fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: 6a.

[mekosuchinae]

6.

i: memory: sif.

She slipped out of the crowded hall and into the night and came up short. A figure darkened the balcony. Loki turned to her. He'd a glass in one hand and the other hand supported his wrist. If he was at all surprised to see Sif out, he didn't show it. He inclined his head. His hair gleamed darkly in the glow of the party.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked. Absurd that her heart should pound so. It was only Loki in a black coat and trousers, high collar buttoned around his throat.

"Something about the starlight," he said, "and the fullness of the moon." His fingers worked along the glass. The bell was near full, mead untouched. "And I suppose I didn't want to watch my brother make a fool of himself again."

A roar of laughter rang out. Voices rose in shouting song, hands clapped, and a glass dropped, shattering upon the stones. She supposed Thor danced with Volstagg still upon the table. Loki's gaze flickered.

"He slew the wyrm Eingeirr," she said. "If he wishes to make a fool of himself, then it's his right to do so."

Loki's gaze flickered from her. He rolled the glass along his fingers. The mead flashed, gold as honey.

"And why are you out here, Lady Sif?"

She shrugged. Her shoulders were bare and the night air was cool upon them.

"I was over-hot."

"Then you are welcome to join me," he said, smiling.

He held his hand out, not to take hers but to encompass the balcony, the railing, the channels which drove on to the sea, and the stars above them. His fingers were terribly long. Her hand felt oddly empty at her side, so she folded her fingers to her palm.

She joined him at the railing. Vines laced the rail, wound between the small pillars that held it up. Loki turned with her, and as she folded her arms across the railing and looked down to the water, he watched her. Sif propped her chin upon her hand and looked back at him. His eyes were pale, but in such shadows they showed so very dark, like stones at the bottom of a deep well.

"I would have stayed even if you hadn't wanted me to," she told him, "though I thank you for your gracious allowance."

"Oh, I know," he said. "When have I ever stirred the brave Sif from her course?" He smiled sleekly at her. Perhaps he thought to mock, but Sif was not moved to think herself injured.

She'd two pints honey-gold mead and a half-glass of rich, unwatered wine in her. Her blood sang, warm and dreamy and sweet, and a soft and marvelous glow suffused all the world. The way the stars glimmered, reflected in the water, made her feel fierce and terrible. That was why when she looked at Loki in his black coat she wanted to see the collar opened, his long, pale throat exposed.

"Dance with me," she said.

The smile remained, but his face stilled.

"I'd rather spare the whole of Asgard the sight of me dancing on top of a table," he said lightly. He leaned to her, as though in confidence. "If you'd like, Thor would be more than happy to carry you through the pheasant."

"I'm not asking Thor to dance," Sif said. "I'm asking you."

Loki drew back. In a moment he would invent a fantastical excuse and leave her there on the balcony as he vanished into the hall, running as a coward would from a challenge. His heel scuffed the stones. His eyes lidded, then his lashes rose. He took breath. The lie flittered up his throat.

She caught his wrist. His sleeve creased. For the span of half a heartbeat, he looked startled. Sif took the glass from his fingers. The mead sloshed, rolling up the sides in shining waves. She set the glass down upon the railing. It clinked lightly.

"And I'm not going to dance with you on a table," she added, as he remained unconvinced.

An eyelash quivered. The soft corner of his mouth did not. He could go so still when he wanted, so watchful.

"How very tempting," he said, "but I'm afraid I must decline."

She turned her hand on his wrist so her fingers fit between his thumb and the side of his hand. Loki did not move. Sif pulled at his hand until, as though he had forgotten how to walk, he stepped forward once then twice, each step a sacrifice. He was taller than her but not by much. Less than a half foot. She needed only raise her eyes to catch him.

"You're not afraid, are you?" she asked him lightly.

His eyes, already dark, darkened. Loki smiled as she'd known he would, sly and tight, his eyes narrowing. It was a polite smile, the sort of slick, mocking look he put on for crowds. She wanted to peel it off his face, just slip her nail under the corner and pull it away so whatever it was he did underneath would be bared.

Sif tipped her head. "Well? Are you?"

"I was only wondering if you could keep up," he said.

His fingers ghosted over her hip, down the curve then up again to rest at her waist. Sif stepped into the box his lean shoulders made. Her chest brushed his. The mead made her dizzy, airy, wild with starlight and the heat running in her blood. The high collar cut off just below his jaw. If she stuck her finger beneath it, would she feel him swallow?

"You should worry more for yourself," she said.

Loki moved against her then. His coat parted at the waist, a shadow splitting, then his knee slipped between her thighs. Sif turned her hips in accordance with the steps and swung about him. His fingers slid across the small of her back, then he released her. Her skin tightened in the absence. Within the hall, the singing thundered, so loud as to drown out the music. Hidden in the leaves of the flowering vine which ornamented the balcony's rail, a family of insects buzzed their wings. Her heart beat and beat.

