The sun has set, and darkness has once again claimed the world on whose back we mortals dwell. Supper is cooked and eaten. The bowls are cleaned and stored away in their places. The cooking fire is banked low, awaiting the morning meal, and the men have retired to the great hall, where flames leap high in the grand fireplace. Their pipes fog the air as they drink their mead and tell tales of bravery and prowess, each urging the others on to greater excesses. Listen—you can hear their boasts and shouts of mirth. That is how men keep themselves from hearing the wolves howling hungrily in the dark pine forests.
Here, in the kitchen, the cries of the wolves sound louder than the stories of men. Listen well, my lambs. The men tell sagas of battles and glorious deaths, of warriors who die only to live everlasting lives in Valhalla. The wolves sing of things that live in the dark, in the secret places in the souls of mortals. We women tell the wolves’ tales of love and hatred and despair, of things so broken they cannot be mended, of the inexorable dissolution of all things.
Draw closer to the fire, young wives. You are women now, girls no longer. You know now what men are, although they do not know you. They like to see us occupied. Keep your hands busy, always busy—spinning, weaving, sewing, and mending—while you listen to our women’s tales. Thus do the Norns draw around their fire when their labors are done for the day, when they have nourished the roots of the World Tree with the waters of Urdr, the Well of Fate. Then, snug before their fire, they tell of time past and passing, and they spin out and cut the threads of time to come.
This is the story of Loki and Hoenir. Some people say that Hoenir was a god, and that he and Loki created us, the mortal race. But Hoenir was a man, not a god, though he was so beautiful that many whispered that a god must have fathered him.
You know what happens when you prick your finger with a spindle and make it bleed, or when the rough, spinning thread passes too quickly over your hand and burns through the skin? That is an unlucky day, for, no matter how long and strong the fibers, the thread is spoilt and must be snapped so that the bloody part can be cut out. (Hear me well—to wear a garment tainted with blood is to tempt the worst of fates!) The day the Norns spun out the length of Hoenir’s life must have been such a day, when a Norn’s blood stained the thread, for Hoenir’s life was brief and his death was steeped in gore.
What do you ask? Ah, the human race. No, Loki did not create us. We arose from the rocks and dirt of the earth as ants do, carrying on their business, heads down, with their noses close to the soil, and ignorant of everything above, as we were creatures of mud until the day a god looked down and deigned to notice us. And that god was Loki.
The earth, which the gods call Midgard, was all newly made, and the bloom of youth was still upon it. Loki was worshipped then—yes, even Loki. He was revered for his silver tongue, his art of persuasion, and even for his tricks, which then were full of wit and cheer, and not bloody and dark as later, when his altars lay neglected and cold until they crumbled back into the earth.
Men do not like the kind of story I am about to tell, and so they hide behind tales of battles and honor and glorious death. There is no glory in this tale, but there is death all the same. Men set rules for everything, for passion that is permitted and passion that is forbidden. They do not understand that the wolf wants in ways that cannot be bidden or unbidden.
One day Loki came to Midgard, for his inquisitive nature made him curious about other lands and beings unlike the gods. Being a Rime-Giant, he immediately loved Midgard’s mountains, with their massive glaciers groaning and scouring the land like living beings. He loved the sound and sight and scent of soft snow falling on pine forests, and when he saw a human man out hunting in the snow, he cocked his head to one side with curiosity and decided he wished to see more.
Father Odin and Mother Frigga had adopted Loki as a baby when his Rime-Giant parents abandoned him for being too small and sickly. Frigga’s heart went out to the mewling babe, and she raised him beside Thor, son of her flesh, as a brother. Odin gave Loki the gift of fire to compensate him for his abandonment, and Loki was content to live among the Aesir as one of them.
Thor and Loki were companions almost from birth. They played together, hunted together, and often fell asleep in the same bed, exhausted from play. They both grew into radiant men: Thor, tall and broad and cheerful, with his yellow hair and beard, and Loki, pale and ethereal, beardless like all Rime-Giants, always thinking and seeing, wearing a wry smile as he stalked along at Thor’s side.
When they were barely men, they sometimes sought each other out for games of pleasure, exploring each other as young men do in the time before they know women. They kissed and touched each other, each reveling in the feel of another’s hands on his skin, learning together the ways of pleasure. To Loki, these were mere games, played with his best friend, his adoptive brother. But in Thor, a passion soon grew strong, so that he missed his brother dearly when Loki was wandering abroad. Without his lover, he could not eat or sleep, and the ache in his chest grew into a throbbing pain that never left him.
