A Broken Clasp
Heimdall heard the clasp break.
It was a small sound, scarcely louder than a seed husk opening. He turned from the empty bridge. Behind him, Asgard lay quiet under its roofs, but something had fallen against a wooden floor: gold touching gold, followed by a hand closing over it.
Then running feet.
He lifted Gjallarhorn from its peg. Before he could raise it, the footsteps stopped. Far below the walls, stones rattled down a slope. Someone had jumped.
Heimdall set the horn against his shoulder and listened past the hall fires, past the horses shifting in their stalls, past the wind combing the grass. A chain scraped rock. He knew that chain. He had heard it stir against Freyja’s throat whenever she crossed the bridge.
By the time she reached him, he was fastening his cloak.
“Which way?” she asked.
Her hair was loose. One hand covered the bare place above her breastbone.
“Toward the sea.”
“Loki?”
From the darkness below came a breathless little laugh, too far away for her to hear.
Heimdall nodded.
Freyja caught his arm. “Bring it back whole.”
He looked at her hand, then at the bridge. Its pale colors stretched into the night. No one stood at the farther end, but that had never been a reason to leave it unguarded.
He struck the bronze rim of his door three times with his sword-hilt. Across Asgard a bed creaked. A voice swore. Soon Thor came out of the dark with his hammer in his fist, barefoot and wearing the expression of a man who had expected a fight immediately.
“The bridge,” Heimdall said. “Until I return.”
Thor glanced from Freyja’s bare throat to Heimdall’s cloak.
“Bring him back too.”
Heimdall was already going down the slope.
Below the last light of Asgard the path split. He took neither branch. The chain had sounded again, faint and hurried, beyond a ridge of stone. He climbed over it and descended through thorn scrub that pulled at his cloak. Once he stopped so abruptly that loose shale overtook him and spilled down the hillside.
No footsteps now.
He waited. Water sucked between rocks. A nesting bird shifted beneath a ledge. Farther out, where the sea washed the foot of Singasteinn, something hard tapped stone twice.
He went toward it.
Under Singasteinn
Loki sat on the skerry with his boots beside him, holding Brisingamen across his knees. The necklace gathered what little light the sky gave. One end of its broken fastening dangled between his fingers.
“I wondered which sound would fetch you,” he said.
Heimdall stepped onto the wet rock. “Put it down.”
Loki drew the chain through his hand. Its links made a soft, deliberate rustle.
“This one?”
Heimdall moved closer. There was water behind Loki and water on either side. The short strip of rock joining the skerry to the shore was already disappearing under the tide.
“Freyja wants it whole.”
“How fortunate. She has sent the careful one.”
Heimdall reached for him.
Loki slipped backward. His heels left the rock, and the body that struck the sea was a seal’s. A sleek dark head broke the surface a little way out. Brisingamen hung from its mouth.
For an instant they looked at one another.
Then the head vanished.
Heimdall unclasped his cloak. He laid it above the wet line and set the horn and sword upon it. Below him, the necklace scraped the underside of the skerry.
He entered the water as a seal.
Cold closed over his head. The sea carried a thousand movements against his body: the pull around a stone, the stir of weed, the sharp disturbance of a tail ahead. He drove downward. Loki’s pale underside flashed once between two rocks, then turned away.
Heimdall followed.
Loki swam fast in open water. Among the rocks he became quicker still, folding himself around corners so closely that Heimdall struck his shoulder trying to hold the same line. Pain ran into his chest. He shortened his turn and listened.
The chain rattled to his left.
He went right.
There Loki was, doubling back through a gap. The sound had reached Heimdall around the longer side of the rock; the beating of Loki’s body in the water had given him away.
Heimdall struck him across the middle.
They rolled together. Brisingamen flashed between them. Heimdall caught its loose end in his teeth, felt the links tighten, and stopped pulling before they broke.
Loki used the hesitation. He twisted under Heimdall and drove him against the stone.
The blow emptied some of the air from his lungs. Bubbles rose past his eyes. Loki wrenched free, taking the necklace with him, and shot into a narrow opening beneath the skerry.
Heimdall went after him before he could reach the surface.
Inside, the water darkened. The cleft was high enough for a seal but too narrow to turn in. Loki’s tail vanished around a bend. Heimdall pressed forward, feeling the walls brush both sides of his body.
The passage opened suddenly into a hollow. He rose and found air under the rock roof.
He drew it in with a harsh gasp.
Loki floated opposite him. Only his head and the bright loop of the necklace showed above water. A low shelf lay behind him. Beyond that, moonlight shone through a second opening.
Heimdall watched the necklace. Its damaged clasp had caught in Loki’s whiskers.
