by C. Gockel
Nodding, Amy says, “Right.”
Pulling out a pencil she jots that down.
Loki snorts. “I believe you’re supposed to work these questions into the conversation and keep mental notes.”
Amy glances up. “That’s what Merryl and Steve say, but I’m supposed to earn your trust. How can I get that by pretending I’m not spying?”
Loki chuckles. “You’re funny.”
Amy looks down. “Next question: you said beyond fully sentient creatures we can expect more trolls, wyrms, kappas, and possibly unicorns...” She blinks at her notes, “And unicorns are very dangerous.”
“Probably not to you,” says Loki. He smiles at her. Amy bites her lip. Flushing, she says, “You know I’m not really a...”
He smirks. “A what?”
Face hot, Amy looks down. “Never mind. Okay, the guys in the office want clarification on what a wyrm is.”
Loki scowls, and looks up as though searching for a word. “It’s a dragon — without legs or wings,” says Loki. “How can they not know that?”
Amy shakes her head. “That’s what I thought! No one listens to me.”
“Hmmm...you might want to look out for the occasional Al-mi’raj,” says Loki.
Amy looks up at him. “Ferocious, predatory, horned rabbit,” Loki says as the tea arrives.
After the waiter departs Loki steeples his fingers and says, “What of the surveillance I suggested around those places in Europe and Asia? Has that been put into place?”
Amy looks at her notes. “Steve says he’s working on it.”
“What?” says Loki, throwing his napkin on to his empty plate.
“Steve says —”
“I heard you!” A burst of orange light makes Amy look up. The napkin on Loki’s plate is on fire.
One of his fingers is tapping agitatedly on the tablecloth. “I can’t tell if you’re lying because you don’t know if you’re lying.”
“Ummmm...” says Amy looking at the fire.
Smacking his hand down and extinguishing the flames, Loki says, “What we need is a teleconference.”
Amy looks up and taps her chin with the pencil. “Well, I guess if we —”
And suddenly the light shifts and she’s staring up at a ceiling much closer than the one in the restaurant. Her hands grip the table — she feels it under her fingers but when she looks down she sees empty air...and tiny little black and white tiles. She looks directly in front of her. Steve is standing there, back to her, wearing only a towel. She blinks. Loki is sitting on a toilet across from her and next to Steve. He raises his eyebrows and smiles.
Amy looks down. She appears to be seated on the edge of a bathtub.
“Are we in Steve’s bathroom?” she says.
“No,” says Loki, tilting his head.
Steve spins around, razor in one hand, his other hand going to hold the towel. Half his face is covered in shaving cream. He’s actually...really well put together. Amy’s eyes go wide, and she looks down at the floor.
“What are you doing here!” Steve says, his voice icy.
“Oh, don’t worry,” says Loki. “We’re not really here. This is just illusions I’ve created for everyone’s convenience.”
“Convenience?” says Steve.
“Shhhhh...” says Loki. “Your little girl is in the other room. We wouldn’t want to upset her.”
Amy’s eyes go to the door. That’s right. Steve’s divorced and has a kid.
Steve’s staring at Loki. It’s hard and frightening. “My daughter...” He points the razor at Loki. “If you...”
Loki’s face goes livid; his upper lip starts to tremble. For a moment Amy swears she feels the air around her get hot.
And then Steve puts down the razor. His eyes narrow and he smiles, though it looks forced. “I forgot...you don’t hurt women or children, right?” He turns back to the mirror and starts to shave.
The air seems to cool. Loki’s lips purse. “Oh, I’d hurt a woman.” He turns to Amy and says brightly, “I am a feminist.”
“Errr...” says Amy.
But Loki’s already turning away. “Now, Steven, I told you to arrange for surveillance around the gates to Vanaheim —”
Continuing to shave, Steve says, “And I’m trying to. You’re suggesting covert operations in foreign countries. That requires coordinated efforts across multiple agencies — which is hard enough. Throw other countries into it — “ He shakes his head.
Loki’s nostrils flare. “And?”
Grabbing the edges of the sink, Steve bows his head. “And some people aren’t convinced of the threat.”
