The Gospel of Loki (26 page)

LESSON 11

Escape

Never neglect the small print.

Lokabrenna

T
HERE FOLLOWED
a long, strange, terrible time. Half in, half out of the waking world, it’s hard to say how long it was, but to me it was an eternity of boredom, boredom interrupted by intervals of brief, but unspeakable suffering.

To do her credit, Sigyn tried her best. Mad as she undoubtedly was, and as impervious to my pleas as she was to my cajolery, she did what she could to help me.

Most of the time that consisted of collecting Snakey’s venom. At intervals she emptied the bowl, at which times the evil creature struck. It also struck when she made me drink, which I had to do occasionally, or when she tried to feed me, or when she went to
powder her nose
. The result of this was that I was perpetually hungry, thirsty, in pain, or all three.

Sigyn was brisk and motherly, her tone like that of a nursery nurse with a fractious infant. She adopted exactly the same tone with me as she did with the snake, chiding us both for ‘not getting on’, and delivering stern little lectures. At other times she would sigh piteously over my sufferings, of course without ever accepting to free me of my shackles. I got the distinct impression that, despite all her complaints, she was happy. She had me
to herself at last, and she wasn’t about to let me go.

Time passed. I don’t know how long. I learned to sleep a little between those intervals of torture. No one else came, and I gave up hope that Odin might one day relent and free me. He was, however, to some extent responsible for my partial relief; Sigyn had said how Odin had told her how to find me, and had given her permission to help me in whatever way she chose. But if anything, that made it worse; the knowledge that Odin, having put me here in the first place, should feel concern for my welfare now – or was it guilt?

Too little, too late
. Did he expect me to thank him? No, I felt nothing but hatred now, for him and all his people. When I got free – and I swore that I
would
– I’d make them pay for what they’d done. And after that, I’d find Mimir’s Head and kick it from here to World’s End, and then bury it as deep underground as the Aesir had buried me.

Well, a man can always dream. Dreams were what sustained me then, between those terrible slices of pain. And Dream was so
close
; almost close enough to touch. I could hear it through the rock on which I lay; rushing through the Underside, bearing its load of ephemera off into the outside world . . .

Skadi’s parting gift to me had a twofold purpose. One was, of course, the sheer pleasure of making me suffer. The other, I suspected, was to keep my mind from thoughts of escape. There’s not really much you
can
think when your eyes are burning and blind, except for wanting the pain to stop. But during those long intervals when Sigyn held the snake at bay, I managed to regain some clarity, and my mind began to work again.

One thing I did was go over and over the prophecy of the Oracle. Especially the part relating to myself, and the precise wording thereof.

I see one bound beneath the court,
Under the Cauldron of Rivers.
The wretch looks like Loki. His wife
Alone stands by him as he suffers.

At first I’d assumed that Sigyn was mentioned simply as the only one who might stay loyal to my interests. Now I realized that the truth was more literal – I was apparently stuck with her from now until the End of the Worlds. I could expect nothing more from her. I went over the fragment of text again, checking the small print for loopholes.

I see one bound beneath the court,
Under the Cauldron of Rivers.
The wretch looks like Loki . . .
The wretch looks like Loki.
Looks like Loki.
Looks like Loki.

I thought about that for a long time. Why that phrase? I asked myself. To fit the metre of the verse? Or for some other reason, as yet unknown?

The wretch looks like Loki.

I suffered. I screamed.

The wretch looks like Loki.

I slept. I dreamed.

LESSON 12

Dream

What is it that the slave dreams?
He dreams of being the master.

Lokabrenna

D
REAM IS A RIVER
that runs through Nine Worlds, even Death and Damnation. Even the damned can dream – in fact, it’s a part of their torment. To escape, even for a second or two, to forget reality and drift, only to be yanked back into the waking world like a fish caught on a line . . .

Yes. In some ways that’s even worse than to have no relief at all. That second or two, on awakening, when anything still seems possible, including the possibility that the past few days – or weeks, or months – might themselves have been a dream . . .

And then it hits you in the eyes. This is
real
. This is
now
. And dreams are just ephemera. In such a case you might almost be forgiven for trying not to dream at all, for refusing to swallow the barb of hope that catches at the back of your throat. But I had the germ of an idea. Not quite a plan – not yet. Not quite. But the hope of escape had not yet quite abandoned me.

