His fire hidden

in a cloak, thick

and dark as a pall of smoke,

there is, now, no thought,

no calculation;

he is pure action

stepping from the night

into the shining hall.

 

He has no friends here

and no one greets him

as he moves smoothly

through the crowd

to stand beside his nephew.

 

Into the blind God’s hand

he presses a twisted

black dart and whispers.

 

Throw it and see what happens.

 

Then he turns on his heel

and leaves.

 

 

Hodur speaks.

 

I neither hated my brother

nor envied him;

we complemented one another;

without my shadow

he was too bright to behold,

without his light

I was too dark to see.

 

 

Loki speaks.

 

I am not much given to regrets;

we do what we have to.

 

Baldur once said to me—

They have made of me

an object of amusement;

what was a symbol of greatness,

now diminishes me.

 

When it was done I fled the hall

and hid in the wilds;

they found me and,

in the form of a shimmering fish,

caught me in the net

of my own cleverness.

 

Before my eyes

they tore my son apart

and, with his guts,

bound me to a rock.

 

My wife stayed to tend me

and even my brother

would come sometimes

and sit silently beside me.

 

I don’t know if it was sympathy

or whether he was afraid

that I too, in torment,

might drag some wisdom

from the void.

 

Hyrrokin speaks.

 

Some people have lived so long

they forget that nothing

lasts forever;

with Baldur fallen

they all felt Death’s cold breath

upon their necks.

 

Robbed of certainty,

they lost their senses;

they mourned him so wildly

and poured up such treasures

about his corpse,

they could not release him

and called for help

from an older and darker power.

 

I came.

 

Old One-eye understood;

I saw him whispering

in the boy’s dead ear,

before I dragged him off the strand

and set him to drift

upon the tides.

 

Then I rode home laughing!

 

My kin will not mourn for Baldur,

for he will rise again.

 

We would rather weep for the Gods

trapped in their blinkered

and unchanging present.

 

 

Baldur speaks.

 

My cousin is not unkind;

my brother, my wife and I

dine at her table,

and wander, at liberty,

across her wide lands.

 

She makes the ages brief

till that day comes

when we shall rise again

to the light.