The Age Of Odin

Twenty-Four

The Norns lived in a cottage on the opposite side of Yggdrasil from Asgard Hall. You couldn't see the castle from the cottage and vice versa. The World Tree blocked the view both ways. Odin and I headed straight there as soon as we got back on Asgardian soil, with a slight detour on the way so that I could visit Frigga for some running repairs. She changed my dressings, applied salves to my new injuries, dosed me up with some of that barely swallowable medicine of hers, and clucked and tutted a bit, telling her husband I was a man in clear need of rest. That wasn't on the cards, but I left feeling a great deal better than I had done. Right as rain and not as wet.

Cottage, as a matter of fact, was a generous description for the Norns' residence. Tumbledown shack would have been nearer the truth. Slates were missing from the roof, sometimes so many in one spot as to leave gaping great holes in its pelt of snow. Broken windowpanes had been patched up with rectangles of fibreboard. The brickwork was cracked and flaky and in serious need of repointing. Ivy and Virginia creeper had the building in their clutches and seemed to be doing their level best to pull it down into the ground. The whole place was sagging and lopsided from threshold to chimney.

A gate, leaning off a single hinge, opened onto an unruly, overgrown front garden. There was a well in the middle of the lawn, an olde-worlde wishing well type of affair with a small peaked roof on top and a rusty bucket hanging from the handle. Looked like no one had drawn water from it in ages. The path up to the front door looked like no one had walked up it in ages either. It meandered, a curving line of smooth, undisturbed snow to the porch.

Odin was not happy. His mouth was pursed. Nervousness was coming off him like a bad odour. Every step closer to the cottage, he seemed to have to drag himself that bit harder along.

"What's up?" I asked. "Somewhere else you'd rather be?"

"Anywhere else," he replied. "I don't dread much, but I dread the Norns."

"But you're Odin. The All-Father. The big kahuna. You're in charge of the show. What's the problem?"

"All Aesir and Vanir fear the Norns. They are the Pronouncers, the Three Fays of Destiny. They were old while we were still young. They determine the fates of all. Even gods must bow before them."

Three women you really don't want to meet, Freya had said. And Odin wasn't that keen on paying them a house call. Even Huginn and Muninn had chosen to give the event a miss and had fluttered off on some birdie errand or other. So, understandably, I was beginning to wonder myself whether this was such a good idea.

"We could come back another time. Or maybe you could tell me yourself about the enemy. We don't have to go to all this trouble if you don't want to."

"It's the best way," said Odin, grimly, gravely. "The Norns have skills that I lack. Their demonstrations of fact are more convincing than any mere words of mine would be."

He reached out to tug at the knob of a bell-pull. A bell clanged deep, unfathomably deep inside the cottage.

"Oh well, nobody home," I said before the ringing had even stopped. "Let's go."

"They're home. They're never not home. Hold fast."

We were on the doorstep for nearly five minutes, and I was starting to hope that Odin was wrong and the Norns were, for once, out. Nipped down to Asda or the bingo or something.

Then: light footsteps, stiff bolts being shot, a key creakily turning, and the door was opened by…

…not a wrinkly white-haired crone like I'd been picturing, but a girl, barely a teenager, blossom-cheeked and pretty. Reminded me very much of Sally Stringer, who I'd lusted after through most of secondary school, tried countless times to chat up at parties and discos without getting anywhere, and had my boyish heart broken by when she started going out with Brett Hughes. It had been an especially painful kick in the teeth because Brett's parents were well-off, had a large house, gave him a generous allowance, and Sally — the Sally I thought she was, the Sally I'd built her up to be in my mind — wasn't the kind of girl to have her head turned by wealth. Although apparently, at the end of the day, she was.

The girl smiled at us, coldly welcoming.

"Odin," she said.

"Urd," said Odin, and he had lowered his head, as if he could scarcely bring himself to look at her. He was even, I thought, shaking.

But she was just a girl. Simply dressed. Slender. Not tall. Slip of a thing. No threat to anyone.

