From its vantage point on the roof of Warr and Pinkle a raven watched the resolute figure of Old Father Time sharpening his scythe in the churchyard opposite. He worked steadfastly, running his sharpening stone to and fro across the dazzling blade which cried out the visceral wail of a tortured rat. Squeak, scrape, squeak, scrape.

A winter's breeze sprang up, ruffled the bird's feathers and tried to topple it from its perch, giving it the queer aspect of a porcupine desperately clinging to the ridge of the gable of the old vicarage. The wind dropped allowing it to bounce along the slippery roof tiles and jabber loudly at the crows sitting on the headstones watching the old man about his work.

The crows scattered like the innards of a discharged blunderbuss, iron shot racing up high into the sky. For a few moments they circled like tumbling rags, showering the raven with irritated cawing and then made their way off into the horizon and dissolved into black pepper dust.

Father Time stopped his ministrations and looked up, long and hard at the raven. Then, obviously irritated by its presence waved a petulant hand at it and shouted something the Raven did not hear (or chose not to). Turning shakily on its clawed feet, the bird inspected the landscape. He tipped his head this way and then that, his black bead eyes blinking away the almond bitter air.

The long lane coming up to the house was undisturbed aside from a double set of footprints, one outward, one inward, made earlier by a small boy who'd the raven had seen trudging to and fro from the house. The building stood alone on a larger plot on the end of the lane. Past the apple orchard at the back of the house lay a small copse hiding a flock of starlings to afraid to fly over the house since the raven had taken residence

Opposite stood the church of St Stephens, beak and taciturn, a relic from the Doomsday book. Past the church, over a field decorated with a glistening layer of snow was a world laid out in miniature. The tiny ice laden houses of Snowfields, cradled a fresh fall of snow giving way to the sparklingly black ice of the River Thames.

The raven leapt from it precarious perch, swept down into the graveyard and landed in front of Father Time.

Father Time placed his sharpening stone in his pocket, rested his hands on the top of his scythe and inspected the bird as it hopped erratically to and fro before him and performed an elaborate dance in the snow. 

It walked to and fro, backward and forward, occasionally stopping to check its bird footed creation in the soft white surface. When it was finished and a pattern filled with a geometric design littered with runic marks had arisen, it jumped to its centre and laid down flat as if it had just fallen from the sky. Then with wings outspread like an injured animal it did three rotations clockwise and three anticlockwise. And then it bounced up on its tiny haunches and waited.

A small flurry of snow twisted up over the runes. Leaving the circle it raced through the graveyard, twisting and turning amongst the gravestones it gathered pace, growing as it did so into a spiral of whirling ice. When it returned it swept over the runes and suddenly the raven, seemingly ignorant of its presence was consumed by the torrent. The shape wavered, spun and grew, until something much larger occupied the space where the bird had lain just moments before.

Father Time watched impassively, his beard flapping, his robes torn sideways by the force of the tumultuous tornado.

The unnatural disturbance died away, revealing within a block of ice a head taller than Time himself, as misty as a pillar of salt. Within the column the skeleton of a man began to form. Legs, arms, rib cage and thick cranium propagated from a pulpy liquid, engorging the fame, that swiftly turned to pumice and thence to solid bone. Fleshy muscles appeared and glued themselves to the cadaver to create an anatomical curiosity of the sort found in in physicians or lecturers in the medical sciences. The transparent carcass trembled momentarily, then gurgling and coughing like a headless spectre, filled up with a gooey liquid, thick and sticky as strawberry jam.

When it was done, the newly moulded ice sculpture disgorged a man, tall and lithe, ruddy cheeked and full lipped. He looked down at his nakedness and clicked his fingers. Suddenly he was adorned in checked suit of gaudy rubicund and black. A little tight in the leg, a little long in the sleeve, to the Victorian eye it marked him out as the hustler, the carouser, the rake who should be met with a look of suspicion and the turn of the heel. With another click of his fingers a long sable cloak appeared, held round his neck with a golden chain and a thick silver clasp.

As if to celebrate his birth from the bosom of mother winter he performed a little jig in the snow, kicking out his heels and spinning on his pins, arms outstretched in a theatrical attitude. Exertions over, he stopped and focused his attentions on the bearded titan who sat shaking his head in evident displeasure at his arrival.

'Time, ah', the newcomers voice was light with honeyed humour and carried a mesmeric amber richness in its tone. Fashioning a cheery smile he went to tip his hat. Then evidently remembering he had none he reached into the air and one majically appeared from the shrill blue sky which he placed on his head. He experimentally cocked it forward and then back until it sat comfortably on his ragged crown of red hair. Once he was happy with its arrangement he took it off, doffed it to Father Time and replaced it on his head with an inscrutable turn of a smirk on his lips.

'Why are you here, Loki?' sighed Father Time.

