Ugh. Ageing. What a bummer, right? I mean, you spend all this time on Earth learning valuable life lessons and bettering yourself as a person, and what do you get? Older, that’s what. And hey, it wouldn’t be so bad if we could all age like Gabrielle Union and George Clooney, but most of us are mortals, so. Thankfully, we have ways around it these days, like make-up and cosmetic surgery and never showing your wrinkled, haggard, 25 year old face outside ever again, you disgusting prune. Unfortunately for the Aesir, they didn’t have botox, and so had to rely on magic fruit. Sounds like a pretty foolproof plan, until you realise that fruit are ripe for stealing (you’re welcome for the pun).
Sources and extra juicy mythological info under the Read More, as always.
You can press J on your keyboard if you don’t want to read a story about cookery, magic tailoring and the perils of ageing in a Western society which places youth and beauty on pedestals and uses them as social currency.
How do you like them apples?
Our story begins with our heroes in the midst of perhaps the greatest, most treacherous quest of all: cookery. Odin, Loki and Hoenir, who is basically the Norse god equivalent to plain toast (i.e. very boring, but a real pantheon staple, and ends up surviving the end of the world, like toast surely will) are sitting around a cooking pot, which they’ve filled with the meat of an ox that they’ve slaughtered, and they’re just sort of chewing the fat. Not literally, though, because the meat isn’t cooked yet, but they’re having a really great conversation. Odin is like “so, I’m glad we finally found that ox, because we’d been wandering around those mountains and deserts for, like, half an hour, and I was getting hungry,” and Loki nods and he’s like “tell me about it, I only had four breakfasts and I’m not sure I could have lasted much longer. Hey, Hoenir, open that cooking pot and check if the meat is done yet,” and Odin says “I cooked it on a low temperature so the meat should be tender and just about falling off the bone, it’s this new technique which really locks the flavour in and gives the meat a rich, soft mouthfeel,” and Loki nods again and he’s like “you could patent that, you know, and call it Odinner,” and they both have a little chuckle, because it was really a very funny joke.
Except then Hoenir opens the lid of the cooking pot, and they all peer in, and they see that the meat is still completely raw. They all blink, and Loki is like “I mean, I’d probably still be up for eating that, honestly, but you’ve really sold me on the sound of that slow cooked technique. Let’s give it another few hours,” and Odin agrees, and so they all sit back and have yet more great conversation, except for Hoenir, who probably just umms and ahhs and makes understanding noises at the appropriate moment and says “well, I never,” whenever Loki talks about one of his hilarious exploits, because he’s that guy.
After a couple of hours, Odin says “Hoenir, check the meat again, it should be as tender as the touch of new lovers by now,” and so Hoenir opens the pot and they all peer in, and the meat is still rawer than the news of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Loki blinks, and he’s like “I know what you guys are thinking, and can I just say that, for once, I am totally innocent in this,” and Odin holds his hands up and he’s all “never even crossed my mind to accuse you, mate, but honestly, if this isn’t your doing, then I guess we slaughtered, like, a magic ox or something,” and Loki frowns and says “no, I keep a list of all the magic ox in the world, just in case I need them to play a hilarious prank on Thor, and this wasn’t one of them. Maybe the cooking pot is just fucked?” and Odin is like “no, I bought it specially from the dwarves’ catalogue of unbreakable cooking utensils, along with a really handy set of silicon spatulas and a neat little measuring jug which doubles up as a trap for frost giants, there’s no way it’s faulty,” and they both look at Hoenir, who shrugs, and Loki’s like “who are we kidding, it’s obviously not Hoenir’s doing, that would require him to have some measure of personality,” and Hoenir just looks at them neutrally, and Odin is about to suggest something else when they hear someone nearby clear their throat.
