Of Suttung, Lord of Hnitbjörg, part 3

He could smell cinnamon, cloves and honey even before he opened his eyes to a dimly lit room. The full moon streamed through high windows while an insistent wind rustled lengths of delicate fabric hung up around him. They caressed his arm, while a long, smooth body warmed his side. Loki wanted to stretch, hook a lazy arm around his wife, and go back to sleep, but a nagging feeling made him strain to see in the darkness. There was a difference, after all, between waking and being woken, and it was most keenly felt in the insistent thump of his heart.

He could see nothing, only silver outlines, crisp and clear in the cool night. Remembering to listen, he sought out sounds. But there was silence, disturbed only by the soft snores of the woman next to him. They made him smile. He had never told her she snored. Why would he? It had never bothered him, only endeared her to him. His Angrboda. Loki felt tremendously sad at that moment, but could not fathom why. He had an urge to wake her up, kiss her, nuzzle her neck, ask her to cradle him in her arms but he knew she would only snap at him. Better not.

He took care to slip from their bed without waking her, bare feet soundless on the carpeted floor. Something drew him towards the moonlit balcony. The playful zephyr beckoned him to go out onto the ledge. White stone framed a landscape of fluid darkness, stretching for thousands of miles in each direction. Blue and purple steppes glistened and waved as the winds chased pale clouds of mist across them, like phantom herds droved by an invisible shepherd. Chills went up Loki's arms and down his naked body. But why was he here? This was Utgar-

Loki looked to the right just as a silent, white shape passed him by, diving towards the horizon. A white owl, too big, too beautiful to be anything but a… Dream? No, magic!

Loki slipped into the shape of a falcon and gave chase even before he fully decided to do so. Air whistled past his ears deafeningly, but Loki hardly needed his sense of hearing now that he had a falcon's eyesight. He could see the owl like a gleaming triangle of light, sliding over currents, dipping into air masses. He followed it easily, the tips of his wings cutting the air into twin spirals. The impossible, white keep they had plunged off of was falling behind them rapidly. Soon, it was nothing but a spindle in the dark. But Loki could not spare it any of his attention. The white owl rushed ahead of him, using its larger wings as though they were ores. Loki found an updraft and let it carry him high above his quarry. He let out a high-pitched cry of sheer exhilaration. Freedom in all its terrible glory! He could become entirely drunk on it this high up. The fabric of reality seemed to thin out to a sliver, and there was nothing in the world but him, the white owl and the huge moon, near enough for them to scratch its surface with their talons. At the peak of the updraft, Loki straightened his streamlined body, hunched his shoulders and hovered for a heartbeat. Then, with a simple tilt of the head, he began screaming towards the ground. The distance between him and the owl melted away forcing the hunted bird downwards until both the owl and the falcon flew mere feet above the wild grasses and stones of the steppe. Loki almost had it now, but then a trail of mist came in from the right. Its white tentacles crept over the dark ground like teeth closing over the throat of its prey. Loki swivelled to avoid it in sheer, primal panic. The owl flew right in.

Loki flapped upwards gracelessly, searching for his mark. His heart was babbling with fear. The mists were dangerous, the mists were old. They could swallow things whole and never give them back. He had learned that the last time he chased after an owl… Was it that same owl? The last time, he had gone in there after it, impatiently – like an idiot, and in there he saw…

Nothing! Nothing was coming out of that mist. No, wait, there it was. The owl flew out the wrong way, as though it had stopped dead in the low cloud and turned at an impossible angle. Loki fell in behind it, and when it began to slow down, he did the same.

And when the owl became a young, brown-haired man, Loki found his shape as well.

"Why are you after me, Little Cousin?" Utgarda asked him.

"Why did you go into the mist, Uncle?" Loki demanded breathlessly.

Utgarda turned to face him. His eyes were red and ravaged, whether from anger, worry or sadness, Loki could not say. It was just like the last time.

"Why did you come in after me? You stupid boy!" he shouted hoarsely.

