Loki: Why I Began the End Read online

  L O K I :

  WHY I BEGAN THE END

  by

  Maia Jacomus

  For loved ones lost

  that their memories last as long

  as ancient mythologies

  Copyright © 2013 Maia Jacomus

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.

  http://maiajacomus.webs.com

  CHAPTER ONE: THE BEGINNING

  Okay, yes, you’re right. It’s time I told you more about how I came to be strapped down with a serpent leaking venom on my face. I didn’t want to tell you before, because not only did it mean telling a rather long story, but it also means revisiting the deception, anger, and pain of those years. Still, you’re right; you’ve helped me all these years without truly understanding my situation—catching the venom in that bowl, never leaving my side. So I’ll tell you thoroughly and from the very beginning. I owe you at least that much. I’ll start with…Yes. I would have to start with Odin.

  ––

  I’ll never forget the first time I met Odin. I’d heard of him from all over—mostly from my fellow Jotun. He was always called our greatest enemy, as he was the god who slaughtered our earliest ancestor, the first to exist, the giant called Ymir, and so started the archrivalship of Jotun against Aesir, giant against god. And though I held willing kinship with—albeit a scarce few of—the Jotun, I did also greatly admire Odin’s deed. After all, in slaying Ymir, he assembled the world as we know it with the giant’s corpulent leftovers. Far be it from me to deny a man like that his due respect.

  I was exploring Midgard that day, at times playing mild pranks on the humans, when I found myself at the world’s axis. I knew it to be so; the trunk of the mighty world tree stretched its ash boughs so high up, that its canopy could not be seen. I’d walked by the stem of Yggdrasil many times before, mostly to look up toward the realm of Asgard, where every Jotun’s enemy lived. However, this time, I was drawn to look down at the ground. A wide hole had been dug open at the base of the trunk, and moans issued from deep within it. Peering inside, I saw a man some distance deep, hanging upside-down by a spear that was pierced through his side, sticking him to the wall. With a wry grin, I asked, “Have the moles finally taken their revenge?”

  A light laugh escaped up and out the hole. “Would you give me a hand, lad?”

  I reached my arm as far into the hole as I could, and I felt him grasp it.

  “Keep a tight hold as I remove the spear,” he instructed.

  I added my other hand to the grip as I heard him groan, removing the spear from his side. “Now, give me your other hand, and I’ll pull you up.”

  He put his other hand in mine, then I braced my feet against the ground as I rocked back and up to my feet, pulling him halfway out the hole. I grasped under his arms to bring him to the surface in full.

  He really wasn’t an impressive figure then. His long white hair and beard were dirty and disheveled, he wore a cloth band over his left eye, and blood poured from his side, staining his ragged clothing.

  He laughed slightly as he said, “Thank you.” He struggled to sit himself up against the trunk of the tree.

  “Anywhere I can take you?” I asked, looking at his wound.

  He waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll be fine.”

  I chuckled at the man’s state, which turned to laughter. “What were you doing?”

  “It was the only way I could read the runes on Yggdrasil’s roots. They tell knowledge of the Nine Worlds.”

  “Huh! And your eye?”

  “I had to sacrifice it in order to drink from Mimir, the fountain of hidden wisdom.”

  “So…what do you do if you need to ask for directions? You cut off a toe?”

  He shook his finger. “Laugh if you will, but it’s all worth it.”

  “I will at least admit that of all the people in the world who seek knowledge, you don’t settle for halfway.” I put out my hand. “I’m Loki.”

  He shook my hand and said, “I am Odin.”

  At the moment our hands struck, something seemed also to strike at our minds. When I looked at our hands, they were dripping with blood. But as I blinked, there was no blood—it was only an illusion. The look in his eye suggested he saw something similar.

  His grey eye flicked up to lock on mine. “Jotun.”

  “Aesir.”

