APPLES OF THE GODS

APPLES OF THE GODS, by Jane Dougherty

I walk through the orchard, taking the path between the plum trees and the blueberry bushes, touching the cloudberries and the bright clusters of hazel nuts. I let my wanderings take me to the pear trees, and then the apple trees, the most precious of all. In the natural way of things, there would be no apple trees in these high and far off days, in this high and far off place that is Asgard, and nor were there, until Odin fetched them from a future where the gods are all dead and dust. The apples that Odin brought from that misty, distant time are no ordinary fruits. And why would ordinary fruits have interested Odin? These are the apples of eternal youth, and I, Idunn the fair, have them in my keeping.

Odin exchanged one of his eyes for wisdom, though except for his apparently magnanimous gesture with the apples, his wisdom he keeps to himself. As much a brawler and mischief-maker as the rest of the gods, his one eye is always open to look after his own interests. If he brought back the apples of eternal youth from that place beyond the ending, I suspect it was for himself and to have company in his immortality. He shares his gift of the magic apples with all the gods, so none will die of old age, but there are greybeards among them. Odin is not above jealousy, and he makes sure that he is not surrounded by bold and beautiful youths. He would not even relieve my man Bragi, his own son, of a few years. He fears Bragi’s sweet words in the mouth of a handsome youth would turn too many heads, no doubt.

These apples that I tend and protect through the endless days and nights, will not give me a young husband. Asgard, home of the gods, is a cruel place, where ever-youthful maidens are married to old men, where these arms that protect the birthing of countless children have no child to hold in a maternal embrace. The apples I tend, with their promise of life renewed, mock my own youth, and I sometimes think I would give it all up for that brief spark of brilliance that is the lot of the men and women of Midgard.

I touch the apples and stroke their smooth skin, green as life and red as blood. I muse, as often happens in this orchard, on thoughts provoked by the apples, their smell, their smoothness. I wonder about life and immortality, and how I will bear it. The long grasses bend beneath my feet and I stroke the sun-yellow heads of tall flowers. This place is all that Asgard has of value. All its beauty and peace is caught between these boughs, lies cupped in the dawn-pink of fruit blossom. I sit in the sun that never falters in this orchard, and wait for another hour of eternity to flow by.

I left the feasting hall, left the ‘gods’ to their drunken quarrel, started by Loki and his dirty mouth. His tactic is always the same, to provoke those he knows will not have the wit to ignore him. Some will snatch up weapons, and Odin will call them angrily to order. Then there are those like Bragi, who will bluster and search for weapons conveniently forgotten outside the hall, and then sink back behind the dishes and pots of the table to hide behind the laughter and derision of the rest. I am weary of having my husband reduced to ridicule, and weary of having such a husband. I am weary of sharing a home with braggarts and mischief-makers.

Bees hum loud here, and blackbirds sing. I would make my house in this place and leave the man-gods to their futile bickering, but Odin would never allow it. I must show my beauty and my youth at his gatherings, for I am a monument to his munificence. I have a duty to guard the fruits of immortality. It is my life, more important than Bragi and his poems that serve him instead of children, more important than my own childlessness. Yet here, surrounded by fruitfulness, I wonder if duty is all.

The great hall rocks with anger and Loki’s insolent laughter. It follows me here, even into the orchard that is not mine, but that it is my duty to protect. The sound of an arrogant warrior’s tread approaches, and a shadow falls across my face. Loki. I turn away but he hunkers down beside me. In his hand he has an apple. I make to snatch it from him. No one should touch the apples but the keeper.

“Look,” he says and points to a blemish on the green skin. “The apples have a blight.” I touch the brown place with trembling finger. Have the birds been pecking at my charges while I slept? “And here,” he says as another speck appears in the red. “Luckily, I know a forest where the same magic apples grow.”

I turn to him sharply and catch the glitter of Loki-lies in his fox-crafty face. I open my mouth to tell him I don’t believe him, but he holds the apple in front of my eyes, and I see. The blemish has spread and rot delves deep into the flesh.

“This will spread and the trees will die. I’ll take you to the forest now, before the damage goes too far.”

“Why should I believe you?”

Loki laughs and shrugs. “Why would I lie about this? I don’t want to wither and die. Come, I have horses ready.”

With a pang, I leave the blighted orchard where the bees and the wasps feast obliviously and follow Loki, the detested, the hateful. The wrench is hard, duty stronger than I had thought, but I do not want my world to die. Perhaps Loki is right. Perhaps, just for once, he is not lying. We reach the banks of the Ifing and my horse makes to plunge after Loki’s into the racing current. I pull on the reins but the beast pays me no more heed than the men of Asgard have ever done. Ifing is wild and cold, and beyond lies the land of the giants. I cry out to Loki, but his horse is already clambering up the far bank and calling out to my own mount to make haste. I have no choice but to follow.

