fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: 9.

[mekosuchinae]

9.

i: loki dreaming.

The universe dragged on. Loki laid on his back, surrounded by leaves and the hum of the wind as it brushed through them, and watched the stars as they moved through the sky. He thought of little, only now and then of Sif, how her hair shone, her hands, her edged smiles, the way she turned her head when she laughed, or of small things he had loved: sand between his toes, rain on his face, snow caught in his hand.

"Ah," said Yggdrasill.

He was too comfortable and too empty to move. Out in the black of space a star consumed itself from the outside in. He watched it as it died. There was a sadness to it. He allowed it. The spot where the star died collected dust.

Loki stirred.

"What's 'ah'?"

"Sif," said Yggdrasill.

Sif, Sif, Sif: a drop of water on his tongue. He rose onto his elbows and looked back to Yggdrasill, where she stood in her own shadow. Her face shone both pale and dark, dappled as with sunlight and night. Like a leaf opening, her smile unfurled. Yggdrasill held her hands up. Her fingers curled.

"She has slain the wyrm Níðhöggr," said Yggdrasill, "whose hide no blade can pierce."

"That's no surprise," said Loki. He laid down again. Lightly, he folded his hands across his chest. "Sif is second-best only to Thor. In the sunburnt lands, she slew more wyrms than Thor and I together."

"She has done me a great service," said Yggdrasill. "Níðhöggr has plagued me since my first flowering."

He'd a song on the tip of his tongue, a poem to both tease and praise Sif; out of habit, the first rather more so than the latter. Sif, whose face they emblazoned in the heavens, including the mole on her cheek which you can see if you look right there. He looked idly for her face in the stars, but all he saw were stars.

"She will be with you soon," said Yggdrasill. "Are you ready?"

"To wake?" he asked. "I've tired of dreams."

"To be found," said Yggdrasill.

The leaves whispered about him. The question they proposed was thus: what prospect could be more terrifying than being alone than that of being loved?

As a child he had hid in the hollow presented by a dead tree and watched as Sif walked by, and as she walked by he had thought: See me, find me, look at me, catch me, but he had said nothing; he had done nothing; he had charmed the tree so she could not find him.

Loki stared up at the stars and found nothing in them. They were only stars after all, and they were far from him. The light they offered was dim and their absence could not cool.

"Are you ready now?" asked Yggdrasill again, and her voice was a murmur, a song fading in his ear as he rose out of dreams into waking.

Another song came to him, and in it Sif said, "Loki."

ii: the waking.

Marshy land took over away from the spring. Her boots made sucking noises when she lifted them. She winced with each step; the drag on her left leg was tremendous, the pull excruciating. Mud splattered her legs. The land began to slope upwards. She pressed on.

The fog had cleared. That was something. And just in time, too, for the dimming light had turned to shadows. Night was coming at last to Yggdrasill. Sif thought she could safely say this had been the longest day of her life. She set her hand on her left thigh and flinching, drew it back. The pulse in her knee beat counterpoint to the pulse in her thumb.

In the dusk, she saw glimmers, will-o'-the-wisps set loose in a swamp. Like soap bubbles they gleamed iridescent, and she thought of the bubbles the cold spring had spat at her as she knelt over it. Perhaps it fed the marsh. Perhaps her eyes were only playing tricks on her.

Then she reached the top of the rise, and before her stretched a great, muddy field out of which wet bubbles coalesced and sauntered toward the branches of Yggdrasill. As from a distance she heard whispers, shouts, laughter, a child shrieking, and in the bubbles tiny figures moved without shadow or reason. Music played somewhere, just a snippet of a song, then it passed out of hearing.

Sif took a step down and another, and another. A bubble drifted as if blown to her. Without thinking, she lifted her hand to it, and it broke against her thumb. When it broke, a voice, Loki's voice, said clearly: "Sif."

Nausea rolled through her: the pain in her leg had flared. Sif stumbled and caught her weight on her hands in the mud. White mud, squishing up between her fingers. Slowly, she forced herself back to her feet. The pressure in her thumb had gone. She'd time enough to think, no, then she raised her head.

Loki lay half-submerged, not five feet before her. Strange lights played across his face, thrown by a bubble which had grown out of the mud and engulfed him. How had she missed him? Then she lunged for him and fell beside him in the mud, and the bubble popped beneath her hands. Her knee screamed at her. She ignored it.

"Loki," she said. She grabbed for him; she clasped his face. Her fingertips itched; his skin was blue and very cold, and what did she care? Mud had spattered his cheeks like bits of web.

