The Stars We Are Given

In the chaos of the situation—she refused to call it a battle, the word so feudal it made her squirm—she had gotten separated from Erik somehow. The anomalies she was creating weren’t as precise as they could be, and it wasn’t always clear exactly where you would land. She filed that information away for later; maybe there was something she could do about it. But in the middle of everything, there wasn’t much time for thinking.

A sound from behind her caught her ear. She whirled around.

One of the Dark Elves was headed right toward her, his spear raised.

Get him, Jane! The thought sounded suspiciously like Darcy’s voice.

Jane stumbled back and, in a panic, turned the dial on her controller and closed her eyes. Please be the right dial, she thought.

No spear ran her through. Everything had gone silent. No, not quite silent: a whisper of dry, stale wind lifted the ends of her hair.

Half-afraid of what she would see, Jane peeked one eye open—and nearly dropped the controller.

“Shit!” she said with feeling.

Before her was a vast desert. A vast, familiar desert.

She turned, taking in the landscape. Dark crags towered in the distance; everything was dull, like the life had been sucked out of it. There were no animals or plants in sight. It was a wasteland.

She was back on Svartalfheim.

It wasn't possible. Her technology wasn't calibrated to do this kind of transportation. Yet somehow it had happened.

Think, Jane, think. She had beamed herself back here. But as long as the Convergence was still happening, there were still thin places between the worlds. She could find a way home—but she had to do it quickly.

She was still standing in the place where she’d come in. She turned the dial again.

Nothing happened.

“Work, work, work,” she chanted under her breath, tapping the side of the device none too gently. She tried again. Still nothing.

“There’s nothing to eat. I can’t stay here!” she hissed at the controller. The device was unmoved by her plea.

Jane cursed in frustration. What had she done wrong? Maybe the alignment of the Realms had changed. The closer it got to the Convergence, the more wild things could get. Or Erik could have moved one of the spikes, made everything shift sideways. There was no way for her to know what was happening back on Earth, so she had no idea what she was doing.

A thought struck her. She’d activated the device twice with no result—but what if there had been a result, just not here? Maybe she’d gotten someone killed, like she’d gotten Frigga killed by attracting Malekith to Asgard. Right now Erik or Darcy or Ian or Thor could be—

No way, she thought, trying to quell her rising panic. This signal can’t go back to Earth. Not without a portal. That’s why it didn’t work.

Like her phone. That sparked a thought. She and Thor had gotten back to Earth—without a device, or Loki’s help. There was a cave somewhere, and if she could just get her bearings . . .

Jane looked around again, this time more critically. Svartalfheim looked just as she remembered it—of course, maybe the whole planet looked like this. She could believe that.

There. That, she thought, was the peak where she’d stood with Loki and Thor before meeting the Dark Elves. Probably. It was a starting place, anyway. After his brother had died, she’d taken Thor’s hand and he had led her . . . where? They’d been looking for shelter. Her gaze followed the outcroppings of rock. She started walking backward, picking up speed.

And stumbled over something heavy and large. She fell to the ground hard, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris that invaded her eyes and mouth when she gasped. She clutched the controller protectively to her chest and coughed, rubbing her eyes.

The large, dark shape next to her was a body.

She jerked away, feeling seared where she’d touched it, even through a layer of denim. She scrambled up to a standing position and tried to swallow down the bile in her throat.

She heard a harsh rasp—the sound of someone laboring to breathe. A moment passed before she realized it wasn’t her.

The body stirred.

She half-screamed as it turned to face her.

It was not the face she expected to see.

“Loki!” she said, half in relief. At least it wasn’t one of the Dark Elves. This was better. Probably. “You’re alive!”

“So it seems.” He turned and spat grit. One of his hands clutched his chest where the sword had entered him. Jesus, Asgardians were able to take an insane amount of punishment. She had no idea how he’d managed to survive a sword through the chest. He’d had an awful gray pallor when she’d seen him last; now he looked healthier. Some kind of advanced healing ability, maybe.

Jane hovered, but stayed just out of reach. “Are you . . . okay?”

Loki struggled to sit up. His hand came away from his chest, sticky with drying blood. He looked at it for a long moment with an unreadable expression, then at her.

“That’s debatable.” His voice caught on the last word and he went into a wet coughing fit.

“Do you need . . .” Jane faltered at the word help.

But he ignored her, rising gingerly to his feet. Jane was wary of coming too close—this was the man who had sent the Destroyer to Puente Antiguo, who had brought an army to invade New York, who had killed Thor. He was bent over, bracing himself on one knee, wheezing for breath.

