Chapter 13: Fading Hope
Sif saw Thor disappear far away riding on Grani, Sigurd Fafnersbane´s black eight-legged stallion. The outline of Asgard´s setting sun formed a halo of light around his head and he had a sacred and wonderful appearance. She was proud and happy, but she also felt sadness and discouragement inside. Why would he leave her now that they had finally found each other again and declared their love for each other? Where was he going and why wouldn´t he take her with him? She tried to call out to him. She yelled and screamed inside that she wanted him to come back and pick her up. That she couldn´t live without him. That she loved him and would die if he left her ... But her throat narrowed and no sound came out of her mouth. She tried to run after him, but no matter how many steps she took and no matter how much she struggled, she didn´t move out of the spot, where she was standing. She was tied to the blue soil of the heath. Here she would stand forever. Could never leave. Would never die, but would just get older and uglier, while life inside her would drain slowly in the grisly certainty that her sadness and discouragement would never end.
Out of the blue the faces of Loki and Baldur appeared in front of her. She hadn´t even seen them coming - or heard them. They stood shoulder to shoulder looking very worried. Baldur struggled frantically with some medical equipment and Loki was unusually quiet and just kept staring blankly at her.
“She´s giving up,” Baldur said his sad eyes focused on the screen on the inside of the medical suitcase, “if she gives up, there is nothing we can do for her.” He looked up at Loki, who shook his head resignedly and pinched his lips together. A drop slowly slid down his cheek and his lips began to quiver. Could it really be, that the great Loki was about to cry? And why? Sif did not understand it, but frankly she didn´t even care. Thor was gone, dead, and where he´d gone, she could not follow. He had left her, just like everyone else. All the people she´d ever loved eventually ended up leaving her, one way or the other. Even Tjalfe and Roeskva had abandoned her. She was all alone and did not wish to live another day...
“Oh, Sif?” A well known face turned up just behind Loki, her eyes red with tears and her cheeks burning hot. Roeskva?? What was she doing here in the middle of Asgard´s wilderness?
“Oh, Sif?” she repeated and grabbed Sif´s hand, “Please don´t leave us. Please don´t die on us.” Roeskva looked back over her shoulder at Tjalfe, who stepped a bit closer. He took Sif´s other hand, squeezed it and looked at her with pleading red eyes.
“Sif, you have to fight,” he prayed, “we need you.”
Sif´s heart melted at the sight of the two children who prayed for her life. Even now, in the midst of her grief, she could not help but smile. Just for a brief second. It wasn´t a big smile either, but apparently enough for Loki to notice, because suddenly his eyes widened and he poked Baldur.
“She is moving!” He almost yelled, “Baldur! Look! She is moving! "
Baldur took his eyes off the screen and looked intently at her. He leaned forward, frowning, as if the few extra centimeters would make him better able to see anything.
”No, I´m sorry,” he finally said, shaking his head, ”You are seeing things, because you want her to fight. There is nothing there.”
”Well, she did, Baldur! She moved! I´m sure of it!” Loki insisted and then he approached the children.
”Go on!” He commanded, but with a tenderness in his voice that the children had not seen before, ”keep on talking to her. Tell her to fight! No, beg her to fight! ”
The children did as he said and held her hands firmly while telling her how much they loved her and how much they needed her. They reminded her of everything they had gone through together. About the time of Alfheim before being abducted, the bailout from Brimir, their first failed escape attempt in the Farbauter and especially how she had refused to give up even when everything seemed to be hopeless.
Tjalfe and Roeskva backed each other up in the most amazing way and even though they both felt as if all their words were probably more directed at the other than at Sif, it still gave them an inner peace. And the more they spoke, the more they begged, the more it they felt hope growing inside.
The pleading of the children had a soothing effect on Sif´s heart and she felt warmth spread through her body. It started at the hands where the warm hands of the children caressed her skin. Then it spread up through her arms and further into her chest. From there it spread through the rest of her body and eventually reached her toes. Sif shook her head and slowly her eyes opened.
”Yes!”
Loki´s loud cry gave Baldur such a shock that he jerked his arms turning over the tray with medical equipment. With a quick reaction he tried to catch it, but that just made things even worse and the entire contents of the tray crashed to the floor with a loud noise! Crash! Bang! Pieew!
He looked at the others with a smile holding a sterile sponge in his hand, the only thing he´d actually managed to catch before the rest of the equipment toppled.
