Ersatz Edda

“You look awfully smug, Heimdall.”

“Only relieved, sir” Heimdall replied, smugly.

“Damn you,” Odin growled.

The Allfather stood in the watchman’s station at the end of the Rainbow Bridge, his twin ravens Hugin and Munin perched silently on his shoulders. Their incessant chatter had stopped abruptly as soon as they’d come into Heimdall’s view, their beady black eyes shiftily avoiding his gold ones. Their dealings as the Allfather’s informants were carried out across the realms on inky wings, with no need for the magic of the Bifrost to spirit them away. Just as well, as the watchman’s all seeing gaze felt stifling enough when you weren’t pinned down in front of it. The only sound in Heimdall’s golden chamber was that of their clawed feet tapping and scraping against their master’s shoulder guards in discomfort.

“It’s been a long war, your highness,” said Heimdall calmly, drumming the fingers of his left hand thoughtfully over those of his right, clasped over the hilt of the sword that controlled the bridge between realms. His voice was calm and steady, its warm rasp earned over a millennia of stoic observation. The Watchman chose his words sparingly, and spoke with a soft, even tone that added weight to each one, “I will be glad to watch peace settle over Jötunnheimr once more.”

“Surely they’ll just busy themselves with slaughtering one another,” Tyr interjected. He shifted the weight of his great battle axe over his left shoulder and sniffed into this curly black mustache to punctuate his thought.

Peace was to be negotiated on Jötunnheimr, in Laufey’s keep. Odin Allfather, king of Asgard and lord commander of all creation, was to journey to the heart of the frozen realm, beyond the sky scraping mountain peaks and the thick black forests where winter winds screamed eternal through an endless night, to the hall of the firstborn Ymirson, perched on the rocky shores of an angry sea. His firstborn son, Tyr, the god of war and commander of the combined armies of Asgard and Vanaheimr, was to accompany him. The grim expressions both wore beneath their horned helms hardly seemed… peaceable.

The eternal watchmen sighed, casting his gaze over Tyr’s stoney face. Heimdall’s eyes were bound in time, just as the eyes of any creature who had them, whether seeing, unseeing, or all-seeing. He could gaze out across every possible detail of the current moment and back through the tangled web of past happenings, but he could only see as far across the tapestry of creation as the Norns had yet woven. The scenes that its countless threads were yet to unveil were secret to him. Now, as he looked into Tyr’s dark eyes, he saw the journey they had taken to bring the young god where he stood before him. Expressions of anger and lust and betrayal all played across his face in Heimdall’s vision like shadow puppets outlined in gold.

“Enough,” said Odin, cutting short the silence that had begun to stretch between them, “open up the blasted Bifrost before I think better of this fool’s errand.”

Heimdall obliged, twisting his sword to open the bridge, sending Odin and Tyr up in a screaming beam of multicolored light that against all odds and contrary to any sense of direction would deposit them in Jötunnheimr, at the door to Laufey’s great hall, where the jötunn king sat waiting.

Odin and Tyr were welcomed at the gates of Laufey’s keep by two armed men who, when they had finished rubbing the stars from their eyes left by the shinning splendor of their arrival, busied themselves with lifting the iron gate and rousing the keep to tend to their guests.

It was odd to break bread among giants. It had a way of cutting gods down to size.

The average jötunn stood twice the height of any óss, and so Laufey’s keep was built to twice Asgard’s scale. A bone rattling chill lived at the heart of the heavy stones that knit together to form the long hallways, arched ceilings, and narrow embrasures mounted high above their heads. The stones were taken from the black mountains to the west and piled high near the sea. They kept within them the hopelessness of howling winds and the deadly silence that fell before the avalanches that reshaped the landscape of their merciless home. Laufey’s palace was not a shelter from his realm but a reflection of it. The Asgardians moving towards its heart drew their bearskin cloaks tighter around their shoulders.

Laufey sat at the head of his table in his great hall, lit dimly by guttering candles anchored to their places amid the cold stone by buttery pools of melting tallow. He was accompanied by his three children sitting to his right along one side of the table. To his left, two places were set for his guests. The hall was barren save for the heavily laden table at its center, and no servants were present to attend them. The jötnar were not prone to festivity in the best of times, and these times were lean.

