Now, Odin was wise, but inscrutable. Freyja, tenacious, but proud, and Loki, well, you know what Loki was like. The gods were gods, but they were as much men. There was, however, one god who was truly perfect. Strong, wise, kind, a shining beauty of a man. His name was Balder the Bright. All loved Balder, his mother, Freyja, most of all. Freyja doted upon him so much that one day she made all things swear not to hurt Balder, and all things swore.

This story is called The Death of Balder.

  The gods had a riotous party testing Balder’s newfound invulnerability; Odin struck him with Gungnir and found his spear glid around him, like a trick of the light. Thor crashed down upon Balder with his hammer, Mjolnir, and it bounced off, reverberating like a drum. Balder could not be hurt by all, all except one thing. Freyja, in her arrogance, never asked the humble mistletoe to pledge not to hurt her son. Loki discovered this, and fashioned a spear of mistletoe, and allowed Balder’s blind brother Hoder to cast it, right through Balder’s chest.

  Freyja exiled Hoder from Asgard for his mistake and Odin knelt down to Balder the Once-Bright’s ear and whispered something, gentler than a cat’s footstep. Odin set Balder’s pyre floating across the Midgard sea, then he rode off on his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, to make all things cry for his son.

I, or someone like me, has told you this story before. You know what happens next. Or you think you know. I know another way this story goes, and if you’ll sit and listen, I’ll tell you. I warn you, it’s a bit of a long one.

  Because this time, this time Freyja cheated.

*

If, by chance, you were wandering the forests of Norway some thousand years ago, you might have seen a chariot pulled by a giant, glistening, golden boar. At the reins, there would have stood a woman, hair as golden as the boar’s bristles, wearing a flowing dress of the finest linen, gripping the reins with two gauntlets of unadorned, layered steel.

  If you had seen her, you ought to have run, for this was Freyja, the Lady of the Slain.

For how long Freyja rode atop her boar-driven chariot, I could not tell you, all I know is that one day, as the sun grew low, Gullinbursti, for that was the boar’s name, grew tired, so Freyja decided to stop at a nearby farmhouse. She jumped down from the chariot, gave Gullinbursti a look so he knew not to leave, and he huffed in reply. Freyja came to the door of the house and gave it a gentle kick with the tip of one metal boot.

  “TOK TOK TOK.”

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ roared a voice from inside. ‘Mimir’s rotting skull what do you-‘ the door flung open, ‘want – ah. My Lady Freyja! I – we,’ the man blanched. ‘Food?’

  ‘Please. And fodder for the boar.’ Freyja strode in and sat at the kitchen table. She took off her gauntlets and threw them down with a thunk. She stretched across the back of the chair and her spine crunched and popped. ‘You have mead too?’ There was a wet snuffling from outside; Freyja sighed, ‘and another one,’ “watered down” she mouthed.

  The farmer finally unfroze. ‘Yes, Freyja, of course.’ He came back with two plates, one of elk meat, one of hay, he left again, then came with two mugs, one almost black inside, the other barely umber.

  ‘Thank you. Who lives here?’

  ‘Myself and my wife Thora –‘

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Ulf.’

  ‘Mm,’ she took a ripping bite of the meat and washed it down with the tarry mead. ‘It’s good. Carry on.’

  ‘Thank you. Myself, Thora, and our little daughter Asta.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Eight summers. Difficult age.’

  ‘So I’m told. You were angry when I knocked on your door. Why?’

  ‘Oh, it was no insult Lady Freyja. We have had an unwanted visitor recently.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Freyja. ‘We’ll sleep in the barn.’ And with that, she left, plate of hay in one hand, and watery mead in the other.

The next morning both Freyja and Gullinbursti were awoken by a thunderous noise.

  “BANG BANG BANG.”

  ‘Lady, you needn’t knock quite so loud!’ She heard Ulf yell, ‘It is but a small house and – oh.’

  Freyja poked her head from the barn door and saw a figure squeeze one great warty shoulder into the doorframe, and then the next.

  ‘You owe me something Ulf,’ she heard the troll rumble. Freyja snuck forward, hiding behind a snowdrift.

  ‘We have not had time to say goodbye! Please, one more day.’

  ‘Men’s lives are as long as a gnat’s to me, but even my patience has its limits. Wait,’ Freyja saw the great troll bend down to the kitchen table. ‘What are these metal gloves?’

  ‘They, they belong to a friend of ours! She is a great warrior, I have heard of the trolls she has slain and the widows she has made. Look at the craftsmanship on just her gloves, her armour covers her like a, a, a crab! I have seen her emerge from the greatest avalanche unharmed, there is no blow too harsh for her. You should leave, troll. Before she comes back.’

  The troll made a rumbling sound, and walked backwards out of the tiny house, first one shoulder, then the next, then he drew to his full height. Freyja cursed that stupid, lying farmer, the troll’s head scraped the clouds!

  After she was quite sure the troll had ambled off, she strode up to the house.

  She stood where the, now broken, door once was. The farmer was crying at the table, his wife, Thora, dutifully rubbing his back.

  ‘My gauntlets, Ulf. Before you rust them with your tears.’

  He looked up, sniffing. ‘He wants to take Asta, Freyja. He’ll take her and marry her, or eat her, or both.’ Now, Freyja stopped at this. She had never been married off like that, but she could not stand by while a child was made ready for the slaughterhouse.

