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coldsongNo crown but the locks of gold and platinum braided into my hair. No robe but armor that has seen me through more than one death. No throne but the chunk of sea ice I step up to, then kneel upon, at the edge of the ocean that appears within the Nexus when someone is looking for it.
Is it actually an ocean? Maybe that’s the real secret. There is no literal body of water here, only a plane of rippling mystery, depths unplumbed and unknown. The sea of the subconscious, Mimir’s Well, water that is neither water nor knowledge nor life nor death, but somehow all of these things. It figures, doesn’t it, that such a body of water should wash up and break its waves upon the shores of the Nexus?
Mimir’s Well, the Well of Urd, the spring Hvergelmir, all these are the same water. I should have seen it sooner. But I saw it when I needed to most. That’s how a story always goes.
The wind picks me up, carries me past the piled ice at the sea’s edge, over the water to where the floes drift with space between them. It’s close to the spring thaw; soon there will be no ice here at all.
I am a frost-flower, a branch with leaves fallen to dust. Something within me chills and swells and expands, breaking through skin and flesh and bone, bringing forth petals of suffering and death and delicate beauty. I let it. I lie in space, cradled in the wind as Odin once hung from the branch of a tree. I am stabbed, pierced from within, not without, and what streams forth, freezes and curls around me is ice and fire, sap and milk, bright and dark, bitter and sweet, in the darkest season.
I am everything, but not all at once, and not without the interruption of death and renewal. I am a story with chapters. A poem. A song with many stanzas.
I release the wind, and I fall, a sacrifice of myself to myself, for myself. The ice cracks beneath me, giving my body passage, and the shock of cold water passes through me to the very bones.
This is sacred. I could become a fish in this water, a seasnake, a whale. I could swim, but that wouldn’t be a fitting sacrifice. I let myself sink, hold my breath until I can bear it no longer and then let my lungs fill, let my body convulse and thrash and fight--too far from the surface to change my mind now.
My eyes are open, but there is no light this deep, or maybe I’m dying, and the stillness growing within me is simply death. But there is no pain, and I hear a voice:
“You should have been mine, you know. You cheated me, dying from a wrecked ship, but dying in space and not in the sea.” It’s a female voice, low and dark and both beautiful and utterly chilling.
I try to speak, but my air is all used up already, and no sound comes out. But I reach up and tug at the horns of my helmet, pulling it from my head. I expected her. I know she watches me sometimes, ever since she loaned me her net. I brought her this gift, the richest gold I have, aside from the locks woven into my hair, and I hold out the helm with both hands.
I can hear her laughing softly, and in a twinkling the helmet is gone, accepted, and the pressure in my chest eases.
“Lady Ran,” I attempt to speak once more, and manage it this time. “The honor is, as always, all mine.”
“It is,” she agrees. “But you are the opposite of unwelcome here.”
“I cannot stay. I have work that must be done.”
“Oh, little Loki, it is not for you to tell me whether you can stay or go.”
I wait, then, staying silent. Sweet words are little use to the queen of the depths.
“But I do like you,” she says, and I can feel the cold dark pressure of the water ripple up my back and around the crown of my head, like a caress.
That is permission to make my case, and so I tell her the one thing most likely to win her to my side: “I go to take vengeance against the man responsible for the murder of your grandson.”
The currents are impossibly strong down here. She could rend me apart with a thought, and for a second I think that is what she is doing, as the water pulls at me. But no, it’s only an expression of emotion, rage undirected.
“Heimdall deserved a worthier death,” she says. “And his body should have come to me, not been left to drift between the stars.”
“Thor tried--” I begin, but she hushes me.
“I do not blame Thor. I know where the fault lies.” There is a heavy pause, and then: “You will deliver Heimdall’s body to me, and I will give you passage. This is my bargain, and no other.”
Now I regret bringing Heimdall’s fate up to her. I have no idea how I can retrieve his corpse from space. Finding where the Statesman was when it was attacked should not be hard, but how far might the flotsam and jetsam of the disaster have floated? And what if I find my own corpse instead? I have enough existential crises to deal with.
But she has made it clear there is no refusing this assignment, and reluctantly I add it to my mental to-do list. “It will be my honor, my Lady,” I tell her.