"I didn't," Loki shook his head. "I didn't come in, I stayed out. This time I stayed…"
Even as he was saying it, he realized the mist was around his knees, cooling his heated body. He made a strangled sound.

"Uncle!"

"Make peace with death," Loki of the Utgardar said to him. Surely, that had not happened in this place. It happened many years after they had been stood here, in the mist.

"Uncle, wait!"

"Make peace with what you see in here."

"Lo-!"

But Utgarda was not even there anymore. Or Loki could not see him, for the mist filled the horizon, as thick as cream. Loki yelped, darted this way and that. His feet dragged over stones he could not see, dipped into the bog below. It sucked him in, like a casket of ice. He fell to his knees, hands going in as well. The bog reeked of decay and rot and burning.

The last time he was here, the last time he was here he had seen…

Loki looked up. A wolf, ghostly grey, three times larger than a man stood a few feet away from him. Scales covered its tail and great spears of bone pierced its back like deadly masts. Its haunches were bloodied, as was its slobbering muzzle. Its eyes were crimson and entirely mad. The wolf smiled at him. It was a terrible grimace. In its jaws, Loki saw remains of its victims, and he knew these were people he had brought here. His friends he had led into the mist and the ice.

The wolf approached. Loki screamed, trying to pull his limbs out of the freezing mud with little success.

"Are you not as hungry?" the wolf teased. His voice sounded like wailing and thunder, and a torrent of water on stones. But more metallic.

"Stay away!" Loki cried. "Stay away, you fuck!"

It was a weak curse. The wolf laughed. "Didn't you know that the tree is the branch, is the leaf, is the bulb?"

"What?" Loki breathed.

"Won't you have my heart?" the wolf laughed, then jumped the gap between them with terrifying swiftness and gripped Loki in its enormous mouth. Its breath smelled of rotten eggs, its teeth burrowed into Loki's chest. Out of the corner of his vision, Loki saw bodies and body parts scream at him from the wolf's innards, accusing, begging for mercy, calling for vengeance.

He yelped and sniffled, "Get back, get away!" His voice was barely audible above the wolf's chortling, reeking pink flesh bubbling with glee. Loki tried to think through the fog of panic. His chest ached as the pressure mounted slowly. The wolf was taking its time, wishing Loki to feel each tooth sink. Why didn't he have his armour? Where were his weapons? Loki remembered to look for Laevateinn. It had to be somewhere in the muck. He always had it nearby! Oh, please, it had to be in the muck.

"Won't you have my heart?" the wolf growled. "What's the matter? Not as hungry?"

The word rang out like metal on metal and Loki knew the wolf would bite down now, half him. In any moment, he would be looking at his legs and spilled guts while the wolf carried him away, chewing him. And he would still be alive, conscious, painfully there, like all those countless others… He moved his fingertips, insensible from the cold, around the sticky gunk looking for his weapon. He felt his ribs crack. Lungs ached, robbed of breath.

Here! The hard, leathery handle! With monstrous effort, Loki pulled out his hand clutching Laevateinn from the cold black muck and plunged it blindly into the wolf's gullet. The beast squealed and its bite slackened for but a moment. Loki tried slashing, hacking, but the sword got stuck and he could not make it budge. Then one of the shredded victims pulled it from Loki's hand, drawing it into the wolf's belly and turning it on his undead companions. The screaming escalated; the jaws started closing again. Feeling sick with fear, Loki propped his shoulder against the wolf's palate, his one free hand against the hard lower fangs, and pushed desperately.

"Aaaargh!" he yelled with effort. "Come on, come on, you cunt!" The bite slowed. Loki angled all of his weight forward, pulling himself from the sticky bog and into the wolf's throat, but as he was doing it, the wolf could no longer close its mouth. In fact, it started whimpering now. Loki got one knee free, then the other hand, then his foot. He jammed it between the wolf's teeth. Growling with the effort, Loki pulled its jaws further and further apart. It howled, it cursed him, it threatened, then there was a loud crack, and silence. The resistance was gone. He had broken the beast's neck.