  ‘How can I help you, Ulf? I’m afraid I can’t just kill him, he could crush me without realising. With or without my ‘crab suit’.’

  ‘Oh Freyja. I lied and still you’ll help, oh,’ he threw himself at her, and she batted him away with no kindness.

  ‘There is one thing, if I may speak, Freyja,’ said Thora. Freyja gave her a rare smile. ‘The troll seemed quite shaken by just your gloves. What if you leave your metal boots too? They are even finer work, they should keep him at bay for at least another day.’

  And so, Freyja took off her sabatons, and laid them with a bang on the table. ‘It is a good idea Thora, but tomorrow I will take my armour and leave. I will not fight the troll for you. And fix the damn door.’

The next morning Freyja awoke with the sun and heard, not long after, a faint noise.

  “Tap tap tap.”

  ‘Is that you, great warrior?’ said Ulf, woodenly, ‘come to collect both your armoured gloves and now also your armoured boots which you left here yesterday?’

  Freyja hid behind that same snowdrift and saw, not a warty troll, but a small man, slick and lithe like an otter. That’s odd, she thought. Usually it’s Odin who comes first.

  The small man cleared his throat. ‘I’m no great warrior nor a troll. I am here as a friend.’

  Ulf opened the hastily fixed door just a crack, peered through, then closed it again. ‘Go away. I’d prefer the troll.’

  Freyja called out. ‘Open the door Ulf. Loki’s here to help.’

  The door slowly opened and Loki stepped in. They spoke for a while in hushed voices, and Loki emerged again. He came to the snowdrift Freyja crouched behind and sat atop it.

  ‘You needn’t have tried to help, Freyja. He always opens the door.’

  ‘It’s cold out here.’

  Loki laughed, he reached out to tousle her hair and she batted him away. ‘Your concern is touching.’

  She glared up at him. ‘Why isn’t Odin here? And Honir, he should be on his way. You’re not due for another two days.’

  ‘Well, little one -’ he reached a hand for her face and she snapped her teeth at him. ‘Someone, and I’m not naming any names, but someone, who shouldn’t be here at all, has really rather messed everything up. The troll was so frightened by your gauntlets, and the farmer’s rather inspired lie, that he’s not going to play around searching for blades of grass and pebbles and eggs. We’re going ahead of schedule straight to stabbing him.’

  With that the ground shook, Loki toppling backwards from his snowy seat.

  ‘And he’s here. You stay down there. And don’t move. We’re not done, Freyja.’

  The troll came from somewhere in the trees. Trees that came up to his chest, but he seemed to have come with no warning at all. No bobbing of his great lumpy head for miles. It was always like this.

  ‘I’ve come for the girl, farmer,’ yelled the troll.

  ‘She has hidden, great one. She is only young, she scares easily, you’ll never find her,’ cried the farmer in reply from his doorstep.

  ‘My senses are honed from aeons of hunting your kind, soft one. Nothing can escape my nose. Where is the girl?’

  ‘She’s in the shed,’ came another voice, smooth but sticky, like oil on water.

  ‘Aha! I can smell her. She is in the shed!’ cried the troll.

  The troll lumbered to the shed, ripped the little door from its rusted hinges, and staggered back, a knife in the gut. The troll toppled with a crash.

  Loki emerged from the shed, gingerly stepping over the steaming corpse. ‘You can keep the knife, farmer. And the corpse. Mount the head on your wall perhaps,’ he called out. ‘I’m done here. I need some time with crab girl now. Just leave her armour on the doorstep.’ Loki sat back down on his snowdrift throne. ‘Go back to threshing wheat or whatever,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Don’t call me crab girl. I’m the Lady of the Slain,’ said Freyja.

  ‘Now, now, Freyja. Don’t get crab-‘

  She punched him.

  ‘Hm,’ he said through a now-bloody mouth. ‘Do you know what you’ve done wrong Freyja?’

  ‘I have this burning urge to throttle you.’

  ‘If you said you’d never considered it I’d call you a liar. But do you know what your biggest crime is?’ asked Loki.

  Freyja mumbled something.

  ‘You won’t PLAY YOUR DAMNED ROLE’ he roared. ‘How many times have you seen Balder killed Freyja? More times than there are blades of grass. And how many times has Odin asked everyone to cry for him, and I’ve refused and ended up with poison dripped onto me. How many times? Did you not stop and think,’ he poked her head, ‘think Freyja, that that’s the way it should be?’ He swept his arm round to the farmhouse. ‘That was an easy story. You didn’t ruin it this time, too much. But what about the next one? And the next? What about Ragnarok, Freyja?’

  ‘I just –‘ she started.

  ‘You just what? You didn’t ‘just’ anything!’ he stopped, panting.

  ‘I wanted to change it Loki. Just for once, do something different. Turn back the Playwright’s tyranny.’ She started crying.

  His flinty eyes softened. ‘Freyja. Stupid, stupid Freyja,’ he stroked her cheek, she let him, this time. ‘There’s no ‘once’ here. You know that. I know you love Balder, and I love you both too. I don’t care how many times you’ve broken my bones, or called me the worst names possible.’

  She smiled that ugly smile people do through wet eyes.

