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- The Treasures of the Gods
- Thor’s wife was the beautiful Sif. She was of the Aesir. Thor loved her for
- herself, and for her blue eyes and her pale skin, her red lips and her smile,
- and he loved her long, long hair, the color of a field of barley at the end of
- summer.
- Thor woke, and stared at sleeping Sif. He scratched his beard. Then he
- tapped his wife with a huge hand. “What happened to you?” he asked.
- She opened her eyes, the color of the summer sky. “What are you talking
- about?” she asked, and then she moved her head and looked puzzled. Her
- fingers reached up to her bare pink scalp and touched it, exploring it
- tentatively. She looked at Thor, horrified.
- “My hair,” was all she said.
- Thor nodded. “It’s gone,” he said. “He has left you bald.”
- “He?” asked Sif.
- Thor said nothing. He strapped on his belt of power, Megingjord, which
- doubled his enormous strength. “Loki,” he said. “Loki has done this.”
- “Why do you say that?” said Sif, touching her bald head frantically, as if
- the fluttering touch of her fingers would make her hair return.
- “Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I
- always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.”
- Thor found Loki’s door locked, so he pushed through it, leaving it in
- pieces. He picked Loki up and said only, “Why?”
- “Why what?” Loki’s face was the picture of perfect innocence.
- “Sif’s hair. My wife’s golden hair. It was so beautiful. Why did you cut it
- off?”A hundred expressions chased each other across Loki’s face: cunning and
- shiftiness, truculence and confusion. Thor shook Loki hard. Loki looked
- down and did his best to appear ashamed. “It was funny. I was drunk.”
- Thor’s brow lowered. “Sif’s hair was her glory. People will think that her
- head was shaved for punishment. That she did something she should not have
- done, did it with someone she should not have.”
- “Well, yes. There is that,” said Loki. “They will probably think that. And
- unfortunately, given that I took her hair from the roots, she will go through
- the rest of her life completely bald . . .”
- “No, she won’t.” Thor looked up at Loki, whom he was now holding far
- above his head, with a face like thunder.
- “I am afraid she will. But there are always hats and scarves . . .”
- “She won’t go through life bald,” said Thor. “Because, Loki Laufey’s
- son, if you do not put her hair back right now, I am going to break every
- single bone in your body. Each and every one of them. And if her hair does
- not grow properly, I will come back and break every bone in your body
- again. And again. If I do it every day, I’ll soon get really good at it,” he
- carried on, sounding slightly more cheerful.
- “No!” said Loki. “I can’t put her hair back. It doesn’t work like that.”
- “Today,” mused Thor, “it will probably take me about an hour to break
- every bone in your body. But I bet that with practice I could get it down to
- about fifteen minutes. It will be interesting to find out.” He started to break
- his first bone.
- “Dwarfs!” shrieked Loki.
- “Pardon?”
- “Dwarfs! They can make anything. They could make golden hair for Sif,
- hair that would bond with her scalp and grow normally, perfect golden hair.
- They could do it. I swear they could.”
- “Then,” said Thor, “you had better go and talk to them.” And he dropped
- Loki from high above his head onto the floor.
- Loki clambered to his feet and hurried away before Thor could break any
- more bones.
- He put on his shoes that let him travel through the sky, and he went to
- Svartalfheim, where the dwarfs have their workshops. The most ingenious
- craftsmen of them all, he decided, were the three dwarfs known as the sons of
- Ivaldi.
- Loki went to their underground forge. “Hello, sons of Ivaldi. I have asked
- around, and people here tell me that Brokk and Eitri, his brother, are the
- greatest dwarf craftsmen there are or have ever been,” said Loki.
- “No,” said one of the sons of Ivaldi. “It’s us. We are the greatest
- craftsmen there are.”
- “I am assured that Brokk and Eitri can make treasures as good as those
- you can.”
- “Lies!” said the tallest of the sons of Ivaldi. “I wouldn’t trust those
- fumble-fingered incompetents to shoe a horse.”
- The smallest and the wisest of the sons of Ivaldi simply shrugged.
- “Whatever they make, we could do better.”
