The Gospel of Loki (23 page)

And now I was trapped, no longer in charge of my personal destiny. Perhaps we were all Mimir’s playthings, pieces on a chessboard. If he
hadn’t
told me the prophecy, would I still have gone in search of the means of killing Balder?

Probably not. In fact, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind if I hadn’t already known what the Old Man was planning to do to me.

And Odin? His mistrust of me came straight from the Oracle’s prophecy. At the time, the thought of betraying him had never even crossed my mind. I was innocent (well, nearly)
until this web of deception descended on me. And now . . . well, now, I had no choice. There was only one path to follow. Admitting my guilt wouldn’t save me. All I could do was carry on and hope that my daughter was grateful enough to offer me a means of escaping the destiny that awaited me.

LESSON 6

Tears

What do I care for Balder?
Don’t expect me to weep for him,
who never would have wept for me.

Lokabrenna

M
EANWHILE
, the Enchantress marched straight into the Underworld to demand her son’s return from the dead. She found Hel predictably difficult. My daughter had her plaything – though, typically, she still wasn’t pleased. Balder dead was compliant, but dull. The spark had gone out.

Hel was jaded. In her hall of bone and dust, she created a court of the dead, clothed them in glamours, made them dance; and still there was no joy in her conquest. Balder sat staring by her side, as unresponsive as ever.

‘Then give him back to me,’ said Frigg.

But my daughter was stubborn. At least if
she
had Balder, she thought, then no one else could have him. And maybe she could find a way to make him love her, given time.

The Enchantress raged and pleaded. She promised and cajoled. She said that Hel was the only heart that could fail to be moved by Balder’s death. ‘The Nine Worlds weep for Balder,’ she said. ‘But you – you’re as heartless as your father.’

Hel gave Frigg her dead eye. ‘That sounds to me like hyperbole,’ she said. ‘But if it’s true, then maybe you can change my mind.’

I didn’t rate Frigg’s chances. History is full of cases of folk who have tried to raise the dead, but usually they end in tears. This one also began that way, as Frigg set off to make good her claim.

‘Weep for Balder!’ came the cry.

‘Weep for Balder!’

‘Choose Life!’

The slogans spread like wildfire. Frigg’s story could wrench tears from a stone, and did, throughout the Middle Worlds. At her command, everyone mourned; everyone wept for Balder. Flowers were tied onto trees in his name; women tore their garments; men hung their heads; small animals howled; even the birds played their part.

It was a kind of hysteria; people who hadn’t even
met
Balder were suddenly stricken with grief at his death; sad songs were written in memory of him; total strangers bonded in grief.

But every trend has a backlash. At the moment of triumph, when all the Worlds wept for Balder, Frigg came upon an old crone living in a hovel in the woods.

‘Weep! O weep for Balder!’ she cried.

The old woman looked at her. ‘Who?’ she said.

‘Balder, Balder the Beautiful. The People’s Paragon. My son.’

‘That’s very sad,’ the old woman said. Her eyes were resolutely dry. ‘But why should I weep for him, eh?’

‘Because, united in grief,’ said Frigg, ‘we can conquer Death itself.’

‘What? So I won’t die?’ said the crone.

‘No,’ said Frigg. ‘But
Balder
may live.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the old crone. ‘But this seems quite unfair to me. Why should Balder’s death be any more important than mine? Is it because he was handsome, when I’m just a jumble of
tired old bones? Or is it because he was young, and I’m old? I’ll have you know I was young once. And I value my life at least as much as this Balder, whoever he was, valued his.’

‘You don’t understand . . .’ Frigg tried to explain.

The old woman smiled. ‘My dear, no one does. We all get a life, whatever that means. Go home. Grieve for your son. But don’t expect me to weep for him, when he would never have wept for me.’

Frigg’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Who are you?’ She fingered the rune
Bjarkán
.

The old woman shrugged. ‘I’m no one,’ she said.

‘You’re lying. I see your colours.’

Under the old woman’s cloak, I grinned.

‘Please. By all the gods,’ she said.

‘The gods can hang, for all I care,’ I said. ‘Go away and leave me alone.’ And at that I closed the door in her face and grinned to myself at a job well done.

