Of How Thor Became the Bride of Thrym, part 1
Loki placed one hip against the heavy oak door frame and settled in to enjoy the spectacle. Thor was frowning in the middle of the room, bathed in morning sun and surrounded by a scuffle of servants who ran around the room carrying trays, trailing mysterious fabrics and generally being useless. Loki caught a passing bowl of dried and sugared fruit, and nibbled happily on a raisin. Frey stood balanced on a stool so that he would be able to reach the top of Thor's head, attempting to fasten different veils and decorations into the red, tangled mess that Thor called hair. In the meanwhile, Thor was scowling at the world and threatening to burst out of the dress he was wearing. Oh, yes. Asgard was home to many an athletic and tall woman with chiselled shoulders and not much in the way of hips. Still, to find a dress that would fit Thor's breadth and height proved to be impossible. The dark grey rag he was wearing was pilfered from the closet of some unpleasant matron who, while perhaps as wide-chested as Thor, was about three heads shorter, making the dress hang sadly around the man's knees while its waistline wobbled high up, practically underneath his armpits.
Frey managed to fasten a veil around Thor's head and let its delicate shroud fall experimentally over the man's face. A good decision, since it finally obscured Thor's displeased expression. Even so it had the combined effect of pissing on a forest fire. Doubtful but willing to give it a chance, Frey stepped back to look at his creation. Loki could no longer keep silent.
"It may do it for you, Frey, but I would need some powerful persuasion to fuck that. At least shave that stubble if you won't let me change him," he said approaching the scene. Frey tried to look as if he disagreed but failed miserably. His forehead crumbled into a complicated expression.
"You are not shaving me!" Thor put in loudly, ripping the veil from his head and with it all of Frey's good work.
"He's right, Thor," Frey sighed looking at the flimsy piece of cloth with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.
"Not shaving-," Thor continued, but Frey put up his hand to cut him off.
"You'll never look like a woman, mate, but we must at least make an effort."
Thor paused and looked from one man to the other, obviously wrestling with two choices which were equally unpalatable to him. He waved his fingers and the scuttling servants left the room in single file.
"Fine," he said at long last. "Change me."
Loki looked on innocently. He knew what it cost Thor to ask for magic and dearly wanted to hear his friend ask for it again. "Pardon?"
"Change me, Loki, but no fucking around," he grumbled, folding his hands in front of his chest to accentuate how serious he was. His muscled forearms, however, only achieved a comic effect in combination with the long bell sleeves and numerous bracelets Frey had fastened onto them.
"Optional extra arsehole?" Loki suggested, but before Thor's growl could become more vocal, or more physical, Frey, now nibbling on that same bowl of fruit Loki had abandoned, commented, "Have a care, Skywalker. He's enough of an arse with the one hole he has."
"You as well?" Thor said with a pleading look at Frey who was now unabashedly grinning. Defeated, the Thunder Master sighed, "Nothing weird, Trickster. And nothing permanent."
"It won't be," Loki shrugged.
Apparently his innocent shrug was anything but for Thor felt he had to emphasize his point. "Loki, I will strangle you with your own entrails."
"And spend eternity as a woman," Loki mumbled but relented quickly. He knew perfectly well that Thor lost his otherwise excellent sense of humour once the joke was put so squarely on him at which point he tended to become incredibly boorish. "Fine, fine, I will make it so that the spell breaks once you have Mjölnir in your hands, or I release you. Will that do?"
"Swear it," Frey suggested, seemingly offhandedly but his eyes glinted with careful cunning.
Loki threw him a dirty look. "Honestly, I don't have to-," he started to protest but saw Frey's wish reflected in Thor's ever clouding face.
"Oh! Alright," he gave in and put his right hand over his chest, his left one resting on the hilt of his dagger ceremonially. "I, Loki of Aesir and Jötnar, son of Laufey, swear on my children that I will not make any changes to this, Thor, son of Odin, master of the stormy skies, which cannot be later recalled. No matter how much they might be considered improvements," he announced with all the required pomp. Frey snickered, Thor grumbled and Loki was finally allowed to get to work.