Setting her hand on his unbending shoulder Sif took three steps, in and out and in again, then turning on her heel she repeated each. Loki stood, motionless, a ghost, a shadow, a dark tree about which she wove. Each step she made, she made deliberately, as if it were an ambush she set instead of the next turn. On the sixth step she rolled on her toes; she turned her back to him. A moment. Then his hand slid around her back to lay flat across her belly. The step called only for a hand at the hip.

Got you, she thought.

He turned his head; his lips brushed her cheek and his exhalation tickled her skin. A shiver prickled her spine.

"Your concern touches me," he murmured.

She stepped over his foot and turned; now his arm bracketed her, a bar beneath her breasts. A length of hair fell across her cheek. She smiled and knew he'd see it for what it was: a baring of the teeth. He stepped back, and now he turned about her, three steps away and three returning. He looked at her, his green eyes refracting light from the hall. What did he think? If she could cut it out of him, she would, but she had only her hands.

He gave her his back. Sif dragged her fingers across his shoulders. Was that a tremor in the left blade? She felt it in her thumb. An insect, its wings jeweled, darted between them. The hum of its wings lingered. The music had faded some, gentling as the set wound down and the dancers brought gifts of beer to those performing. She finished the circuit and came round to his front again. Her hand slid down his arm.



Sif looked up through her eyelashes. If they were thicker, she supposed the effect would be more severe. Loki inclined his head to say: go on.

"We can stop now," she said, "if you still want to cut. The music's almost done."

"Oh, really," he said. He leaned into her and ducked his head, just so. Breath at her ear again, his lips a phantom on her skin. "I wouldn't have thought you would be the one to suggest we stop before we've seen it through."

His hand was strong beneath her own. She felt his other hand at her waist again, thumb at her hipbone, fingers dangerously low on her back. Sif dug her fingers into the back of his shoulder. A little muscle in his cheek fluttered. She felt it at her ear. She turned so her cheek pressed to his, her mouth at his own ear. His dark curls shivered as she breathed out.

"I was only thinking of you," she said.

"How very," he said with a little pause, "very considerate of you."

Then he moved again. His fingers fanned out across the small of her back, bracing. Embracing, she thought. It was the drink that made her burn under his hands. The drink was why she would have slipped her arms about his long throat, so hidden, and pressed against him, as much of him as that half foot difference would allow her. She kept her hands where they were, the one at his shoulder, the other clasped in his hand, his long hand with its long fingers. His eyes were black, draped in shadows. The light shone at his back.

Time, she thought. How much left before someone else came? A pair of lovers seeking a place to be secret with each other. As if he knew what she thought, and perhaps he did, clever Loki-she thought that with some vicious amusement-Loki guided her away from the opened doors and toward the edge, where the vines twined about the railing and the water murmured.

Sif allowed him to press her to the railing. The stone bit into her back. His shoulders rolled, dipping as he bent to her. She leaned into it. The air was light on her throat, her face, her exposed collarbone. She had come outside to cool, but she had only got hot again. Loki loomed over her. A spray of his hair, black and so carefully coiffed, had come loose against his brow. Her stomach knotted. A thought crystallized: in a moment she would bring her leg up to his waist. She felt it in the tension of her thighs. She wondered if he felt it, too.

His eyes flickered. He looked away. A curl fell against his ear.

Sif rose. She went on the attack: she pushed into him; she forced his arm back; she gave him no quarter and no choice but to retreat. Loki glided smoothly as she led him, his hand cool, his fingers loose and wandering over the back of her hand. Sif drove him on. The steps changed. The formal dance gave way to something closer to a spar, something hard and something brutal. He drew back before her but he did not break away; he did not surrender; he did not give. If he smiled, she would strike him.

The hand at her waist lifted. He touched her hair, which fell in a dark cloud past her bare shoulders. His thumb grazed the corner of her jaw. His lips parted, there at the center; at the corners they stuck together still. A flash of teeth, then of tongue.

"You've worn your hair down," he said.

"So have you," she said.

He'd slicked his hair back, but the curls at his throat remained, as they always remained. He had worn his hair like so for years, centuries, since they were children. Thor said it was so people would respect him, but Sif had thought, once, it was so he would look more like Odin, whose hair never curled.

What was it, then, that made her want to wind her fingers in his hair? His hand as it stroked down her back was so very heavy. She felt suddenly that her feet were filled with lead, her mouth with sand. She swallowed but the dryness clung to her tongue. The drink. That was it.

They had stopped dancing. She held his hand, his shoulder. His fingers on her back wafted up then slowly down. A shadow hid his eyes from her. His nose showed, a pale line, his mouth so thin and sweet beneath. Her fingers tightened about his arm. She wanted very badly to press her hand to his jaw and turn his head to her.

"Ha! Sif!"