“Convince them,” says Loki.
Steve turns and gives Loki a look that is completely withering.
Loki glares right back.
“Um...guys,” says Amy. “We’re all on the same team here, right?”
Both of them turn their glares on her.
“Or not...” Amy says.
A knock sounds at the bathroom door, and the muffled voice of a girl. “Daddy? Daddy? Is everything alright?”
Loki grinds his teeth, and the scene fades away. As it does Amy hears Steve saying jovially, “Everything’s fine! I’ll be out in a minute —”
And then Amy is sitting at the table in the Indian restaurant. She turns her head cautiously to the side. The manager, a waiter and a busboy are all staring at them with mouths agape.
Loki peers over. “Oh, yes, they’ve just been watching us have a three way conversation with empty air for the past few minutes.”
Amy holds up a hand. “Check!”
A few minutes later they’re out on the street, fine mist settling on their shoulders. Amy’s staring down at her now damp notes. “I have a few more questions for you,” she says.
“Proceed,” says Loki.
They’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk blocking traffic, so Amy starts walking towards her intended second destination. “Steve’s been doing some research on trickster gods —”
“That’s not a question.” Loki smirks.
Ignoring that, Amy says, “— Iktomi, Aunt Nancy, Prometheus...Any of them ring any bells?”
Loki looks into the distance. “Prometheus.”
“You know him?” says Amy.
“No, I just had a fondness for Greek literature.” His voice gets quiet. “I named my daughter after Helen of Troy....”
It’s the first time he’s mentioned Helen, or any of his family since before Beatrice’s accident. They’re all gone. “I’m sorry,” Amy stammers.
Loki looks sideways at her, and then his eyes drift to the horizon. “You were saying?”
She swallows. “I...so Prometheus is just a myth?”
He stops walking. “I don’t know...”
“Before your time, maybe?” Amy says. And then she notices his irises are doing that funny thing where they start to turn black.
Loki starts to tremble. “I don’t know.” The skin around his eyes and at the edge of his fingers is starting to turn blue again. Remembering how he fell last time, she slips her arm into his. He looks down at it and his lips quirk. Her stomach does an inappropriate little flip flop.
“Loki,” she whispers, leaning closer. “You’re starting to turn blue.”
He shakes as though she’s hit him. The blue recedes. The quirk of his lips vanishes. People are starting to stare, so Amy steers him down the street once more.
His face becomes pinched. “Amy, after discovering the elf queen’s name is Galadriel, I would hesitate to call anything just a myth.”
Amy straightens. “I thought you said you didn’t know her name?” But, actually, now that she thinks about it, he might have called her Galadriel as they left the kingdom. Her brow furrows — yes, maybe, but she thought he was joking.
He shrugs, not releasing her arm. “It came up in conversation.”
Her eyes widen. “When you left the banquet and came back without your shirt or your armor...” She feels like two neurons in her
brain have suddenly fired exceptionally brightly. “Did you and Galadriel....”
He smirks.
Her mouth falls and her childhood smashes into a million pieces. “No...with the queen of the elves?”
His eyebrows dance. The smirk widens to a leer.
Going hot, her eyes narrow. “Is that why she chased us out of her kingdom?”
Loki snorts. “No! Believe me, she was completely satisfied. In fact, I reminded her of a former lover. A female lover.” He sighs happily. “My technique is very good.”
Amy scowls. “So good we wound up on the run from knights trying to smash us with their hadrosaurs!”
“She didn’t want to incur the wrath of Odin!” Loki says, his voice turning angry. “She had to make our escape look difficult.”
“By setting her own knights on fire?” Amy says.
Loki seems not to have heard her. He is looking down the street at a group of people who have a thing for leather lingerie as outerwear despite the cold weather. “What have we here?” he says.
“Oh, they’re probably going to the Alley,” says Amy. “It’s a store for — ”
Loki is already yanking her down the street.
