8

Midgard was a massive world with dozens of bridge stones scattered across its surface. I’d only learned a handful of those dozens, however. Midgard was also densely populated, by a race easily alarmed by the use of magic and prone to gross overreaction—or such was the base of the explanation provided during my training as a bridge. The takeaway of the lesson was, don’t open any bridges to Midgard except to the bridge stones in more desolate locations.

The one Loki requested was on the smaller of the world’s northern continents. The bridge stone itself, as with most of those on Midgard, lay fallen and forgotten by the world’s inhabitants. This particular stone was weathered and covered in moss and lichen, its runes long vanished, its communication crystal cracked and trapped against the equally-aged oak against which it leaned. The oak’s thick roots had lifted one corner of the stone from the earth.

“This way.” Loki offered his arm to me. After one last moment of uncertainty, I took hold of his elbow and let him lead me. I only needed a bridge stone as a target, not as a starting point for a bridge. If trouble happened, I could open a way directly to Asgard and get us out of it.

Or so I reasoned.

“It’s a nice world, isn’t it?” Loki tipped his head back and inhaled deeply. “Room to breathe.”

I glanced around at a forest of heavy-limbed, black-barked trees, mostly shrouded in fog. Nothing struck me as being particularly beautiful about it. But Loki had closed his eyes, and some of the hard edges had fallen from his face. In the soft lines that replaced them, I glimpsed the boy he must have once been.

“It is.” I tightened my fingers slightly around his arm and added a note of gentle urgency. “But we have to hurry. We’re not supposed to be here.”

Loki opened his eyes. They glittered like polished obsidian. One corner of his mouth curled up, into an expression that I’d learned could mean either amusement or disdain.

“That’s half the fun of it, little rainbow.”

I tugged at his arm. “Maybe for you. Come on.”

Loki heaved a theatrical sigh and rolled his eyes. But he also put his free hand over the one I had on his arm and picked up the pace.

The apple trees were as close as Loki had promised. Shorter and greener but no less gnarled than the surrounding oaks, they held apples twice the size of those in Idun’s orchard. Loki let go of my hand and slipped away from me, ducking branches. After a second, I followed, picking my way through fallen fruit that cluttered the spongy turf beneath the trees.

Loki stopped a few feet ahead of me and stretched on tiptoe to reach into the lowest branches. When he turned around, it was to hold a ruby-daubed fruit toward me. When I took it, it filled both hands.

“It’s huge,” I said.

Loki’s grin quirked. “Are we still talking about apples?” he quipped, playing off my earlier remark so neatly that I wondered if he’d somehow manipulated me into it.

“Stop.” But I half-laughed as I said it.

I lifted the apple close to my nose, closed my eyes, and inhaled. The apple’s scent shivered across my tongue, promising bright-sharp tart-sweetness.

“Too bad Baldur didn’t say that a split second sooner to Thor this morning.”

Loki’s voice sounded more distant. It also rang with a self-satisfaction that sent a thrill of suspicion up my spine—that, and the fact that Loki had voluntarily mentioned Baldur.

Once a week or so, the Aesir held a council meeting of sorts in the center of the city, beside the Yggdrasil. In a bit of overly-flashy pageantry, Baldur and Thor, clad in their ceremonial armor, traditionally opened the meeting by clashing their hammers together.

This morning, Baldur’s hammer had nearly slid from his grasp when he hefted it. Thor’s incoming blow had glanced off Baldur’s shoulder, in part because Thor had twisted his aim to the side. Baldur had, quite brilliantly, simply stood there with his mouth hanging open. When Thor’s blow had struck him, he’d squealed like a small child.

The other part of Baldur’s fortune was that Loki had been standing beside Baldur, close enough to reach out and haul Baldur away from the worst of Thor’s blow.

“Loki?” I opened my eyes, the apple’s heavenly scent forgotten.

Loki was several yards deeper into the trees than I, by now. He kept walking, ducking boughs and peering up into the trees.

Holding the apple loosely in one hand, I tramped after him.

“What did you do?” I nearly asked. But that was what one of the Aesir would have asked. What they would have assumed. Could I do that to him?

I eyed the back of Loki’s head, but he didn’t turn. In the haze-filtered sunlight, his dark auburn curls seemed nearly black.

“Baldur’s lucky you were standing nearby.” I spoke the words with careful neutrality. They were not an accusation. “That you were there to drag him back. He could have been hurt much worse.”

Loki’s responding scoff drifted through the dappled shadows beneath the trees. “Not that you heard anyone saying ‘thank you, Loki’ afterward.”

A sick certainty settled into my stomach, that Loki had tampered with Baldur’s hammer himself and set the near-disaster into motion.

What did you do?

Aloud, I only said, still with careful neutrality so that Loki would maybe hear me, “Baldur could as easily have been killed.”

“He’s Aesir.” Despite my caution, Loki’s voice turned cool. “And that pretty armor of his is enchanted. Even if Thor had hit him full-on, he could handle it.”

“It was just a joke,” he seemed to be telling me. “Nothing more harmful than a practical joke.”

Loki’s utter lack of concern ate at me. But maybe he was right—Baldur was Aesir, with a greater share of hardiness and strength than the other races deemed ordinary. This was the first I’d heard of enchanted armor, but it made sense.

“It’s not as if he can’t dish it out.” Loki spoke with a flatness that further ate at me, because this time I thought of the stories Loki had shared of Baldur’s and Thor’s cruelty as children. According to Loki, Thor had been the more physical of the two, but Baldur had been the mastermind behind Thor’s actions. And I’d come to believe, from my time with Loki, that Baldur’s psychological cuts had wounded Loki far more deeply.

“Baldur is worse,” was what Loki would snap at me if I tried to pry further details from him.

And still there was nothing I could say that would sound anything but accusatory. Or like I condoned Loki’s possible involvement in this mysteriously-slippery hammer.

Neither option seemed helpful, to Loki personally or to our friendship. So instead, I sighed and looked up into the trees.

Up close, the bark was black mottled with mossy gray. In amongst the rosy apples, clumps of greenery with smaller leaves grew like small baskets, clinging to the tree branches.

“What is this other stuff?” I didn’t care, particularly. I only wanted to change the subject. “The basket-looking plant?”

“Mistletoe. Nasty parasitic stuff, feeds on the living trees. We don’t have it on Asgard.”

Loki’s voice sounded closer again. I glanced his way.

He carried a half dozen fruit folded up in the hem of his tunic, some still attached to bits of branches and twigs they’d grown on. Bundles of narrower green and tiny white berries clung tenaciously to the same branches.

“Shouldn’t you pull it off the apples before you take them home, then?”

Loki tipped his head and twitched a curious brow furrow at me. “What, the mistletoe? Oh, it’s harmless once it’s out of the tree.”

He stopped beside me and shifted his grip on his tunic to hold it with one hand, leaving the other free to hold out to me. “Can’t hurt a thing. I’ll clean it off once we get you back. Come on, you’re in a hurry, remember? Can’t keep the Watcher waiting.”

And still something in Loki’s tone nagged at me. But I couldn’t place it, and he was right—I needed to get to Heimdal. We’d only been here on Midgard a few minutes. Not even Loki could get into trouble in such a short time.

I held my hand out toward Loki’s, palm up. As he laid his palm down on mine, he smiled, a rare flash of pure happiness that eased my concerns.

“Thank you for indulging my whim, little rainbow. You are a true friend.”