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“It doesn’t look quite like I remember it,” Sylvie said, eyeing the lush landscape that was free of alteration by intelligent life forms. Unless, Loki mused, the most intelligent life form in the multiverse is that which creates the landscapes.
But that would be a god, and we’re supposed to be the gods.
Loki hadn’t felt much like a deity since being ejected from his timeline. And Sylvie… Sylvie had never felt like a goddess at all.
He crinkled his brow. “I still think we could find a timeline that would make sense for us to try to visit here: after Valaskjalf has been built, but before a Loki has been born. We could stop now… Go back to the TVA, check the timelines again…”
Sylvie shook her head. “No, Loki. Prehistoric Asgard is the only time that makes sense. I’m not risking bringing Baard here if there’s any chance anyone might question our identity.” She adjusted the four-month-old baby in the pouch on her chest, where he was sleeping peacefully. “You may forget that I grew up in apocalypses and I’m a little touchy about danger.”
“Sylvie…”
“I just don’t want to take any chances of running into anyone who has the slightest possibility of figuring out who we are. Okay? This is the best way.”
Loki nodded; he never wanted Sylvie to have to face any challenges to her existence ever again. “Yes. Of course.”
She smiled at him and took a steadying breath. “So…which way do I face?” She looked around. “Where’s this magic rock we’re supposed to push?”
“Wait!” Loki said, feeling his eyes sparkle irresistibly at the chance to perform a bit. “I must first recite the Incantation of Purpose.”
“Loki…” Sylvie said, trying to fold her arms, forgetting there was a baby attached to her. “You do realize that I already know about the ritual and you don’t need to give your Loki Lecture.”
Loki gasped, mock-affronted. “It’s not a lecture! It’s a poem. The Incantation simply may not be skipped, it’s part of the ritual.”
Thwarted in her attempts to fold her arms, Sylvie put her hands on her hips and tapped her toe. “Let’s get it over with, then. I’m in the mood to shove things.”
“Right!” Loki clapped his hands together and recited the words he’d heard several times before, but never truly listened to:
A child is born, a life has begun
And now these two must work as one
The sacred stone is what you seek
This task is not for the mild or meek
With all your might, you must not stop
As you ascend the mountaintop
But when you reach an obstacle
The solution’s not to push or pull
It cannot be changed with the wind or weather
The solution must be found together
And when your task is truly done
Your decisions shall be made as one
“Not bad,” Sylvie sniffed, although Loki knew she secretly couldn’t resist his recitations. “So is it really true? If we do this right, will it be easier to make our parenting decisions together?”
“People do say it works. But Sylvie, we already work together as one, don’t you think? Parenting with you has been so easy!”
Sylvie stifled a snort that Loki chose to ignore. Then she asked, “Do all Asgardian parents do this, then? Or just a chosen few?”
“It’s optional, naturally, but with so many aspiring warriors in the land, it is something that is attempted by many.”
“Attempted?”
“Oh, most fail, of course,” Loki said. “It’s a very heavy boulder.”
Sylvie’s eyes danced. “Well. If most people can’t do it, that’s all the more reason we must.”
“Well, naturally,” Loki agreed. He looked around. “Speaking of the boulder, I haven’t seen it yet, but it should materialize soon. Let’s see… The bridge will be here someday…” He positioned her right at the spot where the east edge of the rainbow bridge would eventually be built, some thousands of years in the future, and then turned her to the northeast. “We begin here.”
“Wait a moment.” Sylvie closed her eyes, then opened them again, taking it all in.
Loki couldn’t speak or think for a moment as he luxuriated in her beauty. Then he asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yes… I just can’t believe this is my first time back in Asgard since…” She growled low in her throat and a murderous expression crossed her face; then it passed. Of course, for Sylvie, losing the appearance of murderousness didn’t mean she was about to be nice. “...since that feckless beast Renslayer stole me from my home,” she finished.
Loki stroked the baby’s hair; Baard, amusingly, clucked a bit in his sleep. “Well. You’re back now,” he said to Sylvie. “Are you sure you want to do this? You’ve never seemed like the, ah… traditional type.”
“I’m not. But…” She stared out at the grassy hills, the snow-capped mountains, the fields covered in wildflowers and bounding with prehistoric steeds and tiny proto-dragons. “I can’t explain it. When you told me about this ritual, I just knew… I knew I had to come to Asgard and do it. I had to come home.”
Loki nodded. “I understand,” he whispered. The ritual wasn’t one that he’d ever thought about much in his life; it had been irrelevant to him in his largely self-centered life. People do it, it’s done. He frequently used to attend the ceremony, if the new parents were high-ranking enough to warrant his notice. But he had usually used the opportunity to make eyes at some lithe lad or lass — a new conquest. He’d never contemplated the significance of the ritual, or wondered if he might ever participate in it.
