Loki: Why I Began the End (9 page)

     That giant oaf Thrym came lumbering down toward the alehouse just then. He was famous in Jotunheim for getting his tongue stuck to an icicle and shaking the mountain so hard to pull it off, that the mountain became a valley. He liked to roam Midgard in search of women—which he never found, because they all ran and hid when they saw him coming.

     My initial instinct was to stick out my foot and trip him as I usually did, but I thought the better of it and instead formed into a likeness of Freya with her long blonde hair and blue eyes, the likes of which I knew Thrym never could resist. I stuck my foot as far under the hammer’s handle as I could and groaned in agony. I felt the ground shake beneath me as the dolt ran over to where I was lying. He didn’t say anything—I doubt his brain was working fast enough to find some words. He just smiled his half-toothed grin at me as he lifted up the hammer to “rescue” me.

     The door to the alehouse burst open as a swarm of people streaked out, shouting and scrambling. Thor’s roar from within drowned them all out. I formed into my own shape and joined the masses, able to escape the easily-confounded Thrym, unwilling to stay and watch things unfold.

     My scheme worked—every day after, as soon as Thor stormed into the alehouse, all others would clear out. I would freely sit and talk with Balder, enjoying some intelligent conversation without risk. Balder would slide me a pint of ale, smile, and say, “Loki, thank you on behalf of my sanity.” All Thor would do was stare at the walls and down pints of ale. Some days, I swear I heard the walls shudder at the pressure. One day, he even growled in reply. I laughed to myself and asked him, “No luck yet?”

     He just shook his boarish head and downed an entire pint in one gulp, never breaking his glare from the walls.

     Everything was good. So of course, it couldn’t last. Odin called me to a council of the Aesir. They put me at the end of the table so that everyone could stare me down at once while he said, “You, Loki, will retrieve Mjollnir.”

     I just shrugged and rested my feet up on the table. “Why me? Why not get He-of-the-Thunderous-Wrath to get his own hammer back?”

     Thor was still seething too much to form his own words. Odin answered for him: “Because while Thrym has Mjollnir, he can easily overtake Thor.”

     I scoffed. “Without his hammer, Thor’s got
nothing
below the belt?”

     Thor threw a small tantrum by striking his hand on the table, echoing a thunderclap. “I could snap you in half!”

     “With your girly hands?”

     Thor was about to spring for me—I could see him start—but he just clenched his fist and grit his teeth, and that was it.

     Odin said, “As Thrym cannot be taken by force, he must be taken by wit. You are the clever one, Loki.”

     I nodded and rose to my feet. “Great. We all agree that I’m clever. Glad we got that settled.” I started to leave, but Freya pushed me back into my chair.

     “We aren’t finished with you,” she said.

     I smirked and leaned in to say, “I’ll slip under the table if you want to finish me yourself.”

     She struck me across the face so hard, that I involuntarily formed into a beetle, stuck lying on my back with my legs scurrying in the air, unable to turn myself over. When I formed back into myself, everyone at the table was practically breathless with laughter. I rolled my eyes and composed myself on my chair. “
What
?” I asked.

     Odin brought everyone back on topic: “Loki, you will do whatever you can to bring Mjollnir back to Thor.”

     “No,” I said. “Let the oaf keep it; he needs it for teething.”

     Many at the table began talking at once, scolding me. Odin held up his hand, and they quieted. “You
will
do whatever you can to bring Mjollnir back to Thor. If not, then Thor will be using
you
for pounding.”

     I nodded; knowing Thor, the threat was very real. As I left the room, I added, “You should be glad, Odin, that Mjollnir vowed not to harm your son. Its owner should have vowed the same.”

CHAPTER NINE: A PLAN OF ACTION

Thrym was at his mountaintop home—rather, the jagged assembly of rock and snow that he called a home. For the first few days, I just monitored him, formed either as a hawk or a fly. He never, for a second, let the hammer fall from his fist, even after accidentally hitting himself in the head when he reached to scratch his bald scalp. As such, there was no chance of stealing it from him. So I decided to present myself to him, in my natural form, to talk to the dimwit.

     “Impressive,” was my first word, which caught his attention. “How did you ever manage to steal Thor’s hammer?”

     He chuckled deep from his throat. “Loki the Smart One wants to hear how I did it?”

     “Yes; Loki the Smart One is very interested.”

     He cleared his throat and said, “I picked it up off the ground.”

     “That
is
impressive. And I’m sure Freya would be impressed, too. You should tell her about it. Wait, an even better thought: You should give her the hammer. I’m sure she would be
greatly
impressed.”

     “Yes! I’ll do it! I’ll give her the hammer!”

     “Great idea!”

     “...after she marries me!”

