fic | thor (2011) | yggdrasill dreaming: 4.

[mekosuchinae]

4.

i: sif dreaming.

Sif ran. Out the gardens, she ran. Into the palace, she ran. She bore no sword. She bore no lance. She bore no shield. What weapon she carried she carried in her flesh; what shield she carried she carried in her bones.

Time was short. It closed as a trap about her neck. Faster, faster now. The way spilled out before her: endless, endless, endless. Trees, tall and twisting and winter-bare, crowded the corridors. Their roots knotted; they rose in thick tangles to catch her feet. Sif stumbled and caught herself. Bark scraped the skin from her palm. She pressed on.

The trees thickened. Their branches held up the ceiling, then their branches were the ceiling. The walls fell away. Somewhere the moon shone; its light fell silver before her feet. It led her on, a cold, pale beacon that showed whitely in the soil.

The forest twisted about her. Sif threw her hands up and slipped beneath a branch which had loomed out of the dark to catch her in the throat. The wood crumbled sweetly against her fingers. The sickly scent of rot fell upon her. The trees died, their unladen branches skeletal and brittle and smooth as bone. Beneath the stench of rot and death, she caught a distant, choking smell, like smoke from a fire.

What burned? What smoked? The trees shuddered around her. Dying, they feared death. The air was cold and it bit at her nose; it made the smell of nearing smoke a dry, sharp thing.

Loki, she thought. Loki.

He was here. She knew he was here. Loki ran on before her. She saw his coat flickering at the corner of her eye. She heard a soft echo of his heel as it broke through the soil. Loki was quiet and Loki was quick, and Loki was ever crafty, but Sif was the hunter.

Strange beasts looked out at her from hollows, from branches, from the roots of the trees. Their eyes shone. A great bird passed beneath the moon, and its wings blocked the stars. A shadow washed over Sif. The way darkened. The moon had gone. She stumbled again and set her hand out. She could not slow. She felt time slipping away from her. She felt Loki slipping away.

Sif ran blindly.

Out of the branches a beast with a soft mouth spoke: "Why do you chase him?"

"I have to know why," she said.

Out of the roots a beast with a slithering tongue spoke: "So what if he tells you?"

"Then I will know why he did it," she said. Her breath came shortly.

Out of the hollows a beast with a chattering tooth spoke: "When you know, what will you do?"

"I will take him to Asgard," she said. "I will take him home, that he may answer to everyone he betrayed."

Out of the moon's shadow a beast with a hard jaw spoke: "Who did he betray?"

Her heart stormed. Her ribs pinched. She could not slow. She could not slow. Her breath burned in her mouth.

"All of us," she said. "All of us who loved him."

The bird wheeled away. The moon fell brighter still upon her, and Sif turned her eyes from the sudden light. Her eyes closed. Out of that private darkness Loki spoke:

"And who was it who loved Loki?"

Sif turned sharply. Spots like burn marks on paper filled her vision. She could not see for the light. The trees rose, silver as the moon. In their shadows, did he watch her? Did he hide?

"I did," she said. "I loved him. He was my friend, and I loved him."

"Why?" he asked. "Why did you love him? How did you love him?"

"He was my friend," she said again. The words were sour in her mouth. She turned on her heel and looked to the sky, to the branches woven over her head.

"You knew nothing of him," said Loki, "but you call him friend."

His breath was cold at her shoulder. Sif rounded on him. He was not there. Her chest hurt for the turning. She balled her hands in fists then smoothed her fingers out. She cast her arms wide and shouted,

"I knew that he was cleverer than anyone else I had ever known. I knew that he was a fool, too. I knew that he was as brave as Thor even if no one else saw it. I knew that I wanted to wring his neck more often than not."

His voice was ugly, honed to cut; he wielded it as a blade.

"You knew nothing."

The moon darkened. The smoke neared. It stung her eyes, her nose, her throat. She could not think but for how she wanted to grab him by his shoulders and throw him against the ground and hold him there, that he would not wriggle out of her hands, that he would not slip from her again as he always slipped from her.

"Why do you hide?" she asked of him. "You were always a trickster and a liar and a thief, but you were never a coward."

"And why should I show myself?" he countered. "Why should I return with you to Asgard? O, mighty Asgard. O, holy Asgard."

She shook her head slowly at first then quicker. Such hate filled his throat, such cruel loathing. She could not understand it.

"Asgard is your home," she said.

"Asgard is not my home," Loki said sharply. "I have no home. I want no home. My father saw to that."

"Your father loves you!"

Loki laughed. "Does he now? And which father would that be?"

The smoke drew nearer still. Fire crackled, a low murmur. The trees shivered. Their branches quivered, passing back and forth like hands stretched out for aid. Rot and burning wood weighted the air.

"There isn't any time for your riddles," she said. She held her hand out to the shadows. "Loki. We must go now. Give me your hand, and we will go together. You and I. As we did once."

"We were children once," he said, "but that was long ago. If we were friends then, then we are no longer."

"Fine!" she snapped. Anger made her short. "Then we aren't friends. Who would want you for a friend? But you must give your hand to me!"

"I would so hate to burn that lovely hand," he said. His voice faded. He withdrew. "I'm afraid you're out of time."

She darted for the shadows, but the shadows were gone, the darkness burnt from the trees by the encroaching flames. Sif turned to them, and the fire, towering to consume the world, was hot upon her face. Metal stirred in the deeps. Out of the flames, the sentinel stepped, and it shone silver like the moon and red like the sun.

Sif bore no sword; she bore no lance; she bore no shield. She set her feet, one behind the other, and raised her hands against the sentinel. Its face parted. Fire guttered deep in its throat. Sif did not run.

ii: shadows, mirrors.

Cut off from the rest of the universe, nevertheless Asgard carried on. Her mountains were great, and her belly was greater; the tunnels and catacombs held monsters still. A nest of wyrms, undiscovered, hatched below the fourth aqueduct.