"Loki," she said again, raggedly. "Loki. Wake up. I kept my promise. Wake up now, damn you, you-" She knew no curse, no endearment strong enough.

He was so still, but what did that mean with Loki, who had made stillness an art? She petted his brow, his cheek, stroked her thumb over his left eye. Not even a flicker beneath the lids. Did he breathe? She saw in a moment that she had come too late, that he would never wake, that he was lost to her as he had always been lost to her because of his fear and her pride and his pride and her fear, and Sif dug her fingers into his cheeks and bent and kissed him brutally across his mouth.

If she'd borrowed magic still in her, she would have given all of it to him; she would have pulled all the charms out of her flesh and stuffed them inside him. She would have brought him water from Mímir's well and prayed that it would heal whatever had broken in him when he fell. She had none of those things. All she had to give to Loki was Sif.

She kissed him again, punishing, her teeth pressed flat into his lips, and her mouth burned; her hands burned. Her eyes burned most of all.

"You must wake up," she whispered into his mouth. "I've caught you, so you must do what I tell you, and I am telling you to wake up. Loki."

An oscillation in his cheek, under her thumb. Sif withdrew, just far enough to see if his eyes moved. He drew sudden breath, a huge intake as if he'd forgotten how to breathe, then his eyes flew open and he choked on it.

Sif laughed and cradled his face in her hands and bent, again, to kiss him, to kiss his lips, his slightly curved nose, his cheeks, the fold of skin between his nose and his mouth, all of him. His hand fluttered at her shoulder. He rose into her kiss, his lips chasing after hers. Under his fingers, a warmth spread through her shoulder, through her skin, and the numbness in her face vanished; the ache in her knee went away. Clever, she meant to say, but she kissed him again.

"I never said," she managed at last.

She ran her fingers over his cheekbone, that broad ridge. His eyes were huge, so red, and she wanted, wildly, to kiss them, too. He caught her fingers and brought them to his lips. He kissed them fiercely and said, "What? What didn't you say? You shouldn't start something if you don't intend to finish." There was a hitch in his voice; it took the humor out. He hadn't blinked, though his eyes unfocused once.

"What I wanted to say," she said, but it was too large. It was too much, suddenly, here with Loki trembling beneath her hands, with his lips so thin under her fingers. Loki. Not a dream and not a ghost, but Loki.

He looked at her. What did he see? No more, she thought, than what she saw in him. He ran his fingers gently down her wrist then up again. His hand close about her hand.

"Sif," he said. He touched her face. His fingers were wet with mud. He was real, she thought. Perhaps that was what he thought, too. In the distance a bubble popped and a snatch of song spilled out then died.

"Sif," he said again. He leaned into her. His thumb rubbed her chin. "You found me. You found me. You came. Sif," and there was so much there in only her name she could hardly breathe enough to say,

"Of course I found you. How could I not? Did you think I wouldn't come for you?"

The yearning in his eyes, how he held onto her wrist as if he thought she would go.

"I hoped you would," he said. "I wanted so badly for you to come. Sif. Sif," he said.

"I love you, too." It fell out of her. "That's what I should have told you. I should have told you long ago-"

"You mustn't blame yourself," said Loki, and he smiled almost without artifice. If it was not to his usual standard, it was, at least, his. His fingers curled at her jaw. The scrape of a nail was blunted by the mud.

He was alive, she thought, he was alive, and she slanted her mouth over his because she did not know how to say it, how to put it in words how very glad she was to feel his skin on her fingers, to touch her fingertips to his curls, to feel him against her as he rose out of the mud and wrapped his long arms about her.

They parted. Loki nuzzled her cheek. She leaned into his brow, his shoulders, the coolness of him. All around them bubbles sang and laughed and wept for joy and for sorrow and for fear, dreams loosed from Yggdrasill's roots. Loki exhaled, shuddering. She clasped her arms around his neck and held him, just held him.

"We should go," she said.

"I agree," said Loki, muffled. He brushed his lips over her jaw. "I never want to see another tree again."

"And we are to go, that we never see trees?" she asked him. "A desert?"

His hands tightened at her back. The mesh pulled, knotted under his fingers. His breath tickled her cheek once, again.

"Wherever you want to go," he said. "I will go with you. Even if there are trees."

The name was on her tongue. She swallowed it.

"Midgard," Sif said. She pressed her face to his jaw. "Midgard."

"Then Midgard," said Loki, and he wound about her; he held her and he breathed. He breathed. Alive.

