fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: 8a.

[mekosuchinae]

8.

i: mímisbrunnr.

The mud bled into clay. Sif stumbled, the change in the quality of the earth throwing her. Her leg jolted, and her knee locked then buckled. She fell forward onto her hand and pushed off. The tip of her sword dug into the clay. Shit. She looked back over her shoulder; the way was clear. The fog had dissipated some ways back, and she'd heard neither the hawk nor the wyrm since leaving them. Sif sheathed her sword. Her fingers shook. Her legs shook more.

Going on as she had without rest wouldn't cut it for much longer. Practicality said she needed to find a hollow to lay down in until she'd got full control of her legs again. She sucked on her lip, which had split down the center. Practicality also said she needed to find water. Three full canteens lost. The roll wasn't a loss and she could make do for a week without food, but the water. Throwing the pack had been a stupid idea. It had bought her time, as she'd hoped it would, but-

Sif pinched her cheek between her thumb and her fingernail. Self-doubt would only slow her. She hadn't the time for it. Grimly, she trudged on. Her shield hung from her forearm; with every third step it bounced off her thigh. Forward. Forward. She would rest in a bit. Blood on her lip. She licked it away.

In the early days of her maturity she had walked the sunburnt lands, a young warrior, very young and very stupid, full of dreams of glory. Thor had gone with her. Loki, too. He'd pulled water out of the air when her canteen ran low, dew on his fingertips, rain in his palm. Her face had burnt with sun. Her arms peeled in long strips. She'd scratched at her nose, skin flaking, and said, "What-am I supposed to drink it from your hands?" as a joke.

Loki, who'd burned a deep, dark red like the afterglow of the sun as it set, had said, "Anything for you, my lady," and held his cupped hands up to her.

It was the heat in her skin, the memory of the sun lingering in her chest, that had made her pause. He had smiled at her over his hands, but the corners were all wrong, too tight and too jagged. She'd wondered what he would do if she bent her head to his hands. If she touched his wrists and tipped his fingers down and drank the water from his hands. If his skin would taste of salt.

The sun had set behind her. A wind kicked up along the horizon, throwing sand before it. Sif had turned and held her canteen out to Loki, and he had poured the water from his fingers into the bottle. The back of her neck had itched. Grit in her hair, too much sand on her skin.

The water had been cold on her tongue, marvelously chill all the way down her throat. His eyes had been green. More than that she remembered the smear of dirt on his chin, how his tongue had pressed to the inside of his lip. He'd licked the traces of water from his fingers, and she had turned her mind blank rather than think of what it was she wanted to do with his tongue and his fingers. She'd been hot and thirsty, and that was why she'd wanted.

"Lies," Sif muttered. Mortifying, how she'd lied to herself for so long. She passed beneath an arching lateral root.

A loamy soil replaced the clay. Grass spotted the earth sporadically and then with explosive fullness. The fog had thinned; now it vanished entirely. Sedge grasses peeked out of the greenery here and there. A colossal root rose before her, but a passage had been cut through it in the shape of an arch. Sif walked through.

She emerged in a meadow cradled in the broad juncture of two roots. The grasses, uncut, brushed the tops of her shins. An uncovered well stood at the heart of the meadow, equidistant from each root, and lounging in the grass beside it, a large naked man with a hooked nose lifted his head.

Sif cut through the grass to him. Stalks snapped beneath her feet. The man watched, curious, as she approached.

"Is this Mímisbrunnr?" she called.

"So it is," he said. "And I am Mímir, and this is my well."

She bowed her head quickly to him. He smiled as if amused and tipped his head to her.

"I am Sif Lieffsdottir of Asgard," she said. "I was told to speak with you of the three sisters, whose names-" She made a face. "I cannot remember. I need very badly to speak with them."

Mímir nodded thoughtfully. Then, his shoulders bunching, he sat up. His shadow spilled before him. Sif held her ground. He was large, enormous even, of a size on par with the jötnar. A strange shadow gleamed in his eyes.

"I think first," he said, "you will tell me why you need speak with them."

Sif clamped her jaw. "This is a matter of great urgency. I don't have time to waste. I would have you tell me of how to find them so that I might go to them now."

"You have time enough, Sif Astrasdottir," said Mímir mildly.

She wondered that she had not noticed how cold the air in the meadow. She had not given him her mother's name. Mímir continued:

"If you would speak with the norns, you must drink of my well. To drink of my well, you must give me reason to permit it. So again I would ask that you tell me why you seek the sisters."

She could force him. Tall as he was, strong though his shoulders, she had slain taller and stronger. He, at least, would not spit fire upon her. But she could not do that. Would not do that. Sif forced her hands out flat at her sides. The shield pulled at her elbow.