"Ready for it?" he asked only to get another wordless grunt from Thor as a response but he could no longer pay attention to Thor in his ridiculous outfit, or the leering Frey, or even the sunlight-warmed bearskin beneath his feet. Instead he looked inwards to the heat building up inside him, as he re-imagined what was into what could be. Transforming oneself was easy enough; transforming an object required more concentration. But transforming another being, and especially a being so infused with their own magic – Loki doubted these two warriors, of the Aesir and Vanir races, uninitiated in what they called trickery and deceit, could even grasp what level of mastery it required. Thor's magic was fighting him every step of the way. It was not a conscious resistance: just the strength of Thor's person, the certainty of a man who was only ever one thing. The fact was there was no duplicity to Thor's mind, making it, and everything connected to it, difficult to manipulate. Loki supposed he could call this integrity, or honesty, or transparency. On the other hand, he might as well choose to call this a tragic lack of imagination.
Loki opened his eyes unaware he had closed them. He took a deep breath to steady himself, suddenly lightheaded, and then looked over the result.
The woman before him had a square jaw, high cheekbones and a nose which was only slightly too big for femininity. Her lips, however, were surprisingly full and smooth and her eyebrows rode high on her forehead in a wilful, defiant manner. It was unmistakeably Thor peering at him from behind her blue-grey eyes, but she was also unmistakeably a woman.
As for her body… Well, she wasn't a delicate flower. Still, at least her shoulders fit into the dress now without threatening to break the seams, while its hem dangled around her ankles a full three or so inches below where it had been a few moments ago. Instead of Thor's enormous chest muscles, the front of it was filled in with two generous breasts – the best Loki could do to suggest a woman's body, and the previously tragically flapping bottom half filled in at the hips to create a waist.
"Well done," Frey said clasping Loki's shoulder. "You've shaved him."
"Fuc-, did you not notice the tits?" Loki pointed to Thor's bulging bosom, while Frey gasped for breath, barely containing his laughter.
"Yes, very subtle. They don't help," Frey concluded and took his leave before either the smouldering Thor or the exasperated Loki could retaliate against his delighted snickers. "I mean, I don't know if that works for you, Loki…" Frey's voice echoed in from the hallway, trailing after the man himself.
"Bring me a mirror!" Thor demanded with a note of concern. At least his voice, although still rough, was a womanly alto and not his usual booming bass. Unused to a different voice issuing from his own throat, Thor made a confused face and tentatively touched his neck. While Loki laboured to uncover a polished oval from beneath the discarded dresses and veils spread out on Thor's bed, Thor experimentally touched his breasts, than straightened out the fabric over his newly acquired waist. Than went back to his breasts.
Loki put up the mirror and, with Frey out of the room, looked at his work a bit more critically. "Ah… Well, Frey was right. You were never going to be a pretty woman."
"It's not as bad as that," commented Thor, trying to make himself believe it.
"You look better than your wife when I climbed off of her," Loki agreed happily, invoking the old quip.
"Don't even start with me," Thor said. Surely he'd meant to bark it menacingly as he usually did, but between the feminized face and the honey-flavoured alto voice, if came off as pouting. Loki leered at him, while Thor looked himself over in the mirror with ever more care, exactly as a woman might. "Well, maybe when you get me a proper dress," he said slowly.
"When I get you a proper dress?" Loki repeated in an amused voice very aware that his friend had just mobilised him into this feather-brained plan.
Thor stopped compulsively rubbing his cheeks and neck, ostensibly confused by the lack of beard, to say in a dry, nasal tone, "You are enjoying this far too much, you know that, right?"
Loki sighed, infusing his voice with a bit of seriousness. "A dress won't do it. Thrym is not only not completely deaf, dumb and blind, but he is also not an idiot."
"I just have to get close enough to tear him apart," said Thor, frowning at his reflection.