- “I hear that they’ve challenged you,” said Loki. “Three treasures. The
- gods of the Aesir will judge who made the best treasure. Oh, and by the way,
- one of the treasures you make needs to be hair. Ever-growing perfect golden
- hair.”
- “We can do that,” said one of the sons of Ivaldi. Even Loki could barely
- tell them apart.
- Loki went across the mountain to see the dwarf called Brokk, at the
- workshop he shared with his brother, Eitri. “Ivaldi’s sons are making three
- treasures as gifts for the gods of Asgard,” said Loki. “The gods are going to
- judge the treasures. Ivaldi’s sons want me to tell you that they are certain you
- and your brother Eitri can’t make anything as good as they can. They called
- you ‘fumble-fingered incompetents.’”
- Brokk was no fool. “This smells extremely fishy to me, Loki,” he said.
- “Are you sure this isn’t your doing? Stirring up trouble between Eitri and me
- and Ivaldi’s boys seems like the sort of thing you’d do.”
- Loki looked as guileless as he could, which was amazingly guileless.
- “Nothing to do with me,” he said innocently. “I just thought you ought to
- know.”
- “And you have no personal stake in this?” asked Brokk.
- “None whatsoever.”
- Brokk nodded and looked up at Loki. Brokk’s brother, Eitri, was the great
- craftsman, but Brokk was the smarter of the two, and the more determined.
- “Well, then we’ll be happy to take on the sons of Ivaldi in a test of skill, to be
- judged by the gods. Because I have no doubt that Eitri can forge better and
- craftier things than Ivaldi’s lot. But let’s make this personal, Loki. Eh?”
- “What do you have in mind?” asked Loki.
- “Your head,” said Brokk. “If we win this contest, we get your head, Loki.
- There’s lots of things going on in that head of yours, and I have no doubt that
- Eitri could make a wonderful device out of it. A thinking machine, perhaps.
- Or an inkwell.”
- Loki kept smiling, but he scowled on the inside. The day had started out
- so well. Still, he simply had to ensure that Eitri and Brokk lost the contest;
- the gods would still get six wonderful things from the dwarfs, and Sif would
- get her golden hair. He could do that. He was Loki.
- “Of course,” he said. “My head. No problem.”
- Across the mountain, the sons of Ivaldi were making their treasures. Loki
- was not worried about them. But he needed to make sure that Brokk and Eitri
- did not, could not possibly, win.
- Brokk and Eitri entered the forge. It was dark in there, lit by the orange
- glow of burning charcoal. Eitri took a pigskin from a shelf and placed it into
- the forge. “I’ve been keeping this pigskin for something like this,” he said.
- Brokk just nodded.
- “Right,” said Eitri. “You work the bellows, Brokk. Just keep pumping
- them. I need this hot, and I need it consistently hot, otherwise it won’t work.
- Pump. Pump.”
- Brokk began to pump the bellows, sending a stream of oxygen-rich air
- into the heart of the forge, heating everything up. He had done it many times
- before. Eitri watched until he was satisfied that it would all be to his liking.
- Eitri left to work on his creation outside the forge. As he opened the door
- to go out, a large black insect flew in. It was not a horsefly and it was not a
- deerfly; it was bigger than either. It flew in and circled the room in a
- malicious way.
- Brokk could hear the sound of Eitri’s hammers outside the forge, and the
- sounds of filing and twisting, of shaping and banging.
- The large black fly—it was the biggest, blackest fly you have ever seen—
- landed on the back of Brokk’s hand.
- Both of Brokk’s hands were on the bellows. He did not stop pumping to
- swat at the fly. The fly bit Brokk, hard, on the back of the hand.
- Brokk kept pumping.
- The door opened, and Eitri came in and carefully pulled the work from
- the forge. It appeared to be a huge boar, with bristles of gleaming gold.
- “Good work,” said Eitri. “A fraction of a degree warmer or cooler and the
- whole thing would have been a waste of our time.”
- “Good work you too,” said Brokk.
- The black fly, up on the corner of the ceiling, seethed with resentment
- and irritation.
- Eitri took a block of gold and placed it on the forge. “Right,” he said.
