She nodded.
“But when we see the apple tree,” said Loki, “how will we be able to compare those apples to the ones in your ash box back in Asgard? I mean, I could say, They are even better than your apples, and you would say, Nonsense, Loki, these are shriveled crabapples compared to my apples, and how could we tell?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Idunn. “I will bring my apples. We will compare them.”
“Oh,” said Loki. “What a clever idea. Well, then. Let’s go.”
He led her into the forest, Idunn holding tightly to her ash box containing the apples of immortality.
After half an hour of walking, Idunn said, “Loki, I am starting to believe that there are no other apples and there is no apple tree.”
“That’s unkind of you, and hurtful,” said Loki. “The apple tree is just at the top of that hill there.”
They walked up to the top of the hill. “There is no apple tree here,” said Idunn. “Only that tall pine, with the eagle in it.”
“Is that an eagle?” asked Loki. “It’s very big.”
As if it heard them, the eagle spread its wings and dropped from the pine tree.
“No eagle am I,” said the eagle, “but the giant Thiazi in eagle shape, here to claim the beautiful Idunn. You will be a companion to my daughter, Skadi. And perhaps you will learn to love me. But whatever happens, time and immortality have run out for the gods of Asgard. So say I! So says Thiazi!”
It seized Idunn in one taloned claw and the ash-wood box of apples in the other, and it rose into the sky above Asgard and was gone.
“So that’s who that was,” said Loki to himself. “I knew it wasn’t just an eagle.” And he made his way home, hoping vaguely that nobody would notice that Idunn and her apples were gone, or that if they did, it would be long after anyone would connect her disappearance with Loki taking Idunn into the forest.
III
“You were the last to see her,” said Thor, rubbing the knuckles of his right hand.
“No, I wasn’t,” said Loki. “Why would you even say that?”
“And you haven’t become old like the rest of us,” said Thor.
“I’m old but I’m lucky,” said Loki. “I wear it well.”
Thor grunted, entirely unconvinced. His red beard was now snow-white with a few pale orange hairs in it, like a once-proud fire become white ashes.
“Hit him again,” said Freya. Her hair was long and gray, and the lines in her face were deep and careworn. She was still beautiful, but it was the beauty of age, not of a golden-haired maiden. “He knows where Idunn is. And he knows where the apples are.” The necklace of the Brisings still hung around her neck, but it was dull and tarnished, and it did not shine.
Odin, father of the gods, held on to his staff with knobby, arthritic fingers, blue-veined and twisted. His voice, always booming and commanding, was now cracked and dusty. “Do not hit him, Thor,” he said in his old voice.
“See? I knew that you at least would see reason, All-father,” said Loki. “I had nothing to do with it! Why would Idunn have gone anywhere with me? She didn’t even like me!”
“Do not hit him,” repeated Odin, and he peered at Loki with his one good eye, now glaucous gray. “I want him to be whole and unbroken when he is tortured. They are heating the fires now, and sharpening the blades, and collecting the rocks. We may be old, but we can torture and we can kill as well as ever we could when we were in our prime and had the apples of Idunn to keep us young.”
The smell of burning coals reached Loki’s nostrils.
“If . . . ,” he said. “If I manage to work out what happened to Idunn, and if I were somehow to bring her and her apples back to Asgard safely, could we forget all about the torture and death?”
“It is your only chance at life,” said Odin, in a voice so old and cracked that Loki could not tell whether it was the voice of an old man or an old woman. “Bring Idunn back to Asgard. And the apples of immortality.”
Loki nodded. “Unfasten these chains,” he told them. “I’ll do it. I’ll need Freya’s falcon-feather cloak, though.”
“My cloak?” asked Freya.
“I’m afraid so.”
Freya walked stiffly away and returned with a cloak covered with falcon feathers. Loki’s chains were unfastened, and he reached for the cloak.
“Don’t think you can just fly off and never return,” said Thor, and he stroked his white beard meaningfully. “I may be old now,” he said, “but if you do not return, ancient as I am, I will hunt you down, wherever you hide, and I and my hammer will be your death. For I am still Thor! And I am still strong!”