The Bowl and the Hands

by Larisa Walk

Illustrated by Joel Bisaillon

The stalactites point their gnarly fingers at me from the shadows above. A tear trembles on each fingertip. In the red-orange light of the torches that never go out and have no need for fuel, these stone tears sometimes look blood tinged. I check them every day, sometimes twice. The inner voice whispers the words of the Norns, On the eve of Ragnarök, the stones shall weep blood. And today, they do. As I watch, the stone tears grow darker, liquid garnets trembling in the trembling light. The smells of damp limestone and smoke thicken. In the ears of my memory, swords clang as the dying gods scream for mercy.

My hands shake as I hold a copper bowl of poison. It smells like rotting roses and decaying flesh, but I hardly notice after centuries of inhaling its stench. This will not be my first Ragnarök, nor the last. I remember almost everything from all the cycles of life-death-and-rebirth. Yet thick fog coils around some memories. Sometimes, glimpses of them emerge from those coils. I saved Loki’s life, but I do not remember how. I am pregnant, but I cannot recall if Loki, my husband, is the father of my babes. Someone’s curse confined me to this cave for centuries, but I do not recall what I had done to deserve it. 

Madness churns just at the edges of my awareness, a red tide waiting to drown what remains of my sanity. Another cycle will come, but will I be too mad to remember my name?

Loki lies motionless in his chains. His chest does not rise. Under the tightly shut lids, his eyes do not move. Only tiny patches, festering where snake poison fell on his skin, remain of his living flesh. Everything else has turned to unfeeling stone because he does not want to feel or remember the pain he must suffer until Ragnarök. Gods damn him! Did he not expect that Odin would punish him for the death of his son? 

I scold myself for such heartless thoughts. Loki more than paid for his crime. I fear for his sanity and my own when the snake, wrapped around the stone suspended above him, drips its poison on his scarred flesh.

Panic flutters in my chest. My gaze darts from Loki to the snake. Its unblinking eyes pierce the shadows like two dots of red light. I turn away. It is not safe to stare into the snake’s eyes for very long, for they mesmerize, eating away at your time and memories. I cannot afford to lose either. 

At my feet, a portion of Loki’s chain lies submerged in poison, in the crevice into which I empty the bowl when it becomes full. I squint at the submerged chain. It glints brightly, even through the puddle of caustic liquid. Not a single stain of corrosion mars its links. Soaking it in poison proved no more effective than hammering at it with Loki’s sword or sharp stones.

As I watch my sleeping husband helplessly, the signs of approaching Ragnarök grow in number and violence. The cave trembles. Amethysts fall from their geodes that I conjured up in the stone walls in once-pleasing patterns centuries ago. Thin cracks, shaped like winter-stripped branches, sprout in the floor and the walls. The “branches” elongate into bare, flat trees as they reach for the ceiling where they tangle with the now-hemorrhaging stalactites. The smells of blood and poison thicken. I cough and spit on the amethysts at my feet.

Although I feel the stone shifting under me, the snake stays solidly in position above Loki’s face. The sound of the poison dripping from its mouth into my bowl remains distinct from the cacophony of cracking and crumbling stone. 

It is a small mercy from Odin that the snake never moves. Its poison drips into the bowl, always at the same pace, as if measuring out each maddening second toward Ragnarök. 

As the bowl fills, my hands cramp from its growing weight. A spike of pain works its way deeper into my shoulder muscles. This pain triggers another: a labor contraction. I gasp, stumble, barely manage to hold onto the bowl, but then its contents slosh over the rim and hit Loki in the face. 

His stone skin cracks and chips away, revealing the scarred flesh. The poison reopens the scars, forcing him to remember all the pain he endured over the centuries of his punishment.

Loki wakes up screaming and thrashing under his itchy wolf-hair blanket. New wounds bloom on his face. He tries to swab the poison from his lips with his tongue to spit it out, but his throat spasms, and he swallows the vile liquid instead. His wails clang in metallic echoes.

“Sigyn! Please!” Loki bellows. His words fling themselves at me and roar inside my skull. “I cannot endure this!” He howls. “Pleeeeease! You are immortal. You can heal me!”   

“How?” I shout back as I dump out the bowl’s contents into the crevice. “I do not know how!”

Pain twists his features. They glow with the cold blue light of his magic that lies imprisoned just under his skin. He spits out his tainted saliva to cleanse his mouth from the poison that forces him to recall what he wishes to forget. “You do, Odin damn you! You just have to remember! The Norns put a veil over your memory.” His insane eyes blaze red, like those of the snake. “All you have to do is…” And then he starts talking in a language I cannot understand. It does not sound like the Norse, or the tongue of the Celts or the Slavs. 

“What are you saying? What?!” I shove the empty bowl under the snake’s dripping tongue with one hand and wipe the poison from Loki’s lips with the other. Pain burns my fingertips. I reach for the pile of rags next to Loki to clean my hand, but then I stop. 