She laughs again. “You speak of honor often, in my presence. I know what your honor is, Trickster. You must leave me collateral, a gift that I can hold until you fulfill your end of the bargain.”
“Drowning wasn’t enough?” I know I’m speaking out of turn, but I can’t help but feel the unfairness of this demand.
“No,” she answers calmly. “Death is merely a thing that happens, and happens to you more than to most.”
A fair observation; I can’t deny it. “What would you have of me, then?”
“Your skin,” she says. “Your Asgardian skin, the guise you wear amongst your kind and humans alike. I will hold it until you return with Heimdall’s body. Whatever you must do in the meantime, you can do in your Jotun form, or one of your many other shapes.”
For a moment, I don’t know what to say. On the one hand, she could have demanded something far more necessary to my survival--my magic, a part of my body. Indeed, it might even be more expedient to walk Midgard in Jotun form; I may be harder for the survivors of New York to recognize that way. On the other hand, that means I will have to confront Thor and the other remnants of Asgard in the shape of their mortal enemy.
I am quiet for too long. She speaks again: “You have no time to waste, Loki Odinson. Thank me for my clemency, and go.”
And in the end, she’s right. If I left nothing behind for her save a helmet, I might well neglect the errand she asks of me. The dead, after all, are beyond my help. I cannot bring Heimdall back to life, and proper observation of burial rights isn’t my providence. I hate being outmaneuvered, but here it is more expedient to swallow my pride than to fight back.
“Very well,” I tell her. “Take it.”
I feel her hands on me, and then I don’t feel a thing, except cold.
“I will give you this advice,” she says, ripples of water running through my fingers. “Mine is not the only realm of the dead you will need to enter before you quest is done, son of Odin. Prepare yourself for a queen who will not be reasoned with at all.”
“Hela,” I say with muted dread. “I had thought to avoid her.”
“You had best think again, then,” Ran says, and I know down to my very soul that she is right.
----------
Left, 95. Right, 32. Left, 12. You dial in the combination on the clunky old safe. They could have given you something more advanced, in Wakanda. Something that would hold this thing inside it truly safe and isolated. But you and Steve, you’ve learned to live in this brave new world but you’re not comfortable with it sometimes. No. This is better. It's simple. You put in the right formula and it does what you tell it to.
Right, 10. Left, 78. Click.
The first thing you notice is the smell of water. It’s not unusual to smell the sea in New Asgard; you’re practically on the ocean, but this, this is a stronger scent than normal. Sweeter. Colder. It reminds you of Lake Baikal, the ice thicker than a man is tall, the winter stillness, the beautiful slate-blue mountains scratching at the open sky.
There was so much around you to hate back then, around and inside you, but you never managed to hate the water, or the mountains, or the sky.
The safe door swings open suddenly on its own, clipping your metal arm as it goes, and there’s a sharp metallic clank that seems to echo through the room. And then water pours out, soaking your pants, your shoes, bitter cold. It bites at your toes through the layered wool socks you wear, and you stumble back, because how in God’s name could that much water have been in that safe? How did it even get in there?
Almost as soon as it rushes onto the floor, the water begins to freeze, a pool of deep-blue ice forming, piling up higher as more pours out of the safe. For a second you think you’re going to drown in it, or be captured and frozen , and you press against the wall, fight or flight instincts screaming.
(Let’s be real. Most of your instincts are attuned toward fight now, whether you like it or not.)
You’ve got a knife in your hand even before you recognize that the gathering ice is taking a humanlike form. Once you notice that, you’re glad you have it.
The water slows to a trickle. The light within the safe fades, and the man that’s appeared, reaches slowly toward the Casket.
“Don’t you move an inch, pal,” your voice is rough, a soldier’s growl, one you haven’t bothered to use since the 1940s. The stranger turns as if he didn’t expect to see you. He’s tall, thin, dripping wet, blue skin and red eyes like some kind of horror movie monster, but he looks at you, at the knife you’re threatening him with (a ranged weapon would really be better here, goddammit), and puts his hands up passively.
“That won’t be necessary. I need to see Thor,” he says. “Or Rogers. You’re Barnes, are you not?”
