7. The Inert #3
Mimir closed his eyes and nodded. “Since Ragnarok, I have been more obsessed than I first was before losing my body. I cannot go on like that, but because of you, I believe I can weather the loss.” He opened his eyes again and took a breath before lifting me, easily, to prove he had the strength of a god, even if he’d been a head for ages, and moved me aside so he could stand and crawl from Yggdrasil’s hollow.
“But before I do something about that, I owe you a drink.”
Did he mean it? I could scarcely believe it as he led me into the main hollow with the well. We were both still naked, but it seemed any release had been brushed away and absorbed by the tree.
Mimir retrieved an ale horn and filled it with a dip into the water before passing it to me. Within looked like normal water, but I knew how precious this drink could be.
“Odin gave up an eye for this chance,” I said, “and all I did was share a head with a tree.”
Mimir laughed.
“What will I see?” I asked.
“Only Ygg knows until you drink.”
I suddenly had a very different idea of what the wells of Yggdrasil might be filled with, but I had come this far. I couldn’t turn back now.
I brought the horn to my lips, tipped back its contents, and swallowed the cool water in a gulp.
LOKI
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?”
I’d stormed into the hollow of the tree where the Norns, my Jotun sisters, weaved the tapestry of life, knowing where all the threads of fate led.
“Tell me,” I’d demanded without so much as a greeting or forced smile. “Tell me what comes next. Tell me what the future holds for the god of mischief.”
The three sisters had looked at me and answered:
“We know what you seek.”
“We know your desperation.”
“But we cannot tell you.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“We are not the ones destined to tell your future,” said Urd.
“What in fucking Hel does that mean?”
“It means be patient.” Urd kept her calm.
“You will have answers in time,” said Verdandi.
“But it may not be the one you expect nor want,” finished Skuld.
Riddles. What had I expected from the Norns, but what I said was, “What good are you to me?”
I usually enjoyed their company. They were my people. Jotuns. We were often gifted with special, unique magic. I’d always thought of theirs as a curse, but they continued their weaving happily and never got tired of my presence like so many other gods. Or mortals.
Or everyone.
“Be patient?” I muttered as I turned to leave. “What does that mean for a god? Wait a century? Two?”
“Be well, brother!” Verdandi called after me.
And Skuld said, “As well as you deserve.”
My insides twisted like I was dying all over again on the end of Heimdall’s sword. It wasn’t said with malice, but it made the next breath I took taste like ash.
Where to next? Asgard was the sole realm barred to me.
I could walk the others, have fun in Midgard, break bread with elves, drink with the dwarves, dance and tell stories with other Jotun.
But instead, like some vagabond with nowhere to turn, I transported myself back to Bifrost and continued along the bridge as if I’d never vanished, all the way to the edge of the branches that the realm rested upon.
Eventually, I leapt from the bridge to Heimdall’s watchtower.
I hopped right over its roof and climbed down to sit in the window that overlooked the remaining realms. My eyes were no match for Heimdall’s, but I was still a god.
I could zero in my focus on whatever I wished to.
For now, I looked upon Midgard, the wildest and most fragile of the realms with its mortal denizens.
The people who had worshipped us for ages were ceasing to believe.
Ragnarok had made us relics. In time, we would be forgotten entirely, at least as we truly were.
We would be empty altars and lost names with our stories muddled; mine most of all, I imagined.
The new stories would be for the king trying to expand into the next country.
For the maiden bearing the next great poet and nurturing that babe to success.
For the farm boy discovering a more efficient way to plow.
Or be plowed, as one of them was now. Goodness! And right on one of our old altars too.
I appreciated the man’s gall. And the arch of his neck.
The heave of his chest. The look in his eyes warring pleasure against fury, as if he would be damned if he didn’t enjoy all he could out of life, but he still loathed the path he was doomed to follow.
A slave to fate, at the mercy of his master.
Like me.
“There is something about him, isn’t there?”
I seldom startled, so Heimdall’s appearance didn’t rattle me.
At least he wasn’t pushing me from the window ledge, especially considering the last time I was here, I was fending off sweeps from his blade.
“Have you looked on him too, you dirty watchman?” I side-eyed Heimdall as he leaned out the window beside me.
“I have, but I have seen more than just his… talents. Watch him for a while. He has an interesting future ahead of him.”
The flesh on the back of my neck prickled. “I thought you were done looking into the future.”
“For us. He caught my attention like he caught yours, and it seems the reason he did is because his future is wrapped up in ours.”
“Ours? And here I thought our future was set to be stagnant. What is it then?” I tried to sound casual, much as I ached to know anything about what sort of future lie ahead.
So much had been preordained for so long, to know nothing now was worse torture than what the other gods had done to me after Balder died.
“You don’t want to hear it,” Heimdall said.
“Excuse me?”
“You won’t like it,” he insisted.
“That’s never stopped you from spouting your visions before. Come now! You’ve piqued my interest. Please,” I finished with a last tinge of desperation.
“Well… let me tell you then.”
OLI
“ No ,” I gasped, staring into the empty ale horn. The surroundings of the hollow within Yggdrasil had returned with a rush.
But I needed more. Another drink. Just one more drink!