We climb higher and higher into the mountains, into the land of the Jötnar. The dark, dead, winter green of fir trees enfolds us, and the earth we trample, beneath a thick carpet of needles, is sterile. Even the sound of our horses’ hooves does not grow into a song of movement. I smell the cold scent of snow, and the wind whispers of ice and frost.

“There is no orchard here,” I call to Loki, but my words are swept away and lost among the stark tree trunks. I glance behind. The forest bends over the track, and I see nothing in the gloom. Ahead is only the red swirl of Loki’s cloak, so I follow because there is no other sign of life.

“Here it is,” he shouts, at last. “Just ahead, there’s a broad glade and in the middle of the glade is a tree bearing apples of everlasting youth.”

I slow my horse to a walk. I sense trickery. Loki laughs. “Look, just beyond the spruces.”

His horse walks beyond the spruces into sunlight. The red of his cloak catches sun-fire, and I follow. Even if he is lying, I long to see the sun again. The black tail of Loki’s horse swishes, and he breaks into a trot. I enter the bright dazzle of sunlight and shield my eyes to look for the tree. On a sudden, the light dims and the trees murmur. Light ripples like wings, and the air flutters. Soft and feathered darkness falls and envelops me, as talons, steely-strong but gentle pluck me from my horse’s back. Then there is nothing but the whistle of icy wind in my ears and the dark forest that falls away beneath me. A speck in the glade, red and joyful, flickers then is gone.

Cold and terror steal my breath away, and the lurch of my stomach when the talons lift me into the air is like an evisceration. The world shrinks, forests wheel in a wild circle, snowy glades spin around in a bewildering, sickening motion. The mountainside rears up vertically then slips back level as a plain, before slowly rising back to its correct slope and staying there. The world at last settles into the world of a great bird, and I, being an elf and a creature of the light, let the change flow into my blood and embrace it.

After the initial cold of the upward sweep, I can feel the heat of the bird, the warm of its feathers, form a cloak about me, protecting me from the icy winds and the freezing mists of the high air. I place my hands on the talons that encircle me, and a shiver of pleasure passes from the bird to my fingertips. I feel strangely safe, all decisions taken from me, worries scattered like raindrops. In this high air I am nothing, the prey of an eagle, a life in transit or in limbo. What will be will be, but something in the touch of the bird, the feathered softness, the gentle clasp of the cruel talons, tell me it will not be heartless and cold.

The wild, exhilarating flight ends, and I am set down within a stone palisade before a fine longhouse with carved beams. No even now do I feel fear, only anger at Loki and his trickery. The feathered darkness gathers about me and I am in the warm sheltered shadow of an immense eagle. No fear, not even now. How could I fear such warmth and such grace? The dark feathers droop and melt, and the darkness shrinks to the size of a man, a man taller and stronger than the men-gods of Asgard, with skin fair as snow and hair bright gold as the sun. The Jötunn smiles and holds out his hand.

“I am Thjazi. Welcome to Jötunheim.”

Not fear, but the remnants of anger make me refuse the handclasp and the welcome. “I should have expected treachery. Why did Loki give me to you?”

Thjazi shrugs. “You know Loki. He deceived me, I caught him, and to save his skin he agreed to bring you to me.”

I stare at the great man before me, at his frank smile and the gold of his hair, his muscled chest and arms, and I cannot help but think of Bragi. Bragi will no doubt be making a poem about the kidnapping of his wife, twisting the grey hairs of his beard with sorrow, but never thinking to get himself on a horse and ride after her. “Why do you want me?”

Thjazi’s smile falters and becomes a curious, penetrating expression, as though he could perhaps see into my heart if he peered long and deep enough.

“Because you are beautiful and wise, good and compassionate. Is that not enough?”

The compliments make me reel. I have had compliments before, but hollow and without substance. Always there has been a veiled motive.

“And what of my wishes? Did you not think to ask me if I was content to leave my husband and Asgard? Do my desires count for nothing?”

Thjazi shakes his head sadly. “Does Odin listen to women’s desires now? Do not the women of Asgard, as of Midgard, do their masters’ bidding without questioning?”