"I seek Loki," she said. "I made a promise to him, that I would find him, but I know not where to look for him. The sisters know where he is, so I would speak with them."

Mímir pulled absently at the grass. A stalk shredded between his fingers. "And why do you seek Loki?"

She lifted her chin. Coldly she said, "I promised him I would. My word is my honor. I would not turn my back upon him."

"Allow me to rephrase," said Mímir. He stuck a bit of grass between his teeth. "Why did you promise Loki this thing you promised him?"

Her mouth was so very dry. It hurt to swallow. Sif pressed her bloodied lips together, then licked them again. The skin beneath her lips rasped; soon that would begin to peel.

Mímir worried the grass. He waited, his dark eyes steady on her. Annoyance struck in her belly: he knew, and he would have her say it anyway. Sif reddened.

"Because of my love for him," she snapped.

"As your brother," said Mímir.

"No," said Sif loudly, for the thought of Loki as her brother was absurd, "as a lover."

The word fell heavily from her tongue. Admitted, it could not be taken back. Nothing she hadn't known, still: it was one thing to love Loki and another thing entirely to say she would love him. Her ears burned.

Mímir smiled. Would that she could knock his teeth out.

"So, you love him," said Mímir, "as a lover loves a lover."

He goaded her. She stared fixedly at the well. Mímir spat the grass out and laughed.

"Well," he said. "The sisters will have much to say to you. If you are to drink from my well, and I see now that you are resolved to do so, there is a toll."

"There's always a toll," Sif muttered.

"Always," he agreed. "All things come with a price, and wisdom is no exception. My price is two-fold. First I would ask another question of you."

"And second?" she asked.

"A weight," he said. He extended his finger, gesturing. "The second finger of your right hand."

She snatched her hand back in a fist. "And why should I?"

"Odin gave his eye to drink from my well," said Mímir. Sif stared. He smiled; there was no warmth to it. "Heimdall gave his ear. I ask only a finger of you. That is the token I request. That is the proof of your intent. If you cannot give of your flesh, then I cannot give of the waters of Mímisbrunnr."

Sif touched the fingers of her right hand with the fingers of her left. She curled her hand about the middle finger, longest. The joints were delicate, fragile. She'd never thought of her hands as fragile before, not even as a girl when they were small, her fingers slender and soft. She looked to Mímir again.

"All right," she said. "But first you will ask your question."

He settled comfortably on his elbows. "You would seek Loki, out of your love for him. You know what it is he has done."

A prompt, but she would not rise to it. She knew. The Bifröst opened onto Jötunheimr, all its power turned upon that realm, and Loki the hand that would have slain the jötnar. She had wondered if she would have stopped him, if she would have thought it a sin. She had wondered if perhaps the monster was within and not without.

"So you know, too, the burden he must bear," said Mímir, "the burden of Loki World-killer, which is more than those he has killed will ever have. His judgment he carries. Knowing it, would you take his burden from him? Would you take his judgment for him?"

Loki. In her heart, she saw him alone on the throne, his shadow long against the wall. He had ever been alone.

"No," she said.

"You love him?" asked Mímir.

"I do," said Sif. She lowered her eyes. She said again, "I do. But his burden is not mine to bear, no more than my burdens are his to bear. My sins are my own."

"So you would not take it from him," said Mímir.

She shook her head. "No." She looked up then, and Mímir watched her, his face a thing of stone. "But I will help him with it," she said, "as I can."

"Give me your hand," said Mímir.

She knotted her fingers against her palm. Her knuckles ached. Deliberately she straightened her fingers, and Sif held her hand out to him. She held it steady, unwavering, and there was a dignity in that, she supposed. Then he closed his thick fingers around her second finger and tore it from her hand.

Sif turned her face away. The pain rolled up her arm; she thought she might vomit. She set her jaw against it. Spots bloodied her vision.

"Drink," said Mímir. He pressed a horn into her hand.

Her palm and fingers were slicked with blood, and it nearly slid from her. She closed her hand desperately about it and caught it with her left. Her head swam. Sif brought the horn to her lips and tipped it up. She drank greedily, quickly, and choked, but she held the horn up till she had drunk it all. Her thirst was such that she could have wept, but she'd no tears to give. The water was cool on her parched lips and sweet on her dried tongue. Blood from her hand stained the metal.

Sif lowered the horn. She licked her lips compulsively and swallowed again. The rasp in her throat had gone. So, too, had the pain in her right hand. She turned her hand over. The stump showed, the skin red, but the wound had closed and the bone hurt no more.