     I coughed on my premature triumphant laughter. “What was that?”

     “You bring her here to marry me, and I will give her the hammer as a wedding gift!”

     And once he got that idea, there was no other way of even tricking the hammer from him; he wouldn’t let it go for anyone but Freya. So I weighed my options: get pounded by the Thunder God, or get slapped around by Freya. I decided to see the goddess first.

     “
What
?!” That first shriek wasn’t very inspiring of success.

     I tried to remain calm. “The only way he’ll give up the hammer is if you marry him.”

     “I am no trollop or bawd!” she cried furiously. “I will not be given over to some monster in exchange for a toy! If my husband were here, he would strike you through to Hel for suggesting it!”

     “So…tell me again how you got that necklace you’re wearing?” I quipped.

     Her lips curled into a snarl as her fingers curled into claws. I didn’t stay for further development—I formed into a stag and ran from her house with the greatest leaps I could manage, and didn’t stop until my stag form tired and reverted back to myself.

     I sat with Fenrir awhile, talking over the situation, wondering if he had any thoughts on the topic. He cared little about Thor losing his hunk of metal, but any mental challenge was welcome.

     “Give him Freya,” he said.

     “Only if I could use your fetters,” I retorted.

     “No, father: You can change into Freya. He gives you the hammer, you run with it.”

     I smirked. “That’s not a half bad idea, except that I can’t carry that thing.” Then, I was inspired by my son’s brilliance, and burst out laughing. “No, I have it! I have it!”

     “What?” he asked eagerly. He knew a good joke was coming.

     “Thor will disguise as Freya—in a wedding gown, and everything.”

     It took only a moment to picture the bearded behemoth in a dress for Fenrir to laugh as well. “Perfect, father, absolutely perfect!”

     Our father-son laughter was interrupted by Heimdall. “Loki, the council is meeting to discuss the retrieval of Mjollnir.”

     “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m right behind you.” I stayed back only a second to pat my son on the head, then went along to the council room and seated myself at the long table again.

     Odin opened the discussion: “It is obvious that we cannot give Freya in marriage to this Jotun, regardless of the hammer’s importance to our safety.”

     “I have an idea,” Heimdall spoke up. “We dress Thor in a wedding gown and present him as Freya. As soon as he gets the hammer, he can kill Thrym and escape.”

     I was ready to leap across the table and take that smug jerk by the neck. Odin nodded and said, “Yes, that will work. Loki, you will go with Thor for this.”

     Knowing that Odin knew the idea was mine was enough for me. “Naturally, brother.”

     “I was going to volunteer,” Heimdall said.

     Odin looked at him sternly and said, “I think Loki would play this out better. Don’t you agree?”

     Heimdall just muttered under his breath and shot me a glare.

     Thor wasn’t too keen on the plan. “I’m not dressing up like a woman for anything!”

     “Come on, Thor,” I said. “Thrym already emasculated you—a dress isn’t going to make any difference.”

     Before Thor could react, Odin held out his hand. “Thor, sit down. Loki, shut up. This plan will work. You will do it.” With that, he dismissed the council. Thor slammed his fists on the table and left.

     I shrugged. “He’ll come around.”

      “So long as you don’t berate him,” Odin cautioned.

      “Yeah, yeah; sure. No more jokes about his mallet.”

      “And hurry. If that Jotun figures out what he has, we could all be in great danger.”

      “It takes Thrym eight weeks to count his fingers—and he only has nine. Don’t worry.”

     He pat my back as he led me from the room. “With you, Loki, I always worry.” He then paused and stood in front of me, face to face. “Will you make the vow, brother?”

      “For what?”

      “Vow never to harm my son Balder. Do this for me, and I will leave immediately to find the answer to Fenrir’s freedom.”

     I didn’t think twice. For me, it was a win-win. I knelt down and put my palms to the ground to recite the vow: “
As I am Loki, son of Farbauti and Laufey, born of Jotunheim, I vow by Yggdrasil that I will never harm Balder, son of Odin and Frigg, born of Asgard.
” Given my true heritage, I wondered how iron-clad that vow really was, using my foster parents’ names.

     No sooner did I rise, than Odin embraced me with a fervent pat on the back. His one eye beamed with glory. “You will not see me again until I have learned the secret of Fenrir’s fetters.”

      “Tell the truth, Odin: You had a hand in putting him in those fetters.”

     He shook his head. “It was Heimdall’s servant Skirnir who went to the dark elves of Svartalfheim for the fetters. He had gone to the dwarfs, but anything they made was broken. I will, however, admit that I did not dispute the Aesir’s actions. Having the strength of a Jotun, he struck me as a threat. But he has vowed, and now so have you. With such acts, I will place my trust in you and your son. By my hand, Fenrir will again walk free—brother.”