“How did you survive?” she asked.

He glanced up at her; she had the distinct feeling she’d been forgotten until she spoke, and her uneasiness increased.

Loki straightened, but not without a wince. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said distantly, looking at their surroundings.

Jane held up the controller, compelled to explain. “I transported myself back here. By accident,” she added defensively at his raised eyebrow.

He coughed again, and when the back of his hand came away from his mouth, it was flecked with blood.

“Where is Malekith?” he asked.

“On Earth. I think. I have to get back there, I don’t know if Thor can beat him without me. Without this, I mean.” She tapped the controller.

Loki looked pensive. “There’s no road to Midgard from here—not one that I know of.” His tone suggested that there were none he didn’t. He nodded toward her hands. “I assume your device will be no help.”

Jane’s face warmed. “It might come in handy, you never know.”

But his attention had already turned away from her; he was looking to the distance with a critical gaze. “The flier may still be here. If we could find it—“

Jane’s mind jumped ahead. “We could go back to Asgard,” she thought aloud. “But why would you want to do that? Malekith is on Earth, why would—“ She sucked in a breath and stopped as she thought about what she was saying.

He regarded her with a faint quizzicality. “There’s no path to Midgard from here.”

Jane felt sheepish for her suspicions. He had helped them against Malekith. He’d even saved her life and Thor’s, and died—almost died; surely that counted?—in the attempt.

“There is! At least I think there is,” she said, remembering. “Thor and I got back to Mid—to Earth through one of the caves up there. The Convergence made a doorway back.” She pointed.

“We’ll need to hurry. The Convergence is almost upon us.”

“I know. Come on, I think I remember the way.”

Despite his words, Loki was a slow-moving partner. More than once she had to stop and wait impatiently for him to catch up. His breathing was ragged and wet, and he barely managed to lift his feet higher than a trudge, but he stayed upright. Which was good, because Jane didn’t know whether she could support him.

The ground began to tremble and quake underfoot. Jane didn’t notice it at first, but the vibrations began to grow stronger and unmistakable. As she stood waiting anxiously for Loki to catch up again, she turned to face where they’d come from. Loki turned to look with her.

Out of nowhere appeared one of the Dark Elf ships. It was a distance away, but the sheer enormity of it was still evident. Jane sucked in a breath, transfixed. Its tip pierced the earth like a fallen dagger. The towering edifice tipped forward, its great hulk creaking, and fell to the desert floor with a thunderous crash.

“Oh my God,” said Jane with feeling.

Loki’s heavy hand on her shoulder interrupted her awe. “The cave,” he reminded her through gritted teeth.

On the third try, she spotted the discarded soda can. “Come on, come on,” she urged, leading him inside and toward the back. She thrust her hand into the area where she had stepped through the portal before, and watched part of her arm disappear, sparking a triumphant grin.

Fear and foreboding gave way to excitement and hope. She was going back to Earth, she was going to find Thor, she was bringing his not-dead little brother back in tow, they were all going to save the universe together. Everything’s going to be okay.

In her haste she grabbed Loki’s hand and pulled him through the portal with her.

When she’d stepped through it the first time, there’d been no disorientation or strange feeling at all. Stepping through the portal had felt perfectly normal, like taking a step from one room into another. This was not like that. Gravity changed directions abruptly, and she pitched forward, her stomach lurching. She lost her grip on Loki’s hand and tumbled to the ground with a shout.

Something was wrong: she didn’t stop moving. She was on a slope, her hysterical brain supplied, and she was rolling down it. Without a sense of direction, she couldn’t get her bearings, couldn’t look for a handhold, couldn’t get even the most tenuous grip on her dizziness and fear.

At last her vertigo abated enough that she could realize she’d come to a stop. She tasted sand—was she still on Svartalfheim? Pushing herself up on one elbow, Jane groaned as her head spun and opened her eyes blearily.

She was in a desert, yes, but this one was different. It was bright, too bright; the sun was blazing overhead like it never did in London. Two suns. She rubbed her gritty eyes; her vision must have been swimming. Maybe instead of landing in London, she’d taken them to the Sahara. It sure felt hot enough.

As the dizziness cleared, Jane got to her feet. Pure sand stretched in every direction without even a hint of life. An enormous dune rose up not far away; most of the sand was pristine, but there were scuffle marks where she’d fallen.

She had dropped the controller in her fall. Loki was nearby, lying in the sand. Jane had a flash of déjà vu.

Apparently he was thinking the same thing. “Again?” he muttered as she drew closer and knelt at his side.

