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“Just this?”
“Yes, Ma'am.”
The woman behind the counter smiled at Loki, and when she did her faded blue eyes crinkled at the corners.
She handed him a plastic sack that had begun life in a grocery store. Inside, carefully wrapped in paper towels was a hanging sign made in the rustic style from a single slice of tree trunk, complete with bark still covering the edges. It read:
A vacation is 2 weeks that leaves you
2 Tired to go back to work
And 2 broke not 2.
Loki took the bag, thanked the proprietor of the shop, and stepped out of the dim wooden building into the burning sun.
He winced a little. The summers here were really the only thing he objected to.
Despite the fact that the air was as hot and wet as the contents of a cauldron (and that it seemed to weigh as much as an average cauldron, too) he decided to look around a little before he returned to his rental car and its frosty air conditioning.
The ground that he currently strolled belonged to the town of WhiteHall Texas (est. 1873). The big white sign at the corner of the lot helpfully told him this.
He had come to attend the Texas Pickers 1st Saturday Antique Sale and Flea Market.
Said antique sale and flea market consisted of an old restored cotton gin full of delightful odds and ends (this was where he had made his purchase) a couple of pleasantly dilapidated outbuildings full of more of the same, and a couple of picnic tables sheltered by a tin awning. Currently a feast of local delicacies was being prepared there ( it was called Barbecue, if he remembered correctly).
It was not the first time he had been here, and it would not be the last. For strangely enough, this place held magic.
The people of Midgard stored their magic in some very odd places.
For instance, in the upper story of the cotton gin he had once found a painting of a stormy ocean that perfumed the air around it with the scent of sea salt.
In one of the outbuildings there was a man who sold vintage postcards for two dollars a piece. Loki had bought one with a picture on it of an amusement park situated on a pier that jutted out into the sea like a wooden tongue. Black letters at the bottom said:
GALVESTON PLEASURE PIER 1922 WISH YOU WERE HERE
The back was covered with cramped writing, and in amongst the merry descriptions of “sea bathing” and inquiries as to the health of the recipient (“How is your ear?”) there was an ancient and obscure spell for drawing your true love to you, using white corn, sea salt, and the petals of an orange rose.
He had also found here ( in a glass case next to an old pipe, a rusty can opener, and an equally rusty tin of Fisherman's Friend Lozenges) three brass keys. They had once opened a coat closet, a pie safe, and a root cellar, respectively. But at some point in their long lives, they had been enchanted to protect their owner from the bites of venomous snakes, mosquitoes, and fire ants, respectively.
They were currently in his pocket, jingling cheerfully against spare change. One can never be too careful, after all.
Today he had found no magic, just pleasant flotsam and jetsam. As he strolled among the displays of Tupperware and tote bags made from old feed sacks, he heard the music that trickled from the boom box on the second floor of the cotton gin.
I'm in love with a fast moving angel
Who dresses like the city girls do.
When we're apart there's an ache in my heart
When we're together we're a hell of a crew.
He felt it again then, the ache in his own heart. He had felt it first in the moment he came upon the vacation sign, and he knew from vast experience that it would not stop until he had her in his arms again. He had no need of sea salt, white corn, or orange roses.
All he needed to do was go home.
Within moments he was in the rental car, flipping the A/C knob as high up as it would go. He bounced out of the grassy area that served as a parking lot, and turned back toward the highway.
***
Thor wandered around Sif's bedchamber as he waited for her to change into her riding clothes. As had happened many times, he was drawn to the wall opposite the bed. There, on the satiny golden wood of the wall, hung a large square of cork-board. And on the cork-board there hung all manner of things.
There was a plastic heart that said ICARUS LOVES YOU NEW ORLEANS, accompanied by several strings of green and purple beads. One whole corner was devoted to postcards from places as diverse as Dubai, Fiji, and Iowa County, Wisconsin. There were folding fans painted with moon white magnolias or fat pink roses. There were novelty erasers in the shapes of hamburgers or comically wide eyes or daisies.
And that was just the beginning. The whole board was packed with things, some of them items Thor had never seen elsewhere and did not have names for.
Something new had been added since he'd seen it last. From the lower right corner of the board hung a little wooden sign with a pun-laden statement about the paradoxical nature of vacations.
At last Sif emerged from her dressing room, clad for riding.
“One of these days I shall figure out what all this means.” Thor said, waving a hand toward what he thought of as the Cork-board of Curiosities.
“Will you now?”
“I know Loki gave you all of those...items. And I know they all come from his wanderings on Midgard.”
“What makes you think they're more than souvenirs?”
Thor shook his head. “I know both of you better than that. There's some sort of secret code here. I'll figure it out eventually.”
Sif gave him a slow, sly smile.
“Good luck with that.”
***
Late that night, Sif lay in her bed, nestled comfortably against Loki's side. If she looked past the foot of the bed, she could see her cork-board, laden with all it's junkyard glory. The mellow golden light of the bedside lamp sparkled on plastic and varnish, paper and tin. The vacation sign swayed gently in the sea breeze coming through the open balcony doors.
“Thor is back to puzzling over my collection.”
Loki chuckled. "That should keep him busy for a while."
“Maybe I should tell him I'm building the Loki Odinson Travel Museum.”
“Maybe you should.”
Sif was quiet for a moment, listening to the music of his heartbeat beneath her ear.
Loki raised a hand to stroke her hair. “I doubt he'd believe you if you told him the truth.”
Sif sighed, and rubbed her cheek against the smooth skin of his shoulder. “Tell me the truth again. I like to hear it.”
He chuckled, and she felt the vibration against her cheek. “Once upon a time,” he said in his best bedtime story voice, “there was a prince who liked to wander far and wide, to see everything strange and wonderful Yggdrasil has to offer.
“But no matter how delightful it all was, he still missed his love. And when, in this fullness of time, the missing became too much, he always came back to her. And every time he did, he brought her something, a little token of the strange and wonderful world, to remind her that wherever he went, he thought of her.”
That was the truth that neither Thor nor anyone else would guess. That each silly little trinket was a love letter. And a promise that no matter how far he wandered, he would always come home.
When Sif leaned over to press her lips to his, he thought, not for the first time, that the best part of wandering might be coming home.