  We parted then. I didn’t see him again for some weeks. I knew I would see him again, though; that connection we had, however strange, would bring us together again. I spent some time in Jotunheim and visited my friend Angerboda. I had gone to her run-down house and told her how I’d met Odin. She quickly locked up the door and sat me down at her table.

  “You met the Aesir’s leader Odin?” she asked. She eagerly sifted her hands through her stiff black hair, as she often did when she was formulating a scheme. “He who has the knowledge from Mimir and Yggdrasil roots?” She cackled with delight and stoked the fire. “Loki, you are even more clever than you are renowned to be! Can you see the advantage of partnering with such a figure?”

  “I’d much rather partner with your figure,” I quipped with a grin.

  She smiled. “All in time, sir.” She sprinkled some herbs into the pot of boiling water, inhaling their scent deeply. “Loki, this sign you told me of, with your hands…”

  “It wasn’t a sign,” I sighed. She always tried to define fate by the shape of the moon, the patterns of mushroom growth, and the bated breath of a predatory cat. It was extremely irritating. I can’t remember how many times she prophesied I would mate with a horse. Yes, it was as ridiculous as it sounds. She would hear the harmony of a wolf call, or would trace the design of a snowflake, go into a “trance”, and say, “Loki, you will mate with a stallion.” I would often retort with, “As long as it’s a gelding; I don’t have child-bearing hips,” and then I would leave and not visit her again for months. I had an inkling that my bloody hand was leading to the same thing.

  “It was a sign,” she insisted, “a very profound one.”

  I rose to my feet with a roll of my eyes. “Fine. Come to think of it, I saw a stallion while coming up the mountain. I’ll just hop on down and let him have his way with me.”

  “Not that, Loki. Sit.”

  I shrugged and sat back down. “Just as my long-awaited destiny is about to be realized…I suppose I can wait if he can. So, Angerboda, sere of seers, what does my bloody hand signify?”

  She waved her hands furiously over the pot, causing the water inside to stir. “It signifies a very strong bond, Sly One.”

  “…So you’re saying Odin’s the stallion?”

  She rounded on me. “Forget the stallion!”

  “Gladly!”

  With one hand, she pulled me to my feet and shoved me over to the pot. “Look in there, Dagger Tongue, and tell me what you see.”

  Only a morbid curiosity drove me to peer into the swirling water of the pot, heat rising to bead sweat on my face. I saw two hands, though not who they belonged to. They were slashed through the palms with a dagger, then they clasped together, coming to the exact image I had seen shaking Odin’s hand.

  Angerboda’s eyes grew wide with greed. “Do you know what this means? You will walk with the Aesir. You will learn all their power, and add it to what you already possess. You will be able t
o do vengeance for the Jotun, at last!”

  I could hardly speak, I was so shocked. All I could say was, “I hope you’re wrong, witch dear.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you’re right about this, then I probably also have to mate with a stallion.”

  She slapped me across the back of my head, something I’d grown so used to, that I barely felt it. I made a point of not visiting her for awhile.

  The next time I saw Odin, I had been trolling Midgard, searching for which alehouse was the best. This meant that I stopped at every alehouse in sight and drank the place dry. The third alehouse, whichever it was, was always the best, because after drinking so much, it was the only one I remembered. Then, as tradition followed, the bartender would have his bouncers throw me out, causing me to roll down the hill and into a thicket.

  It was in just such a thicket with just such a hangover that I woke to the sound of voices nearby.

  “For such a thick wood,” said one, “there is not much around to eat.”

  “Let’s go back east,” said another, “I think I had heard some animals scurrying back there.”

  “That was just a gust of wind.”

  “And what would you suggest?”

  “West.” I sat up, slowly rising to my feet, and approached the two Aesir. One was clearly Odin. “There’s a field of oxen to the west, about a quarter of an hour’s walk.”

  Odin smirked. “And from which direction did you find the ale?”

