Notes: This take on Freyr and Gerd's marriage is fairly dark. Most modern tales make them out to be a happy couple in the end, in spite of what is often euphemistically called "a bad start." However, the picture painted in Skírnismál of the circumstances of Gerd's marriage is one of coercion and violence. This story proceeds from that perspective, so major Freyr/Gerd shippers may want to give it a miss.

Thanks to starsinyourwake for the beta.

Sequel to "Something there is that doesn't love a wall" and "The Raven and the Milkmaid." Reading those first isn't necessary, but it may give you a better understanding of the characters and their relationships.

The Winter Flight of Birds

It is the first snow of the dying year, and Asgard is preparing for a wedding.

The wind howls in wolf voices and spits shards of ice through the breathless air. The time for traveling is well past, the harvest stored and the meat salted and dried. The aged sun sheds her frozen light over bare oaks and rime-shrouded firs.

It's that early time of the winter year when stories begin. Sigyn feels this, somewhere deep in her bones, and she is restless with it.

She spends most of her winter hours in her mother's mist-shrouded hall, listening to the tales of Frigg's maidens and aiding her mother in the weaving. Sigyn isn't much of a weaver herself, but she can card the wool and she has an eye for color and form. And she knows how to be patient, which her mother says is really half the art.

On the morning of the first snowstorm, though, she has slipped away from Fensalir and gone walking under the fitful sun. Snowflakes catch in her hair and stick in her eyelashes, and without any conscious intent, she finds herself drawn to the wall.

It looms up suddenly and with finality out of the haze, somehow more solid and yet less real than it had seemed in the autumn of the year.

The wall is now two winters old, and already she has almost forgotten the look of the world without it. Her fingers brush lightly over the gathering snow and faded brown lichen that dusts the massive stones. The wall is bitingly cold and slick with sleet, and the tips of her fingers redden with chill. Her breath ghosts the air.

At the foot of the old ash tree, the stones she had piled for an old woman's comfort over a year ago still sit in a haphazard cairn, and new stones and small bits of mortar have joined them. The wall seems no less solid for their absence, but she feels a foreboding in them all the same.

Sigyn smiles, brushes snow from the ash's limbs, and begins to climb.

The branches of the tree are smooth with ice, and several times she slides back, her fingers scrabbling for an edge, her feet catching and slipping, but holding, on lower branches. She lets her chilled fingers rest against the ice until it melts just enough, then clutches with blunted nails at the bark and climbs again.

In the leap between tree and wall, she looks down and sees the world spread in miniature beneath her, and she hovers for a moment caught between weightless flight and the terror of falling. But her hands catch on the wall's rim and she holds on, half sprawled over the edge, legs gracelessly pulling toward the ground. Blood from scraped knuckles stains the snow as she hauls herself fully up.

For a time she simply lies, gasping on the edge of laughter, snow melting beneath her warmth and soaking into her dress. She sucks on her raw knuckles and sits up slowly. Beneath her, the wall is massive and cold.

And down below, outside the wall, is the world. She looks out over long, rolling plains drifting under new snow, past half-frozen streams and greater rivers still rushing with foam, past rising hills and thick forests of pine and spruce, to the jagged, dimly guessed heights of the mountains of Jotunheim. Everywhere the world is white and silent.

The sharp cry of a wheeling hawk knifes through the stillness. Sigyn smiles to herself, shuffling into a more comfortable position with her feet dangling over the wall's outer edge, and waits.

The hawk drifts on the air, circling lower, then makes a sudden steep dive toward the plain. Far below her, at the foot of the wall, something squeals, and there is the crunch of bones.

In the distance, Jotunheim's peaks, thick with old snow, glimmer like shards of glass. She stretches her hand toward them, and almost thinks she could prick her finger on the immensity of the world. Somewhere, away there, a Jotun woman is leaving behind her home and her people to journey to Asgard and the Vanir lord who awaits her. Even now, perhaps, she is traveling beneath the soft-falling snow, passing hills and valleys and great rivers.

Sigyn has never been outside of Asgard. She wonders if it shines so, from afar.

Wing-beats cut the frozen air in a flurry of gusting snow. Sigyn reaches up to brush windblown hair and melting flakes from her face, and watches from the corner of her eye as the hawk lands only a few feet from her on the wall. The half-eaten remains of a hare are clutched in one blade-edged talon. The hawk blinks slowly at her, its head cocked at right angles with its body.

"Hello, Loki," Sigyn says, and with carefully contrived nonchalance turns back to the view of distant Jotunheim.

She hears the rustle of feathers, and, a moment later, the rather pointed sounds of a bird at its meal. She swings her legs against the wall and hums in the stillness. If she's wrong, she'll only be talking foolishly to a bird, and no one but Heimdall is likely to see. She can risk a bit of foolishness.

And, of course, she's not wrong.

"Everyone's talking about the wedding," she says to the bird, or maybe just to herself. "I suppose you've been out, keeping watch on the bride's progress." Still refusing to look at the hawk, she waves a hand vaguely over the wide whiteness of the world. "She'll arrive soon, I think?"

Another whisper of feathers, and then Loki's voice, the one she's most familiar with, anyway, says, "Yes, tomorrow."

She looks at him. Red hair, brown eyes (for now), and a good deal less laughter than she had expected. He's still crunching on a bone, sucking the marrow with his teeth. Her first instinct is disgust, and then, strangely, shame. It's so infrequently that she's struck by his difference, but now, she thinks, he wants her to see. He's so alien, sitting there, devouring the last bits of the hare with sharp, graceful strikes of movement that are more a hawk's than a man's.

She wonders what a wedding is like in Jotunheim. Will the Jotun woman know what to expect? Is she eager for the splendor of Asgard, and the title of goddess that will come with her marriage? Will she love Freyr as he so desperately loves her?

Sigyn shuffles a bit, dangling legs kicking at the frozen wall. "In time for a wedding on Frigg's day, then," she says. "That's good." Her words fall, small and inadequate, into the silence, and she shifts again, feeling awkward and restless. The snow settles around them like a shroud.

