"He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you
but he thinks
this is a lie, so he says in the end
you're dead, nothing can hurt you
which seems to him
a more promising beginning, more true."
- 'A Myth of Devotion' by Louise Glück
When mankind was yet new to the northlands, and cast their eyes to the skies and prayed, they sent their prayers to Herfodr Bor, Father of Hosts, king of the aesir, who dwelled in the land of Asaheim. And in Asaheim was found Bor's stronghold, Asgard, and in Asgard was found the silver-thatched valaskjalf, the hall where Bor himself did dwell, along with his people.
Within this hall, in the dark of night, a child slept, forgotten. The shouts of men and the growl of thunder and the cracking of wood woke him; little Odin sat up fearfully, peering into a darkness so absolute that for a moment he thought he might be blind. But he turned his head, and saw a sliver of light slipping through the crack between his door and the wall. The light flickered; his father's warriors stomped past, walking by torchlight, their heavy feet shaking the walls and floors of Bor's valaskjalf. Odin waited until the light was nearly gone, then slipped from his bed and fled down the hall on bare and silent feet.
Odin could hear the roar of men boasting, then the sound of metal-on-metal; there was fighting in Valholl. Above the din, there boomed a loud and powerful laugh, the laughter of King Bor himself. Perhaps his sword had drank of heart's blood, weapon's mead. Odin ran away from Valholl, hugging the walls and keeping to the shadows, and made his way to his mother's chambers. No torches lit his path, and Odin went by memory and feeling. He crept into Bestla's chambers, standing on tip-toes to pluck at the furs hanging from her bed. Bestla herself slept atop the furs, naked. She stirred, and in the darkness Odin saw her eyes glow red like coals, and then she reached down and picked him up one-handed.
Odin rested his head in the curve between her breast and her shoulder. Her hand, tipped with wicked black nails, tenderly cupped his skull. The lady Bestla was immense, a head taller than her husband, and that was because she was a giant and no lady at all.
"My broodling," she murmured, "did the noise wake you?"
Odin nodded into her shoulder. Bestla sighed, and her breath frosted against Odin's skin. His mother's magicks gave her the form of a woman, and without those enchantments her touch would blacken the skin of any aesir, with the sole exception of the child she had borne, but the only indication of this was Bestla's icy breath.
"What did I tell you to do, when you are frightened?"
"To study my runes," Odin said, but added, "But it is too dark, mother!"
"Dam," Bestla reminded him gently. "Jotnar have no mothers, we have dams."
"But I'm an Asgardian," Odin said stubbornly.
"And I am not," said Bestla. Her hands closed over his, and Odin remembered the many lessons she had given him in rune-magicks, her hands guiding his much smaller ones as he learned the shapes of the runes, just as his father's hands guided Odin's hands as he learned to shape wood. "Charms to guard you in battle," Bestla said, and Odin mouthed the runes' names silently. "Charms to blunt the weapons of your foes. Charms to break chains. Charms to quiet the ocean's storms, and charms so that a lover will scorn you not." She clutched Odin tight to her. "Twas the last charm that bound your sire to me."
Bestla had told Odin the story many times, so that Odin thought he had always known it, had it whispered in his ear as he lay in his cradle, had it sang into his marrow even as he grew beneath Bestla's beating heart. Of how Bestla, born genderless, of the blood of ancient Ymir, had forsaken her home to follow Bor Burasson here to Asgard, had forsaken her Jotun form for that of an ásynjur woman, and sat faithfully at Bor's feet ever since. And from them was born Odin, the first of a new breed, for this was before the vanir had deigned to mix their proud blood with Jotuns and aesir alike, before Heimdall's nine mothers had brought him forth. Never had there been a child born such as Odin.
"Nothing loves as a Jotun loves," Bestla promised her son. "For our love is more eternal than the sun and the moon, which may be devoured by wolves and die, but a Jotun's love is never devoured and never dies; and more eternal than the aesir themselves, for it is Idunn's apples which give them life eternal, and without them they would starve, but a Jotun's love never starves and never dies. Bestla loves Bor so long as there is a Bestla."
In her grip, Odin shivered.
The door flew open, and slammed against the wall. Odin shook in his mother's grip, but Bestla herself did not flinch. Silhouetted against the doorway, backlit by a flickering torch held by drunken servants, stood Bor. Bor Burasson, Bor Asgard's-king, Bor Father-of-Hosts. He stumbled forward into the bedchambers, groaning, "Blast it, help me shuck these boots."
Bestla abandoned Odin on the bed, and knelt before her husband, pulling the boots from his feet. Bor leaned upon her shoulder, swaying slightly. He looked up and only then did he see Odin, and his eyes went wide. "What in all the Hels is the boy doing here!" Bor cried.