It was the phrasing of that verse.
The wretch looks like Loki
. Not he
is
Loki, but he
looks
like Loki.
Looks
like Loki. Raising the faint possibility that
Loki himself
may be somewhere else.

That would be nice, I told myself. If only I could make that work. But how could I
seem
to be in one place while actually being somewhere else?

Dream was the only answer. If I could somehow escape through Dream, leaving my physical Aspect behind, then maybe I could be free again. Free to rejoin Chaos, maybe; free of Odin’s vengeance.

Of course, there would be serious risks. Dream is a dangerous element, subject to dangerous forces. Here, at its source, it could be lethal; a river of savage ephemera that could destroy a person’s mind. On the other hand, everything dreams; and if I could manage to link myself with the mind of a suitable dreamer, then perhaps I could manage the seemingly impossible task of being in two different places at once.

Yes, I know. I was naïve. But I was also desperate. Ready to risk my sanity, my life, for the chance to get away. And so I practised dreaming; not as a means of passing the time, but doggedly, laboriously, as a convict scrapes away the floor of his cell with a sharpened teaspoon, hoping one day to dig a hole large enough to make his escape.

There are two kinds of dreaming. The kind that takes you in completely, and the lucid kind, in which you’re aware of being between worlds and travelling. It was the second kind I sought. It took practice, and all the time I ran the risk of falling foul of one of the creatures that plumbed those depths, creatures all too eager to lure an unsuspecting dreamer before consuming him mind and soul, leaving his body to die in the waking world. A rare thing in the Middle Worlds, although it sometimes happens. But close as I was to the source of Dream, it was almost certain. And yet I considered the risk worthwhile. Anything to get off that rock, away from Sigyn and Snakey.

And so I began to sharpen my spoon. Gods, it was laborious. There were no days or nights here, of course. I slept when I could, which was seldom. Little by little, I came to know the perils and joys of that river and its islands of ephemera, some as
small as a soap bubble; some as large as continents. I learnt to explore these islands; to skirt their dangers; to touch the minds of the dreamers who had created them. Little by little, I narrowed my search, all the time seeking a dreamer who would suit my purpose.

It had to be a strong mind, though not so strong as to resist my influence, or to try and consume me. An open mind; imaginative; not too constrained by moral issues. I tried many, only to find them all unsuitable in some way; and then, after an eternity of searching, I found the perfect one – or should I say, the dreamer found
me
. A strong mind, and imaginative, filled with familiar landscapes. A kindred soul, in fact, I thought; playing out scenarios that I almost recognized.

Some were tactile; comforting dreams of half-forgotten sensations. Dreams of sweet, cool water; of hands on my face; of linen sheets; of shady trees and the good scents of wet soil and vegetation. Trapped as I was, deep underground, barely able to breathe the air, always fearful, always in pain, always hungry and thirsty and sore, those dreams were my link to a sweeter world, and I embraced them fervently.

But as time passed I found the dreams becoming increasingly violent. The arc of a fountain of lava erupting from Chaos into the Worlds, bringing destruction in its wake. The journey of a flake of ash ascending from a bonfire. Dreams of fire; dreams of smoke; abstract dreams of Chaos. Burning buildings and fortresses falling into twilight; visions of the Folk at war; the Maggots; the Rock Folk; the Ice Folk; the gods . . .

At first it seemed almost too perfect. That violence, so akin to my own; I sensed the potential for a trap. And so I entered carefully, skirting the dreams with caution, occasionally adding a couple of small details of my own to see if he would take the bait.

Well, I say
he
. It isn’t always easy to identify a dreamer. Dreams are complex structures, difficult as prophecies to interpret or understand. Identities are particularly hard to determine,
as the dreamer tends to appear in many different Aspects. I took a different Aspect every time I entered Dream; one day a hawk; the other a cat; the next perhaps a frog or a spider. At first I had to force myself not to move too quickly, exploring the dreamer’s landscapes without trying to make any obvious attempt at communication, or trying to make him reveal himself.

I’ll admit, it was frustrating. But I knew I had to be patient. I’d found myself the perfect mind – clever, receptive, imaginative, and with just the right level of repressed violence to make us nicely compatible. I didn’t want to frighten him (or her) away with my eagerness. I already knew so much about my dreamer; his thoughts and feelings; his intelligence; his imagination; everything but his identity.

