Baldr

Frigg had the knife against his palm, but she could not make herself press.

Baldr watched her thumb whiten on the handle. She had asked fire and water to spare him. Iron had sworn to her, and stone, and the beasts that tore one another apart in the dark. Now she stood before him with a little knife used for cutting thread, unable to trust the world she had bound.

“Let me,” he said.

“No.”

Her answer came so sharply that he stopped reaching for her wrist.

A strip of morning lay across the table. Beyond the open door, someone was calling for a missing horse. Ordinary sounds, belonging to a day that had begun without consulting his dreams.

He wanted to go out into it.

Frigg lifted the blade away. “Tell me what you saw last night.”

“I have told you.”

“Tell me again.”

He had dreamed of Höðr calling his name. His brother had been somewhere close, close enough for Baldr to hear the catch in his breathing, but Baldr could not turn toward him. He could not answer. That was all. No blade, no darkness swallowing the halls, no great beast with bloody teeth. Only his brother asking where he was, and his own mouth refusing to open.

He had told Frigg before dawn. Since then, she had twice asked whether there had been anything else.

“Nothing more,” he said.

She looked at the knife.

Baldr laid his hand on the table, palm upward, and spread his fingers. “You went to all that trouble. We ought to find out whether iron remembers.”

He meant to make her smile. Instead, her free hand closed around his wrist.

“Do not laugh at this.”

“I am trying to laugh at something.”

For a moment she looked at him rather than at the hand.

Then she set the edge against his palm and pressed.

He felt the pressure. The blade rested cool and narrow across his skin. But where it should have bitten, his flesh remained whole. Frigg bore down until the table creaked. The iron slid sideways, as though it had encountered something too hard for its edge, and struck the wood beside his thumb.

They both stared at the small cut in the tabletop.

Baldr turned his hand over, then back again.

“Again?” he asked.

Frigg put down the knife.

He reached across the table and took her hand before she could examine his palm a fourth time.

Outside, the lost horse had been found. Its owner was now complaining that someone else had tied it in the wrong place.

“Come with me,” Baldr said. “Let them see.”

The Game

Thor refused to throw the spear.

He stood at the edge of the assembly ground with the shaft in his fist, looking from Baldr to Frigg as though one of them must eventually admit to a bad joke.

“You have all seen the knife,” Baldr said.

“A knife is a knife.”

“And that is iron too.”

Thor glanced at the spearhead. Then he drove its point into the turf.

“Ask someone else.”

A few of the gods laughed. The sound was uneasy. They had come because Frigg had returned with the oaths, because Baldr had slept badly again, because none of them could bear another morning of looking at his face and wondering whether it would be the last.

Baldr stooped, selected a stone and tossed it to Thor.

“Start with that.”

Thor caught it. “You always were difficult to refuse.”

“Try harder.”

That earned a real laugh. Thor rolled the stone in his palm, tested its weight, and threw it at Baldr’s shoulder.

Baldr saw it coming. His body ducked before he could stop himself.

The stone touched him anyway. There was a small, absurd sound, no more than a pebble dropped on a cloak. It fell at his feet.

He straightened slowly.

Thor came across the ground at once and pulled the cloth aside to look. No bruise. He pressed the place with two fingers.

“Well?” Baldr asked.

“Nothing.”

“You sound disappointed.”

Thor’s laugh burst out of him. He seized Baldr by both shoulders and shook him once, hard enough to make his teeth meet.

Then everyone wanted to try.

The first spear fell short, its thrower unable to commit to the cast. The next struck Baldr squarely below the breastbone. He felt the thrust without the wound, saw the point turn aside and the shaft topple. He stared down at it, astonished by the crude length of wood lying harmlessly across his boots.

A sword followed. Its owner approached with the solemn face of a man beginning a duel, raised the blade, and gave Baldr’s upper arm a cautious blow.

“Was that the best you could do?” someone called.

The second blow rang out.

Baldr laughed.

He could not help it. He had heard the blade whistle, had felt his muscles prepare for pain, and then there was only the flat astonishment of being whole. The laughter came from so far down in him that he had to bend over with it.

Across the circle, Frigg covered her mouth. Her shoulders were moving too.

For a little while, he gave them what they wanted. He stood still for the stones. He opened his arms for the spears. Each weapon that fell seemed to carry another piece of the night’s fear into the grass.

Then he saw Höðr.

His brother was blind. He stood behind the others, one hand resting on the low fence that marked the ground. When the circle shifted, Höðr turned his head toward the scrape of feet. Nobody made room. They were too intent on choosing the next weapon, watching the next impossible failure.

Baldr raised a hand.

“Enough.”

A stone struck his chest and dropped.

