cannot. But we also can do nothing as of this moment. We are weary. We have fought two battles in a short amount of time with nearly no rest in between. We must rest first then decide on our next course of action.”
“I am not giving up on Loki returning to me,” Sigyn announced. She turned towards Heimdall. “Gatekeeper, surely you can see him. Where is he? Please tell me.”
“I cannot answer,” Heimdall murmured. His eyes tightened along with his expression, going out of focus a little, and his back stiffened. He then averted his gaze from her. “My sight ... my sight is failing me. I can see no further than these lands. The Nine Realms are shrouded in smoke.”
“Failing? Or do you simply wish to not say? You wish for me to give up on him! I will not!”
“Nor is anyone asking you to,” Frigga murmured. She wrapped her arms around the petite Goddess’s shoulder. “We will find a way to reach him.”
“Indeed, we will,” Odin agreed. He strode towards his wife and Sigyn. “He has Frey and Heimdall’s swords, and he has Gungnir, weapons he was not meant to have, and I have his blade. We will find a way to use this knowledge to our advantage. So long as we are here, we have breath in our bodies, we will find a way to free Loki and ourselves. I believe Heimdall when he says his sight is failing him. This place, this afterlife, we are in is most peculiar.”
Sigyn’s lower lip trembled. Odin swept her up in an embrace.
“I miss him,” she whispered. “I miss him so much it hurts, Allfather.”
“You will be reunited. I will find a way to make it happen,” he promised.
“I will hold you to it, Odin,” Sigyn said. She let out a sigh. “Now set me down. I am famished.”
He complied. She brushed away a few tears then headed for her longhouse.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Thor demanded. “You fought alongside us, Sigyn. You belong with us, in the main halls of Asgård. Not out here. Not alone.”
“It is my home, Thor.”
“At least allow us to keep you company while we rest,” he insisted. He stepped towards her. “Allow us to repay you for all of the kindness and hospitality you have shown us. Allow us ...” he swallowed. “Allow us to make amends with you. Please.”
“You won’t try to convince me to abandon Loki? To give up on him as you did before our deaths?”
“Nay. We will not. Anyone who dares try will answer to me,” Thor said.
Sigyn regarded him, all of them, with caution and mistrust. Pain mirrored in her eyes, of a horror she had lived but was not meant to endure. However, the words came from Thor and no other. Sigyn relaxed after a moment or two.
“Very well then.” She nodded once. “I will make merry with you this evening.”
Her tone spoke what her words did not say. Sigyn would wait for Loki for all eternity. Of this, Odin was assured. He allowed himself a smile as everyone headed for the main hall of Asgård and marveled at the sensations of hunger and thirst coursing through his body.
‘How is this even possible?’ he wondered. He linked arms with Frigga, and she rested her head against his arm. ‘We died. We should not be feeling such things. We are beyond the need for food and rest yet we feel the urges all the same. Is this how it felt for the Einherjar when they caroused in Valhalla?’
Odin and Frigga were the last ones to enter. Inside the main long house of Asgård, a fire sprang to life in the center. Tables filled with food and mead and wine lined the walls surrounding the hearth. Jörgmungandr slithered to the rafters while Fenris retreated to a far corner in the northernmost part. The rest of the Aesir promptly headed for the food waiting for them. The atmosphere lightened. All raised their goblets in praise of Odin as he and Frigga strode by them and praised him for their glory in battle. They offered up drink in honor for Loki and the hope he would somehow find his way to them. Then, as one, they each threw bits of food into the hearth for Loki.
“So you honor my father, even after you have long since cast him from your presence,” a female voice intoned. “How interesting.”
Odin turned to see Loki’s daughter, Hela, standing inside the doorway. The sun cast her more as a silhouette than anything else. He tilted his head in her direction.
“Lady Hela,” he murmured.
“Allfather,” she replied back.
“To what do we owe the honor of this visit?”
She said nothing in immediate response. Instead, she stepped forward, slowly and carefully. Her gaze traveled over each of them before landing on Odin.
“You have need of me,” she answered. “And I bring tidings.”
“Need?” Odin raised an eyebrow at her.
“Yes, need,” another female voice said. The Norns materialized next to the Goddess of the Dead. “Unlike you, Hela remains unfettered by the actions of Fárbauti and Laufey.”