Loki blew into his hands sending a guff of mist into the air. Behind his cradled hands he cast his eyes about in an exaggerated show of wariness. He dropped to a crouch and lifted a tombstone weighing over two hundred weight and peered under it and finding nothing replaced it with the dull thud of falling masonry. 'We can't be too careful,' he mouthed, 'can we? Must keep our voices down. There has been,' he shielded his eyes from the swelling sun and looked hard up and down the empty lane. 'There's been a rupture, a little splintering.....Someone's been very careless. The cat,' he winked mischievously, 'is out of the bag, if you get my drift.'

'I get your inference, Loki and it's more than a cat about the bag,' glowered Time. 'Why don't you go home while your elders and betters take care of it?'

Loki pulled a face of stupefying perplexity. 'Who? Who is going to take care of it?'

'Me, Loki.'

'Oh you!' Loki raised his hand to his mouth in mock surprise 'You? Well I never!' He reached down and patted Time on the knee. 'Have no fear old man, I'm just here to offer some advice.'

'I don't need your scurrilous advice, Loki. Go home to your sullying drink and unvirtuous women. Sing the sagas of your Norse heros and the wild wind of the north and the cruel Icelandic seas. Go back to Odin, to the tempestuous Valkyrie and your petty squabbles with Thor and the others. Think of home, wouldn't you rather be there.'

'I could take it or leave it,' laughed Loki. 'But thanks for reminding me of its splendours.'

'Don't meddle, Loki, there are too many pike circling the pond and the trout who think they see the flash of light from some little trinket lying on the bottom might come adrift. They might get taken by something bigger,' Time leant in and whispered, 'with sharp, crooked teeth that are not inclined to let go. To sink to the bottom and in the turgid depths chew over their catch for a long, long time.'

Loki grew serious, the laughter ebbed from his voice, he grew taller and wider until he stood towering over Father Time. 'But the pond's leaking, so even the pike have cause for concern. Their malevolent eyes are not on the little fish but something else that might slip out or rather, that has already slipped out.'

Father Time pushed his face into Loki's chest. 'Leave it alone, Loki.'

'I'm not disposed to Old Man, I'll think I'll linger a little longer in this world.' Loki swept his cloak over his shoulder and tightened its leather straps across his chest. 'Don't you get disheartened when you take them, Time? The lovely maiden who is about to leave this world just as her beauty is blossoming, the mother with her helpless offspring crying around her, the grandfather whose death will bring ruin to his family. Don't you long to pursue your desires elsewhere, away from all this misery?'

Father Time patted Loki's sinewy arm as if he were a master addressing a student who really did not understand the realities of life. 'I am a cog in the universal movement of time, Loki, not like you. I'm an inherent part of the inevitable progress of things. I am the personification of the physical discipline of what they now call physiks. You, Loki are just a bit player in the drama, whilst I'm the scenery against which the act is played out.'

An intemperate breeze lifted his beard and he looked uncertainly about him, suspicious of any further divine arrivals. 'Your purpose, if you have any, is uncertain, your future unwritten and subject to the vagaries of the playwright who is certainly not you as this is not an autobiographical work, whatever you may like to think. My place in the acts is certain, for there will always be a need for a stage on which life is to be played out. You may walk off stage at any moment and never return. I am an immutable truth, you are a passing belief.'

Loki responded with nothing less than a sardonic grin and swelled even larger.

'I am omnipresent Loki, you are not.' 

Suddenly another Father Time appeared in the graveyard and another, then another multiplying rapidly until Loki was surrounded by a surfeit of hooded figures.

Father Time, smiled thickly through his willowy beard 'Here I am Loki, all of me or part of me, who can tell? Omnipresence holds many mysteries which you, my fledgling whippersnapper are too young to gasp.' Time tipped the sharp end of his scythe into Loki's chest. 'Remember Loki, in physical form you are mortal, mortal creatures are susceptible to all sort of misfortunes, ruminate on that!'

Loki looked down the gleaming field of blades and the plethora of Father Times' glaring at him through their beetling eyes. 'You would not dare touch me, my brother gods would come.'

'I could send you back to Valhalla now if I liked.'

Dismissively Loki pushed the tip of the blade away with the edge of his hand. 'To threaten me does you a disservice Father. Do you know that?'

'Have you told Thor you are here...meddling?'

'He's busy.' Loki snarled. And striding though the phalanx of Father Times' skipped back over the wall in one single bound.

The many eyes of Time watched him, heads down to disguise their countless furies, shaggy eyebrows drawn deep over scowling faces burnt scarlet red with anger. Together they called out in a choral voice that boomed across the open space. 'So be it, Loki, just don't get your fingers scalded for we will not step in to assist you.' With that they turned away, lent against the many headstones and resumed their toil. Squeak, scrape, squeak, scrape.