Loki put the mirror down and looked his friend in the eyes, which were now, strangely, on a slightly lower lever than his own. "Thrym is also not a little bitch, Ennilang. You will be deep in his realm, where his power is. If you think you can just flip him around and screw him up the arse, this is going to get much worse than it is already."
"I don't need you to tell me-," Thor protested but Loki stopped what was surely going to be an outpour of boastfulness.
"Fine, fine. I'll come with you."
"Wh-?" grunted Thor, at that moment so much like himself even in this faux-form that Loki had to laugh.
"I'll be your maid," Loki said, unbuckling his belt to set his dagger, pouch and flask aside. As he was speaking, he started finding new form, like remembering a fantasy. "After all, Freya would have arrived with a maid."
Turning himself into a woman was, comparatively, a task as easy as breathing. He could feel the magic filling him up, the vision becoming real. During the transformation, the body he inhabited did not feel like his body at all, just an imagined thing, a dream thing that he could mould at his will. Time also melted and changed – just a few brief moments extended into a pleasant uncertainty of dream-time. Then, just as gently, he seemed to wake up in a new body, enjoying the fact that his leather doublet suddenly felt tight around his chest, that his feet no longer completely filled his boots.
Thor had flopped down onto the bed staring at the transformation with a baffled expression and Loki had to remind himself that it was only very rarely that Thor witnessed this type of magic. He smiled, throwing a glance at the mirror to confirm his new face. A handsome woman, red-haired and dark-eyed, his own twin sister, was being reflected in its polished surface as she started to strip her male clothes. Thor stared on with a dumb expression – so much lovelier on his female face than usually, while Loki wriggled out of the doublet.
"How about it?" Loki said, throwing the doublet and under-shirt across the heap of other clothes on Thor's bed.
"Why are you the prettier one?" Thor complained.
"Flattery, Goat Master? You make me blush," said Loki and unfastened his trousers, eyeing one of the dresses to complete his transformation.
Thor, however, made no comment, but only pouted some more. "You made yourself prettier."
"Well, because, look at you. You slouch, glowering, feet apart. I can do magic, Odinson, not miracles," Loki said, thoroughly enjoying the fact that Thor's eyes were squarely on the woman prancing nude in front of his bed, for the moment completely unaware of his own change. "You must learn to inhabit a woman's body," Loki said, coming closer. "Own her voice. Move like a woman," he whispered, putting his hands on Thor's knees to lean closer. "Think like a woman."
"I am thinking like a man now," Thor said with a pointed grimace at the hand-sized, shapely breasts Loki had given himself.
"I thought you'd never notice," Loki commented, playfully licking Thor's lips before a rather large, calloused hand closed over his face.
"I'd rather put my cock in a snake, mate," Thor stated affectionately.
"Same thing really," Loki snickered and gave up his sport to put on a green dress he'd selected when a new thought formed. He looked over to Thor who was also trying to find a better-fitting dress to change into. "Although, it occurs to me. You cannot switch back and forth as you please but I can," Loki stated offhandedly.
"Yes?"
"Well, you cannot put it in the snake, but I might put the snake in you," he finished to see Thor's face pale.
"You will not! You will not turn back while I am a woman, Horse-mother, or I'll beat your teeth out of your head!"
Loki laughed at his friend's honest terror. "Alright, alright, alright. I won't!"
"No, you swear it!"
"I promise," said Loki only to be met with more disbelief. "I swear."
"Swear it on your children," Thor insisted.
Loki hesitated. "… how about I swear it on only one child?"
"Loki!" shouted Thor.
"I swear, I swear it on my children!" he laughed while Thor threw the grey dress at his head. "Crying shame, though."
Their good-natured teasing went on for a while more before they managed to choose half a dozen dresses that Thor could fit into without tearing them.
In truth, it was hardly a little task that awaited him. Thrym was, as Loki had told Thor, not an idiot, but a shrewd and powerful man, who now asked for that thing which Asgard had held hostage almost since the beginning of time – Freya, the Spring, the Rejuvenation, in exchange for the safe return of Thor's awesome hammer.
