Loki

Thor had lifted him far enough that his toes no longer touched the floor. Loki was considering three explanations when Sif put the shears on the table.

They made a small, final sound.

Thor tightened his hand. Two explanations vanished. The third concerned the remarkable speed with which hair grew, and Loki decided to save it for someone whose wife was not standing bald before him.

“Put him down,” Sif said.

Thor lowered him until his heels struck the boards. He did not let go.

Loki looked at the pale line where her hair had shaded her forehead. Last night, with the shears in his hand, he had imagined the astonishment at breakfast, Thor roaring, himself already somewhere else. He had not imagined having to look at her for this long.

“I can mend it.”

“Then tell me how.”

He felt Thor’s thumb move against his throat.

“Gold,” Loki said. “Hair of gold. Not a crown, not something you must pin on. It will grow. You will comb it.”

Thor glanced at Sif. Loki took his first easy breath.

“The sons of Ivaldi can make it. I will bring it back.”

“You will swear,” she said.

He swore. Only then did Thor release him.

As Loki reached the door, Sif held out what he had cut away. He had left the long lock on the floor beside her bed. She had bound it now with a strip of cloth.

“Take this too.”

“For the color?”

“So you remember what you are replacing.”

He put it inside his coat. There was no answer that would improve his departure.

The Wager

The sons of Ivaldi gave him more than he needed.

At the end of their work, gold lay across a bench in strands so fine that his breath stirred them. Beside it rested a spear with a point that seemed to draw his eye forward, and a little ship folded into creases no wooden ship should bear. The smiths showed him how its hull opened, how its sail would take a favorable wind wherever its owner wished to go.

Loki spread the hair over his hand. It warmed against his skin.

He could have gone home then.

He could have placed the gold before Sif and walked away with his bones whole. But there were three treasures now. Odin would have the spear. Freyr would have the ship. Before evening, the gods would be asking what marvel Loki might bring them next.

He wrapped the gifts carefully.

Outside the workshop, Brokkr sat repairing the leather of a bellows. He watched Loki tuck the bundle under his arm.

“Carry that level,” the dwarf said. “You will bend the fastening.”

“I know how to carry a gift.”

“You know how to carry. They know how to make.”

Loki stopped.

Through the doorway behind Brokkr he could see another forge, banked low, and the square shoulders of Sindri moving beyond it. No one in that workshop had looked up at his arrival.

“Your brother might profit from a visit next door,” Loki said.

Brokkr pulled his needle through the leather. “Might he?”

“Three pieces. Each better than anything I have seen from this forge.”

“Then you have seen very little.”

Loki should have laughed and continued up the passage. Instead he laid the bundle on a dry stone and unfolded just enough cloth to show the gold.

“Three to equal these. Can he do it?”

“What do you stake?”

The question pleased him. A wager gave the day a shape in which he was no longer a messenger with a burden.

“My head.”

Brokkr put down the bellows.

From within the workshop, Sindri finally turned.

Loki felt the weight of his own words settle. He could still call them a joke. He saw, with sudden clarity, how Brokkr would look at him if he did.

“Let Odin, Thor and Freyr judge,” he added. “Unless you doubt them.”

“I doubt you,” Brokkr said. “The judges will do.”

Three Breaths of the Forge

Sindri put a pigskin into the furnace and set his brother at the bellows.

“Keep the air coming until I take it out.”

Brokkr began to work. The leather rose and fell between his hands. Under its steady breath, the furnace brightened from red to a white that hurt Loki’s eyes.

He slipped out through the doorway.

When he returned, he came beneath the lintel on six legs.

The forge had become enormous. Every hammer stroke shook the air. Heat beat against his wings, and Brokkr’s hand was a moving hillside, its veins rising beneath a crust of soot.

Loki landed where the skin stretched over a knuckle and bit.

The hand jolted. Its owner grunted.

The bellows kept moving.

Loki bit again, deeper, tasting blood. Brokkr pressed his lips together and worked the handles until Sindri drew a living boar from the furnace. Golden bristles threw light into the roof beams. The animal shook itself, and Loki fled the sweep of its ear.

Back in the passage, he took his own shape and leaned against the stone.

One treasure. A remarkable animal, certainly. But Freyr would have a ship that could hold the gods and fold into a pocket. There was still room to win.

Inside, Sindri set gold into the fire.

Loki slipped behind the doorpost and shed his shape again. This time he settled on Brokkr’s neck, beneath the ear, where sweat had softened the skin. He drove his bite in and held it. The dwarf made a sound through his teeth. One shoulder rose toward the pain.

For a moment Loki thought the hand would follow.

It did not.

Brokkr had found the rhythm again. Lift, press. Lift, press. His whole body bent to it, taking the pain with him, giving it no separate moment in which to matter.

Sindri drew out a ring.

A ring, Loki thought, almost laughing with relief—until he heard what it would do. On every ninth night, eight rings of equal weight would drop from it.

The relief left him. Odin liked gifts that continued giving.

He flew back into the passage. With his own feet on the stone again, he found himself touching his neck.

Sindri brought iron for the third making.

“Do not stop,” he told Brokkr. “Not this time.”

Loki watched the furnace swallow the metal. He could leave now. Take the treasures and run far enough that even Thor would need time to find him. But the gods would hear who had fled, and why. Brokkr would come to their hall carrying three proofs of it.

No. One ruined piece would be enough. There would be a flaw he could point to, a defect no clever speech could conceal.

He became the fly again.

