“Why?” he hissed. “Why would a witch travel all the way to your quiet little clan just to threaten you?”
But Ledger only tightened his lips, denying the elfin any further information. Instead, he asked his own questions. “Why are you here, Vali? Why do you care what I’ve done to my family?”
“Because I need to know!”
“Why?” he screamed. The single word echoed across the barren fields of Asgard, constant inside his head.
In the heat of the moment, the answer sparked, and knowing the truth he unleashed would never leave this hall, he let it fly free from the cage of his tongue. “Because I am the reason Ailsa is alone. I am the one who ended her family line and practically forced this curse upon her. And for some reason, Ledger, Icare.So if there is a way to take this burden from her, I vow to you and every star above listening to us now: I will find it.”
Before her father could respond, Vali brought down the hammer and split open his thick skull. Hot blood spewed across his face and painted the field but did nothing to soothe the anger in his flesh. Ledger was sprawled limp beneath him. It would take him all night to heal from an open head wound, and Vali left him there to be found in the morning.
His confession rocked something inside his spirit, an acknowledgement to both himself and the universe he would be forever marked by Ailsa in a way that ran deeper than the marks on his skin. He cared, but that was not the worst of it. He cared forher,even when he knew he could not.
He made the long walk back to Idun’s garden, feeling the ghost of his heart beat an ache across his chest.
Thor’s hammer sat on the edge of a bench near the well, unguarded.
Vali approached the well, struck by the solacing solitude found beneath the orchid canopy sprawling like fingers above him. He lifted the encumbered weight of the hammer, and as his fingers slipped around the stumped handle, bolts of incredible energy surged through his fingertips. Mjolnir was larger than his head, inscribed with protective runes enhancing the enchantments molded into its metal.
The weight on his shoulders lightened significantly despite the bulky weapon. He had confessed something tonight that had shaken off a dusty place he had ignored for decades. Awoken by a new motivation, one with a steeper stake and a harder fall. He cared for Ailsa—not because she was the Tether or because she held the key to the salvation of his realm, but because she was Ailsa. The distance should have tempered this feeling inside him, but it only made him more desperate to return. He wondered if this feeling in his chest, this hollow ache in his lungs that was insatiable by air alone, if this was what it was like to miss someone.
“What are you doing here?” a quiet voice spoke behind him. Vali startled but looked over his shoulder to see a small woman draped in a silver robe. The sun had not yet risen, and the shadows beneath the cowl concealed her face.
He held a breath as she neared the well. “I was just leaving,” he said.
“Something troubles you, Vali the Heartless. Something beyond your usual burdens.”
He laughed at her blatant understatement. “I don’t need a seeress to know I’m completely screwed.”
“Then maybe a seeress can help you with something else?”
Vali turned to face her. The woman dragged a long finger through the water, the ripples glowed beneath her touch and illuminated the plain features of her face. He asked, “Who are you?”
“They call me Skuld,” she said without looking.
“The Norn who writes the fates of the future?” he asked in a voice light with interest. “Can you tell me my own?” She was one of the three Norns that stood around the Well of Urd, her two sisters representing the past and the present. One of the most powerful beings in all the realms, even more so than the gods because even the divine could not control them. Even gods were at their mercy.
The Norn gave him a sad smile and shook her head. “Fate is not predetermined. If our legacies were written before our actions, how would we feel accomplished for our successes, or take ownership of our failures? I can help you see your potentials, nothing more.”
“What potentials?” he scoffed. “I have nothing beyond what others have decided me to be.”
“Oh, Vali,” she said, clicking her tongue. Her lips twisted in a wry grin. “I have spun your life’s string through many eras. I have woven and untied it from many other threads, left some to join new ones. Your thread is simply a small string in the complex web of all that exists. A long one, I admit, but still just one. You have many connections still to be made and some to be broken. Some to be cut for good, one to be braided.”
He thought of Ailsa and their time coming to an end. He would deliver her to his mother soon, and she would give him over to Odin. The thought made him want to heave his ale. “Whose life string am I braided with?”
The Norn stared into the well and smiled. “That is still to be decided. Choices to be made.”
“So, you really can’t help me with anything.” He scoffed and stood from seat on the bench while he mentally willed Mjolnir to shrink in his palm. Once the hammer was small enough, he slipped it inside the inner closed pocket of his cloak.
“You believe your life’s thread is already sewn into the tapestry of time. You make choices like your fate is decided. I am here to tell you it isn’t, Vali. There are infinite outcomes to your life and the threads that align with it. Whoever has decided what you will do or who you will become does not have the power to do so. You are the weaver of your own fate.”
He paced to the opposite side of the well and looked inside the murky depths. The Norn wrote symbols into the surface, her eyes reflecting scenes in the water he could not see with his own. “I see your future change, even now as you realize your power over your life,” she said.
He gripped the stones lining the edge of the well. “Is she there?” he asked, his voice sounded small across the well’s opening.
The Norn smiled again. “She is now.”
Vali swallowed nervously, afraid of the truth weaving itself into his future. “For how long?”