She jumped and turned. Thor shone, bright as fire, as he filled the door. Loki melted away from her, his hands upon her and then gone. A certain coolness remained, an impression low on her back and on the backs of her fingers.

"So this is where you've run off to," said Thor, grinning. Then his eyes fell on Loki. He laughed in delight. "Brother! You as well! I'd wondered where you hid. Come! Come. You shouldn't sulk when we've such a fine party."

He came forward and took Sif by her shoulder and Loki by his. Loki was stiff a moment then he eased, and he said to Thor, "I was hoping to avoid your notice another hour."

"You stare too much at the stars," said Thor. "You were not bothering Sif, were you?"

Loki's eyes passed over her. She did not meet his gaze. Her head hurt her, too muddled with wine and mead and whatever it was his hands had done to her. The thought of his breath, hot on her jaw: she could not bear it.

"No," she said. "He wasn't bothering me at all."

ii: queen, mother.

A harried-looking courier directed Sif to the queen. The courier bore a length of carpet rolled up and tied in a tube on her shoulder. Sif walked carefully that it wouldn't smack her in the face.

"Packages all day," said the courier grimly. "Always packages. When I close my eyes I see packages. Think she's gone Loki. You know, all mad-like."

Sif stopped sharply. The courier went on another five steps before she noticed Sif hadn't followed. She turned halfway round. The tube of carpet dipped alarmingly at her back.

"You all right?" asked the courier.

"The queen is your queen," said Sif, "and you would do well to remember it."

"What? Oh," said the courier. She reddened. "I was only making a joke. You know, ha ha ha. Good one there."

Sif brushed past her. She bumped the carpet with her shoulder, and if it almost fell from the courier's shoulders, knocked near-loose, then good. Petty, she heard, I would have expected something like that from Thor, but that was only Sif. She forced her hands out flat against her thighs. "Gone Loki." What right had she to say such a thing?

The courier scurried after her. "Er. Lady. Lady. Lady, if you please!"

Sif rounded on her. She scowled down her nose at the courier, who went wide-eyed and shrank back.

"Lady Sif," she said, "if you have to call me lady."

The courier reddened again. She held her ground admirably, though, for all she'd made herself as small and mouse-like as possible.

"Er," she said. "Um. Ah."

Sif rolled her eyes. "What is it?"

The courier fumbled with the carpet. Thrusting it high on her shoulder, she swung her arm out and pointed at a pair of doors back a ways down the hall.

"Her majesty's this way," she said weakly. "Is what I meant. To say. Er. After you."

Sif stalked on. The courier ran, huffing, after her. Perhaps Sif would have offered to carry the carpet for her, but the courier had made that joke. He wasn't mad, she wanted to say. She wanted to shout it. He wasn't mad; he was only- She didn't know.

They passed through a small corridor, softly lit and hardly peopled. Sif's steps rang out like strokes of a hammer, and the courier's were bits of cloth rubbed across a squeaking wheel. The light on Sif's face was gold like the sun but without heat. She thought of all the things she didn't know and all the things she didn't understand, and underneath all of it was: something.

The courier said, "Er."

She'd caught up to Sif. Her head came to Sif's shoulder. The carpet, rolled, rose higher. She was very mouse-like.

"Uh," said the courier.

"If you've something to say," Sif said, leading.

"Lady Sif!" The courier peered up at her. The carpet, jostled, knocked the side of her head. At least the courier had the grace to walk with the carpet away from Sif. "Um. I just wanted to know. Are you the Lady Sif?"

"I know no others," she conceded.

"Oh-h," said the courier. "Oh, oh. Oh."

"Yes," said Sif, "I quite agree."

"Who slew the eight wraiths of the sunburnt lands!"

Sif eyed her. The courier nearly glowed. Oh, indeed. She was an admirer. Sif turned from the courier. The corridor went on another four lengths. The courier showed no signs of stopping. Discreetly, Sif pulled her coat straight.

"Oh, please," she drawled. "There were only six. Hardly the greatest feat of song and legend."

"And!" said the courier. "Who took on the fearsome wizard Anviðr and trounced him!"

"Thoroughly," said Sif.

The courier had got into it now.

"Who slew the wild boars of Night Keep, each of them bigger than two men put together."

"Bigger than that," said Sif.

"Whose bravery in combat is unmatched, and who has no equal with the sword!"

"True," Sif admitted.

"Who cut the head of the wyrm Eingeirr from its shoulders!"

"Oh," said Sif. "That one was Thor."

"It should've been you," said the courier earnestly. Then she hefted the carpet high again and pointed. "This way, my lady. Lady Sif. I mean."

Sif held the door open for her. The courier flushed and smiled hugely and bending at her knees, she nearly toppled. Sif lunged for the carpet and caught it.

"Oh-" The courier staggered upright. "Please, it's mine to carry-"

"I only straightened it," said Sif.