Out from the darkness, a fourth wyrm came slithering on the ceiling for Sif. The tunnels were small and cramped, and she'd barely room enough to throw herself to the side and bring her lance up. The tip stabbed into the rock; the blow ran down her arms. Sif tightened her hands about the hilt and dragged it free again. Rock showered upon her.

The wyrm dropped beside her. It was small, still just a hatchling, and its eyes rolled sightlessly behind the white film that covered them and would cover them till it had matured enough to leave the area directly attached to the nest. The tip of its tongue flashed. Its jaw opened, distending. Perhaps it could not see, but it had teeth enough to shear her arm at the elbow.

Sif skipped back. She'd dropped her torch, a light enchanted to fill a glass ball. Now she flipped it up on her foot and kicked it into the wyrm's mouth. The beast snapped its teeth into it. Light exploded like a sun bursting; in the moment before it winked out she saw blood spurt in dark violet waves from the wyrm's mouth. The glass had cut deep. The creature began to scream. Sif turned her lance about and drove it deep into its throat.

The scream turned wet; the wyrm gurgled. Blood sprayed against her hands, her wrists, her arms bare above her bracers. Where it landed, her skin itched and began to boil. Sif twisted the lance and drove it deeper still. Claws scrabbled over stone. The creature bucked, forcing itself onto the lance as it struggled. Her arms burned; her hands as well. The skin on her knuckles and the backs of her fingers flaked.

A claw hooked in her boot and Sif leaned back to kick the wyrm's chest. So young, its scales were pliable, its bones soft. Ribs snapped beneath her foot. She pushed her lance in again and the wyrm spasmed once, twice, and was still. Sif counted out ten seconds. Each second she ground the lance another inch into the creature's gullet. Wyrms were tricksome and tough. The last she'd forgotten to ensure one such beast was dead, it had clawed a chunk out of her back before she'd cut its head from its neck.

It kicked again at the third thrust, then no more. Sif leaned against her lance. Sweat beaded her throat, her brow, the small of her back. The burning on her arms persisted. Setting her foot on the corpse's head, she jerked her lance free. Blood spattered her boots. The stink of burned leather greeted her. Sif stepped from the wyrm and crouched with her back to the wall. Glass crunched underfoot. She shouldn't have kicked the light into its mouth.

If Loki were here, she thought.

Sif covered her face.

"Shit," she said. Her hands stank of wyrm blood and burned flesh. She listened for the signs of another wyrm. Green lights turned behind her eyes. A spot on her cheek itched where her thumb touched it. She dropped her hands. Her eyes ached, too dry.

A light showed behind a bend in the tunnel, beyond the wyrm. Sif felt for her lance. Her hand brushed over the rounded blade; the blood, still hot, ever hot, snapped at her fingertips. She grabbed the hilt.

Hogun emerged. He held his torch high. A burn showed along his jaw. His hair, usually worn so tight against his scalp, had come loose against his brow. He slung his mace to his shoulder, and circling the dead wyrm, he joined her.

"Where is your light?"

She shrugged. "I had to give the wyrm something to eat, the way it was carrying on."

Hogun frowned. His brow pinched. As she stood, he tipped his head to the other end of the tunnel.

"And if another had come?"

"Is there another?"

"I counted nine shells and," he said, glancing to her kill, "nine dead."

"Then why the concern?" she teased. It came out as flatly as it had sounded in her head. She turned and scraped her blade clean on her heel.

Hogun was quiet for a time. Then he made a little noise in his throat, not clearing, but calling. She looked to him, for he was her friend and she owed him that much, though she did not particularly want to do so. He held the light evenly between them; it did not waver. Hogun did not waver.

"It is unlike you to be so careless," he said to her there beneath Asgard, the wyrm, dead, cooling at their feet and the lamp in his palm shining yellow. His eyes flickered: he looked to the wyrm, the glass, the burns on her arms. "This is not the first."

She touched her right eye, first finger to one corner, middle finger to the other. Hogun waited.

"I haven't been sleeping well," she said at last. She lowered her hand. "Bad dreams." She thought to add-but no. She would not bare herself thusly, even to Hogun.

"Do you need speak with the healers?" he asked. "For a sleeping draught?"

She shook her head so her hair shook with her. "No. I will be fine." She winched her mouth to one side. "I'm sorry if I've proved unreliable of late."

"You need not apologize," said Hogun. "You have not been so." He turned from her. "We must gather the heads to show Odin."

Sif ran her thumb across her brow. She twisted her lance about in her hands so the rounded side retracted and an edge jutted. She stepped around Hogun and said, "Please. Allow me."

He turned to permit her passage. Collecting the heads was a gruesome task which necessitated care, but as the wyrms were dead, it was not such a challenge. They came out from the catacombs into late afternoon, the sky edging from red to purple; blue would follow in a few hours. The first faint stars glimmered above the palace.

She went to her mother's house that evening. Her father's house, too; but Sif and her father did not speak to each other, and she did not think of it as his house. She knocked once at the door, then she pushed it open.

Her mother looked up from her embroidery. Her face lit and she said, "Sif," as if they had not seen one another in ages; and they had not. She drew the thread taut then tucked the needle behind the cloth and rose to embrace her.

Sif hid her face in her mother's hair. Her mother's brow drew even with Sif's jaw, her nose with Sif's throat. When she laughed, bemused, it rushed hotly over Sif's collar.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," said Sif. She released her mother. "I missed you. That's all."

"I've missed you as well," said Astra kindly. "Perhaps if you called on us more often we would not miss each other so."

"Perhaps," said Sif. She smiled.

Her mother squeezed Sif's arms. Then her mouth pursed and she drew back to look Sif over, to take in the bandages wrapped about her hands, her wrists, her elbows. The scent of mint drifted between them, loosed from the poultices. Sif looked away from her mother's eyes; she could not bear the sorrow. Her father stood in the door to the next room, a shadow against the light at his back. He paused there. She could not tell if he looked to her or to his wife.