It fell several paces away from Loki with a dull thud, lifeless, small and pitiful. Its eyes were terribly familiar.

"Fe-," Loki whispered. "Fen…?" He grabbed the mud and stones scattered on the cold ground around him, trying to scramble closer to Fenrir's body. "No, no, no, no, no. You cannot be here! You are not the one I saw before," Loki was howling, tears streaming down his face. "You were never in the mist! This cannot be Fenrir, you are not here! This did not happen here!"

Oh.

Finally, it clicked. This was the dream again, the one that felt prophetic. The owl and Utgarda-Loki and the wolf in the mist had been memories and now those memories had morphed into the familiar nightmare; and he was at the battlefield again. The End Time was unfolding behind him, close enough for him to hear it, taste it. Loki froze, gripped by a far greater fear than he had felt with the grey wolf. He wanted to close his eyes but could not, staring at his hands upon his dead son's broken neck. Laevateinn was there, next to him, ready. He needed only to grip it and turn.

"Turn, turn, turn," the wind seemed to be saying to him.

Loki wept.

"Turn, turn…" the wind compelled.

He must not turn. If he did, he would break. If he did, he would…

"Turn!" It was a woman's voice, like a cold breath on his neck.

"No," he mumbled. "No, please."

"Turn."

He finally recognized the voice. Anger blossomed inside him to chase after the raw fear. "Völva," Loki said, breathing hard. "It's you. I remember you now."

She chuckled. "Then turn."

"No."

"What? Will you not turn? Loki the Liesmith cannot look at the Truth. Loki the sorcerer cannot abide Fate. Are you a coward as well, Wolf's Father? They say we are never more ourselves then when we dream."

"Völva, show yourself!" Loki bellowed. "Come before me, you seid bitch! Come and face me!" Laevateinn was once more in his hand now.

"You face me, Wolf's Father. I am behind you."

"Come out, do you think I am afraid of you?" But he was.

"Then why do you not turn?" she asked. Her laugh was as chilling as the air around them. "Not as hungry?"

"Shut up," his voice had broken, going meek once more. She laughed harder. "Shut up, shut up! This is a dream, just a dream," Loki gripped Laevateinn but his hand was empty now. The other caressed Fenrir's fur – he could feel its touch but could not see his son before him. The dream was melting away already. Yes, he needed but wake up! Loki rolled his eyes into their sockets, going rigid. The white landscape was becoming grey. "It is just the fucking dream. I am not here. You are not here."

"It is a dream, Loki. But I am here nevertheless." Her laughter followed him into a colourless spiral.

Loki jerked awake, grunting and grappling with the covers. They stuck to his sweat-bathed body but he was not hot. His skin was predictably icy. It took him a moment to remember where he was. The black interior of his room in Hnitbjörg came into focus slowly, illuminated by the single, narrow window.

"Ah," Loki panted. He stumbled out of bed yearning for some fresh air when he heard feathery flapping and the amount of light in the room increased by a small measure. There had been an owl resting on the sill. Panicked, Loki dived through the opening to see it gliding back toward the forest.

Just an owl. Not white, not anything special. It still made him feel dizzy with nausea.

Loki breathed deeply, bend over double on the window. Blood was rushing back into his ears; slowly, he was coming to. His skin, which had been glowing with angry designs until a moment ago, was dimming. Loki massaged his narrow, feminine neck with trembling hands, afraid to close his eyes lest his nightmare reformed itself once more. The owl must have triggered it, that old memory of a strange night in Utgard. He hadn't thought about it in so long. He must not think about it now! If his mind went back to that place, if he recalled the sticky cold of the bog or the sulphur smell, he would vomit.

He could only be grateful that Suttung was not here to witness it all. He at least did not have the habit of sleeping next to anyone, taking his pleasure before hobbling back to his hovel, wherever and whatever it was. Even after a week in this grime-covered, vile place, Loki did not know where Suttung slept. Maybe he huddled around his precious casket which held the Mead.