Sylvie looked around. “So where is it? The boulder?”
Right. The actual ritual. Sylvie’s loveliness and the depth of her experience had distracted him from the actual task at hand. “Oh. Hm. That could be a problem. You see, the boulder materializes when the land senses the presence of a new parent, but perhaps it wasn’t always like this. I always assumed it was innate to the land of Asgard, but… well, maybe it was the result of a spell that was cast sometime in the history of our people. If the boulder’s not here…”
“...then we can just conjure one?” Sylvie said, cocking her head and tapping her foot.
Loki shook his head. “That feels wrong somehow. It’s always supposed to be the same boulder. But if we’ve no other choice…”
“No, wait! Loki!” Sylvie started to scamper precariously down the embankment near the water and Loki sucked in air through his teeth.
“Sylvie, er… Try not to lose track of the fact that there’s a baby strapped to your chest…”
“Oh, come off it, we’re fine,” she called back, teetering precariously as she balanced on a fallen tree.
“Are you sure? Because—”
But at that moment, Sylvie let out a triumphant “aha!” and motioned for him to follow her. “Come on and look, Loki!”
Loki climbed down, grimacing at the distasteful state of his shoes as he passed over the rocks (which, he supposed, he should have anticipated on this excursion). With grim resignation, he conjured himself a pair of Midgardian sneakers and endeavored not to look at them. “What is it?” he asked.
When he reached her, she threw her hands out and gestured just below where they were standing. “Ta-da! Your magic boulder, I believe.”
She was absolutely correct: resting at the base of the embankment was unmistakably the boulder that would stand the test of time and become the key element of the ritual that would become so important to the Asgardians when they came into existence in the future of this timeline. Loki smiled and felt unexpectedly affected upon seeing it, lying unused and insignificant, with no crowd watching and applauding in awe of its existence.
“All right. So. I’ll just grab onto it and teleport back up the embankment and move it to where it’s supposed to be for the start, and we can just…”
Sylvie swiveled her head in his direction. “Are you serious? Isn’t the challenge to move it from where it starts to the top of that mountain over there? This is where it is, and this is where we’re pushing it from.”
Loki sighed; but of course she was right. “All right, all right.”
Sylvie brushed her hands off. “Right. Where do we put Baard?”
“Ah. I’ve got that covered, at least.” Loki swirled his hand around and a mechanized pram appeared from his pocket dimension. “I’ve charmed it to glide along next to us. Clever of me, wasn’t it?”
“Sure, except for the fact that I’ll need to get him in there, and he’s sleeping on my chest now, and it’s bound to wake him up.”
“Oh. Right. Um…”
“Oh, let me just try…” Gently, Sylvie took the baby off her chest and, holding her breath, transferred him.
“Yes!” she said, a triumphant gleam in her eyes. “He stayed asleep. Champion baby-moving, yeah?” She rubbed her hands together. “Now…shall we start?”
Loki cocked his head, unable to resist: “You mean, shall we… get the ball rolling?”
“Oh my god. Loki. Are you going to be the father who makes dad jokes? I would have thought better of you.”
“I’m afraid you may need to prepare yourself for the worst, Sylvie.”
Shaking her head, she braced her shoulder against the boulder. “Ready… and… push!”
Getting it over the initial ridge atop the steep embankment was hard enough. But that part was done in almost total silence, save for extravagant grunts, and it was over quickly. After that, though, was a much longer, less steep slope that proved to be far harder than it looked (and the boulder ended up being heavier than it looked).
They started bickering almost immediately:
“Loki, you’ve got to put your full weight behind it!”
“I am, Sylvie! You’re going too fast!”
“The faster we go, the faster we’ll be done with it!”
“But if we lose our grip along the way, then it’ll start rolling down the hill and we’ll need to start all over!”
They squabbled for the first half hour of the trek, eventually reaching a willowy tree and resting under it.
“Okay. Let’s just… think. All right?” said Loki, panting. “Look. There’s got to be a way to make this easier.”
“Well, there’s not. We just have to accept that. This is gonna suck no matter what we do.”
“No, look… look there…” Loki nodded his head to indicate a slight divot in the ground. “That path, right over there. It looks like an old stream that has dried up, and it’s got built-in walls, sort of. Like bumpers in a bowling alley.”
Sylvie quirked an eyebrow at him. “Since when have you been bowling?”
“I’ve had all sorts of adventures, Sylvie. I must tell you about D.B. Cooper sometime. Well? What do you say?”
