‘Though a sitting man soon forgets his tale, in my case there is no choice. An apple, Idunn, if you would be so kind—’
‘No apples,’ said Woden. ‘Speak first, Sly One.’
Loki sighed and inclined his wrinkled, turkey gobbler neck.
‘But he can’t be trusted,’ Freya burst out.
‘That was then,’ said Loki. ‘We’re on the same side now.’
For how long? thought Freya. How could they trust him? He’s so treacherous. So changeable.
‘The Wolf’s father is better in the fold than out,’ said Woden.
‘If One might be permitted a word in One’s own home,’ said the Queen, peeping her white head around the door, ‘I should like to—’
Snot slammed the double doors in her face.
‘Ohh,’ gasped the Queen.
‘Make yourself useful – bring us something to eat,’ bellowed Thor.
‘The frost giants are strong,’ continued Loki. ‘Brute strength cannot defeat them. They are regrouping for a final battle. This time they won’t retreat until our bodies lie ripped apart. This quick world will freeze as they unleash their wind-cold ways, then they will seize our gleaming halls in Asgard. Imagine: giants ruling Asgard. Any Gods who survive will rot in exile.’
The Gods murmured.
‘But there is another way. A crafty way. A wolf way to victory. Our enemies are strong, but slow-witted. I went to see Thrym, leader of the giants, and I bring a peace offer from him. The frost giants will leave Midgard.’
Freya’s heart leapt. Could it be true?
‘They will leave our bright citadel unstormed and return to their frozen lands. Asgard and Midgard will be saved.’
Hope returned to the Gods’ pale faces. Roskva and Alfi clapped their hands.
‘Sounds good to me,’ said the Goddess Freyja. ‘My nails are shot now. Do you have any idea how much a crushed black diamond manicure costs?’
‘And in exchange?’ said Woden.
‘All Thrym asks is that we send Freyja to him as his bride.’
Freya thought she was going to faint.
‘Me?’ squeaked Freya. ‘Me! Marry a giant? Why …’
‘Not you, herring face,’ said Sif. ‘Freyja.’
For once, it wasn’t her. Thank Gods and all the fates, it wasn’t her.
The assembled Immortals gazed at the golden Goddess. Freya could see the calculation in their eyes.
For a moment she thought fire would pour from Freyja’s mouth, as her body and throat swelled with fury. Her neck bulged and the links on her marvellous necklace burst apart, showering the throne room in a cascading clatter of tumbling, rolling jewels. The palace floor and walls shuddered with her rage.
‘Not another giant who wants me,’ shrieked Freyja. ‘You can forget it. I’ll never—’
‘So if Freyja sacrifices herself for our good, as I did when I put my hand in the Wolf’s mouth, then all is not lost?’ interrupted Tyr.
‘The frost giants would leave us and our bright halls alone?’ said Heimdall.
‘The world would not be wrecked?’ said Frigg.
‘And all we have to do is to give them my sister Freyja?’ said Frey. ‘And we’re safe? All-out war to the death is averted?’
Loki nodded.
‘I say yes,’ said Thor.
‘Me too,’ said Heimdall.
‘I think it’s a great offer,’ said Frigg.
‘If we don’t, then giants will live in Asgard,’ said Njord. ‘Sorry, daughter,’ he added.
The Goddess Freyja looked as if a bucket of scalding water had just been tossed over her.
‘Are you all INSANE?’ she screamed. ‘Me, marry a frost giant? Me, marry an ogre? Me, marry a monster? I’d rather you all froze in Hel.’
‘But Freyja, think about the greater good you would do,’ said Njord. You would save the Gods. You would save the world of men. Your glorious fame would spread far and wide, and every—’
‘Yes, my fame as an ogre-lover,’ screeched Freyja. ‘My fame as a floozy. My fame as an old tart.’
‘I think we should send Thrym a radiant bride,’ said Loki.
‘That’s your great plan?’ Freyja screamed. ‘No way.’
Loki continued as if he hadn’t heard.
‘A well-swaddled bride. A timid bride covered in heavy veils and long swishing skirts. A shy bride decked in the Necklace of the Brisings. A buxom bride with jangling keys at her waist and Thor’s hammer Mjollnir hidden in her tunic … the hammer that cannot fail to hit its target, nor to return to the hand that hurled it, the hammer that can shrink small enough to be concealed inside a tunic or dangled from a waist with some jangling keys … I repeat myself,’ said Loki. He frowned.
