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“Thor? I think I’m going away soon.”
Thor blinked in confusion several times at this odd statement. It was very dark here in the nursery that he and Loki shared, but he could still make out the outline of his brother’s face on the pillow beside his. Loki had crawled into bed next to Thor and huddled against him for warmth, which was nothing unusual, but Thor could feel violent tremors still going through his brother’s limbs, as if he was still cold.
Loki had a fever tonight—this, too, was not unusual for him—but Thor never caught anything from him, so he did not flinch away. He simply wiped the sweat from his brother’s forehead and pulled him closer.
Mother was worried, but Thor rolled his eyes every time she came to check on Loki. The younger prince was sickly, but he was always better in time to play outside the next day.
“What are you talking about? You are not going anywhere, you’re too sick,” he whispered.
“I don’t think I have a choice, Thor.” Loki’s voice was raspy, as if his throat was sore.
Thor was too sleepy for Loki’s word games, and he was not sure why he was suddenly frightened. “Where would you go?”
“Just…away.”
A possessive hand closed around Loki’s thin wrist. “You are not going anywhere without me, brother,” Thor said, scowling. “You’re staying right here.”
Loki said nothing; he settled back onto the pillow with a sad smile. Eventually, the brothers drifted off to sleep.
In the middle of the night, Thor awoke to a strange feeling of absence, of emptiness.
When he wrenched his eyes open, he realized the other side of the bed was empty—the hand that had been like a vise around Loki’s wrist held nothing but air. He bolted upright in panic.
Loki’s bed across the room was empty, too, but it looked as if one of his sheets had been taken. But there was a light coming from underneath the door, and muffled voices, so Thor bounded across the room and opened it.
There was a small crowd gathered—Mother, Father, and three healers, all with grim faces. The All-Father was carrying a strange bundle in his arms, wrapped in the sheet from Loki’s bed.
“What’s happening?” Thor asked, rubbing his tired eyes and squinting in the torchlit hall.
The adults exchanged glances before Frigga knelt in front of Thor and placed a hand on his cheek.
“Dear heart, I must ask you to be brave,” she said in a tremulous voice. “Loki was more seriously ill than we realized, and…he…he died in his sleep, Thor. Do you understand what that means?”
Thor shook his head vigorously. “He’s only sleeping, Mother. He will wake up, don’t worry.”
There was pity in her eyes as she said, “No, Thor. He isn’t going to wake up again. Loki is gone.”
It dawned on Thor what the limp bundle in Father’s arms must be.
It took what felt like hours to subdue the little prince, to stop him from screaming and fighting, so that they could take his brother’s body away. Eventually, Frigga had to soothe him with a calming spell and leave him in the care of his nurse, because they had a funeral to arrange.
The body was taken to a cold empty room and laid on a large marble slab.
There was nothing they could have done, the healers told the king and queen. Loki had been predisposed to illness—it was in his very blood.
“His kind…the ones that are born small…they usually do not live to adulthood,” one of the healers explained in a hushed voice.
The healers were dismissed curtly so that Odin and Frigga could be alone with their son before he was prepared for burial.
“Check on Thor. He should not be alone now,” Odin said in a low voice, not taking his eyes from the covered figure on the stone dais.
Frigga obeyed. She was numb for now, could not yet process that this pale, limp figure was her little boy. She was in the eye of the storm, and could hold her family together while this calm lasted.
Her living child was not faring much better, as the spell had evidently worn off—when she entered the nursery, his face was flushed and streaked with tears, and his eyes flashed in fury when he saw her. His nurse was kneeling on the floor beside him, clearly unable to console him.
“You can’t do it, Mother!” he cried, launching forward and latching himself onto Frigga’s skirts. “You can’t burn him up! You can’t let them, Mother, you can’t!”
His nurse shrugged helplessly. “He asked what happened when someone died,” she explained apologetically, “and I—”
“That’s alright, I will take care of him now. Go back to sleep.”
After the nurse left, Thor continued to sob and scream into her skirts as Frigga stroked his hair. It was best that he get this out now.
“He’s only playing a trick, Mother,” Thor insisted. “He’s always playing tricks. He’ll awake in the morning.”