I cannot hold the gaze of his eyes that are green as ripe apples, and I feel my anger die into the silent glow of embers. The Jötunn is right. My wishes count for nothing. They never have. I was married to Bragi because Bragi wanted me, and Odin gave his son what he wanted. I am useful because the apples of everlasting youth are in my keeping. That I am young and bound to an old man has never meant anything to any of them. Thjazi holds out his hand again.

“Come,” he says, “I will show you my dwelling. You will be mistress there and no one will come nigh you should you not wish it. Not even will I.”

I raise my head and see a light in his eyes that I have seen in no man’s eyes in Asgard. I take his hand. “And should I pine for home. Will you let me return?”

“They will come for you. You must decide.”

“They have their apples,” I say. “As long as they have their orchard with their fruits and their berries. As long as they have the fruits that give them immortality, they care nothing for who keeps watch over them.”

Thjazi takes my hands. “It is you who keeps the orchard alive, love,” he says gently. “Without you, the orchard with die, the fruits will rot, the nut trees wither and fall. You are its soul, Idunn.”

 I turn away because I cannot bear the Jötunn’s apple green eyes. They show me something I have never had, and something I should never wish for. Bragi is my husband, keeping safe the apples of eternal youth my duty. That should be all I care for, but Bragi’s grey beard and his voice that is full of poems and never my name, remind me that it is not.

“Then the orchard will die and the gods will age, and nothing will be as it was,” I say, unable to keep the sorrow, for myself and my lost life, spilling over into my voice. Thjazi keeps hold of my hands and draws me to him. He waves his hand over the mountainside where rich pastures slope down to rushing torrents and fat cattle graze. His hand’s arc takes in the pastures, the forests and, in a sheltered valley, an orchard full of blossom and fruit all at once.

“This will be yours to keep, the crops and the kine yours to care for, and our children and their mothers will come to you for healing. The quarrellers and braggarts, the treacherous and the jealous of Asgard do not deserve your loyalty. Stay, Idunn.”

The tears well up though I try so hard to keep them from falling. The emptiness of my existence stretches before and behind, and I see myself for what I am, a useful beam in Odin’s house. Not a woman with desires, not a girl with dreams, just a sturdy roof beam. I let Thjazi’s hands drop and make my way to the longhouse, my new home.

***

Time passes. Spring grows and swells and summer comes. I fill my days with teaching and tending. The Jötnar have no use for magic apples, but their women cry out in childbed like all others, and their children get worms and fall out of trees, are bitten by pigs and catch damp fevers like children everywhere. I miss nothing of Asgard, except perhaps Bragi’s poems in the firelight that carve pictures in the air of something sweet and unattainable.

There are bees here too, and the birds sing the same melodies. Thjazi is attentive and waits for me to give a sign that he may come to me. For such a strong man he is patient and gentle, and every day, as Asgard grows dim and vague and Jötunheim bright and warm, I feel almost able to fall. Thjazi walks with me in the meadows and tells me my duty is to myself, and my place is where I would have it. He shows me the things I have accomplished, the crops that grow without blight, the calves with their mothers, the children running at their games straight and healthy. This I have done with the willingness of my heart, he says, not because a one-eyed god has imposed it. I know he is right, and my heart is heavy with the knowledge.

 When he comes to me in the dark of night, I let the golden Jötunn into my bed. The night is too long and cold to spend it alone, even in summer, even when the stars shine bright. Thjazi is kind and gentle and strong, but he cannot make words into music the way Bragi can. When he sleeps, I remember the song poems and wonder if perhaps Bragi did not put into them what he would have given me had I asked. I wonder, but I have no answers.

“The gods will die without their apples of youth,” I say to Thjazi.

“That is why they will come for you,” he replies. “Loki stole you for me because otherwise I would have killed him. Now, the gods will kill him if he doesn’t bring you back.”

“Will you let me go if I ask?” I have asked this question before. Thjazi looks away.

“They will come and you must choose.”

“But if I ask to return to Asgard, will you let me go?”

He turns and walks away.

***

The orchards of Jötunheim are as fair as the orchards of Asgard, and I have my freedom to come and go at will, to do what I know to make life easier for the Jötunns. But women are still women, and the menfolk always have the final word, be it in Asgard, Midgard or Jötunheim. I was brought here without my consent, and here I shall stay like it or no, or I shall be snatched back again like a hoe that still has some useful life left in it. I walk among the fruits ripening, the berries taking on their bright colours, and think of what comes after the ripening—the fall and the withering. There will be withering in Asgard without the magic apples to keep age at bay, and I think of Bragi and how his beard is already full of silver. How much more will it bear?

Thjazi comes to me at night and I hold him in my arms. He returns my embrace, and sometimes it is strong enough to make me forget everything, past present and future.