Jane twisted her fingers together. “At least I didn’t trip over you this time,” she offered, mustering a small smile she wasn’t sure he even saw. “Are you okay?”

“I’m much more hardy than you humans. I can survive falling down,” he said dryly.

“You’ve also got a giant, bleeding stab wound through your chest,” she pointed out.

He huffed a little breath, not quite a laugh. “True.”

Rising to his knees, he pushed the hair out of his eyes. His gaze searched their environment—looking for something. “Two suns,” he said grimly.

So she hadn’t been imagining it. Her eyes watered as she looked again; she couldn’t look directly at them, but the two bright spots in the sky were distinguishable if she looked just to the side. Maybe they were orbiting each other. No wonder it was so hot here.

“What does that mean? Do you know where we are?” she asked.

He stood, brushing sand from his clothes. It was a minute before he spoke; Jane had begun to think he was ignoring her.

“Muspelheim,” he said finally. He didn’t sound happy. “The other home of the jotuns.”

Muspelheim. The word triggered a faint memory. Thor, sitting on her roof with her journal in hand, telling her about the Nine Realms and the cosmic tree that connected them all. Everything had seemed much more exciting and wonderful then, when she hadn’t been afraid for her life—or the fate of the universe.

“We have to get back,” she said, trying to hide the tremor in her voice behind steely resolution. They had fallen on to the dune from the air; their paths were clearly marked in the sand. Loki sighed but acquiesced.

Walking up the dune proved more difficult than Jane had expected. More than once her footing slipped and she fell to her knees. Loki was no help. She guessed she couldn’t blame him because of his injury—he still looked wan and pale—but when it happened the second time she caught his little smirk.

When they found the portal, she told herself, she would go home and she would be rid of him. She found the controller half-buried in the sand near the top and swiped it up with a sense of triumph.

There was no portal.

She waved her arms. She jumped. She searched, moving in wider and wider circles. She knew she looked like a lunatic, but she didn’t care. At first her considerable energy came from her fear and anger. But as she kept moving, walking, talking, the dry desert heat began to take its toll on her body. The heat drained everything out of her. The sun was too bright; her vision blurred. Her tongue felt heavy and thick in her mouth.

Finally she turned to Loki. He straightened up as her gaze fell on him.

“You,” she said. “You are not helping! Why aren’t you helping?”

The words sapped the last of her energy, and she fell back on to the sand dune. Her head spun.

Loki knelt next to her. In his hands was something round and covered in leather—a canteen. She wasn’t quite so far gone as to have Loki feed her, so she raised it to her lips and drank, several long, thirsty pulls that almost made her sick. But her dizziness and tremors faded.

“If you’re quite finished ranting,” Loki said coolly, retrieving his water and making it disappear with a crisp gesture, “there are mountains in the distance. Will you come with, or shall I leave you here?”

The prospect of being left behind galvanized her to movement. Jane rose to her feet unsteadily, catching herself on his arm.

“Where?” she asked, and he pointed.

She squinted. There might be something there, purple and dim, but . . . “How do you know those are mountains?”

“Only one of us has been to Muspelheim before,” he reminded her.

“Do you know where we are? Have you been here before?”

“Here exactly? No, I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” His lip curled as he surveyed the landscape.

They began walking. Jane was reminded of how much she hated sand and how happy she’d been to move away from Puente Antiguo despite the startlingly clear night skies. At least until she’d gotten tired of the constant rain. Now she would do anything to have the humidity back. Her mother would laugh at her and call her fickle again. The thought made her heart hurt.

“I’m going to need some more water,” she said. “How much do you have? And how are you not about to collapse?”

“I’m not so frail as you. As much as you require.” Loki summoned the canteen from wherever he’d hidden it away. It had a strap that she looped around her wrist. He didn’t protest.

She wanted to ask why he was taking care of her, or at least allowing her to take care of herself, but that might be unwise. He had saved her from the Aether and the Dark Elves, but that had been a problem of potentially universe-ending scale. She had no idea what he was capable of doing, or not doing, when the stakes weren’t so high and he was free to indulge himself. She doubted that he liked her.

She stole a glance at him from the corner of her eye. He looked ridiculously out of place in the desert with his armor and cape. Then again, it was probably better protection against sunburn than anything she was wearing. If Asgardians even got sunburn.

Self-preservation warred with boredom. Any progress they made was indiscernible. Each step, as far as she could tell, was exactly the same as the last.

“What do you think happened?” she asked finally.

“Did you have anything specific in mind, or do you expect me to start from the creation of the universe?”