“But first, the tidings I mentioned. The fires of Surt cool as we speak,” Hela said. “Baldur and Nanna return to the ashes of Asgård, and, together, they will rebuild. Hod has as well.”
A collective murmur rose around Odin. He raised a hand for silence.
“Those are good tidings indeed,” he said.
“Perhaps,” Hela said with a wave of her hand. “They have only just begun to step out of Helheim and into the rain-drenched worlds.”
Odin resisted the urge to defend his son. Baldur returning to the original Asgård and rebuilding was nothing short of a miracle for him and for Frigga. Loki and his family were wont to disagree with him about Baldur. He relished not an argument with Hela.
“We,” he gestured to himself and his wife, “thank you for such tidings. Though you have your misgivings, it is a burden off of our hearts to know he is free to start anew. You said you also have come because of our need for you. Please. Tell us what you mean by that.”
“As you are aware, something in the final battle did not go the way it was meant to go,” the eldest Norn, Urd, spoke up. “Fárbauti and his family found a way to keep Loki from experiencing his death, his fate, at the hands of Heimdall.”
“Make no mistake, Loki is gravely injured,” the middle Norn, Verdandi, interjected. “But he is being prevented from truly dying. His mind and body are wracked with pain.”
“We have no idea how Fárbauti and Laufey managed this, though we heard Fárbauti mention Ymir’s spirit and the Well of Mimir,” Skuld, the youngest Norn, added. “We are currently tied to the fate of Yggdrasil, our own lives in a precarious balance. The same as you, we, too, cannot move from this place.”
“As was said by the Norns, I do not have such a fetter placed on me,” Hela murmured. “They, too, have somehow interfered with my fate so that I may not move on and be reborn. I have chosen to remain on as the Goddess of the Dead ... and I can search for my father.”
“Can you tell where he is?” Sigyn surged forward.
“No.” Hela shook her head. “Not yet. Yggdrasil still groans from the Ragnarök. Though the Nine cool from rains, they remain in upheaval. It may take some time before I can find him. And the Nine still exist, despite Surt’s efforts to destroy them completely and utterly.”
“But you will be able to find him,” Odin murmured. His thoughts latched onto what the Goddess of Death told him with a sickening dread and yet with the thrill of a prospect at a challenge. It was a twist and a knot worthy of Loki’s attentions.
“In time, yes,” Hela said. “But, before you ask, how much time, I do not know.”
The crackling of the hearth fire punctuated the silence. Odin mulled the information the Sisters and Hela had given to him, to them. Their words were bleak but not completely without hope. They – he – still possessed a chance to set things right.
“What can we do?” Thor asked, finally disturbing the quiet.
The Sisters glanced at each other.
“Thor, mighty thunderer,”
“There may not be anything,”
“You can do,” Skuld finished.
“The Well of Mimir will drop on your head,” Hela adde
d. Her eyes went slightly out of focus as she said that then returned to normal. She blinked then shook her head.
“The Well of Mimir ...”
“Not important,” Odin muttered, waving his hand to silence his eldest. Two little knots – one of foreboding, the other curiosity – twisted and coiled in the pit of his stomach. Hela’s words sounded almost prophetic or were at least a clue of some kind. Three times the Well of Mimir had been mentioned. Such an occurrence was not a coincidence, and one he decided to ponder upon after he’d rested a bit. “You say there is nothing we can do? That we must remain here and bide our time?”
“At this time,” Urd murmured, “yes.”
“We will try to do,” Verdandi began.
“What we’ve always done,” Skuld added.
“To read the patterns of the weave of Yggdrasil, but the Nine must stop their trembling. And that,” Urd pointed out, “will take a while.”
“We do suspect, however,” Verdandi said, her eyes twinkling.
“That you will do more than just make merry after a while and,” Skuld giggled.
“You will figure something out.” Urd offered a knowing smile.
Odin weighed their words with care and sought out their meanings. Yggdrasil stood, as it was supposed to do, though scorched. The Nine Realms continued to exist. Baldur and Nanna were no longer in Helheim and capable of rebuilding, along with Thor’s sons, Magni and Modi. The final battle was barely hours old with the Jötun armies defeated in more ways than one. He pursed his lips together then surveyed the main longhouse of Asgård, at the wares