”Oops,” he said with his head slightly bowed and his eyes glowing as he let go of the sponge and let it descend to the floor like a leaf falling from a tree during Fall.
All the clatter and fuss woke Sif. She sat up and looked around with confused eyes. They were all there: Loki, Baldur, Tjalfe and Roeskva stood at her bedside and Freya leaned against the wall behind them.
”Thor?” was the first thing she said. Loki stepped a bit to the side revealing the bed behind him, where Thor lay quiet in a spider web of tubes in his mouth and nose.
Baldur put his hand on her chest and pushed her gently down.
”You´d better lie down again,” he smiled happily, ”you´ve had a rough ride and you need to rest.”
Sif looked concerned at the motionless Thor, but Baldur smiled reassuringly and nodded his head.
”He´s quite alright, Sif, there is no need to worry,” he said, ”even the most fierce can´t bring down Thor. He´s just resting for a bit. The tubes are nothing but a precaution.”
Sif wasn´t quite convinced, but she accepted Baldur´s promise and since she was too tired to protest, she lay down nicely and after a while she fell asleep.
Loki observed Sif as she fell asleep and when he felt quite sure that she was away in dreamland, he pulled the kids aside.
”Come with me,” he said seriously, ”there is something we have to talk about.”
Roeskva glanced at Tjalfe, who nodded an 'ok' and then they followed Loki to the dining room. Here Loki pointed to some seats where the kids could sit down. He then pulled a chair from another table and sat with them. He looked them both in the eyes with a serious look on his face. Tjalfe recognized his look. It was the same kind of look his father had in his eyes when they visited them and asked for their permission to go to Asgard. It was the kind of look he noticed when it had dawned on both his father and his mother that they would probably not be seeing each other again for a long time. Maybe even never again if Thor wasn´t able to prevent the Yetten from kidnapping them. Tjalfe did not know for sure what Loki was about to say, but he had a bad feeling about it. He had a clear sense that he would not like, what Loki was about to tell them.
Loki took a deep breath.
”First I want to say that we are very proud of both of you,” he began. It was obvious that he meant every word. Both his voice and his face showed pride.
”We all are,” he continued, ”both Baldur, Freya, Sif and me - and Thor, of course. He is probably the most proud of us all.”
Loki waited a moment and let the praise seep into the children. Then he continued.
“However, there is something else, I need to tell you and I know it´s going to upset you, so you might as well prepare for a bit of a shock...”
He paused for a moment, trying to figure out how best to say it, but Roeskva beat him to it.
“We can´t go home, can we?” she asked bravely, even though she already knew the answer to her question. Loki shook his head in quiet frustration.
“No, you can´t. I´m sorry,” he sighed, “We haven´t found a way to prevent the Yetten from abducting you again, whenever they please. We can´t risk bringing you home to your parents, because if we do, they will find you shortly. They know where you live and they will not stop before they can lay their hands on you. Not before they are satisfied that you have told them everything, they think you know.”
“But,” Tjalfe objected, “we don´t know anything...” Loki leaned forward and looked Tjalfe straight in his eyes.
“Tjalfe, you´re a bright kid, “he said with recognition, “you know much more than you show.”
Then Loki leaned back in the chair crossing his legs as his hands rested on his lap and his eyes were firmly fixed on Tjalfe like a father trying to reassure his only son of his worthiness.
“I´ll be quite honest with you, Tjalfe,” he said abruptly, “I had serious doubts about you when Thor started educating you - to say the least. In fact, I believed you were just another stupid kid from an inferior race not worth wasting time on. Actually Thor and I bumped our heads on that very subject quite a few times.”
The muscles around Tjalfe´s mouth tightened. He was angry and was just about to give Loki a piece of his mind, when Loki lifted a finger as if to say: ‘wait, there is more...’ and then Loki continued.
“But the truth is: I was wrong. During these past few weeks I´ve come to realize that Thor saw something in you. Something I hadn´t noticed, because I was simply too thick headed. You´re amazing. You both are.” To this point, Roeskva had fought her own jealousy, but hearing Loki include her in the praise made her shine like a sun.
“I´m not sure, what it is about you,” Loki went on, “but for some reason, I can´t explain, you seem to understand much more than even some of the brightest kids in Asgard.” Loki smiled as he said it, but then his smile disappeared and he leaned a bit forward with a much more serious look on his face.