Jeez. “With Malekith and Thor,” she clarified. “That giant ship crashed back on Svartalfheim, I don’t know if you noticed.”

“Your pronunciation is atrocious. And I have no idea. I wasn’t there, you might have noticed.” His voice was clipped.

"I guess I should tell you what happened." Jane frowned. "After you—well, you didn't die, but after we thought you died, Thor and I took the flier . . ."

He listened with no questions or interruptions. Jane wasn't even sure if he was paying attention to her at all, but she plowed through the story in disjointed fragments anyway.

“Malekith must have failed,” she finished, mind racing. Recounting everything had made worry flare up again. “Or everything would be eternal darkness or whatever by now, right?”

Loki tilted his head in a gesture that wasn't quite a nod.

She pulled the controller out from where she'd tucked it under one arm, stumbling as she looked at it.

Half to herself, she murmured, "I don't know if this can help us, but it's worth keeping, isn't it?" At Loki's silence she looked up. "Isn't it?"

He definitely wasn't paying attention now. He was standing still. She was reminded of a snake flicking out his tongue to scent the air.

"What is it?" she asked.

Loki looked perfectly calm, but there was an undercurrent of urgency to his voice. "Jane, when I tell you to run, you should run."

"What?" His words didn't make any sense. "Run? Run where? Why?"

"Doesn't matter." He tilted an ear—toward some sound, she realized. A flash of reflected light: there was a dagger in his hand. She was sure there hadn't been before. He looked over his shoulder at her. There was a manic look in his eyes. "I'll draw it off. Go."

It? What was it? She stared at him.

"Go," he repeated, more urgently, and she turned and fled.

She kicked up sand behind her as she ran, and almost fell more than once. There was a sound from behind her, a heavy thud and a swish. She couldn't help but look back, slowing.

It was some kind of giant creature. Several times the size of a person, but low to the ground. Like an enormous crocodile. Its tail swept through the sand, stirring it up so she couldn't see it—or Loki—clearly. The sand in her eyes didn't help, no matter now much she rubbed.

They were fighting, the lizard and Loki. The lizard was forcing him back, step by step. Toward her.

Jane turned, preparing to run again. Instead, she lost her footing and fell with a cry.

The fall was farther than she expected. Instead of smacking the ground, she tumbled over and over in the air. The fall stole the breath from her lungs, so that when she finally hit something solid, her arm twisting beneath her, she couldn't even scream.

Instead, she passed out.

When she woke the first time, she did scream. Excruciating pain radiated from her shoulder. Strong fingers clamped her jaw shut, choking her into a sob. She fell unconscious again.

When she woke the second time, it was more sluggish, a crawl toward the light. Her shoulder still ached, and she was fiercely hungry, and she had a raging headache.

"What happened?" she asked. It came out in a croak. The canteen was no longer tied to her wrist.

Loki looked up from where he was seated not far away. His back was to the wall, and in front of him hung an orb of light that illuminated the small cavern they were in. Not the orange light of the sun, but something fluorescent and faintly blue, like the not-color of his eyes. It was cooler down here; she must have fallen through some kind of opening. They were underground.

"You're awake," was his only greeting. There was a cut on his face, but he looked much better than she felt. If he had really gone toe-to-toe with a giant desert-lizard, there was no evidence of it. He didn't even have sand in his hair. Stupid Asgardians.

She shifted and bit back a cry of pain. She'd moved her right arm without thinking. It was in a sling; Loki must have put it on her.

"You don't want to move that arm," he added, and she gritted her teeth.

"Thanks, I figured that out," she muttered. She tried to run her good hand through her hair, but didn't get very far. She gave up on unsnarling the mess and tried to wade through the muck of her thoughts. She didn't get very far with that, either. But she did notice a tantalizing smell.

"Is that food?" She sniffed.

"Roast of salamander," he said, holding out a piece. Was that the animal that had attacked them? Jane hesitated, but her hunger won out. She plucked the charred meat from between his fingers and stuffed it in her mouth whole.

God, it was amazing. Maybe it was the hunger talking, but that hunk of meat tasted better than any meal she'd ever head. Wary of her arm, she scooted closer to him to get some more. The water was there, too. She devoured her would-be devourer, pausing only here and there to lick grease off her fingers or chug from the flask.

“What happened to my arm?”

“It was wrenched out of its socket.”

Jane shuddered. She’d dislocated it once when she was eleven, playing soccer, and the doctor had warned her it would be easier to dislocate again. She was glad she’d been unconscious for the relocation. Mostly unconscious.

