Chapter 7
The mushrooms were edible, even palatable, the air was soft and mild, the ground spongy, and a clear stream ran nearby. Frigga lay, after their light meal, with her head propped on one hand, and watched Heimdall sleep.
He had looked so worn and worried that she had insisted, and he had succumbed almost the moment his body was horizontal.
Frigga knew the planet was safe because that was what she had wanted, and she was the mistress of space. She knew also that it was far, very far, from Odin and the Nine Realms under his power.
Odin had once been famous for his world-walking, but she had never heard that he had gone any farther than the branches of Yggdrasil, and he would have told her if he could. He liked for her to know of all his powers, particularly the ones she didn’t share.
When she had been informed, in her youth, that she was to marry the great Odin Borsson, Frigga had been thrilled to think that she could learn some of his spells from him. She had always enjoyed learning new uses for her seithr. But, in all the many centuries of their marriage since, he had never taught her a single spell. Indeed, he had discouraged her from learning any more than what she had come to him knowing, saying that she had no need for more skill as he would always look after her, and was he not all-powerful?
She had thought, for awhile, that he was teaching Loki the spells that he didn’t teach her, but, when she asked Loki, he had revealed that he had found his father’s secret library of grimoires and spell-books, and had been “borrowing” them.
It had seemed to her then that they could not really be hidden as well as someone like Odin could hide them, if a child could find them.
Later, she understood that this was exactly the case; Odin had wanted Loki to know many of the spells that no one else besides they two would know, but rather than teaching the boy directly, he had simply left his personal library "unguarded" and trusted to Loki's curiosity. When Frigga, unwitting of Odin’s plan, had asked Loki to teach her some of what he had learned, Odin suddenly saw fit to send Loki alone on a dangerous quest to Muspelheim. Loki, her clever boy, had come back safe and sound, but Frigga had understood the message very clearly and never spoken to Loki of his father’s spells ever again.
Perhaps it was the fresh, fragrant air here, or the sweet tinkling of the stream, but Frigga felt better than she could remember feeling in a long, long time. She drew in deep breaths and savored them. She savored too the sight of her dear friend, resting peacefully, safe under her eye.
She was not really tired, but she must have dozed too, because she woke to the sound of Heimdall waking. He drew in a great sigh, and rolled over to face her. His face looked much more relaxed than before his rest, and she saw there the kindness and courage she was accustomed to find in his expression. The blisters on his wrists had healed in the few hours since their arrival, as they would on any Asgardian, though the process had been somewhat slowed due to his months of deprivation.
“My queen,” he greeted her, in that low, mild voice that had always been a source of comfort to her. “Have you a plan?”
She sat up, and plucked a handful of creamy flesh from the nearest pillar of fungus, handing it to him. She didn’t like for his wrists to be bony, or for the corner of his jaw to jut out quite so pointedly. He obligingly ate, as she laid out her thoughts to him.
“We must know more of what is happening before we can know what is best to do,” she said thoughtfully, “What do you know of the one that Odin calls ‘master’?”
Heimdall cast his golden eyes down at the fragments of mushroom in his hands. “That part of space is blocked to my sight. Powerful magics have been woven to shroud it. I know only that it is the same place from which Loki traveled to Midgard. I saw the folding of space which carried him from a great asteroid field in a distant galaxy to the human world. It was the same kind of folding, or linking, which brought us here.”
They both turned their heads to look at the innocuous silver chest which held the cube.
“Someone in the asteroid field was able to connect the spear, which they had, to the cube, which they wanted. I know not how,” Heimdall said.
“They are sisters,” Frigga told him, “The gems within. Cannot you feel it?”
Heimdall smiled at her fondly, “I have not your gifts, my queen.”
“As I do not have yours,” she replied, returning his smile, “That is why we are a good team.”
Her smile faltered at a new thought, “They are connected, one to another, and Odin holds the spear. If I can feel the connection, there can be little doubt that he does too. Can he come to the cube here, as Loki came to it on Midgard?”
Heimdall’s eyes took on the faraway focus that showed he was using his powers. “He speaks to the spear, even now,” he muttered.
Frigga didn’t demand ‘what does he say?’ though she dearly wanted to. She knew that Heimdall would report to her as soon as he could.
“He confesses,” Heimdall whispered next. Frigga held her breath.
“It was stolen, master, stolen from my vaults by a traitor, one I trusted…” Heimdall was relaying Odin’s exact words now. “I could not have suspected, she has been true to me for millennia, Great Titan, I swear it.”
“He is silent now. His master speaks, I think.”
“My wife, the b-- ” Heimdall omitted a word, “Frigga-Queen, she stole it from me, master, I would never deceive you. You must know, you must believe me, is she not there? If not, she will be soon…”
Heimdall stared before continuing hurriedly, “He screams, he falls to his knees. The Titan is hurting him somehow.”
Odin thinks that I would go to this Titan? Frigga thought, astonished, Why?
“He rises now, he catches his breath. He listens,” Heimdall paused. “Yes, Great One, I wish only to serve. Show me how to go where she is, and I will obliterate the ungrateful whore – excuse me, Queen! - and the treasonous creature she has taken with her. Nothing could please me more. Except to please you. Of course.”
There was another pause, a long one this time. “He listens,” Heimdall explained.
The pause continued, and finally Heimdall said, “He is in a trance, I think.”