How Thor came to misplace the most powerful object in his possession, and one in whose acquirement Loki had personally shed blood, was a question he would pose to his friend only once Mjölnir was safely recovered. However, what the Alfödr and Loki himself truly wanted to know was how Thrym managed to bind the hammer to himself – a hammer that the Alfödr personally bound to his eldest son alone. And so, while Loki would have gladly come to Jötunheim with Thor had Thor asked for help, and even if he hadn't the mystery of Thrym's magic had motivated Odin to entrust Loki with the task. After all, the Aesir looked down on Jötunn magic, or indeed any kind of magic other than their own, which was innate and specific to them, so short of going himself, the Alfödr had only Loki to fall back on for this. As he'd explained at length. Loki listened patiently to Odin's arguments perfectly aware that Odin could have convinced him to go just by saying "Thor would have to masquerade as Freya". Or just by asking it.
Of all the Aesir residing in Asgard, Loki liked but a handful, and but a handful liked him. They were all civil to him, and how could they not be, for Odin himself was his blood brother, and they were content enough with that to let him share their table, their conversation, their lives. But no matter their willingness to eat and drink with him, laugh with him, and if need be fight with him on their side, Loki knew that every single one of the Aesir was forever and always aware that he was not one of them, that he was somehow completely, dangerously different.
All, that is, except Odin who brought him to Asgard in the first place; and Thor, his eldest son who befriended him.
Loki owed much to Odin and felt towards him a profound gratitude and an uncommon loyalty. But Thor he simply outright liked. He liked him for all the reasons Thor was so difficult to handle: his honesty, his straightforwardness, his stubbornness, his excess, his uncompromising nature. Come to think of it, these were all also the ways in which Thor was different from Loki. Whatever the case, Loki knew he would do anything Thor asked, as long as he was appropriately embarrassed by asking it.
He doubted that the Goat Master knew how rare that was, being one of those even rarer men who did great and good things because they needed to be done, and requiring no other reason.
It was high noon when Loki and Thor were ready to depart Thor's great house. His wife, Sif, saw them onto their horses, the amused expression on her face at seeing her husband now her wife shading over with worry.
"Honestly, woman," said Thor, looking at her face.
"It's a normal response," Sif protested then got on tip toe to plant a quick kiss on his lips. Thor kept it from being quick by grasping her waist to keep her pressed against his chest.
Loki, leaning on the saddle in an unladylike manner, smirked. "I could watch that all day, ladies."
Sif gallantly ignored him, busying herself with arranging her husband's many veils. "It is ridiculous, though, I'll say that much."
"What is?" inquired Thor but Sif shook her head and turned to Loki.
"No funny business," she said, her long golden hair rippling gently with her movement.
Loki suddenly thought of another time he had occasion to watch Sif's rippling hair, but then came to his senses. "I don't get a kiss?"
Sif rolled her eyes around and sighed with exacerbation. She gave Thor, now safely planted onto his horse, another caring look, threw a concerned one Loki's way as well, and then slapped their horses' flanks. The horses jerked to a canter and out of Thor's courtyard.
"Be safe," Sif shouted after them. "Both of you!" Thor and Loki raised their right hands that they had heard her and continued downhill, through the brightly lit, bustling streets of Asgard.
"Hey, why didn't we give Thrym your wife instead?" Loki asked as the many inhabitants of Asgard looked up to see two Aesir women on horseback.
"Are you trying to be funny or is that an actual question?" Thor asked from under his stifling veils.
"Actual question. I could've gone with her, gotten Mjölnir… She would've passed for Freya much more easily. And we could've rekindled our old passion."
Thor did not take the bait too busy trying to keep the many layers of delicate fabric from getting into his mouth. "Sif travel with you? She'd strangle you, Skywalker. Before you even reached the Bifröst."
Loki grinned and then felt compelled to point out, "You don't have to have the veils over your face now. It's only for when we actually get to Jötunhem."