"A gift," said Mímir. "To spare you pain."

He took the horn from her. Sif stared up into his face. He was old, she saw now, older even than Odin, older perhaps than Asgard. She had thought him mocking, and he was that, but he was more, too.

"A word of advice," Mímir said to her, "and one I wish I had thought to give Odin. Wisdom itself is meaningless if you do not use it well."

"Odin's eye," she said. She touched the knuckle where her finger had been and flinched, for the skin was sore to the touch. "When did the Allfather-"

"If you seek the sisters," Mímir said, "go north. You will find them at Urðarbrunnr. They will have food for you and drink, but you will need neither until you have found them. Tell Urðr that Mímir has sent you."

"Thank you," said Sif, when he said nothing else.

"You are welcome," said Mímir. He smiled truly, and she did not wish to strike him for it. "Now go. Night will be on us soon."

Sif went.

ii: loki dreaming.

The universe coalesced. Stars chased one another through the heavens; they left ghostly trails, like the aftermarks of the firecrackers Loki had stolen and set off years ago. The heavens shifted, swinging and then closing about him. His head swam. His gorge rose. Loki neither blinked nor turned away. He would see it, all of it.

Between Yggdrasill's outstretched fingers, a spot of light showed. It grew phenomenally in a half-breath, until it was no longer a spot of light but a world pinched between her first and second fingers, a blue world spotted with black shadows and ringed by three moons. Jötunheimr, the fourth realm. A white blotch marred it: a vast, spinning storm which wandered sideways across the northern continent. It passed in a blink.

"What do you know of Jötunheimr?" asked Yggdrasill.

As a child, he had devoted himself to Asgard's great library and to the task of memorizing everything, firstly because he could and secondly because Thor could not. He'd thought Asgard's records on Jötunheimr sufficient, for what else need he know of the jötnar than that they were savages? The planet neared. The dark spots resolved into shapes: huge pocked squares rising out of the ice, like beehives. He knew very little.

"The oldest maps list it as 'The Uninhabitable Place,'" he said, "or 'The Dead Star.' When the first explorers from Asgard came to it and found it was both inhabited and not dead, they renamed it 'The Shrieking Land.'"

"And what did the jötnar call it?"

The maps had not said.

The hives grew in his perspective. Now he saw them as sprawling architecture cut into and out of the ice, covering huge swaths of land as in communal cities. Silver lights shone here and there through holes carved into the stone or ice. Shadows passed before them. Jötnar.

"What else do you know?" asked Yggdrasill.

They fell closer still to the surface, or the surface fell closer to them. The shadows expanded. In one window, a larger shadow bent to a small one. Loki stared at the place where the two shadows met, then they had passed it and the light was behind them. Yggdrasill waited.

"The explorers called the inhabitants the frostbitten men," he said, "first for the color of their skin and then for the corruptive quality inherent to their flesh, which-" He remembered this clearly, for it had stuck with him, the thought of becoming the monster. He recited the lines dully: "'In the touching, it turns the flesh of our own blue as theirs; and the flesh touched dies, for their touch is death. They are insensate as the dead for they feel nothing, and whosoever is touched by them shall be made insensate wheresoever touched.'"

"Is it true?" asked Yggdrasill, as if she did not know.

Loki touched the back of his left hand. His fingertips were chilled. Blood ran through his veins; he felt it stirring. In the juncture of his thumb and his first finger, a pulse beat.

"No," he said.

They settled on land. Ice crunched beneath his boots. His breath spilled out whitely before him, then a little less, then less than that. Yggdrasill walked. Loki followed.

"Why did the explorers come?"

"To seek out new lands," he said, "in the name of Asgard. For the good of Asgard."

It was a particular favorite phrase of his father's-of Odin's. He curled his tongue against it. Yggdrasill walked on before him. She was naked, but not naked, and the frost that showed on the undersides of her feet was like lace.

"Why did they return?"

His breath showed not at all now. His hand itched; he looked to it. A blue spot ate at his palm. He curled his fingers around it; he dug his nails into the edges to hold it there.

"To bring civilization," he said.

"Were the frostbitten men not civilized?" asked Yggdrasill, and she swung her arms out. Leaves fell like sleeves from her elbows, in thick, cascading waves, and they were silver leaves; they were white as snow laid upon the earth.

He turned to the stars. The first and third moons were half-full above. The second waned. A storm threatened to hide it from view. Ice bore down upon the blocked city outside which they stood.

"Not in the eyes of Asgard," said Loki.

"Come," said Yggdrasill.