“This is a good thing, of course, but it does bring some very dangerous challenges to the surface,” he explained, “for one thing, we are not the only ones, who figured out how smart you are. The Yetten knows too, and they will do whatever it takes to get you to tell them everything you know - and I really mean ‘whatever it takes.’ They will stop at nothing to gain the information they seek. And even worse: even if you tell them everything, they won´t be satisfied. They will still assume you know more than you´re telling them, even if you don´t. If they catch you again, it´s far from certain that we are able to save you. This time we were lucky, more than we were skilled. Next time we might not be as lucky.”
Tjalfe and Roeskva nodded their heads. It all made sense and they too were sure that the Yetten would never leave them alone as long as they thought they had information to provide.
“But...” Tjalfe looked at the floor, while fidging with the edge of his shirt. Then he lifted his head and found Loki´s eyes.
“But what then? Are you going to take us to Asgard?”
Loki shook his head.
“No, Tjalfe. You don´t belong in Asgard. You belong on Earth. We can´t risk bringing you to Asgard. There is no way of telling what our nature will do to you. You could get sick or be poisoned through the food we eat, maybe even die. We´ve visited Earth from time to time, but we never stay for long, because we don´t know what your nature or your air could do to us. Taking such a risk is all part of the territory, when you´re an Aseir soldier, but taking risks on behalf of others is a whole different matter. We can´t put you in danger like that.”
“But what then? What´s going to happen to us?”
“Hmmm... well, that is a tough one to answer, but... suffice to say that Thor has a plan and it just might do the trick - I for one believe it will...”
“Thor??” Roeskva looked very surprised.
“But Loki... Thor hasn´t even woken up yet. How could he have a plan deviced already? And...” she paused for a moment trying to figure out what it was that nagged her. “...and by the way: when we last saw Thor, he strongly believed, he could find out how to prevent the Yetten from ever taking us again? How...? Has he changed his mind?”
Loki had a strange look on his face as he scratched his head while his mind worked overtime to find the words to explain it all in a way they could understand.
“Ehm... well... yeah... but the Thor in there sleeping...” He pointed in the direction of where the hospital bed was. “Ehm... that Thor is going to wake up in a few hours or so and then... Then he will come up with this plan... A plan that he is going to explain to me just before I disappeared at the Fyrkat fortress...”
Loki´s eyes flickered from Tjalfe to Roeskva and back again and his eyebrows were raised clearly revealing his own inability to really understand it himself.
Fortunately, Tjalfe and Roeskva seemed to be even more puzzled than he was.
“I don´t understand a thing!” Tjalfe uttered looking very confused.
“Okay, let me try to explain it in another way...” Loki started all over, “You will be going back to Earth to live almost the same place where you were born, but you are going to live there in another time than you´re used to.”
The children gaped at him. They sat still for a while without saying anything. They starred with astonishment at Loki, who still was fighting the battle of his life to find an even feasible way to explain the complexity of such terms as time and space to children of a race that hadn´t even invented the steam engine yet. This was, after all, a science that the Aseir had only begun to scratch the surface of.
“Another time?” Tjalfe broke the silence tilting his head to one side as he waited for Loki to explain and Roeskva was sitting still with her hands in her lap palms up as if she was in some unconscious way trying to catch her eyes that were about to fall out of their sockets in disbelief.
Suddenly Loki had an idea and lit up in a smile.
“Look... if I want to go from here to the rear of Alfheim,” he began, “I could walk down there or use one of our carts, right?”
Tjalfe and Roeskva nodded their heads and he went on.
“Now, if I walk, it would take me more time to get there, than if I were to use a cart?”
Again they nodded.
“But... what if I had some kind of cart, that could bring me to the other end in an instant? Then my trip would take no time at all. Literally: no time whatsoever.”
“Like when we use the bracelets?” Tjalfe suggested.
“Exactly!” Loki responded in relief that they understood, where he was going with this, “just like the bracelets. But what if I had a very special kind of cart that could bring me to the other end of Alfheim and arriving there one year from now, but in such a way that inside the cart no time would´ve passed at all?”
Tjalfe stopped to think.
“So...” he said, stretching his sentence as he was figuring it out, “you wouldn’t get older, but the ship and everyone aboard it would be a year older?”
“That´s it, Tjalfe! And we do have such a cart!”
“Yeah, but...” Tjalfe hesitated, “as I understand Thor, the bracelets can´t move us more than a few years into the future and what good could that be? I mean, the Yetten probably won´t give up, just because we´ve moved ourselves forward a few years in time...”
“Did he really tell you that?” Loki was surprised. He clearly hadn´t understood the extent to which Thor had worked to expand this boy´s understanding of science.