“You can leave it on the shelf,” he said, and his voice sounded strange in the close air.
Loki raised his head a little. The gold rose with it.
“And let you stand at the bridge looking pleased whenever I pass?”
“You could stop giving me reasons.”
Water surged into the hollow. Their bodies lifted. The roof came closer, and the moonlit exit disappeared.
Loki glanced toward it.
Heimdall lunged.
This time he caught the loose skin behind Loki’s head. They went under together. Loki struck sideways, but Heimdall held and drove him toward the shelf. He could feel the other seal’s strength working against his grip, every twist running down its body before it came.
Then Loki stopped struggling.
Heimdall felt the change a moment too late. Loki folded beneath him, braced against the wall and thrust upward. Heimdall’s back struck the underside of the shelf. He was wedged between stone and the full weight of his enemy.
The necklace came free.
It drifted beside Heimdall’s face, close enough to touch. He opened his jaws and snapped, catching nothing. The chain slid past his cheek. Its bright weight drew it down into a crack at the bottom of the hollow.
Loki released him and turned toward the exit.
Heimdall surged after him. For one body-length there was nothing between his teeth and Loki’s hind flipper. One stroke would close the distance. He had followed that laugh across too many hills, had watched its owner walk back over the bridge with other people’s grief tucked behind his smile.
Below them, gold struck stone.
Heimdall turned down.
The Smallest Sound
The crack narrowed around his head. Brisingamen lay beyond it, half caught beneath a flake of rock. He could see the nearest links. The heavier part rested farther down, where the darkness thickened.
He caught the chain and pulled gently.
It held.
He eased backward, changed the angle, tried again. A thin grating traveled through the gold into his teeth. He stopped. The chain was dragging the necklace harder against the edge that trapped it.
His chest began to ache for air.
He pushed his muzzle deeper. Rock scraped above his eye. The opening was too small for his shoulders; he could advance no farther, and the necklace lay just beyond the reach of his mouth.
He let the links slip until he held only the broken fastening.
For a moment he remained still.
The sea moved through the crack. He felt its pull on the loose chain and heard the little strokes of the trapped gold against stone. Each surge lifted one side of the necklace. Each withdrawal laid it back in the same place.
He waited through another surge.
The gold lifted.
He pushed the chain forward instead of drawing it out. A link slid against his lip. Below, the necklace tipped. He heard one hard click, distinct from the others.
He pulled sideways.
The whole weight came loose against his mouth.
He backed out so quickly that his shoulder caught the wall. Pain shot through him, but the necklace was moving with him now. He clamped it behind his teeth and rose.
His head struck the roof.
The air pocket was gone.
He rolled, searching for the pale exit. Water was pouring through it into the hollow. He swam toward the opening and met the surge head-on. It stopped him as surely as a hand against his chest.
He drove harder. The opening remained beyond his nose.
His body wanted a breath. He held his mouth shut around the gold and ceased swimming.
The water carried him back.
He let it, keeping his head toward the pale gap. Weed swept inward along the ceiling, streamed past him, then slowly slackened. A loose pebble rolled at the bottom of the hollow.
The water turned.
He struck out with it.
Stone rushed past his sides. The cleft tightened, opened, and threw him into the sea beyond the skerry. He rose through cold black water until the surface broke across his head.
Air came painfully. He breathed, sank, and fought upward again. Gold pressed against his tongue. He would not open his mouth enough to let it go.
When he reached the rock, Loki’s boots were gone.
Heimdall hauled himself above the wash. For a while he lay beside his cloak, the necklace pooled against the stone beneath his face.
Then he took his own shape. His hands shook as he gathered the links. He counted them by touch, tested the settings and turned the damaged clasp between finger and thumb.
Whole, except for the break he had heard at the beginning.
He wrapped it inside his cloak and picked up the horn.
Freyja was waiting at his door when he returned. Thor stood in the middle of the bridge, arguing with a traveler who had apparently chosen a poor time to ask when he might cross.
Heimdall opened the cloak.
Freyja took Brisingamen without speaking. Her thumb passed over the wet gold. Then she looked at the scrape above his eye.
“Where is he?”
Heimdall laid the horn on its peg. “Gone.”
She looked down at the necklace again.
“Hold this.”
She put one end in his hand and bent the broken fastening with the point of a small knife. He steadied it while she worked. Water dripped from his sleeve onto the threshold.
At last she took the chain from him and raised it to her neck. The repaired clasp closed with a small uneven click.
Heimdall heard it settle against her hair.
He went out to relieve Thor. Behind him, Freyja’s footsteps crossed the hall and faded; before him, far beyond the bridge, the first bird began to stir.
