III) Loki and His Sons: A Place on the Map

Loki had arranged a family expedition with considerable care.

He had chosen a destination without prisons, prophecies, royal obligations, or anyone who remembered owing him money. He had packed food. He had left word of where they were going. He had even obtained a chart.

Jörmungandr inspected the chart.

“The coast is wrong.”

Loki looked down at the beautifully inked shoreline.

“All of it?”

“Enough.”

Fenrir sniffed the provisions.

“The cheese is wrong too.”

“You haven’t eaten it.”

“I have smelled it.”

Loki folded the chart with great dignity.

“It is reassuring to discover that fatherhood still consists largely of being reviewed.”

They left before breakfast could become an argument.

Their destination was an island beyond the western coast, visible from the cliffs on clear days. Sailors called it Glasswake because its northern beaches held green fragments worn smooth by the sea. No settlement stood there now. A surveyor had told Loki about shallow caves, sea birds, and a warm spring above the southern bay.

It sounded like somewhere a person might go merely because it existed.

Loki wanted that for his sons.

He had been careful not to say so in quite those words. They would have heard the care and suspected an arrangement made around their wounds. Instead he said there might be unusual fish.

Fenrir agreed to come.

Jörmungandr said he knew the way.

They followed the coast until the roads became tracks and the tracks became sheep paths. At the last harbor, Loki went to buy fresh bread while his sons waited beyond the breakwater.

There he found a poster of himself.

It was a poor likeness. The chin was excellent, but someone had given him horns large enough to interfere with doorways.

Beneath it, painted in red, were the words: LOKI’S LOST TREASURE. GUIDED CROSSINGS DAILY.

Loki stood very still.

The woman selling bread looked at him.

“Three silvers. Lunch extra.”

“Whose treasure?”

She pointed at the poster.

“Ah,” Loki said. “That fellow.”

“You know the story?”

“I have an interest.”

According to the woman, Loki had hidden a chest of gold on Glasswake before the last fall of the gods. It lay beneath a stone shaped like a wolf’s tooth. Whoever found it would receive wealth beyond measure, provided he escaped the monstrous serpent guarding the shore.

Loki bought all her bread.

It was preferable to several other things he wanted to do with his hands.

Outside the harbor, Fenrir listened to the account without moving.

Jörmungandr lifted his head above the breakwater.

“Monstrous?”

“Apparently.”

“What does that cost?”

“Three silvers.”

Fenrir’s ears moved.

Then he laughed.

It began deep in his chest and grew until Loki found himself smiling against his will.

“We should charge more,” Fenrir said.

Loki sat on a stone.

“I had planned a peaceful day.”

“It may still be peaceful.”

“Someone has given me antlers.”

“Horns,” Jörmungandr corrected.

“You’ve seen it?”

“There’s another poster on the lighthouse.”

They crossed to Glasswake beneath a sky full of moving cloud. Loki rode where Jörmungandr directed him, holding a strap secured for the purpose. Fenrir traveled with them, his weight settled carefully against the great coils. The sea rose in dark folds around them.

For a while, nobody spoke.

Loki had crossed water by ship, magic, deception, and one extremely disagreeable bargain with a fisherman. He had never ceased to be astonished by the ease with which his son belonged to it.

Jörmungandr turned slightly, letting a wave pass along his body rather than over his passengers.

“You’re staring.”

“I am admiring the navigation.”

“You may admire quietly.”

Fenrir closed his eyes in the salt wind.

Loki did as he was told.

The island rose from the sea in dark shelves of rock. Above its southern beach, grass shone bright between ruined walls. Seabirds stood shoulder to shoulder on the cliffs and objected loudly to visitors.

There was already a boat in the bay.

Its owner came running down the beach when Jörmungandr’s head appeared. Behind him, six travelers emerged from the ruins. One dropped a shovel.

Loki stepped onto the sand.

“Good morning.”

The boatman stared past him.

Fenrir came ashore.

The boatman made a small sound.

“We have come about my treasure,” Loki said.

The man looked at him properly for the first time.

Recognition did not come at once. Loki could hardly blame him. He lacked the horns.

Then the man swallowed.

“I can explain.”

“I was hoping you could. I seem to have misplaced a considerable fortune.”

The boatman’s name was Venn. He had inherited the tale from his grandfather, embellished it for paying visitors, and discovered that nobody traveled quite so readily to see an island’s perfectly respectable grass.

“Have you found anything?” Fenrir asked.

Venn glanced at the wolf and apparently decided that honesty was a sound commercial policy.

“Pottery. Nails. A ring, once. Copper.”

“No treasure.”

“Depends who’s buying it.”

Loki almost liked him.

Then he saw where the tourists had been digging.

Above the beach, a low wall enclosed a patch of softer ground. Several flat stones stood at irregular intervals. One lay overturned beside a fresh hole.

Fenrir reached it first.

His amusement disappeared.

“Father.”

Loki knelt beside the stone.

The letters were worn, but he knew the shape of the old coastal hand. He traced the first line without touching it.

A name.

A second, smaller line.

Beloved sister.

He looked toward the travelers.

“Put down the shovels.”

They obeyed.

One woman began to apologize. Loki raised a hand. He needed a moment before he trusted himself to speak kindly.