"Oh, Sif," said her mother. "What have you done?"

"I've killed a nest of wyrms." Sif looked at her father. He turned away. Lieff had never wanted for a warrior for a daughter. "His majesty the king was very pleased," she said angrily at his back. "Wyrms are dangerous game. Not many warriors can slay so many."

Her father passed out of the door. The light hurt her eyes.

Astra smoothed her hands down Sif's arms, mindful of the bandages.

"I am proud of you," she said softly. She looked up to Sif, and her dark eyes were soft, always soft. "Ever I am proud of you. It's only, to see you again after so long, like this-" She cut off.

Sif took her mother's hands in her own and clasped them tightly. "Believe me when I tell you I'm fine. They're only little burns. They won't even scar."

"Still," said Astra. She looked searchingly at Sif. "I worry about you."

"You don't need to," Sif said, smiling.

"But I do," said Astra. Then she bit her lip and turned. She dabbed at her eyes with her fingers, and Sif felt wretched, clumsy, cruel. She did not know what to say. Her mother's shoulders bowed. Astra had been the one to support Sif when she began formal training, but there were times when Sif thought perhaps her mother regretted it.

Astra shook her hair back. Smiling brightly, she looked over her shoulder.

"Will you be staying the night?"

Sif wanted for something to pull apart in her hands. She touched her elbow instead, where the edge of the bandage turned out.

"Yes," she said, "if that's all right with you."

"Of course it is," said Astra, and she smiled truthfully at Sif.

Sif picked at her bandage and asked, "Do you need help with the meal?" and when all else was done, she walked the stairs to her old room.

The notch in the second stair to the top meant to trip her, but she hadn't forgotten it. Her feet knew the way. A certain board creaked underfoot. A decorative dresser loomed out of the shadows, and she walked around it; it was where it had always been, there in the hallway with a metal bowl on top and nothing in the bowl but dust. Like looking through a dirtied glass; that was how she felt. It was as if she were a child again. Her father had sat across from her at the table and neither looked at nor spoken to her, and when Sif stood to wash he looked to Astra and asked her why she fixed salmon.

"Sif likes it best," said Astra.

Father said no more.

Now Sif sat upon the edge of her childhood bed and looked around the room. It was empty; it was bare. She had cleaned everything of meaning from it when she left her mother's house for the palace. Now it held nothing for her.

A flicker caught her eye. She turned too quickly; her neck pinched. But it was only her hair in the little mirror set by the bed. Sif stared out at her from the glass.

"Why did you come here?" Sif asked of her.

For her mother, whom she had left alone in this house with her father. Sif heard his tread in the hall and looked to her door, but she had closed it and when he passed she did not see him. The room was so very small. Her chest stuck; her nose hurt for the force of her breath. She had forgotten how she hated this room. Between one visit and the next, she always seemed to forget how it closed about her, how in its smallness it made her small.

Her reflection watched her, and so Sif watched it, too. Why had she come here? What did she look for now in the mirror? Only Sif looked at her, no one else. She was alone, as her mother was alone, as, she supposed, her father was alone. All families break, she thought; but that wasn't true. The thought snuck in: if Loki had lived-

But he hadn't lived. He had died. He was gone. Her reflection looked as if she did not believe it. Her reflection looked as if she had dreamt of him nightly for days now, for weeks, till she saw his shadow in her own and heard his voice in her ear when another spoke.

"He is dead," she hissed at the mirror. "Loki is dead. He fell. Thor saw it. You must stop this. You will stop. Now."

The dead were dead, lost forever. Hel would not give up her prizes. She did not know why it should hurt her so. He had been her friend before he had been her king. Yet Thor was her friend, too, and when he had been banished she had not ached so, as if her insides were sharp and rubbed together ceaselessly. But Thor had not been dead.

Sif turned from the mirror. Tearing her tunic off, she threw it over the glass. The cloth fell in folds; her reflection vanished. A little sliver of glass showed between an arm and the body of her shirt. She was done. No more. She would not dream of Loki. She would not think of him. The dead were dead.

She dropped onto her bed. Her arms, her hands, her fingers itched. She scratched at her bandages then forced her hands still. A small light looked through the window-the lamp that swung outside the front door. Shadows ran across the ceiling. Sif followed them in their courses, round in circles, till they bled together.

After a time she dreamed:

Fingers at the back of her neck, cold fingers, so cold her skin ran hot with it. She turned. Loki stood there beneath a great ash tree. The moon hung in its branches. She could not see his face for the brightness.

"Sif," he said. "Does your mother know you're here?"

The world was concave about them. Sif and Loki, the tree and the moon, hidden in a glass bowl. Her neck burned.

"This is a dream," she said. "You aren't here."

"Neither are you," said Loki. He turned his head. His brow, his sharp chin, the long line of his nose: all of it showed as a shadow to her, blurred at the edges with light. "But is it your dream or mine?"

Her chest hurt. She had chased him, she thought. If she reached her hand out to him, would he run again? Did he wait for her to touch her fingers to his sleeve? Like a ghost, would he shiver out of her hands?

Like a ghost.

"The dead don't dream," she said.

He looked to her again. "As a general rule, no, I would think not. But as I've never been dead, I wouldn't know."

"Stop," she said. Her breath caught in her teeth. She tightened her mouth. "Stop it. You're dead. Thor saw it; he saw you fall. Not even you could survive that."

His shoulders shifted. She thought perhaps he would step forward. She did not know if she wanted him to. The glass pressed to her back.

"Did I?" he asked. "Are you dreaming or am I? Am I dead, or are you dead?"

"Don't joke," she said. The moon shone full on her face, and in its light she saw the Destroyer's jaw opening.

"I never joke," said Loki. "How would you know if you were dead? Have you talked with anyone who's died recently? After death."

"I live," she said harshly, "with no thanks to you."