  ‘You have to know it’s not fair Freyja. Not to me, or you, or Balder. I’m not going to stop you. But you know the Playwright will.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Freyja, that’s why He’s here. To stop us going rogue. If you don’t put it right you’re going to get washed out, you know that?’

  At that Freyja stood. Loki had almost forgotten how much bigger the crying woman was than him.

  ‘I’m not going to get washed out.’ She drew a knife from her belt.

  ‘Freyja, slow down. Don’t make this worse than it is.’

  She kicked him square in the chest. He fell backwards and she rammed her knee into his throat. Loki scratched at her thigh, unable to plead anymore, to use his silver tongue.

  She raised the knife with both hands.

  ‘I’m sorry, false-brother.’

  Freyja pulled her knife from the new sheath it had made in Loki’s eye.

  “Tap tap tap.”

  ‘Is that you, great warrior?’ came the farmers voice, from inside the house, ‘come to collect both your armoured gloves and now also your armoured boots which you left here yesterday?’

  It all happened much the same. Loki was eventually let inside, mouth un-bloodied and decidedly alive, the corpse at her feet disappeared, even the stains and footprints in the snow were made like they were never there. Loki talked to the farmer, hid in the shed, killed the troll and moved to leave. It was just like it was before, it was as it was meant to be, as it always had been –

  ‘Oi!’ Loki spotted her. He jogged over. ‘You’re not meant to be here,’ he said in a sing-song voice, wagging his finger.

  ‘I – you’re-‘

  Loki smiled. ‘I know that look. Confusion, fear, anger. You killed me didn’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Bold move sea-brightener. Even I’ve rarely killed a main character. Why’d you do it? No, no let me guess. I tried to eat Gullibursti? I shaved all your hair off and you looked like a baby hedgehog?’ Loki looked up at the morning sky. ‘Ah, no, this is right after Balder isn’t it? Then I know what I said. And I’d say it again.’

  Freyja raised a fist.

  ‘Ah ah, I’d try not to kill any one you’re not meant to again, The Playwright hates it when you do that. Do it too much and he might just come down to pay us a visit.’

  Freyja looked at him, fist still curled.

  ‘Don’t worry about your boy, Freyja, he’s dancing with my daughter now.’

  Freyja’s hand opened again. ‘Loki, do you want to play a game?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Obviously. What kind?’

  ‘It’s, uh, it’s called keep-away. Keep Balder away from Hel.’

  ‘Let’s get your armour.’

And so, though she entered on her chariot alone, Freyja left with another by her side. He would have been little, and spry, with a smile that said that he knew more than you, because he was better than you. This would surely have been Loki, god of Mischief and Tricks. Loki was happy, for he was playing a game, and woe betide anyone who disturbed the Wolf-Father in the midst of a farce.

*

When the gods ride, you hear them before you see them. They come by dark or by day, heralded by the most terrible of sounds: the crash of hooves, the creak of wheels, the clank of armour, the constant, incessant bickering.

  ‘You mean to say you do not know where she lives?’

  ‘I know where she lives. It is, after all, named after her.’

  ‘Yet you do not know where it is that she lives.’

  ‘Hel lives in Hel. Or Helheim if you prefer, dear Freyja. The etymology is-‘

  ‘If I know that I have lost my sword in ‘the field-where-I-lost-my-sword’, I cannot rightly say that I know where it is on the basis that I know it is in ‘a field’.’

  ‘I do not think it is fair to compare my daughter to one of your rusty swords. Most parents do not keep such a short leash on their progeny as you, dear Lady.’

  ‘So you have lost her.’

  ‘Have not. I left her right in Helheim, for, for it to be Helheim, Hel must be there.’

  ‘And Helheim is?’

  ‘Where Hel lives.’

  ‘If I kill you again will you come back at Ulf’s farmhouse?’

  ‘I would not presume to understand the vagaries of our Playwright.’

  ‘There is a cave here with smoke coming out of it. We could ask for directions.’

  ‘Freyja, I cannot imagine anything more demeaning than two gods asking directions from a cave-dweller.’

  Freyja clicked her tongue and poor Gullinbursti gratefully came to a stop, his ears hurting more than his hooves.

  ‘Gullinbursti, no! Go! Walk on!’ Loki frantically clicked his tongue. Gullinbursti looked back at him and snorted.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  ‘Traitor’, Loki mumbled.

  Freyja stepped out of the chariot and stretched her arms above her head, yawning far too loudly.

  ‘Come on Loki, our hermit might have something for you to steal.’

  ‘I’m not going. I’m staying here. You’ll be back momentarily, none the wiser as to where Helheim is and you shall be much chastened!’

  ‘Mhm.’ Freyja ambled to and fro like a bear, only tangentially in the direction of the cave-mouth. As she disappeared around its lip, she waved gaily behind her.

Freyja found herself in a cavern far larger than either the mouth had suggested, or the mountain allowed. The cavern could have fitted the great hall of Asgard - where she had spent so many days arguing and fighting with her brethren - ten times over. The wall that poor, aggrieved Builder had completed for them, so long ago, that was taller than the tallest giant and thicker than the greatest oak, could have been placed in here, with another, its twin, balanced on top. At the furthest reach of her vision, Freyja was sure she could see here where the flesh of Ymir, from which all earth was made, curved down, out of sight.