  I chuckled, sweeping my red hair away from my ale-reddened face. “Doesn’t matter. There’s none left.” The both of us laughed, until his companion cleared his throat loudly.

  “Loki, this is my brother Hoenir. Hoenir, this is my friend Loki.”

  After the momentary shock of being called “friend”, I shook Hoenir’s hand, which he seemed hesitant to do.

  “If your sobriety allows,” Odin said, “guide us to this field of oxen.”

  “On the contrary,” I said, “my sense of direction in this area is better when I’m thoroughly inebriated—fortunately for the two of you.” While Odin and I shared another laugh as we started out, Hoenir looked at me with heavy and painfully obvious suspicion. My voice low, with a hint of gentle mocking, I said to him, “If you don’t close your mouth, you’re likely to trip over your chin.”

  He nodded, closing his agape mouth with a scant, nervous smile.

  We found the field with ease and made short work of the nearest ox. The long work came with skinning and preparing it for proper cooking and eating. Each time we finished carving a piece to put on the fire, an eagle dove down and snatched it away. It stole away all four legs, and when it came down to swipe the steak, I readied myself with a large fallen branch and struck it when it came near enough. It hung in the air a moment, then dove and clutched its talons into my shoulders, raising me off the ground and into the sky.

  The pain of the talons boring into me was nothing compared to the fear of being released of them, and my bones colliding with the ground at least a hundred feet below.

  “Put me down, you mangy, oversized chicken!” I shouted, hurling my fists.

  It laughed. It wasn’t an eagle, not really; eagles don’t laugh. “I’ll set you down nice and easy, Loki,” it said, “if you do me a favor.”

  Unfortunately, I knew that voice. It was Thiazi, the storm giant. He often liked to take the guise of an eagle, feeling that being able to fly brought him closer to Asgard. “What favor?” I asked.

  “I heard you’re in good with Odin. I want some of Iduna’s apples.”

  If it wouldn’t have caused me to plummet to the ground, I would have strangled him. Iduna served the Aesir in Asgard golden apples daily, which kept them ageless in their immortality. “I may have had congenial encounters with Odin, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to let me in his front door.”

  The monstrous jerk flew higher, the clouds mounting beneath my feet. “I want some of Iduna’s apples.”

  “Yes!” I cried out desperately. “Fine! Whatever you say! Just set my feet back on the ground, you feathered imbecile!”

  In a flash, he dove back to the ground and halted just near enough to drop me to safety, then sped away, squawking hideously.

  “Some bird…” Hoenir said, watching it fly away.

  “A giant bird,” Odin said suggestively.

  He was always clever like that; I started then to understand how people would get so irritated with me. I needed to invent an excuse: “Thiazi, the storm giant. Rumor in Jotunheim is that Loki has been seen chumming up to an Aesir—Odin, no less.”

  “Is that so?”

  “As it happens, Jotun don’t like Aesir, and they really don’t like Odin. So Thiazi took it upon himself to remind Loki of who his kin really is.”

  “And how did Loki take it?”

  “I think I heard him scream like a girl once or twice, but he managed to swallow his shrieks long enough to tell Thiazi very specifically that he would be better suited disguising himself as the back part of a mule instead.”

  He laughed—praise Yggdrasil, he bought it! I allowed myself to laugh, too, and even Hoenir joined in, unable to miss the humor in ridiculing a Jotun.

  I had absolutely no intention in actually following through with my promise to Thiazi. Even if I had wanted to help the great jerk, I couldn’t; Iduna never left Asgard, and I, being a Jotun, was not allowed to enter Asgard. However, being only half-giant and the relative size of a human or Aesir, I was significantly overpowered by the rest of the Jotun, who knew of the promise I made to Thiazi, and banded with him to coerce me into keeping my word. And while Jotunheim was my home, I had to appeal to the citizens, else Angerboda would be peeling me off from beneath Thiazi’s foot. Under such pressure did I formulate a plan.