On the garden path leading to the decrepit old vicarage, Loki paused and picked a winter's rose and held it under his nose. It was a long time since he'd smelt London in the grip of the ice. Ah, the smell of the winter berries, the sharpness of the frost, the richness of winter's pleasures. He SO loved winter. When the birds died on the wing, the pensioners slumped unconscious in their chairs by their coal-less fires. It was a hoot!

He swirled like a ballet dancer in his prime to rejoice the moment then strode up the path to the front door, the icy shingle scrunching nosily under his boots like the breaking of old folk's bones.

At the door he resettled his hat until it roosted cosily on his head and kicked his heels sharply together. Then he inspected the door. It offered two possibilities, a bell and a clapper. He looked quizzically at the bell. The arrangement was somewhat indecorous for an undertaker he felt for under the bronze dome hung a little skeleton which fell from a gibbet and jiggled by its neck when the bells rope was pulled.

He gave a sardonic grin and reached out to the iron clapper and stopped, hand paused mid-air as if enveloped by self-doubt. Puzzled, he lent forward until his nose almost touched the contraption. It was a feral thing, a behorned devil with an evil leer and jutting jaw that gripped him with its steely gaze. Loki gave out a little chuckle and tickled the grotesque face under its horny jowl. Then quickly griping it firmly by the throat he knocked thrice in quick succession. 'Ah ha gotcha there,' he muttered and pulled his hand expeditiously away.

At the knock at the door the house wailed and shook as if struck by lightning. In the basement Mrs Thistlewaite almost dropped a crock of preserving liquid. Martin, fumbling with his list at the tumultuous noise said rather louder than he intended over the racket. 'It's OK, Mrs Thistlewaite, I think it's someone at the door. I'll get it.'

As Martin scuttled up the twisting stairway from the depths of the house Loki stood back, took a cavernous breath, threw back his head and sang.

So she is not dead but sleeping

In her coffin lays

Why all those tears of weeping

For these mourning days

As a dream when one awaketh

As the tale is told

Her spirit must be taken

As the story holds

Like the early rays of morning

Soaring toward the sun

So she'll leave us mourning

When she's dead and gone

Loki had a good singing voice and was proud if it too. He knew as he sang he'd still got it. It held an unearthly quality that echoed in the porch and rang lithely across the village of Snowfields. Carried by the frozen serpent of the Thames it flew unheeded down the river to Dartford where Rivermen twisted their heads to catch the tumbling verses. A few moment later sailors hauling herring nets on their rocking vessels in the Thames estuary stopped and swore they caught the refrain of a melody on the wind as it drifted by.

He tapped at the door again. A bolt of thunder clamoured through the building, the house timbers shifted and moaned in distress. In the outhouse the coffin maker stopped his hammering and looked about him and then shaking his bemused head, popped a few nails between his chilled lips and resumed his endeavours.

Inside, Martin paused in the hall. The voice singing beyond the door was a good one, it ebbed and flowed like the tide around him. Martin stood in silence and listened until the sound fell into the ground around him like a dying breath. He pulled the latch and stared in bewilderment at the caller, his mouth agape.

Noting the alarm in Martin's face his visitor pulled at his cloak and interjected without introduction 'It's an imitation,' he said shaking the sable skin. 'I couldn't abide the thought of all those animals dying just for a coat. I can't abide cruelty to animals. Mr Locke at your service spelled L-O-C-K-E, pronounced lockeee you see, with particular emphasis on the e.' He held out his hand.

Assuming the man in the pantomime outfit to be hustler from the fair Martin creased his eyebrow and closed the door. Or tried to as the foot from the visitor jammed it ajar. 'We don't need tickets for the fair, even if it has got a dragon.' He said as he tried to ram the door to.

'Martin, Martin, Martin. I'm not calling about any fair, although a dragon does sound rather seductive. I'm here to see you.'

Martin edged the door open a crack. 'How do you know my name?'

'How's your guest, Martin?'

'Who?'

'The girl downstairs.'

'Are you a relative?'

'A relative,' Loki scratched his copper goatee. 'Hmmm, yes well you could say that. I'm perhaps a distant cousin, maybe be once or twice removed but we do have much in common. How is she?'

'She dead, we're an undertakers.' said Martin circumspectly tapping the brass plate on the wall upon which the name Pickle and Warr was engraved. 'What was your name again?

'Locke, with an emphasis on the e.' with twinkling eyes Loki offered his hand again.

Uncertainly Martin took the hand and shook it. It was surprisingly large and what looked hard and bony felt massively heavy in his hand, is if he were grasping two solid bags of flour. Mr Locke held his hand and did not release it.