- “This next one will impress them. When I call, start pumping the bellows,
- and whatever happens do not slow down, or speed up, or stop. There’s fiddly
- work involved.”
- “Got it,” said Brokk.
- Eitri left the room and began to work. Brokk waited until he heard Eitri’s
- call, and he started to pump the bellows.
- The black fly circled the room thoughtfully, then landed on Brokk’s neck.
- The insect stepped aside daintily to avoid a rivulet of sweat, for the air was
- hot and close in the forge. It bit Brokk’s neck as hard as it could. Scarlet
- blood joined the sweat on Brokk’s neck, but the dwarf did not stop pumping.
- Eitri returned. He removed a white-hot arm-ring from the forge. He
- dropped it into the stone cooling pool in the forge to quench it. There was a
- cloud of steam as the arm-ring fell into the water. The ring cooled, moving
- rapidly to orange, to red hot, and then, as it cooled, to gold.
- “It’s called Draupnir,” said Eitri.
- “The dripper? That’s a funny name for a ring,” said Brokk.
- “Not for this one,” said Eitri, and he explained to Brokk what was so very
- special about the arm-ring.
- “Now,” said Eitri, “there’s something I’ve had in mind to make for a very
- long time now. My masterwork. But it’s even trickier than the other two. So
- what you have to do is—”
- “Pump, and don’t stop pumping?” said Brokk.
- “That’s right,” said Eitri. “Even more than before. Do not change your
- pace, or the whole thing will be ruined.” Eitri picked up an ingot of pig iron,
- bigger than any ingot that the black fly (who was Loki) had ever seen before,
- and he hefted it into the forge.
- He left the room and called out to Brokk to begin pumping.
- Brokk began to pump, and the sound of Eitri’s hammers began as Eitri
- pulled and shaped and welded and joined.
- Loki, in fly shape, decided that there was no more time for subtlety.
- Eitri’s masterpiece would be something that would impress the gods, and if
- the gods were impressed enough, then he would lose his head. Loki landed
- between Brokk’s eyes and started to bite the dwarf’s eyelids. The dwarf
- continued to pump, his eyes stinging. Loki bit deeper, harder, more
- desperately. Now blood ran from the dwarf’s eyelids, into his eyes and down
- his face, blinding him.
- Brokk squinted and shook his head, trying to dislodge the fly. He jerked
- his head from side to side. He contorted his mouth and tried blowing air up at
- the fly. It was no good. The fly continued to bite, and the dwarf could see
- nothing but blood. A sharp pain filled his head.
- Brokk counted, and at the bottom of the downstroke he whipped one hand
- from the bellows and swiped at the fly, with such speed and such strength
- that Loki barely escaped with his life. Brokk grabbed the bellows once again
- and continued to pump.
- “Enough!” called Eitri.
- The black fly flew unsteadily about the room. Eitri opened the door,
- allowing the fly to escape.
- Eitri looked at his brother with disappointment. Brokk’s face was a mess
- of blood and sweat. “I don’t know what you were playing at that time,” said
- Eitri. “But you came close to ruining everything. The temperature was all
- over the place at the end. As it is, it’s nowhere near as impressive as I’d
- hoped. We’ll just have to see.”
- Loki, in Loki shape, strolled in through the open door. “So, all ready for
- the contest?” he asked.
- “Brokk can go to Asgard and present my gifts to the gods and cut off your
- head,” said Eitri. “I like it best here at my forge, making things.”
- Brokk stared at Loki through swollen eyelids. “I’m looking forward to
- cutting off your head,” said Brokk. “It got personal.”
- II
- In Asgard, three gods sat on their thrones: one-eyed Odin the all-father, redbearded
- Thor of the thunders, and handsome Frey of the summer’s harvest.
- They would be the judges.
- Loki stood before them, beside the three almost identical sons of Ivaldi.
- Brokk, black-bearded and brooding, was there alone, standing to one side,
- the things he had brought hidden beneath sheets.
- “So,” said Odin. “What are we judging?”
- “Treasures,” said Loki. “The sons of Ivaldi have made gifts for you, great
- Odin, and for Thor, and for Frey, and so have Eitri and Brokk. It is up to you
- to decide which of the six things is the finest treasure. I myself will show you
- the gifts made by the sons of Ivaldi.”
