LITMIR.BIZ

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him. The other gods threw weapons at my brother to test him, but beautiful Baldr only laughed as all things kept their promise. But Loki tricked me. He gave me mistletoe, which had been too young to swear peace to Baldr, and in my envy I threw it, ignorant of its power. One little dart of mistletoe from my hand and my brother laughs no more. Baldr was slain at my hand.’ It howled into the air again then slumped, blind eyes turned towards the musicians. ‘Vali killed me in just wrath, but a god never truly dies.’

      Will stirred from his watching. He heard Thomas speak to the mud-man, and heard its replies in his blood and bones, through the earth. ‘A god, are you? How is it you’re here?’

      ‘Loki bound my spirit to an earthen jar. He delivered me to the hands of men to be a talisman. I have travelled far from Asgard on warships, but I never brought those Captains to victory. Another of my brother’s tricks. He never tires of them.’

      ‘Baldr?’

      ‘Loki is also my brother.’ It frowned. ‘He is not always my brother. Perhaps my sister too, sometimes. He takes many shapes.’

      ‘My brother also had other shapes before we killed him.’

      ‘I did not harm your brother.’

      ‘A fire on the other side of the world covered the sun with ash and brought a winter cold enough to wake you,’ snarled Thomas. ‘Now you’re killing the world with ice.’

      ‘I am the god of ice,’ it said, as though such deaths couldn’t be helped.

      ‘Do you have a name, Loki’s brother?’ asked Will casually.

      ‘I am Hoor.’

      ‘I think I’ve heard of you,’ said Will. ‘By the name of Hod.’

      ‘I have many names.’

      Thomas scowled. ‘Well, Hoor of Many Names, you killed Dickon with your cruel winter.’

      ‘Not alone,’ said the ice god Hoor and his tone wasn’t kind. ‘Negligence, selfishness and fear, you said.’

      ‘That’s right,’ said Thomas, just as ruthless. ‘We’re a pair alike, we two. Just as you killed Baldr with envy, foolishness and spite.’

      Will held his breath, sure from the fury on Hoor’s face that their luck was done and death was coming.

      Instead, Hoor laughed, grimly, without mirth. ‘I did.’

      ‘I know what you did to Baldr. Shall I tell you my tale?’ asked Thomas.

      ‘Did you kill a god?’

      ‘A god can’t die, you said, but my sister-brother died twice, first as maiden then as man.’

      Hoor bent his head closely to hear more. Will, likewise, listened. His broken finger throbbed but he gripped his drumstick tight anyway, unsure of what to do, or if anything was possible.

      ‘Lulie was born a rosy lass who could never be a maiden. She never learned the skill of it or to desire that she should,’ Thomas said. His voice rose and fell in storytelling cadences, but it was filled with the sharpness of a secret’s first telling.

      ‘From youth, my older sister would answer to nothing but Dickon. She was boyish in all things, from her large hands and loud laugh to the careless way she ran and climbed and fought with boys who challenged her wildness. Dickon caused our parents only grief, except for when she sang, for then she sounded like an angel.

      ‘Dickon would not relent in being Dickon, and would not be made to wive, since her body and her heart to womanly virtues would not strive. Dickon grew tall but lean; her menses would not come. At last our parents gave up persuading Dickon to be Lulie and accepted their daughter was a son. As a family, we buried Lulie as a name. Dickon my brother from that day became.’

      Will pressed his hands to the earth and ignored the ache of one broken finger while all the rest tapped faintly in the dirt, picking out the uneven rhythm of Thomas’ story.

      ‘To me Dickon confessed he’d found a way, a trick of song to make his body obey. To banish his irregular courses and sing his chest flat. I confessed I had my own tricks after that. With my self- made bone and yew pipe I charmed the partridge and the lark to my knife. I fluted fishes to my net, fires to light, clouds to part, warmth to night. We found when I played and Dickon sang, we charmed coins to our purse and our good fortune rang.’

      Will felt the dirt under his fingers tremble, though Hoor was, like him, transfixed by the story. Will found in it echoes of a ballad heard last summer. The long tale written by a sarcastic Cornish poet going by Heldris. In the tale, an earl’s daughter was raised as a boy named Silence. “The boy who is a girl” – li vallés qui est mescine in the poet’s hand. What else had the ballad contained? Jo cuidai Merlin engignier, Si m’ai engignié. “I thought to deceive Merlin but I have deceived myself”.

      Will already knew this similar story of Dickon didn’t end well. Yet the story compelled, as did Thomas’ telling of it.

      ‘We brothers thought it easier to sing for wealth than learn our father’s trade, and we did well, until a burning mountain this early winter made. Will says the cold stirred you from your sleep. You brought a bitter cold and we starved, and so my brother’s magic grew weak.’

      All Thomas’ rage seemed now self-directed, the nails of his own curled fists biting into his palm, drawing blood. The vibration in the earth under Will’s hands shuddered.

      ‘Dickon dared not carouse with pages and with squires, the body he’d shaped for himself did not hold true. But I was cold and wished for the warmth of other companionship, and the cheerful comradery that ale and wine imbue. I wished to forget, with men like me, that men may die of want. To spend a night without Dickon’s fear and rage for his body changing, thin and gaunt. So I went to the woods with other men and wasted life and time, and burned fuel that should have had more prudent use, and fed on Hanley’s stolen bread and wine.’

      Thomas’ chest was heaving as though he had climbed mountains to tell his tale. His body was trembling with the strength of his feeling, which fortunately also masked the insistent tapping of Will’s nine healthy fingers on the ground. Will was getting the hang of the rhythm now, thrumming under the surface of the earth, under the surface of Thomas’ tale, and under the surface of the ice. A small magic, unheeded as yet by the blind monster.

      Will thought he saw something moving in the air, a flap of dark wings. He thought he felt something moving in the sluggish water under the ice, a deep river green. He didn’t let himself be distracted, but continued to tap the beat and listen to the words Thomas spoke. There was no spell in them yet, but for all that, they were spellbinding. Hoor, unspeaking, listened hard to every word.

      ‘I returned, drunk, to find Lord Hanley, seeking his unfaithful staff, discovered my poor Dickon whose face and body were womanly round and soft. He could not find the thieves of wine and wood, so he punished the one who had lied to him, though done less harm than good. He locked Dickon in the snow and ice in a pen beside the woodshed, and that’s where I found my brother-sister frozen, where he fell and broke his dear head.’

      The air almost hummed with the tension of this ending, the death of Dickon.

      ‘Negligence, selfishness and fear,’ said Hoor. ‘But yours was not the hand that slew your dear.’

      Did Hoor know he’d spoken in this land’s English tongue, and made a rhyme to add to the magic all around?

      ‘Yet I’m culpable. Dickon died because of me. He also froze to death because of you. The fault is ours to share or refuse equally. You who your brother with envy, foolishness and spite slew.’

      Hoor’s voice rumbled in its chest of mud and ice and bone, a dark agreement at the remorse.

      ‘What should we do, we guilty brothers?’ Thomas asked. ‘Would our own deaths make amends for what we’ve done?’

      ‘I will find redemption or annihilation at prophesied Ragnarok.

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