They all look up to the source of the throat clearing, which comes from a tree just above them, and Loki’s like “shitting hell, that eagle just coughed,” and the eagle, which is absolutely massive, like ten times the size of a normal eagle, says “yeah, sorry about that, I’ve been breathing in the acrid smoke from that pot for, like, four hours,” and Odin is like “does the fact that our meat is still raw have anything to do with you?” and the eagle does a weird up-and-down motion with its wings, which is presumably meant to be a shrug, and says “maybe,” and Loki sighs and says “look, take it from me, you should always own up to your hilarious pranks, even if they end up causing the end of the world, because credit is everything in the Trickster game,” and the eagle cackles, which is actually surprisingly effective, and says “then yes, ‘twas I who kept your meat raw,” and Odin is like “it really comes to something when a man-sized, magic, talking eagle can tell me that he’s the reason my dinner is delayed, and I’m not even surprised,” and Loki’s like “yeah, honestly this just seems like a normal Friday to me,” and the eagle huffs and he’s like “look, do you want your meat to cook or not?” and Loki says “I mean, clearly we do want that, but we’re just saying that we’re not, like, going to be telling this story to our grandkids or anything,” and Odin says “what Loki means to say is that we’re really fucking hungry, so if you could cook our meat pretty promptly, that would be great,” and Hoenir says “well I never,” because he has a thing about swearing.
The eagle drops down from the tree and says “I’ll make you a deal. If you let me eat my fill of that ox before you guys have your share, I guarantee that it’ll be cooked to perfection,” and Odin says “what, with a red wine sauce and an ample seasoning of rosemary and garlic salt?” and the eagle is like “sure, why not, although I’m more of a salt and pepper man myself, good seasoning should amplify rather than overpower the flavour of the meat’s natural juices,” and Loki looks at Odin, and Odin looks at Loki, and neither of them even bother looking at Hoenir, who just has no opinion on any situation ever, and Loki says “sure, it’s a deal,” and the eagle says “great! The meat’s cooked now,” and he starts to eat the meat from the pot. First, he eats both the ox’s shoulders and its thighs, the most tender cuts of the meat, and then he eats its belly and its rump, and he’s about to eat the rest of its leg meat when Loki decides that enough is enough, and he shouts “this is just taking the piss, mate, that ox ass was mine! We didn’t say that you could eat all the choice cuts and leave us with the offal, that’s what we were going to do to Hoenir,” and then he picks up a big stick that’s just conveniently lying around on the ground nearby and he strikes the eagle with it.
He hits the eagle so hard that the eagle becomes airborne and begins to fly away, which would be absolutely ideal were it not for the fact that the stick has somehow become stuck to the eagle, and Loki is still holding onto the stick, and apparently it’s just, like, the stickiest stick in the world, because Loki can’t let go. He’s stuck to the sticky stick, and as the eagle flies away he makes sure to fly super low, so that Loki’s feet are getting dragged across the ground, and bits of gravel and rock and grit start to wear away at Loki’s shoes until his feet are bare, and then it’s basically just agonising pain and blood and bits of foot and no-one’s having a good time, honestly. Loki is just howling “I’m sorry! The ox butt is yours! Just let me go!” and the eagle pretends not to hear him, even though there’s no other sound for literally miles around except for the noise of Loki’s feet being turned into pulp, and Loki cries “I’ll do anything you want if you let me go!” and the eagle is like “anything?” and Loki says “literally anything, which is definitely something which won’t come back to bite me in the arse later!” and the eagle says “fine, deal. Find Idunn, the goddess who guards the weirdly non-specific fruit of youth, and bring her out of Asgard. If you promise to do that, I’ll let you go,” and Loki says “I promise, I’ll do it!” and so the eagle lets him go and brings him back to Odin and Hoenir. Odin blinks – well, winks – and says “nice time?” and Loki is like “let’s forget that any of this happened and go home, and also can one of you please carry me because my feet aren’t really currently feet,” and they do.
When they get back to Asgard, Loki goes to find Idunn. He smiles at her in a way that he has been told is thoroughly disarming, and he says “Idunn, my old pal, light of my life, woman who guards the fruit that literally keeps us from ageing so much that we turn into raisins, how do you feel about accompanying me, Loki, the trickster god, into the heart of an uncharted forest outside of Asgard?” and Idunn furrows her brow and she’s like “I feel lukewarm about it, if I’m honest. Why? What’s in the forest?” and Loki says “I’ve heard that there are apples there which make your apples look like absolute shit,” and Idunn scoffs and says “no way, my apples are the greatest, have you seen the shine on these things? Plus they’re magic and literally keep us all young, which is a real boon as youth is, sadly, currency, so,” and Loki just shakes his head and says “I’ve heard that the apples in the forest are genetically modified so that the skin doesn’t get stuck between your teeth and they don’t have that gross hard bit around the core,” and Idunn narrows her eyes and says “take me there right now,” and so Loki leads her out of Asgard and its fortified walls, and into the unprotected forest.
