Hammered

the crackling of logs in the fire, there was no sound when Gunnar sat back down on his boulder. I was thinking about the two werewolves that had fallen in the battle against Aenghus Óg at Tony Cabin. Their deaths had always been a touchy subject with the entire pack, and now I understood a bit better why that was so.
    » I’m sorry about Rannveig, « I said to Gunnar, breaking the silence, and he nodded sadly, though I wasn’t sure if he thought he was accepting an apology or sympathy.
    Zhang Guo Lao spoke up. » It pains me to hear that Thor has treated you and your pack so abominably. I am sorry to say it seems consistent with what I know of his character. «
    » Is monstrous fuckpuddle, « Perun asserted, and everyone turned to stare at him with equal parts amusement and bemusement. » What? Is this not English word? «
    I suggested that if it wasn’t a word, it should be, and the others agreed.
    » I, too, have a crime to lay at Thor’s door, « Väinämöinen said after the levity of Perun’s neologism faded. » His feeble mind insists that his arrogant trespasses are somehow justifiable since he is a member of the Æsir. Any criticism levied against him is met with a thunderbolt. Listen, and I will tell you how he violated a wonder of the world. «

Chapter 16

    The Wizard’s Tale
    Outside of Finland I am not widely known, and even there I am largely forgotten. Like so many other gods and folk heroes, I was shoved aside to make room for a new savior, who turned out to be a man with neither music, nor sex, nor any laughter, just a promise of paradise later in exchange for meek obedience now. I am not the son of yesterday’s grouse: I could see that my people wished to swap me for something softer, and no matter how much I railed against it, no matter how much I struggled and strained, it wouldn’t produce either a baby or shit.
    The best thing for me to do would be to exit gracefully. So that is what I did: I sang myself a copper boat, packed my belongings, brushed out my beard, and my purpose held—like the Ulysses of Tennyson—to sail beyond the sunset, vowing to return one day when my people needed me. Someday, I thought, someday soon, they will tire of this pale, weak god, and then they will clamor for my homecoming. That was in the year of cone and helmet.
    Now we are come many years forward, and still no one calls my name. I am tired of waiting. They will never shift back to my paradigm; my glory is centuries gone.
    But in Asgard there is plenty of work for an axe.
    I was bitter for a time, thinking myself cast away like the stale biscuits of a fortnight ago. But slowly, rising and falling with the swell of the ocean, a new rhythm emerged within me, a sense of the tide and what it washes away, and likewise what it brings to new shores. Music swirled from my kantele as the ocean waters swirled about my keel, and thus I sang myself into a finer state of mind.
    I did not lack for food on my journey: I sang to the fish whenever I had stomach, and they leapt into my boat. Nor did I lack for company. I sang to the whales of sun and wheat and the animals of the earth, and they sang to me songs of currents and krill and ceaseless peregrination. More than this, they sang of old creatures still lurking in the depths, giant serpents that men sketch fearfully in the corners of maps.
    Eventually I longed for land again and made fall on a green isle with clouds of steam rising from lakes of white water, spumes of spray erupting from the earth, each hotter than the anger of a wounded bear. Today this isle is called Iceland. There were Norsemen living on the western side, in modern-day Reykjavík, but I kept to myself on the opposite side, settling on the northern shore of a fjörd that later became the site of a town called Eskifjördur. A small shelter I built there, partly with my hands and partly with my voice, to break the wind’s chill and keep my few treasures safe from the elements. This I did for solitude’s sake, but not for misanthropic reasons. No, I so loved men that I shunned them to save them.
    There were questions I harbored in my heart, but no man could answer them; there were sights I would see, but no man could show them to me; there were tales I would hear told and songs I would hear sung, but no man’s voice could give them breath.
    The whales, you see, had piqued my curiosity. There were older things than I in the deeps, and it was with them I wished to treat. I remained apart from men