The war between the Æsir and the Vanir had gone on for a long time. Long enough for both sides to have forgotten why it started, and long enough for neither side to admit it.
The peace came with conditions. Hostages. Both sides would send their best to the other, as a guarantee. It sounds reasonable if you don't think about it too long. Give away your best people to your enemies and hope the enemies do the same. Diplomacy.
The Vanir sent Njörðr. Wealthy and wise, with hands hardened by work. He smelled of salt and seaweed and fish, because he was the god of the sea, and that smells foul, though it smells real. And they sent his son Freyr, who was young and strong and had that specific calm that only people with genuine power possess. Freyr did not need to prove a damn thing. He simply was. The Vanir sent their best, because the Vanir were serious about the peace.
The Æsir had a problem.
They did not want to send their best. Odin would not go, because Odin never goes anywhere he does not rule. Thor would not go, because Thor did not understand what hostage meant and no one could be bothered to explain. Týr had already given a hand to the Fenris wolf and had been in a foul mood ever since. Loki was, technically, not even an Æsir. So there they stood, the gods, Asgard's mightiest, looking at each other and trying to work out who they could spare.
And then they looked at Hœnir.
Hœnir was tall. Taller than anyone else. He had a jaw that looked like it had been carved from stone and shoulders as broad as an ox-cart. His voice was deep and clear, precisely the right kind of voice for saying important things. He always stood straight. His back like a pillar. His hair fell perfectly. In all honesty: Hœnir looked exactly the way a god should look if you painted a god on a wall.
The problem was that Hœnir was empty. Inside the magnificent shell there was nothing. No thought that had not been fed in from outside, no opinion that was his own, no will that survived more than three breaths. Hœnir was a statue that could walk and talk. The other gods knew it. They had known it for thousands of years. It was one of Asgard's worst-kept secrets.
"We send Hœnir," said Odin. He said it without smiling, because Odin was good at hiding things, and his single eye glittered. "And we send Mímir with him." That last part was the key. Mímir. The wisest being who had ever drawn breath. If Mímir stood beside Hœnir, Mímir could whisper the answers and Hœnir could deliver them with his magnificent voice and his magnificent jaw, and the Vanir would never notice the difference.
That was the plan. And like all plans built on deceiving people you have just finished fighting, it was bloody stupid.
The first months went well. The Vanir received Hœnir with open arms. They saw him, tall and broad-shouldered, with that voice, and they thought: the Æsir have sent their best. Hœnir became chieftain. They gave him a seat at the ting and listened when he spoke.
And Hœnir spoke well. He must have, because Mímir sat behind him at every assembly, and Mímir knew exactly what needed to be said, and Mímir whispered it, and Hœnir said it, and it sounded like poetry, and the Vanir nodded and were satisfied. Should we open trade routes to the east? Mímir whispered. Hœnir delivered. Should we build new ships? Mímir whispered. Hœnir delivered. It was like clockwork.
Then the thing that always happens happened. Mímir fell ill for a week. Or perhaps he went away to think, or perhaps he was simply somewhere else, it does not matter. The point is that Mímir was gone, and Hœnir remained, and the ting asked a question.
"Should we trade with the eastern settlements?" they asked. Hœnir was silent. Not silent like a man who is thinking. Silent like an empty room. His eyes were open and beautiful and there was nothing behind them. "Ráði aðrir," he said at last. Let the others decide. His voice was as magnificent as ever. The words were empty as air.
They asked another question. Should we build a wall around the village? Hœnir fell silent again. The long, beautiful silence. "Ráði aðrir." Where should we graze the horses? "Ráði aðrir." Every question. Every time. They might as well have asked a fence post.
The Vanir did not grasp it immediately. People, and gods, are slow to realise they have been cheated. It takes time for the shame to catch up, and shame is sluggish. It caught up though. Piece by piece. They began to look at Hœnir and see what the Æsir had always seen: a beautiful surface with no depth. A facade. A bloody swindle.
They could not start a new war. That was the whole point of the hostages. The anger needed to go somewhere, though. Fire that is not allowed to burn outward burns inward. And it burned toward Mímir, because Mímir was the one they could reach, and Mímir was the one who had made the deception possible. Without Mímir they would have exposed Hœnir in the first week.
They cut off his head. It was not ceremonial and it was not dramatic. They took Mímir to a meadow behind the village and a Vanir with a sword struck once. Quick. Efficient. Then they packed the head in a basket with straw and sent it to Asgard. No one accompanied the basket. No letter. The message was clear enough.
Odin opened the basket alone. No one knows exactly what he thought, but you can guess. He had sent away the wisest being in all the worlds as part of a con, and now the wisest being's head lay in his lap with closed eyes and cold flesh, and it was his fault. Entirely. So instead of grieving he did what he always did. He fixed the problem.
He took herbs and runes. Anointed the head with substances no one else knew, and he carved signs into the forehead and the cheeks, and he sang the incantations that only he could sing, and slowly, gradually, Mímir opened his eyes. The mouth moved. The voice came back, thinner now, like wind through a crack, and it said Odin's name, and Odin answered, and from that day the Allfather sat in his chambers and talked to a severed head, and the head talked back.
Mímir still knew everything. Death had not taken the knowledge. Odin asked, and Mímir answered, and no other living being was allowed to be present for those conversations. It was the darkest kind of intimacy. A god sitting alone in a room asking a dead head about the future, and the head answering, and the answers being correct, and none of it needing to have happened this way if the god had not cheated in the first place.
And Hœnir? Hœnir remained among the Vanir. Tall and beautiful and utterly, utterly pointless. No one sent him back. The Vanir did not want him, and the Æsir did not want him either. He stayed like a piece of furniture no one has room for and no one takes responsibility for. He stood at the ting and said "ráði aðrir" to everything, and after a while people stopped asking him, and he stood there anyway, because Hœnir had never known what to do with himself, and that had not changed.