He did not speak. The branches shivered. The moon turned. A redness grew out of its belly to swallow it.

"Why did you send the Destroyer?"

"To kill Thor," he said, flat. "I had no choice. If you had only listened to me, I would never have had to send it. He would have lived his life on Midgard with his lady Jane, and we could have avoided this whole, stupid mess."

"No," Sif said. "It doesn't work like that. You sent the Destroyer. You did that. No one made you do it."

"Fine," he said, as if it were an indulgence. "I sent it. I told it to kill him."

The moon shone red as fire.

"You told it more than that. What did you tell it?" she asked him.

"I told it to kill whatever got in its way," he said.

She came forward then. His coat was sleek on her fingers. He did not vanish; he did not run. Sif wound her hands in his collar.

"You saw everything," she shouted. "You heard it. I know you did. You heard Thor when he spoke to you, when he reasoned with you. You must have seen me when the Destroyer tried to kill me."

"I saw." The moon hid him, still. "But you didn't die. Did you?"

"That isn't how it works, Loki," she said tightly. "Why did you do it? Why?"

"I've tired of this dream," he said.

"This isn't your dream to tire of," she said. "This is my dream, and you are going to tell me why you tried to kill me."

"I wasn't trying to kill you," he shouted back.

She shook him. His coat pulled tight over his shoulders. He did not fight her-Loki, who always fought.

"You could have stopped it! You saw it, and you did nothing."

"Did you want an apology?" He spoke quickly, lowly, his tongue twisting. "Did you want me to get on my knees and tell you how sorry I am? How I never wanted to hurt you? Do you want me to swear it was a mistake and to vow never to so much as pull a hair from your head?"

Sif said: "Would you mean it?"

Loki said: "Would you believe it?"

They had been children once. They had been friends. It hurt her to think of it.

"Why do you hide your face in my dreams?" she whispered. "Why can I never see you?"

"It's a cliche, isn't it," he said, "the monster revealing itself to the maiden beneath the full moon."

"I am no maiden," she said, "and you are no monster."

"No," he said, "you are no maiden."

He set his hands on her wrists. Her skin hurt; it tightened. She remembered suddenly a dream from the week before, how she'd woken curled about her hand, which ached as if she'd struck it in her sleep. Now her wrists burned beneath his fingers, his long, elegant fingers. He'd always had beautiful hands. They were beautiful now, too, and blue.

"In the stories," he said, "some brave warrior always slays the jötunn. Will you do it?"

The moon had turned to ice. His eyes were red and his skin was blue. His hair, slicked, curled black at his throat.

"Loki?" she said.

Then the glass broke beneath her feet, and Sif woke alone in the dark. Light shone in the window; the lamp still swung. She felt for her wrists, bandaged. This was her room, but it could not be her room. For a moment Sif could not remember how old she was, then a stair creaked and she knew that this was her mother's house, that she had stayed the night, that she lived here no more.

The back of her neck was cold. She touched it and turned, searching. What did she search for? A flash of red. An eye on her. The mirror, covered. A bit of glass winked at her. Sif lunged for it. She tore the cloth away, and in the mirror she saw: Sif. The bed, the quilt wrinkled where she'd slept on it. The window where the light gleamed.

Her heart beat and beat. The room was empty. The room was silent. His hands cold upon her, his eyes gleaming red: what had she dreamt? What had she made of Loki in her dream? Jötunn. The son of Odin.

"Are you dreaming or am I?" he'd asked her beneath the tree, beneath the moon, within that shining bubble that made the world.

"He is dead," she said to the mirror.

iii: memory: sif.

Far over the mountains, a storm gathered. The air thickened with the rising moisture. As the day was already over-warm, Sif wished she had thought to wear a sleeveless tunic. In running from the house, she hadn't taken the time. Summer pressed on her. Sif turned the stick in her hands and lashed out at a near branch. A crack sounded, and beneath it: a snapping twig.

She rounded. The tip of the stick drew even with Loki's throat. He lifted his empty hands to show them to her. His hair was dark, his eyes pale, the shadows thrown by the trees shivering across his face.

"Peace," he said. "I only wondered who made such a violent racket by the pond."

Sif scowled and withdrew. She spun the stick, dropping it to her foot and kicking it up again. The pond, alone in this small clearing, was clear and calm but for the wind stirring its edges. If only she'd that sort of control, but that made her think again of her father. She turned from Loki. The stick was rough in her hand. She tightened her fingers around it, so the bark bit into her palm.

"Were you expecting someone?" Loki, still. "Thor's busy. He did poorly on a test."

"I'm not expecting anyone," she said. She brought the stick down hard on a branch that jutted at her. The leaves rattled. Two fell, stems broken.

"Ah," said Loki.

He was quiet then. Sif followed the first two forms, bending, rising, striking, guarding, advancing and retreating. Loki watched. He'd a way of making himself known when he wished to be known, even in his silences. Like a shade in a mirror, seen from the corner of her eye. Sweat slicked her throat, her brow, her nape. Her hair fell heavily against her neck and back. She brought the stick down in the last step, then she turned on him and snapped,

"What? What is it? Either speak or leave."

He'd taken a seat on a fallen limb. Now Loki blinked up at her. His eyes were wide and nearly dark in the knitting shadows of the trees. His white shirt opened at his throat. The little crook in his clavicle showed.

"I was admiring your form," he said. "You don't have much formal training. But you've learned a lot from watching Thor. You're quicker than he is."

Her ears burned. She had watched Thor at practice. Once or twice, she'd joined him in the yard. Had Loki watched her at practice? Cool eyes in the shadows, stopping to see what the little girl would do with a wooden sword.

"What business is it of yours?" she demanded. "Why should you care if I play at swords?" She curled her lips in. The words were bitter on her tongue. Her throat hurt.

Loki's eyes lidded. His lips pursed.

"Oh, save it," he said. "It isn't me you're mad at."