Loki finishes his meal. He throws the skin and the bones bare of marrow over the wall behind him, back into Asgard, and she hears a dull thump as they hit the wet stones. Sigyn swallows, but doesn't say anything. When Loki turns to look at her, it's with tilted head and slow-blinking eyes that speak of long flights and simpler worlds.

"What brings you to the edge of this little world today, Odin's daughter?" he asks. "Are you looking for monsters?"

Once she might have been troubled by his question, but now it provokes only a snort of laughter. Maybe, she thinks, he's not wrong.

"All Asgard is preparing for Freyr's marriage," she says. "I have my duties, but mostly I seem to be underfoot. And I wanted—" She stops. She isn't sure what she wanted, exactly, except that for a week now she's been hearing stories of Gerd's beauty and Freyr's lovesickness. As the date set for the marriage approaches, Freyja looks more and more beautiful herself, and more and more cold. And Sigyn is too conscious of the things she sees, but no one ever talks about.

She looks again at the mountains. The fading sun is now only a hint of diffused light through lowering clouds, and the distant peaks look more stark than gleaming. They stand up like dark, jagged bones against the grey sky.

"Do you think she'll be happy?" she asks at last.

Loki smiles at her, sharp-edged. "She'll be a goddess among the Aesir. Isn't that enough to make anyone happy?"

Sigyn shifts. Snow flutters around her, displaced.

It's not an answer, really, except that it is.

Gerd arrives the next morning, borne on the wings of a biting wind from the mountains. She comes alone to her bridal; of course a lot of Jotuns could not have been allowed to enter Asgard. She passes the gates with head held high, radiant in the morning, and the whispers of her beauty run far ahead of her throughout Asgard.

Sigyn is there in the crowd at the gates. It's curiosity that draws her, more than any real reason to be there. She hardly has a place in this wedding. But the idea of the Jotun woman, coming alone across the wilds of two worlds to a marriage with a Vanir man she initially rejected, has sparked something in her. She needs to know.

Gerd is a beautiful bride, shining and sun-kissed as the snow-covered peaks of Jotunheim, and every bit as cold. Every bit as jagged, too, Sigyn thinks, when she meets the Jotun woman's eyes by accident and finds them edged like a finely forged blade. A question lives there, in the shadows of Gerd's eyes, but it is not one Sigyn has the answer to. She wants it, though.

She watches as Gerd is met by Sjofn and Lofn and Gefjon, and finally by Sigyn's own mother, Frigg, whose blessing will lie on the day of the marriage. Freyja is conspicuously absent.

There is another woman, though, not of Asgard and wholly unfamiliar, which is enough of a clue for Sigyn, now she knows what to look for. This woman is brown-skinned and dark-haired and certainly a Jotun. She cuts her way easily through the gathering crowd, and Sigyn catches the edges of whispers that follow in her wake. Gerd was meant to come alone, and this woman is known to no one.

But the strange Jotun woman is unconcerned. She reaches Gerd and clasps her by the hand in the greeting of a kinswoman. Sigyn sees their eyes meet, and a nod pass between them, before the woman falls back to follow behind Gerd, a retinue of one.

Gerd trails the women of Asgard toward Sessrumnir, and the crowd moves after them. But Sigyn stays behind, glancing back toward the now barred gates and the imagined view of Jotunheim beyond. Silence descends, and the gloom of fast-building clouds.

Sigyn shivers, and hurries her steps towards Fensalir and the warmth of her mother's fires.

That night, when the welcome feast is over and all are long asleep, Sigyn slips out of her mother's hall. The snow is gusting in great clouds now, whipped about by a strong north wind. Wisps of white air slither over the drifted snow like serpents. The night is bright with the fitful, diffused glow that comes when snow hides the full face of the moon. Silence and breathless stillness cover the world.

Sigyn breathes deep and shivers as the cold burns her lungs. In the quiet, the beat of her own heart fills all her senses.

She steps out into the night, and the snow dances around her and envelopes her in tremulous white silence.

Asgard looks wholly different under snow. The untrodden white flakes blanket everything in vastness, lending a stark beauty and a depth of strange and wild loneliness to fields and halls she has known since birth. Alone in the ever-deepening snow, Sigyn could almost believe she has come into another world.

Each year, at first snow, she walks alone in the sleeping dark and imagines herself in Midgard, or Vanaheim, perhaps, or even terrible Niflheim. Each year she laughs with herself and wanders old places made new, telling herself all their stories.

But tonight it is Jotunheim she thinks of. Asgard is built on a plain, but her mind constructs great crags and towering cliffs and mountains beyond mountains rearing to unguessed heights and clambering over one another endlessly into the shrouded distance.

The air sears her exposed face, and she clutches her fur-lined cloak closer about her. A second little snowfall, disturbed by her movement, flutters from her shoulders to disappear in white air.

She is a wanderer, far from home, with no certainty of shelter for the night. Perhaps, as in one of Thor's tales, some kindly farmer will offer her hospitality. But no, this is Jotunheim, and the stories are harsher here. She will have to pass some sort of test, won't she, to gain hospitality?

A great shape appears suddenly, dark and looming against the misty brightness of the night. This is no farmer's stead, but a great hall, thatched with gold.

A part of her recognizes that she is near Freyja's hall at Folkvang now, though in the dark and snow she can easily think it the hall of some terrible mountain giant, whose hospitality will be uncertain at best. She smiles a little at her own fancy and begins to turn back—tale-telling to suit herself is all well and good, but the night grows late and she has chores in the morning. For all its mystery wrapped in ice, the hall is after all only Sessrumnir, and she will receive hospitality in plenty in her own mother's hall.

But in that moment there is movement in the dark, a shifting of shadows where she had thought there was only an old yew tree. Sigyn turns to look properly, but now the tree is still, wrapped in falling snow.

"Hello," Sigyn calls out, but her voice is small and uncertain, and the wind devours it. Her earlier thought of mountain giants returns, less idle and much less amusing now.

