Apples and Trickery
The bird had a name, but they did not know it yet.
It had started as an ordinary journey. Odin, Loki, and Hœnir were wandering through the wilderness, as they sometimes did, and they got hungry. They caught an ox and set it over the fire, but the meat refused to cook. They turned it and waited, blew on the embers and added more wood, and still raw. Red muscles and gleaming sinews, as if the fire could not be bothered. Then they heard a laugh from above. In the oak above them sat an eagle, enormous, with wings that cast the whole clearing in shadow.
The eagle said it was his doing. No fire in these parts could cook meat without his leave. But if he got to eat his fill first they could have the rest. They agreed, because they were hungry and foolish, and the eagle flew down and took both thighs and both shoulders, the four best cuts, and left the scraps. Loki flew into a rage. He grabbed a long pole, a whole young birch tree, and struck the eagle with everything he had.
The pole stuck fast in the bird. Loki's hands stuck fast to the pole. And the eagle took off.
What followed was not dignified. Loki hung beneath the eagle like a rag in the wind, and the bird flew low on purpose, over rocks and treetops and bushes with thorns, and Loki was bashed against every stone and every branch and his skin was flayed and his clothes were torn to shreds and he screamed and begged and wept and promised everything. "What do you want? I will do anything. Let me go. I will do whatever you want." The eagle said he wanted Iðunn. Iðunn and her apples. The apples that kept the gods young. Loki said yes, because Loki always said yes when the alternative was dying, and worried about the consequences later. It was his life pattern, and it would cost everyone.
The eagle was Þjazi, the giant from Þrymheimr, and he was powerful and old and knew exactly what the apples were worth. Loki kept his promise, because such promises you keep: the kind given with blood in your mouth and panic in your chest. He went to Iðunn in Asgard and said he had found apples in the forest, apples even better than hers, and she ought to bring her own to compare. Iðunn, who was trusting in the way that only someone who has never been deceived can be trusting, took her casket and followed him out through the gates.
Þjazi swept down in eagle-shape and took her. His talons closed around her body, the casket fell, the apples bounced in the grass, and he flew with her to Þrymheimr. She screamed the whole way, and no one heard, because there was wind and distance and no one else cared enough to look up.
Without Iðunn's apples the gods began to age. It happened fast. No one had thought it could happen so fast. Bragi forgot his poems mid-verse, stood with his mouth open and his eyes empty. Tyr fumbled his sword and dropped it and could not bend to pick it up. Freyja's hair fell out in clumps on the floor. Odin sat on his throne coughing like an old man in a nursing home, and his one eye was clouded and his hands trembled.
None of them understood what was happening until someone asked: where is Iðunn? And then: where is Loki? The two questions came close together, and they had the same answer.
Loki was found, and the gods asked the sort of questions you ask of someone who has ruined everything. Thor grabbed his collar with a hand that could barely clench but was still strong enough to make an impression. Loki confessed, because what was he going to say? He was given Freyja's falcon cloak again, the bloody falcon cloak that never brought good news, and flew to Þjazi's hall in Þrymheimr.
Þjazi was out fishing. Iðunn sat alone in a hall of stone. Loki turned her into a nut, small as a thumb, clutched her in his talons, and flew toward Asgard for his life. Behind him the mountains shot past and the sea glittered and the sky was cold and Loki flew faster than he had ever flown.
Þjazi came home, saw that Iðunn was gone, and turned into an eagle. He was faster. His wings were wider. He gained on them. The gods stood on Asgard's walls and watched them coming: a falcon with a nut in its talons and an eagle on its tail, and the distance shrank with every wingbeat. They lit fires on the walls. High, hot fires of dry wood and fat and everything flammable they could find, and the flames leapt up in spirals.
Loki shot through at the last second, straight through the wall of fire, and his feathers singed but he landed inside the wall. Þjazi had too much speed. Or perhaps his rage was so great he could not turn. His wings caught fire, his feathers burned like torches, and he crashed and fell inside the walls, and the gods killed him before he could rise, with spears and swords and Mjolnir, and the giant died at the gods' feet with smoke rising from his ruined wings.
Iðunn was back. The gods ate the apples and became young again, and the colour returned to their cheeks and the strength to their arms, and everyone pretended the whole thing had not happened. That was what they were best at, the gods: pretending catastrophes had not occurred.
But Þjazi had a daughter. Skaði. She came to the gates of Asgard in full armour with spear and helmet and a look that promised this matter was not settled. She wanted blood or compensation, preferably both. The gods, who were aware they had killed a giant who had technically been robbed of his catch, offered a settlement. Skaði was allowed to choose a husband from among the gods, but she could only see their feet. Nothing else.
All the gods lined up behind a screen with only their feet showing. Skaði looked. One pair was whiter and more beautiful than all the rest, with perfect nails and skin soft as silk. That must be Baldr, she thought. The most beautiful of the gods surely had the most beautiful feet. She chose. But the feet belonged to Njörðr, god of the sea, whose feet were white from always wading in salt water. Skaði hid her disappointment, but she was not good at hiding things.
The deal also required the gods to make her laugh, and Skaði was not in a laughing mood. Everyone tried. Bragi composed. Odin told stories. Freyr smiled his warmest smile. Nothing worked. Skaði sat with her arms crossed and a face like granite.
Then Loki stepped forward with a rope and a goat. He tied one end of the rope to the beard of the angriest goat he could find, an old billy that reeked of piss and had eyes like burning coals. The other end he tied around his own bollocks, and there is no way to do that with dignity. The rope went taut. The goat pulled. Loki screamed. The goat kicked. Loki fell. They were dragged back and forth across the floor like two idiots bound together by fate and a rope, and Loki howled and the goat bleated and the floor became slippery with goat droppings and Loki ended up on all fours with his face in Skaði's lap.
She laughed. She tried not to, and she was ashamed of it, but she laughed, and it was a real laugh that came from the belly and could not be held back. The gods all swear she laughed, and that was enough.
Odin took Þjazi's eyes and cast them into the sky as stars, and that was the last honour for an enemy. Skaði stayed among the gods. She married Njörðr, but they were never happy. She wanted to live in the mountains with the howling of wolves and he wanted to live by the sea with the crying of gulls. They tried nine nights by the sea: Skaði could not sleep, the gulls disturbed her, the waves annoyed her, everything was wrong. They tried nine nights in the mountains: Njörðr froze, the wolves woke him, the silence pressed. They shuttled back and forth without ever finding home, and that is what happens when you marry the wrong feet.
But Skaði was among them now, and life went on, and Freyr, who had been watching the whole affair with half an eye, withdrew and climbed up onto Hliðskjálf, Odin's high throne from which you could see all the worlds. It was not his seat. He should not have been sitting there. But he sat, and he looked out, and what he saw destroyed him.