  The source of the smoke they had seen in trickles from outside was a bonfire at the centre of the cavern, formed of furniture, doors, halls, entire ships, and scores by scores of bones. Kneeling on the ground by the fire that seemedrighter than the sun, was a giant, who held a hammer formed from a spinal piece of a creature so massive that Freyja knew she had neither seen nor even heard tales of it. Every time the giant drew his hammer up, though he knelt, he would brush his head ever so gently on the cavern ceiling, and scant fragments of rock finer than sand would fall; ever so slowly, ever-lengthening the great gouge in the rock above him, wide enough to sail even Skithblathnir through. When he brought the hammer down, it would strike atop the crown of a skull Freyja could have comfortably stood inside, doubtless the same great beast that made up his hammer. When he struck the skull, pieces of rock would shake from the sky like snow, raising the ceiling ever further.

  The Giant placed his hammer on the ground with so much care that it made barely a whisper. He turned his great body, with such a cacophony of cracks and creaks that Freyja thought he must never have moved in such a way before.

  ‘Little one. If you have come to this place, you must be great. For only the great would find such a place. What shall I call you?’

  ‘You may call me Fangi. And I you?’

  The giant stared at her unmoving for a moment. ‘Vafthrudnir. That is what you are likely to call me.’

  ‘I am looking for Helheim, Great Vafthrudnir.’

  ‘I can tell you how to go to such a place. But there will be a price, as with all. We will ask each other three questions, each in turn. If one cannot answer, the other claims their head. Do you wish to challenge me, Fangi?’

  ‘I do,’ said Freyja.

  ‘I will warn you Fangi, I will have your head before the day is done. Do you wish to challenge me, Fangi?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I shall tell you the rules, for there is no sport against an ignorant. If you know the answer, you will answer. You will do so without thought, nor intention, but you shall answer. If you do not know the answer, you shall make no guesses, merely not speak at all. I shall show you, though this shall not be one of my true questions: What, Fangi, is in my pocket?’

  Freyja’s mouth would not open, she could not even grunt to say that Vafthrudnir could have hidden cattle in his pockets.

  ‘You may go first, as my guest.’

  ‘Where –‘ Freyja paused. ‘How do I reach Helheim without the use of Odin’s steed, Sleipnir?’

  ‘You must travel to where the sun dies, for three days with the dead in your heart. It matters not from where you start, nor if you travel by foot or wing, in three days you will arrive.’

  ‘Thank you, Vafthrunir.’

  ‘Do not thank me, I am bound by my own rules. I shall ask you a question now. The gifts of the dwarfs, the Brothers Ivaldi and Brokk and Eitri, given freely to the gods of Asgard. What, of the many things gained, was the greatest?’

  ‘All-Father Odin claims it to be the hammer given to Thor, Mjolnir. But he is wrong. Mjolnir is third greatest. The second greatest was the quick-wit of Loki, in declaring that although he had bet his head, his neck was not to be touched, showing us the value of a well worded agreement. Greater still was the strength of the Brothers Ivaldi, in sewing Loki’s mouth shutegardless, showing us that a pledge made with trickery in the heart, is as good as spit in the eye.’

  Freyja stopped, hands shooting to her mouth. She had not planned to say any of that, true though it was. The words had flowed from her, bypassing her mind. She settled herself.

  ‘Vafthrudnir, can a god, or giant, or mortal, endless in strength and resolve, could they, if they had the desire, stop Ragnarok, the burning from which we all run?’

  ‘No. Who, Fangi-‘

  ‘That is no answer at all!’

  ‘That it is not the answer for which you wished, alas, does not make it untrue. Now, who, Fangi, aside from himself and his kin, does the god Loki care for?’

  ‘The god Freyja, the Lady of the Slain.’

  ‘That is untrue. I shall claim my spoils and your head will burn in my fire, fuelling my projects. You were a better opponent than most, Fangi.’

  ‘I cannot lie here, Vafthrudnir. That you do not wish for the answer, alas does not make it untrue. It is my turn. Can a god, or giant, or mortal, endless in strength and resolve, could they kill the Playwright?’

  Vafthrudnir looked down at Freyja, unmoving.

  ‘You may ask your question, Fangi.’

  ‘Can the Playwright be killed?’

  Vafthrudnir did not react, not in the slightest, his breath did not catch, he did not blink, and even the thunderous beating of his heart stayed even.

  ‘I say again, you may ask your question, Fangi.’

  ‘Did you not hear me, Vafthrudnir?’

  ‘Though it has been battered by the rings of my hammer since the day of my birth, my hearing has never failed me before. If you do not wish to ask a question, I am afraid it will become my turn, and I promise you, after my final question, I shall have your head.’

  It seemed not everyone had the right, nor the will to know who truly ruled over them.

  ‘What did Odin whisper to Balder as he lay on his funeral pyre?’

  Vafthrudnir nodded slowly. ‘That, Freyja, I do not know. You must be the Lady of the Slain, for few witnessed Odin’s final secret to Balder the Bright, and but two know what he said. I do not number among them. My head, you may have it.’ He lay his neck across his great anvil. ‘You may harm my neck also, I am quite unlike Loki in that way.’

  Freyja climbed up the skull that the giant used for an anvil and stood next to Vafthrudnir’s head, even his ear out of her reach. She reached up and plucked a hair from his beard. The hair uncoiled and became as long as Freyja was tall, thicker than her wrist and more pointed than a needle.