"And Gideon Coxall," she said, turning to me.

"Gid."

"Your mother always preferred Gideon. Your father was the one who shortened it. It was a bone of contention between them — one of the few, all minor, until his infidelity. Afterwards, she wouldn't even let your friends call you Gid while they were in the house. 'Gideon,' she would insist. 'As in the Bible.'"

Me: eyes on stalks, jaw open to the neck.

But I recovered well, I thought.

"Okay, that trick isn't creepy much. What have you got back there, The Big Book Of Gideon Coxall, complete with illustrations?"

"Something of that ilk," said Urd. "I shall use Gideon too, because it was your mother's choice, and she is a significant factor in your past. What my sisters call you is their own business."

"Will you invite us in?" said Odin, having to force the request out. "I can't believe our visit was not expected."

"Nothing is unexpected to the Norns," Urd said, "and indeed we already know your motives for being here and have prepared accordingly. Come in, both."

She let us in, shut the door behind, and showed us along the hallway through to a lounge. The cottage's interior matched its exterior. Ripped and peeling wallpaper. Threadbare rugs and throws. Chairs well ventilated with holes. Moth-eaten, mildewed, mouldering curtains with hems so rotted away they barely touched the sills. The smell of dust, dense and peppery in the air. If the Norns were deliberately going for the shabby-chic look, they'd nailed it. Nailed it to the point of overkill.

In the lounge, two women rose to greet us. Both had a similar look about them to Urd. Same posture, same mannerisms, same colouring. In point of fact, they were exact replicas of her, just older. One by maybe twenty years, the other by a lot. One was Urd as she might be after childbirth, broader in the hips, plumper around the jowls. Matronly was the word that sprang to mind. The other was Urd as she'd become once menopause, osteoporosis, and the general withering of age had taken their toll: stooped, hair streaked with silver, lips shrivelled to a dog's bumhole with a sketching of moustache across the top.

"Verdande," Odin said to the mother version of Urd, and "Skuld" to the ancient version. There was a definite tremor in his voice. Oh how he did not want to be in a room with these three.

"All-Father," Verdande and Skuld replied. Usually a term of respect round these parts, but from their lips the title sounded sarcastic, even contemptuous. They were scornful of it, and of Odin.

The Norns gathered together in the centre of the room, and it was like a snapshot of three generations. Grandmother, mother, daughter. Which would have been charming if they weren't so eerily alike in every way. Triplets born across a span of several decades.

"We are busy," said Urd. "There is much work to be done."

"The tides in the affairs of gods and men are in full spate and reaching flood," said Verdande. "We must weave and divine as never before."

"Yet we have made time for your visit," said Skuld. "How could we fail to? We are the Norns. It was foretold."

"We are grateful," said Odin.

But they didn't much seem to care for further niceties. "Be seated," Urd instructed, and Odin and I did as told, finding places for ourselves on a settee between the sticking-up springs and the outbursts of horsehair stuffing. A one-bar electric fire buzzed hear our feet, shedding some warmth but no further up our legs than our ankles. Funnily enough, I couldn't see where the fire was plugged into. It didn't even appear to have a flex.

"What has Odin told you about us?" Urd asked me. "About how we work?"

"Little, I'd imagine," said Verdande.

"The All-Father is loath to acknowledge that we exist at all," said Skuld. "Or that, as we prove, there are things beyond his control."

"We see all."

"While he sees not nearly so much."

"Nor nearly so far ahead."

"One eye only."

"The other sacrificed in return for a drink from the Wellspring of Wisdom in Jotunheim."

"Plucked out and given to Mimir, the only wise jotun that ever lived. A poor exchange."

They were ripping the piss out of Odin, and he just stared at the middle distance and took it. I felt a bit sorry for him.

"For wisdom by itself is never quite enough," said Urd.

"Not when unaccompanied by foresight," said Verdande.

"Oh what it must be to understand all, but be able to predict the outcome of naught," said Skuld.