- He presented Odin with the spear called Gungnir. It was a beautiful spear,
- carved with intricate runes.
- “It will penetrate anything, and when you throw it, it will always find its
- mark,” said Loki. Odin had but one eye, after all, and sometimes his aim
- could be less than perfect. “And, just as important, an oath taken on this spear
- is unbreakable.”
- Odin hefted the spear. “It is very fine,” was all he said.
- “And here,” said Loki proudly, “is a flowing head of golden hair. Made
- of real gold. It will attach itself to the head of the person who needs it and
- grow and behave in every way as if it were real hair. A hundred thousand
- strands of gold.”
- “I will test it,” said Thor. “Sif, come here.”
- Sif rose and came to the front, her head covered. She removed her
- headscarf. The gods gasped when they saw Sif’s naked head, bald and pink,
- and then she carefully placed the dwarfs’ golden wig on her head and shook
- her hair. They watched as the base of the wig joined itself to her scalp, and
- then Sif stood in front of them even more radiant and beautiful than before.
- “Impressive,” said Thor. “Good job!”
- Sif tossed her golden hair and walked out of the hall into the sunlight, to
- show her new hair to her friends.
- The last of the sons of Ivaldi’s remarkable gifts was small, and folded like
- cloth. This cloth Loki placed in front of Frey.
- “What is it? It looks like a silk scarf,” said Frey, unimpressed.
- “It does,” said Loki. “But if you unfold it, you will discover it is a ship,
- called Skidbladnir. It will always have a fair wind, wherever it goes. And
- although it is huge, the biggest ship you can imagine, it will fold up, as you
- see, like a cloth, so you can put it into your pouch.”
- Frey was impressed, and Loki was relieved. They were three excellent
- gifts. Now it was Brokk’s turn. His eyelids were red and swollen, and there was
- a huge insect bite on the side of his neck. Loki thought Brokk looked entirely
- too cocky, especially given the remarkable things Ivaldi’s sons had made.
- Brokk took the golden arm-ring and placed it in front of Odin on his high
- throne. “This arm-ring is called Draupnir,” said Brokk. “Because every ninth
- night, eight gold arm-rings of equal beauty will drip from it. You can reward
- people with them, or store them, and your wealth will increase.”
- Odin examined the arm-ring, then pushed it onto his arm, up high on his
- biceps. It gleamed there. “It is very fine,” he said.
- Loki recalled that Odin had said the same thing about the spear.
- Brokk walked over to Frey. He raised a cloth and revealed a huge boar
- with bristles made of gold.
- “This is a boar my brother made for you, to pull your chariot,” said
- Brokk. “It will race across the sky and over the sea, faster than the fastest
- horse. There will never be a night so dark that its golden bristles will not give
- light and let you see what you are doing. It will never tire, and will never fail
- you. It is called Gullenbursti, the golden-bristled one.”
- Frey looked impressed. Still, thought Loki, the magical ship that folded
- up like a cloth was every bit as impressive as an unstoppable boar that shone
- in the dark. Loki’s head was quite safe. And the last gift Brokk had to present
- was the one that Loki knew he had already managed to sabotage.
- From beneath the cloth Brokk produced a hammer, and placed it in front
- of Thor.
- Thor looked at it and sniffed.
- “The handle is rather short,” he said.
- Brokk nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s my fault. I was working the
- bellows. But before you dismiss it, let me tell you about what makes this
- hammer unique. It’s called Mjollnir, the lightning-maker. First of all, it’s
- unbreakable—doesn’t matter how hard you hit something with it, the hammer
- will always be undamaged.”
- Thor looked interested. He had already broken a great many weapons
- over the years, normally by hitting things with them.
- “If you throw the hammer, it will never miss what you throw it at.”
- Thor looked even more interested. He had lost a number of otherwise
- excellent weapons by throwing them at things that irritated him and missing,
- and he had watched too many weapons he had thrown disappear into the
- distance, never to be seen again.
- “No matter how hard or how far you throw it, it will always return to your
- hand.”
- Thor was now actually smiling. And the thunder god did not often smile.
