6. The Expert #3
I settled into this new, smaller hot spring pool. Loki wanted to play games. Maybe he couldn’t resist or didn’t know how to be direct. I could work with that. “Not even a little, truth be told. And I’m not sick of stories. I’m sick of stories that don’t need to be told. I would rather hear truths.”
Loki went quiet, but I knew he was there, behind the door. I imagined him sitting on the ground, leaning against it.
While the hot spring I was in was part of the landscape, the room wasn’t in any cave system, or at least this part wasn’t underground.
There was stone and wood around me to enclose the bathing hut, with bowls and soaps like the one I’d come from, and small tables covered with lit candles.
Torchlight from outside added further illumination, but not so much that it dulled the stars. It was practically romantic.
If only Loki was in here with me.
“Thor did look ravishing in a dress,” he eventually said, cool and even toned, “but I did convince him to go along with the suggestion because I enjoy making people laugh.”
“Sounds like he didn’t need much convincing.”
“No.” Loki chuckled. “But we made a good show of it for the others.”
“So he said. Plus, by doing so, you gave him an excuse to exist in a way he couldn’t admit he enjoys.”
“I suppose I did.”
“And you had fun with him and Thrym later, apparently.”
Loki didn’t comment at that. Of course he didn’t.
“You said to me, when we first met, that you prefer a man’s cock. What did you think of Thor’s back then?”
“Overrated.” Loki returned to flippant. “ You must have enjoyed it, given you went back for seconds.”
“You didn’t retrieve me. And how could I pass up two gods at once? You’re hardly the prudish type to judge. You’ve fucked and been fucked more than any of the gods, with possibly the most children because of it.”
“Yes. What a deviant that makes me.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You are helping the others as agreed,” Loki said.
He wasn’t flippant now, or cooly detached.
He sounded angry, while trying to hide it behind clenched teeth.
“Splendidly so, in fact. Above and beyond! You are fulfilling your end of the bargain, meaning you are well on your way to being free of me.”
I splashed some of the steaming water. Maybe I couldn’t work with him like this. I kept saying and doing the wrong things, and whenever I thought I knew what he wanted, or at least how to get him to admit what he wanted, I angered him instead. “Do you want to be free of me?”
“Why wouldn’t I? I hardly know you.”
“I know you.”
“You think—”
“I. Know. You,” I repeated. “Far more about you, honestly, than I could say about anyone else in my life, gods or otherwise. But you don’t know much about me. You’re right. You didn’t even know I’m not a farm boy.”
“Just a stable hand?” Loki taunted.
“Among other things.”
“I know what ‘other’ usually entails for you, Oli.”
Was this jealousy? It seemed so, but also resentful in a way I didn’t quite get.
Why would Loki resent me? Maybe because he didn’t understand me.
“You know a little about me but not enough. Like how I cried for a week after my mother was sold,” I said, and once I’d started down a path of truths, more came easily.
“How the first time Thorsten fucked me, I thought I loved him.
Then the first time he fucked me calling me thrall instead of by my name, part of me hated him and has ever since.
“How I stitched the most beautiful garment belonging to Thorsten’s mother.
She thinks one of the maidens did it. Every time she wears it, I want to say that it is beautiful because I made it beautiful.
But I don’t. What would be the point? Even if she praised me, it would just be words. I’d still be her slave.
“I have grown more bitter every year since I was fifteen and realized my lot in life would never change. Maybe I’m still bitter, even believing there might be an end in sight.
But the strange thing, the pathetic thing, is that even with Thorsten, I liked having made someone happier when they left me than they were when they found me.
I liked it. I really did. At least that part.
I just hated that it was always as a thrall and never my choice. ”
“Because it felt like fate was beyond your control?” Loki asked, eerily calm again.
“Isn’t that the nature of fate? Perhaps I would be a tailor or an artist more than a stable hand if I was free to choose my fate. The idea of having that choice still baffles me and doesn’t feel real.”
“It is real. It will be. You’re earning it, remember?”
Earning it didn’t feel right anymore. “Tell me, Loki, what would you do if you weren’t the trickster god who likes to make people laugh?”
“Spend time with my children. With all those I’ve loved.”
It was a more honest answer than I’d expected. “Why not do that? Hel implied you visit her.”
“I do.”
“But not all your children and loved ones? Or… not as much lately?”
He didn’t answer.
“Because you think not all of them want you to visit?”
I took his continued silence as a yes .
“ I haven’t felt like not having you around yet.” I flicked some of the water again.
“No?”
“No. I almost enjoy your company, irritating as it can be.”
He chuckled.
His mood was as unpredictable as him, which meant all I could do was continue to take chances. I slipped my hand beneath the water’s surface to palm myself. “Do you know what else I enjoy, Loki?”
“I can guess, given your zeal for the task you originally scoffed at.”
I started a leisurely stroke, bringing my limp dick to attention. Godly magic or otherwise, it was quick to bob into my grasp with Loki so close, his voice soft, while I was touching myself. “Can you guess what I’m doing now?”
“…what?”
“Imagining the hand touching me is yours.”
Loki hesitated, but there was acid on his tongue when he said, “I don’t need your aid like the others.”
“Even if I’m offering it willingly?”
When he didn’t answer, I stroked myself slower, gasping audibly at the first brush of silky prerelease from my tip before the water washed it away.
“Come inside, Loki. Please. Or at least stop pretending you don’t have your eyes on me, always.” He could be a flea in the room. He had done so in stories.
But again, no answer came.
I stopped touching myself and stood. Loki could wax on as much as Thor when he wanted to, which made his silence maddening. “Loki? I know you’re there. Can’t you admit you want me for yourself and take me already?”
When there was still no answer, I climbed out of the hot spring, stomped to the door, threw it open, and stepped…
Onto the roots of Yggdrasil.
I stared. Behind me, the hut was gone, because wherever I’d been, I was not there now. I was at the roots, the core of existence, from where all life grew.
The base of the tree was before me, massive like a giant wall, though I could see where it curved right and left from where I stood facing a hollow in its trunk.
The cavity was large enough that I could step inside, past minor roots that parted like a curtain.
Within was what might have appeared like the stump of a smaller tree, but I could see that the stump was carved out and filled with water. A natural well.
And given the head resting on its edge with eyes piercing me, I knew which well this had to be: Mímisbrunnr, the well of knowledge.
The well of the headless god Mimir.
LOKI
This time, I wouldn’t watch.
I couldn’t.
Fuck prophecy. Fuck all who see them and spout them at others and still allow those fated paths to be followed! This pain was what I was meant to feel. It was all I was meant to feel from now onward, and I couldn’t escape it.
This time, I would not watch. I was still outside the hot spring hut, watching the heavens—the opposite direction of where I’d sent Oli.