The future unspooled before her. She saw it, a hot thing spilling smoke, and she knew it; she knew it would not be simple or easy, for when was peacemaking ever peaceful, but she had Loki and when she thought of that hot thing coming toward her she thought of Loki beside her, his cool hand in her own.

Night had come to Yggdrasill. The shadows lengthened, swallowing them. Loki turned and kissed her ear, softly. In the boughs of Yggdrasill, a pale moon showed, a white moon newly full.

"Are you ready?" she asked Loki.

He touched her cheek and said, "Yes."

iii: memory: sif.

The palace loomed before Sif. Though she'd come to it many times before, countless times, nearly every day for the last who knew how many years, she had never thought it so grand or so frightening. It imposed in a way her home did not. Not your home anymore, she thought crossly. Then her anger faded and as it faded she felt herself small and unwanted again.

How her father had raged that morn, as he had raged every morn since the queen's invitation. At least he hadn't raged at her this time. He hadn't so much as looked at her all week.

"If she goes, she will never come back," he shouted at her mother.

Sif had crouched on the stairs and looked around the bend at her parents, their silhouettes thrown by the early morning lanterns to play hugely against the wall. She had watched as her mother, her small mother, drew upright-on the wall, she fairly towered-and shouted back.

"If she doesn't come back, it will be because of you!"

Sif had never heard her mother shout before, certainly never at Lieff, and her chest ached to hear it for her mother did it for Sif. And what did Sif do? She cowered on the stairs, like a babe, like a child too small to know itself.

"You know what this means for her," Astra went on, "to be invited by the queen, to study at the palace like a nobleman's daughter-"

"I'd rather her go as a wife," he snapped, "not a shield-maiden. I did not use what influence I have to get her in the company of the princes for her to learn to fight like a common soldier."

"And what of an uncommon soldier?" her mother shot back. "The queen said-"

"I don't care what the queen said!" her father thundered. Astra fell back; her shadow wavered and fell, and Sif would have stood to shout down at her father had he not then said, "The queen knows not what she speaks of; her head is full of stuff."

Sif pressed her hands to her mouth. Her heart pounded, and she was hot, hot all over with rage for the queen, who was beautiful and wise and true, and with fear, for what if Heimdall listened? What if he heard? The word treason rose in her like a corpse in a pond.

The silence pressed on her. In a moment Heimdall's messenger would be at their door, she thought; but the silence persisted for long, awful moments. Her mother's shadow twisted. She'd looked away.

"I'm done with this," said Lieff. "I'm done with Sif. Let her go to the palace. I have no daughter. Tell her that."

Her father passed out of the hall. Sif watched her mother's silhouette as it bent and changed. Astra pressed a hand to her face, and her back bowed in a tight, hurting line. She breathed out softly, and Sif turned and fled up the stairs to her room.

Her mother had fetched her later, after the sun had risen over the horizon. Astra had stood in the doorway and feigned delight at the cleanliness of Sif's room, as if it weren't bare, stripped of Sif.

"Look at how you've cleaned this room," said Astra. "If only the queen had invited you sooner."

Sif set her bags down at the door and threw her arms about her mother's shoulders. She hid her face in her mother's collar. Already she was almost taller than Astra. Her throat stung. She whispered, "I'll miss you."

Her mother petted her hair gently, her fingers sliding through Sif's locks as easily as they always had.

"Look at you," she said. "Acting as if we'll never see each other again. I expect you to visit once a week. Letters every day."

"I can't write that many letters," Sif protested.

"Every other day," her mother conceded, and she'd bent to kiss Sif's brow when Sif held her tighter.

Now Sif stood alone before the palace, like she'd told her mother she wanted to. "All grown up," Astra said, but she'd let her go.

The steps rose endlessly before her. Her heart was a bird fighting to break out of her chest. No daughter of Lieff's, she thought. She'd hoped it would strengthen her resolve, but it only made her chest hurt more. What was it she had wanted so much to shout at her father that morning as she watched him from the stairs? She tasted it in the back of her mouth. What of me can you not love?

"It's bad luck to cry when you move into a new home," said Loki at her back.

Sif jumped and turned, fists ready. He smiled nicely at her and shivered around to her front. His tunic was neatly pressed to his shoulders, his collar, his waist. She didn't know where he'd come from: the walk up to the palatial doors was one devoid of ornamentation. The palace was decoration enough.

"Of course, I wouldn't know much of that," he added. "I've never had to move."

Sif set her hands on her hips and looked down her nose at him. It had been easier to do before he'd got so tall. Thor still straggled behind, shortest of all if thickest through, but Loki had sprung up like a weed over the winter. Their eyes met, level now. He'd flakes of yellow in the pale green of his eyes.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

"Only to extend my heartfelt welcome to our new guest," he said smoothly.

