Idun and the Apples of Youth

by Joan Holub

  And laugh she did. Letting Loki have his way, she ran along beside him and her cart until they were breathless. Truthfully, she felt flattered that he liked her apples so much. At least someone did.

  Slowing somewhat, Loki gestured over his shoulder back toward her nine trees. Fruit still hung from some of them. “Want me to help you pick the rest of those apples later?” he asked.

  “That’s so nice of you!” said Idun. “But only I can do the picking. Anyone else touches an apple on those trees, and the apple withers.”

  Loki snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten that,” he said with a grin. Briefly Idun wondered if that was a lie and he’d only made his helpful offer because he knew she couldn’t take him up on it. But today was about giving Loki the benefit of the doubt, so she did.

  He grabbed an apple from her cart as they continued toward the bridge and then handed the cart off to her. “So you aren’t tired of my apples?” she asked, watching him munch the one he’d chosen.

  “Why would I be?” he asked in surprise, looking over at her.

  “It’s just that I’ve been getting the funny feeling that some people around here are a little bored with them,” she informed him.

  “Yeah,” Loki said. “I’ve noticed that too, actually. Maybe it’s not the apples. Maybe it’s the apple recipes. Why don’t you shake things up? Have the kitchen try some new ones,” he suggested.

  Idun brightened. If that was all it was, she could fix that, easy! “Do you know any?” she asked eagerly. “Recipes, that is.”

  “Me? Nah, I don’t know how to cook,” said Loki. Finishing his apple, he tossed away the core. He didn’t offer to take over pushing her eski again. But that was okay with Idun. It slid along easily on its runners. She wasn’t really a cook either, but racking her brain as they walked along, she named off some recipe possibilities.

  “Apple burgers?” she suggested.

  Loki shook his head. “Frey doesn’t like any food with the word ‘burger’ in it. He’s become a vegetarian in the last couple of weeks.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that. Well, how about apple macaroni, then?”

  “Honir thinks macaroni is slimy. He says it gives him the creeps,” Loki informed her. No matter what idea she came up with, the boygod was able to name one or more students who wouldn’t like it. By the time they reached the bridge, she was feeling pretty discouraged.

  Heimdall greeted them in his usual friendly manner. (Not!) “Halt!” He blocked their way across the bridge. “Are those pip-purses you’ve got there?” he asked, eyeing the leather seed pouches around their necks.

  “I don’t carry a purse!” exclaimed Loki.

  “A pip is another name for a seed,” Idun explained. “ ‘Pip-purses’ must be Heimdall’s kenning for ‘seed pouches.’ ”

  The security guard nodded. He often spoke in kennings—hyphenated-word nicknames for things. He referred to his sword as a “hurt-stick,” for example, and his horn as his “noise-toot.” He now pointed his hurt-stick at the eski. “Golden apples of youth? Also full of seeds?” He folded his muscular arms forbiddingly. “They cannot leave Asgard.”

  “I would never plant the seeds of my magic apples outside the walls of Asgard,” Idun assured him, without bothering to explain that her magical apples couldn’t be grown from seeds anyway. “And as for the seeds in our ‘pip-purses,’ ” she went on, “they are ordinary apple seeds that I’ve collected walking around. They’re not glittery gold like the seeds of my apples of youth. See?” She opened her “pip-purse” to show Heimdall the plain old brown seeds inside.

  “Yeah.” Loki showed Heimdall his pouch too. “We’re off to scatter them down in Midgard to grow apples for the humans there. Our good seed-deed for the day.” He laughed.

  The security guard glanced at Loki with raised eyebrows. “You? Helping? Voluntarily?”

  “That’s right,” said Loki. “Just call me Mr. Good Deed–Doer. We’re taking the golden apples for when we get hungry, and so we can ride on the eski.”

  Idun couldn’t believe he’d told Heimdall all this. Especially since he’d asked her not to tell anyone about their plan. Loki had always found it difficult not to boast, though.

  “Want one?” Idun asked, offering a golden apple to Heimdall. “For a snack later on?”

  The security guard straightened. “No snack-stractions on duty.” (Which Idun figured must be his made-up word for food distractions.)

  She wanted to ask him if there were any apple recipes he was especially fond of, but he waved them on past before she could speak again. “Be back before dark,” he commanded. “See you later.”

  “Not if we see you first,” Loki joked.

  Heimdall didn’t laugh. Which was no surprise given his limited sense of humor. No matter. He was a cool guy in her opinion. And a superb watchman with his amazing hearing and eyesight.

  Since the glistening tricolor bridge was all downhill to Midgard, and the eski ’s runners slid well over it, Idun stood on the back tips of the runners and Loki made room for himself to crouch inside the box with the apples.

  “Whee! Woo-hoo!” they both shouted, zooming lickety-split all the way down the bridge.