And yet she hesitates only a moment before turning aside toward the yew. The snow muffles her steps and ghosts her breath, but the shadowed figure now dimly visible beneath the tree looks up at her approach. In the shrouded light, Sigyn cannot guess the face or even the form.

"Hello," she says again, though it sounds more like a question. "I don't mean to disturb you." Her words are clouds on the air.

"It is a strange night for a walk," says the other, but not unkindly. The voice is a woman's, soft, but deeper than common, and somehow still, like the living voice of winter.

"Not so strange," says Sigyn, pointedly, and the woman laughs.

"Not for me," she says, soft still and even a little wistful. "I am a daughter of the mountains. The little snows of the plains hardly trouble me."

Sigyn blinks snow from her lashes and considers the other woman's meaning. She had half wondered if she might be talking to Loki, but she doesn't think so now.

"I am Sigyn," she says formally. "Odin's daughter, and Frigg's." And then she smiles. "And to us on the plains, this snow is not so little!"

The other woman laughs loud and brightly, startling in the stillness. In the branches of the yew above them, ice crackles and sings.

"And I am Gerd," she says, confirming Sigyn's thought. "Daughter of Aurboda and Gymir, and soon bride of Freyr of the Vanir. You may share my tree, if you like," she offers, in mockery of a great lady bestowing a sudden favor.

Sigyn smiles, and steps under the yew's spreading boughs. The snow is less under here, though not entirely kept out.

"I've heard of you," Gerd says suddenly. "You are Loki's friend."

Sigyn blinks in surprise. Is she? They haven't exactly discussed it. And, she realizes, she's never really thought that Loki might talk about her to anyone at all. How strange.

"Well," she says slowly, "we talk, certainly."

"Loki calls you a friend," Gerd says, and there is a note of testing in her voice.

"Oh," Sigyn breathes. She is woefully unsuccessful at hiding her sudden joy.

Gerd seems to relax, shifting close enough that Sigyn can see her smile in the pale light. "Yes," she says. "In fact, Loki tells me you are curious and not above lying, which is quite a compliment."

Sigyn hardly knows what to say to that. "Oh," she says again, though this time it sounds more like a question.

Gerd laughs at her, and something in her that was still rigid seems to soften. She shrugs her shoulders eloquently.

"Loki is my kin," she says, and that is a surprise, though maybe it shouldn't be. Gerd breathes deep, as though shouldering a great burden, then quietly she adds, "She will stand with me, tomorrow."

Sigyn stares at her. Gerd is turned away from her now, facing out into the blinding snow, and her profile caught in the light is distant and unearthly in its beauty.

Loki never speaks of his kin in Jotunheim, or if he does it is not to her. He is laughing and quick and always seems quite at home in Asgard. Or so Sigyn has always thought. But—there are those strange private moments, when he tells her about monsters and lets her see the hawk in his eyes. And there is the way Loki looks at the wall, when there are no others to see, with a distaste that approaches hatred. She thinks of his quick, sharp movements as he ate the hare, and shivers.

Gerd's beauty is a shadow against the dim snow. Sigyn wonders if shape-changing is common among the Jotuns, and if the fullness of Loki's changing nature, which she is certain is unknown to most in Asgard, is common knowledge in Jotunheim. She has never known anyone else refer to Loki as anything but a man. (Or is it anything but? a dark thought whispers. She has heard him called argr, and other things besides. It had never seemed important before—just a common insult, awful, certainly, but used to prod and tease, not—)

"I tell you," says Gerd, "because if what Loki says of you is true, you will recognize her anyway." She pauses, her pensive smile fading entirely, and seems to reach a decision. Then she adds, all in one breath, "And because I would ask you to stand with me, too."

"What?" Sigyn looks up sharply. "Me? But I'm not—"

"I am not of the Aesir," Gerd says curtly, and Sigyn falls silent. "And yet I shall live among you, as the wife of Freyr of the Vanir, who, they tell me, is held as one of the greatest of the Aesir now." Her voice twists. "I know little of the customs of the Aesir or Vanir. And I do not think there is any great love for me here, that anyone else would want to spend their time instructing a Jotun woman." Her tone now is almost vicious, daring Sigyn to disagree, to name anyone else. Sigyn is silent.

Gerd's voice falls from fierce insistence into a quiet resignation. "But I believe I could ask a friend of Loki." She turns to look at Sigyn again, and there is nothing at all in her expression.

"I—" Sigyn stammers. She is no relation of Gerd's. She is not even a relation of Freyr's, and as an unmarried woman herself, she should have no part in the coming marriage. There will be questions, if she agrees. What role has she in a Jotun woman's marriage to a man of the Vanir? She is Odin's daughter, and it does not concern her.

But she is Loki's friend. She can't deny that, and more importantly, she doesn't want to.

"Well, I—" She hesitates. But, after all, Gerd will be numbered among the Aesir herself, after her marriage, and surely it can't hurt. "I can offer you assistance, in preparing," she says decisively. "And answer some of your questions. If, maybe, you can answer some of mine."

Gerd is momentarily surprised, and then she smiles. "And what are you curious about, Odin's daughter?" The note of teasing laughter in her voice is Sigyn's first real reminder of Loki, and that in itself is surprising.

"Oh, everything!" Sigyn laughs, settling on honesty. The misting snow seems to blanket their words, and it feels less strange, on a night like this, to be asking about Jotun marriage rituals.

Gerd eyes her speculatively, and oddly seriously, and finally nods. "I will answer your questions," she says. But she shifts, preparing to leave the shelter of the yew. "Tomorrow. The night fails, and tomorrow's preparation will offer time enough." She gestures vaguely toward Sessrumnir, dim and grey in the hazy air. "Come here in the morning, if you are still willing to stand with me."

And she turns sharply and strides off into the billowing snow, her feet seeming to glide through the drifts. In only moments, the night swallows her.

"I will," Sigyn says, belatedly, and turns her own trudging steps toward her mother's hall.

The morning is crisp and clear and brilliant under the new snow. Sigyn wakes early, hoping to go about her business unobserved. She makes it to the entrance hall, grinning to herself at the stealth of it all, and swings the door open on soundless hinges.