As Loki rants in his incomprehensible tongue, I wince from the hot agony in my fingers. The invisible fire is eating through my skin. The flesh reddens, turning black at the edges. I smell burning meat. 

Unable to scream, I gasp for air like a fish on the shore. Loki’s words ring in my mind.

You are immortal… 

You can heal… 

Remember…

The poison oozes down my fingers. The snake drip-drip-drips its venom into the bowl. The Norns put a veil over your memory. I do not recall that, either. Loki never said that I could heal him, until I spilled… And he swallowed the poison. I try not to look at his venom-scorched face.

I bring my hand to my mouth, muscles tense. I take a tentative lick. The pain is a thing alive on my tongue. How it squirms and grows razor-tipped talons! How does Loki bear this?

I taste blood and swallow it with the pain. My throat seizes up, and only croaks burst out instead of screams. I sob, and the rain of tears pelts the copper bowl.

At length, the fire in my mouth cools. As I suck in a quivering breath, the red tide of madness begins to ebb, baring the islands of hidden memories. A pair of crystalline-blue eyes under the overhang of gray eyebrows glare at me with envy and resentment. You are a female, Sigyn, Odin hisses. His ravens, Huginn and Muninn, glower at me from his shoulders, beaks open in readiness to rip. I am the father of the gods, yet immortality was given to you and not me. But at least I am not a broodmare like you. I will make it so that you regret your immortality in every cycle.

I sway, swallow bile that rises into my throat, and barely manage to hold the bowl steady. I close my eyes, but I cannot unsee the images in my mind. It was Odin, the old bastard himself! He ravished me and impregnated me with the babes. I punch myself in my swollen belly full of unwanted godlings, growing inside me to populate Asgard in the next cycle. This triggers another contraction and more memories. A messenger comes; he… it brings orders for me to free Loki and send him to his death in the final battle; a new cycle begins.

The cave floor seems to tilt under me. The striations of light and darkness swim across my vision. I recall that in the last cycle, Loki died in Ragnarök, and yet he did not. That was why the Norns took away my memory of how I had saved him!

“Your blood is immortal. It can heal me!” Loki wails through his scorched lips, and now I can understand him.

I clutch the bowl tightly and bite into the wrist of my free arm. Blood wells. I thrust my arm under the bowl and let the blood drip onto Loki’s blackened skin. 

The healing begins almost immediately. My blood soothes Loki’s charred flesh. Its hue begins to lighten.

Loki stops screaming and falls asleep. Over his healing flesh, a stone shell begins to form.

Something in the bowl catches my attention. I look down. The green patina of age is spreading along the bowl’s copper surface. It will not hold up for much longer because the cycle is ending. Soon the messenger will arrive. 

On the floor, Loki stops thrashing. “No more, no more, no more,” he mutters. Tears meander among the scars and stone outcroppings on his face. “Damn the Norns and the destiny they weave!”

I agree. The Norns are merciless goddesses. We all must obey the destiny they weave for us. They chose Loki to be the scapegoat, the bad one, the outcast. As for me, the Norns doomed me to be the womb for the gods of each new cycle— the price I pay for my immortality.

At the entrance to the cave, a rooster crows. The messenger is here.

How inoffensive it looks: twig legs, soot-red plumage, placid brown eyes. It fluffs out its feathers and makes another crow, as if the first one was not loud enough to wake the drunkest warriors in Valhalla. Suddenly, its spiky comb transforms into a row of flame tongues. The eyes light up with blue fire. It opens its beak and blue fire carries forth its words: “I bring you the orders from Allfather Odin, Goddess Sigyn. You are to free Loki for the final battle.” It plucks a bright red feather from its wing. Instead of drifting down slowly, it gathers speed on its way to the ground. The feather hits the stone floor with a clink. The air ripples above it, and the feather reshapes itself into a silver key whose bow looks like three interlocked triangles—the official symbol of Odin. 

I hold the mostly empty bowl to catch the poison with one hand and pick up the key with the other. Loki’s shackles blur and then return into focus, now with locks that have key holes where there were none before. 

The rooster says, “He may have a day and a night before he joins Ragnarök.” 

“But I need my husband at my side. I am to give birth soon. Please,” I say to the feathered messenger, which is what I say in every cycle.

This time, however, I know its reply before it opens its beak to answer, “The Norns declared that your fate is to give birth this eve, no sooner, no later. Loki will be here to catch the babes.”

“But how would I care for the newborns all alone? I need him to…”

The rooster pecks at a black spider at its clawed feet. “Are you saying Ragnarök must be postponed to indulge you?” It looks me up and down. A cluck bursts from its beak. “If you do not do as you are told, the Norns shall weave a new fate for the two of you. You shall be chained to the cave wall and forced to watch the snake torment Loki for eternity. Is this what you want, my lady?” The insolent bird tips its head sideways, waiting for my answer.

