Chapter 7 — Before He Comes Back

The manuscript remained open on the table after the false Gina disappeared.

I kept my hands away from the pages and went to the door. The guard stood where Frigg had placed him, looking down the passage rather than into my room.

“I need you to carry a message to Frigg.”

He turned. “What message?”

“Gina entered the Library. Those words. Nothing else.”

His eyes went past me to the table. He had admitted someone wearing Gina’s face less than a minute earlier. As far as he knew, she was still in the room.

“Do you want me to fetch her first?”

“No. She isn’t here.”

He looked at me again.

“Please take the message.”

He went.

I closed the door and returned to the table. The ink on the manuscript was dry. The paper had not changed. I could still see the place where the visitor’s hand had rested before the room lost her.

The real Gina knew where the Library manuscript led and where she had placed the way back. Asking Frigg to inspect it, then studying it like an unfamiliar object, did not fit her.

I had never seen who was under Gina’s face. I still believed it was Loki.

The room remained quiet. Somewhere below, the landlady moved a pot across a hearthstone. A cart passed outside. The ordinary sounds made it difficult to believe that a god had just vanished through several sheets of my handwriting.

I moved the manuscript away from the edge of the table without touching an inner page. Then I waited.

Every moment I waited here also passed for Loki in the Library. I could track how long he had been gone. His progress was impossible to judge: he might still be checking the first door or already have found the shelf.

The guard returned with several people behind him. None wore a badge or uniform I recognized. They entered without touching the manuscript and spread through the small room as well as the furniture allowed.

One moved the chair aside. Another stood near the wall opposite the table. They left the door and window alone.

“Frigg’s order,” the guard said. “Anyone who appears inside this room is to be seized and held. Whatever face they show. Whatever name they give.”

I glanced at the patch of floor beside the writing table. “Here?”

“Inside the room.”

“What if it is Gina?”

“Then she will be held until Frigg says otherwise.”

I understood the order.

The room was too small for all of us to wait comfortably. One of the people Frigg had sent took my place near the table. The guard told me that Frigg wanted me brought to her.

I put on my coat. The manuscript remained on the table, surrounded by people who had not been told what it did.

I pointed to it. “Don’t touch the pages. Don’t damage it.”

No one answered.

Frigg’s working room had changed since my last visit. The household accounts and petitions were gone from the side tables. Maps, message tablets, and scraps of folded paper had taken their place. People came to the outer door, spoke in low voices, and left again.

Gina stood near one wall. She looked at me when I entered, then at the guard who had brought me.

“He gave the message,” I said.

“I heard.”

That was all either of us said about the Library.

Frigg sat at the same table where she had been working before Baldr’s death. There was an untouched cup near her hand. She asked when the false Gina had entered. I gave her the time as closely as I could.

“And you believe it was Loki.”

“Yes.”

“Believe?”

“I didn’t see him change back.”

She accepted that with a small movement of her head. “The order at your room is in place.”

I looked toward the shuttered window. The cold had found the edges of the room despite the brazier. “We don’t know when he will return.”

“No.”

Frigg turned to the next message brought to her. I remained because she had told me to remain. Gina did too.

People entered, reported, and left. Most of what they said concerned places and families I did not know. I learned which messages mattered by watching which ones Frigg answered herself.

The cup near her hand cooled untouched.

I counted the time at first. Eventually I stopped because it told me nothing about how far Loki had progressed.

The outer room grew noisier. A voice called for space. Someone knocked against the doorframe, and two people moved a table before the door opened fully.

Hermod came in looking exhausted from the journey and went directly to Frigg.

She rose before he reached the table.

“You saw her?” Frigg asked.

“I saw Hel.”

For a moment Frigg’s hand remained on the table beside the cold cup. “And Baldr?”

“She will release him.”

Someone near the door began to speak and was immediately hushed.

Frigg waited.

Hermod continued. “If everything in the world weeps for him. Every being and every thing. Living and dead.”

The condition matched the story I remembered. Frigg had sent Hermod before I told her that story, and nothing in my manuscript had directed his journey. He had returned with the same condition, and I did not know what to make of it.

“Did she say how we are to prove it?” Frigg asked.

“She said what must be done.”

Frigg looked at him for another moment, then turned to the room.

“Send the condition out. Every household, every hall, every road the messengers can reach. Let each person who hears carry it farther. Reports return here.”

Before she finished, people were taking copies of the words. Others repeated them back to make sure they had heard correctly. Doors opened, closed, and opened again.

Frigg did not ask me whether it would work.

I stayed beside the wall while Asgard tried to mourn Baldr completely.

The first reports came from within the palace. More followed from outside it. Some were spoken by people who had run; others arrived on folded sheets or tablets passed from hand to hand. The reports were not uniform. They named halls, streets, households, gatherings, and places I could not locate. Frigg asked short questions and sent several messengers back when an answer was unclear.

I heard grief through the walls as well as reports of it. The sound did not begin at once. It spread unevenly through the palace, voices close by mixing with others farther away.

No one could verify every being and thing named by Hel’s condition. They spread the demand as far as they could and waited for Hel’s response.

I waited for a report of refusal. None came, and no one brought the name Thökk. I did not know why.

Gina crossed the room once to put another piece of wood on the brazier. She did not ask whether I thought we had succeeded. Frigg continued receiving reports. Hermod remained close enough to answer when she needed him.

Each time someone came in, I looked up. Usually it was another messenger.

Then the people in the outer room stopped speaking.

A man came through the doorway without an escort. I had never seen Baldr alive. Frigg left the table at once, and the man had to be her son.

She crossed the room and put both hands against Baldr’s face.

“Mother,” he said.

Frigg’s head lowered. Baldr held her. The others gave them space.

My attention kept moving between Hermod and the open doorway. I still wanted to understand what had happened.

Baldr had returned. Hel had accepted the condition.

I still did not know whether Loki’s absence had changed the result.

People nearby set their work aside. Someone began to cry harder. Another person laughed once and covered it with a hand. Gina moved aside to clear the doorway.

Soon after Baldr entered, another messenger came through the doorway.

He went to Frigg but spoke loudly enough that I heard him.

“Someone appeared inside the Midgardian’s room. We seized him at once. He is restrained.”

The messenger did not say Loki’s name.

I looked at Gina. She had heard the same report.

The person they had caught was almost certainly Loki.