“Hey! Stop! I wanted to go to the comic book store!” But he yanks her right by Chicago Comics and before she knows it she is standing among the black and metal studded clothing of the Alley, shopping center for all things punk and goth. Plastic skeletons and plaster gargoyles are grinning down at them. People with multiple piercings and tattoos look at them curiously. Modelling a black leather brassiere — thankfully over his clothes, Loki juts out a hip. “What do you think? A gift for Thor, maybe?”
Amy remembers her run in with Thor in Alfheim, how he suggested Loki keep her as a plaything, and how he waggled his finger at her as though she were a bird in a cage. “I’d rather not think of that ass at all.”
Loki raises an eyebrow. “Oh, he isn’t all that bad.”
“He is an insensitive idiot and a clod!” says Amy, crossing her arms.
Loki puts the brassiere back on the rack. “No, not really.” Smirking softly, he looks away.
x x x x
Loki is in Asgard. It is night and the streets are lit with jeweled lanterns of many colors. The streets are packed with Asgardians, Vanir, dwarves, elves, giants and even the occasional fire and ice ettin. It is the festival of the Changing of the Streets. Asgard is about to transform itself from an above-ground replica of dwarven jeweled cities to a city modelled after the Imperial City of Midgardian China.
Anganboða is at his side, her arm in his. Fenrir lopes beside them. Loki is holding Helen in his arms — an activity that surely labels him as argr and a fool among the Aesir; but he is called a argr and a fool for so many other reasons anyway, and he sees no reason to deny himself the pleasure of his daughter in his arms. Helen adores him. And she is so small and light, her bones as delicate as a bird, her limbs narrow and fragile. Eir, Frigga’s lady-in-waiting and practitioner of healing, says Helen is as small as a child of one year, though she is nearly three.
In Loki’s arms, Helen’s misshapen limbs are easy to hide. The way her lips pull down slightly to one side, the blue color of half her face, the way her hair is half-honey colored, half-black, is another matter.
But tonight, everyone is too intent on the festival to pay Helen much more than a quick look of curiosity or disgust. Tonight Loki hears no whispers of how Aggie bewitched him into keeping a deformity, a monster. He catches no snippets of how Helen is a blight upon the court.
Not that these comments pain him much — though they pain Aggie. What is painful is when someone suggests he named Helen after Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman on Earth, as a cruel jest.
Loki glances down at his little girl, the blue light of her magic nearly brighter than the lanterns above his head. Asgard is as blind to her beauty as they are to Baldur’s ugliness.
Catching his eye, Helen gives him a lopsided grin, throws her good arm around his shoulder and buries her face near his neck. Loki can’t help but smile.
“She has you wrapped around her little finger,” says a familiar feminine voice from behind.
“Sigyn,” declares Aggie happily.
Loki does not scowl as Sigyn comes over and embraces Aggie, or when she touches a finger to Helen’s nose and Helen gurgles a laugh. No matter how much animosity he harbors towards Sigyn, she is one of Aggie’s few friends, Helen likes her — even Fenrir likes her. And though her chiding would be an insult to another man’s masculinity, he feels that it is completely good natured. So he bites his tongue.
As the women begin to chat about the elves’ continued objections to Odin’s order to remove the elven presence from Midgard, Loki’s eyes go to the edges of the crowd. There are all sorts of gaming booths tucked in among the alleys. Loki loves gambling. He’s married, he’s faithful — despite the belief of everyone in Asgard, and despite being in Aggie’s words ‘an incorrigible flirt’...he needs some games in his life. On Aggie’s advice he stopped betting on sure things and started betting on surely not things; it allows him to put less money in for higher stakes. That increased his takings immensely. Odin says it’s cheating. Loki says he’s jealous.
But now that Helen’s come along...before her birth Loki could tell when fellow gamblers were lying or bluffing, but when Helen’s with him he can feel what cards they hold in their hands, see the slightest unsteadiness in a horse’s gait, and somehow knows what strategies are going through the mind of his opponents during chess. Now, in the alley closest to them, he sees a man sitting in front of a board. Smiling, Loki walks in his direction and whispers into Helen’s ear, “Want to play a game of chess, Darling?”
“Nuh,” comes the reply.
“But it will be fun. Daddy will win lots of money and buy you a sweet.”