And then, one night, I found myself more than just a spectator. At last, I had made a connection beyond the mere subconscious. In spite of my attempts to hide, the unknown dreamer had spotted me.

The dream was an oddly comforting one; a long, deserted summer beach, with trees almost up to the waterline and the scent of flowers and ripening fruit.

At one end of the beach, a small girl was busy building a sandcastle.
Could she be the dreamer?
I thought.

I moved a little closer. I’d assumed the Aspect of a little redhaired boy – an Aspect which I found both practical as well as nicely unthreatening.

The girl seemed wholly preoccupied with the task in hand; I ventured closer still, keeping in the background of the dream so as not to attract attention. But the girl had seen me. Her gaze was strangely penetrating, and when I tried to shift my ephemeral Aspect, to make myself inconspicuous again, I found that I couldn’t. I was caught.

The little girl looked at me. ‘Who are you?’

‘No one. Nothing.’

‘That’s not true. I’ve seen you before. Won’t you tell me your name?’

She
must
be the dreamer, I told myself. But like myself, she was lucid; clearly able to exercise control over aspects of her dream – and that included Yours Truly, trapped on a little island of Dream that might at any moment vanish into ephemera as soon as my dreamer chose to awake . . .

Perhaps, despite my precautions, I thought, I hadn’t been quite wary enough. I’d relied too much on my camouflage, believing myself invulnerable. And now I was caught between realities, unable to shift, at the mercy of the dark intelligence I’d wooed for so long, and which, whatever else it was, was certainly
not
a little girl.

‘Who are
you
?’ I asked, to gain time.

‘Heidi,’ said the little girl. ‘Did you see my sandcastle?’

I looked beyond her down the beach. The sun was going down, and the light was suddenly ominous. In its glow, the sandcastle looked even larger than before, and all at once it occurred to me that it looked a lot like Asgard.

I looked a little closer. Yes: there was Odin’s hall; the walls; the turrets and bridges and towers and gates. There was my place; and Sigyn’s; Idun’s garden; Freyja’s boudoir; all painstakingly built in sand, with the Rainbow Bridge arching out from the parapet.

The tide had suddenly started to turn. The wind, so clean and fragrant a few moments before, now smelt of mud and seaweed. In the glow of the setting sun, the waves were crested with frills of blood.

Once more I tried to shift my ephemeral Aspect. I was getting a bad feeling about this dream; the bloody light; the turning tide; the Sky Citadel built in sand. But again I found that I could not shift. The dreamer’s will was stronger than mine.

I looked up at the sky. It was purple. The waves had reached the outer walls of the sandcastle. The bridge of sand fell almost at once; the battlements might hold longer.

‘This is the bit I always like best,’ said Heidi, in a bright voice. ‘Watching it fall. Don’t you agree? Watching as the sea
takes it back, grain by grain, until there’s nothing left?’

Silently, I nodded. Whoever she was, she had a point.

‘Of course, these things aren’t made to last,’ Heidi went on in a dreamy voice. ‘Order and Chaos have their tides. It’s futile to resist them.’ She looked at me. ‘I know who you are. You’re Loki, the Trickster.’

I nodded. ‘Right. And you’re Heid, otherwise known as Gullveig. The Sorceress. The mistress of runes. Cunning, greedy, vengeful.
Big
fan, by the way – those are my favourite qualities.’

She gave me a mischievous smile. Behind the little-girl Aspect she was complex; troubling. And, let’s admit it, alluring; alluring as only a demon can be.

‘I’ve heard a lot about you, too,’ she said. ‘You’re clever, ruthless, self-obsessed, narcissistic, disloyal . . .’

I shrugged. She had me there, I thought.

‘I’ve always wanted to meet you,’ I said. ‘But you’re not an easy woman to find.’

Gullveig smiled. ‘I was waiting for the right time.’

Interesting. ‘Why?’ I said.

‘I want to offer you a deal.’

A deal.
You’d have thought that by that time I would have learnt to read the small print. But after an unknowable time chained to a rock in World Below, I was hardly in a position to haggle. I thought of the Oracle’s prophecy and said:

‘This deal. Does it involve you freeing me from torment, putting me at the head of a fleet and doing to Asgard what the tide just did to your sandcastle?’

‘Kind of,’ said Gullveig.

I said: ‘I’m in.’