I ran up the Spire-Branch a few steps before grabbing onto its bark.

“Stop showing off!” Asotall's moustache and eyebrows scowled at me, forming two bushy arches.

Ignoring him, I clambered my way to the next rest-point: A sprout barely fit for one man. From there, I pulled on my release-string, which was connected to the quick-release knot I had tied earlier—pulling the part that makes it slip. Thus untied, I could pull in the rope, and tie it to a new anchor. In this case, I used the sprout I was standing on as an anchor. Or I suppose it was a twigling, seeing as it didn’t break under me.

Climbing further, I zigzagged between the rest points we had set up. Soon, I could hear a tap-tapping up ahead. Looking back, I saw the others were out of sight, hidden by various sprouts and shrubbery that sprang from the branch and the surrounding thickets. Moving slowly, I soon found Birger, hammering and cursing Stonebear under his breath.

“Who’s there?” Birger looked down, a throwing knife in one of his hands.

“Your best friend!” I popped out from under a shrub.

“You don’t look like Njord.”

“Thanks!”

Birger cackled. “Stonebear sent you to help, did he?”

“Yes, but only because I called him old and stupid.”

Birger made a sound… I think it was a laugh, but I’d describe it as more of a ‘demonic gurgle’. “And here I was worried you were Stonebear’s sorðinn.”

I shared a threatening grin. “I’ll go to quite some lengths for a pat on the head… so you should be careful.” I bet I could make that gurgling sound.

“Be careful yourself… I don’t need that job with the princess.”

He said, having insulted Stonebear, and now needing that job.

“But if you’re here to help, go up ahead—I need to rest my limbs.”

He moved closer… and then veered off, descending to a little netted hammock anchored to a tiny sprout and a strong looking screw.

“Why the screw?” I was very sure I could make that sound.

“For hauling our supplies, of course.” He rubbed his arms and hands, stretching. “There aren’t any good twigs around here, so I screwed in an anchor. When we start hauling, this will keep them going straight, so they don’t veer off into the brush.” I got out a whetstone to resharpen his climbing spikes.

I gurgled at him.

His eyes widened. “What from Hel was that!?”

“The sound you made.”

“There’s no way I made a sound like that…”

“You did, just before—when I said Stonebear was an ugly old man with short legs.”

Birger gurgled demonically. “You didn’t say that.”

“See, you made the sound again!”

“That was different–”

I gurgled at him again. “No it isn’t. I got it exactly right.”

He looked at me… and just kept looking. I am very nice to look at.

“Are you a skiptingr…? A changeling?” He asked me slowly, his voice lower despite the distance. “Was your father an álfr? Do you have magic!?”

“First you call me sorðinn and now a seiðmaðr, a sorcerer?” I ought to scare him with the sound again.

He held up a hand, looking down the trail beneath us, into the bushes. “I’m not asking you to insult you….” It was uncanny how much his voice had changed. Was this his real voice, and the other put on to be more raspy and snake-like to frighten people? “I’ve known a skiptingr before—and he was different. I don’t know if he was replaced by the álfar with another child, or if they just did something to him. But, while most don’t think anything beyond them being weird idiots, disappointing kitchen-fools who they like to throw rocks at and call cursed by the gods… I’ve seen the incredible things they can do. The… boy I knew… he was so stupid he couldn’t say more than two words—but when he picked up a knife for the first time? He made a sculpture of wood, worthy of a master craftsman!”

“I’m told I speak too many words,” I said. Birger was also speaking a few too many….

“Not saying you’re stupid… I know better now: You’re cunning, you have plans for this group.”

I stopped at those words, just for a moment. Suppressing the urge to laugh, I jerked my head in shock. Gasping, I looked left and right, as if wondering if anyone heard. I put my hand on my knife.

“Wait! Wait!” Birger said. “I’m not against it… I just thought, well: If you’re going to steal the sap—I can help you.”

I paused for a good long… four seconds. Slowly, I removed my hand from the knife. “Continue.” Maintaining long, stern eye-contact, I tried my best to give the impression I could kill him with a spell if I didn’t like what I heard.

His chuckle was part nervous, part delight. “I can tell you’re not just a boy… least, not an ordinary wolfling. You’re all over the place and you can do everything. You hang over Stonebear’s shoulder and question what we’re doing; even how many pitons we have.”

