The Prison of the Angels

by Janine Ashbless

  “He was.” I’d smiled then. “My Papa was amazing. Strong and clever and kind—and he could make anything with his hands.” He would have liked you.

  “What about your mother? You never say anything about her.”

  “She died when I was very young.”

  Egan hadn’t taken the hint, but waited, eyebrows raised.

  “She went down with pneumonia, after walking out in the winter. In mountains just like these.”

  “Ah. I’m sorry.”

  The journey downhill to the lodge was fine, even exhilarating. It felt good to be back on skis again after all these years, with the snow hissing beneath my feet, the pull on my muscles and my breath freezing to ice in my flying hair. Gliding side-by-side with Egan felt like we were flying together.

  By the time we reached the cluster of red-painted buildings by the lake, the windows were spilling yellow light across the snow. I was surprised how many windows there were; I’d expected low, beleaguered huts, but this was a big modern lodge with over a hundred beds. It also had the biggest log-pile I’d ever seen in my life, stacked with a meticulous, even obsessive, neatness. The Norwegian flag hung from a tall mast outside, not stirring. Down here by the lake it was a lot more sheltered than on the hillside; there were even low trees around the site, though they were blanketed and bowed with snow.

  Inside the structure everything was yellow pine: floors, walls, ceiling and furniture. It felt like we were drowning in melted butter, I thought, as we threw off our outside layers. The decorative elements ran mostly to rag rugs, folk art, reindeer hides and antlers, but it was undeniably welcoming. And the woman who checked us in at reception switched to effortless English the second she set eyes on my face. “Dinner sitting is at seven in the restaurant,” she told us. “Or the café is open for coffee and waffles.”

  My room, up in the eaves of one of the outer buildings, was like the inside of a pine box; the window here was definitely an afterthought. Egan’s room was right across the corridor. “D’you think it’s safe, us sleeping apart?” I asked somewhat peevishly, propping the door open with my rucksack for the moment.

  “A lot safer than us sleeping together,” he shot back.

  “I could do with some peril tonight.”

  He leaned on the doorframe and smiled, half-disapproving and half-complicit. “Bad girl.”

  “Yeah.” My eyes challenged him. “Want to teach me a good, stiff lesson?”

  “I’m…” His voice broke, suddenly hoarse. “Going to take a shower,” he concluded, turning away.

  “I’ll be picturing that,” I promised cruelly, and I swear I heard him groan under his breath.

  I did picture that—Egan sluicing his heat away under the cold flow, his nipples stiff, his pale Irish-Polish skin stippled with goosebumps, his strong hands soaping his mutinous frustration. It made me feel dizzy. Then, fending off my torrid imaginings, I killed time reading through the English-language book of Viking myths I’d picked up in Odda, searching out all mentions of Loki. He read as such an ambiguous, shifty figure—first friend and then foe to the Aesir, sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine, restless and incorrigibly unable to leave well alone. His resentment of the gods of Asgard seemed to grow palpably with every episode, from the incarceration of his children to the sewing together of his lips, until he’d stepped over the line into the murder of Baldur and they’d slapped him down for good.

  It was hard not to feel some sympathy for him, even discounting the angelic facts behind the pagan mythology. And especially so when I read the cruel details of his incarceration.

  When we’d washed and changed we went back to the main building. I was hungry and didn’t want to wait for the dinner sitting, so we went into the café-bar, which turned out to be heaving with people already revving up for a party night. Someone was standing on a table, waving an oversized goblet around and declaiming in Norwegian to a loudly appreciative circle of friends. We had to wriggle through the press to the counter to order hot chocolates and Hansa beer. We also acquired a wooden board of cured meats—elk, reindeer and sausage—and cheeses, served with sour cream and red lingonberry jelly. I liked the meat, and all the cheese except a sweetish one the color and texture of caramel fudge, which turned out to be the most rancid thing I’d ever tasted. My horrified reaction made Egan laugh.

  Squeezed into our corner table, we didn’t pay much attention to the other customers, though I could tell from the different voices that people were taking it in turns to sing or speak, sometimes accompanied by a guitar or a drum.