Brokkr’s hands were beyond persuading. Loki passed them, rose through the hot air and settled between the dwarf’s eyes.

He bit the eyelid.

Brokkr jerked his head. Loki held on. Blood welled beneath him, ran along the brow, gathered in the lashes. The dwarf blinked hard. His breath came in bursts, but the bellows still answered one hand and then the other.

Loki dug deeper.

Brokkr’s face vanished behind a sweep of fingers. The blow caught Loki and hurled him against the wall.

For one beat, the bellows fell still.

Sindri shouted.

Loki clung to the stone while the world wheeled around him. Below, Brokkr seized the handles again, too late to hide the break. Sindri thrust his tongs into the furnace and drew out a hammer.

Its handle was short.

Loki saw that before he saw anything else. The head was massive, the grip absurdly small beneath it. Thor would look ridiculous holding it.

He crawled into a crack and waited until his wings would carry him.

The Best Gift

At the judgment, Loki left the hair until last.

First came Gungnir, the spear. Odin tested its balance and followed its point with his one eye. Then Loki opened Skidbladnir across the stones before Freyr. A breeze filled its sail. He folded it again and placed it in the god’s hand.

Only then did he turn toward Sif.

The gold slid from its wrapping. She touched it before allowing him near, testing a strand between finger and thumb. Loki laid it on her head. It took root beneath his hands, flowing down past her shoulders, warm and supple as the hair he had stolen.

A murmur went through those watching.

“There,” he said softly. “Better than before.”

Sif drew a strand across her palm.

“You have kept your oath.”

She moved away before he could make that sound like praise.

Brokkr brought out the boar. Freyr rose to meet it. Then came the ring, which Odin received without taking his attention from the dwarf.

Last was the hammer.

Loki laughed as Brokkr laid it before Thor.

“Did you run short of iron?”

Brokkr’s eyelid had swollen. He had washed his face, but blood remained in the creases beside his nose.

“Take it,” he said to Thor.

Thor closed one hand around the grip.

“Both hands would be more usual,” Loki said.

Thor lifted it. Turned it. The hammer looked less foolish now.

“It will not fail what you strike,” Brokkr told him. “Throw it, and it will return.”

Thor looked toward the bare hillside beyond the assembly. Before Loki could speak again, he threw.

Stone burst high on the slope. The sound reached them a moment later. Loki ducked as the hammer came back across the court and settled into Thor’s hand with a heavy slap.

Thor was smiling.

Loki looked from that smile to the short grip. He had put it there. He had bitten through skin, endured the heat, risked being crushed, and made precisely the imperfection that now seemed too small for anyone to care about.

Odin set the spear upright beside his seat.

“The hammer.”

Freyr nodded. Thor did not need to.

Brokkr put away the empty wrappings. “My wager.”

Loki offered gold. He offered more gold than he possessed. Brokkr refused each amount with the same small movement of his head.

Then Loki ran.

His shoes carried him above the stones, out past the last watching faces. Air struck his cheeks. He heard Brokkr call to Thor and bent forward, reaching for speed.

A hand caught his coat from behind.

The cloth cut into his arms. The sky turned. Thor brought him back with one knee torn open and set him down before the dwarf.

Brokkr drew his knife.

The Last Word

Loki watched the edge approach and discovered that he had no wish to be remembered for any of this.

Not the spear. Not the ship. Not even the marvelous hammer that Thor had tucked into his belt.

He wanted the next breath.

“The head,” he said.

Brokkr paused.

“You won my head. I grant it.”

Thor’s fingers tightened on his shoulders. Loki forced himself to keep still.

“But not my neck.”

The knife rested cold beneath his jaw.

“Cut carefully,” Loki whispered. “Nothing that is not yours.”

Brokkr looked up at him. Then he looked toward the judges.

Odin said nothing. He did not need to. Loki felt the blade withdraw, and air went into his chest so suddenly that he nearly laughed.

Brokkr took a cord from his pouch.

“What is that for?”

The dwarf tested its length between his hands.

Loki tried to turn. Thor held him facing forward.

“No neck,” Brokkr said.

He raised the knife to Loki’s mouth. Its point slipped without piercing. Loki’s relief flared again, wild and premature.

“An awl,” Brokkr said. “My brother’s awl would do it.”

The tool was there when he reached for it.

Loki had time to draw one breath through his open mouth. Then the point entered his lip.

He tried to cry out. Brokkr pulled the first stitch tight.

After that, Loki breathed through his nose and kept his eyes on the ground between the dwarf’s feet. A black grain of iron lay there, caught in a crack. He counted it, lost it, found it again while the cord passed through.

When Thor let him go, he stumbled but did not fall.

The gods were gathering their treasures. Freyr called to the boar. Odin walked away with the spear. Thor tested the hammer’s weight once more, and the pleasure in that small movement was unbearable.

Loki reached inside his coat.

Sif was at the edge of the court. He caught her sleeve and held out the lock he had carried down to the smiths and back. The cloth binding had loosened. A few hairs clung to his fingers.

She took it.

He wanted to tell her that no one would remember her old hair now. They would speak of the gold. They would speak of everything he had brought home.

His mouth moved against the stitches. He raised his hand to steady the painful cord; when he lowered it, a loose hair remained caught there.

Sif stepped closer. For an instant he thought she meant to untie them. Instead she lifted one loose strand of her old hair from the cord, drew it carefully free and wound it around the lock in her hand.

Then she left him with his head.