Loki snorted, a weak smile playing on his lips. He propped himself onto the windowsill and looked to the greying horizon. Dawn was an hour or two away. And joy of joys, Suttung would be away with it, to hunt, or whore, or whatever villainy it was he did when he was not in his keep. He had haunted Lofthildur's steps like a paranoid badger, and now for the first time, he would leave her alone in the castle. Did that mean Suttung began to trust her, or to trust she could not steal the Mead? Loki sighed unhappily. Well, if it was the latter, Suttung was right.

The little doubt that had taken hold on the very first day, had since grown into a certainty. Suttung did not really know what he had. For all his boasting, for all the paranoia, the Mead was to Suttung nothing but a payment of a blood debt, the only thing of value he had been able to barter from Fjalar and Galar.

That did not change the fact that he protected it fiercely.

At least after that first night, it did not get any worse. It was just more of the same. Quickly, Loki learned how to handle it: Suttung's distrust, Suttung's rages. He did his best to coddle Suttung's vulnerable ego, and tantalize him with stories of the feats they could accomplish together.

This was not the partnership Loki had dreamed of in his more optimistic moments. It was not even tutelage. The parchment Loki had brought to the castle was an object of some fascination, but very quickly Loki could see that other than fascination, it evoked very little else in Suttung. No insight, no inventiveness, no inspiration. Before going to Gymir, Loki had prepared this piece of text with utmost care. It was just the right mix of gibberish and real magic from the tablets to intrigue a master magician; understandable enough to legitimize it, yet baffling enough to make it entirely useless. Quite frankly, it was a masterpiece of deception! And here was Suttung, nodding self-importantly at everything Loki said, disagreeing only occasionally, when he failed to understand. He was not completely ignorant but he was by no stretch of the imagination a great sorcerer. Similar to a man who loved gorging on meat but could not hunt himself, Suttung collected mysteries he could not hope to master, all out of sheer greed. He was no better than Skirnir; even worse than Skadi.

The sun winked from behind the keep, illuminating the northern skyline gently. The morning chill refreshed Loki enough to clear the last trembling memory of his nightmare. It was present now only as a trail across his eyelids, whispering to him if he let his mind wonder. He could not lose focus now. He was close, so painfully close.

Waiting for inspiration to hit him, now that Suttung was not around to distract him with his general foulness, Loki trumpeted around the castle grounds. In truth, it was not an entirely charmless place. Behind the keep, where a sheer cliff created a natural barrier, there was no forbidding wall, and so Suttung's ancestor had made it into a stone gallery with jolly arcades propped up by sturdy pillars. To the side, Suttung's daughter kept a modest garden – the source of the infernal turnips. Despite that, it was neat and tended, broken up into sections and levels as it used every little bit of available land on the steep slope. Improvised steps guided the way around it, to and from an old, crumbling outpost at the bottom, which threatened to fall off, into the forest below. In the midst all that vivacious green, it looked charming. He imagined Gunnlöd would sit there in the dying sunlight, grateful for a moment of peace.

In his time here, Loki had tried to strike up a shy friendship with the girl but their conversations usually ended before they even began, and Gunnlöd slithered away. Still, he must have endeared himself to her at least a little bit. Enough to have earned himself an occasional serving of lingonberries and snowberries left outside of his room. As he passed the unspectacular but beloved piece of land on his way to the stone gallery, Loki recalled lingonberry powder helped stop bleeding. He had no idea what snowberries were good for. Sigyn would know.

He dared not think of her. He missed her awfully.

Thus it was a welcome distraction to see Suttung's daughter seated at the end of the arcades, crouched on a step. Loki could not see what had claimed her attention so totally until it flapped away. A pair of pigeons were roused by his careless footsteps. Gunnlöd sat back and sighed. Now Loki could see the bundle of paper in her arms and the thin piece of coal.

"I am sorry," he said honestly. "I did not mean to startle you."

Gunnlöd gasped, smiled, and recoiled all at once. "Oh, no. No, no. It, it is quite alright."