When Loki followed the mortal hunter home to his village, he found that the people there lived their lives in fear and cold. They ate their meat raw, tearing at it with their teeth, and during the cold nights they had neither warm hearth nor light, and instead crowded into their shelters and listened, shivering, to the wild animals outside that coveted their flesh.
Loki appeared first as a creature bathed in fire, and the people screamed and ran away, except for one youth who looked on him with amazement, forgetting to flee. Looking right into this young man’s heart, Loki saw his courage and adventurousness, his thirst for knowledge. At that moment, Loki lost his own heart and sealed his fate forever.
Stepping out of his cloud of fire, he took the young man’s hand and spoke to him. They looked into each other’s eyes, as each said his name and then the other’s.
Loki showed Hoenir the uses of fire—how to gather it from trees struck by his brother’s lightning, how to bank it and save it for many days, and even how to start a new fire using flints to make a spark to light tinder and sticks.
Hoenir learned eagerly and brought Loki’s gift to his people. Loki brought other gifts too, knowledge of plants and animals, and remedies that only the Aesir knew. For the villagers’ sake, Loki had dulled his godhead when he appeared before them. Since his arrival bathed in flame, he had always appeared as a simple young man, dressed in hunter’s garb, as pale and beautiful with his dark hair and dancing green eyes as Hoenir was with his blond hair, almost white, and his soft brown eyes.
At first the village people were grateful for their new, comfortable lives, and they gave thanks to Loki, building altars to make him sacrifice. But when they saw that he and Hoenir were inseparable, they began to grumble about dishonor and ergi, when all they were seeing was love.
To the young women of the village the beauty of this pair was a wound that never healed, for they only had eyes for each other. Hardly a girl in the village had not at least once dreamed of Loki’s eyes lingering on her face, or Hoenir’s hands on her body. “Why has Loki chosen the best among the young men of the village?” they complained. “If he had never seen Loki, he would have chosen me. Surely the god has cast a spell on him.” And secretly they wished the god would cast a spell on them, too.
Hoenir and Loki went off together every day. They left the village in the morning, and at sunset they returned, hand in hand. When spring came and the weather turned mild, they no longer returned at night, but only came back to share meals with Hoenir’s family. Loki began to seem aloof to the others, always urging Hoenir to leave the village and follow him again to the forest.
Then a rumor spread. Someone had seen them in the forest, in a leafy bower. Naked, they were even more dazzling, their entwined limbs glowing with health and happiness. But the village elders did not see their beauty. They spoke to each other in grave tones, worrying that Loki had taken Hoenir, had made him argr. They saw this as a shame for the whole village, as your husbands and fathers might. Thus do men despise a man who takes the woman’s place in bed, though the one who enters him is blameless. Think well on this. For I tell you now a truth that all women know: to man, woman is a deep mystery that defies their understanding. Those men who most fear ergi in others have been most tempted to it themselves. So with Thor, who secretly wished his brother to take him, and who wished to take Loki in turn. They had never yet performed this act, although Thor wanted it with all his heart.
Long before, Odin had lost one eye in his quest to gain knowledge. With the remaining eye, he saw everything, and so it was not long before he saw Loki and Hoenir entwined in passion, neglecting their lives and their families. He saw Loki favoring the mortals with fire and other lore of the Aesir, indulging his lover in every way. He saw Thor fuming, mired in jealousy and hopeless passion for his brother. He saw the village seething with rumors. These things he did not like. It was time to punish Loki for sharing fire with a race of mud-beings, and to chasten the mortals for their new-found pride at being favored of the gods. Odin thought about what to do, and soon he had a plan.
It was almost the winter solstice, and soon it would be time to make sacrifice to the gods to make sure that the snows would melt in spring, that the sun would shine and the crops would grow, that reindeer would run in the forest, even when the land was covered with snow, to assuage the people’s hunger.
Every year, they chose the plumpest and most beautiful of the goats and sheep, and decorated their horns, and brushed their coats, making them ready for the gods. Every year, a young man or woman was chosen to represent a sacrifice. This young person, too, would be dressed in garb fit for the gods, but would only pretend to fall under the knife. The next day, the chosen one would go back to daily life as alive as the day before the ritual. This year, Odin put it into the minds of the village to choose Hoenir, for truly he was the most comely of all the young men of his age. Loki felt a stab of fear as he saw his beloved being dressed as a sacrificial prince, with as many ribbons in his hair as the goats and sheep.
“But it is a great honor,” Hoenir said.