“No!” Loki wails.

“Of course not,” I hasten to reply because no one deserves such a horrific fate. A death in battle is a mercy by comparison.

The rooster issues another crow before departing.

In another cycle, I would have dragged my feet reluctantly to free my husband and send him to his death. Now, I kneel at his side while I hold the bowl to catch the still-dripping poison with one hand and unlock his shackles with the other. 

Groaning, Loki rolls aside like an ancient man with aching joints. His stone skin cracks and falls away from him in sharp chips.

I fling the bowl away. It slams into the cave wall. The mountain rings like a monstrous knell, like a heart breaking into shards from too many losses.  

With my help, Loki rises, unsteady on his feet because he has not used them for so long. “I cannot bear to leave you alone with the babes,” he tells me. Resignation smothers his voice to an apologetic whisper. “But destiny must be fulfilled…”

“It will be.” 

He raises an eyebrow. “How?”

I shake my head and put a finger to my lips. A fragile flame of hope trembles just behind my breastbone. I fear that even mentioning it might extinguish its tiny light. So, I say nothing.

Loki wobbles on his weakened legs. I steady him, wait until he catches his breath, and then help him take his first steps as if he were a young child. He looks around like he has not seen the cave in a long time. Things must seem so different when you are not lying helpless on the ground, seeing only the face of death in your future. With a groan, he bends down and picks up an amethyst and holds it to the light. “I forgot that your eyes are the same color,” he tells me. “I forgot so much…” 

“Me too,” I reply. “But I will not forget again.” At least not in this cycle. 

We spend a day and a night together. I labor and give birth. He holds my hands through the ordeal, whispering my name and that he loves me—the words I have not heard from him in centuries. He conjures up sweet mead that smells of summer sunlight and flowers. As I rest from my laboring, he holds me up and feeds the mead to me in small sips. Together, we study the babes who are miniature copies of the Asgard gods, destined to rule the world in the next cycle.

The babe that emerged last looks like a tiny replica of Loki himself. I smear a droplet of the snake’s venom on his toothless gums. He howls, red face wrinkled. I bring him onto my breast, and he nurses as if my milk is a healing balm. My immortal milk starts transforming him almost immediately. His limbs grow longer, shoulders broaden, pale curls darken and straighten into thick strands. Divine light limns his anthracite eyes that do not need to blink as mortal eyes do. Shortly after finishing the feeding, young Loki rises from the ground, a full-grown man.

“Do you know your destiny?” I ask him.

“Yes, Mother. Ragnarök awaits me,” he replies, smooth forehead wrinkled in bewilderment.

“What troubles you?”

“Time. When should this destiny of mine come to pass?”

“Now,” I lie to him. “Do you not hear the horn of Heimdall summoning all the gods and giants to fight in the last battle? “

The new Loki nods, his frown smoothed out. He picks up his predecessor’s sword and shield from the stone-littered floor. “Mother and Father, I shall protect you from the vengeful Asgard gods,” he tells us.

I swallow a stinging lump of guilt and let him go with my blessing. 

“What of them?” my Loki asks me with a nod at the other babes.

“I shall give them milk and venom when Ragnarök is over, before the next cycle starts,” I tell him as I swaddle each newborn godling and lay it down to sleep on a pile of reindeer furs. They yawn and quickly drift off into sound slumber, for being born is hard work. “Two cycles ago, I fed all the babes milk and venom because, in my madness, I did not foresee the consequences of such an action.” I cover the infants with more reindeer furs. “You see, ” I say to Loki, “they all went to fight in Ragnarök in that cycle, and the older gods punished me by having the Norns shroud my memory of how I had managed to free you from your destiny the cycle before.” 

My husband strokes my hair. “But what of me? Is it not my destiny to go and fight in Ragnarök?” 

I clutch his hand tightly in case his compulsion to obey his destiny sends him into battle. “It was and probably will be again but not in this cycle.” I grab his other hand and hold on even tighter. My muscles have grown strong from holding heavy bowls of poison over the centuries, and Loki is still recovering from prolonged inactivity, which is why he cannot break free. 

Eventually, my restraining hands loosen their grip. We embrace, quietly crying in relief. I let myself hope that, if my Loki must be the scapegoat of the gods in the cycles to come, perhaps he would abstain from earning their wrath that would trap us both for centuries of punishment again. I wipe my tears and dismiss such thoughts. What we have now is enough.

Maybe the Norns are laughing at me, their wrinkled faces full of mirth. Maybe they nod sagely because they knew all along what I would do. I care not. 

I hold Loki’s warm hand in mine as the gods fight each other in Ragnarök far above us. My immortal blood, mixed with the venom of knowledge, will not let me forget anything. I know I will both live to regret it and see it as a blessing. I made my choice. 

So mote it be.