He fixed a questioning expression on his face and looked over Gunnlöd's shoulder to the stack of papers she was clutching. He caught glimpses of a delicate sketch of different animals, chiefly birds, lifelike and detailed. There was the proud beak of a raven, the staring eye of a robin; next to it, the hook-like talons of an eagle. Loki found it no effort at all to produce an appreciative frown. "I have chased away your models, it would seem."

Gunnlöd could not decide whether to hide her drawings away, or succumb to politeness and show them to Loki. So she merely stayed as she was, bent over on the step like a sad snail stuck to the fence. "It's not important, truly."

Loki shook his head. "Not so, sister Gunnlöd! This is a beautiful rendition. You have quite the eye."

"It's just scribbles," Gunnlöd attempted to belittle herself yet again, but a shy smile tugged her lips upwards, lending a pinkish blush to her gaunt cheeks.

"Not at all," Loki protested, seating himself next to Gunnlöd on the stone step. Mercy, but it was cold in just that thin dress… "Not at all! Look how the wing breaks here! It is just as it should be." Loki leafed though the papers carefully. The drawings were many, and close together, sometimes overlapping, to conserve space. There were some plants, one or two landscapes. With sadness, Loki noticed that these were all vistas from the castle itself. Has this girl ever been beyond her father's walls? Did she even know what a huge place the world was? He swallowed bitterness and continued scrutinizing Gunnlöd's excellent sense of line, depth and shadow.

Gunnlöd shrugged, not daring to be cheered by the praise. Not knowing how to react to it. Again, Loki felt tremendous pity for this child-woman. He was reminded of what Freya had said, about how sometime people got what they did not deserve, and sometime that was more luck then they could have hoped for. He had always found the corollary to be true. That getting exactly what one deserved was no sort of luck at all, but how did this gentle creature ever deserve her pitiful life? Loki could see her father not only in the colour of her eyes or the structure of her face, but also in the submissive bend of her back, and the thinness of her cheeks, the nervousness around her mouth. What had he done to her to have warped her so? What terror did he teach her? She, who was flesh of his flesh, blood of his…

Blood.

Loki's smile faltered for but a moment while his mind heated up. The idea rang out in his skull, and then bounced off of its bony walls to reverberate endlessly, compellingly. "I would have you make a drawing of me!" he proclaimed, jumping up to his feet.

"I couldn't possibly!"

"Please, I insist," he plopped himself onto the grey railing, back to one pillar, and the light pooling over his shoulder. He turned towards the sun and pursed his lips into a delicate smile. "Is here good?"

Gunnlöd could not resist. Anyone with patience enough to capture the likeness of birds would not be able to resist this light, this face. "I, I suppose…"

Loki smirked, playing on. "Wait, is the light alright? Would you like me to put my hair up?"

"No, it is perfect. You are perfect," Gunnlöd mouthed. With shaky hands she found a clean sheet of paper – she must have been saving it meticulously, and straightened it over her knees. Then, miraculously, the moment she pulled her piece of coal over the paper, mapping out proportions, her tremors disappeared. Her face settled with a wonderful concentration and the two women remained silent for a while. As Gunnlöd studied Lofthildur's appearance, thus Loki studied the heart of Suttung's daughter.

Weak, cowardly, unassuming and charmless she was. Simple, if not downright dim-witted. Yet she was kind, and thoughtful. And the inheritor of Suttung's coursing, living blood. Loki wondered whether Suttung understood what he had said; realized he was not the only person in this keep who could open the casket with the Mead.

Perhaps he did; perhaps that was the reason his daughter was made into this witless captive, this worm kissing the foot that crushed it.

And what would she be made into if Loki used her to open the casket?

Loki felt a nauseating chill run over his body. It was echoed in Gunnlöd's querying look.

"May I talk?" Loki asked with a smile.

"Of, of course," Gunnlöd nodded.

"I shouldn't move too much, I mean."

"Oh, no," Gunnlöd offered another of her shy smiles, eyes on her drawing. "I am used to my birds moving all the time. They are never still…"
"You are quite fond of birds?"
"Yes," she whispered. "They are very gentle.