She shook her head. Baard woke, eyes wide and blinking at them from the pram, and Loki bent to give him a kiss and a snuggle. Fortunately, he seemed content where he was, for once. Sylvie responded, “It’s tempting, Loki, but it’ll take longer. It’s a more winding path. I’d rather just strong-arm it up in a straight line.”
Loki, who was feeling incredibly winded despite his prodigious strength, couldn’t let it go yet. “Please, Sylvie… I swear it will be more effective in the end… and we won’t run the risk of losing all our progress. Please? Indulge me?”
Sylvie smirked. “Well, you know I like to indulge you.”
“Indeed you do.”
“Fine. But if your idea ends up making this take longer, I’ll make you do the whole thing again by yourself.”
“Well, we’ll never know, will we, so let’s just assume it’s faster,” Loki said, gritting his teeth and continuing to push… although, somehow, the boulder felt a smidge lighter now.
And indeed, after a while, Sylvie looked down, took a deep breath, and gave him a sideways look. “Fine,” she said.
“Fine what, my darling?” Loki asked, feeling quite complacent.
“This is easier and probably faster,” Sylvie said quickly, not looking at him. Loki grinned and didn’t press the issue; it was a big deal for Sylvie to admit he’d been right, and he didn’t want to gloat (however much he was tempted).
When they reached a large chasm, Loki stopped, resting against the boulder. “I don’t know what the Hel to do here,” he said. “Please, let’s just put it in my pocket dimension and clamber down and back up, and then fish it out again on the other side…”
Sylvie snapped her head to him. “Loki, that completely goes against the spirit of the quest.”
“But there’s no possible way to do this!”
“Yes, there is. Look: we’ll have to use those vines over there to build a bridge. I’m good with knots, it won’t take me long. Just get yourself to the other side and be ready to catch it. All right?”
Baard looked at them, cooing. Loki reached out to stroke his cheek. “I wonder why he’s being so calm. You know, there’s a spell that will be performed later in Asgard’s history, when the ritual is created… The spell keeps the infant calm while the parents are performing the task. It’s almost as though that spell is already in place, even though no one has cast it yet.”
“Well, whatever the reason, don’t jinx it! Let’s just get this done before he starts wailing,” Sylvie said.
“Right.” Loki made his way gingerly down into the chasm and ascended the other side, and only a few minutes later, Sylvie tossed him a rudimentary rope bridge, which he affixed to a tree on his side.
“Cross your fingers, Loki!” Sylvie called, as she lined up the boulder with it. “We’ll need all the luck we can get!”
“What? I thought you were certain about this… aaah!” Loki dived out of the way as the boulder came swishing across the bridge. The bridge collapsed behind it, but Loki yanked at his side of the bridge and pulled it like a rug, tugging the boulder along with it.
“Eh!” cried Baard, who of course couldn’t say anything, but somehow seemed to understand that this was quite an important development.
“Wonderful, Sylvie!” Loki exclaimed. “Now climb down and back up, and—”
“Nah, gonna jump—”
“Sylvie, no!”
But it was too late, and Sylvie was leaping through the air across the gorge. For a moment, she seemed suspended in the air, and then she landed roughly at the edge of the land, rolling over until she was seated carefully at the foot of the boulder.
“There! Worked like a charm.”
Baard let out a satisfied little noise, and they rushed over to him. “Look, Sylvie, he’s clapping for us!”
“That’s ridiculous. Four-month-olds can’t clap.”
“Well, that’s what any old baby can do, not our baby.”
“That’s actually a good point. Good clapping, Baard!” Sylvie bopped him on the nose and he laughed, a fine new trick of his.
“Sylvie?”
“Hm?”
“Yours was a fantastic idea, too.”
Sylvie held her chin high, but her cheeks were pink from the compliment. “Well. I know that, of course.”
As they resumed pushing, it again felt lighter and more manageable. They got into a quick rhythm with it, and the child seemed to be egging them on, cooing loudly without actively fussing.
Finally, they reached the area just below the summit of the mountain. Baard was busily kicking the walls of his pram, alternately staring at his hands and his parents.
“It’s so steep,” Sylvie said, wincing and holding the boulder in place with her back. “Do we really have to get it all the way to the peak?”
“All the way, or it doesn’t count.”
“Rrg. Why did I want to do this bloody ritual anyway? I mean, what’s the point of it?”
“Well, it’s supposed to challenge us and make us stronger and worthier parents.”
“Sod that,” Sylvie said through gritted teeth. “I’m strong and worthy already, and so are you. Should we just let this bloody thing go?”
Loki gaped at her. “You can’t possibly mean that. Not after all of this.”
After a few ragged breaths, she admitted, “No. I don’t mean it.” She squinted up at the peak. “So… I think it’s your turn.”
