Stormbringer: Book 2 of the Wyrd

Seven

Jötunn. I grow bored, tell me a story."

Another day, another interminable ride, this one slow and awkward, the horses picking their way over roots and fallen logs along what used to be a path. Probably. At some point.

Above us, the trees of the Myrkviðr are living up to their reputations. Dark and tangled and strange.

"A story?" I turn to look at Þrúðr. She's stiff-backed and stern, eyes focused ahead and knuckles white around her reins. Still, this is the most she's said to me since we left, so: "Uh, sure. What kind of story?"

"Of Father," she says, still pointedly not looking at anything. "I wish to know . . . something the skalds do not sing of." She's especially not looking at her brother, and the way he's trying to catch her eye with an expression even a blind jötunn can read as What are you doing, fool girl?

I grin. "Sure," I say. "I got a few of those."

From up ahead, Magni growls, "If you slander Father's memory with your lies—"

"Relax, relax," I say. Then, very distinctly to Þrúðr, "You'll like this one."

She nods, once. Almost glances my way, even. "Proceed."

"Right," I say. "Well. This is a while back, starting before you were born. About eight months before, in fact, because the first I remember of it is your old man running out to find me one day. 'Loki!' he shouts"—and I do the dialogue in the old tongue, for effect—" 'Loki, show yourself! I have news!'

"And meanwhile I'm thinking, Oh shit, what now . . . But I come slinking out and Thor grabs me, fingers crushing into my shoulders and he's shaking me"—I mime the gesture, chains rattling as I do—"and bellowing, 'Loki! My wife, Sif. She is with child, Loki! I am to be a father!' "

"Do not think to dishonor our mother, ei—"

"Silence, little brother!" Þrúðr snaps. I resist the urge to z-snap at the back of Magni's head.

Instead, I continue, "So Thor is bellowing, and when my eyes stop rolling in their sockets I see he's grinning this great big fool grin. Ear to ear like a Glasgow smile, and I don't think I've ever seen the guy so damn proud of himself.

"We go drinking to celebrate, as you do, and for the next month I can track the progress of the announcement by the number of people staggering around with mild brain damage. And meanwhile it suddenly hits your old man that he is, in fact, about to be someone's old man. So he goes scouring all over Ásgarðr for advice. Odin is useless, as usual"—he never did have much of a way with kids—"so Thor ends up at Frigg's knee. She teaches him how to hold a child and how to nurse and how to wrap swaddling, and she shows him how to make your mother comfortable during the pregnancy, even what to do during the birth. And everyone's tittering behind their hands about The Mighty Thor going soft, doing women's work, but your dad? He gives exactly zero shits, sitting next to Frigg, Mjölnir abandoned on the floor while he practices changing diapers." I mime someone with huge hands delicately folding a tiny scrap of fabric. Þrúðr bites back a giggle, and actually it occurs to me I don't really have to fake the size difference. Like this, I'm probably an inch or two taller than Thor was, if not nearly as broad. But my hands are big and my claws are thick and—

Right. Story, telling a.

"So the months roll on and Thor's cluckier than a barn full of hens, rarely leaving your mother's side unless she gets sick of the sight of him. Then it's all"—a nice falsetto, not quite Sif's voice but close enough to make Móði startle—" 'Thor, my love. I absolutely must have only the finest Álfheimr dates. Fetch them for me, please?' Then it was into the chariot and off we went. Seven months of that." I huff, shaking my head.