As soon as they’re outside the safety of Asgard, they hear someone clear their throat, and they look up to see a giant eagle swooping down. The eagle grabs hold of Idunn and begins to fly off with her, and then Loki is like “oh, shit, eagle? You didn’t actually say that you were going to abduct the poor woman, I just thought that maybe you wanted to take her out on a date or something,” and Idunn says “I can’t believe you’re standing up for me, this is so unlike you,” and Loki is like “honestly, I’m standing up for your fruit, we’re all going to age like prunes if you get taken away,” and the eagle cackles and says “I’m glad you kept your promise, Trickster god,” and Idunn is like “wait, what promise?” and the eagle sighs and says “the promise he made to me, the giant Thjazi in the guise of an eagle, keep up,” and then he flies away with Idunn and her basket of fruit, leaving Loki to stare wide-eyed into an empty sky, and Loki says “well, that went smoothly, I guess we’re all absolutely fucking fucked now,” and he goes home and doesn’t tell anybody what happened, because he’s pretty sure that no-one knows he’s the one to blame, and the world looks great from his high horse, and he has no intention of getting down now.
Pretty soon, the gods begin to realise that something’s amiss when they all start to age really rapidly. Odin can’t stop listening to public radio. Freyja gets mistaken for Kellyanne Conway twice. Even Baldr starts to rant about entitled millennials to anyone who’ll listen. They all get old as balls, is what I’m saying. Really old ones. Eventually, Odin calls an assembly, inviting all the gods, and he says “when did everyone last see Idunn?” and Frigg is like “pardon?” and Odin says, a little louder, “when did everyone last see Idunn?” and Frigg says “there’s no need to shout, dear,” and Loki coughs and says “well, I last saw her a few weeks ago, just categorising her fruit collection, nothing out of the ordinary, certainly no eagles,” and Thor frowns and says “hang on, I last saw her leaving Asgard with you,” and Freyja nods and then winces at a crick in her neck and says “me too, she looked really wary and you were talking to her about ethically dubious apples,” and Freyr says “and me, she was carrying her fruit basket and you were leading her into the forest,” and Odin narrows his eye and says “Loki, you little shit, what did you do?”
And Loki is like “oh my god, I’m so sick of being accused of literally everything around here. It’s like, someone steps in a massive pile of dog shit and everyone is like ‘Loki, what did you do?’ just because I’m the guy whose son is a wolf and I trained him to shit in Thor’s doorway. Like there aren’t any other gigantic dogs in Asgard who might be shitting in strategically inconvenient places and the doorways of the people I have personal beef with. Everything has to be my fault. Anyway, what was the question?” and Thor sort of roars then, except it’s more of a cough because he’s very tired, and he says “where did you take Idunn, Loki?” and Loki says “oh, sure, let’s blame Loki. Did you all forget that I also do good stuff, like helping you to get an impregnable wall around this entire place?” and Odin says “Loki, if you don’t tell us where Idunn is right now, I’ll allow Thor to beat you up,” and Loki pales at that, and then Thor says “you’ll have to give me a few hours, but when I’ve had my afternoon nap, I’ll get Mjolnir and I’ll intimately acquaint it with various parts of your body,” and Loki holds his hands up and says “look, lads, I’ll level with you, I sort of made a deal with that eagle who stole our meat and I told him that I’d take Idunn out of Asgard, but in my defence, I thought I’d just promised her to a giant eagle, not the frost giant Thjazi, which is who the eagle unfortunately turned out to be, but there’s literally no way I could have known that – ” and then Freyja just shrieks “you let a giant kidnap the goddess who looks after our supple skin? What is wrong with you?” and Loki says “in my defence, my son is a giant wolf,” and Freyja says “that’s not a defence at all,” and Loki says “I know, but I just wanted to remind you before you threatened me with grievous bodily harm again,” and Odin says “we can have storytime later, but right now, you need to get Idunn back.” Loki grins at that and he’s like “luckily, I have a cunning plan. Loki saves the day again,” and Thor says “you literally ruined the day, you bellend,” and Loki’s like “shh, let me have this.”