She followed the courier up this next corridor. She knew it, Sif thought. The reliefs on the walls were familiar, if distantly so, then she remembered: Loki running before her, his black curls bobbing as he turned and shouted, "You'll never catch me." They had been children, young children. She hadn't caught him. Her chest hurt suddenly.

Sif cleared her throat. To the courier she said, "Not that I'm not flattered, but-"

"How do I know so much?" the courier finished for her. She winced. "Sorry. Bad habit. Didn't mean to. Um. I'm from the mountains. Whole family's from the mountains, but my uncle. He served in the guard till he lost his leg. He told stories."

"Only the good ones, I hope," said Sif.

"Oh, the best," said the courier. She stared steadfastly ahead. Her ears were all but purple. "I came down to the palace because, um. I wanted. You know, to be a warrior. Like you. Here we are," she said quickly.

Sif paused outside the doors. The courier wouldn't look her in the face.

"Why didn't you?" asked Sif.

The courier shrugged, but it was a tight shrug, a shamed shrug. The sort of shrug Sif had given her father when she was young and he'd asked her why she insisted on coming home covered in dirt and bruises.

"I'm small," said the courier. "Not very strong. I tell too many jokes."

Sif considered her. She was small, but then so was Sif beside Thor the mighty, Thor the massive, Thor the half a mountain.

"How many of those have you carried today?" Sif asked. She thumped the carpet. A cloud of dust puffed out from the end.

"Lots," gasped the courier. "At least twelve."

"All from downstairs," Sif guessed.

The courier nodded.

"You don't seem weak to me," said Sif decisively. "Physical strength isn't everything. I've won more battles by being smarter than someone bigger than me. If you want to do it, do it. Don't hesitate."

The courier bit her lip. She glanced up at Sif and said, "It's hard, though."

"It's always hard," said Sif. She thought of her father, her mother. "But if it's what you want, what you really want. It's worth it."

She swallowed the "usually" at the courier's smile, which lit like a lamp at the heart of a darkened square.

"Thank you," said the courier. She bent at her knees again. The carpet began to slip. "Thank you. Thank you, my lady."

"Just Sif," said Sif. She caught the carpet and hoisted it. "I'll take this in for you."

"Oh," said the courier, "no, I couldn't possibly. I can't. Please. My lady-"

"Yes," said Sif as this threatened to continue, "you can. I've already done it."

"Thank you," said the courier again, helpless, "oh, thank you. Thank you."

As she opened the door, Sif paused. She looked to the courier, bright-eyed, smiling, face red as anything.

"What's your name?" Sif asked on a whim.

"Oh," said the courier. "Grid. For 'peace.'" She made a face.

"Farewell," said Sif.

Grid bowed low to her, and Sif opened the door.

The queen bent over a long table strewn with lengths of cloth in varying colors and patterns. She'd a bit of chalk poised between the first finger and the middle finger of her right hand and another bit of chalk in her mouth. A third piece hung from a string tied about her neck.

"Delivery," Sif called.

At this, Frigg looked up. Her eyes crinkled. She took the chalk from her mouth.

"Sif." She said her name as if it were a pleasure just to know it. "What a lovely surprise. You can put the carpet down wherever you like." She paused. Apologetically, the queen said, "So long as it's over there."

Sif laughed and set the roll of carpet down beside the rest of the rolls, in the corner by the door. The queen had drawn open the drapes, that the sun might light the room rather than the torches now dimmed along the walls. Shaking her hair back, Sif straightened and looked about. The room was dusty and but for what the queen had brought into it, great rolls of cloth and carpets and tubes of paper, it was bare. No one had used this room in years.

"What is all this?" Sif asked.

The queen drew a jagged line down a length of cloth then abandoned it. She pulled another roll of cloth to her. This one was blue, shot through with lines of silver.

"I needed something to keep busy," she said. "A new project. And there's so many rooms we never use. They stay empty for years and years, while we complain of how little room we have."

Frigg sketched white lines on the blue cloth, shaping the cloth with the chalk. Once she'd settled on a form, and if she were pleased with the cloth she'd chosen, she would cut it free of the cloth and give it life. Sif watched her as she worked, her hands steady. The thing she'd come to ask weighed in her chest. Now that she'd come, she knew it to be cruel; then she thought of Loki.

"And why have you come?" Frigg asked at last. She looked shrewdly at Sif over the roll. "You were never one for what some would call the feminine arts."

"You're very insightful," said Sif. She smiled. "I haven't your skill at it."

"Oh, but I've many years of practice." Frigg tapped the chalk against the chalk. The shape had escaped her. Absently she said, "I think, even if you'd as many years of practice, you would still chafe to work at it. We each of us have our own talents and our own desires." Then she smiled at Sif. "Whatever the men may say."

"They say a great deal," Sif said. "Some of them, anyway, and little of it worthy of consideration."

"They said the same things when I was young," said Frigg. "But there are fewer of them now."

