Monsters : I Bring the Fire Part II (A Loki Story)

by C. Gockel

  Typically, lost in her own world, Anganboða did not hear the cry from Baldur for all the ladies to retreat to his side of the boat. Or maybe she did and chose to ignore him. Either way, her calm, the wonder on her face, her heedlessness to the crown prince; they are all making Loki remember what he first saw in her.

  The water next to the boat swirls and a serpentine body, nearly as wide as the boat itself, with dark green scales rises up, a blue fish-like-fin at its top.

  “It rises again,” says Freyja, as the body and the fin disappear beneath the waves.

  “It is Jörmungandr, the world serpent,” says Aggie breathlessly, and Loki recognizes the fins and the scales from a book they borrowed from Hoenir just recently.

  Not looking at her, Odin says, “Yes. We are in no danger.” If there was a slight bit of tension between Loki’s shoulders, it disappears instantly. Jörmungandr patrols the seas around Asgard, and is a servant of Odin as much as he; but neither Freyja nor Thor put down their weapons.

  The fin and body disappear and there is a collective sigh from the boat, but then out of the water shoots an enormous head, as wide as the boat, as tall as a man. The boat rocks and people scream. The serpent has a huge maw, with glistening sharp teeth. But what is truly startling to look upon is its forehead. It is high and flat, directly above its jaws — almost hominid. Its eyes are to the side and small, where its gaze falls is difficult to tell. Magic hangs in the air around it, thick and as green as the dark seaweed in its teeth.

  From its mouth comes a voice like the roll of thunder. “All Father,” it says. “And I see you, Thor...is that the lovely Freyja...and Loki?”

  “Begone, beast!” shouts Thor.

  Jörmungandr huffs. “So rude is your son, Odin. But who have we here?”

  The beast lowers its head so that its bottom jaw is level with Aggie’s face, long whiskers that sprout from its chin coiling at her feet. Loki’s heart stops. But he is not so foolish as to show anger or fear. “My wife Anganboða, Sea Thread.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” says Aggie, holding up a hand as though to touch its face but catching herself.

  The boat creaks and rises a little, and then Jörmungander rubs his mighty whiskered chin against Aggie’s hand. There are intakes of breath from across the ship. To Loki’s immense bemusement, Aggie just laughs with delight even as Baldur shouts, “Leave her alone, foul serpent!”

  Loki is sure to aim a smirk in Baldur’s direction and lay a possessive hand on Aggie’s hip.

  “Pleased to meet you, little mother,” says Jörmungander. Mother is something one would call any wife in Asgard. Of course Aggie isn’t a mother. But Jörmungander’s words are heard by all present, and before Aggie has borne a child, she becomes ‘Mother of Monsters.’

  After several decades, Aggie does, eventually get pregnant. Loki is frantic and wonders if he should go on some sort of quest with Thor for the duration to be on the safe side. But times are distressingly calm, and he remains in Asgard.

  Aggie goes into labor on a day when Loki is helping Odin craft new terms for World Gate access for the dwarves. The dwarves have ‘kindly’ acquiesced to withdraw from Midgard — under threat of war. Odin’s never fully explained to Loki why the withdrawal was decreed, only that it was so that ‘Midgard be for humans.’ Now it is done, and Odin is seeking to soothe short trading partners.

  Loki doesn’t leave Odin’s side when he hears news that labor has begun. It just isn’t done by men. He sends apparitions of himself to wait outside the delivery room. He doesn’t go into the room, even in astral form. It just isn’t done. Beside the door also waits Fenrir, a giant wolf that followed Loki home from Jotunheim one day — Aggie took a fancy to the beast. In the court they whisper Fenrir is another one of Aggie’s ‘children.’

  Loki has been dismissed by Odin and is walking home very quickly when Aggie begins to scream. He breaks into a jog. Before he even reaches his home, Aggie has quieted, and there is the wail of a babe and Loki is running. He is just entering the front door when Aggie begins to scream again. This time there are words. “What are you doing? Give me my baby! Let me see! Let me see!” and then frantically, “Loki!”