She ran her gaze up him. Loki, ever cool, hardly squirmed. "You've straightened your hair again."

"You've softened your tongue," he said back. "But not so much as mine." Then he dropped into a little, mocking bow, bending low at the waist, and it mocked because he was not supposed to bow so low to anyone but the king and queen. He smiled up at her. "Welcome, Sif Lieffsdottir, to my most humble home."

She scowled, but it pinched too tightly. He'd made her want to laugh. Loki's smile sharpened. Sif bunched her lips.

"Are you going to help me with my bags or not?"

Loki straightened. He flicked his fingers, dismissive. "Leave them. A servant will get them."

"I can carry my own bags," she said indignantly.

"Then why ask for my help?"

"Because you're different," she said. "Where's Thor?"

Loki snagged one of her bags and hoisted it gracefully to his shoulder.

"Sleeping in," he said. "You know how he is. Big day. Important guest. He's drooling into his pillow. Mother will get mad at him when she knows he didn't get up to greet you."

"You shouldn't try to get him into trouble," said Sif.

They walked together up the steps. Loki snorted and said, "He gets me into enough trouble. Why shouldn't I return the favor?"

"Because you're smarter," she said bluntly.

Loki showed his teeth in a feral sort of smile, which was as close as he'd come to laughing, she knew. He'd laughed in days before when she joked of Thor, but he'd gone quiet recently in strange ways.

"Coming from one half of the bash berserkers," he said, "that's quite the compliment. Why are you so early? You weren't supposed to come until later. Mother had a little ceremony planned."

"Change of plans," Sif said. She stared ahead at the doors. "My father was busy. This was the only time they could drop me."

Loki was looking at her in that studious way of his, as if she were one of his absurdly heavy books. He said nothing, though, and when they got to the doors he stopped to press his hand to the sun at the center. The doors parted for them.

"I can't wait for you and Thor to make a mess of everything," he said.

"I can't wait for you to stop being so rude," said Sif.

He smirked sidelong at her. His lashes fell low over his eyes. That was a new trick of his, too, a way of sneering with his eyes in place of his mouth.

"Oh, Sif," he said, "I am never anything but polite to you."

"If you're so polite, then show me to my room," she said, and she marched ahead of him.

"You fit in already," Loki called.

He caught up with her easily enough-why had he got so tall, that's what she wanted to know-and smiling, mocking, he strode on the verge of a jog before her, which was as clear a challenge for her to catch him as any she'd seen.

Sif tucked her bag under her arm and raced him down the hall.

iv: the hawk, the eagle, and the squirrel.

"Don't move so," Veðrfölnir hissed. "It's bad enough trying to get comfortable in here."

"Sorry," said the eagle, though she didn't sound much. Carefully she brought her wing down again, tucking it about Veðrfölnir. "Better?"

The eagle's breast rose and fall against Veðrfölnir's head, steady as her heartbeat. The shadow she made with her wing was dark and and warm and sweetly so. Veðrfölnir leaned against her, but only just.

"I suppose it will do," she said.

Veðrfölnir bent to pick at her own breast. The feathers were all a mess, bloodied and pressed to one side or the other. The scratch bit at her. Would that she'd clawed the slithering shit's eyes out before he'd knocked her off. He'd raked a line of dots and dashes down her belly and clipped her left foot. She nursed that, even sitting.

"You fought well," said the eagle.

She scowled. "Not well enough. I'm out of practice. Used to be I could have taken a wyrm half again as big as Níðhöggr, the fuck."

"I remember," said the eagle. She turned her head, and the eagle's beak slicked over Veðrfölnir's brow. "Sleep now."

"Only if you stop talking," said Veðrfölnir gruffly, but she turned her head to the eagle's grooming. The eagle preened, cleaning the grime and blood out of Veðrfölnir's feathers as Veðrfölnir first dozed then lightly slept.

In her dream, she was a fledgling again, and she was lost in the vastness of Yggdrasill. Her wings were too short to catch the thermals properly and she sank in gradations, from the higher boughs to the middling boughs then down further to the roots. Níðhöggr waited for her. She saw his fangs, his eyes gleaming and spinning. He would snatch her up. She pumped her wings but they were too damned weak.

Then a cage closed about her, huge claws bearing her up, up, away from Níðhöggr and the earth. The eagle, who never flew, said, "Caught you." Ratatoskr said, "Níðhöggr is dead."