  ‘That shall be my prize, Vafthrudnir. Thank you, I have gained the answers I sought.’ She bowed, hopped down to the ground and began her long, long walk back to Loki and Gullinbursti.

  ‘Freyja!’ the giant bellowed, ‘You won, take your prize, Freyja, please! Take it, take my head!’

  Though her bones threatened to unseat themselves with the force of his voice, Freyja did not look back.

‘And so the shamed god comes crawling back! What mad ramblings of the hermit do you have to enlighten me with?’ said Loki, always so smug. He sat in the chariot whittling a knife from wood.

  ‘I see we’ve both got new weapons. Mine’s hair, and yours?’ Freyja said.

  ‘Oh this, ‘tis the king of woods. Mistletoe. I think you know it well.’ Loki stood, adopted a fencing stance and poked her with the surprisingly sharp tip.

  ‘Stop that.’

  ‘Shan’t. En Garde, wench!’

  ‘If I poke you with mine, I expect it’d go through your belly and pin you to the ground. Then you would come back, I would have left and you’d have to find your own way to Helheim. Is that what you want?’

  ‘No,’ Loki grumbled. ‘Maybe that’d call the Playwright down and he’d put an end to this misery.’ He ceased his poking.

  ‘Walk on, Gullinbursti.’ Freyja lay down in the chariot, spear lain across her chest.

  ‘Where to?’ Loki lay next to her, his new knife lying across him.

  ‘West,’ she sighed. ‘We ride west, and we remember the dead.’

*

Freyja and Loki aimed themselves at the setting sun and rode. I need not tell you who Freyja thought of, for he was at the front of her mind always. Her beautiful, shining, bright boy, taken, not by his own failure, or Hoder’s naivety, or Loki’s tricks, or even by her own arrogance. Balder had been taken by the Playwright, whose hand was in all evil. Perhaps it was as a sickening lesson, to be told to brash children, to temper one’s strength with humility. But her boy would not be a reduced to a lesson; a fairy tale.

Loki had so few to mourn. Time and time again his children would be taken from him, or made twisted-things, or beasts of burden like poor, dutiful Sleipnir. Loki was the father of monsters and the young ones had little say in their fate.

  Loki could remember the birth of Fenrir, Hel, Jormungandr, even Sleipnir; how he carried him in his arms, and handed his child to Odin as a gift. Loki could remember long nights with Sigyn, surely, but never a kicking at the walls of her belly, and certainly never a twin birth. Little Vali and Narfi weren’t, and then they were, suddenly, only to be remade again, a monster and a prison. Odin would lead Loki to that cave and call in the little ones. He would only see them for seconds, just seconds each time around, before Vali twisted and popped, and where there was a boy, there was then a wolf. The wolf would tear out Narfi’s belly, and Odin, the All-Father that Loki had saved so long ago, would reach into the boy, and tie Loki’s arms with his guts.

  Loki had never quite grown used to it, but every time, just a little more, he would hate their creator. Not Odin, the old man had lost any kind of will long ago, too proud to admit he was a pawn.

  No, not Odin. The other one. The little one. That soft, gentle voice, with the only real power in this world. The only God there really was.

Freyja and Loki sat silently for three days in their cart as Gullinbursti trotted ever onwards. They were on a road well travelled, facing the setting sun, and then suddenly, they weren’t.

*

Gullinbursti skidded to a halt, the chariot jack-knifing behind him.

  ‘Woah boy! Woah!’ Freyja called. She looked down and saw the gouges his hooves had left in the sand they now rode upon.

  ‘It – it’s warm, just slightly,’ said Loki. He held his hand out. ‘There’s not even a breeze.’

  ‘Hm,’ Freyja agreed; her eloquence never having quite matched Loki’s. ‘Quiet, too.’

  ‘Very. It’s nothing, Freyja. There’s nothing.’

  They looked to the horizon and saw, just as Loki had said, nothing. No, wait, not quite nothing. Just on the edge of their vision, obscured by the eddies and whorls of heat, was a thin stream of smoke.

  ‘Hello!’ Loki called. ‘Is there anyone there? Hel? Balder?’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Vali? Narfi?’

  ‘Come Gullinbursti, ahead,’ said Freyja.

  Gullinbursti huffed and began to pick his way across the sand, his hooves sinking as he did, the wheels of their chariot burying themselves in the dunes. It was not long before it would not move at all. Gullinbursti stopped and shrugged his harness from his golden shoulders.

  ‘I ride the pig and you walk?’ Loki tried.

  Gullinbursti snorted, spraying thick snot onto Loki’s legs.

  ‘Ah yes, or we all walk side by side, perhaps hand in hoof?’ Loki wiped his thigh gingerly.

  Freyja began to walk, using her Giant’s-hair spear as a walking stick, the sand seeping its way in between the plates of her boots. Her beloved linen dress kept her both cool and protected from the sun. Though they had left just before nightfall, the sun was at its peak now, and had not moved its way across the sky at all.

  Loki stumbled behind her, his leather jerkin making unpleasant squeaking sounds as he walked.

  ‘Freyja?’ Squeak, squeak. ‘You don’t have another one of your attractive and practical dresses stashed away, do you?’ Squeak, squeak.