"How sad."

"How limiting."

"How short-sighted."

"Come on, girls, leave it out," I said. Someone had to stand up for the old bugger. He obviously wasn't going to himself. "So Odin's missing an eye. Never stopped Columbo, did it? Means he can't enjoy a 3D movie, but that's about the only drawback I can think of."

"Don't defend me, Gid," Odin said. "This… teasing is just their way. The Norns must be endured and never — I repeat — never antagonised."

"What's the worst they can do? Slag me off to death?"

The three women laughed in unison, a horrible sound, jarring and jangling like a bad guitar chord.

"Gideon has spirit," said Urd.

"Gid does," said Verdande.

"A hero born," said Skuld.

"No, whoa, what?" I said. "Hero? Oh no. That's enough of that."

"Modest?"

"Or ignorant."

"Or in denial."

"Denial of his future path."

"Shall we show him, sisters?"

"Show him the course we have set for him?"

"The thread we have selected?"

"Ought we?"

"He has come. We ought."

"He wants truth."

"We shall give him truth."

They were talking so fast now, I was having trouble keeping up with which of them was saying what. The three-way rota of Urd then Verdande then Skuld had been abandoned. They were all speaking at once, or finishing one another's sentences, or doing alternate words, I wasn't sure which.

"It is the price."

"The price of truth."

"To be shown the truth of himself."

"A truth for a truth."

"Does he wish to see what is to be?"

"As if he has a choice."

"In our house."

"On our terms."

"He cannot refuse."

Then, like that, they were gone, whisking out of the room in a flourish of skirts. I looked at Odin.

"What the hell was all that — "

And suddenly they were back, wheeling a TV set. It was sitting on a rickety hostess trolley, with a VCR on the shelf beneath. The telly was vintage; fake wood veneer, bulbous screen, loads of knobs and buttons. Mid 'eighties at the latest. The VCR was much the same. A top-loader the size of a kitchen sink, with clunky lever switches you had to press hard.

"Once, we spun threads," said Urd. They were back to speaking in turn, thank God. That overlapping dialogue of theirs had been freaking me out.

"One for every mortal," said Verdande.

"But so effortful," said Skuld. "So laborious."

"A grey thread for the common man whose life is never to amount to much."

"Occasionally a colourful thread for the freeman or the farmer, he whose lot is to provide for others and set a good example."

"And rarely, very rarely, a golden thread, for the chieftain, the king, the hero…"

"The uncommon man."

"The exception."

"The great."

"But that was then, and this is now." Urd produced a videocassette. It gleamed brightly. It looked for all the world like an ordinary plastic-cased VHS tape that someone had spray-painted gold. I glimpsed my name scrawled on the stick-on strip on the side.

"This is yours, Gideon," she said. "This is you. Your past…" She handed the tape to Verdande.

"Your present," said Verdande, passing it on to Skuld.

"And your future," said Skuld, slotting it into the VCR.

The telly, like the fire, lacked a plug cable. Still it came on when Urd prodded the main button. Verdande manually selected a channel. Skuld pressed "Play" on the VCR. The machine's drive motor whined and churned.

"Sit back."

"Watch."

"It will be instructive."

Out of the corner of his mouth, Odin said, "I was afraid this might happen. Those who come to the Norns seeking knowledge must pay for it somehow. In your case, the cost is submission to a demonstration of their power. If you weren't a hero, or so unintimidated by them, they wouldn't feel the need to flaunt their superiority. The greater your destiny, the stronger your character, the more they must try to belittle you."

"With a video?" I muttered back. "A Blu-Ray disc, a forty-inch plasma display, now that would impress me. But this?"

"They have modernised."

"Hardly."

"Nonetheless, I urge you, don't watch. Or watch for as long as you can bear, but close your eyes and stop your ears when it becomes too much."

"It's pre-digital technology," I said. "There aren't even remote controls. I'm not worried."

The TV screen flickered into life. A wash of static. Then…