‘I’m not listening to another word of this,’ said the Goddess.
‘Not you, cat-eyes,’ said Loki. Then he paused. His face wrinkled. ‘Where was I?’ he muttered. ‘I was thinking … thinking …’
‘What is the Trickster on about?’ said Njord.
Suddenly Freya understood.
‘He means Thor should go disguised as Freyja,’ she burst out. ‘You know, like Achilles did, in the Greek myths, when he dressed as a girl to—’
‘We have no interest in copying those dead sons of mares,’ bellowed Thor, as everyone except him burst into howls of laughter.
Thor looked around the room at the hysterical Gods.
‘Me?’ bristled Thor. ‘Dressed as a woman? Decked as a bride?’
‘You’ll look lovely,’ said Loki. ‘A nice flouncy cap, some rich brooches pinned just so, a long-sleeved tunic and a heavy veil. A VERY heavy veil. In fact, several heavy veils. I’ll go with, disguised as his bridesmaid.’
‘Loki, even swaddled in a thousand veils you are no one’s idea of a bridesmaid,’ said Heimdall. ‘You’re far too old and decrepit. You can barely lift your arm: how will you join battle with Thor?’
‘I haven’t agreed to this yet,’ yelled Thor.
The Trickster’s eyes gleamed.
‘You can easily fix that. Give me an apple.’
Woden’s eye narrowed. ‘When and if the frost giants are defeated, you will be restored to youth and to Asgard. Till then you will remain as you are here. We need a warrior to attend Thor as his bridesmaid.’ Woden surveyed the room. ‘Snot can be the bridesmaid.’
Snot looked as if someone had just heaved a rock at his head. He growled, knotting his bristly grey brows together and baring his chipped black teeth.
‘Roskva and Alfi will attend you both,’ continued Woden. ‘Their youth will disarm the giants.’ Freya saw Alfi go pale.
‘I’m not shaving my beard and that’s final,’ bellowed the Thunderer.
‘Loki, tell Thrym we accept,’ said the All-Father. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I prefer you where I can see you. I will send my ravens instead.’
He whispered in their ears, and the pair, Huginn and Muginn, flapped off.
The Gods and Goddesses, suddenly cheerful, huddled around Thor, swaddling him in long robes and heavy veils threaded with gold. Thor towered above them all, looking like an angry corpse as lace veil after lace veil hid his red-bearded face. Loki stretched out his withered legs on a pale blue silk sofa, directing the dressing. Snot’s battle-scared head was also veiled, and his thick body draped in a richly embroidered, long-sleeved dress and shawl.
Freya tried not to smile, Snot looked so ridiculous. Hopefully, he would look the epitome of beauty to a giant.
‘I’ll kill anyone who ever speaks of this,’ said Snot. He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the ornate mirrors and shuddered.
‘Oh, just one more thing,’ rasped Loki, coughing. ‘So small I forgot to mention it. Skadi demands compensation for her father Thjazi’s murder. She wants Freya.’
In the happy tumult of dressing the ‘bride’ and ‘bridesmaid’ Loki’s fatal words barely rippled.
Freya went cold.
‘Me?’ squeaked Freya. ‘Or the Goddess?’
Loki fixed her wit
h his fathomless eyes.
‘Skadi is thirsting for vengeance against you, mortal, for her father Thjazi’s murder,’ said Loki. ‘As is her right.’
‘But I didn’t kill him,’ said Freya. Her heart squeezed. Skadi. Thjazi. Two names she’d hoped never ever to hear again.
‘You led him to his fiery death in Asgard,’ said Woden.
‘At your command,’ said Freya. If her heart beat any louder it would echo around the room.
‘A leader has been killed, and compensation must be paid,’ said Woden.
‘Can’t you give her gold?’ begged Freya. Gods know, they had enough of the stuff.
Thor laughed. ‘You saw Skadi’s storm-home. It is filled with gold.’
‘Only you will satisfy her,’ said Loki, yawning.
Why could she never escape her entanglement with the Gods? Just when she thought she was free, they’d yank her back on her chain, a pawn in a cosmic game she would never understand.
Alfi squeezed her hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.
Roskva refused to look at her. Why should she, when her own grim fate was almost as bad?