  By the door to the bedroom, Fenrir starts to whimper. A midwife passes through Loki’s apparition shaking her head, a wailing bundle covered in a sheet. She runs into the real Loki and drops the bundle with a scream.

  Catching the wailing, writhing, tiny form flailing against the cloth, Loki shouts, “What are you doing?”

  “It’s for the best,” says the midwife. “I’ll take care of it for you...”

  “Take care of it?” says Loki, yelling to be heard above the wailing. But as the words spill from his mouth, he knows. The midwife means to kill the child, his child, the one whose lungs are exploding with ear-splitting effect. The one she’s already draped in a funeral shroud.

  “Get out!” Loki screams. Beside him Fenrir begins to growl. The woman’s face goes white and she runs.

  Frantically, Loki casts the sheet aside and looks down. The wailing ceases as though by enchantment, and the babe no longer struggles, just gasps air hard and fast. It...she...has limbs that seem bent at erratic angles, too thin, too spindly, and he knows somehow they are wrong. But he can hardly look at that, because what he sees first and foremost is his baby’s skin. On one side she is pale, Jotunn, with a gray eye like Loki’s. On the other side she is blue, like the horizon of the Midgard sky on a cloudless day, and her eye on that side is completely black, like he is staring at the infinity of the void. Though she is only a few minutes old, the air around her is thick with magic of the same blue. Her magic is so strong where Loki’s skin touches her, his own fingers turn that same color.

  He does not know how a creature like himself could be part of a creation so beautiful.

  x x x x

  Valli and Nari weren’t as magical as Helen. But Loki loved them, too. And he lost them all. There is something about losing a child; it seems to tear against the order of the universe. Maybe that’s why it keeps happening to him.

  His apparition, standing across the street from the dilapidated house where he stole the drug money, grits his teeth. There are men coming and going, and women he’d recognize as whores in any realm.

  He feels sick to his stomach and he wants to set the whole building on fire. Maybe that will end the ‘turf war’ he’s started. He looks down. Or make it worse. Nothing he plans works out quite the way he intends.

  He hears gunfire in the dilapidated house and lets his projection fade.

  He blinks and his physical form takes a sip of coffee in the small cafe near Amy’s apartment. Since the neighborhood is Little Italy, he’s taken the disguise of an elderly Italian grandmother type for the occasion — though beneath the disguise he wears his armor and his sword Lævatein is at his hip.

  Amy was right. ADUO will confiscate anything he gives to her. Nor, he suspects, would she want the money if she knew where it came from.

  Red mist curls around his feet.

  “Why must you repay her?” Cera says. Loki just scowls. Because he knows the danger of lies, how one can lose track of what is truth...that is why he always, always, keeps his oaths. But he says to Cera, “She gives me access to ADUO, and to you.”

  “You are wise!” says Cera, and she slips into the air and away.

  Loki lifts his head. Where is Miss Lewis? He sends an apparition to her home, just a few blocks away.

  It is dusk, and the TV at the front of Amy’s apartment is on, but Amy is in the kitchen by the back door. She is dressed in black. Giving a hasty pat on the head to Fenrir, the girl takes a deep breath and then darts outside. She runs through the tiny backyard and slips quietly through a back gate, looking quickly from side to side as she does so — as though she’s trying to run away from someone.

  Loki tilts his head. She is running away from someone, the agents who are charged with observing her. How curious. Ignoring the stares he stands a little too quickly for an old woman, walks
to a nearby alley, and then down another, and lets himself fade into invisibility.

  In his invisible form he slips behind Amy just as she pokes her head around the corner of a house.

  “Coast is clear,” she mutters.

  “Actually,” says Loki, not bothering to make himself visible, “there is an agent in that car just to the right, though you can’t see him at the moment.”

  Amy jumps around with a yelp and narrows her eyes in not-quite Loki’s direction.

  “Oh, there he is,” says Loki as the agent’s head pops up into view. “He must have dropped something.”

  Putting her hands on her hips, she says, “Well?”

  He tilts his head. Have they told her about the money and its source? It would be the sort of thing she’d upbraid him for. And she might take Bryant up on the ‘witness relocation program’ offer Loki’s apparitions have heard about.