Sif went hot all over, hotter still than before. She would have shouted at him-the words were hard in her mouth, What do you know?-but she saw her father in Loki's shadow. She heard an echo of his voice in the shape of Loki's mouth.

"And besides," Loki went on, "even you aren't quick enough to cut me." His smile turned like the edge of a knife, secretive and silver.

She weighed the stick in her hand, measured the distance between them, counted: four steps to stand before him, a second to cross them, another half to take his collar in her hands, another to draw him to his feet. She took one step. He was smiling at her still when someone at her back pulled lightly on her plait.

Sif turned, and her stick passed through a phantom, one which smiled at her as Loki smiled at her. Then another caught her stick and yanked it from her hands. She threw her elbow back and caught: air. Nothing.

Two Lokis smiled at her, the one seated, the other standing. The third stepped out from behind the second. He held her stick out to her, the knobbed end she'd used as a grip first. She took it; she could not think of what else to do.

"What is all this?" she asked, looking over her shoulder.

The first Loki blinked out. When she turned, the second had gone, too. Loki, just the one, stood before her. He smiled again, so very pleased with himself. Sif kicked him in the shin.

"Got you," she said with satisfaction as he stumbled against her. "You're not so quick now."

He'd arrested his fall by grabbing onto her arms. She felt the pressure of his fingers on her arms, the line of his jaw where it grazed her breast. He pushed off, away. His lips were white, pressed thin. He brushed at his sleeves, the front of his shirt.

"I should've known you were too brutish to appreciate a trick like that," he said.

"You've scared all the dirt off," she said when he moved on to his hips. His hair fell black against his brow. Then she looked at him again. "Oh, no. Did I hurt your feelings?"

His mouth curled. Loki looked up to her. A line creased his brow, then it smoothed. A purposeful blankness fell upon him.

"Hardly," he drawled, but she'd caught him; she had.

"I did!" she said with delight. "I hurt your feelings. You were showing off!"

His lashes flickered. The corner of his mouth tightened then eased. He flicked a languid look over her, from her brow to her toes, and sneering, said, "I'm surprised you've confused me with my brother."

"Oh, shut up," she said. "You're as bad as he is."

He said, "I'm sure Thor will be thrilled to hear of it." Pissily, she thought, and she laughed. He'd been bragging, like Thor puffing his chest up when he'd swept her feet out.

Loki said, "Well, you're in a better mood. I'm so glad I could help."

"Lay it on thicker," she said, but her laugh faded, then her smile too.

"I will not see my daughter prancing around playing soldier," her father had shouted at Mother. "I will not have her disgracing herself. She is a girl, and that is all she is."

Loki looked to her. The wind had strengthened, and as it slithered through the trees it set the leaves to turning. Speckled shadows danced across his face, in his hair. Waves rolled across the pond. Thunder sounded, distant.

"Thor wondered if you would join him at practice," Loki said suddenly.

"What, now?"

"Yes, now," he said as if it were obvious and Sif unspeakably dull, "and tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and so on, ad infinitum, et cetera."

She stared at him. Loki stared back. His mouth pulled down. He rolled his eyes and sighed noisily.

"It's a formal invitation," he said slowly and clearly, "to formal training with the formal prince, formally. If you want to accept," he added, "you should go now."

Sif could not breathe a moment, then the world snapped into focus again and Loki, insufferable Loki, stood at the center of it.

"Why didn't you tell me first thing?" she shouted.

"In the mood you were in?" He clicked his tongue. "No, thank you. Not with you carrying that big stick around and looking for something to hit."

"I wouldn't hit you for this!"

She shook the stick furiously at him. Loki leaned out of reach and eyed her.

"You're a barbarian," he said. "You're unpredictable. I don't know what you'll do."

"I'll kick your knees in for starters," she shot back.

"That's why I didn't want to tell you," he said.

She slung the stick at his legs and Loki danced away, spinning on his heel. She could have chased him, would have chased him-wanted to chase him, catch him, pin him on the ground and make him swallow all his smiles and teasing laughs-but to train, to train.

"I'll get you later," she promised.

"Is this the thanks I get?" he shouted after her. "I didn't have to tell you today!"

"Go stuff yourself!" Then she turned on her heel and shouted: "Thank you!"

She didn't know if he heard. Thunder cracked nearer now. She'd a ways to go before the storm broke over the mountains and slid down to catch them, and Thor would begin his training soon, sooner if she did not run. She wouldn't wait to find out whether or not Loki had cared to stay or to follow.

Sif slipped through the trees and ran fleet-footed out from the woods and up to the palace, which shone like the sun even as the storm swarmed darkly about it.

iv: hearts, dreams.

Thor walked with the queen through the winding corridors of the innermost complex of the palace, reserved for the king and the queen and their sons, now one, and those whom they deemed worthy of welcome. Windows gave them light, windows which ran all along the walls and looked out across their city, Asgard. Sif knew on the other side, outside, the windows showed as thick metal, impenetrable and opaque. Loki had explained how it worked once. Sif hadn't listened.

She called out to the queen and to Thor: "May I join you?"

They turned to her, Frigg and her son, and smiled, but it was Frigg who took her hand from Thor's arm and held it out to Sif.

She said, "Please, walk with us." From Frigg, it was as it was: an invitation to be taken or discarded, and though she would be saddened by the latter, she would accept it. From the queen, it was more than that. The queen's please was demand, command; to be taken and not discarded, for it could not be discarded. Sif had known the princes years of their youth when she at last realized here, in the most private palace, it was not the queen who spoke to her but Frigg, just as it was not the first prince who told her to stop bowing, but Thor who thought she looked a chicken.

Sif took Frigg's hand. Frigg tucked her hand in Sif's elbow and held her arm tight to her side, as she held Thor's arm tight to her other side, and together the three of them proceeded. Frigg's fingers were light in the folds of Sif's arm, and they were steady, too.