Laufey rose from his seat and locked eyes with Odin, who seemed to have put down roots at the entrance to his hall. He took stock of the óss he’d once known. The familiar honey-yellow of his hair had long given way to silver, and he had grown his grey beard long. His helm had changed as well, now boasting great golden stag’s horns stretching out half an arm’s length in either direction. The hole left from his missing eye was covered by a patch of gleaming gold forged to match his armor. But the armor Laufey could conjure only in his memory, as his black bearskin cloak obscured his frame and dragged along the floor. The Allfather’s remaining eye was still familiar to him; a pallid blue beneath his pale brow . It had been striking when set into the young, clean shaven face of a venturous prince. Now it sat deeper in his socket; settled into the face of a power hungry king. His twin ravens were the same as ever; unaffected by the cold and croaking low in their throats in an endless back and forth chatter understood only by the two of them.

Tyr stood behind him, stony faced, dark of eye, his thick black brows and curled mustache framing the harsh planes of his face into a grim caricature of stoicism. There was little of the Borson in him; his coloring was darker and his face was more severe, with a large, broad nose at its center that must have been his mother’s. He was half a hand taller than his father, and balanced a great axe over his left shoulder. He had removed his own helm, which sported two well polished bilgesnipe horns, and held it pressed to his right side. He was cloaked in a similar bearskin, tied tightly around his neck to keep the wind at bay.

“Well met, Asgardian,” said Laufey, dryly.

His greeting was met with a tense silence. Just as Laufey’s two eldest sons were beginning to rise from their seats in anger, the Allfather chose diplomacy.

“Well met… old friend.”

Odin watched Laufey carefully, testing the waters of this meeting with a sharp prod from a long stick. They hadn’t been friends for the last few dozen centuries, but they had certainly grown old as they had grown apart. The intricate markings carved into Laufey’s pale blue skin had faded from the brilliant pearl in Odin’s memory to a dull milky white. He wore a simple golden crown, balanced on his bare head behind two horns that curled back from his temples. His eyes were unreadable as ever, square black pupils sat ringed in gold on twin fields of scarlet, betraying nothing of what may have lain beneath their glossy surface. He wore his customary royal adornments, gold cuffs striping up his arms and legs, set with precious stones traded from passing dwarven caravans. Bands of gold ran up his horns as well, drawing attention to their knifepoint tips.

Laufey’s eyes narrowed slightly at the provocation, apprehension shifting across his face before his features melted back into their usual regal indifference. Odin turned his attention to the king’s children, whose six red eyes were trained on him with an inherited intensity.

The eldest son, Býleistr, sat furthest from his father. Had he been first to greet them at the door, Odin would have thought it was the young king come once again to spurn his courtesies. He wore his long dark hair tied in a sensible knot behind his horns, a sharpened bone driven through its middle. In addition to his golden jewelry, he sported a great feathered collar around his shoulders, bound together across his neck by a necklace hung with dried bird’s feet.

Helblindi, seated between his two brothers, must have taken after his mother. He was shorter than his father by a hand, built stocky and low with two heavy tusks protruding from his bottom jaw. One had broken off and been capped with a point of gold. His hair was plaited down his back, falling neatly at his waist and weighed down with gold chains and well polished glass baubles.

Loki, youngest of Laufey’s brood, sat closest to his father’s side. When Odin rested his eye on him, he felt something snare into the jelly of it to keep him transfixed.

He was small, easily Tyr’s height, and slender, his clawed feet crossed daintily at the ankles beneath the table. In addition to his moonlit jötunnn markings, his pale blue skin was criss crossed with milky white scars. His thin lips carried death’s head markings, scars pulled across them like the outlines of blunt, uneven teeth. He wore his dark hair down, spilling over his shoulders and down the slope of his back; intricate braids at his brow kept loose strands from his face. His features were sharp, like his fathers, but the bump he sported on his crooked nose had been earned by fist, not birth. He wore more jewelry than the rest of his family put together, rings stacked tall on each thin finger and gold chains weighing heavy on his neck. A circlet rounded his head and dripped a fat, well polished ruby at his widow’s peak. His horns, tall and curling back from his temples like the rest of his family’s, had gold spirals forged to fit their length and cap their tips like douters. He rested his elbows on the table and combed his neatly manicured nails through a lock of raven hair, the gold adornments plaited into it chiming softly against one another.

Loki met the Allfather’s spellbound gaze and grinned, his wide smile revealing tar-black gums and needle sharp teeth. He stood and lay his left hand on his father’s arm, gesturing with his right towards the two empty seats across from him.