“Refuse it, my love,” Loki said, petting him. “Refuse it for me.”
Looking down, Hoenir pouted. Odin put it in his head to resist Loki’s urging, which he had never done before. Hoenir was starting to see himself as a privileged one because he was the lover of a god. He was thinking only of how others saw him and his beautiful lover who could command fire. “Why don’t you want to see me made much of?” he asked sulkily. “You are a god, and all worship you. I wish to see what you feel when everyone kneels to you, and I wish to honor your father Odin and your brother Thor. Why are you jealous of me?”
Loki could refuse him nothing, and so he kissed his lover and gave his consent, while the village girls blushed and yearned, the village elders disapproved, and Odin plotted against him.
The blót was to take place at the most sacred spot of all, at Odin’s vé, a place where no one was permitted to go except at this time of year. There was a grove there of ancient trees, the oldest, most venerable pines that anyone had ever seen. Some said that they had seen the birth of the gods, and some thought they were outer branches of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, that had entwined themselves through the bowels of the earth.
The procession made ready before dawn, so that the sacrifice could take place when the first rays of sun came over the horizon. Loki followed with fear in his heart, as Hoenir was feted and made much of, and was even carried on a bier on the shoulders of four village youth, who did not seem pleased with their proud burden.
Loki felt something vibrate in the air, as if all nature shared his foreboding. And then he heard the thunder, and he knew.
He ran to Hoenir and pulled him off the litter, preparing to run away with him, for even he feared to use magic and dishonor this sacred place. But Hoenir resisted, thinking that Loki was toying with him, embarrassing him in his moment of honor.
Loki felt a great blow strike him in the back, and he fell, groaning, to the hard ground. It was Mjolnir, Thor’s powerful hammer. The people did not see Thor, whom Odin had made invisible. As Loki fell, Thor’s strong hands seized him and carried him to the largest of the trees, the gnarled old pine in whose branches the sacrifices would be hung until the ravens had picked all the flesh from their bones and taken it up to Odin.
Within that tree, Odin imprisoned Loki as if he were wood himself, made one with its substance: his feet became its roots, and his fingers its branches. And he watched, helplessly, as Hoenir was tied to the bier he had been carried on, arms and legs stretched out to his sides. Finally, as if he were awakening from a dream, Hoenir realized that something was amiss, and he stared with great fear in his eyes at the tree where Loki was held without strength or voice, summoning over and over the fire that would not come to him. Odin had withheld his gift, and Loki cursed him wildly, without being able to make a sound.
The bier was propped up so that Hoenir was facing Loki’s tree. A knife flashed as the sun broke over the edge of the world. Odin breathed madness into the priests and they did his bidding.
“No!” Loki screamed, but all that was heard was the creak of wood as the wind swept through the pine tree’s branches.
Hoenir was split open from belly to throat. His viscera poured out onto the meadow grasses and his blood flowed freely.
“Loki,” he moaned, “forgive me! My love, why did I not heed you?” And his eyes went still and blank. The body that Loki had loved to touch was a ruin, a grisly horror. Still trapped in the pine, Loki found that he could not look away.
Hoenir’s limp body was cut from the bier and stretched across the branches of Loki’s tree. The ritual words were pronounced, but Loki did not hear them. There was a great rushing in his thoughts, as if everything in the world were moving and changing all around him, as if he were falling from a great height. The world that had been bright and new was transformed into a ghastly charnel pit. The words of worship to Odin mocked him and his love, whose blood dripped slowly down his bark. In those hours, Loki’s mind unraveled, and he went mad with grief. Every terrible thing he did ever after can be traced back to the day he spent bearing that awful burden in his branches.
And then somehow it was dark. The day had fled, and Loki was himself again, kneeling in the meadow weeping with the shell of Hoenir in his arms. Now heedless of defiling the sacred place, he used magic to build an enormous pyre. There he burned the once beautiful Hoenir, sparking the blaze with the power of fire that belonged to him again, now that it was too late to save his lover. Lightning flashed on the distant horizon as he stood all night watching, and at dawn he scattered the ashes in the bowers where they had loved each other once, passing the hours of pleasure they had thought would last forever.
Then he stood at the edge of the forest and waited for Thor.
Thor came to claim him while it was still light, throwing him down on the forest floor and stripping off his clothes. Thor thought he could tame his brother by punishing him in Odin’s name while secretly indulging his hidden passion. Loki did not resist, but cursed Thor and Odin with every breath he could draw until Thor stopped Loki’s mouth with his own. But Loki would not be tamed. He bit Thor’s lips until he tasted blood and screamed into his throat. When Thor entered him, Loki cried out Hoenir’s name. You see, he wished to be punished for bringing the wrath of Odin down upon them both.