  Dressed as a human, I made some rounds once again to alehouses—the ones I hadn’t yet drunk dry. While there, I sat myself among the more talkative crowds up at the bar counter. Eventually, their talk would migrate over to me, the mysterious one.

  “What brings you to this part of the world, stranger?” one finally asked.

  “I’m chasing a myth,” I replied.

  “What’s that mean?”

  Pulling together my best storyteller voice, I said, “I’ve heard that there is a hidden grove of sacred trees where golden apples grow.”

  “Like, solid gold?”

  I shook my head. “Whoever eats them gains immortality.”

  That was all I needed. I went to merely two alehouses, and talk of the magical golden apples spread wider than even the Storm Giant could reach with the full length of his arms. Two days later, as I laid in wait, I saw Iduna descending from the rainbow bridge of Asgard, clutching her ash box, as always, where she stored her apples. I casually wandered out from my place, keeping eyes focused on my path as I walked by. I feigned surprise at seeing a lady at the foot of the bridge, and halted in my tracks. She smiled at me somewhat timidly, and I took it as an opening.

  “Forgive me for staring,” I began. “I was just curious as to where you may be traveling, having come from Asgard.”

  “I have heard there is a sacred grove where enchanted apples grow,” she replied. “I feed my own apples to the Aesir. I thought to find these new apples, and have brought my own to compare.” She raised the lid of the ash box to display the shining golden apples.

  I let my brow fall into a perplexed state. “A grove of enchanted apples? In Midgard? Some ridiculous rumor, I’m sure. There couldn’t be any place like that down here in the humans’ realm.”

  Not a moment later, Thiazi swooped down, his great eagle wings flapping, took hold of Iduna by her fragile arms, and flew away.

  “Put her down!”

  Of course he didn’t listen; he wasn’t supposed to. He took her off to Jotunheim. By the time I arrived there myself, I was a hero.

  CHAPTER TWO: BROTHERHOOD

  I was more glad than I could say. It had been some time since I pulled off a prank, and had never pulled off one of
such measure—one to trick the Aesir. Best of all, while the Jotun worshiped me for as long as their slight attention spans would allow, Odin believed in the mask of innocence I had created for myself in my encounter with Iduna before her capture. I very deliberately made myself available to encounter him, walking leisurely by the trunk of the world tree, to show him just how “upset” I was over the poor girl’s abduction. It took hardly even three full days for Odin to approach me at that place.

  At first glance, one would not suppose anything was going wrong with the Aesir. Odin was always excellent in displaying only a countenance of determination, purpose, and at the same time, utmost indifference—a man so guarded, that I almost couldn’t say what to think of him. Almost. With his usual tread of solid, deliberate steps, his face not striking any concerns or troubles, he came to me at the base of Yggdrasil.

  “Loki, my friend, you were witness to the abduction of our Iduna,” he began.

  I nodded slowly and said, “I am more sorry than I can say. Being only half-giant, I am barely contest for an ogre like Thiazi.”

  “You underestimate your abilities, Loki.”

  Though the statement was made simply enough, it struck me—did he determine that it had really been all my plotting? But going on, he made no such declaration to that knowledge.

  “Despite our many powers,” Odin said, “Aesir may still be overtaken by creatures so large and strong as the Jotun. And in speaking with my council, no one could determine a course of action—by force or strategy—to retrieve Iduna from such a dangerous place for us as Jotunheim. So I have come to appeal to you, friend.”

  I felt a sudden shock down my spine, unbelieving that Odin could possibly ask what he was about to.

  “I ask for your help, Loki, in returning Iduna to us. One of my raven scouts confirmed that she is being kept in a high tower, unreachable to anyone not of a giant’s stature.” He then brought up the sack he was carrying and removed a feathered cloak. “This is Freya’s cloak.”

  Now a lump caught in my throat at the sound of Freya’s name, the name of another Aesir being used so freely in my presence.