Thrashing in his arms, Helen twists her head. “Nuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Loki scowls. But he turns back to Aggie and Sigyn. At that moment the ground at the foundations of the buildings begins to send off tiny sparks and the crowd goes wild. In Loki’s arms, Helen squeals so shrilly he thinks he may go deaf.
The sparks begin to move up the side of the buildings, slowly at first, but then faster and faster. In their paths are ribbons of light of every color, roughly outlining the contours of the buildings beneath. There is a collective intake of breath, and then the threads of light slip down like a curtain. Instead of thick dwarven bejewelled brickwork and heavy green copper roofs, there are now white-walled pagodas accented with red and gold. Jewel lanterns are replaced by paper lanterns. The crowd roars. And then in the center of the street five plumes of smoke rise, about 40 paces apart from one another. Revelers run to get out of the way. Fire dances up to replace the smoke and smiling dragons slip out. They’re not quite wyrms; they have sets of tiny legs with wicked claws every few lengths. The dragons begin to march along the street, the rhythm of their claws being matched by clapping hands. The crowd moves as one body to follow them. Somewhere drums begin to sound.
In his arms, Helen squeals in delight as they are carried along with the crowd. Loki shakes his head. Odin has outdone himself this time. It is then that he realizes he can’t see Aggie. He projects himself upwards, sees her with Sigyn across the street from where he wades through the crowd with Helen. Fenrir is with them, so they’re given a wide berth.
She’s safe. Loki pulls back his apparition and concentrates on not letting Helen slip from his arms. Vendors are in the crowd hawking all sorts of mementos and alcohol. Loki sighs; with Helen bobbing in his arms, a bottle of mead is probably out of the question.
Loki follows the dragons and the crowds for what might be the better part of an hour. As he does he notices the crowd getting rowdier, even as Helen’s body sags against his. After being knocked into for a third time, Loki scans for an exit. Seeing a break in the press of bodies ahead he slips forward...and realizes why the gap exists.
Thor is walking amongst the commoners with his stepson Ullr,
and Ullr’s fiancee Skadi. The people are giving them space in deference to their station. Loki scowls and thinks about slipping back into the crowd. But by chance Thor happens to turn. He meets Loki’s scowl with one of his own.
And then Ullr and Skadi turn also. Skadi’s eyes narrow. Like Loki, she is a jotunn, and her skin is very fair. A consummate athlete she is tall and lean. Her father once repaired a large section of Asgard’s walls. Since Asgard had no money at the time — due to fancy festivals like this — her father asked for Freyja’s hand in marriage in exchange. Lopt told him he would have it, but only if the repairs were done in a ridiculously short amount of time. Skadi’s father would never have succeeded if it weren’t for his stallion Svadarvi. The creature could work both day and night and had the intelligence of a man. He led the other horses in delivering materials and made it possible for Skadi’s father to concentrate on the actual masonry of the walls. But just before the task was completed, Svadarvi was distracted by a mare in season — human legend alleged the mare was Loki in disguise, but it was before his time. Mad with lust, the stallion ran off and the wall was unfinished. For daring to make a bargain of Freyja’s hand in marriage, Skadi’s father was slain, this despite the fact that Asgard had no death penalty. Svadarvi was never seen again, but 11 months later,Odin came into possession of the eight-legged realm-walking foal Sleipnir.
Skadi had come to the Aesir years afterwards to protest the treatment of her father. In compensation she was allowed to marry the man of her choice — but only allowed to choose based on view of their feet. She’d desired Baldur, but instead had mistakenly chosen Njörðr. She’d been furious and declared that unless the Aesir could deliver her happiness, she would relentlessly spread word of their unjust actions through the nine realms. It was Odin who declared if she was made to laugh, even briefly, her happiness had been achieved. One by one the Aesir had come forward with jests and tricks, but none even achieved a flicker of a smile. Loki, only a teen then, had held back. When two clowns were doing an imitation of a tug-of-war with an invisible rope he had slipped next to her and whispered, “Not as satisfying as seeing a tug-of-war with one end of the rope in the mouths of Thor’s goats, and the other end tied to Odin’s balls, is it?”