And there is her mother, standing still in the morning light, carding wool between her fingers. "Good morning, Sigyn," she says softly, her eyes not moving from the horizon and the new-risen sun.

Sigyn groans softly, and ignores her mother's answering laugh.

"You're up earlier than usual this morning," Frigg says knowingly.

"I wanted to get an early start," Sigyn mumbles, and the lie sounds weak even in her own ears.

Frigg nods sagely. "And how is our Jotun guest?" she asks. "You've talked with her. Will she settle well, do you think?"

Sigyn knows better than to be surprised by her mother's knowledge, but she startles anyway. Last night, she'd felt the need for secrecy, though nothing of great consequence had been said and Gerd was, after all, soon to be numbered among the Asynjur herself. Yet she feels that need still, unexplained but stronger now in daylight.

But she can't be entirely silent, and her mother is very good at keeping secrets.

"I don't know," she admits, a mere breath on the wind, but one that confesses everything. "I don't think she really agreed to this marriage. I don't think she wants it."

There's silence, and gusting snow out in the field. Sigyn breathes with the slow, deep breaths of someone who has unburdened a terrible weight.

"I thought as much," says Frigg in a clear, uncompromising tone that shatters the stillness. "What will you do?"

Sigyn laughs from simple relief. Her mother has always understood her best. "I promised to stand with her," she says. "I don't even know what she expects of me. But she asked that I teach her the ways of the Aesir, and…and I couldn't say no."

Frigg clasps her hands and smiles, a little sadly. "You have always been curious, daughter, and you are becoming a wise teller of stories. I think she chose well." And then her smile twists with mischief and she adds, "If there are questions, I will say that you stand in my place, with my blessing."

"Oh," Sigyn breathes. "Thank you, Mother." And she looks up slyly through her lashes. "Does that mean I get out of my duties this morning?"

Frigg only arches a brow at her. "But then you would have risen early for nothing," she laughs. "And that would be a shame."

She doesn't escape her chores, of course, and she finds herself irrationally annoyed that Loki has not decided to mysteriously complete her work for her this morning. Of course he couldn't do so when it would be really helpful.

Still the work goes quickly, helped by the fact that her mind is already away in Sessrumnir, and full of questions.

Sigyn misses the bridal bath, as she is unmarried herself and the ritual is forbidden to her. She wonders who, if anyone, sat in the steam with Gerd, sharing women's knowledge and all the secret arts of marriage and homekeeping. She hopes someone did; Sigyn herself does not know many of those secrets. So she waits until the first rituals are already completed before presenting herself at Sessrumnir. Freyja's door is guarded by Gefjon this morning, and the other woman looks Sigyn up and down in mingled amusement and suspicion before letting her in. Sigyn gives her a bright grin in return.

Freyja's hall is bright with streams of light from many windows, and from a large cheery fire that burns in the middle of the hall, casting shadows and glint on the multitude of gold that fills Freyja's home. The pillars are gold, and the roof is thatched with gold, and everywhere carven shapes of dragons and bears and fierce hawks rear and swoop in gleaming gold.

Gerd is seated in the center of the vast glittering hall, near the fire, her face like carved stone as two serving maids bustle about, preparing her hair and readying the bridal crown. She is even more terribly lovely by the light of day. Her pale radiant hair tumbles through the maids' fingers and falls against the smooth brown length of her neck. She is beautiful, but unmistakably Jotun.

Freyja is there, too, her face nearly as hard as Gerd's, but there is no one else, not even Gerd's kinswoman who is certainly Loki. For a wedding that has all of Asgard in a stir, it's a very small bridal party.

Sigyn steps into the room, and Gerd looks up at the sound of her arrival, frustrating the women who are busy with her hair. She smiles, very faintly, but it's startling on that stony face.

"Here's our lady of the Aesir," she laughs without humor. "Perhaps you can explain this crown to me. Freyja says it's a fertility charm?"

Sigyn realizes she's never really thought about it before. The bride always wears a crown. Sometimes it's made of sheaves of wheat and flowers, or gold and ribbons, or even adorned with burning candles. But she doesn't know why. It's just a part of the wedding ceremony.

Gerd's bridal crown is cunningly crafted in gold and bound around with wheat and barley from the late harvests and many brightly colored ribbons. Freyja, evidently, has put some thought into its meaning.

"Well," Sigyn says slowly, moving fully into the room, "it could be. I think—" She hesitates. "I think it's also a symbol of sovereignty, of, er, the dignity of the married woman." Even to herself, she sounds like a girl reciting something she's heard about but never experienced.

Gerd snorts. The sound is the very opposite of dignified.

Sigyn isn't sure how to take that, so she stumbles on. "It, uh, it's also the last time a woman wears her hair loose. After today you'll cover it." She says this almost apologetically; Gerd has beautiful hair. Sigyn remembers how it looked when she arrived, windswept and flowing around her head like waves of white gold. Not like hair that is used to being bound.

Gerd looks pointedly at Freyja, who tosses her own loose hair over her shoulder and smirks. "I am Vanir," she says. "And my husband is…gone." Her smile slips into a deep scowl. "And probably dead. So I do not abide by Aesir customs."

"Hmm," Gerd says, but she lets it go, and the maids continue twisting her hair into the complex braids that will hold the crown in place.

Freyja watches them for a moment, and then sighs. "Thank you," she tells them firmly. "That's enough. Sigyn can do the rest." The two girls offer her startled bows and hurry out of the hall.

Sigyn blinks. She's hardly an expert on bridal preparations, and even if she were, it's a servant's job.

But Gerd is looking distinctly relieved. "It's all right," she laughs, seeing Sigyn's face. "My kinswoman will do it."

Sigyn had entirely forgotten about Loki.

"Where is L—she?" she stammers, suddenly very aware of the secrets she seems to have stumbled into, and not at all sure of how much Freyja knows, or how much Gerd wishes her to know.