And that was that; Balder stayed dead, Hel had her due, and I had something to bargain with – something that, three hundred years later, would earn me an unexpected prize.

Still, all that was yet to come. For now, I had other things on my mind. The End of the Worlds, for example, as well as my own imminent death . . .

LESSON 7

Names, II

Sticks and stones may break my bones . . .

Lokabrenna

A
FTER THAT
, you might have thought I would have settled down for a while. Adopted a low profile, perhaps. Taken up a hobby. But there was something in the air; a scent of revolt, a whiff of smoke. War was coming. I wanted to fight. So shoot me. It’s my nature.

It wasn’t that I was remotely sorry for what had happened to Balder. Sorry isn’t really a word that figures in my vocabulary. All the same, I didn’t feel as good as you might have expected. I found myself growing restless. I couldn’t sleep. I was irritable. I spent too long in bird form, trying to beat my increasing sense of imprisonment. I suffered terrible nightmares in which I was shackled and blinded, surrounded by venomous snakes that crawled all over my naked body.

No, it wasn’t
guilt
I felt. But the joy had gone out of everything. The ball of barbed wire in my heart had grown to monstrous proportions. Food had no taste; sleep brought no rest; wine just made my head hurt. The threat of Mimir’s prophecy hung over me like an anvil; I couldn’t talk to anyone; I felt terribly alone.

It didn’t help that Sigyn was cloyingly sympathetic.

‘Poor angel, you look
terrible
,’ she said, on seeing me looking
less than fragrant after another sleepless night. ‘What have you been
doing
to yourself? Come over, and I’ll fix you something nice for dinner. The boys would love to see you . . .’ And so on, and so forth.

My sons had become increasingly wild since Fenny’s disappearance. Now they barely spoke to me, or to their mother, but spent their days lounging on the battlements of Asgard, throwing stones down onto the plain and jeering at Sól in her chariot as she raced across the sky.

As for the gods – since Balder’s death my colleagues had been less than warm. Some of this was Frigg’s doing; the Enchantress, although she had no evidence to support her belief that I was to blame for what had occurred, had nevertheless somehow managed to convey her suspicions to everyone else, with the result that no one (with the exception of Sigyn, of course) wanted to be seen with me.

All their grudges and grievances were brought out for an airing; Sif, the fact that I’d cut off her hair; Bragi, the kidnap of Idun; Freyja, that whole business with the sons of Ivaldi and the gold necklace; Thor, all the times I’d mocked him. No one remembered all the times I’d saved them from the enemy. The court of public opinion had judged and condemned me all in one. No one talked to me any more. No one even looked at me.

That hurt my feelings – no, don’t laugh – even though I was guilty. They didn’t
know
I was guilty; they just assumed it had to be me. As if I was the only one ever to have done bad things. As if I was dirt. It made me angry to think of it and, one hot night, when I’d had a few drinks alone in my dingy little rooms, I heard the sound of music coming from Aegir’s under-sea hall down the way. It sounded like a party and so I went to investigate.

I found all the gods assembled. Aesir and Vanir; boys and girls; Aegir and Ran, his glaucous wife; even the Old Man himself was there, drinking from a horn of mead and looking
almost
mellow.

Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest move to try and gatecrash the party. But I’d been through some difficult times; the insomnia, Sigyn’s persistence, my visit to Hel, the prophecy – not to mention Balder’s death, that of his wife and the brutal killing of Hoder. Try to sympathize when I say I went a little crazy.

I opened the door into Aegir’s hall and addressed the merry gathering:

‘What, celebrating without me? Come on, Odin, let’s have a drink.’

Bragi, who had been playing his lute, said: ‘I think you’ve already had a few. A few too many, if you ask me.’

‘But I
don’t
ask you,’ I said. ‘I’m asking my brother Odin. Odin, who swore a blood oath that he would never pour himself a drink without making certain that I had one, too. Still, promises are like piecrust, eh? Always made to be broken. And speaking of pies . . .’ I helped myself to a slice of something from someone’s plate. ‘Not bad,’ I said, with my mouth full. ‘Maybe a little greasy.’

Odin gave me his impassive stare. ‘Come in, Loki. You’re welcome.’