Fenrir moved through the enclosure, sniffing the disturbed earth. Jörmungandr rested his head beyond the wall, where he could see without knocking it down.

“Did you know?” Loki asked Venn.

The boatman’s face had gone pale.

“No.”

Loki believed him. Belief did not make the hole disappear.

They filled it together.

No spell restored the ground exactly. The turf had been cut badly. Roots protruded. The overturned stone needed three people and a timber brace to stand safely again. Fenrir remained nearby while they worked, and nobody mistook his silence for indifference.

Afterward, Loki read the names he could.

There were eleven legible stones. A fisherwoman. A child. Two brothers who had died in different years. Nothing announced a great battle or a royal house. These were people who had lived beside the sea and buried those they loved above the tide.

At the last stone, Jörmungandr spoke.

“There are more below the eastern cliff.”

Loki turned.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Long ago. The cliff stood farther out.”

The false chart lay in Loki’s coat.

He understood.

“The coast changed.”

“The sea does that.”

They should have left then. Venn said as much when he saw the sky darkening beyond the headland. But one traveler was missing: a young man who had gone to examine the eastern caves while the others ate.

Venn swore softly.

“The tide closes that shelf.”

Fenrir raised his head.

“He’s still there.”

Loki was already standing.

“I’ll go around from the beach. If I can make him see—”

“No,” said Jörmungandr.

The word stopped him.

His son watched him from the shore.

“You can go above. Fenrir can find where he is. I can reach the water.”

“I was only—”

“Arranging us.”

Loki shut his mouth.

The silence stretched.

He had wanted to give them an ordinary day. Now danger had appeared, and his first instinct had been to place himself where it could reach him before it reached either son. Once, that might have sounded noble enough to end the discussion.

Jörmungandr did not look grateful.

“All right,” Loki said. “Tell me where you need me.”

Fenrir turned toward the rising ground.

“With me.”

They climbed together.

The eastern coast had broken into shelves and steep gullies. Below them, water surged through an arch whose lower edge vanished with every wave. A thin cry rose from inside it.

Fenrir lay flat at the cliff’s edge.

“There. Beyond the second opening.”

Loki lowered himself beside him. He could see a hand clutching a crack in the rock, then the young man’s face.

“Stay where you are!”

The man looked up and nearly lost his grip.

“Don’t look up,” Loki amended. “Excellent. Keep doing that.”

Below, Jörmungandr entered the channel.

The sea changed around his body. Waves that had struck straight into the cave broke against his coils and spilled sideways. He did not stop the tide. He gave the frightened man a few quieter breaths between its blows.

Loki cast a small light onto the safe ledge nearest the opening.

“Can you reach that?”

“My foot’s stuck.”

Fenrir’s claws dug into the turf.

Jörmungandr brought his head level with the cave.

“Tell me where.”

The young man screamed.

Loki flinched.

His son did not.

“I know,” Jörmungandr said. “There is quite a lot of me. Tell me where your foot is.”

It took time. The water rose while the young man tried to speak through chattering teeth. Jörmungandr nudged a fallen stone carefully enough that Loki could see the effort trembling along the muscles of his jaw.

At last the foot came free.

The man fell forward onto dark scales and held on.

From the cliff, Loki watched his son carry someone out of the sea.

He had no clever words for it.

He found he did not need any.

They spent the night above the southern beach. Venn’s boat was safe, but the water beyond the bay would remain rough until morning. The tourists built a fire. Fenrir ate the cheese after announcing that hunger did not improve its quality. The rescued young man sat wrapped in two coats and kept looking toward Jörmungandr.

Eventually he got up.

Loki watched him walk down to the shore.

“I’m sorry I screamed.”

Jörmungandr opened one eye.

“You were drowning.”

“It was when I saw you.”

“I noticed.”

The young man stood miserably in the sand.

Then the great serpent shifted his head a little, making room beside it.

“You can sit down.”

Later, when the others slept, Loki sat between his sons with the inaccurate chart across his knees.

“I wanted us to have something pleasant,” he admitted.

Fenrir rested his chin on his paws.

“We had bread.”

“That is a low standard.”

“We also watched you discover you were selling treasure you didn’t own.”

Jörmungandr made a sound that sent small ripples across the bay.

Loki looked between them.

“You enjoyed that.”

“Very much,” said Fenrir.

Loki laughed, and this time there was no effort in it.

In the morning, they corrected the map. Jörmungandr described the coastline. Fenrir walked the paths. Loki marked the burial ground and copied the names.

Venn listened while the new arrangements were made. No digging. No invented treasure. He could bring visitors to the warm spring and the green beaches, provided he warned them about the tides and helped care for the graves.

“Will anyone pay for that?” he asked.

Loki looked at the sea, where his son lay beneath the lifting light.

“Try telling them what is actually here.”

They returned a month later.

The new sign read: GLASSWAKE. HOT SPRING, SEA GLASS, AND COASTAL WALKS. LOCAL GUIDE REQUIRED.

Underneath, in smaller letters, someone had added: Occasionally visited by a very large serpent. Please be polite.

Jörmungandr considered it.

“Better.”

Fenrir had already gone to inspect the bread.

Loki followed them, carrying a picnic he fully expected to have criticized.