Norse Mythology(42)

Thor took Hymir’s fishing line, rammed the ox’s head onto the hook, and threw the line and the head into the ocean. He felt it sink to the bottom.

He waited.

“Fishing,” he said to Hymir. “I suppose it must all be about learning patience. It’s a bit dull, isn’t it? I wonder what I’m going to catch for our dinner.”

And that was when the sea erupted. Jormungundr, the Midgard serpent, had bitten down on the huge ox head, and the hook had dug deep into the roof of its mouth. The serpent writhed in the water, trying to free itself.

Thor held on to the line.

“It’s going to drag us under!” boomed Hymir in horror. “Let go of the line!”

Thor shook his head. He strained against the fishing line, determined to hold on.

The thunder god slammed his feet through the bottom of the boat, and he used the sea bottom to brace himself, and he began to haul Jormungundr up on board.

The serpent spat gouts of black poison toward them. Thor ducked, and the poison missed him. He continued to pull.

“It’s the Midgard serpent, you fool!” shouted Hymir. “Let go of the line! We’ll both die!”

Thor said nothing, just hauled the line in, hand over hand, his eyes fixed on his enemy. “I will kill you,” he whispered to the serpent, beneath the roar of the waves and the howl of the wind and the thrashing and screaming of the beast. “Or you will kill me. This I swear.”

He said it beneath his breath, but he could have sworn that the Midgard serpent heard him. It fixed him with its eyes, and the next gout of poison came so close to Thor that he could taste it on the ocean air. The poison sprayed his shoulder, and it burned where it touched.

Thor simply laughed and hauled again.

Somewhere, it seemed to Thor, in the distance, Hymir was babbling and grumbling and shouting about the monstrous serpent, and about the sea rushing into the rowing boat through the holes in the bottom, and about how they would both die out here, in the cold, cold ocean, so far from dry land. Thor did not care about any of this. He was fighting the serpent, playing it, letting it exhaust itself thrashing and pulling.

Thor began to pull the fishing line back onto the boat.

The Midgard serpent’s head was almost within striking distance. Thor reached down without glancing away, and his fingers closed around the haft of his hammer. He knew just where the head of the hammer would need to strike to kill the serpent. One more heave on the fishing line and—

Hymir’s bait knife flashed, and the line was cut. Jormungundr, the serpent, reared up, high above the boat, then tumbled back into the sea.

Thor threw his hammer at it, but the monster was already gone, vanished into the cold gray waters. The hammer returned, and Thor caught it. He turned his attention back to the sinking fishing boat. Hymir was desperately bailing the water from the bottom.

Hymir bailed the water, and Thor rowed the boat back to shore. The two whales that Hymir had caught earlier, at the prow of the boat, made the rowing harder than it normally would have been.

“There’s the shore,” gasped Hymir. “But my home is still many miles distant.”

“We could make land here,” said Thor.

“Only if you are willing to carry the boat and me and the two whales I caught all the way to my hall,” said Hymir, exhausted.

“Mm. All right.”

Thor jumped over the side of the fishing boat. A few moments later, Hymir felt the boat rising into the air. Thor was carrying them on his back: boat, oars, Hymir, and whales, carrying them along the shingle at the edge of the sea.

When they reached Hymir’s hall, Thor lowered the boat to the ground.

“There,” said Thor. “I brought you home, as you requested. Now I need a favor from you in return.”

“What is it?” asked Hymir.

“Your cauldron. The huge one you brew beer in. I want to borrow it.”

Hymir said, “You are a mighty fisherman, and you row hard. But you are asking for the finest brewing kettle in existence. The beer that is magically brewed in it is the best of beers. I will only lend it to someone who can break the cup I drink from.”

“That doesn’t sound very hard,” said Thor.

They ate roast whale meat for dinner that night, in a hall filled with many-headed giants, all of them shouting and happy and most of them drunk. After they had eaten, Hymir drained the last of the beer from his drinking cup and called for silence. Then he handed the cup to Thor.

“Smash it,” he said. “Smash this cup, and the cauldron in which I brew my beer is yours as my gift to you. Fail and you die.”

Thor nodded.

The giants stopped their joking and their songs. They watched him warily.

Hymir’s fortress was built of stone. Thor took the drinking cup, hefted it in both hands, then threw it with all his might against one of the granite pillars that held up the roof of the banqueting hall. There was an ear-splitting crash, and the air was filled with blinding dust.

When the dust settled, Hymir got up and walked over to what was left of the granite pillar. The cup had gone through first one pillar, then another, breaking them into tiny fragments of stone. In the rubble of the third pillar was the drinking cup, a little dusty but quite undamaged.

Hymir held his drinking cup above his head, and the giants cheered and laughed and made faces at Thor with all their heads, along with crude gestures.