“Please, Allfather, Tyr,” he inclined his head to both of them in turn, the jewelry in his hair ringing like gentle bells, his voice an unhappy marriage between a whisper and a scream, “we’ve much to discuss, and we are honored to have you as our guests.”

Odin felt Tyr’s eyes on him, waiting to follow his lead. Wordlessly, he walked over to the place set immediately to Laufey’s left, directly across from Loki, and sat down. Hugin and Munin flew off to find their favored perch amid the rafters, the beating of their wings echoing through the chill air. As he heard Tyr follow suit and take the seat beside him, he kept his eye on Loki, whose ghastly smile remained fixed in the center of his odd face.

“You must be Loki,” said Odin coldly, “I hear tell your first breath was cut with matricide.”

“Surely Fárbauti would have found my escort to Helheimr more pleasing than what she would have had at the hands of Asgard’s finest,” Loki said calmly, with a bat of his dark lashes. His brothers stirred angrily at his flippancy, but were silenced with a glance from their father.

“And I see now that every breath you’ve taken since runs slick with it,” Odin continued, ignoring his retort.

“Surely, Borson, you did not come to avenge me for my wife’s passing,” Laufey interjected, “nor could you have come to innumerate my sons’ transgression, else I would have had rations prepared to last us through next winter.”

“Why did you come?” came Býleistr’s voice from the far end of the table, raspy and high pitched like dead leaves crushed to dust against each other.

“To taste Jötunheimr’s famous juniper ale, boy,” said Odin, keeping his eye fixed on Loki as he spoke. Loki met his gaze with an impenetrable serenity, his sly grin threatening to cleave his head in two. Frost giants didn’t blink overmuch, but he seemed not to blink at all.

“Then it breaks my heart to say that tonight, Allfather, we sip on barley wine,” he said.

“My brother is eager to dazzle the visiting warlord,” Býleistr spat, crossing his arms across his chest.

“My brother should be wary of the warlord in residence,” Loki replied, still speaking through the razor edges of his smile.

“The boy speaks true, Býleistr,” Laufey looked at his eldest, but addressed them all, “your birthright earns you nothing in my hall while I still draw breath within it, least of all a seat at this table. Watch that your tongues don’t cut short your threads.”

“Am I interrupting what should have been a family matter?” said Odin, punctuating his phrase with a cold, barking laugh, “I should happily leave you four hens to your quarrel.”

“Nonsense, Allfather,” Loki soothed, “we’ve simply whet our appetites, the better to enjoy our meal. Bread broken among friends is best eagerly devoured.” The last phrase he said with such a confident, well practiced flourish of his hands that Odin wondered if it was a jötunn proverb he’d forgotten.

“Family matters can quickly become rough seas,” he continued, turning his head at last to look very pointedly at Tyr, “they require skilled navigation.”

Loki gestured towards the center of the table where a silver dish sat piled high with roasted horsemeat, “And such journeys cannot be made on empty stomachs. I implore our guests to remedy these states of ours.”

Odin obliged him, drawing his knife from the leather sheath at his hip to serve himself. He filled his plate with horsemeat, black bread, salted cheese, dried bullaces, and fresh blackthorn sprigs. Tyr served himself next, then Laufey, Býleistr, and Helblindi, leaving Loki to pick at what remained, which he did only after filling all their glasses to the brim with barley wine. Odin wondered if it was precisely this order of seniority that had left Loki so small and narrow.

The feast was one of well salted vittles, fit for the hard and lean and reflective of the unforgiving wastes from which it was sourced. Loki kept the conversation going as darkness fell around them, amusing the gathered royal families with tales from the nine realms that ranged from cheap gossip to political intrigue. He spun a tale of darkness and deceit about the uniting of the elven realms, accomplished by a hand tying between Malekith of Svartálfaheimr and fair Queen Featherwine of Álfheimr. This ceremony, built on sharp tongues and black magicks, was contrasted by his retelling of the joyous hand tying of Odin and fair Freya, to celebrate the end of the Æsir-Vanir war that had bloodied the last age. His tale of the frozen winds of Niflheimr licking at the sputtering flames of Muspelheimr in the endless void between them was told with bawdy, ribald humor that brought tears of laughter to every grim eye at the table. And finally, when he told of empty Helheimr, the realm of the dishonorable dead, governed by no one and robed in endless, velvet night, a hush fell over the great hall so complete, that even beetle-eyed Hugin and Munin in the rafters sat listening with wrapt attention. Loki held himself with a graceful ease at the center of attention, refilling chalices in moments when laughter broke out across the table and skillfully maneuvering past his brothers’ more brutish stories without ever cutting them short. As plates began to empty and his tales found their end, a peace had settled across the table such that even stern-faced Tyr threatened to smile.