So, he gets Freyja to lend him her magic cloak made of falcon feathers and plot devices, which lets the holder transform into a falcon at will and is barely ever mentioned again, and he flies over to Thjazi’s place in Jotunheim. Either this house is incredibly well sign-posted or the cloak comes with GPS, because he finds it almost immediately. When he gets there, he peers through the open bay window on the ground floor, and he sees that Idunn is sitting inside at the kitchen table, taking all the fruit out of her basket and putting it into piles based on weight, size and juiciness. He flies through the open window and takes off the falcon feather cloak, making him look like himself again, and he’s like “psst! Idunn! It’s Loki, come to rescue you!” and Idunn looks up at him blithely and says “no way, I’m not going with you, I’m not falling for that again,” and Loki rolls his eyes and he’s like “please, it would be way too predictable for me to repeat that trick. Give me some credit. Variety is the spice of life, you know,” and Idunn mulls it over for a few seconds and then she says “how do I know you’re not tricking me again?” and Loki sighs and points to some of the wrinkles around his eyes, newly appeared, and says “you think I want to live like this much longer? It goes against everything that society’s frankly unattainable standards of beauty dictate that I should aspire to, and frankly it’s a nightmare,” and then Idunn’s eyes widen and she says “is Freyja ageing, too?” and Loki nods solemnly, and Idunn says “shit, I’d better get back before she sets Ragnarok in motion just to avoid hitting 30,” and she stands up and says “let’s go!”
Loki blinks and he’s like “won’t Thjazi hear us leave? Don’t we need a sneaky plan? I’m kind of great at those, I had this really great idea where maybe I fuck the eagle – ” and Idunn shakes her head and says “oh, no, he’s gone out hunting for the day and left me all on my own. It’s been really boring, honestly. I thought that being kidnapped by a giant would be exciting, but it’s mostly just sitting around and watching old reruns of Jeopardy by myself,” and Loki is like “you mean you’ve been here by yourself, by an open window, for all this time?” and Idunn nods, and Loki says “you do realise that we’ve all aged horribly while you’ve been twiddling your thumbs and taking ‘reasons why Thor is the absolute worst for 10, please’,” and Idunn says “well, you’ve learnt your lesson, then,” and then she claps her hands and says “let’s get the Hel out of here before he comes back and ruins this incredibly convenient plot device,” and Loki says “I know right, first the cloak and now this, everything is running suspiciously smoothly,” and then he turns her into a nut. Not just for the Vine, though – he then puts Freyja’s falcon cloak back on, picks up the Idunn-nut in his falcon talons, and flies out of the window and back to Asgard.
They’re nearly back when Loki hears the swoop of displaced air behind him and the sound of a familiar throat being cleared, and Thjazi is behind them, and he crows “surprise, bitch, bet you thought you’d seen the last of me,” and Loki sighs and he’s like “my guy, that meme is deader than Donald Trump’s ill-advised range of premium steaks, and also I’ve been wondering, how do you do the whole ‘transforming into an eagle’ thing? Do you have a magic feather cloak, too? Do you and Freyja have the same tailor? Because I’m thinking that maybe I need to get me a cloak like that, except does your tailor do other animals too, or is it just ornithology? I’d be super interested in, say, a horse cloak, if you could give me the number of your guy,” and Thjazi chuckles menacingly and he says “distraction won’t work on me, Trickster god, I’m far too clever for that,” and Loki says “cool, it’s a good thing then that you’ve definitely noticed that you’re about to fly right into a burning fire,” and as he says it, he swoops up and over the fire that the Aesir have started on a huge pile of wood shavings placed at the periphery of Asgard as a trap for Thjazi, who doesn’t have time to react before he flies right into it.
His wings ablaze, Thjazi can’t fly any more and he falls down into Asgard, where he’s immediately beaten to death by a bunch of old men and women, presumably with a couple of nap breaks. Thjazi dispatched, the gods chow down on some of Idunn’s tasty fruit of youth, except for Freyja, who gets it made into a summer berry mojito, because she deserves it after the week she’s had, and they immediately become young and hot again, like the cast of Teen Wolf instead of Last of the Summer Wine, and they all live happily ever after.
Until Thjazi’s daughter literally skis down from the nearest mountainside, hell-bent on avenging her father, but that’s a story for next week.
My other retellings can be found here; my dedicated mythology blog is here; and my Mythology Mondays Facebook page is here. My tiny, tiny book is here.
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