  “Looks like it’s Folk Night,” Egan commented. We sipped our drinks and talked about skiing and winters we had known in different mountains.

  Then all of a sudden there was a man standing over my chair; a tall rawboned man with long sandy hair and a ginger beard who stared at me with wide, not-entirely-sober blue eyes.

  “You have stars in your hair and fire on your lips,” he announced. “Are you traveling to the hof?”

  “Maybe,” I said, not knowing what a hof was. Egan shifted in his seat and rubbed his fingers against his palm.

  “Will you sing for us?”

  “Oh, no,” I laughed, self-conscious.

  “Come on, sing!” the stranger boomed. “See, everyone is taking a turn!”

  I didn’t know whether it was terribly bad manners in Norway to refuse to entertain, so I pushed back my chair and stood up shyly. Most of the bar crowd was watching; others simply stood and drank and talked among themselves. I did give Egan a quick look, but despite an expression that wasn’t wholly encouraging, he didn’t offer any advice.

  “What’s your name?” the man demanded.

  “Milja.”

  “I am Harald,” he said, shaking my hand with his free paw. He turned to the crowd and shushed them in Norwegian. “Milja will sing for us now!”

  “Okay,” I said, blushing. I don’t have a real voice like my father had a voice; he was a priest after all and sang the Divine Liturgy. Mine is pleasant and simple, so I stuck to a simple folk tune—in fact the first thing that came into my head was Oh Bright Dawn of May, which is also our National Anthem.

  Oj svijetla majska zoro,

  Majko naša Crna Goro,

  Sinovi smo tvog stijenja

  I čuvari tvog poštenja.

  Volimo vas, brda tvrda,

  I stravične vaše klance

  Koji nikad ne poznaše

  Sramotnoga ropstva lance.

  When I’d finished, Harald led everyone in cheering. “We love you, the rocky hills and the terrifying gorges?” he said to me, under cover of the hubbub. “That is just like our land! You saw the hills out there?”

  Hills was an understatement, surely?

  “You speak Montenegrin?” I asked, frowning.

  “I don’t need to.” He thrust his pottery goblet at me. “Now you drink!”

  I sniffed the liquid within and thought I caught a waft of honey. “What is it?”

  “Mead. Suttungmjaðar. Special mead.”

  I took a single sip—and it was honey, and thyme or something herbal, and a warm bass note of flavor that opened like a blossom somewhere in the convolutions of my brain. “Oh, that’s good,” I muttered.

  Harald passed the goblet to Egan—who had, I noticed, been spared the price of singing—and gave him a conspiratorial masculine nod. “Try.”

  Egan nodded, having gone along with it. “Good stuff.” That was enough for Harald, it seemed, who wandered off in search of his next musical volunteer.

  “You didn’t have to sing,” I complained as I sat down again.

  “I don’t have stars in my hair and fire on my lips,” Egan said dryly.

  “Did you get that word he used? Hof? What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. Look it up?”

  I did a quick search on my cellphone, and found the parish of Hof in Norway—a good way east of us—and the municipality of Hof, even further north. Neither seemed to be relevant. Then I noticed a line in the
Wikipedia entry regarding the etymology of the word.

  “It means temple. A pagan temple.” I had a sudden mental picture of a high, dark hall with wooden beams intricately carved with tangled vine-like beasts; an image so clear that the real room around me seemed to fade, and I caught my breath.

  “Ah.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “That’s…interesting.”

  The café suddenly seemed too crowded, the noise too intrusive. It was all just too much. I wanted silence, and I needed space to think. Now.

  “I’m going to the restroom,” I muttered, abandoning Egan at the table.

  But I didn’t go to the Ladies; as soon as I was out of the bar I headed outside instead, out into the snow. There was no need for me to pile on layers of thermal clothing. The night was so still that I could hear my own heartbeat. I took a few paces across the open ground. My shirt felt too tight around my neck and I tugged at my collar, lifting my face to the night sky. My heart was pounding now. And suddenly, just as at Burning Man, I saw.

  Dizzying panoramas rushed in, flooding me with light.

