Page 27 of Last Thrall of Asgard

“Youa service? Um—”

“Not that.” Hel chuckled. “Well, not with me. But a service it will be for me regardless because, honestly, he is bringing everyone around here down. And this is meant to be a place of peace. He shouldn’t even still be here, but he refuses to ascend back to the living world, despite having been reborn and Ragnarök having passed.”

I searched my mind, my knowledge of the stories, for whom among the gods who perished during Ragnarök would not have ended up in Valhalla. All would have died in battle…

No. One did not die in battle, but his death was the reason Ragnarök began.

“Balder.”

Hel laughed softly. The sound was very much like Loki’s. “You were well chosen. Balder expects you. He wants to leave here. But… well, he will explain.” She brought us to a stop in front of a new door, similar to the one I’d walked out of.

I hesitated on what to say next, not because I feared Balder. He was as beloved a god in the stories as Freyr. But to be in Hel, before Hel herself, I felt as though I was missing an opportunity to ask… I wasn’t sure what, butsomething.

“You wonder about the meaning of life?” she asked. “How long your thread of life might last? If anyone you love is already walking my streets? I am afraid I can answer none of it. But Iam grateful to you, Oli, for where your thread of life leads.” Hel nodded at the door, and then released me.

“Wait! May I… ask something else?”

“You may, and if it is a question I can answer, I will.”

She had already denied me the questions most on my mind, but I was curious about something else. “If the gods, the beasts, basically everything that perished during Ragnarök, all came back after it ended…howdid they all come back?”

“Spirits are eternal.”

“Yes, but the gods came back in the flesh.” And quite potent flesh, given what I’d experienced so far.

“Those of the realms other than Midgard are closer to Yggdrasil’s lifeforce,” she explained. “We paved the way for your realm’s existence, and thus, we can never fully die, not so much that we cannot reform.”

“So, itisthe same as how burnt land eventually grows grass and crops again, only for the gods, they are the same as what died?”

“New growth is closer to its progenitors than you might think too. A spark of the original life is always there, or burnt lands would remain barren forever. But you know well that the gods are not thesameas they were. Many things must die to make way for the new, Oli. Sometimes, more important is the death of how we used to think or feel or chose to act.

“Do you have other questions for me?”

I wasn’t sure, or completely sure if she’d answered my original question, but another one passed my lips. “Is Loki a good father?”

Hel smiled. “Would it surprise you to hear that he is?”

“I thought he barely got to see you or his other monstrous children. Not thatyou’remonstrous—”

She laughed. “I think you know this already, Oli. If there is someone Loki wishes to see, he makes sure he sees them.” Shebowed her head, and then turned to head back to the busier streets of her kingdom, where the peaceful spirits of the dead greeted her warmly.

Warm. She was warm too. Some stories called Hel cold, but it wasn’t that she was detached or emotionless, more neutral, able to judge fairly and offer peace to those who earned it. She was nothing like Loki in that regard, for he was all chaos, yet it was odd how his company felt peaceful to me too.

I couldn’t even be angry with the trickster, for none of this was as terrifying as I might have feared, but if he had warned me, it would have made me more anxious.

With firmer resolve, I opened the door before me.

This room was similar to the one I’d woken up in, but while the previous chamber had borne Loki’s style, matching where we had feasted, this room was all Balder.

Not decorated like Balder, mind you. The room only had a bed, but the walls depicted scenes. Scenes I knew. The most well-known stories of the beloved god, and not as murals. They were moving memories like projected plays, one on each wall.

Balder being praised as the greatest of the gods, while Frigg, his mother, wife of Odin, fretted on the sidelines, demanding of every living thing that they vow to never cause her son harm.

Balder in a fitful sleep, dreaming of his imminent demise despite his mother’s best efforts to keep him safe.

Balder dying amid his reveling brethren because Loki had tricked Hod, Balder’s brother, into killing him with the one living thing that had not made that vow, for Frigg had deemed the plant too fragile to ask.

Finally, the last scene showed Odin whispering into the ear of Balder’s corpse before his funeral pyre was set adrift and then set ablaze with a soaring arrow. What Odin had whispered was one of the ultimate mysteries of the old tales.

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