‘Welcome? I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Face it, I’m as welcome here as a turd in a hot tub. Which is fine, because I hate you all. Especially you,’ I addressed Bragi, ‘because, apart from having the bad taste to hold a party without me, you’re a terrible poet, a worse instrumentalist, and you couldn’t sing in tune if the Worlds depended on it.’

Bragi looked as if he were ready to hit me with the lute. I told him to go ahead, it would probably do less harm to me than if he tried to play it. And then I turned on the others, who were watching me, open-mouthed, probably wondering what in Hel had happened to the silver-tongued Trickster they thought they knew.

Idun tried to take my hand. ‘What’s wrong?’

I started to laugh. ‘What’s wrong?’ I said. ‘How very sweet of you to ask. Sweet or stupid, anyway. With you, there’s not
much of a difference.’

Now Freyja stepped forward. ‘Stop it!’ she said. ‘You’re being offensive. Thor, can’t you stop him?’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Get somebody else to intervene. Preferably someone who’s dumb enough not to realize you’re using them. Thor’s a pretty good choice – I mean, he
can
obey simple instructions, as long as you feed him properly . . .’ At this point Thor gave a low growl, and I took the opportunity to deposit the piece of half-eaten pie onto the platter in front of him. ‘Or maybe you should ask Odin? That is, if he can somehow forget that you sold yourself to the Maggots, and all for the price of a necklace – oh, shouldn’t I have mentioned that?’ I bared my teeth in a savage grin. ‘It’s the Chaos in my blood. It sometimes drives me to misbehave.
You’d
know all about that, Freyja.’

Freyja assumed her Crone Aspect. Her skeletal face was terrible.

‘You need to get some beauty sleep,’ I said. ‘You’re getting wrinkles. And don’t drink so much beer tonight. You know it makes you fart in bed. Some men may like that kind of thing, but frankly, it’s unappealing.’

I know, I know. I was on fire. I couldn’t stop myself, which was, I suppose, part of the problem. Someone should have looked out for me. Someone should have
stopped
me.

Thor tried. ‘If you want a fight, don’t pick on a bunch of women. Fight like a man.’

‘The way you did at Thrym’s place, all dressed up like a bride?’

Thor took another step forward.

‘Or when the old woman wrestled you to the ground at Utgard-Loki’s banquet?’

Thor made a grab for me. I dodged and helped myself to wine. ‘Slowing down a bit, Thor,’ I said. ‘Mind you, the amount you eat, I’m not surprised. You should work out – better still, get Sif to lend you one of her corsets—’

Sif gave a wail of protest. ‘You animal! I do
not
wear corsets!’

That started me laughing, and once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I went round all the circle of gods, and told them exactly what I thought. The Folk call it a
flyting
, a ritual name-calling ceremony, and it became a tradition. One of my many gifts to the Folk. Anger is often cathartic, a healing process at moments of stress, although I suppose that, at the time, I should perhaps have given it all just a
little
more thought.

As it was, the wine must have gone to my head, because I gave them the works – told Frey he’d been an idiot to give up his runesword for a girl; told Sif she was getting fat; told Njörd he smelt of fish. I told Thor that his mistress Jarnsaxa was pregnant and expecting twins. I told Frigg that Odin had been playing away again. I may also have said something to Týr about the way he lost his arm, and I’m pretty sure I called Heimdall a ‘pimped-up gobshite’. But it was probably a mistake to tell Skadi that her father had squawked like a chicken as he fell ready-roasted into the flames, and then to ask the Enchantress if Golden Boy was still as dead.

That brought silence to the room. Maybe I
had
gone too far. Thor picked up his hammer and levelled it at Yours Truly.

‘Don’t,’ said Odin softly.

‘I’d be doing the Worlds a favour,’ said Thor.

‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Bring it on. I’m unarmed and outnumbered. That ought to be odds enough for you. Or should I really be blind, as well?’

The others looked uncomfortable as they remembered Hoder.

‘Well,’ I said, turning to go. ‘Much as I hate to leave, folks, it really has been a
very
dull party, and I have places I need to be.’

And so I walked out of Aegir’s hall, and as soon as my headache had lifted – which was sometime later that morning – I took hawk guise and made for the hills. Call me over-cautious, but Your Humble Narrator was starting to feel that he had out-stayed his welcome.