She roused, unwilling, to their voices. Veðrfölnir blinked blearily out from the shelter of the eagle's wing. Ratatoskr, small as a mouse, had perched on the edge of the nest. He pulled at his whiskers and rolled his eyes.

"Oh," he said, "the other lady wakes."

"I have a name, vermin," Veðrfölnir mumbled. Sleep made her soft. She would have to chase him about later.

"I'll use it when you remember mine," said Ratatoskr. He stared with interest at her feathered breast. "What an awful scratch you've got, my lady."

"She fought Níðhöggr," said the eagle. Gently she nipped at Veðrfölnir's forefeathers.

Veðrfölnir turned her head away. The eagle laughed.

"Fought and lost," said Veðrfölnir.

"Better warriors than you have rotted in his gut," said Ratatoskr sympathetically. Before Veðrfölnir could decide whether or not it was worth getting up to bite his nose off, he went on to say, "But one of them finally got the better of him."

Veðrfölnir stared at him. In her dream- But that had been a dream.

"Níðhöggr is dead?"

"He is dead," said the eagle. "I have looked. I have seen."

"That warrior from Asgard slew him," said Ratatoskr, "the one you saved."

"That skinny thing!" Veðrfölnir scoffed. "How could she have slain Níðhöggr?"

Ratatoskr wriggled his tail. His eyes narrowed. Airily he said, "I suppose she just used her brain," then he dove off the nest.

"Stay still," said the eagle placidly as Veðrfölnir struggled to rise. "Your cut will open. You need to rest."

"Yes, please," Ratatoskr called from below, "listen to the eagle. She's very wise."

"It is true," the eagle agreed.

Veðrfölnir fought still for balance. Her leg ached terribly, in that sore way of an old wound. How long had she slept? There was something else odd about standing, though, something she couldn't place; then it came to her in the stillness.

"Yggdrasill's stopped shaking," she said, surprised.

Ratatoskr popped his head up again. "Her blessed treesiness stopped ages ago. You missed it."

Veðrfölnir craned forward to look up to the eagle, whose eyes had turned to the stars.

"What does it mean?"

"Yggdrasill rests," said the eagle. "Níðhöggr no longer plagues her. She dreams."

"And what does that mean?" asked Veðrfölnir, exasperated. Trust the eagle to lose her reason in stargazing. Dreams! And what could that signify, with war coming and fire on the horizon?

"I don't yet know," the eagle said. She looked to Veðrfölnir and tipped her head to one side, which was her way of saying things were all right. "But in time."

Ratatoskr translated: "What she means is find your patience, Lady Hawk."

"Fuck off," said Veðrfölnir without heat. She was as yet tired and standing had taken more out of her than she liked. Níðhöggr's poison worked through her. That would pass, in time.

"We will watch," said the eagle. "We will see." She fixed her eye on Veðrfölnir. "You must rest now."

"Listen to her," said Ratatoskr. He peered over the edge, his eyes huge and dark. "You're no good to anyone if you can't so much as stand."

"You're no good at all," said Veðrfölnir.

"You are both good to me," said the eagle. "Now sleep. Let Yggdrasill dream."

In time, Veðrfölnir slept.

v: yggdrasill dreaming.

Yggdrasill, of you we sing. Of you we sing, Yggdrasill.

We give our song to you. We give our hands to you. We give our breath to you. We give our blood to you. We give our dreams to you.

Yggdrasill, of what do you dream? Múspellsheimr has woken. The sons of Múspell have woken. Their fires have woken. Do you dream of their soldiers marching, their torches held high to burn you down and through your ashes open the way to noble Asgard, faithful Asgard, Asgard the terrible? Do you dream of how the flames will come upon you? Do you dream of the Bifröst as it broke, of Asgard's power breaking and all the realms freed to make war or peace amongst themselves, of Múspellsheimr's vengeance sparked in the breaking?

Or do you dream of something else? Do you dream of something green, something sweet, something cool? As fires kindle, do you dream instead of rain?

Níðhöggr the undying is dead. Loki the hunted is caught. Sif the pursuing is victorious. At the well Urðarbrunnr, the three norns Urðr and Verðandi and Skuld weave. At the well Mímisbrunnr, the giant Mímir drinks. At the well Hvergelmir, the wyrm Níðhöggr rots. Who among them knows the future? Who among them can know it? In the water, ripples. In the earth, cracks. In the air, storms.

In her hands, Sif bears Loki. In his hands, Loki bears Sif. Out of your roots, they climb. Out of memory, they climb. Out of dreams, they climb. Loki climbs. Sif climbs. Together, they climb.

Yggdrasill the undreaming dreams.

8. | Masterpost