  ‘You would wear one of my dresses?’

  Loki sniffed, ‘I find dresses have their uses. Though the draft is unpleasant in our home, it would be most welcome now.’

  ‘It seems to me, Loki, that you should have dressed more appropriately. Leather and furs have their place, but it is not here.’

  ‘I hardly expected to find myself in a desert.’

  ‘Neither of us did. However, linen is suited to all climates, it is cool when it is hot, warm when it is cold, it is strong yet light-’

  ‘Please, Freyja, no more. Do you have a dress for this poor, short-sighted fool?’

  ‘I do not, I only ever had one made.’

  Loki stopped. ‘Freyja, when did you last change your clothes?’

  Freyja snorted. ‘When did you last change yours? We are both naught but pigs, Loki.’ She looked down. ‘No offence, Gullinbursti.’

  Gullinbursti huffed. None taken.

  The trio walked in blessed silence for a while, before it was, of course, broken by Loki.

  ‘Freyja, have you considered the inequality of our situation?’

  ‘I have Loki, we are to travel to a place full of nothing, to recover the unrecoverable, and kill the only true God in this world.’

  ‘No, no, not all that,’ Loki waved her away, ‘You have both your dress and your spear, yet my little knife makes a poor walking-stick. Perhaps we could share the spear?’

  ‘Hm,’ Freyja considered this. ‘The spear is far too rough for a bare hand, given that it’s made of hair, and my gauntlets are made for the hands of a warrior, not a thief. No, I should think you are far more suited to your blackguard’s knife.’

  Loki hummed. ‘What’s your spear called, Freyja? All great weapons must have a name.’

  Freyja stopped. ‘In my head I have been calling it “The Giant’s-hair spear,” or, “He-who-pokes-Loki,” though I must admit it doesn’t roll off the tongue.’ Freyja continued her march.

  ‘What about Heitabregda? Promise-breaker.’

  ‘Heitabregda? That is a good name, yes, for what are we but habitual breakers of oaths? Thank you, Loki, Heitabregda it is.’

  ‘Freyja, now may I have a turn with Heitabregda?’

  ‘No, Loki, no you may not.’

Freyja, Loki and ever-faithful Gullinbursti finally arrived at the source of the thin stream of smoke. Whether it took them minutes, hours, days; I could not say, for it is so hard to tell when the sun doesn’t move. They arrived with burnt faces, chapped lips, and hoarse throats, for complaints had been their only sustenance.

  Our travellers came to a small ring of tents, all facing a campfire. At the campfire was a canvas throne, and on the throne reclined a woman, drinking horn in hand. The woman’s face split right down the middle, across the nose. One half was the white of bone, with a pink eye, the other was the black of lightning-struck wood, with a green eye sunken in. She stared up at the sun.

  Freyja opened her mouth, but Loki put up a hand, face uncharacteristically grim.

  ‘I’ll talk to her.’ Loki knelt down and placed a hand on the woman’s arm. ‘Hel? It’s me. We need to talk.’

  Hel slowly, lazily rolled her head to look at Loki, and, face unchanging, weakly spat at him.

  ‘Father.’ When Hel spoke, two voices came out, one was high and reedy, the other gravelly and warm. The high voice spoke on its own, ‘I hate you,’ it said. Then the low voice, ‘I missed you,’ it said.

  ‘Always a pleasure, Hel,’ said Loki, wiping spit from his face. ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘Of course I am. What else is there to do?’ Hel said. She tried to stand from her throne, but only succeeded in rolling onto the sand. She lay there as though she had always intended it. ‘Better than nothing,’ said the high voice. ‘Better than being lucid,’ said the low voice.

  Freyja knelt by Hel’s side. ‘Is there anyone else here?’

  Hel looked at Freyja, then slowly back to Loki. ‘Who’s this?’ she said. ‘Your new whore?’ said the high voice. ‘My replacement?’ said the low voice.

  ‘I am Freyja. Lady of the Slain. You have something of mine.’

  ‘I don’t have anything,’ said Hel. ‘Nothing of yours,’ said the high voice. ‘Nothing of my own,’ said the low voice.

  ‘Is Balder the Bright here? He’s hard to miss. He’s a god, just like us,’ said Freyja.

  Hel laughed, a choked, gurgling sound. ‘We’re not gods,’ she said. ‘You’re a cheater,’ said the high voice. ‘I’m a reject,’ said the low voice.

  Freyja wrapped her hand tighter around Heitabregda. ‘I will only ask you one more time, wretch. Where is Balder? Where is my son?’

  ‘Balder the shiny? Take him. I don’t want him,’ said Hel. ‘He just cries all the time,’ said the high voice. ‘He just cries,’ said the low voice. Hel pointed to one of the tents. Her hand collapsed back to the ground, as though the effort was insurmountable. She burrowed her face into the sand, like a babe in blankets.

  Freyja, however, dropped Heitabregda to the ground and ran. She barrelled into the tent and there sat Balder the Bright. Her son looked up at her, salt dried on his cheeks but slightly smiling.

  ‘Oh, Mother. Good morning, are you-’

  Freyja wrapped her arms around him.

  ‘Are – are you well?’

  Freyja just hugged him tighter.

  ‘What’s happened, Mother? Did that bastard Loki do something again?’