"Even birds of prey?" Loki inquired. He very much felt like a bird of prey; a hawk wrestling a helpless dove to the ground just as he had once upon a time hunted down a white owl. He had never been one for justice, so what was the matter with him now? This girl was a key, if only he deigned to shove it into the lock.

"They are…" Gunnlöd attempted to give an answer. "They rarely come near. Not near enough to draw, in any case. I've only ever seen an eagle up close when it landed on the roof to eat its prey. It was… magnificent."
"An eagle? I am sure it was," considered Loki. He looked for a way to continue the conversation. "But I have seen owls here. They must be nesting nearby."

"Hm?" Gunnlöd looked up, shrugging. "Oh, oh, yes. I suppose."
His heart ached for this girl, this stupid, stupid girl. "Do you not get lonely up here, all on your own?" he asked gently.

"Me?" Gunnlöd asked, voice approaching the closest thing to cynicism Loki had yet heard from her. "I am hardly on my own."

Clearly. Even now, Loki could hear the prattle of Suttung's retainers. He had been surprised to learn that some of them were in fact women. They had just ceased looking the part. "But I daresay no less lonely," he ventured.

Gunnlöd shrugged. "It is a tall mountain and this is an old house. We have a special need for secrecy," she threw a frightened glance Loki's way as though expecting to be punished for mentioning it. She probably was. "I suppose it is better this way. Rather this than have neighbours ceaselessly bearing teeth against us. It is better that I am lonely."

Loki could weep for her, or slap her silly. "Not anymore you are not," he whispered then quickly changed the subject. "Oh, but you have captured my likeness already!"

He pranced to Gunnlöd's perch on the stairs and crouched beside her to gaze at her work. She had indeed managed to find Lofthildur's narrow nose, and her wide mouth, so similar to Skadi's. Freya's vivacious locks were still only curling outlines framing Lofthildur's face. But the eyes staring at him from the paper reminded Loki strangely of his mother's. And the expression in them was… strange. Honest.

Not only did Gunnlöd have a good eye. She also saw very well.

"That is," Loki choked out. "Haunting. Beautiful."

"No, no, it's…" Gunnlöd protested with predictable consistency.

"I know my face when I see it, sister," Loki stated, feeling supremely hypocritical. "Here is my nose, my eyebrows! It is magnificent. Although, perhaps you've made ma a bit prettier."
"But you are beautiful," Gunnlöd said before she could stop herself.

Loki smiled at her, then brushed a gentle thumb against her cheek. "You are kind. So very kind."

She smiled, shy at first, then bolder. Oh, but this girl could have such a brilliant smile, if only she ceased being afraid of her own light.

"It is not finished yet," Gunnlöd said quietly after a moment.

"Of course," Loki walked back to the railing, feeling a heaviness in his breast. He took his time arranging himself, eyes turned away from Suttung's daughter lest she saw the water standing in them. "Was it like this?" he asked once he had composed himself.

"Yes. A bit more to the right, yes."

Not a post for months, and now you get two... Well, honestly, I didn't want to leave you at the last scene of Chapter 32. After that, this one came out in one sitting. I just had to spend some time deciding how exactly to set up the resolution of the plot.

While I was taking a break from this story, however, I returned to an older, larger project that a friend of mine and I have been working on for the past few years (and I have been working on it for fifteen... That's how old I am...). You'll forgive me for a little rant on the subject (and a little shameless marketing, as you'll see).

The project is a SciFi novel that a small community of writers would collaborate on. The idea is that we exchange stories about the same set of original characters, set in the same world, and see where it guides us. There is an overarching plot to guide what would, essentially, be a fanfiction RPG.

The stories we have written so far, and the details about the setting, characters and plot, have not been published anywhere yet (they have just been furiously exchanged on our gmail). If you are interested in hearing what it is, and maybe collaborating with us, leave me a message on FF. If you are interested in posting the invite on your blog, or have an idea about who might be interested, I would also love to hear from you. Cheers!