  I saw…a cleft in a mountainside. From it emerged three huge, winged beasts in turn: a golden eagle, a crimson lion, a white bull.

  Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, I thought.

  The lion looked at me and shook its fiery mane. “That is not the secret,” it said.

  Behind the beast came a figure that looked like a winged man, faceless except for a shining light. I recognized him anyway: Uriel. He looked around at the barren rocks and waved his hand, and at that gesture the cleft in the mountain closed up like it had never been there. Then each of them dissolved into a dazzling effulgence and faded out of sight.

  Oh—that’s the cliff above my old house.

  I saw…the Tribes of Israel lost in the wilderness. Except they weren’t real Israelites, of course—they were suspiciously Hollywood-white and -clean looking for anyone living in the Sinai, and that was definitely Charlton Heston as Moses, so maybe it was some movie I’d seen and forgotten. He was holding up a long wooden pole topped with a brass snake, and all the people were kneeling down in awe and lifting pleading hands to it as they murmured Nehushtan! Nehushtan!

  That’s some Bible story I’m sure, but I can’t remember what it was about…

  I saw…a huge tree. It was so huge that I was sitting in its branches, sheltering from the heat of the day among its leathery leaves. Beyond its canopy I could see the glare of sun on rocks, and on other trees nearby, clustered around a near-dry river bed, under a sheltering cliff. And I felt a queasy terror and delight just at being here, because this was the best Yellow Fruit Tree in our Family territory, and Father didn’t let anyone feed in its branches except himself. If he caught me up here he would scream and bite me. I was already scarred by his punishing canines, as were all members of the Family.

  But Father and the Family were sleeping out the heat of the day in the caves up on the cliff face, and I wanted Yellow Fruit, while there were still a few left. We were coming into the dry season; soon there would be no fruit at all. I was already hungry, but it wasn’t hunger that drove me; it was the thought of those little Yellow Fruit with their sweet rinds. My stomach churned with longing. I only got to eat Yellow Fruit during the brief glut after the rains—or if Father made the mating face and let me have some in exchange for mounting me. I loved Yellow Fruit.

  So here I was in the rippling heat of the day, when everyone else was asleep, up in the Best Yellow Fruit Tree, searching for the last drupes of the year. I found two that were withered and full of wasp-grubs, and I ate them greedily, looking over my shoulders in case Father came running up.

  Then I spotted a cluster of ripe ones. The best Yellow Fruit I had ever seen, maybe. I was about to leap to that branch—when I saw the Snake.

  I nearly dropped from the tree and made the Snake Call that would have brought the whole Family out. We could have thrown sticks and rocks at the Snake until it went away.

  But Father would bite me. He would know.

  So I froze, and just stared at the Snake. It was the biggest one I had ever seen. It was bigger than any other Snake in the Family territory, as thick through as the tree trunk itself. It had feathered wings, and it was covered in scales whose colors shifted and glowed like the Wildfire of the dry season.

  We were afraid of the Wildfire, but we would follow it when Lightning struck and it burnt the grasslands. It left charred Rats for us to eat. Wildfire was good, like the River was good.

  Snakes were not beautiful, but this Wildfire Snake was beautiful. And he was draped over the branches below the hanging fruit. His green eyes were on me. Color ran down his long body like flame. I wanted to touch that color, like I dreamed of touching the Wildfire.

  He was more beautiful than the Yellow Fruit.

  I reached out.

  He dropped a coil around my body, and drew me close.

  Ah, stories—stories, oh God, snakes and stories! As snow showered down from a disturbed branch I wallowed up for a moment out of my vision, like a drowning bather snatching a last breath. Then I sank beneath the surface again.

  I saw…a crimson handprint melted into a patch of snow, and a single black feather jutting out between the print of the fingers.

  I saw…the gods drag my beloved husband across the rocks. He was never a warrior, my Loki; his sharpest weapons were always his words, his strongest muscles in his wits. Now he was naked and at his most vulnerable, and in comparison to their strong frames he looked as slight as a youth, his long limbs twisted almost out of their sockets under their cruel hands. His fox-red hair dragged in the mud at their feet as they hauled him deeper into the mountain.

