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“The hall towered,
gold-shingled and gabled, and the guest slept in it
until the black raven with raucous glee
announced heaven's joy, and a hurry of brightness
overran the shadows.”
― Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney
“No, no, no, nononono-” The word, said, so many times, loses its meaning to both the speaker and the listener.
“Loki.” Thor grabs his brothers hands, stopping them from tangling further into his traveling cloak. “Stop this, brother, I will not be gone an hour.”
“You cannot - please, don’t leave me.” Loki’s eyes are wild, shot through with red. His face is white, sweat beading at his temples. His skin burns wherever Thor touches, the fever raging through his body. He tries to pull Thor closer, not relinquishing his grip on his cloak.
“Stop,” Thor commands and Loki obeys, stilling. “You are very ill. You’ve had a fever…” Thor tries to do the mental calculation but in his weariness cannot manage it, cannot tell where the days have blurred together and become weeks. “You’ve had a fever…too long. I need to get help.”
“Help?” Loki can’t seem to grasp onto the meaning of the word. “Help? But…I can’t…I can’t be alone.”
The way his voice breaks on the final word tears into Thor’s heart. “I know. I know you’re afraid,” Thor says, trying to soothe. He’s surely remembering the last time he was left alone in the house, when Thor had set off and they had come for him so soon after. Or the long lonely days trapped in a cell. “If I could send someone, or leave someone with you, I would. But we have no one else.”
Tears spill over, dripping down Loki’s cheeks. “Why are you leaving me?”
Thor takes a deep breath, and patiently says, for the third time, “Because you’re ill. I need to see if I can get medicine. I will not be gone long, I swear to you.”
It takes another half an hour to calm Loki enough for Thor to feel comfortable leaving. Finally, he starts to drift off back into unconsciousness, wearied by the infection ravaging his body, and Thor is able to slip away, out of the house and into the cold, late winter day.
He moves quickly. He doesn’t have much time. Thor tells time now in the brief periods of Loki’s peaceful sleep, and after such an upheaval it’s not likely to last long this time. The argument has also pushed his departure later into the afternoon. Though the days have been lengthening, the sun still set early and he wants to be back in the relative safety of the house before nightfall.
Their closest neighbor is an old woman named Martha. She had not been among the crowd that horrible day, and though Thor has no doubt she’ll have heard what happened, he still hopes that her absence means that she might be sympathetic to their plight. She had expressed some minor dissatisfaction with the imperial authority in the past, some nostalgia for the days in which his father had ruled these lands, and Thor can only hope that the sentiment still holds and she won’t hold Loki’s charges against him.
And, of course, that she will have what they need.
In his rush, Thor nearly misses the bird.
It’s a starling, a little bigger than most, perched on a frozen branch. It appears to be no more than an ordinary bird, but as Thor watches it, it seems to be acting rather strangely for a bird. As the others flit about branches, it sits stock still, fixing its eyes firmly on him.
He pauses, caught by surprise by the intensity of the animal’s stare. “What do you want?” It ruffles its feathers, shaking something off. Thor shakes his head. “Phenomenal, I’m talking to a bird. I’m truly losing my mind.” It has been a long, lonely winter. It is no wonder Thor is talking to the first creature that pays him any mind.
The bird hops closer on the branch, cocks its head at him as he turns to go, shaking of the odd feeling of uneasiness that has settled over him. Thor looks up at the grey sky, calculating the remaining daylight, and hastens further along the path.
Smoke rises from the chimney of Martha’s small cottage. He knocks on the dark wooden door, and hears her answering call from inside.
A moment later the door cracks open and the woman herself appears, wrapped in shawls and looking surprised to see him.
“My lord,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Of course not, and I’m sorry to intrude, ma’am. It’s just that I’m in need of medicine in a bit of a hurry, and I was hoping that you would…”
“Ah.” She regards him carefully. “It’s for your brother, is it not?”
“It is.”
For a moment, Thor fears she will refuse. But then she nods solemnly, and pushes the door open further. “Come in then, boy. I have some to part with, if you can afford it.”
Inside her cramped but warm kitchen, she gestures for him to sit and puts a kettle over the fire. “Sit down, I’ll make tea.”
“Thank you but-”
“I’ve cared for a sick one, my boy. Three children through various ailments, and my husband ’til it killed him. I know the value of taking a much needed break. You must be exhausted. The pot of tea’s on me.”
Thor is exhausted. And relieved, if he is honest with himself, at getting a break from playing nurse. There’s a moment of guilt, remembering the harsh, desperate grip Loki had on his cloak. Thor reassures himself that Loki had fallen asleep soon after, and would probably remain slumbering a little while longer. It would be fine, to take a bit of rest before returning to the sickroom.
“Thank you,” he says and Martha smiles.
“Good.”
They have tea, making little more than small talk until the pot is drained and Thor is feeling more himself. Martha rises and totters about in the cabinets until she produces the herbs he needs and names her price.
“I’m sorry they’re a little dry, but they should do the trick. The apothecary used to give me a discount, so I can let them go for a steal.” Thor privately disputes her assessment of the drug’s value, but pays her the requested sum anyways, though it is likely twice that of what she paid for them fresh. He won’t begrudge her what she has to do to survive.
