I refused to speak to Havamal as we swam back to the glacier. He tried once to break the silence by clearing his throat, but I didn’t even grunt in response. My mind raced with thoughts of Ragna. Would the water in her canteen hold out? Would she make it to the shore? Would I ever see her again? Part of me wanted to imagine her sitting in her boat, looking up at the twilight, waiting where I’d left her. In my daydreams, Havamal stopped, apologized, and let me go back to her.
But in reality, his hand remained fastened around my wrist like a chain. I half expected him to haul me before the king and make me publicly announce my intentions. Instead, he escorted me to my own cave and then hovered in the alcove, biting his lip as though he had something to say.
When I still said nothing, he shook his head and murmured, “I’ll come back and check on you in an hour or so. When we’ve both cooled off.”
“And then you’ll apologize, and we can forget about this?” I rubbed the back of my head and tried to laugh even though I wanted to sob.
He frowned and gripped the edge of the ice cave to steady himself. “We can talk about when we’ll tell the king.” Then he swam away.
Feeling numb, I propped the horn up against the wall of my cave. I surveyed my human treasures, wondering if I should scoop them up and hurl them into the ocean so Havamal wouldn’t have physical evidence to use against me. But everything inside me ached, so I curled into a ball, wrapped my tail around me, and buried my face in my fins.
Havamal had me trapped and he knew it. Whether the king believed him or not, he would take Havamal’s side. By now, everyone would have heard about the ceremony. King Calder would see my body as too valuable to waste and he would make a decision based on what I could do rather than what I wanted. Would he strip my scales before he turned me over to Havamal? I tried to rest, but all I could do was imagine the king’s cruel laugh as he flayed rows of scales from my back, leaving my flesh bare to the burning cold salt of the ocean water. He’d done it to others before, even to his own sister.
Shivering, I raised my eyes to the ceiling. Havamal had been my best friend and now he wanted to be my jailer—a warden disguising himself as lover, forcing me to do his bidding.
I’ve never been particularly pious, but praying to Loki before the ceremony had seemed to help. Or at least, it had eased my anxiety even if the god of lies had had nothing to do with the ceremony’s outcome. I didn’t like the idea of adopting the trickster as my patron god, but if ever I needed a trick or two, it was now. The words of a remembered prayer tumbled from my lips. Everything inside me felt too frozen to make up my own plea.
Blue light shimmered against the back wall of my cave. It was pale and strangely electric and reminded me of watching lightning strike the sea from fifteen arm-lengths below. I swam to my crevice’s mouth. Peering out into the gray water, I squinted at the source of the strange glow. The light became so intense I had to look away. It radiated from a little ball I could hardly see. All of a sudden, it blinked and dimmed. A green and yellow sea turtle glided toward me. The electric blue light glowed from his eye sockets, and he stared right at me. A shiver ran up my back, and my blood cooled.
Above me, the patter of hail echoed through the ocean, followed by the crack of lightning. I wondered if I should scream for help. Was stress making me imagine things? Sea turtles couldn’t survive here, could they? With their cold blood, they needed the summer currents to survive. I shook my head to clear the image, blinked, but the turtle still swam toward me. If I screamed and there was no turtle, the king would think I was losing my mind, and I’d have less chance of defending myself against the things Havamal could say. Plus, I didn’t want to wake Mama. I took a deep breath. My heart felt raw and exposed, blistered and stinging, like a wound cleansed with ocean salt. I wasn’t ready to talk to her.
The turtle drifted peacefully toward me, like a moving lullaby propelled by the tide. The creature’s bright eyes dimmed further, and it cocked its head, winking at me as it coasted through a school of silver fish. Then it began to paddle rapidly; its thick flippers pumped faster and faster until its whole body became a green blur. Overhead, the hail and thunder intensified—almost as if Thor himself surfed across the waves. A bolt of lightning struck the sea and a fiery purple and yellow aurora of fiery diffused over the waves.
When I looked up toward the lights, the turtle slammed into me, knocking me back into the cave. Before I could scream, a hand covered my mouth: a hand that was pink, warm, and strangely dry.
As my screams died in my throat, the creature spun me around to face them. Their turtle shell had transformed into a billowing cloak of sparkling greens and golds. Caribou antlers covered with strips of fur stuck out on either side of a silver helmet; each antler was tall enough to scrape the ceiling of my little cave. Blue, electric light emanated from their very skin. A sea snake the color of dying coral wound about their waist. I couldn’t decide if I was looking at a man or a woman. Their form was slim and elegant, androgynous, with neither soft curves nor rippling muscle. High cheekbones and pursed midnight-blue lips set off hooded, bright eyes, deep-set in their chiseled face.
I wanted desperately to swim away from them, to hide behind my kelp curtain, but they gripped my shoulders so hard I could feel bruises forming under my scales.
“Do you know who I am?” they demanded, raising a turquoise eyebrow.
The blue light shining from them made my scales glow as if I lay under the sun. A bubble of dry air formed in the ice cave and expanded until it filled the space. A warm feeling crept up from the tip of my tail, even while my stomach sank in fear. The horns reminded me of images from our legends that had been carved into the ice sculptures decorating our central hall. The statues in the hall had frozen their stories into our collective memories.
I swallowed. I was seeing the same face I’d seen every day since I was a child, engraved above me in the dining hall.
Loki, god of lies. I’d memorized their crystal smirk. But their eyes now carried an animation, a mischief that matched their hardened grin.
“You’re Loki,” I whispered. Why would the trickster god choose to help me? This was only the second time in my life I’d prayed to them. From everything I’d heard about Loki, my situation should have amused them. Maybe they were here to taunt me, to mock me for praying to them concerning a ceremony I didn’t care about and wasting whatever favor my birth season entitled me to.
They nodded, but their eyes never left my face.