The eagle flew once around the meadow, beating its wings in gusts so powerful that the coals in the pit flared and flamed and the gods were forced to hold on to each other to keep from being blown off their feet, and then it returned to its perch high in the tree.
This time they buried the meat in the firepit with a good heart, and they waited. It was the summer, when the sun barely sets in the north lands and the day lasts forever, so it was late in the night that still felt like day when they opened the pit, to be met with the glorious smell of cooked beef, tender and ready for their knives and their teeth.
As the pit was opened, the eagle swooped down and seized in its claws the two rear haunches of the ox, along with a shoulder, and began to tear at it with a ravenous beak. Loki was furious, seeing much of his dinner about to be devoured, and he struck at the eagle with his spear, hoping to force it to drop its plundered food.
The eagle flapped its wings hard, creating a wind so strong it almost knocked the gods over, and it dropped the meat. Loki had no time to enjoy his triumph, because, he discovered, the spear was stuck in the great bird’s side, and as the eagle took off into the air, it carried him with it.
Loki wanted to let go of his spear, but his hands were stuck to the shaft. He could not let go.
The bird flew low, so Loki’s feet were dragged over stones and gravel, over mountainside and over trees. There was magic at work, and it was a magic mightier than anything Loki could control.
“Please!” he shouted. “Stop this! You are going to tear my arms from my sockets. My boots are already destroyed. You are going to kill me!”
The eagle soared off the side of a mountain and circled gently in the air, with only the crisp air between them and the ground. “Perhaps I will kill you,” it said.
“Whatever it takes to make you put me down,” gasped Loki. “Whatever you want. Please.”
“I want,” said the eagle, “Idunn. And I want her apples. The apples of immortality.”
Loki hung in the air. It was a long way down.
Idunn was married to Bragi, god of poetry, and she was sweet and gentle and kind. She carried a box with her, made of ash wood, which contained golden apples. When the gods felt age beginning to touch them, to frost their hair or ache their joints, then they would go to Idunn. She would open her box and allow the god or goddess to eat a single apple. As they ate it, their youth and power would return to them. Without Idunn’s apples, the gods would scarcely be gods . . .
“You are not saying anything. I think,” said the eagle, “I will drag you over some more rocks and mountaintops. Perhaps I will also drag you through some deep rivers this time.”
“I’ll get the apples for you,” said Loki. “I swear it. Just let me down.”
The eagle said nothing, but with a twitch of a wing it began to descend to a green meadow from which a fire’s smoke rose. A swoop, down to where Thor and Hoenir were standing openmouthed, looking up at them. As the eagle flew above the firepit, Loki found himself falling, still grasping his spear, and he tumbled onto the grass. With a cry, the eagle beat its wings and rose above them, and in moments it was a tiny dot in the sky.
“I wonder what that was about,” said Thor.
“Who knows?” said Loki.
“We left you some food,” said Hoenir.
Loki had lost his appetite, which his friends attributed to his flight in the air.
Nothing else interesting or out of the ordinary occurred on their way home.
II
The next day Idunn was walking through Asgard, greeting the gods, looking at their faces to see if any of them were beginning to look old. She passed Loki. Normally Loki ignored her, but this morning he smiled at her and greeted her.
“Idunn! So good to see you! I feel age upon me,” he told her. “I need to taste one of your apples.”
“You do not look as if you are aging,” she said.
“I hide it well,” said Loki. “Oh! My aching back. Old age is a terrible thing, Idunn.”
Idunn opened her ash-wood box and gave Loki a golden apple.
He ate it with enthusiasm, devouring it, seeds and all. Then he made a face.
“Oh dear,” he said. “I thought you’d have, well, nicer apples than this.”
“What a peculiar thing to say,” said Idunn. Never before had her apples been received like this. Normally gods talked only about the perfection of the flavor and how good it was to feel young again. “Loki, they are the apples of the gods. The apples of immortality.”
Loki looked unconvinced. “Perhaps,” he said. “But I saw some apples in the forest that were finer in every way than your apples. Looked nicer, smelled nicer, tasted nicer than these. I think they were apples of immortality too. Perhaps a better kind of immortality than yours.”
He watched expressions chasing each other across Idunn’s face—disbelief, puzzlement, and concern.
“These are the only apples like this that there are,” she said.
Loki shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I saw,” he said.
Idunn walked beside him. “Where are these apples?” she asked.
“Over there. Not sure I could tell you how to get there, but I could take you through the forest. It’s not a long walk.”