She bent again to the cloth. The queen's fingers were white with chalkdust. She'd a smear at her chin as well. The sunlight sparkled in her hair; it threw off flashes of light like a pan filled with nuggets of gold. In the same light Loki's hair would have gleamed sleekly, black as a well-groomed raven's wing. Frigg had called him her raven when they were young, before Loki had grown old enough to think himself above such endearments. That was before Sif had called him goat.

"I came with a question for you," said Sif.

"Then I have an answer for you," said the queen. She drew another line down the cloth.

"When the Allfather returned from Jötunheimr," said Sif, "at the end of the last war. He brought home a child. A baby. Is this true?"

The queen stilled. Her fingers trembled. She set the chalk down. She drew breath then let it out, and she looked up to Sif. Sif had never seen the queen look so, for Sif had never seen the queen struck. Her mouth worked.

"How could you know?" she asked.

"Loki told me," said Sif. The words were overly loud in her ears. It was true, then. He was a jötunn. And now you know the why of it all, she thought. The thought cut.

The queen stared at Sif, searching. "How? When did you speak with him, that he would have told you?"

"In a dream," said Sif. Spoken, it was absurd. The queen's brow knitted. "I know how it sounds, but it is him. He lives, somewhere. I don't think even he knows where."

"Alive," said the queen. She was still, so very still. As a child, Sif had thought her so terribly beautiful, so regal and so elegant. Even as she said, "Loki lives," her grief a question, she was a pillar of grace.

Sif came round to her. She gave her hand to Frigg, and Frigg took it and held it tightly, so tightly the bones in Sif's fingers ground. Frigg looked wildly at her.

"Are you certain?" she asked urgently. "Are you certain my son lives?"

"He must," Sif told her. "When I see him, in-" Her tongue stuck.

"In your dreams," said the queen. "Oh, Sif. Oh, dear Sif, I am so sorry." She reached for Sif and cupped her cheek in her long, slender hand. "I knew, and I said nothing. I didn't want to arrange your lives."

Sif could not think of it. She would not think of it. She forced it away, viciously.

"When I see him," she said again, "when I speak with him, he answers as Loki would answer. He talks to me. He talks with me. He's as infuriating as he's ever been, and he showed himself to me. As he truly is."

The queen closed her eyes. The shadow of the jötunn slept between them.

"Why did you not tell him?" Sif asked.

"He was my son," Frigg whispered. She opened her eyes again, and the sadness there made Sif feel the monster, the brute. The queen lowered her eyes. "I wanted to tell him, when he was a child. I saw how he looked at Odin and at his brother. He knew he was different."

Loki of the black hair. Loki, thin and pale, who melted in the summer. "There's one in every family," Sif's father had said once. He had meant it for Sif.

"But you didn't," said Sif. She clutched the queen's hand. She leaned into her. "Why did you keep it from him?" From us, she wanted to say, but it had never been her truth to know.

"The Allfather said we should not," said Frigg, remote. Then her mouth creased. "And I was afraid to lose him. He was my son."

"He is still your son," said Sif. "Wherever he is now, he is still Frigg's son."

Frigg turned to her. Even now, like so, the queen was beautiful, like a ray of sunlight bound in flesh, like a beloved aunt, like a shadow of her own mother. It was the Allfather's wisdom which Asgard followed, but even as a child Sif had thought Frigg wiser. She had wanted so badly to be like the queen, to be graceful and kind and slyly clever. But she was only Sif, and she thought, perhaps, that was enough.

"How will we ever find him?" asked the queen. "And if he is found, will he return to us?"

"I will find him," said Sif.

The queen held her hand tighter still.

"But will he return?" she asked.

Sif lowered her eyes.

"I cannot say," she said.

iii: sif dreaming.

Sif came to a tree, a great tree, a vast tree: ash, its branches spread wide, its fingers heavy with leaves and the simple winged fruit which bore its seed. She had a purpose, and she knew it, and she carried it with her as she would a blade. The roots rose like hills about her, and in their shadow she came to stand at the base of the trunk. Sif tipped her head back.

The branches turned up in the shape of a bowl, to catch the moon shining directly above. The moon shone so hugely it was as if it would fit into the tree after all. No simple way to ascend the trunk presented itself. Footholds, here and there. Knots like boulders protruding from the bark. She could use those to scale the side. If she'd a weapon she would have slung it across her back, but she'd nothing but her conviction and her hands.

Sif climbed. The bark was rough on her hands. The trunk twisted strangely, bulging here and receding there. It was an old tree, and it had grown into and out of itself in stages. Laden with foliage, green leaves glimmering silver, heavy with its age, nevertheless it remained unbowed. The trunk stretched on and on before her. Sif dug her toes into the underside of a knot and pushed up over the rest of it.