"Odin was frightened by the din," Bestla told him, pushing the boots aside. "Our broodling sought me here. Let Odin stay the night, and sleep between us."
Bor pulled off his shirt, revealing a muscular torso crisscrossed with scars and streaked with soot; Asgard's king must've fallen into the fireplace while brawling in Valholl. "I came to your chambers tonight to lie with you," he told Bestla. "The boy was not part of it. Send him back to his room. I don't like the way you coddle him anyway, you'll make him strange, filling his head with that Frost Giant nonsense."
Bestla regarded him reproachfully. "If you would have me, then have me," she told him. "But you are Odin's sire, speak to Odin yourself. Speak not through me."
Bor groaned but kicked at the bed, shouting, "Out, out with you!", sending Odin tumbling from the furs and running for the door. At the threshold Odin stopped, peeking back in, hoping to see his mother upbraiding his father for his cruelty, but all he saw was Bor already pushing Bestla back onto the bed. So he fled back down the hall, back the way he'd come.
The night was darker still, and somewhere on the slippery path to his chambers Odin stumbled and went sprawling. He landed on his belly, his hands scraping the stones, his foot twisting painfully. He lay frozen for a moment until dull pain seeped into his consciousness, and Odin whimpered and curled in on himself. His whimper echoed down the hall, but no one came to find him, and that made him sob, for he felt very small and very alone. He wanted Bestla to come and fuss over him; he wanted Bor to come and sweep him up in his strong arms.
Footsteps behind him, and Odin's sob hitched in his throat, and relief flooded his body. Had his parents heard him after all? But the footsteps were much too light to belong to either Bor or Bestla, and Odin's joy burned away like morning's dew when he realized it was just some stranger. Some court lady or guard come to stare at the princeling's scraped knees and palms.
But it was none of these. Odin looked up to see a girl, golden as a sovereign, younger even than he. She came and sat beside him, and rubbed his back. "Are you hurt bad?" she asked. "Should I go fetch my father?"
Odin sniffed. "What is your father going to do to help me?"
"My father is a great healer," the girl assured him. "If your ankle is broken, he can fix it." Her hand hovered over his ankle. "May I touch?"
Odin was afraid he'd howl from pain, but he didn't want her to know that. "If you wish," he said.
She rested her hand on the ankle, and there was a little pain, but when Odin didn't flinch or cry out she began to rub gently. They sat there for some minutes as the girl rubbed sensation back into Odin's aching ankle, and he wiped at his face and said, "I think I can walk now."
"Let me help," she said, and put his arm about her shoulder and walked with him to his chambers. When they made it to his door, Odin turned to tell her goodnight, but she dropped a curtsey before he could say a word.
He flushed. "You knew all along I was the prince?"
The girl smiled. "Of course I knew." And from far down the hall came a cry, a woman's voice calling for Frigga! Frigga! and she quickly said, "I have to be going. Farewell!"
"Thank you," Odin said, but she was already gone.
Odin sought after her for some days, without success. There were not so many children in Asgard; there were many warriors in gleaming helms, many beautiful women clad in furs or silks or sometimes even belts made of coins, but few children. All he knew was that the girl's name was Frigga, and that her father was a healer, but that helped him but little. At last, Odin went to King Bor, who was sitting at the head of his table, supping with a host of warriors to his left and a host of warriors to his right.
Odin approached respectfully, waiting to be acknowledged. Bor was in a good mood tonight, and when he saw his son he pulled him into his lap and favored him with a bite from the succulent meat he held. "That's a good lad! Eat hearty! You'll grow into a great warrior yet... perhaps a king one day!"
Odin twisted in his father's lap and peered up at him. "Father-King," he said, "may I ask you a question?"
Bor drank deeply of his mead and slammed the empty tankard on the table, demanding more from the serving wenches. "Go ahead," he said.
"Do you know of a girl named Frigga?" Odin chewed at his lip. "Her father is a healer-"
"A girl!" Laughter bubbled from Bor's throat. "You hear that?" he asked, turning to the nearest of his warriors. "Already asking after a girl. He's my son, that's for sure!" His warriors roared with laughter.
Odin despaired, but then a tall figure draped himself over Bor's shoulder and whispered into Odin's ear, "Fear not, my prince. I know of whom you speak, she is Fjorgyn's daughter." Odin looked up to see the god Od, his father's oldest friend, the god of comings and goings. It had been Od who had given Odin his tooth-gift when Odin grew his first tooth; it had been Od who'd given Odin his name.