“Yes, he has,” Tjalfe replied, “he also said that you cannot go back, only forward. So even if we could travel far enough into the future, how will we ever be able to visit our parents again? "
Now it was really getting hard on the already tried Loki.
“Ehm... well... yeah, that is true... however... Thor seems to have found a way to travel far enough forward in time and...”
“And he´s even found a way to travel back in time, hasn´t he?” Tjalfe interrupted.
“Yes, he has... and that´s why...” Loki stopped mid sentence looking lik
e someone, who had just taken a blow to the head. Was there no end to this boy´s ability to surprise?
“Wait,” he said with raised brows, “How do you know?”
Enjoying his moment, Tjalfe leaned back in his seat with a huge smile on his face as he bathed in the obvious admiration beaming from Roeskva.
“Well, he hasn´t. Not yet, that is. But he will as soon as he wakes up.”
Loki stared at Tjalfe his face frozen as if it was made of stone. He just couldn´t believe what he was hearing. How could a mere boy of human origin be able to deduct this? Even with all the education, Thor had given him, it was nothing compared to the years of school needed to understand theory of this caliber. He shouldn´t know even the basics of time travel, the curving of space or temporal paradoxes, for that matter. How could he reach to this conclusion, which was the right one, without being formerly schooled in the more basic disciplines, such as physics and mathematics, not to mention the more hard core theories on particle physics and chemistry? It was at the very brink of what Loki could cope with and he had to muster all of his mental strength to get hold of himself and his body language. He wasn´t all that keen on revealing that Tjalfe understood these things better than he did, although this seemed to be the case. How embarrassing...
“Ehm... well... I suppose...” he began, but he was very aware of how stupid it sounded, “you´re absolutely right, Tjalfe, that´s how it is. What you just said, I mean. But how did you come to that conclusion?”
Loki was rather pleased with himself as he sudden found a way to regain his position as the higher ranking of the two: asking questions. This was his field, interrogation, and he was very good at it. During all his years in the Yetten security service, before he was recruited by Odin and enrolled in the Aseir fleet, interrogation was definitely what he did best.
“Well, for one thing,” Tjalfe began, as he did what he could to not hurt Loki more on his self esteem than he´d already done, “Thor is the only one who can reprogramme Miolner properly. Baldur could easily hit both Sif and Thor with time distortion pockets just before Brimir exploded. That could be done with minor adjustments in the system. But there is no way he could reprogramme Miolner to get both of them and me in the Farbauter at the same time. It would take far more complicated recalculations to merge pockets differing in both sequencing and time distortion as much as those did and Baldur isn´t able to do it. It takes someone like Thor. Or maybe Sif, but she didn´t get to the bridge before later.
“Okay, but he could´ve made those changes earlier and entered them in a submerged programme ready for deployment?” Loki tried, but Tjalfe shook his head.
“No, he couldn´t know what kind of circumstances there would be when the need for reprogramming rose. Not at the time when he left Alfheim, anyway. Besides, Baldur said that he had gotten the instructions for reprogramming Miolner from a friend with a scar on the cheek.”
“Which Thor has, remember? Sif shot him and the medical equipment healed the wound and left only a scar?”
“That´s right. He has a scar now. He didn´t then. When he boarded the cruiser, it wasn´t a scar. It was a wound. And before he left the Alfheim to find us, he had neither scar nor wound. The only viable explanation is that he must have solved the issues with time travel some time in the future. Then he´s traveled back from a time when his wound had already become a scar. During this visit he called on Baldur and told him how to reprogramme Miolner and then he´s returned to his own time.”
Loki thought deeply about Tjalfe´s theory. It did make sense, but there was still something about it that didn´t seem to fit exactly, although he couldn´t quite put his finger on what it was. He decided to let it go. At least for the moment. He still hadn´t told Tjalfe who made the changes in the shield´s system and was guilty of giving the Yetten the chance to abduct Tjalfe and Roeskva in the first place. He didn´t look forward to that moment of truth either. Although he´d acted on direct orders from Odin, his consciousness still tormented him and he had no intention of telling the kids about any of it. Not yet, anyway. He nodded his head acknowledging Tjalfe´s theory giving the boy a feeling of pride and acceptance.
Aversively, Tjalfe looked at Loki in a way that gave him a notion that maybe the boy knew much more than he had already told him. But maybe it was all in his mind. Maybe this was just his bad consciousness speaking.
***