Chapter Text
“I told you we shouldn’t come here.”
Idunn hissed as she and Sigyn trotted their way down the Asgardian street.
“Everyone always looks at us funny,” she added.
The sun danced above the fjord, almost deciding to dip, but lingering high a few moments longer to taunt the children.
Sigyn tugged on the sleeves of her dress while her older sister quickened the pace. There weren’t many passersby lining the roads, as usual. Just the vendors at the fruit stands and the grumpy men scolding their horses for trampling everything in their sights.
“We’re almost home,” Sigyn squeaked back.
“No we’re not.”
“Are too.”
“Mmhm?”
“Mmhm?”
Idunn shoved the side of Sigyn’s shoulder with a snicker, throwing her off balance for a few seconds. Frustrated, Sigyn barrelled that same shoulder into Idunn’s. The task was hard enough, seeing as how Idunn towered at least a foot taller than her.
“Hey!”
“Don’t hit me.”
“I was playing, Gynnie.”
Sigyn huffed, and for the next short while, both sisters sped through the Asgardian roads in an angry silence.
Why would anyone look at them funny?
They didn’t look different—at least not any different from the rest of the strange Asgardian people—so Sigyn figured her older sister was being paranoid.
Or that word Mum told them about, the one where people act like they hated a place just because they wanted to go to their real home.
What was that called again?
Homesick.
Ew.
Sigyn didn’t think she liked any home she’d lived in so far—not on Asgard, and definitely not on… on the other one, where Mum was from. Sigyn wasn’t doing a very good job at remembering anything.
Either way, Mum said they also looked enough like Dad that they didn’t look different from anyone else on Asgard.
“Hurry up, Gynnie.”
Idunn hurried both of them around another corner, and after only a few seconds, Idunn was practically dragging Sigyn to hurry back home.
“Why do you make us run so much?”
“I said hurry up.”
And so Sigyn started sprinting alongside her sister.
“You there!”
CRISHASH.
Sigyn did everything in her power to make sure her fingers didn’t detach from her older sister’s no matter how quickly they ran.
“Stop!”
Sigyn was panting by the time they wove their way back to their home street.
“Come on.”
Idunn probably would have made it home already if Sigyn’s legs weren’t so stupidly tired. She didn’t know who or what they were running from, just that they were always running.
Mum told them Asgard was beautiful, and that it was filled with all of Dad’s friends who would treat them nicely, and although Sigyn could always see the palace shining out from across the city, all she discovered so far on Asgard were its twisty forests and icy fjords and no friends.
So why were they running?
Who were they running from?
“St…”
“…come back.”
The voice died down the closer the girls got to their home.
“Come on,” Idunn repeated. She gasped once she made it to the front steps, and she finally slipped her sweat-slicked hand off of Sigyn’s.
Sigyn hunched over for breath, feeling more nauseous than the time she insisted on eating an entire bag of sour grapes. Idunn, meanwhile, reached into her tan dress’ pocket and plopped a key into the front door.
The wood groaned along with the door hinges, revealing the well-used, small cabin. Sigyn let Idunn scatter inside first, knowing Mum would be upset at them for coming home late again.
“Herregud.”
Before Sigyn could make it all the way inside, Mum swept down on the two girls and wrapped them in a tight embrace. She muttered the saying a few times over while pecking kisses onto the sides of their heads.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you two,” she sniffed, cupping one hand to each of their faces.
“We were just—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Sigyn’s feet sank into her shoes.
Mum ran her hands down her own face, right before ushering Sigyn through the doorway and fastening the locks.
“What did I say about staying out late?”
Sigyn knew better than to back-talk. But Idunn was much braver than her.
Mum’s bags sprawled out along the front hallway, and by the looks of things, she had just come back from a long trip.
“We only went down—”
“I went all around town trying to find you,” Mum cut Idunn off.
She quieted down for a few seconds—probably to do that breathing thing she said was good for when people were upset—and she swept a lock of her inky hair to the side.
“Okay,” she restarted quietly.
The tips of her pale fingers were starting to fade back into the blue of her real skin, and Sigyn knew that that meant she was really angry.
But just as Mum opened her mouth to speak again, a cold and sharp BANG BANG BANG came from the other side of the door.
Mum froze, and without another word, she pulled both girls behind her.
BANGBANGBANG.
Sigyn clamped her hands around Mum’s lower leg. She and Idunn both stood behind her when Mum pushed them to.
“By will of the Allfather,” a stern male voice called. “Open this door.”
BANGBANGBANG.
“Don’t move,” Mum whispered. “And keep your heads down.”
Sigyn glued her lips shut when Mum took the first few strides towards the door. Mum shook her hands, allowing her pale skin to cover up the blue on her fingers before pulling the locks open.
“What is it now?” Mum asked the stranger, not opening the door wide enough for Sigyn or Idunn to see who it was.
Neither of them were able to deal with their curiosity and keep their heads down.
“You’d best have more respect for the Einherjar,” the man called back.
He shoved the door all the way open, and then looked down at the two girls. A set of shiny gold armour covered his body, a strange tall helmet sat on his head, and an even shinier staff gleamed from his hand.
Mum rushed back into the house to shield the girls from the man with her body.
“That’s not why I’m here,” the man puffed his chest up. “Not this time, at least.”