“Bucky,” you say. “My name is Bucky. Who the hell are you?”
“A friend,” he says, and smiles.
Well. Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell.
((Musical Inspiration))
Is it actually an ocean? Maybe that’s the real secret. There is no literal body of water here, only a plane of rippling mystery, depths unplumbed and unknown. The sea of the subconscious, Mimir’s Well, water that is neither water nor knowledge nor life nor death, but somehow all of these things. It figures, doesn’t it, that such a body of water should wash up and break its waves upon the shores of the Nexus?
Mimir’s Well, the Well of Urd, the spring Hvergelmir, all these are the same water. I should have seen it sooner. But I saw it when I needed to most. That’s how a story always goes.
The wind picks me up, carries me past the piled ice at the sea’s edge, over the water to where the floes drift with space between them. It’s close to the spring thaw; soon there will be no ice here at all.
I am a frost-flower, a branch with leaves fallen to dust. Something within me chills and swells and expands, breaking through skin and flesh and bone, bringing forth petals of suffering and death and delicate beauty. I let it. I lie in space, cradled in the wind as Odin once hung from the branch of a tree. I am stabbed, pierced from within, not without, and what streams forth, freezes and curls around me is ice and fire, sap and milk, bright and dark, bitter and sweet, in the darkest season.
I am everything, but not all at once, and not without the interruption of death and renewal. I am a story with chapters. A poem. A song with many stanzas.
I release the wind, and I fall, a sacrifice of myself to myself, for myself. The ice cracks beneath me, giving my body passage, and the shock of cold water passes through me to the very bones.
This is sacred. I could become a fish in this water, a seasnake, a whale. I could swim, but that wouldn’t be a fitting sacrifice. I let myself sink, hold my breath until I can bear it no longer and then let my lungs fill, let my body convulse and thrash and fight--too far from the surface to change my mind now.
My eyes are open, but there is no light this deep, or maybe I’m dying, and the stillness growing within me is simply death. But there is no pain, and I hear a voice:
“You should have been mine, you know. You cheated me, dying from a wrecked ship, but dying in space and not in the sea.” It’s a female voice, low and dark and both beautiful and utterly chilling.
I try to speak, but my air is all used up already, and no sound comes out. But I reach up and tug at the horns of my helmet, pulling it from my head. I expected her. I know she watches me sometimes, ever since she loaned me her net. I brought her this gift, the richest gold I have, aside from the locks woven into my hair, and I hold out the helm with both hands.
I can hear her laughing softly, and in a twinkling the helmet is gone, accepted, and the pressure in my chest eases.
“Lady Ran,” I attempt to speak once more, and manage it this time. “The honor is, as always, all mine.”
“It is,” she agrees. “But you are the opposite of unwelcome here.”
“I cannot stay. I have work that must be done.”
“Oh, little Loki, it is not for you to tell me whether you can stay or go.”
I wait, then, staying silent. Sweet words are little use to the queen of the depths.
“But I do like you,” she says, and I can feel the cold dark pressure of the water ripple up my back and around the crown of my head, like a caress.
That is permission to make my case, and so I tell her the one thing most likely to win her to my side: “I go to take vengeance against the man responsible for the murder of your grandson.”
The currents are impossibly strong down here. She could rend me apart with a thought, and for a second I think that is what she is doing, as the water pulls at me. But no, it’s only an expression of emotion, rage undirected.
“Heimdall deserved a worthier death,” she says. “And his body should have come to me, not been left to drift between the stars.”
“Thor tried--” I begin, but she hushes me.
“I do not blame Thor. I know where the fault lies.” There is a heavy pause, and then: “You will deliver Heimdall’s body to me, and I will give you passage. This is my bargain, and no other.”
Now I regret bringing Heimdall’s fate up to her. I have no idea how I can retrieve his corpse from space. Finding where the Statesman was when it was attacked should not be hard, but how far might the flotsam and jetsam of the disaster have floated? And what if I find my own corpse instead? I have enough existential crises to deal with.
But she has made it clear there is no refusing this assignment, and reluctantly I add it to my mental to-do list. “It will be my honor, my Lady,” I tell her.
She laughs again. “You speak of honor often, in my presence. I know what your honor is, Trickster. You must leave me collateral, a gift that I can hold until you fulfill your end of the bargain.”