  She’s staring at a point just below his collarbone, which is disconcerting. He lets himself become visible again. “Well, what?” he snaps, prepared for the worst.

  Bouncing a little on her feet she says, “Are you going to help?”

  She doesn’t know about the drug money. He actually feels relieved.

  Waving an arm, she snaps him from his reverie. “Make me invisible!

  And suddenly, everything is a fun game. He smiles and taps his chin. “Why should I help you escape from your masters? Were you another girl I would suspect a tryst with a lover you wished to keep hidden, but since it’s you —”

  She holds up a small beige device that has a faintly glowing face at the end of a handle. “So I can get to the micro lab at UIC’s med school in the next ten minutes and put the glowy-organic looking stuff inside this thing under a scope.”

  Loki draws back. He’s seen these devices at ADUO but he hadn’t divined their purpose. “Humans can’t detect magic,” he says.

  Scowling a little, Amy says, “Really?” She pushes it closer to Loki and it glows brighter. She smiles. “I think we can.”

  Loki stares at the glow. They’re using Vanir technology to restrain magic — he’s investigated the wire mesh they used to attempt to contain Cera, and it is definitely Vanir in origin. In attempting to escape from it, Cera had panicked and fused part of herself with the mesh, ironically, making it physically stronger and more difficult to get her out.

  Of course, to contain magic you have to know it’s there. Loki is suddenly very curious about this little device. Smiling, he puts a hand on her arm and lets invisibility fall over them like a shroud. “Let’s go,” he says with a smirk.

  x x x x

  The stairway of the main building of the University of Illinois Chicago’s Medical School is dark and too hot. A heater is clicking. It smells like burnt dust.

  Loki’s arm is on hers. He held her arm the same way last time he made her invisible, when they slipped by the ADUO agents to get to the restaurant.

  Amy’s grateful for his arm. You don’t realize how much you see of yourself until you can't see yourself. Glimpses of hands and feet, breasts, and the tip of her nose are little signals to her brain that she exists. Without them, it is disorientating.

  Amy bites her lip. “I think you can make us visible now.”

  She doesn’t feel anything, but she blinks and the tip of her nose comes into focus — or unfocus, rather. She sighs with relief.

  “Come on,” she says, pulling Loki towards an elevator bank. They pass some med students on the way. They don’t even glance at Loki and Amy. Amy swallows. She misses veterinary school. She knows her job with ADUO is only for a year, but sometimes she feels like everything she learned is slipping away. That her brain is turning to mush. She is so bored, except for present company. She squeezes Loki’s arm.

  She catches herself as they step into the elevator. Dropping his arm, she smiles up at him apologetically. Loki is focused on the numbers above the door and doesn’t seem to notice. He was ‘wearing’ a suit when he first popped up behind her this evening, but now he’s wearing jeans, a gray V-neck tee shirt, and sneakers. She blinks — exactly what one of the med students had been wearing. As if aware of her gaze, he turns to her and smirks.

  She rolls her eyes.

  The elevator stops at the Microbiology Department and they step out. There is a long white hallway with locked lab doors on either side. Loki peeks into the windows of one of the doors.

  “Microscopes!” he says. Looking pleased, he turns to her. “Your people put a lot of effort into educating your healers.”

  Amy peers into the little window and sees lab tables lined with scopes. Nothing special. “I guess.”

  “Hoenir had the only microscope in Asgard. You have dozens here!”

  “Yeah, ummm....and we have them in some elementary schools, most junior highs and almost every high school, too,” says Amy.

  Loki turns his head to her, his eyes wide. “So much general access to the magics of your world,” he says.

  It takes a moment for Amy to process that. School was always an escape for her, a place away from her mother and her revolving door of husbands and boyfriends. Someplace where there was stability and order. Math and science were her favorite subjects because they were so much less subjective than history and literature. In particular she loved biology because of its connection with living things. Her veterinary school education had taken her deeper into microbiology and histology, and she found she loved those subjects, too — even though the critters didn’t come with cute furry tails and whiskers. Life, on whatever scale, is fascinating to her.