“Thor… your brother was very sick. He’s not going to wake up now, not anymore. Do you understand?”
She had to repeat this many times, and she still was not certain he grasped it. When it seemed he would hyperventilate from crying, she began to murmur, “Sweetling, you must calm down. You know we must burn your brother’s body, so that he can go to Valhalla. Don’t you want him to be with your grandparents?”
“No,” he growled. “I want him here with me.”
Frigga’s brittle mask crumbled at this. Tears fell fast into Thor’s hair. “So do I, my love,” she sighed. “So do I.”
When Frigga entered the sanctuary again, she found Odin standing motionless. He had taken Loki from the marble dais and was cradling the limp form of their youngest in his arms. At first, he seemed unaware of his wife’s presence, and she dared not speak.
But then he said softly, “I remember that night, when I carried him home from Jotunheim…he was so light, I feared I would crush him…”
Slowly, he rocked Loki back and forth as if lulling an infant to sleep, and Frigga realized there was moisture flowing freely down the old king’s face. She pressed her lips to his shoulder to muffle her own sobs.
They remained that way for a long time.
The funeral was held at the water’s edge just before dawn.
The little prince’s death stunned Asgard. The Æsir were resilient, long-lived creatures that barely noticed the passage of centuries—death was unnatural for them. The death of a child was unthinkable. Though openly crying was generally frowned upon at Asgardian burials, the conventions were relaxed under the circumstances.
The shipwright almost wept when commissioned to make a funeral frigate for such a young boy, but the final product was a thing of beauty, intricately carved with fierce dragons and writhing serpents to guard Loki on his journey to Valhalla.
There were none of the traditional grave goods—no weapons or shields, because Loki had been too young to receive any—and so the body was surrounded by some of his favorite toys. The stuffed wolf with the patched ears that he’d claimed he was too old for, but could not sleep without. The wooden blocks he and Thor had built so many castles and fortresses from. The storybooks that Frigga had taught him to read by, the chess set Odin had given him for his last naming-day.
The shroud Frigga had woven by hand. Her ladies-in-waiting had offered to do it for her, urged her to get some rest before the funeral, but Frigga felt it was something she had to do herself. It was delicate gossamer, stitched with jade leaves and honeysuckle vines, images of the garden where she and Loki had spent many a happy summer afternoon together.
She kissed her son’s cheek and smoothed the hair away from his forehead before draping the shroud over him. It was not so different from tucking him into bed—except his bright eyes did not fly open and he did not sit up and plead for another goodnight kiss.
Thor pushed through the solemn crowd and rushed forward to the frigate.
This was not part of the ceremony, and several nobles tried to stop him from disrupting the ritual, but Thor squirmed deftly out of their grasp. He carried a red woolen blanket—his blanket, technically, though Loki had borrowed it more often than not.
“I…I don’t want him to get cold,” he explained to his mother in a small voice. When Frigga nodded, he spread the blanket over Loki and tucked the edges in to keep him warm.
“Don’t be scared, brother,” he whispered, his voice shaking.
Frigga took Thor’s hand and gently led him a few paces away, so that Loki’s ship could be launched into the water.
Thor watched the outline of his brother’s face, desperately seeking some sign. Surely Loki would turn to wink at him, would sit up and laugh at him for falling for his tricks yet again.
Wake up, wake up, please wake up, Thor silently begged. But the ship drifted farther to sea, and Loki was still.
An archer atop the parapet sent a flaming arrow, which struck the frigate and instantly set it ablaze in the water. Thor clenched his mother’s hand so tightly that it must have hurt, but she held on nonetheless.
He could not bear to watch his little brother consumed by flames, but nor could he waste the precious last seconds before he disappeared forever. In the end, it wasn’t a choice: his vision was too blurry to see anything at all.
The curls of smoke rising into the sky mingled with the hazy clouds at the horizon, which was just beginning to glow rose and gold with the rising sun.
Odin, who had remained silent and impassive all this time, who had spent his tears in private, struck the ground once with Gungir.
Instead of turning to ashes, the ship dissolved in a shower of silver sparks, which soared into the sky to join the morning star.