"Right here, lady," says a voice immediately behind her, and Sigyn jumps, her mouth opening in a gasp that quickly transforms into a scowl when she sees the brown, gnarled old woman laughing silently at her. Sigyn huffs and silently vows revenge.

"Loki," says Gerd, which answers that question. "Where have you been?"

"Here and there," Loki says carelessly. She's carrying a long narrow bundle, wrapped in thick cloths, and a small pouch dangles from her left wrist. "I've been finding your bride-gift."

Sigyn's eyes widen, but Gerd only looks puzzled. "I do not need a gift from you, kinswoman."

Loki only raises an eyebrow and looks pointedly at Sigyn, who explains hurriedly. "It's not a gift for you. It's for—well, for your husband. The bride gives her groom a sword, as a token of the peace between their families." At this, Gerd actually laughs, a choked sound, and Sigyn stumbles on quickly. "It, uh, it also shows that she is leaving her father's protection, and coming under her husband's. The sword will go before you to the wedding-place. And your husband will give you his ancestral sword, too, to be kept for his son."

Gerd snorts. "Oh, of course," she says. "But it's my understanding that my dear husband has already given away his sword to win my hand."

"Well, yes," Sigyn murmurs. She'd actually forgotten that.

But Loki has unwrapped her bundle, and in spite of her disdain, Gerd rises to take it. It's a long sword, wonderfully wrought, with a wolf's head carved into the pommel. It will make a splendid bridal gift.

Gerd stops short at the sight of the sword, and a fire kindles in her eyes. "Where did you get this?" she hisses at Loki.

"Your brother sends it," Loki says. Her voice is oddly gentle.

"That sword was buried with him," Gerd whispers harshly. Sigyn takes a startled breath, and even Freyja draws herself up sharply.

"Yes," Loki says, extending the blade, laid flat over her arms, toward Gerd. "And now he sends it to be your bride-gift to your husband."

"You visited him?" Gerd breathes.

"I visited my daughter," says Loki, not unkindly. "And Beli was there, feasting in her hall."

Gerd nods, shakily, but she reaches out and takes the sword. A fierce light fills her eyes.

"Good," she says. "Well, I thank him. And I will certainly pass his gift to my husband. Perhaps he will remember Beli's sword."

Sigyn's eyes shift to Freyja, whose face has gone very still and cold. But she says nothing. Everyone in Asgard knows the tale of how Freyr slew the giant Beli with only a stag's antler, when he was surprised without his sword. The story always takes a great part in song whenever Freyr's praises are sung in the mead hall.

Loki ignores them both and removes the small pouch from her wrist. She offers this, too, to Gerd, and says with the air of someone imparting a secret, "My daughter also sends a gift."

Gerd's eyes widen, and then she bows her head and murmurs, "She honors me," as though she were speaking of a great queen.

Sigyn is surprised. Loki's daughter is a queen, of course, though of a dreary and terrible realm, but Sigyn has never heard her spoken of with honor before. And Loki appears entirely unconcerned with Gerd's reaction. She simply shrugs and presses the small pouch into Gerd's left hand.

"She always liked you," Loki says warmly.

Gerd swallows thickly and opens the pouch. She peers in, and surprise and understanding pass across her face, but she does not remove the gift. "This is a powerful charm," she breathes, closing the pouch again and clutching it tightly to her.

"Keep it always with you," Loki says. "It will grant you a choice in your body, if not in your marriage." She leans toward Gerd and whispers her next advice, though not so quietly that Sigyn and Freyja can't hear. "If you do not wish to be a mother, wear it close to you. If the need is desperate, you can brew it in a drink of herbs. Your mother will have told you which."

"Yes," Gerd whispers in turn. And then, quiet suddenly, she embraces Loki, clinging to her arms and burying her face in Loki's neck. "Thank you."

Sigyn is stunned. She wonders, distantly, if this is always a part of the women's knowledge that old wise women share with a new bride. She glances aside at Freyja, looking for some hint of how she should respond, but Freyja's face is carefully blank. She takes Sigyn's elbow and pulls her away from the two Jotun women.

"Give them space," she murmurs, then fixes Sigyn with a fierce glare. "And hold your secrets, Frigg's daughter. A woman in such a position must take her freedoms where she can."

Sigyn nods shakily. She's always understood that weddings are happy occasions, times for feasting and song, but Gerd seems almost to be in mourning. And Freyja is angry, whatever else she may feel.

"All right," says Gerd sharply, standing suddenly rigid and looking now not sad, or even disdainful, as before, but simply determined. "Loki, we sent the maids away, so you will have to finish my hair."

Loki eyes her critically. "I can see that," she says drily, and ushers Gerd back to her chair by the fire. Her fingers move nimbly and quickly through the long strands, braiding and plaiting with obvious familiarity, and in a matter of moments she says, "Give me the crown."

Freyja brings it, shining and splendid, and for the first time Sigyn wonders where it came from. Gerd hadn't arrived with much in train.

"Is this your family crown?" Sigyn asks. "It's lovely."

Gerd starts to turn to her in answer, but Loki tuts and reaches up with swift hands to nudge her head back into place. Gerd huffs, equal parts amused and annoyed, and says, without looking at Sigyn, "No. This is not one of our customs, in Jotunheim."

Sigyn instantly feels foolish—of course she knew that. Hadn't Gerd just asked her about it? But her silent recriminations are cut off abruptly as Gerd adds, "Freyja loaned me her crown."

She says it easily, as though she has no idea what it means, and Sigyn can guess, from Freyja's perfectly composed face, that this is not a tradition she needs to instruct Gerd on further. She has so many secrets already that keeping Freyja's, too, seems like little chore.

So instead, Sigyn focuses on the other half of Gerd's answer. After all, Gerd had promised to satisfy Sigyn's curiosity, too.

"What is the custom in Jotunheim, then?" she asks eagerly.

She sees the edge of a smile appear on Gerd's profile. "There are several different customs," she says, "among the clans. But if I had been married among my own people, we would have presented ourselves before the graves of our foremothers, and made our vows in their hearing, and when we returned for the feast I would have presented my new husband, and my grandmother would have welcomed him into our family." She gives an odd, forced sounding laugh. "Or, if she disapproved, she would have turned her back to him, and he wouldn't have been my husband, after all."

