Ratatoskr was a squirrel. Small and red with eyes that glittered with the sort of joy you normally only see in people who thrive on the misery of others. He had four paws, a tail longer than himself, and a voice that carried further than it should have given his size. Small creatures with big voices are rarely good news.
He lived in Yggdrasil. In the bark, in the cracks, in the narrow space between the outer layer and the living wood. The whole trunk was his home, from the roots to the crown, and he knew every crack and every knothole and every spot where the bark loosened enough for a squirrel to sleep for half an hour. Ratatoskr slept rarely. Never more than half an hour. He had too much to do.
High in the crown sat the eagle. No one knows his name. Odin, who knows most things, has never said it aloud, and that may be because he lacks the knowledge or because he has it and stays silent, and with Odin you never know which. The eagle was old. Older than the gods, some said. As old as the tree, said others. Between his eyes sat the hawk Veðrfölnir, staring out across the world without blinking, and that was the only thing Veðrfölnir did, and it was the only thing he was good at, and it was enough.
Far below at the roots, in the mud and darkness where the water from Hvergelmir bubbled and stank of sulphur and rotten eggs, lay Níðhöggr. The dragon. The serpent. The one who chewed on Yggdrasil's roots with teeth yellowed by age and toughened by hatred. Níðhöggr had lain there since before anyone could remember, and he had no intention of moving, and the roots tasted bitter but he ate them anyway, because Níðhöggr preferred bitterness above all else.
And between them ran Ratatoskr.
He ran every day. Up and down. From the darkness at the roots to the light in the crown and back again, and he ran fast, because Ratatoskr had never done anything slowly in his entire life. His claws clicked against the bark like hail on a wall, and his tail streamed behind him like a red flag, and if you stood by the trunk and listened you could hear him coming a long way off, and you could also hear him if you were not listening, because Ratatoskr was not a squirrel who creeps.
Every morning he climbed to the crown. The eagle sat and stared, as he always sat and stared, and the wind pulled through his feathers and Veðrfölnir sat between his eyes and did not blink. Ratatoskr settled on a branch. He cleared his throat. It was unnecessary, the eagle had heard him already at the fifth branch, but Ratatoskr cleared his throat anyway, because he wanted the audience ready.
"Níðhöggr sends his regards," he said. "He said you smell like an old bird who has been sitting too long in his own shit. He said your feathers are grey as ash and just as lifeless. He said the day you fall from the crown no one will miss you, because no one has ever cared about a bird who just sits and gawps."
The eagle slowly turned his head. His eyes were like two wells filled with ice. "He said that," said the eagle.
"Word for word," said Ratatoskr. And it was a lie. Níðhöggr had said roughly half. He had said "the bird sits too much" and "the feathers look shabby." The rest, the stench, the ash, that no one would miss him, Ratatoskr had added himself, word by word, with a precision that requires talent. It takes talent to lie so that it feels true. It takes mastery to lie so that it feels worse than true.
"Tell this to the fucking worm," said the eagle. His voice was calm. Dangerously calm. "Tell him I see him. I see him every day. I see him lying there chewing on roots like a rat in a rubbish heap. Tell him the day this tree falls, and it will fall, I will come down with the full weight of the sky, and the last thing that bastard sees will be my talons."
Ratatoskr nodded gravely. He stayed a moment longer, as if absorbing the weight of the message, as if he understood the gravity. It was acting. Ratatoskr understood nothing of gravity. He understood timing.
Then he ran downward. Fast. Faster than he needed to. The message burned in him like embers and he wanted to deliver it while it was hot, because an insult that cools loses its power, and Ratatoskr always delivered hot.
Halfway down he passed the Norns at Urðarbrunnr. The three sisters who spin fate. Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld. And they watched him as he rushed past. Urðr, who sees backward, said nothing. Verðandi, who sees what is happening, said nothing. Skuld, who sees forward, shook her head, and it was not clear whether she was shaking it at the squirrel or at everything he would cause.
"The eagle sends his regards," he said to Níðhöggr. The dragon lifted his head from the roots. Bark hung between his teeth and his jaws were stained brown with the tree's sap. "He calls you a rat. A rubbish-heap rat. He says you crawl and gnaw like vermin and that you will never be anything more. He says his talons will tear you apart the day the tree falls, and that the last thing you see will be his shadow falling over you."
"Shadow," said Níðhöggr. The word caught in his mouth like a splinter. "The bird thinks he has a shadow. The bird thinks he casts a shadow." He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Tell him I don't give a shit about his shadow. Tell him I chew. Every day I chew. And one day the root gives way, and then his fucking tree falls, and his fucking crown, and his fucking branch, and him with it. I eat from below. He knows it. He can sit up there and play king, but I am the one who decides when the floor disappears."
Ratatoskr ran upward again. And this was where the art happened. He added. Not much. Just enough. Níðhöggr had said "I don't give a shit about his shadow." Ratatoskr rephrased it into Níðhöggr laughing at the shadow, mocking it, saying it was thin and transparent as the eagle's courage. Níðhöggr had said "I eat from below." Ratatoskr added that Níðhöggr had said he could taste the eagle's fear in every fibre, and that it tasted better than the roots.
That was his method. Never invent entirely. Always start from what was said and then turn it half a notch further, so that the original could no longer be told apart from the addition. A lie that is a hundred per cent lie is easily spotted. A lie that is seventy per cent truth sticks like a tick.
"Níðhöggr sends his regards again," he said to the eagle. And the eagle grew quieter and colder and his talons scraped against the branch, and his reply was longer and more vicious, and Ratatoskr ran down again with that reply and added another round of shit, and Níðhöggr chewed harder and answered angrier, and Ratatoskr ran up again.
All day. Every day. His entire fucking life.
Sometimes, far down at the roots, he heard Mímir sitting by his well, drinking. Mímir who knew everything. Mímir who had watched Ratatoskr run past every day for thousands of years and had never said a word to him. And Ratatoskr had never said a word to Mímir, because Ratatoskr had no interest in truth. Truth was boring, lacked nerve, was for people who did not understand that what drives the world forward is not facts but rumours.
Ratatoskr ran. Up and down. Down and up. He added and embellished and seasoned with things neither of them had said but both would believe the other had, and that was his art, his only art, and he was a master of it.
And then Ratatoskr ran up again, to spread yet more discord.