The Cauldron

It started with ale. Everything starts with ale among gods, because gods drink like people who never need to get up in the morning, and that is true, they do not need to. Ægir had invited them to a feast. Ægir was the sea god with the great beard and the even greater kitchen, and the problem was that he had promised to brew for everyone, all of them, every single bloody god and goddess and demigod and hanger-on loafing around Asgard. And then he had checked the stores and realised he did not have a cauldron big enough.

"I cannot brew ale for everyone in an ordinary cauldron," he said to Thor and Tyr, who stood in his hall dripping seawater on the floor. "I need a cauldron that is a mile deep." He said it as if it were a normal measurement. A mile deep. A cauldron you could drop a horse into and never hear it land.

Tyr said: "My father has one." He said it quietly, almost reluctantly, like a man who tells you where the money is hidden but would rather no one went to get it. "Hymir. He lives in Jötunheimr. He has a cauldron a mile deep." Thor looked at him. "What is the problem?" he asked, because Thor could tell there was a problem, and it was unusual for him to notice such things. "He is a giant," said Tyr. "His stare cracks stone. His temper is worse than his stare. And he hates visitors." Thor shrugged. "Let us go."

And that was how it worked with Thor. Someone said something was dangerous. Thor said let us go. Someone said a giant could crack mountains with his eyes. Thor said let us go. Someone could have said that a volcano spat fire and the ground burned and death waited on the other side, and Thor would have said the same thing, because Thor had exactly one attitude toward danger and that attitude was to walk straight into it with the hammer in hand.

They walked through Jötunheimr. The landscape was grey and endless, stone and ice and moss that was green in a way that made it look sick. Tyr walked in silence. Thor walked with heavy steps that echoed between the cliffs. "Tell me about your father," said Thor. "Stepfather," said Tyr quickly. "Tell me about your stepfather." Tyr was quiet for a moment. "He eats three oxen for breakfast. He fishes for whales. His beard is made of rime frost and it never melts. His grandmother has nine hundred heads." Thor stopped. "Nine hundred heads?" "That is what I have heard." "That is a fucking lot of heads." "Yes."

They arrived at Hymir's hall. It was built of stone blackened by age and covered in frost that glittered in the thin light. The door was so tall that Thor, who was used to large doors, had to tilt his head back. Inside stood a woman. Tyr's mother. She was beautiful the way mountains are sometimes beautiful: cold, still, vastly more imposing than you expect before you stand in front of them. "You must hide," she said. "He will be home soon and he is in a bad mood." "Is he ever in a good mood?" asked Tyr. She looked at him the way only mothers can, with a look that contains twenty years of disappointment compressed into half a second. "Get behind the cauldrons."

Along the wall hung cauldrons. Eight of them, large as bathtubs, hanging on beams of oak. Thor and Tyr squeezed behind them. Thor did not fit. He was too broad, too thick, too much Thor. He pressed himself behind the largest cauldron and stood still, and it was the hardest thing Thor had done in a long time, because Thor had not been built for standing still.

Hymir came home. You could hear him a long way off. The ground shook. The door opened and in came the most ill-tempered giant that Jötunheimr had to offer, and that is a landscape with fierce competition on that front. His beard was frozen in stiff coils. His eyes were small and deep-set and full of an anger that needs no reason, a permanent ember that refuses to go out.

He looked at the beam above the door. He had the feeling something was wrong. His gaze narrowed. And the beam cracked. Clean through, like a twig. Stone cracked behind it. The eight cauldrons crashed down from the wall with a bang that made the floor vibrate. Seven of them shattered. Metal and shards and dust everywhere. The eighth, the hardest, the deepest, the one that was a mile deep and made of a material that has no name in any human language, that one rolled out onto the floor and stopped in front of Hymir's feet. Intact. Thor looked at it through the dust and thought: that one.

"Guests," said Hymir. He said it the way you say "vermin." He looked at Thor and Tyr standing in the ruins of his cauldrons, covered in dust and metal splinters. Tyr's mother put out food. Hymir threw two oxen on the table, whole, unbutchered, just killed and flung there like logs. "Eat," he said.

Thor ate. Thor ate both oxen. Whole. Bones, sinew, cartilage, everything that could be chewed and some that could not be chewed but that Thor chewed anyway. Hymir sat and watched. His mouth was open. Giants he had seen eat. Wild animals he had seen eat. Never had he seen anyone eat the way Thor ate, with the mechanical efficiency of a mill that grinds and grinds and does not stop until there is nothing left to grind. The meat disappeared. The bones disappeared. In the end Thor sat with grease in his beard and a satisfied expression and two empty ox hides in front of him.