“Thanks for, um, sticking it back in. You said that was a salamander? But that thing was huge!”

“To what size are you accustomed?”

She showed him the palm of her hand. “This. This big, Loki. That thing was . . . enormous. I mean really huge. I mean really, really . . .”

“I think I get the idea,” he said dryly.

Having some food in her stomach cleared her head, and by the time she was done eating she was full of questions to ask, and only one person to assail with them. She sneaked a sidelong glance at her new traveling companion and decided to risk it.

"How long was I out?"

"Several hours at least. It's hard to tell down here."

Jane's heart clenched. Thor was out there. Thor was on Earth, without her. Assuming he was still alive. She'd reunited with him after so long, but maybe the universe was against them ever being together.

She took a deep breath. Ridiculous. She just had to find a way back to Earth. It wouldn't be the first time she'd found a method of interstellar travel. Or even the second. Then there wouldn't be any obstacles between her and Thor. Third time was the charm, right?

“So I fell down a hole,” she surmised, looking up. There was no opening; he must have closed it.

He settled back against the wall, lacing his fingers together and half-closing his eyes. “Quite serendipitous. You have my thanks.”

Jane ignored the light sarcasm in favor of exploring the little cavern they’d found. The walls were hewn from stone, too smooth to be a natural formation. It was just tall enough for her to stand in and not stoop. What had Loki called the people who lived here? Jotuns. The word sounded so forbidding. Maybe they had stumbled upon some dwelling or building. The world above sure seemed too inhospitable for life.

She trailed to the back of the cave, past where Loki was sitting. Something white flickered in Loki’s light, light and dark alternating in a way that made her stomach clench at the sight of it. She stepped closer, and the disparate shapes resolved themselves into a cohesive picture.

Bones. There were bones down here.

She stepped back automatically, and couldn’t keep the quaver of fear from her voice. “Loki?”

“I see you’ve met our companions.”

He was obviously unbothered. Jane pushed her nausea down.

“There’s nothing else back here, is there?” Though she doubted Loki would have just let it hang out with them if there was.

“Nothing dangerous.”

Jane steeled herself to take a closer look. The bones ranged in size, some almost as large as Jane herself. There was something that looked like a full skeleton, or close to it. It was not-quite human, residing in that uncanny valley that was more creepy than something from further away on the evolutionary tree. The spine was deformed, bending forward, and the legs were comparatively short, almost childlike. It was perhaps a little taller than Loki and twice as broad.

There was nothing else to indicate they were in a dwelling: no carvings, no art, no furniture. They were in a stone box full of bones, that was all.

“Where are we?” Jane asked. “I mean, what are we in?”

“The salamander’s dwelling, of course.”

Jane felt a chill run through her, even though she knew it couldn’t exactly return, unless she started feeling really sick.

“Did it . . . build this thing? It couldn’t have.” Even through the haze of sand, she thought she would have noticed opposable thumbs.

Loki laughed. “Of course not. No, it was put here.”

Jane tried to imagine. “Like a cage? For a pet?”

“Something like that. The jotuns are a barbaric race, and they have devised fittingly barbaric entertainment for themselves.”

She had the feeling he wasn’t talking about racing the lizards. “A gladiator thing?”

“More like a . . . hunt. If you look hard enough,” he added indifferently, “you might find prey not unlike yourself.”

He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes held a sly amusement and Jane was sure he was purposefully trying to creep her out. Well, it was working.

“Gross,” she said with feeling.

He murmured an agreement. “As I said, barbaric.”

“So you’ve never . . .” She hesitated.

“I’m told Odin outlawed the practice long ago.”

"So what is it still doing here?"

His eyes narrowed, though not at her. "I suppose it had grown accustomed to its new habitat. Perhaps this cursed existence was the only one it knew. How would I know? The hunts ended long before I ever set foot here."

That’s right, he’s been here before, she remembered. Maybe he had some survival tips she could use before Thor came for them. It couldn’t hurt to pick his brain.

“When did you come here?” she asked, cradling her arm as she knelt next to him.

He thought. “Perhaps five hundred years ago.”

“With Thor?”

“Yes.” Curt. Thor was a sore subject: check.

“What did you do? It doesn’t seem very fun up there.”

“There’s a bit more than just sand. Only a bit, to be clear. Mountains and volcanoes, mostly. And of course creatures to test one's mettle against.”

Mountains. They’d been headed in the direction of possible mountains. Higher altitudes would mean less breathable air, but also less heat. On the other hand, she didn't much like the sound of creatures, especially if they were anything like this salamander.