"Thor," said Frigg, "was just telling me of his lady Jane of Midgard."

Over Frigg's head, Sif saw Thor smile. He had smiled in the days since-since the breaking of the Bifröst, but not like so, as if the light on his face came not from the sun without the windows but from within. It was a quiet smile, a happy smile. Sif was glad to see it, so very glad.

"Jane Foster," he said, as if her name were something to be taken on the tongue and held there till it melted away. "But she is no lady, though," he hastened to add, "she is a lady. She is a professor, a teacher of the sciences. She studies the stars, how they move, where they go, what lies between them. She is more clever than anyone else I have ever known."

"To hear Thor speak of her," said Frigg to Sif, "you would think her as wise as Odin, as good as Idunn, and as beautiful as Freyr and Freyja together."

"She is all that and more," said Thor, laughing.

Frigg and Sif shared a look, for it was so, that when Thor loved he would love deeply, blindly, truly, and never mind if he had only known her three days.

Frigg tapped her fingertips at Sif's elbow. An old, familiar sign. Sif turned to her.

"You saw her," said Frigg. "You spoke with her. What is she like, Thor's lady, Jane?"

Sif weighed her words. Frigg looked at her, the mother worrying, the mother hoping, but Thor looked at her, too. She knew he worried and hoped as well. Love made her weigh her words. She thought of how Jane had looked to Thor when he spoke of his father dying (and she thought, too, of how her own heart had splintered to hear him say it; she had thought: Loki, and her splintering heart had hardened). How Jane had stayed as the Destroyer neared; she would not leave her people to die, or allow for Thor, without his power, to face it alone. How she had run heedless into the fray to stand over Thor, to touch his face and tell him to live. How she had fought to remain even as Mjolnirr cut through the heavens like a falling star.

"She is brave," said Sif slowly. "Recklessly so. She was not made to fight, but she would have fought."

Sif remembered the sun hot on the back of her neck and the Destroyer's blooming fires hot on her face. The palace was cool. She blinked the memory of fire away.

"When the Destroyer came," Sif said to Frigg, "she could have run. She should have run. But she chose to stay."

Frigg smiled then, soft so the little folds at her eyes deepened. Thor looked to his mother.

Another memory, fleeting: of the queen touching the back of Sif's shoulder and saying, "You are a good friend to Loki." Sif was a child then and she had looked up to the queen, and she had found the queen smiling. They were in the garden, and the sun peeked over Frigg's shoulder. Then Frigg had turned from her and called to her sons. Thor came first, but it was Loki Sif saw first; Loki, who dropped from a tree like a leaf, like a shadow, his face turned to Frigg but to Sif as well.

As she had felt then, now Sif felt a strange prickling at her nape, as if a cold wind ran over her. As a child she had slapped at her neck and wondered at it. Now she thought she knew why, why the itch in her skin, why the burden in Frigg's delicate touch, why Loki had looked to her standing at Frigg's side and let Thor pass him.

"I see why Thor should love her," said Frigg dryly. She smiled, though, as she had smiled at Sif when Sif was just a girl who played at swords and Loki, to everyone but that girl who played at swords and Frigg, Thor's little brother, only a shadow, not Loki at all but a second thought.

"If she's so brave as to care so little for herself," said Frigg, "then it's no wonder."

She turned to Thor. Her curls shone, gold. Thor bowed his head to his mother, and he shone, too, like honey and sunlight.

"I'm glad," said Frigg softly to Thor. "I'm glad that you should love her. I only wish I could meet her. This brave woman from Midgard."

Thor smiled, a small smile. His eyes pinched. Frigg lowered her head. The silence unspooled. Sif turned from them and looked instead to the windows which rounded the far corner. Asgard gleamed, brass lined with dark shadows, gold laced with silver and onyx. Green showed where the forest grew to fill Asgard's spaces.

"But you will meet her," Thor said to Frigg. He believed it, Sif knew, deeply, blindly. Truly. "I have told you how she is more clever than any other. If anyone is to open the way again, it will be Jane Foster."

Frigg took her hand from Sif's arm. She set it on Thor's cheek, her long fingers so still on his beard, his skin.

"If you believe," said Frigg, "then I believe."

Thor smiled and covered his mother's hand with his own.

"You will like her."

"I believe I will love her," Frigg told him.

Then she rose on her toes and kissed him gently on the side of his nose. Sif ached for her mother. She looked away.

Frigg settled. "I'm afraid I've put off my work as long as I can. Will you two promise to behave and not to fight?" She touched Sif's shoulder.

Sif mustered a smile. She meant it. It was difficult not to mean a smile when Frigg asked it of you.

"I can make no promises," she said.

"Well, I can," said Thor, ever the poor sport. He took his mother's hands in his own and said, quite earnestly, "I vow not to wage battle with Sif on this day."

"That's all I ask," Frigg told him, amused.

Turning, she smiled at Sif and touched her cheek as well, in parting. There was a moment in there, a little half a moment which flitted from Sif as a bird from a tree, in which Sif wanted to tell Frigg, I dream of your son at night. I see him in my mirror when I turn away from it. I thought I was going mad but now I don't know if I'm going mad or if I am mad or if he's there.

"My queen," said Sif.

"My lady," said the queen.

Sif bowed her head to the queen. Frigg's hand was light on her brow, her fingertips soft at Sif's crown. Then she passed from the sanctum, her skirts whispered along the stones as a wind through leaves.

Sif stood again. Thor was looking at her. Though she knew him to be too obtuse to tease meaning out of the way she held herself, Sif still felt bare beneath his consideration.

"What?" she snapped.

He grinned, unbothered. That was Thor all through.

"I wish you'd had time to know Jane," he said. "You would have liked her."

"If I like her," Sif said, prickling, "it will be for her sake and not yours."

He clapped her on her back. He grinned, still, and she knew he heard what she had not said, which was I already like her.

"I am glad of you, Sif," he said. "You are a good friend and dear to me."