"Tomorrow we fish," said Hymir. That was all he said. He went to bed. The tone was clear. It said: you have eaten my meat, you bloody parasite, and tomorrow you will work for it.

Thor woke at dawn and walked out to the barn. Hymir had said he should arrange his own bait. Thor looked at Hymir's oxen. They were enormous animals, black and muscular and with horns that curved backward like sabres. Thor walked up to the largest. It was called Himinhrjótr. Heaven-breaker. Thor grabbed its head and tore it off. Just like that. With a single pull. The head came away with a sound like a falling tree, and Thor held it in his hand and blood ran down his arms and he thought it made a perfectly excellent bait.

Hymir stood in the doorway. His face was purple. "My ox," he said. "My bait," said Thor. They went down to the sea.

Hymir's boat was not large. It was built for a giant, and Thor was no giant, but he took up space like one. They rowed out. Hymir rowed with slow, heavy strokes. Thor sat in the stern with the ox head in his lap and blood dripping into the wake. They passed Hymir's usual fishing spots. "Here," said Hymir. "Further out," said Thor. They passed the reef. "Here," said Hymir. "Further out," said Thor. They rowed until the coast was a sliver and the sea was dark beneath them and Hymir could feel in his giant kneecaps that they were too far out, that below them was something that should not be disturbed.

"We are above Jörmungandr," said Hymir. His voice was flat. "Yes," said Thor. He fastened the ox head on the hook. The hook was as large as a scythe. The line was as thick as an arm. He cast it out. The ox head sank. The line ran out, foot after foot, and Thor waited, and the sea was still, and Hymir sat motionless with the oars in his hands and eyes that said he wanted to be anywhere except here.

Something bit. The line jerked. Thor held on. The boat tipped sideways. The sea around them began to move, first slowly, then in great circular churnings as though something enormous was turning beneath the surface. Thor pulled. His muscles swelled. His feet pressed through the bottom of the boat and down into the seabed below, because Thor was now standing with his feet on the ocean floor and pulling, and the boat was no longer a boat, it was a platform for a man hauling up the world's doom on a hook.

Jörmungandr came up. Head first. Big as an island. Eyes that burned yellow. Jaws that cracked the water like an earthquake and from them reeked venom, sulphur-yellow venom that etched the sea around them and made Hymir's beard sizzle. The serpent stared at Thor. Thor stared at the serpent. They recognised each other. They had always recognised each other. This was the first time, and it was the last, and it was neither the first nor the last, because this fight had been going on since before time was time, and it would go on until time ran out.

Thor raised Mjölnir. The hammer shone. His arm was drawn back and his teeth were bared and he was ready, and the whole sea held its breath, and the gods in Asgard felt the ground shake and knew that Thor held their fate in his hand.

Hymir cut the line. One motion. One knife. The line snapped and Jörmungandr sank, and the serpent's head disappeared beneath the surface with a sound like a continent drowning, and the water closed and the sea was still again.

Thor turned around. His face was empty. Empty in a way that was worse than anger, because anger has direction and this had nothing, it was just a hole where a possibility had been. He struck Hymir on the side of the head. The giant flew overboard. Splash. He sank. He came back up, coughing and spitting, and they rowed home in silence, and the silence was thicker than the sea.

They went back to the hall. Thor walked straight to the cauldron, the great one, the one that had survived Hymir's stare, and he lifted it. A mile deep and made of impossible material and Thor lifted it and placed it on his head like a hat. It hung down to his ankles. He walked out through the door. Tyr followed. They started walking.

They had gone some distance when Tyr looked back. "Thor," he said. Thor looked. Behind them, over the hill, came the giants. Hymir's kin and neighbours and friends, if Hymir had friends, and he probably did not, but he had allies, and in Jötunheimr allies are people who hate the same things you do. Many of them, armed, and running.

Thor set down the cauldron. He raised Mjölnir. And then he walked back toward them, and it did not take long, because Thor had never needed long, and when he was done they lay on the ground, all of them, and it was quiet, and Thor had blood on his hands and in his beard and on the hammer, and he walked back to the cauldron and lifted it and put it on his head again and kept walking as though nothing had happened.

They came home. Ægir got his cauldron. He brewed the ale. It took days. It smelled of malt and honey and something old and dangerous that only exists in drinks brewed by a sea god in a cauldron stolen from a giant. The feast was held. All the gods came. Everyone drank. And it was at that feast, with that ale in their cups, that Loki stood up and began insulting everyone in the hall, one by one, and no one could stop him, because the truth in what he said was worse than lies, and the ale had made them drunk enough to listen and sober enough to remember. That is another story.