As she neared the top, where the branches grew in earnest and joined together, a rustling ran through the leaves. No wind played at her hair. The branches had tightened about each other. Sif snorted. She hitched her leg over a jutting canker.

"It won't do you any good," she called.

She waited. No one called back to her. Hiding, she thought. That was like him. She stuck her hands between two branches and, pointing her fingers sideways, she leveraged them apart. It was slow going at first; the branches refused to part. The leaves shuddered again. The bark seemed to shiver, too, turning under her feet. Sif planted her feet and pulled at the branches. Her back tautened. The muscles through her shoulders hardened. She wasn't Thor, the mountain made man, but she was Sif, and she would not be turned from her course by a silly tree that grew up in the wrong way.

"This is my dream," she said to it. "One way or another, I will break your branches off."

The tree said nothing. Which was natural, of course; it was a tree.

"Loki," she shouted. "Call off your tree. If you don't, I'll pull its limbs off one by one." She thought a moment then added, "And when I do find you, you'll be sorry you didn't listen to me."

Loki said nothing either, which was also natural. Always with his games. She grit her teeth, drove her arms in up to her elbows, hooked her arms about the two branches, and pushed. Muscles strained. Her head began to ache.

Then the wood creaked. Leaves showered down upon her as if spooked. Samara fruits winged past her like startled birds. The tree groaned, and at last the branches parted.

Sif rested her head in the exposed juncture between the branches, only for a moment that she might breathe. Her back twinged horrifically. A rib on her left side throbbed; she'd pulled an accompanying muscle. Tightening her arms about the branches, she swung up onto the right. She had thought perhaps she would have to force her way through another series of tightly packed branches, layers and layers put in place to shield Loki, but there was nothing else.

At the bottom of the bell, in a hollow scooped out of the trunk, Loki sat in a throne carved out of black ice. He watched her as she stood from the branch. His face was pale, silver beneath the moon. His eyes shone green. At his ears, his hair curled thickly.

Sif slung her legs over and dropped like a stone, like a bird with its wings folded, like a cat. She landed on her toes in a crouch. Still, Loki watched. His fingers were white, the bones near his skin, pressed up as he held on to the arms of the throne. A look, a hunted look, a longing look, consumed his face, drew it tight.

She stood again. He lifted his head. Ten steps separated them, fewer than she'd expected. Distances worked strangely here. At her back, the branches made low mutterings and closed again. They sealed up, locking Sif and Loki in this globe, but light showered down upon them. A half moon, imprisoned in the spot where the branches knotted overhead.

"Not much of a challenge," she said. "I expected better of you."

"It isn't my design," he said. "I'm as much a pawn in this as you."

She took one step and then another. Her feet were bare. At least this time she was mostly dressed. In her belly, a hot thing squirmed.

"That's very unlike you," she said, "to let someone else tell you what to do."

He grimaced, perhaps, the ghost of a pout pulling at his lip. Ever the sore loser, Loki.

"I've found I have very little say," he said.

The bark of the trunk had scraped and clawed at her feet. Here in the hollow, it was as down or water, a malleable softness that gave under her toes and propelled her on. Three steps vanished.

"And yet you still go on nattering," said Sif. She narrowed her eyes. "You never did know when to stop talking."

Loki made a little noise in his mouth, tongue on his teeth.

"At least one of us has a basic grasp of civilized conversation. It isn't your fault," he said with honeyed kindness. "Too much time with Thor and anyone would forget how to string four words together."

"Don't," said Sif.

He blinked at her, one delicate decline and then rise of his lashes. He'd entirely too many of them. When he'd leaned into her, his hand so very cold on her cheek, she had counted nine in the one corner. It was more than she'd ever allowed herself to count. He was very blank now, smooth as silk. His shoulder twitched. He leaned forward very slightly.

"Touched a nerve, did I?"

"You haven't seen how he mourns you," she said.

Loki sank back. Disinterested, he said, "He mourns a lie." That was the lie.

"He mourns his brother," said Sif.

"I am no brother of Thor's," said Loki, but he faltered. It stumbled in his mouth.

Two steps more. He shrank back as she neared. The throne had been cut in a sharp design, all jagged edges rising asymmetrically angled to the left. Now it enveloped him; it cast shadows as arms to embrace him, to hide him from Sif.

"Lie if you wish," said Sif, "but I know the truth of it. And the truth of it is that you love Thor."

Loki stared unblinkingly at her, and in the shadows he was no longer pale, white under the moon, but blue and cold and-and Loki, she thought.

"Why have you come?" he asked. "Why will you not allow me this one measure of solace?"

"Why do you call me?" she countered. "Why do you tease me and tell me to find you and then shout at me for chasing?"

At another time or in another place, he would have looked furtively about; he would have feigned innocence. Now he leaned forward out of the shadows of his iced throne and stared at her with his terrible red eyes and said, "Why won't you leave me." But his eyes weren't terrible. It wasn't a terrible thing for him to look at her like so, his skin a velvet blue, his eyes bloodshot all through and his black hair a mess.