He took her hand and she ran her free hand before them. The world shivered beneath her fingertips and ran as melting ice from her hand. Jötunheimr raced past them. Silver spires which shone with yellow lights whipped by, then a huge and residenced bridge which spanned an enormous chasm. A complex in the shape of spikes driven up through the earth approached. A pair of grand doors carved with three moons, one new, one half-full, the other full, came at them. They were at the palace; they were within the palace; doors melted before them and they were through.

The world stilled. Loki stared up at a door on which a carving of Jötunheimr showed in relief. Three lines at right angles connected the planet to the same new-half-full moon iconography of the palatial doors.

"Would you see her?" asked Yggdrasill.

"Who?" he asked, but he knew.

"Your mother," said Yggdrasill.

Frigg was on his tongue; her name pressed on his lips.

He turned again to the door.

"Show me," he said.

Yggdrasill set her hand to the door. The moons turned, the new to full, the full to new, and the half-moon switching sides. The door opened.

What had he expected? Memories of the war had lingered long after Odin's peace. In the library he had read accounts of jötnar eating the flesh of their young, and he had whispered them later under cover of dark to Thor, who had laughed and shouted at what had made Loki dread sleep.

She was tall and but for a dark cloth wound about her abdomen and thighs, naked. She'd hair, curling hair, black and shorn close to her scalp. The room was ornamented with items whose meaning he thought he knew-chairs, a high table, a length of ice polished as a mirror-but it was the bed, a nest set into the floor, on which she reclined. Laufey, naked, sat opposite her, and they looked together at a small thing set between them.

"He's very small," said the woman. Her voice was deep; it scratched.

Laufey laughed. "He will grow."

"No child has ever been so small."

"All children are small," said Laufey.

"Trust me when I say that our son is small," she growled.

Laufey held his hand to her for peace. Her mouth twisted; she grumbled. Then she set her hand on his. His fingers framed her wrist. She closed her hand about his wrist, the end of his palm. A string of red beads slung over his arm clattered.

Loki walked, without thought of walking, closer to the bed. Thick silver furs lined the depression. What lay between Laufey and the woman? He stared down at the child-an infant, newly born, only a tiny, wrinkled head sticking out of a cocoon of cloth.

As he watched, the woman-his mother-rested her other hand upon the baby's-Loki’s-chest. Her thumb stroked where his legs were bound.

"How will he survive when he is so small?" she said.

"Elngi is strong," said Laufey, "like Nál."

She smiled. A web stitched into her lip-a violet tattoo-pulled out, as string drawn tight.

"He shrieks like Laufey," said Nál, "all wind and no hail."

Laufey shook, his thick shoulders quivering. "He will hail in time."

"Elngi," said Nál to the babe, to Loki. She touched a fingertip to his cheek, all she could touch to it without hiding his face in her hand. "You will grow and be strong. One day you will lead us all to greatness."

"Enough," said Loki. He spun around on his heel. In the ice mirror he saw her face in profile, bent to the child. A smile wrinkled her cheek. "I've seen enough."

"Elngi," whispered Nál.

"No more!" he shouted. His lips drew back from his teeth. "Stop it now."

Yggdrasill lifted her hand. Jötunheimr winked out. The stars in the heavens twinkled, unnumbered, above, and Loki stood breathing heavily, his fingers curled as hooks, in the boughs of a summer-green tree.

He turned from Yggdrasill and covered his face with his hands. His fingernails dug into his brow. His palms when he looked at them were blue, darkly blue, the color of Laufey's skin and Elngi's skin and Nál's skin. If he cut the skin from his hands, it would only grow back.

His heart beat jaggedly in his chest. He closed his eyes. When he'd control again, he slicked his hair back from his brow. Loki looked to the spot in the sky where Asgard shone.

"What happened to her?"

"She is dead," said Yggdrasill gently. "Felled in battle. Perhaps it would be a comfort to know she died at the hand of Odin's strongest man, and only after she delivered a blow which, in turn, felled him."

"Not much of a comfort," he said.

"They burned her," said Yggdrasill, "in a great pyre on Jötunheimr. Odin did."

He turned, surprised. "So great an honor?"

"Not to the jötnar."

Yggdrasill looked to another point in the sky, which was Jötunheimr, he knew, from the way the stars were arranged about it.

She said, "The jötnar bury their dead in the northern ice, which is sacred to them as the sweet waters are sacred to the Aesir. In the eyes of Laufey, Odin's respect was defilement. A queen of the jötnar would not want for Valhalla."

He looked away. His hair had not stayed as he'd slicked it. Now it curled, wild as it had when he was a child. He thought of Sif, of her fingers wound in his hair, and he wanted to rest in the hollow of her throat. She is coming, he thought. Loneliness consumed him.