Mum stayed silent, putting her arms behind her back so she could hug the girls closer to her. Sigyn wished Mum would fight the person who was being so rude to her.
“You are lucky Sigurd was one of us,” the man continued.
“Yes,” Mum agreed, but given how quiet and wobbly her answer came, Sigyn didn’t think she really meant it.
Sigurd.
Wasn’t that Dad’s name?
Didn’t he once wear a weird outfit like the strange man in the doorway?
Sigyn wanted to ask a thousand questions, but she was too scared to even open her mouth.
The man raised his chest even higher, before tapping his spear onto the floor. He poked his head out to the side to try and look directly at the girls.
Sigyn scrunched a little further behind Mum’s leg.
“Why don’t the girls leave the room?” the man suggested.
Once again, Mum stayed silent. Sigyn didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to leave Mum with the mean man.
Mum carefully peeked her head back over to the girls, who each held onto her legs as if asking her to stay that way.
“It’s OK,” she whispered to them.
She turned back to the man for a second, who was tapping his foot impatiently.
“Listen to him for now,” she explained quietly. “I’ll call you back for dinner.”
She tried pulling her leg away, but Sigyn wouldn’t let go.
“It’s okay, my loves.” She ruffled both Sigyn and Idunn’s hair with a faint smile. “Go.”
Idunn, once again, dragged Sigyn away.
⋆ 𖤓 ⋆˚࿔
Mum barely spoke for the rest of the night, which was weird, because Sigyn thought that she and Idunn should have been in trouble. The blue of Mum’s real skin crawled all the way up past her wrists instead of stopping at her fingers. Sigyn didn’t ask her why.
She stayed as quiet as she could in her room, burying herself in a book of really old spells that she managed to pluck off the middle of the road. Sometimes she didn’t understand everything—especially because the book was much thicker and much longer than what she’d usually read—but she tried her best to fill in the gaps with her imagination.
She couldn’t ‘conjure’ anything yet, but she was able to make bursts of blue magic with a little practise. And she once managed to heal a bunny’s broken foot during one of her strolls in the forest.
That was pretty cool.
So Sigyn made sure to learn everything she could about magic, even though she heard some people talk about how it was forbidden in Asgard.
Who would forbid magic?
“What are you reading?”
Idunn flopped down onto her own bed, just across from Sigyn’s, and flicked her brown braid to the side.
“Nothing,” Sigyn answered quickly.
Idunn rolled onto her stomach and dropped her face into her palms.
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“It’s none of your business.”
Idunn jumped to snatch the book away, but Sigyn shuffled back before she got the chance and pressed the book against her body. She didn’t need Idunn to find out what she was doing, especially since it was ‘forbidden’ on Asgard.
Sigyn carefully ripped out the page she was on and stuffed it in her pocket where Idunn couldn’t see. Idunn stared determinedly at her for a few seconds.
“What are you—hey!”
The book tumbled out of Sigyn’s hold and onto the floor when Idunn began tickling the sides of her stomach.
“Wait—”
No matter how hard Sigyn pushed, Idunn was still taller, older, and stronger than her.
Not fair.
Idunn swept the book into her hold and read the title through a series of snickers. But the longer Sigyn watched defeatedly from her bed, the madder Idunn’s face would become.
“Gynnie…” Idunn lowered her arms and looked back at her. “Where’d you get this?”
Sigyn’s stomach tightened and her head started hurting out of the blue. She tried grabbing back the book, but Idunn held it as high as she could to keep it out of her reach.
“It’s mine.”
“Where did you get it?”
The second time Idunn asked the question, she didn’t sound mad, but she sounded scared.
Really scared—which wasn’t normal for her.
Sigyn panted and crossed her arms.
“I found it. On the floor,” she explained. “Now give it back.”
She jumped on the bed to try and grab the book, but Idunn moved away again.
“Give it!”
“Shhh!”
Idunn frowned at Sigyn, who froze at the sharp reaction.
“Shh! Do you have any idea how much trouble we’ll be in?” she pressed. “Or how much trouble Mum will be in?”
Her voice didn’t go higher than a whisper, and somehow, she sounded super mad.
“This is what monsters and witches use,” Idunn continued. “Not us. Not anyone here.”
The harder Sigyn tried not to cry, the more her arms would shake.
Was she a monster? Or a witch?
She bit her tongue to make sure she wouldn’t start weeping. She didn’t know what to say.
Idunn stuffed the book under her arm and turned to the door without saying anything else. Sigyn’s voice came back just in time.
“What are you doing with it?” she asked weakly, barely loud enough for her older sister to hear.
Idunn didn’t turn around to look back at her. Her footsteps carried her all the way out the room.
“Burning it.”
Sigyn flopped down helplessly onto her bed, and right at that moment, the tears she’d been trying so hard to keep in streamed down her cheeks. She wasn’t sobbing, but she was crying, which was weird, because she didn’t think she could have tears without breathing weirdly.
Her book.
Her book.
Her spells.
Her magic.
And it was all being burnt.
Trouble.
‘How much trouble Mum will be in?’
Sigyn gulped harshly. She didn’t try to follow her sister out the door, knowing she would lose whatever fight she’d start.
Instead, she uncrumpled the page in her pocket and blinked through her watery eyes. One bolded title sat on top of three thick paragraphs of words and a few drawings.
Sigyn wiped her nose with her sleeve before trying to make out what the title said.
‘Enchantments’.