"Because you're as helpless as Thor," she said.

"Shut up about Thor," he said. "I want you to tell me why it is you've come here."

"Because someone has to keep you from doing something stupid," she said. That wasn't right, but she couldn't stop. "Because if I don't, you'll regret it."

"I don't need a nursemaid," Loki said cuttingly. "Tell me why you're here."

"I don't want to be your nursemaid," Sif said as sharply. "If you need someone to wipe your face, you have two hands."

His eyes lidded dangerously. "You're avoiding the question."

Sif took another step, and now she stood between his splayed knees. She leaned into him and set her hands to either side of his head on the back of the throne. Loki turned his face up to her.

"So are you," she said.

He breathed heavily. If Thor raged, Loki had flashpoints. She saw it coming in his eyes, the spark lighting in the red. Don't say something you'll regret, she thought. She didn't know if she meant it for Loki or for herself. That hot calmness had come over her. She welcomed it, almost.

Low, Sif said, "So tell me. Why is it you call for me then push me away? Tell me the truth."

Her breath stirred his hair. He looked at her as if across a great distance.

"You were always meant for Thor," said Loki.

"People aren't meant for other people," Sif snarled. "I choose what I want. I choose who I want."

Sneering, he said, "If only we could all be so lucky as you," but his fangs fell short.

In her calmness, her careful, burning serenity, Sif said, "Choose." She said, "Now," for she was tired of it. She was tired of games. She was tired of how Loki stared at her and then looked away. She was tired of dreams and memories and wanting.

His fingers twitched on the left arm. He looked up to her and he was hunted, he was hungry, he was guarded Loki who ran from her, who said stupid things and made her want to shake him and kiss him and make him be still.

What he chose to say was, "I love you."

He said it as if he remarked on the weather. The words dropped like stones into water.

"Not since the first time I laid eyes on you," he said, "but after that. I think when you first threw me into a bush. That was when."

Like a tattoo cut into her heart. All that time. She remembered looking up the steps at the two princes, Thor bright as sunlight, Loki pale as moonlight, and thinking how thick the second prince's curls, how delicate his face.

"Why," she said, and it was small, fragile. She hated how it sounded, so wondering, so weak. More strongly she went on: "Why did you never tell me?"

His mouth twisted, mocking. He mocked himself. He smiled, and Thor was a shadow between them.

"Why do you think?"

"You were afraid," she said. "You were a coward."

The corner of his mouth flattened. The shields came up again; his eyes darkened. He leaned away from her. His head tipped back. If he mocked, he mocked Sif. And who's the coward? his leer wondered. Sif had never been one to turn her back to a challenge.

"So tell me," he said, "if we're being so honest with one another. While we're baring our souls. Why are you here? Come to drag me home to face justice?"

What was it she wanted? She'd known for a very long time, though she'd refused to think of it. In the queer moonlight Loki showed blue, dark and cool as a shadow, the jötunn sitting before her and waiting for her to strike, to push him away.

"No," she said.

His face was turned up to her, and he was Loki, only Loki. Always Loki. He waited. She felt his breath on the underside of her chin, like the first frost. He was Loki. The hot thing inside her split apart.

"No," she said again. "I've come for you."

His lips parted. In the moment before she knotted her hands in his collar, that ridiculous high collar which closed him off from her and made her fingers itch down to the bone, his eyelashes flickered; he half-rose from the throne. His hands lifted.

Sif grabbed his collar, shoved him down again, and kissed him crushingly on his blaspheming mouth. Her lips burned; they froze against his skin. He exhaled. His breath bit at her lips. Then he wound his fingers in her hair and he turned his head to the side and back, and his mouth opened beneath her mouth, and what she asked of him he gave.

They parted. Sif licked her lower lip and tasted blood.

"Little cold," she breathed.

"Well, that won't do," said Loki.

He kissed her, and his lips were warm, his mouth hot. Her skin tingled, that rush which came from a healing spell burning through her. She chased after his tongue. His fingers flexed and flexed in her hair, and he slid his left hand down to set it at the small of her back.

"I swear," she said, "I'm going to break you in half for being so stupid."

"I deserve it," he said immediately. "I should never have been such a prat. Kiss me again, please."

She did so, but only because she'd figured out how to pop the hooks that held his collar closed about his throat. How long had she wanted to pull it apart like that? Longer than she ever would have admitted to herself. In the idle, shamed fantasies she had entertained and denied as a girl, he had been pale; he had fallen apart in her arms. Now he rose against her; he pulled at her hair and bit at her invading tongue; he was dark and cool and Loki, Loki, Loki. Always Loki. The years spilled out, wasted and innumerable. She could have choked him for them. She supposed to be fair she would have to choke herself, too.