"There is one more thing I would show you," said Yggdrasill.

iii: urðarbrunnr.

North, Mímir had said, and so Sif traveled north. As she walked, she pressed her thumb to the empty spot between her first and third fingers. The touch hurt, the skin still sensitive, but she would not leave it alone. Such a small thing to sacrifice. She'd her share of scars, and they were all of them testament to her courage, her struggles, the battles she'd won and the battles she'd survived. This was another thing: flesh given of her, not flesh taken from her.

"Another scar," she said. That was all. Her lips had stopped bleeding, her legs their trembling. Fortunate, that she did not have to worry of a bleeding hand. The skin itched, new. Blood dried in the lines of her palm.

Sif walked on. The clouds neared again. Slowly, over time, the light began to dim, and Sif's shadow lengthened at her side. The tree, in its immensity, was such that it seemed as though she made no progress, and if it had not been for the way the sky darkened she would have thought perhaps she'd fallen to some enchantment; but it was only that the tree was so vast.

The grass thickened. Smaller trees grew in the shadow of Yggdrasill, and even as their branches arched over her head she thought them tiny, for in the shadow of Yggdrasill, how could they be anything else?

She scaled a tall root. The shield, strapped to her back, bit into her nape when she looked up to judge how far she'd left to climb. Sif slung her sword higher on her shoulder and dug her fingers into the bark.

When she'd got to the top, she slung her legs over and stopped, for below was another well, which was a deep spring lined only with reeds, and seated in the grass some distance away were three old, wizened women who worked with cloth.

"Jötnar," she whispered, for they were so: tall even as they hunched, with skin blue as the early night sky. Dark lines creased their hands. Jötnar. That Mímir had not mentioned this- But to Mímir, did it matter?

Sif slid the rest of the way down the root, and when she'd got close enough she leapt free of it. A twig snapped beneath her toe.

One of the women, the skinny one at the center, lifted her head. She'd no eyes, only folds of skin and the shiny marks of old scar tissue stretching to her temples. Her nose was bent near the top. She looked directly at Sif and said, "Sif's here. And about time. We've been waiting for you," she shouted at Sif. "Well! Stop dallying. If you want an invitation, you have it."

"I did not know I was expected," Sif said. She came forward.

The one in the middle snorted and sat back in her chair. She'd a handful of gossamer-thin strands and she wound these quickly about each other, spinning thread between her fingers. The woman to her left, which was Sif's right, had a loom, which she left off. The cloth spooling from it hung limply aross her lap.

"Oh, I've so wanted to meet you," she said eagerly. She, too, was eyeless. Her hair fell in a tangled cloud about her shoulders. "We've been expecting you for quite a long time, and we know, oh, so much about you. Practically everything there is to know, past, present-well, the future's a bit muddy, but I know some of that, too."

A scrap of something her mother had said to her when she was little came to her, then. Sif stared at them. Her hand ached suddenly, the bone where her finger had gone stinging as if struck.

"You're the fates," said Sif.

"And you're clever," said the one in the middle. "Do they tell stories of us, then? Even in Asgard? Never told you we were jötnar, did they. Can't have their good little babes knowing we were down here spinning."

"Don't mind Verðandi," said the one who'd spoken so excitedly to Sif. "Though she's right. I am Skuld, and this is Verðandi, and that's Urðr over there."

Sif followed Skuld's gesture. The third sister picked burrs from a mess of wool drawn out of a basket at her knee, and she did so with one eye turned down to her lap.

"She's eldest," Skuld went on, "and I'm youngest, but I know an awful lot, and I'm very good at weaving."

"Oh, push off," said Verðandi with disgust. "You think she cares about your weaving?"

"It's very beautiful," Sif said to Skuld.

Skuld smiled hugely and began to preen. "Beautiful, she says. Do you hear that, Verðandi? Beautiful."

"As if you can tell," said Verðandi, "when you haven't even got the eye."

"Can you hear how beautiful it is?" Skuld asked her earnestly. "Listen to the colors, Verðandi."

Siblings, thought Sif, and she was glad she'd none of her own. Drawing nearer to Urðr, she said, "Mímir has sent me to you, with regards to Urðr."

"With regards!" shrieked Skuld.

"Oh, I'm certain he did," said Verðandi, "with quite a few regards," and both she and Skuld began to laugh.

"That is enough," said Urðr, long-suffering, but her sisters only laughed the harder for it.

She turned her eye on Sif, and it was a blue eye, the iris set in a white sclera. Her other socket was empty and scarred, flesh sunken into the hole left. The back of Sif's neck prickled. Her hand ached more fiercely still. Urðr set her work down.

