PART TWO
Laufey carries the small infant in his arms with a distant tenderness, quieting it softly when it starts to shift and complain. “Shh, little one. Rest now.” His steps bring him slowly to the temple, the light of the casket casting queer shadows upon the walls and floor. Stopping before it, he reaches out, taking the small clenched fist of the child with him, touching their joined hands to the vessel of the energy that spreads into the ground, sending with it the life of the joined forms that live in tune with its own brightness. The baby quiets, eyes growing wide, and he smiles, imagining for a moment it living past infancy, standing beside him with that same look of wonder at some new discovery. But he pushes the fantasy from his mind and lays the babe gently before the casket. “May the Tree take you, may you endure no suffering or hardship,” he says quietly, and takes note of the battling before the gates. He closes his eyes for a moment, a grimace twisting his features. “I am sorry, little one, but I must leave you now.” He steps from the temple as the baby begins to wail, making his way to the enemy without the gates.
The fight is brutal and swift; the Aesir have their victory but not yet the satisfaction of an enemy’s defeat, and the two kings face each other silently in a battle apart and above from those of the people clashing in the palace that once was great. Odin spares his life—cruel, canny man that he is, Laufey could not hope for the death another man would have freely given. But he is wounded and weak; lying on the ground within the ruins of his kingdom, of his home; his anger departs with the conquering force and leaves only empty silence. He drags himself to the temple to drive in the sight of what he already knows; feeling the emptiness before he hears it, the plinth only silent stone. He falls to his knees, resting his head against it in prostration; and the thought enters his head with a quiet heaviness. I’ve failed. We are lost, we are defeated.
Eventually the numbness lifts enough that he begins to think once more—he casts his mind to the little one, left to die alone, and at this hour it seems unbearable cruelty not to stay with it until the end. But it is gone from where he placed it within the temple’s confines; gone, and the lack of piercing cries warms him to the bone. He staggers to his feet, leaning against the plinth for support, casting his eyes about the room, but there is nothing within. He speaks distractedly. “Gone? What kind of thief would take the meal whole without leaving a trace?” And yet even as he speaks he knows the answer. The same thief who took your Casket.
The reuniting, months later, with his wife and children is as painful as it is joyous, covered over with the cloud of defeat and loss. Farbauti steps up to him, without that sureness that he had once thought was as deep-seated as the ice—yet even ice could be broken. “Loptr, where is Loptr?” are her first, desperate words to him as they cling to each other like drowning ones, and he meets her eyes with bafflement. “Who?”
“My son,” she says.
Gone, Laufey answers within his mind. Taken by the conquerer; for what purpose I know not. I only hope a swift death for him and not a slow one. But aloud, he says, “Dead, Farbauti. You know this.” At his words she grips him tighter, a sound rising from her throat which is almost a sob. Behind her, Byleistr and Helblindi stand motionless and uncertain; with eyes too knowing for their young age.
“Dead, dead,” she says, stepping back with nervous energy and casting her hands over her face. “And it is my fault.”
“He would have died regardless,” Laufey says, to comfort her. “It was a mercy.” Farbauti laughs. It is sudden; with no hint of true mirth in its sideways tone; something flickers in her eyes. “My husband, I am afraid I must take my leave for a moment—”
“Of course.” He reaches down. “Helblindi, Byleistr. Come on; what, are you afraid?” somehow he manages an exaggeratedly affronted look which draws out their shy smiles and brings them tumbling into his arms. Holding them tightly, he remembers when he had not thought to ever see his family again.
This, at least, has not been taken from him.
And yet it becomes increasingly clear that something has cracked that cannot be mended. Farbauti hosts dinner regally, yet Laufey notices the bundle of cloth tied into a crude doll that is never far from her hands. Every one grieves in their own way.
But the months pass, and instead of passing the doll gains first a body, and then multitudes of clothes, every iteration more lifelike than the last; it dawns on him slowly that the thing is growing in time with the ghost of a boy forever lost. Only once does he broach the subject of destroying the doll to his wife; the look she gives him is of betrayal that cuts deeper than any word said in the frost of their arguments which had been wont to scare half the castle with their fury. “Would you kill Loptr once more, then?” she asks him with a voice as far from him as the ice is to the wind. “When he has not even a body but that I make for him?” It is then he realizes that the doll is no replacement in her mind, but the child they have lost.
He feels her falling from him, the ice which had seemed sturdy melted by a sudden warmth and treacherous underfoot. So it is that she slips into her own mind: easily, like falling, and slowly, as the turn of a season from growing to hibernation.