‘But … what will she do to me?’ quaked Freya. ‘What does she want with me?’ She well remembered Skadi’s angry face, her tree-trunk legs, her disgusting smell. Use her as a pillow? Keep her as a slave in Thrymheim, her cold dark storm-home, gutting fish for eternity? Hurl her over the cliff?
‘That is not our concern,’ said Njord. ‘She is owed compensation and she has demanded you. A very modest request. We want to end the blood feud with her race.’
Freya looked pleadingly at the other Gods, while they primped and attached richly jewelled brooches onto Thor’s white overdress.
‘Oy! Watch how you pin that,’ he snapped.
‘Looking good,’ said Frigg.
‘You should rejoice to have this chance to serve us,’ said Heimdall, pinning a three-lobed brooch at Thor’s neck and standing back to consider the effect. ‘Perfect.’
‘Rejoice?’ said Freya.
‘Life is harsh and unfair,’ said Woden. ‘Even we cannot escape our fate. Now let us move on to more important matters. Where should we be while Thor is hammering the giants?’
‘Please let me call my mum,’ said Freya.
‘Shhh!’ scolded Tyr. ‘The Lord of the Gallows is speaking.’
‘Be quick,’ said Woden, as the Gods continued in their Council.
Hands shaking, Freya punched the speed dial on her phone and moved away from the Gods towards the door. As usual, her battery was almost dead. Clare answered instantly.
‘Freya. Thank the Gods. I’ve been so worried. Where are you? I’ve been calling and calling but the phone lines are down. Tell me you’re nowhere near the hurricane. Are you all right?’
Freya gulped.
‘Fine. Fine. Mum, I have to go … go on a journey.’
She could hear her mother’s antennae twitch.
‘Journey? With … them? Where?’ said Clare sharply.
‘Just …’ Freya fell silent. Stratford, and then Jotunheim, the land of the giants? Her mouth was cardboard. ‘Just a journey. But I’ll be fine, Mum, really.’ Freya struggled to keep her voice even. What was the point of alarming her?
Roskva gestured angrily. ‘Hurry up,’ she muttered. ‘Time won’t wait.’
‘Gotta go, Mum.’ She wanted to add, ‘I love you,’ but she couldn’t say the words.
‘Freya! Don’t—’
‘Bye.’ She clicked off her phone.
If she couldn’t avoid her fate, she would try to face it bravely. That much she had learned. Her only hope was that Thor would kill Skadi in the battle to come.
‘My ravens tell me the giants are camped in the great stadium of games encircled by the river, east of here,’ said Woden. ‘The one mortals call the Olympic Stadium.’
‘How will we get there?’ said Freya. ‘We can’t exactly hop on a bus or take the Tube.’ Would they make her walk towards her hard fate?
‘You will ride in Thor’s goat chariot,’ said Frigg. ‘The Einherjar have brought it here.’
Of course they have, thought Freya bitterly, as she followed the others out of the throne room.
The Horse Might Talk
Thor and Snot trudged down the curved gold stairway, clutching the banister and trying not to trip over their dragging skirts. They passed the Queen on the stairs, carrying a tray of sandwiches and pies. Thor snatched a handful as he descended.
The Gods gathered in the frosty courtyard to see the bridal party off. Someone had already opened the black iron gates. Above them, on the palace first floor, a curtain twitched and a crown peeked out.
The goats reared and stamped as they stood in their halters, glistening in the freezing night air, their fur flecked with snow, eager to start.
Freya knew all about Thor’s magic goats, which could be eaten and yet spring back to life so long as their intact bones were thrown onto their skins. These were the ones that had caused Roskva and Alfi to be enslaved long ago, when Alfi had disobeyed Thor and gnawed on a leg bone. Freya, teeth chattering, felt like she was falling into a feverish dream.
Snot stomped over to the waiting chariot. He kept forgetting to hitch up his long skirts, and he stumbled on the gravel. The clomp of his heavy footsteps carried through the stillness.
‘Snot, don’t stomp,’ hissed Roskva. ‘You’re a bridesmaid.’
‘This is how I walk,’ bellowed Snot.
‘And no bellowing,’ snapped Roskva. ‘Master, that goes for you too. You’re the goddess Freyja. She doesn’t bellow – well actually she does sometimes, but – you know what I mean. Just keep saying to yourself, ‘I’m a Goddess. I’m a Goddess. I’m the loveliest Goddess in all the nine worlds.’