When Bestla brought the newly born child to Bor, Bor had been unsure of what to do with him. To feed and clothe and name him was to accept him as his heir, but how could a half-breed Jotun rule Asgard? And yet Odin was his first-born son and no man wishes to cast out a healthy boy to die. So Bor turned to his oldest friend, Od, who advocated for the mewling, helpless child.
"Let him live," urged Od. "I know the boy has a grand fate."
"Very well," said Bor. "But though Bestla and I may have given him life, so have you, and so he shall bear your name. As you are Od, he shall be Odin."
And so it was that Odin came to bear his name, which like Od's meant something between poetry and frenzy.
Od and Odin agreed to meet the next evening. It was a propitious decision, for Bestla chose that morning to go into one of her trances, and when she was lost to the spirit world no one might reach her, not even her son; nor did he wish to, for the first time he had seen his mother go into her trance, Odin had been filled with a sort of horror unlike anything he knew. It was like watching ice break off a glacier and crash into the sea, or the cry a deer makes when its heart's blood stains its breast, and it gives itself up for lost.
The vanir women who lived in Asgard practiced seid, but the art had been taught to them by the jotnar, who had perfected a raw and frightening form of magick, the purest form of which was practiced by none but themselves. Their ancestors had divined the future with runes long before the vanir or aesir had sat in silver-thatched halls and fed themselves on good meat. While Bestla was in her trances, it was not unknown for fire to be sighted in the skies above Asgard, or for ancient trees to crack and groan, and blood pour from their limbs. When she was in her trances, Bestla would turn away even King Bor from her door. This was the only time she saved to herself.
Odin obediantly met up with Od at the bottom of the long flight of stairs. Od awaited him, whittling something from a block of wood with his knife. When he saw Odin, he pocketeted both knife and wood and swept the boy up into his arms. "Ah, look at you, you scamp! Doesn't the queen dress you more warmly than this?"
Odin flushed. The truth was he had dressed himself; he had slept beside Bestla in her big bed, and woke to find her burning wood in her grate. Knowing what this meant, Odin had put on his wrinkled tunic from the day before, clumsily wound his leg wrappings around his legs, and snuck from her chambers to scrounge up some food for himself. The maidservants had fled in terror hours before - it was said anyone struck by the queen's gaze while she practiced seid would be accursed. King Bor's halls were mostly empty, and Odin assumed the king was gone boar-hunting. He half-thought Od would have gone with him, forgotten his promise from yesterday, and was pleased to be proven wrong.
Seeing the boy's embarassment, Od quickly shucked his own cap and sat in on Odin's head, a favor that made the boy smile, then sat him down and draped his own cloak over Odin's shoulders for warmth. "Come along," Od said, "and follow after, and be quiet."
Odin followed him down to the sacred grove, walking quickly to remain in-step with Od, and remain hidden in the dark folds of his cloak. The cool air whirled about them, playing with their hair and tweaking their noses, and it seemed to Odin that other, stranger, things danced just out of sight, on the fringes of perception, in the encroaching darkness.
Once inside the grove, Od went to lay beneath the gaping roots of a tree so long dead it had petrified into stone, and gestured for Odin to join him. There they laid for some minutes, until dusk's dark veil covered them completely. In the distance came a glow; and Odin watched as the glow came closer, and coalesced into torches, torches held by the uplifted hands of a small group of womenfolk. Vanir, distinguished by their surreally blue eyes and surreally blonde hair, even in the dim light; all but for the youngest, an Asgardian girl whom Odin recognized as Frigga, Fjorgyn's daughter. She carried a basket and went barefoot, despite the cold. The women stopped before an ancient apple tree, and the tallest and most beautiful of the women, Idunn by name, stepped forward and cupped one of the fruit with her hand. Odin watched as her lips moved, as she chanted or, as he liked to imagine, coaxed the tree to give up its fruit. The apple came loose in her hand, and Idunn dropped it into the basket that Frigga held aloft for her.
Odin tilted his head to peer up at Od. The elder god watched Idunn rapturously. With the innocence and wisdom of a child, Odin understood that Od loved her, had perhaps come here and watched her gather the sacred apples on many occasions.
The basket of sacred apples seemed to give off its own light, and as Frigga leaned over them, the soft glow illuminated her features, revealing the curve of her cheek, the benificent curve of her lips. Odin had known it was her at once; he had not needed his eyes to see, but he was glad of them, nonetheless.
In her chambers in Asgard, Bestla's black nail scratched across a plank of blackened wood in three jagged motions. They moved of their own accord, and she gazed in wonder at the rune she had cast. As she did in all her trances, she sought time and again for scraps of Odin's fate. In the fire-charred wood was etched the first rune of Futhark, a secret to Odin's fate. Bestla sealed this knowledge within her secret self, and cast the wood and its rune back into the grate. Some things were too sacred to be known by others.