Since nothing seemed to be happening for the time being, Frigga suggested that they follow the little stream and see if this world had rivers or oceans. They stood and brushed themselves off, and Frigga took up the silver chest by its handle. They began to pick their way slowly downhill, wending a path between the tree-tall mushrooms. At one steepish point, Heimdall held out his hand for Frigga to take, and several minutes afterwards, she found that she hadn’t let it go.
Eventually they came, hand in hand, to a large pool where the water was cupped in a dense net of hair-thin white roots.
“Perhaps,” Heimdall said wistfully, “If my lady-queen would consent to turn her back, I might bathe away the foul odor of the dungeons.”
“Perhaps your lady-queen also wishes for a bath,” Frigga smiled, “Will the Watchman turn his back?”
Heimdall chuckled, one of Frigga’s favorite sounds in (or out of) the Nine Realms. “You know that I can see through the back of my head,” he reminded her.
So they bathed in their underclothes; Heimdall in his thin half-breeks, and Frigga in her even thinner shift, laughing and splashing each other like children, utterly forgetful of Odin and his mysterious master. The water was refreshingly cool, and when they had been in it long enough for it to feel cold, they climbed out onto the snow-white, fibrous bank and lay side by side, panting.
“Tell me of my sons, Heimdall,” Frigga said. It was a relief to be able to say it. She had spoken these words to him nearly every day until his imprisonment, and now she had gone more than two months without word of her boys.
“Thor is with the Lady Jane,” said Heimdall, his eyes crinkling at whatever he saw, “They are cooking, with the maiden Darcy and Professor Selvig.”
“Thor is cooking?” Frigga asked. She had never witnessed such a thing, and wished that she could see it too.
“No,” Heimdall chuckled, “The Lady Jane has requested that he wash the dishes. He is washing them most mightily.”
Frigga smiled, charmed by the picture. She had heard much of the Lady Jane from Heimdall, and dearly hoped to someday meet the woman who could make the once-arrogant prince into a contented scullion.
“And Loki? Is he visible?” she asked.
“Loki…” Heimdall hesitated, “The younger prince is in the tower-home of the Avengers. Two of them are with him; the Captain of America, and the berserker.”
Frigga put a hand to her mouth, “They have taken him? And Thor not there to protect him?”
Heimdall shook his head slowly, as if wondering at what he saw, “He is not shackled, nor bound in any way. They speak together of… of a recorded saga, I think. Entitled Law and Order.”
Frigga lowered her hand, “Perhaps he has chosen to befriend them. Loki ever did make friends easily, when he wished. Remember the Elvish envoy’s daughter-”
She was interrupted by a loud crackling and a flare of light. They turned their heads sharply to stare at the silver chest, which now flickered in the midst of a blue flame.
“Odin speaks!” Heimdall said, “Though still entranced. He is chanting.”
The ground shook briefly under them, wobbling like a pudding due to its sponginess.
Frigga got to her feet and stepped towards the chest.
“Frigga-Queen!” cried Heimdall in warning, leaping to his feet to follow her. He put a hand out as if to restrain her, but remembered himself in time. “Come away, my queen,” he pleaded instead.
Kneeling down beside the case, Frigga carefully reached to touch the blue fire that surrounded it. Heimdall groaned behind her.
The fire was potent, and uncomfortable to touch, but Frigga’s seithr was strong, if untutored, and she knew that this pale effluvia would not seriously harm her.
The earth gave another, stronger tremble, and Frigga caught herself with one hand to the ground.
“Frigga, Frigga, I beg of thee,” Heimdall murmured almost inaudibly behind her, coming closer than she would have liked.
For a moment she was thoroughly distracted by his words; he rarely addressed her by her name alone, and never before had he used the familiar ‘thee’ with her. Indeed, no one had used it with her, ever, except her own parents. She was a queen. Almost, she turned to look at him in surprise, but the case flared with blue light and crackled dangerously, holding her attention.
Ignoring the sounds, and the unpleasant sizzling in her hands and arms, Frigga reached into the fire, and opened the case. Light glared from the cube within, and the blue flames began to gather and spin like a whirlpool. A high whine started, building in the surrounding air.
The sound grew in volume and intensity, and more and more of the blue fire gathered around the cube, engulfing Frigga’s whole body now.
Then the sound stopped very suddenly. A thread of fire snapped from the cube and shot out to a point fifty paces away. There, joined to the first by the taut rope of flame, another whirlpool of light appeared, draining away the fire from the cube. The second whirlpool was making a new and different noise, an ominous roaring, as it grew and its center darkened.
No, not darkened, Frigga realized – opened. A hole was opening to another realm.
There, through the hole, as if through a doorway, Frigga saw Odin.
And Odin saw Frigga.
“TRAITOR BITCH!” he bellowed at her, and took a step forward, the glowing spear in his hand.
Frigga put out her hand and touched one fingertip to the blue walls of the cube. Its power flashed through her in an instant, crashing through her mind and body, irradiating her from within. Odin was yelling and coming towards her with his heavy stride. He stepped through the portal and lowered the point of his spear at her, filthy words flying from his lips.
“No,” said Frigga, and the cube heard her.
The whirling, snarling portal rushed forward and swallowed Odin whole, like a carp eating a pea.
The portal, the fire, the spear, the King; all vanished at once, and quiet reigned again on the world of the mushrooms.
Heimdall, who had been crouching, ready to throw himself on Odin, stumbled and spun to face Frigga.
She took her fingertip, which was beginning to vibrate painfully, away from the cube. She looked at it, and then at Heimdall. If she were not a queen, and therefore too dignified for such lady’s maid gestures, she would have shrugged.
“I am the mistress of space,” she reminded him.