Page 48 of Last Thrall of Asgard

I scoffed, picking at Loki’s snake. How easily any fear turned to resentment. “Not according to some of the gods represented by these symbols.”

“We weave as the story goes,” Verdandi chided, “not ahead.”

“But there is a pattern you follow, isn’t there? You know what each stage of the picture will look like.”

“Knowing doesn’t mean we chose it!” Skuld giggled, and each time another spoke, they rotated who was weaving, again and again.

“Sometimes, fate is what you follow,” said Urd.

“Sometimes, it is what you fight,” said Verdandi.

“Either way, choice doesn’t lessen the path or outcome,” said Skuld, and the others joined her in saying the last.

“Choice merely shines a light on what you want and hope to keep.”

A glimmer from the tapestry brought my eyes back to its braiding, where I thought light must have struck the most recently woven threads, for there seemed to be a metallic one where I didn’t think there should be.

Should it?

“That is all you are allotted, I am afraid,” said Mimir, tugging me back from the hollow’s mouth. The Norns continued their weaving, their watering of Yggdrasil, alternating in a circle, like the infinite motion of time.

But what did they mean? My fate was my own, my choices were my own, even if the end results were inevitable? How, when my fate wasn't really mine with which to do anything, for wasn't Loki the one who held my future in his hands?

I was barely aware of my feet moving when we continued around the tree, and we were back at Mimir’s well before I knew it. “If that was all I am allotted from the Norns, what doyouoffer?” I asked him.

“I thought you were here to aid me?” Mimir smiled.

Handsome as he was, this was the first time I felt put off by another coupling with a god, even if he was more than a head. “Then why did you show me all that?”

“You needed to see it. But I do offer knowledge.” He gestured to the well, but then proceeded to walk out past it again, as if returning inside his hollow was only a detour. “Once we are done.”

I followed like before, wondering if we would circle the tree once more, but Mimir went to the side of the hollow and pressed a hand to Yggdrasil’s trunk. The tree glowed with its rainbow iridescence where Mimir’s palm and fingers touched, and some of the roots near his feet parted, opening a different kind ofhollow. “Done?” I asked. “Is my price for that knowledge the whole of my body, like how you asked for Odin’s eye?”

“The price ismybody.” Mimir turned and began to disrobe.

I was still enough in my right mind to enjoy the reveal. He had anicebody. But what did he mean?

“Sometimes there are phantom pains all through me,” he said, “as if this body is not mine. I had grown too used to being nothing but a mouthpiece, not quite conscious, but not quite alive. I do not know how to be whole anymore. I need to be used as the head I was, but with my mind intact to know I am more.”

I felt a pit in my stomach larger than when Balder had wrapped my hand around his throat. “Then Iamto fuck a head?”

“You are to use a mouth, young Oli, lips, tongue, and throat, to remind me that there is more.”

I was suddenly very aware of Mimir’s scar. “While I think I understand… how exactly? Please tell me you do not intend for me to behead you again.”

“No. Ygg can give us all we need.” Mimir climbed into the hollow beneath him and leaned his head against the tree’s trunk. “Do this for me, and I will give you your greatest boon yet.”

Knowledge. Of what, I didn’t know, but to be allowed to drink from Mimir’s well, I might see anything. Including what Loki wanted from me.

Ifhe wanted me.

“I feel a bit useless though,” I admitted. “You know what you need from me more than I do.”

“It is my nature. And yet, admittedly, one I must be free of.”

The roots of Yggdrasil moved again, winding around Mimir’s body until he was engulfed, with the head that remained left in such a position that, if I knelt upon where his body was hidden, I could rock between his lips with ease.

The gods were mad. All manner of perverse. Or perhaps I was the perverse one that my loins stirred as I neared the head.

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