“Enough,” he repeated, laughing still, though less easily. “I should like to get through the day without having to stand in one place.”

“An axe,” someone said. “We haven’t tried an axe.”

Baldr stepped over a spear and left the center.

One More Throw

“You have missed a magnificent display of poor aim,” he told Höðr.

“I heard you being struck.”

“And laughing.”

“I heard that too.”

Baldr put a hand on the fence beside his brother’s. From here the circle looked different. Men were picking weapons out of the grass and calling to one another across the space where he had stood. There was already an argument over whose spear had hit hardest.

“Walk with me,” he said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere they haven’t brought an axe.”

Höðr’s mouth shifted, almost a smile.

Baldr touched his elbow. His brother moved it away.

“I know the way out.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know.”

The words closed the small space between them. Baldr had heard too much tenderness in his own voice, the careful voice everyone had been using with him for days. He took his hand off the fence.

“Then you lead,” he said. “I have been stared at quite enough.”

Höðr reached for the opening in the rails. Before they could leave, a shout went up behind them. Someone had brought the axe.

At the far edge of the ground, Frigg was speaking to a woman Baldr did not recognize. The woman stood with her head inclined, asking something. Frigg answered, then turned back toward the noise.

Their eyes met across the assembly. His mother smiled.

Baldr lifted his unmarked hand to her.

“Where is everyone?” Höðr asked.

“Still arguing.”

“No. Which way are they facing?”

“Toward us.”

Höðr let go of the rail.

Baldr understood then that leaving could be another kind of exclusion. His brother would hear the game retold that evening, each throw enlarged, each weapon heavier. He would be the one who had stood outside it until Baldr came to fetch him.

“Do you want to try?” Baldr asked.

“With what? My empty hand?”

“I can find you something.”

“And lead me into the proper place.”

Baldr was about to answer when a familiar voice spoke behind them.

“I can do that.”

Loki slipped through the opening in the fence. He carried a slender green shaft, so slight beside the weapons on the ground that Baldr nearly laughed again.

“What have you brought?” Baldr asked. “Are we reduced to gardening?”

“Everyone else has had his turn.” Loki held the little shaft where Höðr could take it. “Why should your brother be left out?”

Höðr reached forward. His fingertips found the wood and closed around it.

Baldr looked toward the center of the assembly ground. The gods had begun to gather again. Beyond them, Frigg was alone; the unknown woman had gone.

“One throw,” he said. “Then we leave.”

Höðr tested the shaft between his fingers. “Stand somewhere I can hear you.”

“That should be easy enough.”

Baldr returned to the trampled patch. He moved a fallen spear with his foot so it would not trip him, then turned to face his brother.

Loki stood at Höðr’s shoulder. One hand rested lightly on his arm.

A breeze stirred the grass. Baldr could smell the earth torn up by the spearpoints. He had spent the morning bracing himself against iron and stone; now there was only a green twig in his brother’s hand.

“Here,” he called.

Höðr lifted his arm.

Loki adjusted it a little.

Baldr’s body remembered fear. The muscles across his stomach tightened; his heel began to turn. He could step away. He could end the game by refusing this last small thing after permitting every other god to strike him.

Höðr waited.

Baldr planted his foot again.

“A little to your left,” he said. “You have me.”

Loki’s hand fell away.

The shaft came toward him without the shriek of iron. For an instant Baldr could see it plainly against the bodies beyond: the pale broken end, a small scrap of green still clinging to the wood.

It struck.

He waited for it to drop.

Instead, something gave inside him.

He looked down. The shaft had entered his breast. His fingers found it, and the warmth spreading beneath his hand was so unfamiliar that he pressed harder, trying to understand what had happened.

The circle tilted.

“Baldr?” Höðr said.

He wanted to tell his brother to stay where he was. There were spearheads in the grass. There were people already moving, and Höðr would not know which way to turn.

He opened his mouth.

His knees struck the earth.

The Unmarked Hand

Frigg could not get her fingers beneath his shoulder.

His weight had settled into the ground. She knelt beside him, pulling at the cloth, trying to raise him as she had reached across the table that morning. Someone bent down opposite her. Someone else made a sound that did not become a word.

The little shaft moved when she touched him.

Mistletoe.

She had seen it growing west of Valhalla, a small, young thing. Too young, she had thought, to be asked for an oath. She had passed it by.

Her fingers stopped pulling at his shoulder.

Behind her, feet stopped scraping. The assembly ground was sacred; even now, no one drew a weapon against the hand that had done this.

“Baldr?” Höðr called again.

Frigg found her son’s wrist. His palm lay open in the grass. It had no cut across it, no mark where the knife had pressed.

She folded his fingers around her own and held them there.