“Thank you, truly. And if you ever need anything-”
“Oh, I’ll be taking you up on that, young man, come spring time.”
Thor grins. “Say the word.” Heads back out into the chill afternoon.
“I am sorry,” Martha calls from the doorway. “For all your…troubles. Yours and your brothers.” She sounds sincere and there is real sadness in her eyes. “I can still remember when…ah, it doesn’t do to dwell on the past, does it now?”
“No. Not when it cannot be changed, or brought back.”
She nods and Thor turns back to the path up the mountain.
At the same fork in the road, his eyes catch something odd.
The bird is perched on the thin branch, standing more still and gazing more intently than the others. Thor stops. He could have sworn it was the same bird that had caught his eye on the way down the path. It still does not move, even as the wind picks up and the rest of the flock takes to the skies with a flutter of wings and a series of piercing cries. Thor steps closer, but the bird still does not move, its beady eyes fixed on his. The sounds of nature around him seem to bleed away, leaving a void of silence, and this creature watching him.
Thor forces his gaze away, forces himself to turn his back. It sends shivers up and down his spine, sends his heart racing in his chest like he just turned his back on a raging beast instead of a tiny starling, but he does not turn back.
The feeling fades when he rounds the corner, but the image of the bird so still on the branch sticks in the back of his mind.
When he turns his back, the bird takes to the sky. It traces a now familiar path through the air, back to the house, beating him back by quite a bit. It keeps gathering its observations of the deteriorating estate on the mountain.
Over the next few days, the herbs do their job well.
It takes a herculean effort to get the first cupful through Loki’s chattering teeth, but the second dose he takes without struggle. Thor stays by his side as he stays gripped in the fever, talking to him softly so he knows he is not alone.
He even finds himself telling Loki about the bird, though he cannot understand why. “It was the strangest thing,” he says. “I can’t explain it. I’m sure if you were there, you’d be able to, but maybe I’m just imagining things. Likely in fact.”
The fever breaks the night after Thor ventured out into the world, leaving Loki trembling and drenched in sweat, but more coherent than he’s been in weeks. At dawn, he’s even able to sit up and drink the next cup of herbs himself, with Thor watching tiredly from a stool in front of the fire.
It seems as though Loki remembers some of what Thor had said, even through the haze of his fevered delirium.
“Do I recall correctly that you said a bird was watching you?”
“Oh.” Thor feels his face warm. “It was nothing. A bird behaving strangely. I’d barely left the house for weeks, I was imagining things.”
Loki slowly lowers the cup, looking thoughtful.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Loki says. “A strange feeling. Like a memory, but I can’t quite grasp it. Hm.” He takes another sip of the warm liquid, wincing a bit at the taste, then chuckles. “A bird. Perhaps we’re both cracking up.”
“That does seem likely, brother dear.”
A bird catches a gust of wind outside their window, uses it to climb higher into the sky, and follows it away from the house.
Hela takes her hand off the cold pillar. It takes another moment for her vision to fully clear, for the tangled branches of the forest canopy to resolve into the buildings and mountains of the capital city. It takes her another moment to resolve the feeling of being fully human again. She shakes off the feeling of being covered in feathers, of having a hard beak instead of lips.
“My lady Hela.” Only one person could say her name with such dripping sarcasm and disdain. Hela turns away from the window. “Yes, Valkyrie?”
There is true hate in the Valkyrie’s eyes, but she smiles sweetly. “The king was looking for you. In the tower.”
“Thank you for carrying the message.” Hela takes a closer look at her bitterest rival. The warrior is dressed in plain, rough traveling clothes, her sword slung across her back. “Going somewhere?”
The Valkyrie smiles again, her lips pressed into a thin line. “An errand. For the High King.”
“Oh? Going to be gone long?”
“Happy to see the back of me?”
“Of course.” Hela starts down the stone steps. “But I’m also worried for you, my dear, traveling at such a time. In such weather.”
“Spring is on the horizon. I thought you had proven that yourself.”
Hela had predicted that the winter freeze would begin to thaw within the fortnight. Weather magic had never been precisely her forte, and was unpredictable even in the most skilled hands, but she had felt confident in her predictions. “Well. It will be wet.”
“I’ve never been afraid of a little mud, my lady,” the Valkyrie says with a mocking smile.
“Of course not. Safe travels.” Hela turns her back on the other woman, feels her sneer against her back, and walks carefully down the stairs, towards the high king and whatever his demands.
Valkyrie waits until Hela is out of sight. She goes to the window and traces a hand over the column, where Hela had stood for several minutes, in a trance, completely unaware of the Valkyrie’s presence in the shadows. Under her hand, there’s a humming of magic. She had not the true power to wield it, or even know the specifics of what she had done, but she had been taught to recognize the traces of it.
She wonders what Hela had been doing. She has her suspicions, of what the witch is up to. Then again, the Valkyrie too has an agenda of her own. This errand to the outer reach makes for a good excuse to be gone from the castle for a while.
She sets off in the opposite direction as Hela, pulling her cloak tighter around her body as she heads out of the castle and into the late-winter chill, and her errand. The one for the king, and then onto her own.