The veiled Thor turned to look at her. His eyes blazed through the heavy fabric.
‘Say that one more time to me and I’ll kill you,’ he roared.
‘Unless I kill her first,’ growled Snot.
‘I’m only trying to help,’ said Roskva.
‘Get in and be quiet,’ said Thor, as he followed Snot into the fur-lined chariot and grabbed the reins. Roskva, Alfi and Freya climbed in and sat behind him, covering themselves in bear skins.
To Freya’s surprise, all five of them fitted comfortably inside. Her eyes darted about. Could she jump from the chariot and flee for her life? Yet if it was so fated she should be handed to Skadi, her harsh fate would catch up with her wherever she was.
‘Follow the river to the giants,’ said Woden. He whispered to Thor, who nodded, then yelled at the goats who immediately galloped off into the black night.
The goats hurtled down the foggy Mall through the darkness of Green Park, now flattened and devastated. A few faint stars glittered above them. The air smelled of fire. The chariot jolted as the goats wove through the fallen trees and rocks without breaking stride. Freya clutched the side, praying they wouldn’t crash. Alfi squeezed her freezing hand. ‘It’s okay, the goats never stumble,’ he whispered. His breath floated like puffs of smoke around his face. ‘And don’t despair.’
‘We must all do as destiny decides,’ said Roskva. ‘Fate is remorseless and holds dominion over us all. And don’t I know it.’
‘Once I was taken prisoner by a King and sentenced to death,’ said Snot. ‘And I told him if he spared my life for one year, I would teach his favourite horse to talk. The King agreed. Everyone mocked me. You can’t teach a horse to talk, they said.
‘A lot can happen in a year, I replied. The King might die. I might die. Or the horse might talk.’
‘What happened?’ said Freya. She’d never heard Snot speak so many words.
Snot shrugged. ‘As you see, I am still here.’
Despite herself, Freya smiled.
The jerking chariot moved swiftly along the deserted roads, splashing through puddles and flood water, somehow gliding over the rubble from the great battle, following the river towards the Olympic Stadium where the giants waited.
‘Master, remember to toss your head the way Freyja does,’ said Roskva. ‘Don’t forget you’ve got golden curls beneath your cap.’
‘I will not toss my head,’ said Thor. ‘Isn’t it enough I’m swaddled in a bridal veil and dress? Wearing a necklace so heavy it would choke an ox? And a frilly cap?’
‘I swear by the Gods,’ said Snot, ‘if I’d known I’d be falling on my face getting my feet twisted up in skirts I’d rather have been left for dead on Hekla.’
They fell silent the closer they got to the stadium, which loomed up in the darkness, encircled by freezing fog, the iron air dense and malevolent. Freya heard the whirling winds roaring inside the arena, as if a ferocious tempest had been bottled within its walls. Hail, sleet and snow blasted them. The Olympic Stadium had become a reeking storm-house for frost giants.
Freya could hear their raspy voices filling the night, like the terrifying whoosh of hurricane winds. Flaming torches had been set all round the arena’s high circle, where the 5012 Olympics had been held. Now hideous frost giants patrolled the perimeter, their stumbling, lumbering bodies shadowy boulders against the eerie night sky. The monsters who had come to destroy her world had made themselves at home.
Freya trembled as the goats juddered to a halt beneath the twisted red steel observation tower outside the howling stadium. Her final moments of freedom before she was handed over to Skadi.
Freya’s legs felt like rubber. She cowered under the bear skins. If only she could she’d stay here forever, comforted by the enveloping warmth of the furs, just to snuggle down and—
Snot pushed her out of the chariot.
‘You’ve got legs, haven’t you?’ he snarled. ‘Why is it that every time I’m with you something awful happens to me?’
‘I could say exactly the same thing about you,’ said Freya.
‘Quiet, both of you,’ said Roskva. She glared at Freya. ‘Master. Snot. Please. If you must speak, talk in high-pitched voices only. Otherwise you’ll give yourselves away and we’ll all die.’
Thor grunted.
Snot growled.
Freya despaired. Were these two the least likely women ever? How could Midgard’s survival depend upon Thor of all the Gods persuading Thrym that he was the loveliest Goddess in the world? Freya turned and took her last look at London.
The Lost Gods Page 16