'I see mention of her disturbs you Martin, prey tell the source of your disquiet.' Locke pulled Martin close, his hot breath like cinders in Martins ear. 'Is she still fresh, Martin, is that what worries you? For well it should. You see Martin, she shouldn't be should she? Fresh I mean? She's been pulled out the ice, she should be squished and a bit mangy if the truth be told. But she's not is she? She's like a freshly picked apple from the tree of heaven, don't tell me you haven't noticed? But I should tell you she's not Gods own fruit, Martin. No, no, she's something otherwise, something entirely otherwise!'

'I don't know what you mean.' Martin tried to pull free of the fleshy weight that clung to his hand.

'Well she shouldn't be, should she? Her countenance is somewhat at odds with her condition which, is not, I may to be so bold as to suggest,  fine and dandy. There are certain rules Martins, you need to abide by those. You can't just make up the rules as you go along.'

'Rules on what?'

'Come on Martin, you shouldn't be circumspect, you know the machinations of life and death, it's your business.'

'I know how it works.'

'Do you? Walk with me, Martin.' He gasped Martin firmly by the arm and dragged him from the porch. They walked down the path together, Locke's arm locked resolutely to Martins. Locke waved his hand melodramatically at the wintery fields gripped in winter's hoary grasp. 'We are but gambolling lambs in the pasture of life. Well you all are, I'm not, but I suppose that's not the point I'm trying to make. And sometimes Martin, into this field of floating buttercups and dreamy summer haystacks, the metaphorical wolf comes to call. He may be a mutton headed god with no sense of humour but when he comes we must go with him, however unwillingly and meet our maker. Do you understand my insinuation, Martin?'

'Not really, about the girl?'

'You see Martin,' Locke stopped and drew a line in the snow with the tip of his boot. 'On one side lies death, the other side, life. There can be nothing else. Your young lady, she should be here – on the dead side but actually she's here in the middle sitting on the fence. Hovering between the two, in limbo as some might say. She just needs a little push and all will be well again.'

Locke scrubbed out the line with his sole. 'Death is evitable, it is written into the rules of life. Behold the mutton headed one in the churchyard over there.' Loki coughed sending a puff of tiny raven feathers over Martin. 'I do so apologize!' He flapped the downy fluff away with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Martin looked over the wall. Through a fizzing miasma of light that seemed to float over the graveyard, was a shrouded figure standing by a tombstone. The sound of a sharpening blade hung in the air. Martin squinted into the low hanging sun as the vision clouded over and disappeared. He looked up at Mr Locke. 'Are you here to take her?'

'No, Martin that would be discourteous, I'm not allowed to interfere. Some others will be organising her passing again, of that I feel sure.'

'It's this a warning then?'

'In a way Martin it is, it's because I like you. What you do has value and let's face it you are a little different from everyone else. Perhaps we are soul mates which is why I don't want you hurt in the forthcoming unruly proceedings –so remember you need to dodge the bullet when it comes.' As if to demonstrate he waved his red checked arm like an eel wiggling upstream against the current.

'But someone's still going to come to do her harm, even though she's dead?' Martin scratched his head, mystified.

'In limbo, Martin!' Loki corrected sternly. 'Immutably they are. There now, I've told you and there's a weight off my chest! Don't let me down Martin, remember dodge the bullet when it comes. It's not meant for you. Oh, Martin you know I'm talking figuratively don't you, it may not be a gun, it could be a knife or a garrotte. I cannot say. Pass her my felicitations of the season when she wakes. I feel she probably wouldn't come to the door if she knew I was here. Good day, sir,' 

He tipped his hat, released Martin from his grip and struck off down the path. At the end he opened the gate and did a little caper around it, his red pantaloons billowing in the breeze and then sauntered back up the lane.

Martin watched as the eccentric figure paused and glared back at him. Martin retreated, with one last peek through the crack he closed the door and went back downstairs totally befuddled with it all.

'Who was that?' asked Mrs Thistlewaite

'Some madman escapee from Bedlam I shouldn't wonder,' relayed Martin with evident uneasiness.

Outside, after checking Father Times multitudinous omnipresence had passed Loki leapt the wall back into the churchyard. He kicked his heels out and propped himself against a gravestone and sat there as if he were reclining on a goose down bed.

Father Time pocketing his sharpening stone blew the dust from the sheer edge of the metal blade. 'What did you say to him, Loki? You shouldn't be interfering, you could get into trouble. Demi gods should stick to their business and that business does not embrace the travails of human affairs.'

Loki gazed at the crystalline blue sky and the wafer moon stuck to the quartz ceiling of the Northern hemisphere. He decided to let the demi god slur slide. 'Have you heard there is a dragon at the Ice Fair?'

Time hadn't. He closed his hooded eyes and wished Loki away. When he opened them the wily Loki was still there, impetuously stamping his fist into the crisping snow. 'I don't suppose you've seen it, Loki, the dragon?'

'Not yet, but I'm inclined to.' Suddenly Loki sat up, 'How about we go, you and I. Let's see this mystical beast together, you cantankerous old conjurer.'