She shrugs, and smiles awkwardly at Sigyn. The fact that her grandmother is far away, and that Gerd is not likely to see her again, remains unspoken.

"We have a feast, too," Sigyn says, eager to find some similarity. "And everyone will be there. There'll be endless food and drink, and singing, and storytelling. Oh!" She laughs, half in anticipation and half simply to break the silence that has fallen. "At the last wedding we had, that was Njord's marriage to Skadi, they told the most ridiculous stories, and it lasted for days, stories about Thor's adventures and great battles and wild swan maidens and—" she giggles and glances slyly at Loki, "there was Loki's story with the goat of course."

Loki smiles a demure old woman's smile. "Yes, that was a good one, wasn't it?" she says.

"You'll have to tell it again," Gerd says with a knowing smirk.

"Oh, no," says Freyja drily. "I think once was quite enough for that story." She tucks a last strand of Gerd's hair into the twining gold of the crown, and steps back.

"That's it, then," she says, which Sigyn is certain is not the usual thing to say on such an occasion.

Gerd nods stiffly. She rises from the seat by the fire and stands like a queen, regal and untouchable, crowned in gold.

"Freyja, my sister," she says softly, missing, or else purposefully ignoring, the way Freyja winces at the word, "will you bear my brother's sword before me to the wedding-place?"

Sigyn watches Freyja's eyes widen, and then a shutter falls over her face, and she says, softly and deliberately, "I will."

Gerd acknowledges this with only a slight bow of her head, before turning to Loki. "Kinswoman," she says, "I have no other kin in this place. Will you do the old woman's duty for me?"

Loki takes her time in answering, peering closely at Gerd and clicking her tongue. "Well, all right," she says at last, waving a wrinkled hand. New years seem to have settled in her face and colored her hair with snowy white.

"Thank you," says Gerd quietly. She turns briskly, straightens her gown, and moves with sudden determination to the door. "There's no point delaying any longer. Sigyn, walk with me."

There's nothing else to say. They walk in silence out of Sessrumnir, Freyja leading with Beli's sword, and Gerd following with Loki and Sigyn on either side, and the silence holds until they reach Barri, where Freyr waits with his party, wearing a smile as bright as the sun.

They've brought a man from Alfheim to perform the sacrifices. Sigyn watches in bafflement as he invokes first Freyr, who is so taken with the sight of Gerd that he seems not even to notice, and then Freyja, whose stony expression turns positively glacial, and finally Thor, who is standing in Freyr's party and at least responds appropriately with a booming blessing of the marriage.

Sigyn glances to her left and catches Loki, who shrugs her shoulders in apparent dismay and rolls her eyes broadly. Sigyn turns hastily away again, suppressing giggles.

The final sacrifice is offered to Frigg, who smiles graciously and speaks the appropriate words, but all the while her eyes are on her daughter.

Freyr hasn't brought a sword, though Skirnir is there, in his wedding party, wearing the sword that was Gerd's wooing-price. Instead Freyr offers the story of how he lost his sword through his deep love of Gerd, and promises many splendid treasures for her morning-gift to come.

Gerd smiles graciously, but says nothing.

And then Freyja brings the sword to him, and Freyr's smile staggers, catching itself in a rictus of surprise and dawning unease.

"I know this sword," he breathes. Freyja stands unmoving, holding it out to him, but Freyr's eyes are only for Gerd.

The Jotun woman smiles at her new husband, the warm, sunny expression of a woman in love. At least, Sigyn thinks, if you don't look too closely. Sigyn herself does look, and she reads death in that smile. She swallows hard, and steps back a little from the proceedings, a bit surprised when Loki moves with her.

"It is my brother's sword," Gerd says sweetly. "I offer it to you, dear husband, in token of my affection."

She sounds perfectly sincere, and her words are appropriate. Sigyn watches Freyr swallow, watches uncertainty chase itself across his face as he looks at his wife. Gerd meets his eyes guilelessly and softens her smile.

And with that the spark of distrust in his eyes fades into a clear, burning gaze, and he fairly beams at her. His hands reach to receive the sword from his sister, but he doesn't even seem to see her. Sigyn watches Freyja's closed off face, and Gerd's smile too loving to be true, and wonders how no one else present can see the cracks.

But the marriage is made. Freyr and Gerd exchange finger rings, and Var hears the vows, and the bride is given a gleaming golden apple from Idun's hoard to eat. A brief clamor goes up when this is done, the Aesir and Vanir acknowledging a new goddess, and then both parties separate in preparation for the feast.

Sigyn goes out with the bridal party, but as she leaves she can see the men jostling Freyr and laughing, congratulating him on such a fine bride, and recalling again the adventure with Beli and the stag's antler.

Gerd's unnatural smile has dimmed again, and she and Freyja both seem to wear the same non-expression. Loki is oddly quiet, and Sigyn, strangely, finds herself in the lead of the party. The journey to Alfheim is not an overly long one, but it seems endless in the silence.

Freyr's party has ridden ahead and is waiting to receive them at the threshold of the feasting hall. Whatever uncertainty he experienced at the vow-taking seems to have melted away like last night's snow in the brilliant new day's sun, and Freyr is once more beaming with joy. He hurries forward to receive his bride, with such haste that Sigyn can see several members of his party are plainly embarrassed.

She hesitates, looking back at the rest of the bridal party, but Freyja steps forward with an over-bright smile to announce the arrival of the bride. Gerd is handed over to Freyr, and an enormous shout goes up, with laughter and the banging of swords on shields. Sigyn looks out over the crowd and sees all of Asgard gathered to acclaim the marriage.

All but Loki. She has turned her back.