“I’m also making my own.” I beamed dangerously with the brightness of a shared secret.

“And… what are you going to do?”

“What do you think? Get some time aside with an excuse, and set up some ziplines. Then, just before we leave with the kegs of sap, there’ll be a distraction—I’ll go down the zipline while they’re distracted, with the kegs. Then cut the line so they can’t follow. After that, hide the kegs about a half-mile down the tree.”

Birger was enraptured. “You really plan to do that!?”

“Too much chaos for the Loki-thrall to handle?”

“Oh, no!” He let the ‘thrall’ comment pass by him, not even noticing. “But…” He glanced down as if he could see the others. “You can’t do that alone, can you?”

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“Why do you think your heart is still beating…?” I pointed at his heart. He grabbed for his taufr of Loki… but remembered I had discarded it.

“Can’t have you too protected now, can I?”

His eyes widened. “So you did throw it away.”

I nodded. “Trickster magic is particularly troublesome. But let’s get to the point… are you in?”

“Stonebear can go to Hel! I’m sick of those filthy, money-grubbing dvergar giving us one percent to split amongst ourselves. You just tell me you have a buyer, and I can help you—Njord, Ragnhild, and Gunne, they’ll join. Then we can kill the others and take ALL the sap for ourselves!” Birger was smarter than I gave him credit for. This changed things….

I gave serious consideration, and then a very serious nod. “You asked me if my father was an álfr…?”

He clenched his hands, brimming with excitement.

“Well… those are our buyers.”

“The álfar!? But they protect the tree… doesn’t it give them sap like the Kings?”

“Yes… but you can always have more. Especially when, if you have friends amongst the álfar, it’s very easy to avoid their patrols and know exactly where to hide the kegs. Namely, in a place my contact will find them… spiriting them away without reporting them to the other álfar. He’ll then pay us.”

Birger was leaning forward so far he was almost falling off his hammock. He roared with bellowing laughter, and if not for the thick foliage the others would’ve no-doubt heard. “I hope the álfar are more generous than the dvergar.”

“Is anyone less?”

He wheezed. “Even if it were still just one percent, there’d be less ways to split it after we lose the old man and his hundar.”

Then we laughed maniacal laughs for a long time and even gurgled at each other. But as fun as this was… we still had all the hard work before we employed any devious schemes. I got to hammering the pitons. My supernatural status may have inspired Birger with awe, but not enough to let me off route-finding duty.

I thus had plenty of time to consider what, exactly, I would tell Stonebear about Birger.

Gripping the large ridges of Yggdrasill’s giant bark, I ascended with hands and spiked boots. It’s similar to climbing a rock wall, though the boots make it easier. I placed a piton every ten feet or so. Though some places were much harder to climb than others, where the bark was smoother without the ridges for grip. Or worse, sickly and frail; ready to peel off unexpectedly. These are places where you put a piton every couple of feet, and hammer them in tight.

“I’m out of pitons, your turn again!” I called down to Birger.

“Hold on, I’ll send some up to you!” He grabbed my haul-line, tying a bag to it.

I made the sign for negative, which was like drawing a line across your throat with your entire arm. “I’ll haul it up for you, if you like… but you’re doing the next leg.”

“You can’t be serious!” Birger bellyached. “You’ve barely put in a dozen!”

“Do you want me to curse you…?” I pointed at his heart again.

“You can’t just—... nevermind. I’m always the one who has to do the hard work, but that’ll change soon enough.”

In preparation for Birger, I very quickly hammered in an anchor-piton, fixing it to my klifrigg with a hook. Then, I pulled up the belay cord between us until it was tight, and pulled up Birger’s pack with the haul-rope. Fixing the pack to the anchor, everything was ready….

Birger climbed up, slower and more cautious than myself. “What…. What do you know, about changelings?” He spoke meekly, focusing intently on his words, and not on his handholds. “The boy I mentioned, he was—AH!” He gripped hard onto the bark, one spiked boot pulling out of the spire.

“What happened?” I held his belay cord tight.

“You idiot! You nearly pulled me off!” He readjusted himself, stabbing his other boot back in.

I measured the distance to him, neck craning. “You’re still all the way down there? How are you so slow…?”