"I am not going to be seen with tits in my own home town, thank you," Thor replied, spitting out and puffing at the veils which insisted on clinging to his face tightly. They reached the bottom of the valley and the edge of Asgard's walls. Loki looked at the large gate stones fondly, then had to readjust his horse quickly when Thor turned left at the gates.
"Where were you going?" Thor inquired.
"Spaced out," said Loki, following quickly. He frowned at the force of his own habit. Unlike almost any of the Aesir, when he left Asgard to travel across the Nine Worlds, he did not seek out Himinbjörg and the Keeper of the Bifröst bridge. It was not that travelling across the realms without using the Bifröst was forbidden. It was simply that doing so did not occur to the Aesir or the Vanir living with them, who had no reason not to want their whereabouts known. And who had no reason to particularly dislike Heimdall.
Himinbjörg, the only hall of the gods outside of the protection of Asgard's city walls, except Loki's own, soon came to tower over them, its crystalline surface betraying nothing except its owner's opaque and unilateral character. They were admitted into the open hallway which ran through the centre of the building and seemingly dropped off a cliff at the other end. Heimdall sat in the shade on the side of the road, eyes over the edge of this world.
"Jötunheim, is it?" he inquired without turning to look at them.
"That's the idea," said Thor miserably. Heimdall let his lips rise in a miniscule smile and Loki found himself for the very first time in their long acquaintance suspecting Heimdall of a sense of humour.
"Very well," said Heimdall, deep voice ever calm and monotone. As he spoke, the edge of the cliff gained substance, but only a shimmering one, like the surface of a calm lake, a mere suggestion that the thing had any mass. Thor and Loki nodded thanks to Heimdall and stepped out onto the deceptive surface. As they did, they could no longer see Himinbjörg behind them, nor the hills and walls of Asgard, nor anything of the world whatsoever. This was the high road, Loki reminded himself, and up this high there was nothing to look at, except his slouching companion.
Thor finally removed the veils and turned to Loki. "Long ride?"
"The Bifröst is always a long ride. Long, boring-ass ride."
"No, I mean through Jötunheim."
"It's a bit of a way," nodded Loki.
Thor frowned. "What did you bring?"
"Thinking about food already, Ennilang?" Loki chided.
"I meant in the way of steel."
Loki nodded to himself. He was sure this was not the first time the odds have occurred to Thor, but this was the time he decided to discuss them and get Loki's take on the strategic situation. Typically, it was after they had already set off but that was just the way Thor operated.
"Enough to fight out of a skirmish," said Loki, watching Thor closely. It wasn't that Thor was powerless without Mjölnir, not even by far. However, if the opposition was able to wield it – well that could turn the tables in a decisive and unpleasant way. "Not enough to storm a castle," Loki added prudently.
"Hm," Thor commented.
"Yes, we are kind of counting on this masquerade not to go entirely balls-up."
"And so it won't."
"And we are kind of counting on going in and going out quickly."
Thor nodded slowly, a strand of his stubborn hair coming out of the complicated bun his servants had managed to tame it into, and suddenly reminding Loki they were both in women's bodies. "Speed up, yeah?" Thor said finally.
"Better do," Loki replied, and they both poked their heels into the horses' flanks. Soundlessly, the horses lurched forward, on and on, into what seemed an eternity of straight road beneath and an iridescent sky above until Loki and Thor could see something in the way. They continued forward. It seemed to come to greet them, until, suddenly, it swallowed them, like the lightning flash illuminating the world for a heartbeat. And just like that Thor and Loki were in the heart of Jötunheim. And what an old and frosty heart it was.
NOTES:
Ennilang: "Wide forehead", a kenning of Thor that I think Loki would use to make fun of him.
Horse Mother: a kenning I think Thor would use when he wanted to make fun of Loki.
Aesir: the race of "gods" of Asgard; As is the singular masculine, Asynja feminine.
Also, hello. This is not an Avengers fanfiction, hopefully this much is clear. I am just exploring my take on Norse myth.
All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online.
Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope.
Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places.