"I want to kiss your throat," Loki whispered between kisses, long kisses, cold kisses for Sif and hot for Loki. His breath came up against her teeth. "I want to lick all your fingers and your toes. I want to bite your ears and your nose and your breasts and your tongue. The insides of your knees."

Her skin ran over with goosebumps, then tightened. A muscle in the back of her right knee trembled. She wanted to pick him up out of the throne and throw him to the ground and- But his mouth was so cool, his teeth so many, his hand sliding low across her arse so long and so tight about the curve. She licked at the ridged roof of his mouth and felt him shiver against her.

Wildly, he moaned, "I want to slip under your armor."

She laughed into his mouth. "Not while I'm in it."

His nails scraped over her scalp. He fisted his hand in her hair and dragged at it.

"Then why bother?"

Sif left off his mouth and bent to his throat. Loki made a little heartbroken noise, a breath strangled in his throat and swallowed. He arched. His fingers bit into the back of her thigh. He spoke madly into her hair, into the air, the moonlight: "I love you, I adore you," and "Your hair," and "Sif-"

The way he said her name, as if it were sacred. He so rarely called her "Sif." He had always spoken to her directly. Always.

Sif drew back. Loki followed, his fingers sliding from her hair to cradle her jaw. Her hair shone, caught in his palm. The moon glimmered above them. The tree was still, the throne cold. His lips were flecked as if with ash. In the distance, she smelled smoke.

"Loki," she said.

She touched his cheek, that high ridge of bone, the corner of his eye. His skin was cold but it did not burn her. He stared up at her. No one had ever stared at her like that. Her heart twisted. Clothed, he was bared. Dressed, he was naked. How long until he hid once more?

"Loki," she said again. She buried her fingers in his curls. He leaned into her palm, her wrist. "Please. Tell me where to find you."

He stilled. She felt his breath on her wrist. Then he straightened. Her hand fell away. He began to close.

She snatched his collar up and drew him to her. "No," she snapped, "you aren't running."

"I'm not going back," he said. "I won't. Not to Asgard. Not to Odin."

"Fine," she said. "Then don't. I won't force you where you won't go. But you must tell me where you are."

His eyes shadowed. His mouth was swollen, bruised and burnt with her kisses. She stroked his throat where she'd kissed his pulse, which hammered away beneath the skin no matter how he sought distance.

"You must believe me," she said. The words caught, too thick to slip through her throat. "Loki. You have to trust me. Tell me. Where? How do I find you?"

He closed his eyes. He was in her hands, she held him, she'd caught him, and yet still he slipped from her. No. She would not let him go. Sif tightened her hands in his coat. She drew a deep breath.

Then: Loki opened his eyes. What did he see? In his red eyes she saw only her reflection, warped. His expression was remote, his eyes unfocused. Then he looked at her.

"Yggdrasill," he said. Only that.

Loki covered the hand on his throat, and his fingers shone brightly with a green light. In her head Sif saw: a tree, a tree, a tree greater than any she'd ever known, and in its trunk, a door which opened. He pressed his lips to her jaw.

"I'm allowing you one chance," he murmured. "Don't waste it."

She said half a "What," meaning it for a question. Then he dropped his hand, and Sif woke alone and sweating in her room. She started upright and looked, wildly, about, but of course it was her room in the palace and Loki was not there; no one was there. She'd closed the window. The curtains hung limply to either side. Her nightshirt stuck to her skin.

Sif threw the covers back and grabbed at her shirt, then she paused and looked to the mirror. He'd never been there, she thought; that, at least, had been on her. And anyway, hadn't she just ravaged him in his absurd dream throne? His collar popped open, his long throat exposed. Much lower and she would have found the knot in his clavicle. Sif sweltered. She stripped out of her shirt.

Brushing her hair back from her face, she lowered her right hand. Experimentally, she curled her fingers. It was only a hand. What was that he'd done there at the end? Doors opening, she thought, a dark passage through the heart of a tree. Yggdrasill.

She looked to her bedroom door. Then she stood, naked but for her underthings, and held her hand as a fist and crossed to it. She set the fingers of her right hand on the handle. An itch snarled at her palm. She closed her fingers on the handle and thought:

"Don't waste it," Loki breathed across her skin.

Sif let go of the handle. She swapped her right hand for her left and turned the handle viciously. The locking spells shivered, then the door opened onto the empty palatial corridor. She hoped one of the sentinels wasn't out there. Presumably they'd seen worse than Sif, nearly nude. She dragged the door shut. The wards wriggled into place again.

If she was going to go charging into the wilds of Yggdrasill, and she was though the thought was so huge she almost couldn't bear to think of it, for Yggdrasill- She would need more than the clothes on her back drag him out of the earth. Sif raked a hand through her hair. Her palm itched no more, but the rest of her made up for it.

She turned on her room. In the silence, another thought dropped. If she went, when would she ever return?

"I can't leave him," she said.

( Continue.)