Norse Mythology(48)

The giantess scratched her nose, cleared her throat, and spat onto the rock.

“Old Thokk won’t weep for Balder,” she said bluntly. “Alive or dead, old Odin’s son brought me nothing but misery and aggravation. I’m glad he’s gone. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Let Hel keep him.”

Then she shuffled back into the darkness of her cave and was lost to sight.

The messengers returned to Asgard and told the gods what they had seen, and that they had failed in their mission, for there was one creature that did not weep for Balder and did not want him to return: an old giantess in a cave on a mountain.

And by then they had also realized who old Thokk reminded them of: she had moved and talked much like Loki, the son of Laufey.

“I expect it was really Loki in disguise,” said Thor. “Of course it was Loki. It’s always Loki.”

Thor hefted his hammer, Mjollnir, and gathered a group of the gods to go looking for Loki, to take their revenge, but the crafty troublemaker was nowhere to be seen. He was hiding, far from Asgard, hugging himself in glee at his own cleverness and waiting for the fuss to die away.





THE LAST DAYS OF LOKI





I


Balder was dead, and the gods were still mourning his loss. They were sad, and the gray rains fell unceasingly, and there was no joy in the land.

Loki, when he returned from one of his journeys to distant parts, was unrepentant.

It was the time of autumn feast in Aegir’s hall, where the gods and elves were gathered to drink the sea giant’s fresh-brewed ale, brewed in the cauldron Thor had brought back from the land of the giants so long ago.

Loki was there. He drank too much of Aegir’s ale, drank himself beyond joy and laughter and trickery and into a brooding darkness. When Loki heard the gods praise Aegir’s servant, Fimafeng, for his swiftness and diligence, he sprang up from the table and stabbed Fimafeng with his knife, killing him instantly.

The horrified gods drove Loki out of the feast hall, into the darkness.

Time passed. The feasting continued, but now it was subdued.

There was a commotion at the doorway, and when the gods and goddesses turned to find out what was happening, they saw that Loki had returned. He stood in the entry to the hall staring at them, with a sardonic smile on his face.

“You are not welcome here,” said the gods.

Loki ignored them. He walked up to where Odin was sitting. “All-father. You and I mixed our blood long, long ago, did we not?”

Odin nodded. “We did.”

Loki smiled even more widely. “Did you not swear back then, great Odin, that you would drink at a banqueting table only if Loki, your sworn blood brother, drank with you?”

Odin’s good gray eye stared into Loki’s green eyes, and it was Odin who looked away.

“Let the wolf’s father feast with us,” said Odin gruffly, and he made his son Vidar move over to make room for Loki to sit down beside him.

Loki grinned with malice and delight. He called for more of Aegir’s ale and gulped it down.

One by one that night Loki insulted the gods and the goddesses. He told the gods that they were cowards, told the goddesses that they were gullible and unchaste. Each insult was woven with just enough truth to make it wound. He told them that they were fools, reminded them of things they thought were safely forgotten. He sneered and jeered and raised old scandals, and would not stop making everyone there miserable until Thor arrived at the feast.

Thor ended the conversation very simply: he threatened to use Mjollnir to shut Loki’s evil mouth for good and send him to Hel, all the way to the hall of the dead.

Loki left the feast then, but before he swaggered out, he turned to Aegir. “You brewed fine ale,” said Loki to the sea giant. “But there will never be another autumn feast here. Flames will take this hall; your skin will be burned from your back by the fire. Everything you love will be taken from you. This I swear.”

And he walked away from the gods of Asgard, into the dark.





II


Loki sobered up the next morning and thought about what he had done the night before. He felt no shame, for shame was not Loki’s way, but he knew that he had pushed the gods too far.

Loki had a home on a mountain near the sea, and decided to wait there until the gods had forgotten him. He had a house on the top of the mountain with four doors, one on each side, allowing him to see danger coming toward him from any direction.

During the day Loki would transform himself into a salmon, and he would hide in the pool at the bottom of Franang’s Falls, a high waterfall that tumbled down the mountainside. A stream connected the pool to a little river, and the river led directly to the sea.

Loki liked plans and counterplans. As a salmon he was fairly safe, he knew. The gods themselves could not catch salmon as they swam.

But then he began to doubt himself. He wondered, Could there be a way of catching a fish in the deep waters of the pool beneath the waterfall?

How would he, the craftiest of all, the most cunning planner, catch a salmon?

Loki took a ball of nettle yarn, and he began to knot and weave it into a fishing net, the first such net ever to be made. Yes, he thought. If I used this net, I could catch a salmon.

Now, he thought, to work out a counterplan: what will I do if the gods weave a net like this one?

He examined the net he had made.