“Mimir—” I turned to find wherever he stood, but he was already rushing toward me, rushing to the well, with an axe in hand that he swung through the well’s side.
The sliver left behind leaked water with a spurt and then a gush until nothing remained, absorbed by Yggdrasil’s roots.
“No!” I dropped the horn, staring at the lost knowledge evaporating at my feet. “I didn’t see it all! There was more! I didn’t see everything I needed to!”
“My boy.” Mimir wiped his brow and propped the axe against the remains of the well.
“Whatever you were shown was all you were meant to see. No one should have all knowledge, or we stop seeking it. We stop questioning. We stop fighting to understand it. Then we might as well be no more than heads with nothing to rest upon.” He grinned, and as much as there was panic, disappointment, and anger within me, I knew he was right.
Loki wanted me. He did. He had to! And he knew something about my future. That was why he’d taken me. I just had to find out what.
“Hopefully, all this knowledge will seep to the other realms,” Mimir said of what the roots had absorbed, “just enough to tempt people to learn more rather than horde knowledge for themselves.”
“A reassuring thought, if it happens that way. Thank you, Mimir.” I began to back away, needing to return to Loki. Now. Immediately. “I have to make use of the knowledge I learned.” Then I left him, stepping out of the hollow, which outside its arch was now an open expanse.
The landscape was beautiful. If this was somewhere in Midgard, I didn’t know where, because it certainly seemed heavenly.
I was dressed yet again, standing atop a lush green hill covered in bright pink flowers.
Below was a lake with mountains in the distance, and the nighttime sky of earlier had been replaced with a sunrise, turning the sky varying shades of pink like the flowers.
I lost my breath taking it all in, much as my surroundings often changed. I lost my breath again when my full turn revealed Loki standing where he hadn’t been before.
The half of his face that I could see looked furious.
“Loki—”
“Let us skip to the point, shall we? Odin is next. Odin is last. Then our deal is complete, and you can go home.”
“No.”
Loki’s eye twitched and he smiled a very unfriendly sneer. “Are you backing out of our arrangement?”
“No. But I don’t want Odin to be the last, and neither do you.”
His cruel smile remained, not reaching the eye that gleamed at me. “Need to complete your set, do you? And to think, you once pretended you didn’t want to only be good for fucking , yet you. Are. Insatiable.”
“Just like you.” I stepped toward him. “Admit it! You want me for you . I saw as much. I drank from Mimir’s well and saw it myself.
Or rather, saw myself . You watched me as much as Heimdall did.
Maybe more so. When you first saw me getting fucked on that altar, it wasn’t the same day as when you abducted me. ”
“Are you sure? How could you possibly keep the days of all your dalliances straight?”
“Loki—”
“You will only see me again after Odin so I can conclude our pact.” He backed away at my continued advance. “Then you are free, Oli. Lucky you.”
“Gods damn it, Loki!” I stomped, keeping the distance he’d forced between us.
“Will you listen for one fucking second? It’s no wonder you infuriate as much as you entertain.
You lead yourself right into it. You cause it.
You bring it on yourself! And here I thought the great god Loki didn’t care what others thought of him. ”
His eye twitched again. His false smile too.
“That was what I liked about your stories. That you didn’t give a damn.
You wanted to make merry, yes, make mischief, make people laugh, or maybe get back at someone who’d wronged you or your friends, but you didn’t care if it all went wrong.
You didn’t have to care. You’re Loki! Now here you are wallowing, lying to yourself like you lie to others?
You have no right to wallow when you brought it on yourself.
“What I wouldn’t give to have what you did, freedom from the very beginning to be as you were and have what you wanted. What I wouldn’t give to have anything other than what I got.”
It was selfish, I was being so selfish, colder and more bitter than I’d intended. But I was angry, and angrier still that Loki dared to seem angry with me.
When he looked at me, his voice was cold and bitter too, and he stretched his awful smile wider.
“Aren’t you lucky then? Because anything is what you’re getting.
” He turned from me, but before he could banish me to Odin like I knew he would, I raced around in front of him and grabbed his face, inadvertently brushing the unbraided half of his hair aside and seeing, feeling, finally understanding the half he kept hidden.
It was scarred. That side of his face was mottled with scar tissue. It was a series of teardrop shaped scars connected like a downpour. That eye was milky too, like he had been splashed with acid.
Or had the venom of a snake dripped onto him as punishment until the last days of Ragnarok brought him into the fight.
In that second of registering why Loki hid his face, I saw a bluish-green glow, and then I was blasted backward, like all the magic in the trickster repelled me in one great gust, and when I blinked awareness, I was somewhere new again.
Damn it . I’d gotten angry and said it all wrong.
What I’d honestly loved about Loki and his stories was that he seemed like the embodiment of the freedom I’d always craved.
I didn’t resent him for that. I felt sympathy.
Empathy. It hurt to see him bow down within his shackles, mourning and lamenting, despite pretending otherwise, and therefore proving that not even the gods were ever truly free.
He did need me. My aid. My help. And all I wanted was the freedom to give it.
I wanted Loki. Not just anything . Not anyone else.
Loki.
“My turn at last, is it?” a deep voice said from behind me.
I steadied my resolve.
First, I had to get through Odin.