“Drowning wasn’t enough?” I know I’m speaking out of turn, but I can’t help but feel the unfairness of this demand.
“No,” she answers calmly. “Death is merely a thing that happens, and happens to you more than to most.”
A fair observation; I can’t deny it. “What would you have of me, then?”
“Your skin,” she says. “Your Asgardian skin, the guise you wear amongst your kind and humans alike. I will hold it until you return with Heimdall’s body. Whatever you must do in the meantime, you can do in your Jotun form, or one of your many other shapes.”
For a moment, I don’t know what to say. On the one hand, she could have demanded something far more necessary to my survival--my magic, a part of my body. Indeed, it might even be more expedient to walk Midgard in Jotun form; I may be harder for the survivors of New York to recognize that way. On the other hand, that means I will have to confront Thor and the other remnants of Asgard in the shape of their mortal enemy.
I am quiet for too long. She speaks again: “You have no time to waste, Loki Odinson. Thank me for my clemency, and go.”
And in the end, she’s right. If I left nothing behind for her save a helmet, I might well neglect the errand she asks of me. The dead, after all, are beyond my help. I cannot bring Heimdall back to life, and proper observation of burial rights isn’t my providence. I hate being outmaneuvered, but here it is more expedient to swallow my pride than to fight back.
“Very well,” I tell her. “Take it.”
I feel her hands on me, and then I don’t feel a thing, except cold.
“I will give you this advice,” she says, ripples of water running through my fingers. “Mine is not the only realm of the dead you will need to enter before you quest is done, son of Odin. Prepare yourself for a queen who will not be reasoned with at all.”
“Hela,” I say with muted dread. “I had thought to avoid her.”
“You had best think again, then,” Ran says, and I know down to my very soul that she is right.
----------
Left, 95. Right, 32. Left, 12. You dial in the combination on the clunky old safe. They could have given you something more advanced, in Wakanda. Something that would hold this thing inside it truly safe and isolated. But you and Steve, you’ve learned to live in this brave new world but you’re not comfortable with it sometimes. No. This is better. It's simple. You put in the right formula and it does what you tell it to.
Right, 10. Left, 78. Click.
The first thing you notice is the smell of water. It’s not unusual to smell the sea in New Asgard; you’re practically on the ocean, but this, this is a stronger scent than normal. Sweeter. Colder. It reminds you of Lake Baikal, the ice thicker than a man is tall, the winter stillness, the beautiful slate-blue mountains scratching at the open sky.
There was so much around you to hate back then, around and inside you, but you never managed to hate the water, or the mountains, or the sky.
The safe door swings open suddenly on its own, clipping your metal arm as it goes, and there’s a sharp metallic clank that seems to echo through the room. And then water pours out, soaking your pants, your shoes, bitter cold. It bites at your toes through the layered wool socks you wear, and you stumble back, because how in God’s name could that much water have been in that safe? How did it even get in there?
Almost as soon as it rushes onto the floor, the water begins to freeze, a pool of deep-blue ice forming, piling up higher as more pours out of the safe. For a second you think you’re going to drown in it, or be captured and frozen , and you press against the wall, fight or flight instincts screaming.
(Let’s be real. Most of your instincts are attuned toward fight now, whether you like it or not.)
You’ve got a knife in your hand even before you recognize that the gathering ice is taking a humanlike form. Once you notice that, you’re glad you have it.
The water slows to a trickle. The light within the safe fades, and the man that’s appeared, reaches slowly toward the Casket.
“Don’t you move an inch, pal,” your voice is rough, a soldier’s growl, one you haven’t bothered to use since the 1940s. The stranger turns as if he didn’t expect to see you. He’s tall, thin, dripping wet, blue skin and red eyes like some kind of horror movie monster, but he looks at you, at the knife you’re threatening him with (a ranged weapon would really be better here, goddammit), and puts his hands up passively.
“That won’t be necessary. I need to see Thor,” he says. “Or Rogers. You’re Barnes, are you not?”
“Bucky,” you say. “My name is Bucky. Who the hell are you?”
“A friend,” he says, and smiles.
Well. Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell.
((Musical Inspiration))