The wedding feast lasts a full nine days. Loki, or at least Gerd's mysterious kinswoman, disappears after the first day, and Sigyn herself is much less involved. Gerd is a married woman now, and as an unmarried woman herself, Sigyn is barred from many of the rituals. But she attends each of the nine days of the feast, and sees Gerd and Freyr drink the mead cup together. There are songs and wild tales and wrestling matches and even, on the second day, a very spirited bout of flyting, from which Loki is conspicuously absent.

But on the third day of the feast, Sigyn spots Loki at last. He's his usual self again, a red-haired, brown-eyed man, talking animatedly with Freyr. His hands fly about him with abandon, and she can spot the sly tilt of his rather too concerned smile from here. Laughing softly to herself, she shifts just close enough to overhear.

"It's a good job I'm here," Loki is saying, throwing a companionable arm around Freyr's shoulders and leaning closer as if imparting a secret. "It's plain that no one has told you anything about Jotun women." And he clucks his teeth in evident despair at the usefulness of Freyr's wedding party.

Freyr, who has been doing rather well with the mead, blinks owlishly at him. "What do you mean?" he says, slightly too loudly. Sigyn stifles a giggle.

"Ah, my friend," Loki says broadly, and Sigyn thinks that anyone who would fall for this performance deserves everything that is coming to him. "Of course they didn't tell you. Always fun to have a little joke at the newly married man, right? Let him find out for himself, and then laugh at his misfortune." Loki shakes his head sadly, then blinks, and shifts into a sudden grin. "Well, except maybe for Heimdall. It's entirely possible he just doesn't know."

"Doesn't know what?" Freyr demands, eagerly now. His eyes have gotten very big indeed.

Loki lowers his voice even further, and Sigyn shamelessly moves closer. No one is paying any heed to her, anyway.

"About Jotun women's bleeding, for one," Loki says in a whisper that seems designed to carry, if not far. Freyr doesn't notice, but Sigyn catches Loki's eyes on her. She shrugs, unapologetic, and Loki grins and even winks at her before turning conspiratorially back to Freyr, who seems to be choking on his drink.

"Oh, well," says Loki breezily, "I'm sure it's not that bad. Here, let me take that." He grabs the mead-horn from Freyr's hand and polishes it off himself.

"What do you mean?" Freyr demands, sounding a bit harried now.

Loki favors him with a deeply unimpressed look. "You do know about women's bleeding time, don't you?"

"Of course!" Freyr splutters, shaking off Loki's arm, which he has apparently only just noticed.

"Oh, well then, of course you do," Loki says, nodding, very much like an old man humoring a boy who thinks himself very experienced indeed. "Of course."

Freyr scowls darkly at him. "What is your point, Loki?"

Loki shrugs. "Only that, well, most Jotun women bleed for two weeks, you know, not just the one."

Freyr's scowl drops, and he stares.

"What?" He starts to wave his arm, most likely going for a sweeping gesture of disbelief, then frowns and refocuses when he realizes there is no drinking horn in his hand.

"It's true." Loki nods sadly. "It's to do with the harshness of the climate, I think. All that ice and barren rock."

Sigyn bites her lip to hide a laugh. That explanation is barely coherent, and certainly no one who is sober could fall for it. At least, she hopes not. For the first time, she wonders if Loki is entirely sober himself.

Freyr has spotted his drinking horn in Loki's hand, and his scowl is back in full force. "That's ridiculous!" he snaps, too loud again, and not sounding nearly as certain as he probably means to. "I've never heard anything about that, and anyway, my father is married to a Jotun himself!"

Loki eyes him slyly. "But that's hardly a common sort of marriage, is it? Don't think they were even in the same place together long enough for him to find out."

Freyr looks genuinely offended by this, and he draws himself up with dignity and makes a swift grab for the drinking horn. Loki lets him take it, as it's empty anyway, and continues looking entirely unconcerned.

"They're very happy, no doubt," he says blithely. "But if you intend to actually live with your new wife, well, I thought you ought to know how things are. You won't want much to do with her during those two weeks, I can tell you, and I always think a man should be forewarned." He nods stoutly, punctuating the point, and throws his arm back around Freyr's shoulders.

Freyr looks more uncertain now, and distinctly uncomfortable. "Someone would have told me if all that was true," he mumbles.

"Yes. I'm telling you," says Loki patiently. "And I ought to know. I've been a Jotun woman myself."

There's a sharp scuffle of limbs as Freyr attempts to get as far from Loki as possible without looking like he's moved at all.

"Er," he says. "Well. Thank you then. Yes." He seems to be casting around for something else to say, but when he spots Var heading towards him with a fresh drinking horn, he takes the chance and all but dashes away. Sigyn can hear him mumbling, "two weeks," under his breath as he goes, shaking his head every now and again in dismay.

The instant Freyr has disappeared back into his wedding feast, Loki clasps an arm around his stomach and doubles over in cackling laughter. He's a couple minutes at it, and when he straightens he's still chortling a bit. She's pretty sure now that he's had more than enough mead himself.

"Two weeks, huh?" she says, shifting from eavesdropping distance to stand next to him. "I can't even imagine. That must be awful!" She gives him the most credulous, big-eyed innocent stare she can manage.

Loki lets out a huge snort of laughter and collapses all over again in what can only be called giggles.

Sigyn sniffs. "How cruel you are, to laugh about it," she says haughtily, and Loki nearly chokes on his own glee.

She tries to hold her stern expression, but his mirth is catching, and soon she's laughing just as hard, if not quite so loudly, as Loki gasps out, "Did you see his face?" And that sets them off all over again.

"You two certainly seem happy," says Gerd drily above them, and all of Sigyn's laughter melts away. She stands hastily, brushing off her dress and searching, without much hope, for her lost dignity.

Loki doesn't seem bothered, though. He gets up languidly, stretching with a pointed lack of concern, and still chortling to himself all the while. Finally he seems to notice Gerd's raised eyebrow, and favors her with a wicked grin.

"If your husband actually gets up the nerve to ask you, just remember that of course Jotun women bleed for two weeks, as anyone with any knowledge of the world ought to be aware." He says the last with a disdainful sniff, which doesn't at all match the mischief in his eyes.