     I grinned, disbelieving of how well we were getting along at that moment. “Well, brother, I will leave you to that. I am off to perform a far more difficult task: wrestling the God of Thunder into his wife’s dress.”

     Thor was nowhere throughout Asgard. Knowing him, he could have been anywhere, so I decided that, in order to find him, I had to think like him. And in order to think like him, I had to drink like him. So I went down to Midgard, just in time to see Odin cross the rainbow bridge as proof of his quest. Balder’s usual alehouse wasn’t far away, and I thought it a likely place to find the Thunder God.

     I felt happier than I had in a long time. Balder was free from the constant barrage of projectiles, giving me my favorite comrade back, and soon Fenrir would be free from his chains, giving me my son back. I would be whole again.

     Thor was in the alehouse, sitting at a table across the room from Balder, glaring into the emptiness and downing one of the many pints of ale queued up for him. I pretended to ignore him as I went over and sat with Balder at our usual table. He wanted to pick up our discussion regarding the division of the light elves and dark elves, but in whispers, I told him I had a mission concerning Thor. Then, in a loud voice, I began to explain it to him.

      “Your father wants me to help get Thor’s hammer back,” I began. “So I thought that we’d dress up Thor like Freya, Thrym will give him the hammer, and that’s that. But He-Whose-Ego-Knows-No-Bounds can’t do it. So how about you?”

      “You want me to dress up like Freya?”

      “Yes. And now I think of it, you would work a whole lot better than the blonde yeti over there.” That got his attention—Thor put down his drink and looked over to us. “You would pass for Freya better; with your clean-shaven face, you’re a lot prettier.”

     Balder grinned. “Finally, my true life’s purpose is realized.”

      “Besides, you can’t get hurt. There’s nothing for you to be afraid of, whereas Thor has to stand up against a monster ten times bigger than he is, and who has the Crusher. Yeah, I guess I can’t blame Thor for saying ‘no’. How can anyone expect him to go up against a moving mountain with a brain the size of a poppy seed? You’re clearly the better choice.”

     Thor overturned his table and stormed across the room, laying down his fists on our table so hard, that the ale jumped out of our mugs and almost hit the ceiling before splashing down to the ground. He pointed his finger at me severely, gritting his teeth against words he couldn’t express. Then he calmed a little and scoffed. “You think you can fool me, huh, Loki? You think you can jerk me around whatever way you want, and I’ll just go along for the ride? Boy, you must think I’m real dumb to fall for any of your tricks, so well as I know you.”

      “So you’ll do it?” I asked.

      “Yes, I will,” he said, sitting down next to me and hailing for a pint. “I don’t want anyone killing that toothless, rattle-headed ogre but me.” Just then, he seemed to notice Balder for the very first time. “How’ve you been?”

      “Good,” Balder replied.

     Thor nodded, silent for a moment, staring at Odin’s son like an estranged nephew. “You aren’t letting this mental case corrupt you, are you?”

     Balder laughed. “No more than necessary.”

      “You like fishing?”

      “Sometimes.”

      “When I get Mjollnir back, we should go.”

     I added, “So long as it’s not out to sea, right, Thor?” I chuckled as I thought of a story Balder hadn’t heard. “Thor was out in a boat, and he wasn’t catching anything, so he hooks up this bull’s head for bait…”

      “
Loki
…” Thor warned.

     I didn’t take any notice. “So he gets a bite and yanks the line, and Jor comes shooting out of the water with the line in his mouth.” I could hardly talk, as hard as I was laughing. “Thor just about wet himself!”

      “I did not!” Thor protested. Then he looked to Balder and said, “Who’re you going to believe—me, or the report of some water serpent whose father has worse breath than he’s got?”

     Now Balder was laughing so hard, that he almost made tears trying to stifle it.

     Thor merely shook his head and grumbled, “Why Odin ever became your blood-brother, I’ll never know.”

      “You may well ask the same of your friendship with me,” I quipped.

      “I would stand against the greatest monster
with
you, but I would never spill my blood
for
you.” Turning to Balder, he said, “Did he ever tell you about the time we went to Jotunheim to see that clod Geirrod?”

     Thor and I didn’t get around to our mission that day. We stayed at the alehouse long into the night, competing to tell the best story, of which Balder was the judge. We wrapped up the evening with a drinking contest—I only remember that Balder won, because he was incapable of getting drunk. When we woke up the next morning, both Thor and I had a different boot on each foot. Balder had to explain that, when our intoxication hit its peak, we told each other “I love you” and swapped left boots as a sign of best-friendship. Furthermore, the boots we swapped had cut locks of our hair in the toes. It was then that we had to tell Balder the golden rule: What happens in an alehouse dies in secret.