"Oh, please," she said, but she smiled.

They walked together, companionable, as they had ever been so. When they had first met, Sif introduced by her father to the queen and by the queen to her sons, she had looked at Thor, ruddy and grinning, and known she would like him immensely. She had not thought the same of Loki.

"I have heard from my father you hunted wyrms the other day," said Thor. "You should have told me!"

"You were busy with princely work," said Sif. "I couldn't have dragged you away from such vital, pressing matters of state."

"I would that you had," he grumbled. "Nine wyrms! So Hogun claimed."

"Hogun claimed truly," she said archly. She tossed her hair. "I killed four myself. I would have made it five had Hogun not beat me to it."

"I don't doubt," said Thor, chuckling. Then his laughter subsided and he turned to her as they walked. She knew what he would say even before he said, "Hogun has told me-"

"It's none of his business or of yours," she snapped.

"I have no intention to tell you what to do," said Thor. For all his rages, he had ever been the peacemaker. "But you are my friend, and I care for you. I would hope that you would care for me were I to behave unlike myself."

As if at her ear, she heard Loki say, "Oh, it's too easy," and she knew it was only her mind speaking for him.

Sif drew breath and allowed it out again. He was right. She knew it. He was her friend, and he cared for her. She said, "I thank you for your concern," and only wished it were not so stiff.

Thor said, "Don't thank me for this."

Asgard gleamed at them through the windows, bright and hot with the sun. The sea glittered, flashing as if strewn with stars. Sif stopped at the bend in the corridor. She leaned into the window, looking out to the Bifröst, to the end of the world. Then she looked to Thor, who waited, patient, as he would not have waited before. If she did not speak, she thought he would not press her.

"I dream of Loki," she said.

His face tightened. Pain showed in his mouth. He would have turned from her, she knew it; hadn't she known him nearly all her life? He said, "Sif-"

"No. Listen to me," she said. She drew close to Thor and set her hand on his shoulder. "Listen to me. For once in your blockheaded life, be quiet and listen."

He breathed out. He would not look at her. She curled her fingers in his tunic, curled them till her cropped nails dug into his shoulder. His hair gleamed fair as wheat behind his ears, against his throat. He had turned already.

"I miss him, too," she said, "and that's why you must listen."

Thor closed his eyes. Grief, grief, ever grief. Always grief. She was tired of grief. She hurt with it. She was numb for it. When he spoke, his voice scratched with it.

"I will listen."

How to begin? How to tell it? At his back she saw a shadow, and in that shadow she saw the shape of Loki's cape, his heel turning, the line of his throat. In the window, out the corner of her eye, she saw Loki's jawline: pale, then blue. Behind her lids and against her eyes, his eyes: red, pale green, red.

"They're dreams," she said at last, "but they aren't like dreams. They aren't like memories either, they're. They're something else. It's like he's there, talking to me."

She searched Thor's face and found- What did she find? His brow had furrowed. He looked at her as if through a darkened glass. The back of her neck began to prickle.

"Please tell me you dream of him, too," she said.

Slowly, Thor shook his head.

"I do dream of Loki. Every night, I dream of my brother." He looked from her to the window, to Asgard below, the sky beyond. "But they're only memories. Things I wish I had done differently. Things I ought to have said to him."

"But do you talk to him?" she asked urgently. "Do you speak with him as if he were present? Does he answer?"

"Never," said Thor.

The silence which followed this was louder than anything Sif had ever heard. It deafened. It crushed, as a boulder dropped from a great height.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. Thor, I did not mean to-"

Her tongue, clumsy, stuck to her teeth.

Thor's jaw worked. His lashes fell. He had not turned to her again. Beneath her hand, his shoulder was hard, taut.

"If that is all," he said. "I have duties to which I must attend. I would rather we not-"

She twisted her hand more tightly still in his shirt.

"You said you would listen to me, so you will listen to me!"

He began to turn to her, his face dark like the first clouds in a storm. He remained Thor, after all, but she remained Sif, and she would not cower before him.

"You knew Loki as I knew Loki," she said. "You know how you could see him in one place but he would be in another. How he could cross distances so much faster than you or I."

"My brother is dead," said Thor harshly. "Loki is dead."

"What if he is not dead? What if he lives?"

"He is dead!" Thor snarled. "I saw him fall. If I had tried, I could have caught him, but he fell, and you were not there-"

"And I would have been there had Heimdall not needed me," she shouted at him, "and you are not listening to me!"

"I have no need to!" His face was red, his throat thick. "You are tired. You need to speak with Eir and her healers-"

Sif struck him. His jaw was like stone against her knuckles, then the corner buckled and he turned, her blow driving him back. Thor came up again, and she thought: yes, yes, for she ached to fight. She ached to not think.

"Don't you ever imply I am not conscious of myself," she said. "Don't you dare think to tell me what I am and what I'm not."

She waited for his fist; she expected it. For a moment, she thought he would throw the next punch, and Sif braced. Then he closed his eyes and he lowered his hands. His fingers unbent.

"You're right," he said. He looked to her then, really looked to her, and in his eyes she saw at last how much they had changed, all of them, in so short a time.

"I am sorry, Sif, truly. You are right," he said again. He bowed his head to her.

She stared down at his head. When had Thor ever bent his head to Sif? How his hair shone. How she wished it were dark. She did not know what she wished. She felt Loki's fingers on her wrist, burning with cold. But this was Thor. Thor: her prince, her friend, her sworn shield-brother.

"Thank you," she said. "I'm sorry I-you know."

As he straightened, she mimed punching him. She tapped his chin lightly. Thor smiled at her, and it was nearly a grin.

"You owe me no apologies. I deserved it. I deserved more."

His smile faded. He glanced out the window again, and she knew then she would not push him. Sif turned to look, too, out the window. Their shoulders pressed together.

"If you had struck me," she said, "I wouldn't have told. Not even if the Allfather himself demanded I tell him true."