Gerd blinks. "What, really?"

Loki nods gleefully, and seems to be in danger of breaking out into giggles yet again.

"It's true," Sigyn says solemnly. "He looked very upset about it."

Gerd's cold face is utterly still for a moment, but then she breaks out into a sudden and staggeringly brilliant smile that lights her whole face and casts a radiance all around her. For the first time, Sigyn thinks that she can begin to understand Freyr's lovesickness.

Her smile doesn't fade, but Gerd nods decisively and says with perfect sincerity, "It's good that someone told him. It would have been terribly awkward to have to tell him myself."

That does set Loki off again. Sigyn glowers at him, but without much force, and she gives it up when she feels a touch at her elbow.

"Thank you," Gerd tells her softly. "It's...good, to have a friend here."

Sigyn swallows. She wonders if this is becoming a pattern: first Loki's friend, and now Gerd's. Of course Gerd is one of them now, just as Skadi is, and Freyja. And Loki too, really. But she watches the other wedding guests, sees the uncertainty and distance in their faces when they look at Freyr's Jotun bride, and she knows it isn't that simple. Maybe she knows too much.

But she isn't sorry.

She smiles at Gerd. "It is good. I'll be glad to have someone to share the first snows with."

Gerd laughs, a soft, quick sound of delight, and Sigyn can't bring herself to regret any of her new secrets.

It snows again. The brief thaw seems to have lasted only as long as the wedding feast, and the second snow of the year is fierce and wild, and more like to freeze than melt. Even Sigyn stays inside that night, for the wind is hungry, and ice and deadly cold come billowing out of Niflheim with the moaning of ghosts.

But the bleary morning reveals a stark, cold sort of beauty. The ice has crept all through Asgard in the night, and molded itself in strange, fluid shapes to the branches of trees and the gilded thatch of halls. The sun has veiled her face and walks shrouded through the sky, but even that little light catches on the frozen world and sets its jagged points and edges gleaming with fire.

The wall is deadly cold and slick, but it feels more solid than ever under Sigyn's fingers as she climbs. She feels its weight pulling at her limbs and dragging at her nails, and she sets her teeth against it. She is far from the old ash today, and the climb is harder without its aid.

Her right hand begins to slip. Sigyn lets out a hiss of breath between her teeth and, in a rush of anger she hasn't let herself acknowledge, she bites out a charm that leaves the icy wall as yielding to her grip as if it were built of ancient stone pitted with holes and footholds.

The rest of the climb is almost disappointingly easy.

Something rages in her heart as she reaches the summit and looks out over the lip of the wall and into the wide white world. As far as she can see, she is the only creature abroad in the blasting wind; even the knowledge that Heimdall may be watching seems to hold less power than it should.

The fierce, lonely cry of a hawk echoes somewhere far off, invisible in the white air. Sigyn staggers atop the wall, throws her arms wide, and screams out her answer into the devouring wind.

It swallows the sound, all her anger and confusion and the thought of Gerd's frozen smile, and only empty echoes return.

Sigyn droops to sit on the edge of the wall, her legs once more kicking over the rim and out into space. She laughs, and doesn't know why. Around her, the white snow settles in gusts and sudden drifts, and stillness falls like sudden night.

She sits there a long time, thinking nameless thoughts, while the storm rages against itself and finally dies, and the sun comes out from behind her veil to cast splendor over the gleaming world.

The hawk cries again, wheeling overhead and settling quite close beside her on the wall.

She looks at Loki, preening his pinions and casting her sly looks now and again, and for a moment she almost hates him.

But the moment passes, and mostly she's just left feeling oddly wistful.

"What's it like, in Jotunheim?" she breathes, watching the hawk with a distant smile.

Even though she's watching closely, she doesn't see the change happen. Maybe it never did. It's just that Loki was a hawk, and now he's a man.

But not a man as Sigyn is used to seeing him. This Loki is undeniably and unavoidably Jotun. His skin is dark and smooth and his eyes shine like twin stars beneath tightly coiled black hair. She thinks of Thor and Tyr and their descriptions of the wild fire ettins, misshapen and ugly, with their burnt skin and terrible blazing eyes. And she looks again at Loki and laughs, but there's an edge to it.

Loki is beautiful.

"Jotunheim is wild, of course," says Loki with a twisting smile. "All tumbled rock and jagged ice, fierce beasts and wild, raging giants. Everyone knows that."

Sigyn meets his gaze unflinchingly. "No," she says softly. "Not that. I want to know what it's like. Not what everyone knows."

Loki's smile softens, and he even laughs, briefly. "How can I answer that?" he says, and she follows his eyes away to the horizon, and the gleaming peaks of Jotunheim rising up out of the mist. "A whole world, in a few words?"

She laughs too, but she doesn't take back her request. "Tell me anyway," she says. "Tell me what Gerd has left behind. Tell me what you've left, to be here with us."

Loki shrugs, his eyes still on the horizon. "And what is Asgard like, then? Can you tell me that?"

She blinks. "But you already know—" she begins, but Loki cuts her off.

"No. I don't know Asgard as it is for you. So tell me."

She's silent, thinking. And then, after a while, she's silent because there's nothing to say. Finally she shrugs.

"It's home," she says, helplessly.

"Yes," says Loki, and to her surprise there's hopelessness in his voice, too.

She steals a glance at him, caught in profile against the white world, and suddenly it's not enough, sitting here on the wall, looking, always and only looking.

She stands, and the snow falls away from her in a rush of wings.

Loki looks up at her and cocks his head, hawk-like. She sees distance in his eyes, and worlds unguessed, and places where "home" has other meanings than here.

Sigyn spreads her arms against the sky and laughs, murmuring a charm under her breath that will turn the snow below soft as down, and speed the wind to her will.

She steps to the very edge of the wall, and looks back at Loki, who's watching her now with a slow-growing grin.

"Well," she says, matching the challenge in his smile, "are you coming?"

Then she leaps out from the wall, caught by the wind in that space between falling and flying, and the world opens below her, wide and terrible and unbounded by any wall.