"We know why you have come," she said, and Sif believed her absolutely.

"We all do," said Skuld, giggling. Verðandi shushed her.

"You seek Loki, son of Frigg and of Odin," said Urðr, "who was Elngi, son of Nál and Laufey, who has no mother and no father and no home."

"He has a home," said Sif.

Urðr smiled at this, a little dry flickering of her lips. "If you will sit with us and listen, we will tell you where to find him."

"But there is a price," said Skuld.

Sif could not help it; she rolled her eyes. "Why is there always a price?"

"Because that's the way of it," said Verðandi. "If you don't like it, you can leave."

"Don't say that," Skuld hissed. "You know what we lose-"

"Is it a finger you want?" Sif asked. She looked to Urðr, who stared unblinking back at her. "I've seven left, and my thumbs, too. Or would you like one of my toes?"

"Just your hair," said Urðr lightly. She reached for Sif. Sif stiffened, but Urðr only touched her hair where she'd tied it near to her crown. "From here out." She drew her hand back. A chill ran over Sif's jaw.

"What use is my hair to you?"

"Hair has many uses," said Urðr. She picked her wool up again. "We clean it and spin it and weave it."

"I found the scissors," Skuld called. "Verðandi was sitting on them."

"I was not," said Verðandi.

What was hair to a finger? Skuld passed the scissors to Verðandi who passed them on to Urðr, whose fingers, though gnarled with age, worked with grace. Urðr turned, setting the wool back into the basket. The scissors gleamed against her thigh. Sif looked round the half-circle, at the jötnar sisters. Her sword pressed into her shoulder as she knelt.

Sif bent her head to Urðr.

Urðr's hand was light at the base of her skull, there to steady. Sif rolled her lips in to her teeth. The scissors slid through her hair in fractions, sawing through the tie. A length of hair fell limp against her nape and then another, and another. Urðr caught them all. The scissors clicked, metal on metal, and Urðr drew Sif's hair from her shoulders, hooked between finger and thumb.

Wisps of hair tickled the back of Sif's neck. She was bare, her head light, and looking up to Urðr, who smiled down upon her, the ease with which she lifted her head made her dizzy and uncertain. A halo of sunlight glimmered in Urðr's black hair, which hung straight down her back as Sif's had hung down hers. Now her hair lay flat across Urðr's lap, black hair spotted in places with flecks of leaf or dried mud.

"Is it strange?" asked Skuld softly. "You must feel so naked."

"Don't say that," said Verðandi. "How will that help? You'll only make her feel poorly."

Sif touched her nape. Little scraps of hair stuck to her fingers. The strangeness of it-her bared neck, the absence of pressure where she'd no finger-was near dreamlike; then she was only Sif again, kneeling in the grass. She turned, smiling, to Skuld, then she caught herself.

"A bit strange," she said, "but I think I shall learn to live with it."

Skuld smiled at her. The lines in her face folded up: they were smile lines, mostly, and laugh lines, too.

"We learn to live with a lot of things," she said to Sif, but it was Verðandi who snorted and said, "More than we should."

"Sometimes," said Urðr. "There's food in the basket at Verðandi's back. You may help yourself to it and to the spring."

Sif rose from her knees. Grass stains showed green on her trousers. White mud speckled the grass at Urðr's feet, which were naked, her toes long and knobbed as Sif's mother's toes were long and knobbed. A silver ring decorated the littlest toe on the left.

"Don't worry about eating too much," Skuld called. "Verðandi fits, but the basket never empties. You can eat all you like."

"Fits," grumbled Verðandi. "And who is it who holds onto the eye past her turn?" She tucked her finger between the strands and bent to draw the basket out from behind her.

Bread and cheese, but Sif had lived off less, and the bread was soft and the cheese pungent. Her mouth, so recently dry, watered; her tongue ran slick. She jabbed a hole in her bit of bread and stuffed a piece of cheese in it. Putting it to her lips, she hesitated. She looked up to the sisters-to Verðandi, whose mouth was lined with frowns and whose cheekbones showed severely. How Loki would tease her for her rudeness: And where are your manners, my dear lady Sif?

"Thank you," Sif said. "For the food and for your kind welcome."

"And why wouldn't we welcome you?" asked Verðandi, acerbic. She twisted the strands tightly together. "But you are welcome, so eat."

Sif bowed her head and ate. The bread and cheese melted together on her tongue, and her chest was heavy for it. At her left, Urðr worked, pulling the dirt and fluff out of Sif's shorn hair. She had watched Frigg work thusly before, cleaning wool and cotton of burrs and tangles with a warrior's ease with a shield, and her mother before that. The soft whisk-whisk of the loom started up beneath Skuld's hands. The sound of it soothed Sif, as it had soothed her when she was a child.