“You’ve welcomed us into your hall,” said Odin, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “fed us at your table and now have seen us in our cups.”

He looked at King Laufey, raising his half filled silver chalice, “I would continue this peace between our realms, Ymirson. Let us set aside the poison brewed between us that our people may prosper once again.”

A silence stretched between the two kings, threatening to sour the atmosphere crafted by stories and free flowing wine. The great hall echoed with the distant howling of the wind. Hugin and Munin sat deadly still in the rafters, their dark eyes turning this moment into history. Five children exchanged glances between themselves as they watched their fathers hold one another’s stares. Seconds became hours as the Norns’ threads wove together the whims of kings.

Finally, Laufey spoke, his eyes lowered to the table before him, “Aye, peace would be a fitting end to this armistice.”

The five men at his table all huffed out a breath they hadn’t planned to hold.

“How are we to bolster this unwritten treaty, then, Borson?” asked Laufey, peering over the rim of his chalice.

“Surely if a hand tying is good enough for the Vanir and the elves, it can be good enough for the jötnar,” Odin replied. He watched Laufey tense, a fire sparking in his bright red eyes, but it was doused by the voice of his eldest son at the far end of the table.

“So we are to unite our kingdoms, then?” said Býleistr around a mouthful of bread, “have you a fair Asgardian bride for me?”

“Our kingdoms shall remain peaceably divided, boy,” said Odin patiently, “but I would see our families woven together without the burden of a throne.” He glanced at Laufey, who, through the stoney features of his unreadable face, seemed to indicate his understanding.

“Are they not already?” asked Loki thoughtfully, chewing on a hangnail. He peered across the table through his dark lashes, watching Tyr’s lips set in a hard line and his hands ball into fists. The Allfather, turned from Laufey to his youngest son, and grinned.

“You know of Hrod,” he said, cheerfully, “I’d expect no less from a viper so entwined into the roots of Yggdrasil.”

“Hrod is hardly a secret, Allfather,” said Loki, “she’s an aunt.”

“Did you know,” he said, turning to Tyr whose knuckles had gone white, “that you dined among cousins this night, War God?”

“Distant cousins,” Tyr replied, tersely.

“Distant cousins,” Loki repeated with a solemn nod.

“You’re a viper I would keep an eye on,” Odin continued, as if Loki hadn’t just been busy picking at an open wound, “Your tales took us from Helheimr to Heven, but what know you of the Golden City?”

“Only what its king hath made its legacy,” said Loki with a flattering grin.

“Very good, Laufeyson,” Odin sighed, “Now, what do you know of Balder the Brave?”

Loki’s expression stayed static for a moment too long as his mind whirred along without taking his face into account. Finally, after a few unsettling beats, it shifted into the same suggestion of understanding as his fathers, save for a shard of what may have been pain stuck in his crimson eyes.

“Your youngest child,” he said softly, “brother to Thor and Tyr. The golden youth of Asgard, beloved by all creation.” His words were well rehearsed, and though they were true they sounded empty, like a garland of cicada skins.

“And what claim does Balder have to the throne of Asgard?” asked Odin.

“In this moment? As much as Tyr or I.”

Odin chuckled and drained his chalice of barley wine, “Very good, Laufeyson. And would you tie your hand to his?”

All eyes turned to Loki, whose expression betrayed nothing of his decision making process. A beat, then another, but just as the silence was threatening to pull taught, Loki broke it with a bow of his head that sent his heavy jewelry into a shower of delicate chimes.

“It would be my honor, Allfather,” he said, his voice measured and low.

Odin clapped a hand against his knee and stood, Hugin and Munin descending from the rafters to alight on his shoulders. He reached his hand out to Laufey, who stood to take it.

“Then it’s settled,” he said, shaking the king’s hand, “may the peace between our realms last for longer than our children shall outlive us.”

“Aye, may the Norns weave it so,” said Laufey.