  Freyja held him by the shoulders. ‘What’s happened? What’s happened? You-’ Freyja paused. ‘I-’ she tried again. ‘You died, Balder. You’re dead. This is Helheim.’

  Balder patted at his chest, then his face. ‘Did I? I feel quite alive.’ Balder smiled at Freyja, kindly. ‘This is my room, Mother, the same room I was born in, the same room I’ve always lived in. This is Asgard, not Helheim. What’s wrong?’ Balder stood, suddenly. Freyja let him. ‘Loki’s been playing tricks on you again! That snake! That, that weasel! I will take his head from his shoulders!’

  Freyja stood, head barely reaching his chest. ‘Loki’s not done anything wrong. He led me to you. You died in - in an accident. We burned you. Hel took you down here and now I have come to take you back home.’

  Balder smiled. ‘I am home, Mother. This is my home.’

  Freyja slapped him, the metal of her gauntlet drawing blood from his cheek. ‘This is not your home! This is the worst of places! Think, Balder, think! Does your room have canvas walls, or alder? A floor of sand, or furs?’

  ‘It – this is my home.’

  ‘You’re lying! It’s not home.’ Freyja panted. ‘Lick your finger.’

  ‘Pardon, Mother?’

  ‘Go on!’

  Balder did.

  ‘Rub it on your cheek. Not the bloody one.’

  And Balder did. Wiping a finger through the dried trail of tears.

  ‘What does it taste of?’

  Balder sucked on his finger and thought for a moment. ‘Hm. You’re right, Mother! It tastes of finger with an underlying layer of cheek.’ Balder put a hand on his mother’s shoulder. ‘Either you have gone mad – and people have called you many things, but never that – or Loki has done something. I intend to find out.’

  And with that, he walked out of the tent, stopping to nod just outside the entrance, and spoke to someone behind the wall.

  ‘Good day, thrall,’ Balder said, ‘Make sure my Mother is fed and watered. She is not quite feeling herself.’ And he was gone. Again.

  The ‘thrall’ walked in. Well, staggered in. She smiled through both sides of her split face. Hel eased herself to the ground and lay like a beached starfish.

  ‘You want to talk about your crybaby?’ Hel said.

  ‘Not to a drunken madwoman,’ said Freyja.

  ‘How do you think I feel? The most company I’ve had in, well, forever, is a sober madwoman.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘It’s you, you’re the sober madwoman,’ Hel said.

  ‘Thank you.’ Freyja sat on the ground next to her, looking up at the roof of the tent. ‘You’ve stopped doing it.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘The thing with your voices. You’re just speaking normally now.’

  ‘“The thing with my voices” is normal,’ Hel said. ‘Normal for me,’ said the high voice. ‘Maybe not for you,’ said the low voice.

  ‘No, no, that was different. You don’t have to do it then?’

  ‘They’re all my voices.’ Hel picked at her shirt. ‘Don’t have to do anything. I don’t do anything, most the time.’

  ‘Except torment the soul of my son? And whoever else you keep trapped here.’

  ‘I don’t torment anyone. He torments me, if anything. Wailing all day - and it’s always day here.’

  ‘He wasn’t crying when I came – he had been, but he wasn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, that was weird. I don’t really know, sorry. Whenever you start to mess with, you know, Him, things go all… off. Don’t think I haven’t noticed by the way.’

  ‘Noticed what?’

  ‘You’re not meant to be here,’ Hel said in a sing-song voice, wagging her finger.

  ‘Oh, and here I thought you didn’t take after your Father.’

  Hel’s face – faces – hardened. ‘I don’t.’ She went back to picking at her shirt. ‘Anyway, I don’t trap anyone. People – souls, whatever - they don’t really stay here. No reason to. Except your boy, he just curled up and cried.’

  ‘What about your half-brothers? The wolf and the prison?’

  ‘They have names. Vali and Narfi. And no, they didn’t stay. In fact, if you run you might just catch Father leaving to find them.’

  Freyja stood, quickly. ‘And you didn’t think to tell me straight away?’

  ‘Just one last favour for the Father of Monsters,’ Hel said. ‘He loves you, you know,’ said the high voice. ‘But not as much as he loves those boys,’ said the low voice.

  Freyja heard none of this, for she had already picked up Heitabregda and was running like she had never run before.

When Freyja found Loki, she saw the very scene that she had feared, perhaps the one you too had feared.

  Loki stood behind Balder, his mistletoe knife at Balder’s throat, Loki’s face like thunder, Balder crying again.

  Balder saw her first.

  ‘Mother! Please! He’s going to-’

  Loki drew his knife across Balder’s throat, blood spraying as his corpse fell. Before the blood even touched the sand, it disappeared, the body along with it. Balder reappeared and strode towards Loki.

  ‘Listen here Wolfs-Father, you release my Mother!’

  Loki grabbed him by the shirt, spun him around, and again his knife was at Balder’s throat.

  Freyja levelled Heitabregda at Loki. ‘You let him go, Loki.’

  ‘Not a step closer, Freyja. Any closer and I’ll put the knife through the back instead of the front. He’ll be dead either way, but come any closer and he’ll feel it.’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare, Mother! Please!’

  ‘The boy’s right, Loki. You wouldn’t. Much more and the Playwright won’t like it, you said so yourself.’ Freyja stayed just where she was, but her spear stayed trained on Loki.