There was something about that eye. Not only that it was blue, dropped in white, but the way it looked. She'd seen it before. Mímir had said, "Odin gave his eye to drink from my well. Heimdall gave his ear."

Sif lowered her sandwich and looked to Urðr. Urðr's eye was on her hands as she brushed the length of hair.

"Odin's eye," said Sif.

Urðr did not look up. Sif's hair shone in Urðr's hands as it had never shone, like a metal buffed to shine. Verðandi and Skuld worked quietly.

"Our eye now," said Urðr. She smoothed Sif's hair beneath her hand. "He took our eyes from us before he locked us down here, that we might not see."

The scars at their eyes, the bends in their noses. The bread in Sif's belly was a stone. He had cut them, smashed them so their eyes popped and their noses broke.

"We are powerful seers," Verðandi broke in. She held her hand out to Urðr, who passed Sif's hair to her in waves. "Even as children, we saw more than Odin liked. He could not allow Jötunheimr so dangerous a weapon as three girls with good eyes."

"We saw everything," said Skuld. She smiled reassuringly at Sif. "But we got the better of him in the end. Mímir gave us his eye."

"Because of his great love for Urðr," said Verðandi slyly.

"Oh, shush," said Urðr, but she did not deny it. She looked very comfortable with it.

"How old were you?" Sif asked. Even as children.

"I was a babe," said Skuld. She didn't seem very bothered by it. "Verðandi could speak, and she says she swore terrifically at him."

"Because I did," said Verðandi as she twisted Sif's hair into a long, shining thread. "I laid a terrible curse on his feet. That's why he has such warts on his toes."

"Does he have warts on his toes?" asked Skuld.

"I've never seen his feet," said Sif. Her voice was too loud in her ears.

She could not stop thinking of it, of the Allfather cutting the eyes from children. From a babe. Even a jötunn babe, she thought; but there was no 'even' to it. A babe. She glanced at Skuld, who was quite cheerfully old, older than anyone else Sif had ever seen but for Verðandi, who was older still, and Urðr, who was oldest.

"How long have you been here?" she asked of them, for she had to know. Locked away in the roots of Yggdrasill, children blinded by a king.

"Always," said Urðr. "Time works strangely here in the shadow of Yggdrasill. By your understanding, we've only been here a few millennia, since the third war. By ours, we have been here since the beginning of time."

"So long," said Sif.

"It isn't so bad as all that," said Skuld. "We have each other."

"Would that we didn't have you," grumbled Verðandi, but she smiled at her fingers as they spun.

"How could he do it?" Sif asked. Anger had sparked inside her. "How could the Allfather possibly have hurt children, for, for-"

"For the good of Asgard," said Urðr. She stared at Sif, and Odin's eye stared at her. "That was what he thought."

"Even so," Sif said hotly. "He is of Asgard; he is our king. He would not ever-"

"Steal a babe from a temple?" asked Urðr. "Cast out his son for being what he made of him? Held his love as ransom? Odin is king, but he is mortal, too. He sins as all sin."

"Múspellsheimr girds for war," said Skuld dreamily. She picked at the threads on her loom, sliding them free. "Vessels in a shipyard, bent for the stars. Asgard burning. War again."

Sif rounded on her. "Múspellsheimr would never turn on us!"

"Because you would not let them," said Urðr. "Múspellsheimr offered no threat but the Allfather still extended his dominion over them."

"We gave them protection," said Sif, "as we gave protection to all the realms. We guard them from their enemies."

"You guard them from you," said Verðandi shortly. She fed the thread to Skuld, who fed it to her loom.

"For the good of Asgard," Sif shouted. "Always, for the good of Asgard."

"And what of Múspellsheimr?" asked Urðr.

Sif turned to her. Urðr gazed steadily at her.

"What of Jötunheimr?" she asked Sif. "What of Elngi, son of Laufey? Is Asgard more than them?"

"We gave them protection," said Sif, but her heart had gone out. She remembered, oddly, her father grabbing her by the arm and dragging her from war games with the neighborhood children. "For your own good," he'd shouted as she cried. "No daughter of mine will play at swords."

Skuld's loom started up again. She wove Sif's hair lightly, and like a spiderweb strung with dew, she began to shape it.

"So," said Urðr. "War begets war. Cruelty begets cruelty. For the good of one, the ill of the other."

The bread had broken apart in Sif's hand, the cheese smushed. She ate it without thought; a warrior could never afford to overlook a meal. The cheese stung her tongue. She swallowed, and her throat was dry. Sif rose and went to the well.

