Giants of the Frost by Kim Wilkins

her, he needed her language.
    Vidar ran after Aud, calling her name. He caught her on the near side of the stream.
    "Vidar? Is something wrong?" she said as he approached.
    "Are you well enough to walk?"
    "As you see."
    "I need you to go to Loki for me."
    Aud nodded, eager to please.
    "I need you to borrow Midgard books, in English. Every one he has."
    "Of course. I'll go immediately."
    "Take care. Go easy on your leg."
    She smiled. "I'm perfectly fine, I'll enjoy the walk."
    Vidar watched her disappear into the woods, banishing a momentary twinge of guilt. She didn't limp, the wound had been very shallow. He stretched out on the grass and looked up. The sky was washed clean after a week of rain. He felt young, not like a man who had lived more than a thousand years. The light and jolt of love had lain dormant within him for centuries. He'd shaped it into a dull, aching thing to be buried deep and best not remembered. Now she was back he could allow himself to feel it once more. The fantasies unfolded, the memories washed through him. With the aid of Loki's books, Vidar would remember her language in a week or two. Then he could start planning the next step: his return to Midgard.
    Through the forest, where only random shafts of light penetrated the gloom, past the steep black cliffs and still fjords, Aud made her way to Loki's house. The last time she had journeyed this way she had been with Vidar, snuggled against his back on Arvak, caught up in such a swirl of longing and sadness that she barely registered the route. The heat of Vidar's body through his soft woollen shirt, the warm tickle of his hair whipped into her face, the addictive rhythm of his heartbeat against her cheek. She remembered that Loki's house lay to the east after the open fields, where the trees began to close again, and she eventually spied the roof. Loki's house was easily three times as big as Vidar's, but barely a tenth the size of Valaskjálf. It huddled among the crowded trees, whose trunks and branches were overgrown with dark moss. The leaves of many autumns were layered atop the roof and mist hung and swirled low around it. Vines—some dark, some sickly pale—crawled over Loki's house as though it were something organic, something that had grown out of the ground long ago, ancient and elemental. He had no fields of barley or animals for food and clothing as Vidar did. Instead, Loki was a regular visitor at Odin's hall, borrowing some things and stealing others to support his solitary existence. Aud fought through the overhanging branches down the path to the door.
    "Loki?" she said, pushing the door open.
    Aud found herself standing in a large room; a fire burned on the hearthstones in the center. All around, on every wall up to the ceiling, were overflowing shelves. Midgard things. Books, toys, strange appliances, decorative objects, junk metal, pots and mirrors. She approached a shelf and reached out for a mirror decorated in silver and pearls. It was beautiful. She traced the design with her finger.
    "That's mine!"
    Aud jumped at the roar from behind her and dropped the mirror, which shattered on the floor. Loki stood near the door, biting his lip with amusement.
    "I'm so sorry," she said, crouching to retrieve the fragments.
    "Seven years of bad luck. That's what the Midgard mortals say when you break a mirror."
    "Seven years isn't such a long time." She handed the pieces to him. "Here."
    "I liked this mirror. I'm very disappointed to have lost it." Aud watched him examine the pieces. Loki was a handsome man, with gleaming black hair, unusually light grey eyes and long pale hands. He was tall and thin, and always dressed in fine, dyed clothes. He was wearing a circle of gold around his head.
    "I'm very sorry," Aud said again. "You gave me such a fright—"
    "Don't blame me!" he shouted, raising his eyebrows in shock. "You shouldn't have picked it up in the first place."
    "You'll work it off, of course. Vidar can spare you. A day a week