  ‘Where are my boys, Freyja?’ Loki’s voice cracked.

  The tip of Heitabregda quivered just a little. ‘The Wolf and the Prison?’

  Loki drew his knife across Balder’s throat, before Freyja could move an inch the body was gone, and once again Loki held Balder.

  ‘They have names. Vali and Narfi. And I want to know where they are.’

  ‘I don’t know, Loki!’

  ‘It’s warm here,’ said Balder.

  ‘I want my boys just as much as you want yours.’ Loki’s voice was even now. Still.

  ‘You hardly knew them!’

  Loki killed Balder again.

  ‘Just for seconds. Just for seconds each time around.’ Loki said, quietly.

  Balder began gnawing at Loki’s hand, there was no force to it, like a toothless bear.

  ‘I don’t know where your children are Loki. But I came here to get mine. And you won’t stop me. Please, put Balder down, the Playwright won’t bear much more.’

  ‘You don’t know where they are. No, Freyja, you don’t know. But there’s someone who does. And he’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother.’ Balder looked up at her, eyes bright, smile wide. ‘It’s just like Odin told me, “It’s only ‘till the next go around.”’

  With that, Loki slit Balder’s throat. This time Balder didn’t reappear. In his place there instead lay a skull, bleached by the sun, and on the crown of the skull stood a mouse. There was no crashing of thunder. There was no darkening of skies. There was only the Mouse God, as there always had been, and always would be.

  There came a tiny voice, quieter than the blood rushing in Freyja’s ears. But it did not come from the mouse’s mouth, nor did it come through the air. It came into being right in her head, barging its way into her mind. The voice was all she could hear, it was all-encompassing. Every thought, every memory, every desire was replaced with the voice. The voice was everything. And it smelled like rot.

  ‘My patience has rather run out,’ it said.

  Loki pointed at Freyja with the tip of his knife. ‘She’s the one you want, not me.’

  'Was it not you who killed Balder?’

  Loki bobbed his head furiously. ‘It was, it was, but only to call you here. It’s Freyja who has ruined things, not me.’

  ‘Lord I-’ Freyja started.

  The mouse turned its little head to her, and a great pressure filled her skull. ‘Not now, girl. I will deal with you later.’ Freyja whimpered, dropping her spear and falling to her knees.

  ‘Now, Loki. You have gone to great pains to get me here, what do you want?’

  ‘I wish to spend the rest of this cycle with my sons, Vali and Narfi-’

  ‘Done.’ There was a strange sucking noise and Loki disappeared from the sand, not even his footprints remained. His knife fell, tip piercing the dunes. The mouse hopped down from the skull and stood on its hind legs in front of Freyja. ‘Now you may speak. Why have you ruined things so?’

  Freyja kept her head down. ‘I- I wanted to-’ she stopped.

  The mouse wrung at its hands. ‘There’s no rush child. We’ve all the time there is.’

  ‘Where’s Loki?’

  ‘Our Trickster is just where he wanted to be, which is incidentally, just where he should be: with his sons. He is in a cave with Vali dead at his feet, and Narfi is binding him in place, where he shall have poison dripped onto his forehead.’

  ‘Forever?’

  The mouse looked up at her with its tiny black eyes. ‘No, of course not.’ The Playwright did not elaborate any further. ‘Carry on, child, what did you want to do?’

  ‘I just wanted one thing. I just wanted to be with Balder, be Mother and Son. I don’t want to play your game anymore.’

  The mouse cocked its head. ‘You know I cannot stop this. Not for the wishes of one. But if you wanted to be with Balder, why didn’t you say so?’

  With that Balder sprang from the sands, fully formed, the same half-smile he had always worn, and not a drop of blood on him. But he didn’t move. His eyes did not blink, his chest did not rise. He was as a statue made flesh.

  ‘I can have him? Just like that?’ Freyja asked.

  The mouse hummed. ‘No, not just like that. Though your plight was noble, if a prisoner runs from you, you do not let him go for the nobleness of it. No. You catch him with dogs, chain him and cut off his hand, so he remembers his place. I will not do anything so violent. Instead I will give you a choice. You may either stay here in Helheim with Balder, completely free from my influence, but you shall be unmade at the end of Ragnarok, never to be reborn-’

  ‘I’ll do it. That. I’ll do that.’

  ‘I shall finish. Or, girl, you may return to Asgard. Return to your glory, but as a shell of yourself. Your,’ the mouse wriggled slightly, ‘wilfulness shall be gone from you. Your rebellious spirit that Loki loved so. And your love for your son. All these things shall be taken from you, and placed into a new woman. Balder shall have a new Mother, gentler than you ever were, and you will remember none of this, this farce. You will be a beauty first, a warrior second, and a mother never.’

  ‘The first one. The first.’

  ‘Take your time, child. It is your choice. It was always your choice.’

*

Now, Odin was wise, but inscrutable. Frigg, tenacious, but proud. Freyja, beautiful, but empty, and Loki, well, you know what Loki was like. The gods were gods, but they were as much men. There was, however, one god who was truly perfect. Strong, wise, kind, a shining beauty of a man. His name was Balder the Bright. All loved Balder, his mother, Frigg, most of all. Frigg doted upon him so much that one day she made all things swear not to hurt Balder, and all things swore.

This story is called The Death of Balder.