Kings Odin and Laufey laid out the terms of their accord well into the blackest hours of the night, their gathered children seated around them in reverent silence. Once they had bid the æsir farewell, and once Býleistr and Helblindi had retired with a grumble about the tedium of familial politics, Laufey and his youngest son sat together at the head of their table, staring down into empty cups.

“You will have a chance to meet your betrothed at Thrym’s hall when the spring crests to summer,” said Laufey.

Loki ran a finger around the lip of his drained chalice, his face blank and his eyes dark.

“The Allfather thinks a marriage will curtail your influence, but you know as well as I that it will only develop it,” he continued, “Asgard’s golden youth is put in peril by the Borson’s misplaced sentiments.”

Loki remained quiet, his eyes cast down.

“It’s as I had predicted, the old man’s gone soft in the age he’s spent bogged down in his throneroom,” said Laufey, the beginnings of a smile pulling at his thin lips, “He sits back from his wars and when he grows weary, he solves them with matrimony.”

Laufey thought back to his youth spent at the Borson’s side, drenched in blood and wild eyed with battlelust. Of late the realms had all begun to turn rotten at the core like late summer apples; beautiful and insubstantial.

He drummed his fingers against the table thoughtfully, “They’ll think it novel to have a jötunn in Asgard. You’ll be an entertaining import to say the least. I’ve seen with my own eyes how the gods discount what they believe they’ve tamed. All the better shall your purpose work on them.”

“The royal family of Asgard is to lose a son to Jötunheimr,” said Loki quietly, in the same low tones in which he had agreed to his hand tying and bid his father-in-law to-be goodbye, “and King Laufey is to lose nothing of consequence.”

Laufey waited a beat before rising and throwing his silver cup full force into Loki’s face. The blow knocked his head back, and he threw his hands out to steady himself against the table. His jewelry rattled, delicate chains twisting into hopeless knots between his horns and into his dark hair.

Loki waited until his father’s footsteps had faded into the distance of the adjacent hall to open his eyes again.

Tyr and Odin stood just outside the iron gate to Laufey’s keep, pulling their bearskins tightly around their necks to guard against the howling wind. It was louder in the dead of night, and it tugged at their hair and their cloaks like a forceful lover. Odin’s twin ravens chattered back and forth, their throaty little exclamations carried away into the velvet night to drown in the roar of the black sea.

The Allfather seemed very pleased with himself.

“You would tame a viper by having it bite the hands of others,” said Tyr over the wind, “Asgard’s golden youth will be befouled by this jötunn poison.”

“You raise your voice in matters you know nothing of,” Odin replied, unbothered. There was no doubt that by now Heimdall had seen them waiting to be carried home. Whatever gave that damnable watchmen the gall to leave his Allfather out in the bitter night of Jötunheimr’s late winter, he’d have it cut out of him by morning.

“What of Prince Thor?” Tyr persisted, “surely it will raise suspicion to knit Balder’s hand into alliances before his? And to settle so great a war without him? To act before he sits the throne?”

“And would your bastard’s arse had warmed it for him had I married you off this night?” Odin could feel ice freezing over his pale lashes.

“I have n-“ Tyr began, with a wounded expression.

“Were you not welcomed in my hall before my wife and children? Were you not trained, educated, coddled, and made welcome nightly at my table?” Odin turned to face his firstborn son, the flush that anger brought to his cheeks melting some of the frost that had formed over them, “And does this marriage unsettle you still?”

“I speak out of concern for a kingdom I have pledged my life to protect,” said Tyr, the icicles weighing down the ends of his curled mustache and muffling his speech, “my objection lies with the future of the realm eternal, which I see you casting into peril.”

“Balder,” said Odin, testily, “is beloved across the realms, and holds no rights to the throne of Asgard. Loki has in equal measure beleaguered and beguiled his way through those same nine to sow his influence, in service to the throne of Jötunheimr but with no hopes to sit it. Has there ever been a union between two youngest sons with nets cast so far and wide? This is a pact made to secure their influence, that they may both be kept at bay.”

He turned to cast his eye towards the dark heavens, “I would tie Loki to Asgard to curtail his mischief and to unite our family with Laufey’s clan. He has no fondness for the boy but he’ll preserve this peace of ours to secure his assets.”

“Then you lead Balder as a lamb to slaughter,” said Tyr.

Odin’s reply was drowned out by the roar of the Bifrost cloaking them in its impossible light.