"I know," said Thor. He smiled briefly at her reflection. "That was but one of the reasons why I couldn't."

"Wouldn't," she said. She looked through her reflection, through his. The moon showed, a pale crescent in the day sky. "You had a choice. I had a choice."

"We all have choices," he said, and his eyes were on the bridge.

Looking to the moon, she thought: Why would Loki show himself to her but not to Thor? Who was she, that Loki would come to her? Thor was his brother, and Loki had loved him once. Perhaps she was mad. Perhaps she was over-tired. Thor had seen Loki fall from the Bifröst as it cracked.

Thor stirred and turned from the window, speaking of duties, and Sif looked to the bridge.

v: heimdall ever-watching.

What remained of the Bifröst flew forth from Asgard much as it had ever done; though now it shone dully, the color leeched from it so that it but faintly glimmered, as distant as the memory of a dream. The jagged end of it leered over the edge of the world, and there Heimdall ever-watching stood sentinel. As a child, Sif had wondered at him and feared him, too, for who but Heimdall could know of all her little childhood crimes and who but Heimdall might speak of them to her father, Lieff of the heavy hand?

"Sif," said Heimdall as she drew near to him. He did not turn.

She stood at his shoulder. Heimdall Stargazer looked out over the infinite expanse of the cosmos, his gold-burnt eyes open to all the stars and all the worlds, for no door and no gate could be closed to his consideration. Sif looked out as he looked out and saw only stars and the incestuous, twisting nebulae which spun with infinitesimal slowness through the heavens. A yawning shadow remained, low in her comprehension of the skies, where the Bifröst in its breaking had torn a hole through whatever stuff composed this, Heimdall's domain.

Now he turned fractionally to her. His gaze fell upon her. As a child, she would have shrunk beneath the weight of that regard, but she was no more that child and his regard was not so heavy.

"Have you come with a question?" he asked. His voice, resonant with the power which dwelt within Heimdall born of nine mothers and which he wielded as surely as his blade forged of nine sisters, rang with the fullness and grave certainty of a large bell well struck.

"Perhaps I only wanted to speak with you," she said lightly.

Though he did not smile, she heard it or thought she heard it. Dryly, for Heimdall was ever dry, he said, "I have long known you, Sif, daughter of Astra, Astra, wife of Lieff. You come with a question, though I welcome your company."

Now she felt the child. Sif cinched her mouth to one side, rueful.

Heimdall returned to his stars. He would wait until she asked or he would dismiss her; the Bifröst, though shattered, was sacred to Heimdall and all but the king were beholden to his sovereignty over it.

"I know you can see into all the worlds," said Sif. "Can you also see into Helheimr?"

"Helheimr is but one realm," Heimdall replied, "and neither it nor its queen are closed to my sight. What purpose do you have with that dead world?"

She had wondered a short time how to ask it, but Sif was not one for vague statements or tricksome leads, and Heimdall and Loki, whose silver tongue thrived on such vague and tricksome things, had never been of a kind. She would ask and be done with it. Still-Loki had frozen Heimdall and discharged all the dormant force of the Bifröst upon Jötunheimr; because of Loki the bridge was lost to them and through the bridge, all else which lay beyond Godenheim.

"Can you see Loki there?" she asked of Heimdall, whom Loki had feared and who had no lost love for the fallen king.

Heimdall turned fully to her, and his gaze was like a stone dropped around her neck, one which would see her bent at his feet. The knowing of his endless, golden eyes was terrible beyond the thought of it. Sif held his gaze. Her heart twisted up, and she found it was not for fear of Heimdall, but for fear he would turn her away.

"Please," she said. "I must know."

"If he is dead," said Heimdall, "then he is Hel's thrall. There is no seat for Loki World-killer in the holy hall Valhalla."

Sif drew nearer still to Heimdall. He inclined his head that he might follow her. Lowly she said, "But if he is not dead-" and Heimdall's face hardened.

He turned from her. The stars opened to him. His face was as stone, then his eyes flickered; his mouth tightened.

"Is he there?" Sif ached for her lance, her sword. Inaction bit at her. How her heart turned viciously in her chest-and yet she could not move. "Can you see him?"

"If he is there," said Heimdall, his face still lifted to the incomprehensible sky, "then he is hidden from me, for I can neither hear nor see him."

The cosmos contracted. For a moment she thought she could hear the Bifröst singing again. If she had thought her heart vicious before, now she thought it cruel. Grief-grief, always grief, but a wild, mad hope as well and another thing beneath that which she could not name. She thought of crimson eyes, flesh like indigo.

"Am I dead," Loki had whispered, "or are you dead?"

"Then Loki lives," she said.

"I cannot say." Heimdall looked to her again, and his countenance was intense, searching. What he read in her face, she dared not think. "He may have cloaked himself in Helheimr, though for what purpose I cannot know."

"So he may still be dead," she said at last.

"He may be," said Heimdall, "and I hope that he is so. Yet Loki claimed to know secret ways between the worlds to which even I am blind. If he found one such way as he fell, then it may be he still lives beyond my sight."

Sif looked to the stars. The cosmos spun on and on and on. The vastness of it consumed her. How many stars? How many worlds? The Bifröst lay dead at her feet.

Heimdall spoke again: "If it is so, that Loki lives, should he return to Asgard, I will bring all the power of my office upon him."

She turned her back upon the sky. "You will do what you must," she said. She bowed to him. "Thank you for looking."

He inclined his head, just so. "Thank you for asking. I will look again and let the Allfather know of what I find or do not find. Ill portents abound."

His gaze turned from her. The universe's many distant lights found magnification in his eyes.

"You may leave when you wish," said Heimdall.

Sif bowed again. Her heels rang dully against the bridge. Once it would have sung to her, she thought; but that was before Loki had been king. She felt the weight of the stars on her shoulders long after she left the Bifröst.

Interlude. | Masterpost | 5.