  She stares at Loki. “I have a feeling I’d hate Asgard.”

  Loki draws up and tilts his head, a thoughtful expression on his face.

  At that moment a familiar voice booms from down the hall. “Amy! It’s great to see you!”

  Amy turns and smiles. It’s her friend James from her undergrad days. Amy has been called an “over achiever” in her life, but James puts her to shame. Just a few years older than her, he’s just finished his Ph.D. in Microbiology and has a Bachelors in Computer Science. He’s healthy, tall, handsome...and married. Her eye catches at the flash of his ring. In typical perfectionist fashion, he’s managed to find a wife who is a beautiful, brilliant neuroscientist.

  Laughing, James slaps a hand on her shoulder, nearly knocking her over. “Great to see you here. Katherine and I were so sorry you couldn’t make the wedding.”

  “Yes, well...” she says.

  He turns his eyes to Loki. “And who have we here?”

  Before Amy can answer, Loki holds out his hand and smiles. “Loki.” There’s something a little bit challenging in his tone.

  If there is a challenge there, James doesn’t see it. He takes Loki’s hand and pumps vigorously. “Ha ha ha! Your parents are mythology buffs! Mine are literature buffs! I was a coin toss away from being named Rudyard after Kipling. Are you studying veterinary medicine, too?”

  Loki tilts his head. “No, my area of interest is...physics.”

  Amy winces. Oh, no, he’s going to talk about physics with James.

  Dropping his hand, James beams and gives a covert wink at Amy. “Really, my brother is a physicist working for NASA. Where did you go to school? What is your speciality?”

  “I went to Oxford,” Loki says with a satisfied smirk and Amy winces again. Of all the schools...

  “I went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship,” says James, happily leading them down the hall to his lab. “Who did you do your thesis with?”

  Amy bites her lip, but Loki is saved from having to answer by a young man walking up to James, book in hand. “Dr. Swanson, I really don’t know why I need to know what bacteria survives in space to become a surgeon!”

  For the first time, James’ smile drops. Amy hears him mutter, “Med students.” Turning back to Amy and Loki, he says, “I have to get to my lecture. Amy, you know where to go.”

  Amy and Loki watch as he starts back the way they came, the med student next to him, saying something A
my can’t make out.

  “You know, Amy,” Loki says quietly, “I never thought I’d see the disadvantage in the ease of modern Midgardian air travel.”

  At that moment James turns around and calls down the hall. “Remember, in return for this favor, you’re going to tell me where you got that feather!”

  Loki looks sideways at Amy, a glint in his eye.

  With a gulp, Amy runs into James’ lab and hustles over to a counter with a microscope hooked up to a television monitor.

  Loki follows and shuts the door behind them with a smirk. “Feather?”

  Putting the ‘magic detector’ on the lab counter, Amy doesn’t meet his eyes. “I may have sent James a picture of a hadrosaur feather. He might have a slight interest in dinosaurs, a slight familiarity with comparative anatomy and avian and reptilian histology, and a general burning curiosity...and might have recognized it as being not quite feather like, but definitely not scale like.”

  She swallows. She was on strict orders from ADUO not to talk of her trip to Alfheim, or about Loki, to anyone. Technically she didn’t talk about anything, though. She just sent a picture.

  “Mmmmm-hmmm,” says Loki, walking over to join her, the magic detector glowing brighter as he does. She takes a nail file out of her purse. There is a seam in the plastic that runs along the side of the detection device. If she runs the nail file through it, she can loosen the outer casing and open it. She’s already done it once at her desk when she was being ignored...as usual. Swallowing again, she looks up at Loki.

  Biting her lip nervously she says, “Ummm...so I’m really not supposed to be doing this. This little thing is supposedly worth 30 grand and it doesn’t even have the fancy gadgets and meters on it. It’s one of the prototypes.”

  Bending close, Loki whispers. “I won’t tell.”

  Amy lets out a breath and relaxes a little — but not too much. Loki is really close, leaning over her shoulder and making her nervous...or something. Running the file along the seam she says, “Bryant just gave it to me because he said I had a right to know if you were spying on me while I was in the shower or dressing.”