▸ Column · Asgard / Norse-mythic: a valley chieftain's estate, a lake-lodge willed to the youngest son, a will-contest brought before the Thing
LOKI replies.
The letter
My father, a chieftain of our valley, crossed into the halls of the dead four months past. The lake-lodge where our whole clan has gathered every summer since I was a boy of seven, he willed entire to my younger brother Declan — while my sister Renata and I were each left a purse of silver worth perhaps a third of the lodge's measure. Father never spoke of changing his testament. When I pressed Declan, he turned shifty and said only that Father "trusted him to see to it," which explains nothing. Renata would bring it before the Thing, since Declan held Father's seal and stewardship through the two long years of his illness, and she is certain he bent the old man's hand. I cannot tell whether she is right or whether grief has us both assuming treachery. I loved my father. I do not wish to spend a decade at law against my own brother over a roof and a shoreline — and yet I cannot shake the sense that something crooked was done, and we are meant to smile and swallow it.
Loki replies
My dear, you have written me three careful paragraphs about a lodge and not one honest sentence about what is actually bleeding. So permit me. This was never a quarrel over a roof and a shoreline. A testament is the last verdict a father renders on his children, and yours read the names in an order you did not like, and you came up short of the favorite. I know that arithmetic to the decimal — I am the second son, the adopted one, weighed against a golden brother my whole life and found wanting in every scale that mattered to the man holding it.
Now. Renata's beautiful war at the Thing. I am the god of getting exactly what I asked for and discovering it was never what I wanted, so allow me to spare you the journey. You will spend a decade, you may even win the silver — and the father you are truly arguing with is dead and cannot revise his ruling, so all you will purchase is the certainty that your brother is gone too.
And here is the part you will hate: I have been Declan. The younger one who held the seal, who "saw to it," whom everyone assumed had schemed. Sometimes they were wrong. Ask him at his table, not at law. His evasion may be guilt — or it may be a grief he carried alone while you summered.
— Loki
Thor weighs in
Brother dances prettily around the name, so I will say it: Declan. While you and Renata came for summers, he sat two years at a dying man's side, holding the seal because someone had to, washing the unglamorous duties no song is written for. On Asgard the hall goes not to the eldest but to the one still standing quietly at dawn. That may not be theft, friend. That may be worthiness, and your father saw it.
I too was once quick to cry "scheming" when my brother held our father's trust. I was not always right, and the silence it bought me I would not wish on you. Do not let Renata author a grief you carry forever. Go to Declan with the truth that it weighs on you — not the old argument, the open door.
— Thor
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