  I stumbled on behind, trying to stifle my sobs.

  They brought him to the place they’d prepared, a cave where adders overwintered. Three sharp-edged shelves of rock thrust out from the cavern wall, and bored through each was a hole to allow for the ropes they carried with them. Understand my hatred; I’d seen those bonds made. They were the entrails of my own son. Narfi, only fourteen years old, our own flesh and blood. They’d gutted him to bind his father.

  If I’d had any strength to hurt the gods, I would have thrown myself upon them and slain them all. But I was nothing in comparison. Mortal, inconsequential, not even an afterthought. They ignored me as they went about their task—Thor in his shining mail corselet; keen-eyed Heimdallr with his horn at his belt; somber Tyr the oath-keeper; gray-headed Odin, already burdened with foreboding. They roped my slender husband’s arms behind his back then lifted him by his ankles and bound him to the highest stone so that the edge bit into his tendons. The middle shelf of rock cut into the small of his back, while the lowest thrust against his shoulders.

  “Did you foresee this too?” Thor mocked, but Loki’s eyes were closed with bruises and he did not respond.

  I waited in the shadows. An adder slid across my foot, and I did not move.

  Tyr was the last of the gods to leave. He turned and looked into the corner where I crouched. “Are you staying with him, Sigyn?”

  “Yes.”

  “The door is about to be sealed. You will never get out. You will die here.”

  “You think I care?”

  He shook his head, and left, and took with him all light.

  Loki, my love. I am here. I will never leave.

  Samyaza? Are you here? Are you alive? I’m not Sigyn—My name is Milja. I am here to set you free.

  All of a sudden I could see him again; a faint pale glow in the darkness of the cave that took human form, inverted, his flesh phosphorescent and his long fell of hair a sullen flame.

  “Milja Goðisdottir,” he said, his horribly scarred lips barely moving, and his eyes still closed.

  “Uh. Milja Petak.” Oh, he was pretty, in a slender elfin way that was nothing like either Azazel or Egan; an androgynous flower of a man.

  “If you are here, then it is the end.”

  “The end?”

  “Of the gods. Of everything.
The three roosters crow, red and gold and black, and the seas rise at the thrashing of the great serpent. The ship made of dead men’s nails will break its rope and set sail from the Corpse Shore. Gods and giants will fall together upon the battlefield and soak the world in their blood. The sun will be devoured by the wolf, and all the world will be covered in flame and darkness, and sink beneath the waves. I have seen. This is Ragnarok.”

  8

  THEIR WINE IS THE POISON OF DRAGONS

  No! I just want to help Azazel free his people, I told myself. “Azazel said that you could see the future. Is all that true then?”

  Loki opened his eyes, green as malachite and devoid of focus. “I see the paths. Is my brother free already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he know how this will end?”

  “I don’t think he cares much, so long as it doesn’t end like this.” I gestured at the cave around us, though I could see nothing in the darkness.

  “What about you, Daughter of Earth? Don’t you care what happens to the world?”

  Me? Go to hell, Samyaza. I have enough guilt on my conscience; I can’t carry any more. “Well, I don’t believe in predestination. But supposing I did, then how could I fight it?”

  He laughed, his torn lips weeping blood.

  But I opened my eyes and saw stars, and trees, and moonlight on snow. I’d wandered away from the lodge, it seemed, into the untracked wooded area further along the shore. Everything seemed to glow blue under that moon, and the trees themselves were so bowed by snow that they looked like icing-sugar lumps on a Christmas cake. The muffled silence was profound. I turned in a circle, huffing out ice crystals and watching them rise into the still air. Then I looked down at myself.

  I was bootless and naked, almost knee-deep in a drift. For once my creamy Serbian skin looked dark, just in contrast to that glimmer. I still had my panties in my right hand, but they seemed purposeless so I tossed them away with an uncomprehending laugh, starlight fizzling against my bare flesh. I shook out my hands and lifted my arms to the moon, feeling its glare lap me like a cold tongue. Every particle of my flesh was filled with its glow.