High on his throne in Asgard, Odin turned away from his younger son, and his face showed nothing, neither sadness nor satisfaction. Loki had been punished, and he hated Thor. His younger son was argr, but he had saved the elder, the child of his flesh, from that fate. What Odin did not yet understand, despite all his wisdom, was that Thor’s passion was not assuaged, but only inflamed the more. He had taken Loki’s body by force, but Loki had taken his soul.
When Thor left him, bleeding and broken, Loki rose and summoned all his strength. Surrounding himself with a veil of fire, he appeared in the village as he had that first day, but this time he burned it to the ground, and its people with it. The few who escaped were forever haunted by that day and the deed they had performed at Odin’s bidding. They were shunned by all who met them and lived in fear, sure that the wrathful God of Mischief would find them and visit horrors upon them.
From the day that Loki burned the village, he foreswore fire, throwing Odin’s gift back to him with many a curse. From that day onward, he claimed ice as his power, returning to his Jotunn heritage. His wit became sharp and cold as a knife of ice. When he played a trick, he was only satisfied if it spread death and strife and suffering. Never again did he feel part of the Aesir. He lived in three worlds but belonged to none: Asgard, Midgard, and Jotunheim.
Whenever he went to Odin’s court, he could not stop his mouth, but spewed insults at everyone, men and women alike. Once, his lips were sewn shut as punishment, but even then he would not stop the flow of words—truth and lies mixed together; insults and slander, combined with true stories of shameful deeds he had seen when he wandered, invisible, though the Nine Realms.
The last time Loki appeared at Odin’s court, he killed a serving man and was banished, but came back again and demanded entrance. When Loki had revealed the shameful secrets of every one of the gods, Odin decreed that Loki was to be bound in a cave on Midgard with a venomous serpent, there to suffer grievous punishment until the end of the world. You have all heard the story—each time venom drips into Loki’s eyes, he writhes and we feel the earth shudder.
But there are more things about Loki you have not heard. With a Rime-Giantess named Angrbooda, Loki begot Fenrir, a giant wolf. And from Fenrir’s loins came all the wolves in the world. Loki is the grandfather of the wolves we hear singing in the forest.
Loki is called many things: Silver-Tongue, Lie-Smith, Scar-Lip, and other names. Ages after Hoenir was forgotten, people still call Loki “Friend of Hoenir.” It is the last trace of poor, wronged Hoenir upon this earth.
Listen, my darlings. Do you hear the thunder in the mountain? Thor mourns his brother still, and it is said that when Thor’s thunder echoes Loki cries out for Hoenir as he lies in torment waiting for the day when he will break his chains and lead the final charge against Asgard. Some say that Loki and Heimdall will fight to the death, and all the gods will be destroyed. Some think that this has already happened, and that the old gods are dead, so that the God of the Rood is the only god.
Others think that Loki still awaits his time. When it comes he will fight Thor and kill him by treachery, and stand over his body and howl until his own death by Heimdall’s hand. Thor will go to Valhalla then, and Loki to Hel’s realm, and so the ill-omened brothers shall never meet again, but Loki will abide in Hel gnashing his teeth, wishing to kill Thor again, a thousand times over, for what he did that day to Hoenir.
I do not believe that ending, so I will weave another. We are told now that Hell is a place of torment, and Heaven is a place for the worthy to go. But how many of us are worthy? I think that Hel’s dim realm is a humble place where two souls who loved each other in life but whose threads were cut short by chance can find a piece of ground with a little hut and a warm fire where no one will bother them. Loki will seek out Hoenir in Hel, and, when they meet, the pair will fall into each other’s arms, weeping as each sees how the other has changed. The howling wolves will sound like music to their ears, but the distant thunder will chill their bones. At night they will lie close, soothing each other with loving words and hands, and even Hel herself will let them be, for she knows that Loki was once a mighty god, brought low by the pitiless Norns.
Of women, only shield-maidens can reach Valhalla. All other women, no matter their worth, are sent down to Hel when they die. But we were not all of us made for fighting, boasting, and feasting. And, thus, I believe that, one day, when we have passed from the earth, when our valiant men feast in Heaven or Valhalla, we will gather around a cozy hearth in Hel and do our handiwork and weave our stories still, listening to the songs of the wolves.