“To what?”
“To come up with a brilliant solution. You came up with the winding path, I came up with the bridge, and now we’re back to you.”
“That’s not fair at all! Then I will have come up with two brilliant solutions and you with only one.”
“Well, it’s not fair the other way, either.”
“So should we come up with one together?”
“Sure. You start.”
“No, you start!”
“No, you—”
It was at this point in a spat that they would usually start sparring or having sex or both, but neither was available to them at this moment. Sylvie’s face began to crack and she pursed her lips to keep them from trembling. “Dammit, Loki. We’ve come this far. We can’t just give up.”
Loki, unable to move his hands, nuzzled her forehead. “Maybe there is no magical solution for this one. Maybe we just have to steel our resolve, put our backs into it, and push until there’s nowhere left to go.”
Sylvie nodded. “No magical solution.”
“Unless we genuinely use magic. Still an option.”
“It’s not, and you know it’s not. Please don’t.”
He nodded. “I know. I won’t.”
She closed her eyes and nudged her shoulder into his. “If anyone can do this together, it’s us. Don’t you think?”
“Of course,” Loki said quietly, “I would never doubt that for a second.”
And with a final peck on the lips, Sylvie was off, grunting and grimacing and pushing as hard as she possibly could, almost straight up. Loki quickly matched her, heaving with all his might.
He looked over at her, and he had never seen anything so lovely as Sylvie’s look of fiery, unwavering determination.
“Together,” he rasped, “we can do this together.”
“Always,” she said, and with a rush of adrenaline, or possibly a magic beyond either of their knowledge, the boulder felt, for just a moment, light as a feather. They shoved hard and it rolled itself over the final ledge, settling itself in a small hollow at the top of the mountain.
They scrambled up to stand next to it, breathing hard. The pram floated up next to them, and finally, as though he suddenly knew that the time was right, Baard began to whimper and fuss. Loki picked him up, shushing him and kissing his head. He pulled a bottle out of his pocket dimension and began to feed him as they all stood staring out at the landscape.
“We did it,” Sylvie whispered.
“We did,” Loki said. “Look, Sylvie. You’re home.”
He traced a series of lines in the air, sketching out a visible outline of the palace, the rainbow bridge, the sumptuous gardens, and everything else that made Asgard feel like Asgard. It was nothing close to the massive metropolis their older variant had conjured in the void, but it was something, at least.
After admiring it all with a smile playing about her lips, Sylvie turned to him and put her hand on his jaw. “But you know, of course, that I already have been home. Now that I’ve found you.”
“Sylvie! I thought I was the cheesy one.”
“I get one cheesy line per year. ‘Kay? You get, like, fifty.”
“It’s a deal.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder and patted Baard’s back.
“I’m glad we came here,” she said. “I needed to do this.”
“So did I. I never understood… this ritual, it’s more than just…” He shook his head. “Well. There was a lot that I didn’t understand when I lived here.”
After a few more moments to take in the lush, untamed scenery, Sylvie took on her most efficient demeanor and indicated the boulder. “So. This thing will need to get back down to where it was. Don’t you think? So that we won’t have altered anything… you know, messed up the timeline… I mean, how does the boulder get back down after the ritual, anyway? It seems awfully dangerous to just send it rolling…”
“Like that,” Loki said breathlessly, as the boulder dematerialized before their very eyes. “That’s how it happens. It’s back down below now, even though we can’t see it. It will appear again when it is needed.”
Sylvie blinked rapidly at it. “What? How? I thought the magic wasn’t activated yet, since there are no people here to have done it.”
Loki knelt and felt the ground beneath him, closing his eyes and feeling the thrum of seiðr that ran through it, eternally. “Maybe it never needed to be activated. Perhaps it has always existed.”
“Perhaps,” Sylvie said, smiling softly. “This really is a wonderful place, Loki. I’ll miss it.”
“We can always come back here,” he said, putting his arm around her. “To this very moment, where it’s peaceful and free, with no one to question us.”
“I’d like that.”
Baard gave an impatient little kick, and Loki laughed. “All right, little one. Sylvie, shall we go home?”
Loki pulled out his TemPad, but Sylvie stopped and put her hand on his arm. “Do you think it worked?” she asked, her face more solemn than usual. “Do you think we’re going to super-parents now, and all our decisions together will be easy?”
Loki sighed. “I don’t know. I truly don’t,” he said. “But I know that I loved doing that with you. And if we loved that…”
“...then we can love doing anything together.” Sylvie flashed him a grin, then kissed Baard on the brow and he unleashed one of his irresistible smiles. “Right, then,” she said, “Let’s go home.”