“Not all of us try to fly everywhere when we climb!” His hissy accent came back with his hissy fit. “Have you ever belayed for someone in your life!?”

“Well…” I paused, trying to think of a good way to say, ‘no’.

Birger’s tattoos looked darker as his skin paled. “Firekeeper preserve me… Keep some SLACK in it! It’s better I fall a little further than you… what were you even trying to do!?”

“Well, when Njord yanked on my belay… it just gave me a boost. And you were really, reeeally slow!”

“...Crow.”

“Birger?”

“If you do that again, I’ll kill you. No more ‘boosts’.”

“Fine, be boring then.” The sun moved through the sky, the shadows of the other branches slithering and shifting as he finally approached at the rate of a tortoise climbing a tree.

“I’m not that slow! Stop yawning!” Birger said, a full year later. “Move aside… you picked the only good place to go up that rotted section—of course you’d quit just before the hard part.” There was a patch of sickly bark that covered almost this entire side of the Spire-Branch, prone to break, fray and slip as you scale it. We could’ve circled around past it, to the opposite side where the slope of the Spire was to our advantage… but that side was more exposed to patrolling eyes.

“Allow me to make way for Loki’s chosen.” After a sweeping bow, I descended to make room for Birger. And then, very awkwardly, we tried to pass each other.

“Hey, watch it! Not so close, you almost kicked me in the head!” Birger gave me a wide berth, perhaps a little afraid of the ‘changeling’.

“Oh, sorry… your head just looked good to step on.”

“Bah! Don’t think you can treat me like a thrall just because you have connections!”

He hissed at me, and I was tempted to mimic that as well.

“You need me, remember that!” Birger assumed the lead position, going up with the belay cord between us.

“No need to be angry, Birger. I'll still help.” I adjusted the belay, keeping it tight.

“Just handle that cord properly or I’ll strangle you with it!”

Birger used a crack in the bark to climb up, wedging his hands in it as he got to my last piton, the anchor. Left to handle the belay while Birger put in pitons, I came to realize just how boring belay work was. You just sit there, loosening the rope every few minutes as they go up. And Birger had a tight grip, so he wasn’t likely to fall. Small chance of falling debris hitting him, too, which the belayer was meant to watch for.

“More slack! Are you trying to choke me?” Birger was on his third piton in what felt like the third hour, hammering them excessively as Njord did; perhaps out of fear of the sickly bark. I obliged, giving him a little more slack every time, until he had plenty.

The sun was high, now; the swirls of slithering darkness replaced by a few long snakes of shadow—great dragons stretching across the vast spire. One stretched over us, connecting me and Birger like a dark path I was taking.

He began to chuckle, his sour mood lightening with the lifting sun. “I can’t believe I’m working with an agent of the álfar!” He wore a loud smile as he finished his sixth rivet.

“Believe it quietly.” Resting under a bush, I leaned into the tree; its cold, shadowed surface not chilling me at all. Rather, it suited me well.

“I know that,” Birger said, as if he hadn’t been just laughing loudly about how fine it was to be secret agents. “You know, I considered killing you before. But you were ferocious in dodging around on that rope… you barely looked human! I decided I wanted that on my side, and my pendant could fall down to Hel where you threw—OOF!”

Birger fell.

Tumbling through the air, choking and gasping, his arms flailing. He caught hold of his belay, just before he hit the end of his rope. “Ghaaack!” He looked around in a confused daze, clinging to the belay, to his klifrigg, desperate to take the pressure off his aching body after the fall. “Cro–khaa khaa—Crow…?”

Birger’s eyes finally found mine. His tattooed face did little to hide the fear in them… but he relaxed at the sight of me clutching the belay. “Was worried you got hit, too…. What was it? A falling sprout…? Knocked the wind right out of me. D-don’t just hang there like a statue!” Looking up, he saw the length of his belay was some five yards. A nasty fall, but likely nothing broken. But, due to the slant of the tree… he was left hanging out of reach of the bark, with nothing to grab. “Loki’s burning eyes!” He sounded annoyed, now; the fear gone, his breath returned. “I’ll swing back… get ready to catch me.”

But then… there was a terrible sound. My anchor, which I had so hastily hammered in… began to groan.

The fear returned to Birger’s eyes, wincing at every crack of the wood as the anchor’s hold failed. “Crow… don’t panic. Listen carefully.”