I expel a throaty, unladylike gasp that sounds like a troll giving birth to triplets.

  “Loki?” Gunnar Magnusson’s urgent voice stuns me.

  I thought I was dead. Why is he here? Is he dead too?

  “Loki!” he shouts. I hear his smile before I see it.

  I’m cold everywhere except for my right hand. Something warm and trembling covers it.

  Gunnar Magnusson.

  “I’ve got a pulse,” a woman says.

  An inviting pine scent fills my nose.

  Gunnar Magnusson.

  “Step aside please.”

  I clutch his hand with all my strength. I need Gunnar Magnusson.

  “Is she breathing?” he says. The warmth dissipates, replaced by an antiseptic chill. I shiver.

  Come back, I try to say. My mouth moves, but it produces no sound.

  Beeps and shuffles fill the room. Cold instruments and rubbery hands fall on my body.

  “Oh my God, she’s alive,” Freddie bellows.

  “Get them out of here,” another person says.

  “No!” This time my voice works. “Stay.”

  I fade out to a chorus of chirping machines speaking a language I don�
�t understand. With Hel fresh on my mind, I reflect on my sins.

  Time passes. I open my eyes.

  It’s quiet now. I’m bundled under blankets. My blood seems to be circulating again. I squint through my crusty lids to inspect the room, and my gaze snags on the giant man stuffed into a too-small box of a chair. His glasses lie next to an untouched food tray on a table. His elbow is planted on the chair’s wide arm, and a meaty hand shields his eyes from the low light. Waves of blond hair hang limply around his shoulders. Even his whiskers droop. But he’s beautiful despite his state of disarray.

  I take a moment to admire his imposing physique, but soon my thoughts wander past the tough skin and bulging muscles and burrow into what lies beyond.

  He must’ve stayed by my side for as long as I’ve been in this hospital—or wherever I am. Though I’ve been selfish and lied to him at every turn, he’s still here. That means something.

  If there was any doubt before about his identity, it’s evaporated. Gunnar Magnusson is Sigyn. The devoted, doting wife I scorned, cheated on, and largely ignored in the before times.

  That was then. This is now, Laguz says.

  Now seems filled with second chances. Perhaps I should take advantage of this favorable wind the Norns have granted and set sail on the seas of remorse and recovery.

  The warm flesh lying atop my hand moves. I glance down. In sleep, Gunnar Magnusson’s fingers are laced between mine. Sigyn never let me go when the snake poisoned me in the cave. He won’t let me go now.

  I am filled with awe at everything this man—this person—has done for me across the gulfs of time and space.

  I squeeze his hand. Gunnar Magnusson startles awake and scrubs his face. He lurches forward in his seat and stares down at me. Oh, how his kind blue eyes flay me.

  “Loki,” he whispers with a cautious smile.

  “S—” I start to say her name and barely catch myself in time. “Gunnar Magnusson.”

  “This might’ve been your best trick to date,” he murmurs with a catch in his throat. “You managed to face death head on and came out unscathed. Mostly.”