- “You can change the size of the hammer. It will grow, and it will also
- shrink down so small that if you wish, you can hide it inside your shirt.”
- Thor clapped his hands together in delight, and thunder echoed across
- Asgard.
- “And yet, as you have observed,” concluded Brokk sadly, “the handle of
- the hammer is indeed too short. This is my fault. I failed to keep the bellows
- blowing while my brother, Eitri, was forging it.”
- “The shortness of the handle is a minor, cosmetic problem,” said Thor.
- “This hammer will protect us from the frost giants. This is the finest gift I
- have ever seen.”
- “It will protect Asgard. It will protect all of us,” said Odin with approval.
- “If I were a giant, I would be very afraid of Thor if he had that hammer,”
- said Frey.
- “Yes. It’s an excellent hammer. But Thor, what about the hair? Sif’s
- beautiful new golden hair!” asked Loki slightly desperately.
- “What? Oh, yes. My wife has very nice hair,” said Thor. “Now. Show me
- how to make the hammer grow and shrink, Brokk.”
- “Thor’s hammer is better even than my wonderful spear and my excellent
- arm-ring,” said Odin, nodding.
- “The hammer is greater and more impressive than my ship and my boar,”
- admitted Frey. “It will keep the gods of Asgard safe.”
- The gods clapped Brokk on the back and told him that he and Eitri had
- made the finest gift that they had ever been given.
- “Good to know,” said Brokk. He turned to Loki. “So,” said Brokk. “I get
- to cut off your head, Laufey’s son, and take it back with me. Eitri will be so
- pleased. We can turn it into something useful.”
- “I . . . will ransom my head,” said Loki. “I have treasures I can give you.”
- “Eitri and I already have all the treasure we need,” said Brokk. “We make
- treasures. No, Loki. I want your head.”
- Loki thought for a moment, then said, “Then you can have it. If you can
- catch me.” And Loki leapt high into the air and ran off, far above their heads.
- In moments he was gone.
- Brokk looked at Thor. “Can you catch him?”
- Thor shrugged. “I really shouldn’t,” he said. “But then, I would very
- much like to try out the hammer.”
- In moments Thor returned, holding Loki tightly. Loki was glaring with
- impotent fury.
- The dwarf Brokk took out his knife. “Come here, Loki,” he said. “I’m
- going to cut off your head.”
- “Of course,” said Loki. “You can, of course, cut off my head. But—and I
- appeal to mighty Odin here—if you cut off any of my neck, you are violating
- the terms of our agreement, which promised you my head, and my head
- only.”
- Odin inclined his head. “Loki is right,” he said. “You have no right to cut
- his neck.”
- Brokk was irritated. “But I can’t cut off his head without cutting his
- neck,” he said.
- Loki looked pleased with himself. “You see,” he said, “if people thought
- through the exactness of their words, they would not dare to take on Loki, the
- wisest, the cleverest, the trickiest, the most intelligent, the best-looking . . .”
- Brokk whispered a suggestion to Odin. “That would be fair,” agreed
- Odin.
- Brokk produced a strip of leather and a knife. He wrapped the leather
- around Loki’s mouth. Brokk tried to pierce the leather with the tip of the
- knifeblade.
- “It’s not working,” said Brokk. “My knife isn’t cutting you.”
- “I might have wisely arranged for protection from knifeblades,” said Loki
- modestly. “Just in case the whole you-can’t-cut-my-neck ploy did not work. I
- am afraid no knifeblade can cut me!”
- Brokk grunted and produced an awl, a pointed spike used in leatherwork,
- and he jabbed it through the leather, punching holes through Loki’s lips.
- Then he took a strong thread and he sewed Loki’s lips together with it.
- Brokk walked away, leaving Loki with his mouth sewn up tight, unable to
- complain.
- For Loki, the pain of being unable to talk hurt even more than the pain of
- having his lips stitched into the leather.
- So now you know: that is how the gods got their greatest treasures. It was
- Loki’s fault. Even Thor’s hammer was Loki’s fault. That was the thing about
- Loki. You resented him even when you were at your most grateful, and you
- were grateful to him even when you hated him the most.
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