I know he is here.
I haven't seen him, but when I ride alone at night, before the lights are quenched one by one along the runs, I sometimes hear a hiss beneath the bristle of the trees.
Bren knows it too, although he won’t talk about him. Sometimes, as we watch Fenrir dart away from us and disappear into the dense stands of evergreen crowding the base of Lenape Mountain, Bren grows distant, his amber eyes fading until they become pale and haunted.
It was my idea, that Loki stay, but I wonder now if it was wise. Yew Dales is prepared for spring rains, but it hails almost every day.
On my third solo search of the mountain, I found him.
The hail had turned the whole world silver, and the raceway had been closed for a week because of the freeze. I skidded down on the back edge of my board and shimmied over to where he sat on a rock amidst a white stand of trees. In his black leather jacket, Loki looked like a crack in a sheet of ice. He didn't glance up as I approached, and it gave me the chance to really look at him. I let my eyes linger on his hair - a little longer now - hanging in his eyes, pushed behind one ear, jagging over the collar of his jacket. His face was scruffed with shimmering, honey blond stubble, his shoulders and chest more muscular than I remembered. Bren told me once that the way they felt, the way they saw themselves, determined their forms.
I took a few steps forward and stood in his peripheral vision, watched him stare at the snow. After a while, his hand found its way into Fen's ruff. Fen dropped his muzzle onto Loki's boots - black combats that could never have clicked into skis - and closed his eyes.
"You're here." I said.
He took a long drag on the cigarette trapped between his thumb and forefinger, blew the smoke upward, and watched as it thinned out into the canopy.
"Are there cigarettes in Asgard?"
He laughed out another puff of smoke. "What do you think?"
"They're not good for you." I said.
He let his eyes slide toward me without turning his head. A smirk curled the corners of his mouth. "Am I unaware of some cancer that plagues immortals?"
Stupid. "It's bad for the people around you."
"So am I," he said. But he crushed out the cigarette on a rock near his feet, held it up to me, and slipped it into his pocket. "Gods you're high maintenance."
I moved to fold my arms across my chest, realized it would look pouty, and dropped them. There was no getting around this. I couldn’t leave with nothing but small talk.
"Are they looking for you?"
He eyed me sideways again.
"The…elders. Do they know you're here?"
"Of course they do."
I needed more than this.
"The battle can't happen without me." He said.
"It can’t happen without Frey either. But they haven't stormed the mountain."
"It's different now."
I watched him stroke the fur on Fen's neck. Something about these last words made me want to change course.
"We've been looking for you. We've been to your condo, to Ringsaker. Everywhere."
"Did you bring torches and pitchforks?"
Fen sighed. It was a snorty growl that made him sound like an ordinary dog.
"It wasn't like that." I said.
"Really?" He turned on me. "Is that what he told you? That he was just going to see if I wanted to take a ride? Grab a latte?"
"Stop talking to me like I'm an idiot." This time I did fold my arms. I started to pace and looked up past the frozen canopy for some direction. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.
"You’re a teenaged girl with a hyper-crush on a god you know next to nothing about. You’re not just an idiot. You’re dangerous."
I marched toward him, my boots crunching on the snow, and looked down into his face. He ignored me. I was still afraid, standing this close to him. It was a trace of the fear I had felt the first night I met him, when I looked into his churning eyes and saw what I still thought of as Hell. My anger backed off and let a little common sense through.
"I'm not a threat to you." I said.
He looked up at me. His eyes were green and gold now, but darker than mine. "I said you were dangerous, and you are. This thing with him…Bren," he waved a patronizing hand at the name, "you have no idea what you’re doing. If you were smart you'd walk away." He looked back into the trees lining the run. "You can start now."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Maybe I really was an idiot, to think that he and I were beyond this. His scatting of me like I was some cat at his screen door.
"Well if I feed you," he said, "you'll never leave."
I hated him watching my thoughts, but it wasn't a fight I could win.
"I need to know what's going on. In Asgard. Bren doesn’t want anyone to tap in. He thinks it might provoke the elders. And he's afraid for his mother."
Loki laughed. "And you're sure I have? Tapped in?"
"He said you'd want to know where you stand."
"And if Bren says it, it must be true."
"Is it? Do you know what's happening there? Are they planning something?"
"What do you think?"
"Why do you keep asking me that?" Anger rose in me again, tightening my chest. "How the hell am I supposed to know? I'm not an Asgardian. I don't know anything about any of this."
He stood, slowly, and stepped toward me. When he was too close, he peered down into my face. My heart hammered so fast I couldn't have counted the beats. It took everything I had to hold his gaze.
"Know then thyself, presume not god to scan."
I stared.
"Alexander Pope." He said.
"Why do you quote humans if you think we're all stupid? There are no poets in Asgard?"
He stepped back and narrowed his eyes at me. "Stupid is as stupid does." When I didn’t answer, he said, "Forest Gump."
After a moment, he turned and walked toward the trees. Fen followed. With every step he took my desperation thickened, became sticky in my mouth, weakened my legs. I watched the line of his footprints growing longer in the snow, and finally blurted the last thought that came to me.
"It was his mother."
He stopped mid stride, Fen pulling up beside him. His back rose and fell a few times with his breath and then he half turned, peered over his shoulder and raised a brow.
"What?"
"It was his mother. Forest Gump's mother said 'stupid is as stupid does.' He was quoting her."
The moment froze, the hail the only evidence that clocks, everywhere, were still ticking, and then he spun and strode toward me. Again, too close, his eyes heavy on mine. It seemed a long time before he spoke.
"The elders will come," he said. "They will do whatever they have to do. Hunt us all down. They will never let this stand." He paused, and then went on. "Sif was detained as soon as Thor was caught plotting to lure your friends across the bridge, but he confessed to everything and convinced them that Sif was innocent of any knowledge of it. She has been released, but they are watching her closely. And they will not hesitate to use her to get to the others." Another pause. "Like I used you."
These last words were a stab. The hail pummeled my head and shoulders, heavier by the second. I had practically begged him to stay, risked everything for him that day on Bifrost. Now, I couldn’t remember why.
"Go away, Jenna." He said.
My focus returned, but he was already disappearing through the evergreens. The last thing I saw was the gray flick of Fen's tail as they vanished into the shadows.
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