***

He is away, fishing on the lake, my golden Jötunn. I walk through the barley and cure a patch of blight. The wind blows soft here and strokes the golden stalks. The meadow flowers are as yellow as the sun-flowers of Asgard, the eglantine as perfumed, but I smell the ice in the mountains and know that soon winter will come. The snow will fall and the lake freeze over. We will huddle around our fires in our great halls and listen to the skalds telling their stories and strumming their music. In Asgard too, the fires will blaze in the hearths, but will Bragi Greybeard still sing or will his voice have cracked with age? The apples will have withered on the bough, and Frigg, Odin’s wife, will stare into her mirror at the cracks in the skin around her eyes, wondering where her husband’s eye will wander next.

A stirring of the air makes me look up into the clear sky. Mountain peaks thrust all about, clad in their dark green furs, and in the patch of open sky a hawk hangs, watching. On a sudden, the hawk plunges, a raggedy flight. Not a hawk, a buzzard perhaps. The bird drops, veers, swoops, and I see through the seeming. This is Loki wrapped in Frigg’s hawk-feather cloak, come to take me back.

I scream for Thjazi, but he is too far away. The women in the barley field look up, but what can they do? Their children stop their games in curiosity. The feathered cloak covers me and I smell trickery and malice. I tear at the cloak but find that I have no hands. The earth rushes up to meet me and I feel the threads of Loki’s enchantment wrap me in its mesh. I fall, bounce, roll. I am a nut, and Loki plucks me from the earth in his talon-fingers with a chuckle.

My anger and my despair rock the air, and far away on the lake, Thjazi hears, and his anger is ten times mine. It rolls like thunder over the lake and sets the air in violent motion. Loki-hawk falters and his wings flap like drying washing but he struggles on. I feel the air fill with the majestic wingbeats of an eagle, my golden Jötunn eagle, and I know suddenly, if I am asked, what I will choose.

We cross the river Ifing as the sun sets and the night begins. I feel the cold air of rushing water rise up and ruffle the false feathers of Loki’s disguise. A nut has no voice, no power. I am as helpless as a chick carried from its nest by a raptor. My eagle is closing on Loki Hawk-Cloaked. I can hear the wind as it roars though his pinions, and in his wild voice, fury and grief.

Ahead, Asgard looms, perched high on its rock, lofty and indifferent to the world. I scream, a nut scream, for around the walls of the fastness, they have built a hedge of kindling. Loki shrieks in his hawk voice, and ploughs his way through the last free air, and tumbles, an ungainly, feathered ragbag, behind Asgard’s stone walls. The kindling is lit, and a wall of flame rises up behind us, encircling the fastness, filling the evening sky with fiery red.

I fall, bounce, roll, and as the enchantment fades, a scream tears through the roaring voice of the fire. I stumble to my feet, my eyes fixed on my hopes. An immense eagle, my Jötunn eagle, falters as fire springs from each outspread pinion to the next. Rippling flame engulfs him, a torch that lights the darkening sky, and he falls, slowly, slowly, a blazing autumn leaf. All of Asgard shouts out in triumph and the gods, haggard and grey, push me aside to be the first to reach the Jötunn in his agony and deliver the deathblow.

Loki is already there, his hawk-cloak cast aside, a knife in his hand. I run to stop him, sobbing like any mortal woman, but are not all women the same when they love? I am too late, too slow, too feeble to stop his final act of ignominy. With a shriek of wild joy, Loki’s knife prises out the eyes of my golden Jötunn and tosses them into the flames. But the flames will not have them. I make sure of that. I think of my apples, green and bright, and how I preserve them from all harm, and Thjazi’s eyes soar into the sky despite the anger of the gods.

***

I see them now, Thjazi’s dear, gentle eyes, stars now, brighter than any others in this cursed sky. They will still shine long after the future comes, as it will. The future, full of aging and death, bloodletting and battle, will come because the gods are corrupt and undeserving of immortality. The future will come that Odin saw, when the gods of Asgard are dust and Asgard fallen and forgotten, and he will be the architect of his own undoing.

 I stand in the orchard, watching the stars. In the hall, Bragi makes his poems and I listen in vain for my name among the sweet words that he strums. I watch the stars that will shine forever, and remember the apple green eyes of the Jötunn eagle who taught me that the path to love is also the path of sorrow, and that it has no end.

________________________________________

Jane Dougherty writes novels, short stories and poetry. Her stories always contain a speculative element, often derived from her native Irish and adopted Norse mythologies. She lives in southwest France in the middle of a meadow where the stories grow.