In the water, her reflection stared up at her: a fierce woman with short hair and hazel eyes. A woman of Asgard. A warrior of Asgard, the worthy daughter. The question came to her again: if the decision had been hers to make, would she have sacrificed the Bifröst for Jötunheimr? She heard the Allfather speaking: "For the good of Asgard." And what was the good of Asgard? War came again.

She touched the ragged ends of her hair and wanted for Loki.

After a time, Skuld said, "There. It's done. Sif!"

Sif looked up from the well. Skuld shook out a length of cloth, which shimmered and shone as well-polished brass. How she'd woven it in so short a period, Sif didn't know, then she started, for that was her hair. She had not had so much, she knew.

"It's for you," said Skuld, beaming.

"For me!" said Sif, for the hair had been her toll.

Skuld laughed. "If you're to face Níðhöggr again, you'll need better armor." She shook the cloth again. "Whatever your hair covers cannot be harmed, by fang or claw or fire."

Níðhöggr. The great wyrm, that monstrous mountain which lurked in the fog.

"But I've given you nothing for this," said Sif.

"Not yet," said Skuld, smiling, "but you will. War comes, but it does not need to."

"And how can we stop it?" Sif demanded. She threw her arm out, encompassing the clearing, the well, the root beside it, the whole of the world beyond. "The Bifröst is broken. The way is gone. Without the bridge, how can anyone stop them?"

Urðr spoke: "There are other ways between the realms. Loki knows of them. You have walked one."

Skuld leaned forward, the cloth bunched in her hands, spilled across her lap. "You can bring peace, Sif," she said. "You can stop the war before it comes to burn us all. You and Loki. Together."

"And if you don't," said Verðandi brightly, "we all die horribly, crushed beneath the weight of Yggdrasill's corpse."

"Yes, thank you, Verðandi," said Urðr. She looked to Sif. "Will you take the mail we have made for you?"

In the fog, the wyrm waited for her. In the sky, Múspellsheimr burned with war. Between, somewhere: Loki, son of Odin. Elngi, son of Laufey. In her dreams she had seen fire at his back, in the face of the destroyer and in the burning of a tree.

"I will take it," said Sif.

Skuld rose and brought the cloth to Sif, and shucking shield and sword, Sif dressed in it as if it were truly armor and not simply a cloth spun out of her hair. It felt as armor would beneath her fingers, a fine mail that held even as she dragged covertly at the weaving.

"It won't tear," Skuld whispered.

Embarrassed-shamed for doubting-Sif finished fitting it to her thighs. The cloth covered her shoulders, her arms, her chest and back; it fell in a skirt to the tops of her shins. How Skuld had shaped it, she wished she knew, and she thought perhaps the sisters bore more magic than sight.

"It's well made," she said to Skuld. "Thank you for it."

Skuld smiled. The scar tissue at the corners of her eyes wrinkled.

Verðandi shifted, impatient, and said, "Give me your hand, if you want to know where Loki can be found."

Sif straightened, sword in hand, and slung the strap over her shoulder. She gave her left hand to Verðandi, who clasped her wrist. Too late she remembered frostbite; but Verðandi's fingers did not burn her. A blue light bore into Sif's skin, then her wrist flashed yellow, as if draped in gold. Verðandi dropped Sif's hand.

"Your other hand," she snapped. "That one's already got a charm in it."

So Sif gave her right hand to Verðandi, who said, "Ah. That's what he took." Then the blue light drove into Sif's right wrist, and for a moment she saw four fingers and her thumb. But it was a phantom, and it faded. Sif's hand felt cold, chilled through.

"This charm will lead you to him," said Verðandi. She held Sif's hand still. "Follow it truly and you will find Loki. Once you have started, you cannot stop. Do not turn back. Do not go astray."

"I won't," said Sif.

Verðandi clutched Sif's hand a moment longer; then she released her. "Good," she said, and it was done.

"Then I'm afraid it's time for you to go," said Skuld.

"Remember what we have told you," said Urðr.

She watched Sif with Odin's eye, but it was her eye and her sister's eye and her other sister's eye. Odin had no claim to it.

Sif looked to the three sisters, Urðr and Verðandi and Skuld. She bowed to them.

"I will not forget," she said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank us," said Verðandi. "You still have to prove yourself."

"She will," said Skuld.

"I will try," said Sif.

Her hand, chilled, ached to go. Sif left Urðarbrunnr, where the fates spun, and followed the call as it led her from the well to the west, from the north into a growing fog where shadows waited and Loki, too.

( Continue.)