  “Lean right!” yelled Idun sometime later as they approached the curve that would take them off the Midgard exit. Both of them leaned, causing the cart to veer in that direction. Whoosh! They slid down the exit ramp and off the bridge, coming to a stop seconds later on the level, snow-covered path beyond.

  Laughing, they hopped off the eski and began to walk, pushing it ahead of them. Soon they came upon fallow farmlands with rich soil that was perfect for growing apples. Since the soil here was only lightly dusted with snow, Idun reached into her pouch and started tossing seeds right and left as they continued to walk. Following her example, Loki did the same. But every once in a while, Idun noticed, he would stop and murmur over the seeds.

  “What are you saying to them?” she asked at last.

  Looking charmingly embarrassed, Loki said, “It’s a magic spell the gardener who took care of the grounds at my old school used to say as he worked. Bragi came up with it originally—that’s when he started rhyming everything, to get over being shy.”

  “Shy? Bragi?”

  “He used to be when we were kids. Making up all those rhymes helped him make friends, and he sort of got over it. Anyway, he made up a rhyming spell for the gardener to help things grow.”

  “How does it go?” Idun asked.

  Loki repeated it for her:

  “Grow, little seeds.

  Sprout and blossom.

  May whatever you bear

  be healthy and awesome.”

  “I love it!” Idun exclaimed. How sweet of Bragi to want to help things grow at his old school! Hearing this story caused her to like him even more. And how nice of Loki to employ that spell now to help their seeds. The feeling that she was doing the right thing by encouraging him to help others strengthened. “Does the spell really work?” she asked.

  Loki shrugged, grinning. “Maybe. The gardens at my school were awesome.”

  “Keep saying it, then,” said Idun. “And I will too.”

  An hour later, Loki held his pouch upside down and shook it. “All done. I’m empty.”

  “Same here,” Idun told him, tossing her empty pouch into the eski.

  After tossing his in too, Loki stretched his arms high. While planting the seeds, his manner had become gentler and more open than usual. But now, though she couldn’t have said what tipped her off exactly, she detected a subtle shift back toward the old “tricky” Loki.

  He looked into the distance, appearing thoughtful. “You know, when Bragi and Honir and I were out skiing yesterday, I saw some apple trees in a forest not far from here. They were full of golden apples that looked exactly like the ones in your grove. Weird, huh?”

  Idun shook her head firmly. “There’s no other apple grove like mine.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Loki said
casually. “But since we have some of your apples with us, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to compare them with the ones I saw? I mean, what if someday your trees got a disease? Might be nice to have a backup source for more apples of youth, right?”

  Can there really be a grove of magical apples here in Midgard? Idun wondered. Heimdall had been concerned about her special apples leaving Asgard. He and the great and powerful Odin would want to know if more magical trees existed outside of their realm. Feeling a little anxious about the notion of a competing grove or her trees getting a disease, Idun asked, “How far away is it?”

  “Not far,” Loki replied. Taking charge of her cart, he began to slide it, she presumed, in the direction of the other grove. “Hey, if the apples really are like yours, maybe you could claim the grove for the gods. Your apples’ youth-restoring properties would have no effect on humans, so no loss to them.”

  Idun trotted along to keep up with him. “No loss if we offer them new apple groves—like the ones we just planted,” she said. “If there really are more trees like mine, it would be good to know. Since only eighty-one apples can be harvested from my grove each day, another source of them would be a great find.”

  Loki led her to a forest at the foot of a mountain. There he paused to scoop several apples from the eski and put them in his pockets. “I’m getting hungry. You?” he asked as they entered the forest.

  She shook her head. Before she could ask if the grove was close by now, a shadow fell over her. Scree-ee! Scree-ee! An eagle as big as Heimdall, with a gold crown atop its head, came swooping from the trees toward them.

  “Whoa! Wait!” yelled Idun as it seized her, hooking one of its claws in the back of her hangerock. At the same time, it lifted the handle of her half-full eski with its other claw.

  “Help me, Loki!” Idun shouted, reaching out to him. But that boygod was already racing away from the forest, acting like he hadn’t heard her.

  9 Captured

  YEAK WONBEAK GETEAK ANYEAK HELPEAK freak himeak,” the eagle said to Idun as it flew higher with her and her apples. Then it laughed.

  “What? I don’t understand you!” she cried out.

  The eagle let out an irritated huff. “Why you gods expect eagles to learn your language when you don’t bother to learn ours, I’ll never know. So, anyway, as I was saying—and if you’d bothered to learn eaglespeak, you’d know this already—you won’t get any help from him. Loki owes me. He brought you here to fulfill a promise he made to me in exchange for his life yesterday.”

  “His life? A promise?” she said, feeling desperate as she watched the landscape pass by beneath them at tremendous speed. This must be what Freya felt when she flew in her feathered cloak, only without the terror!

  “He tried to attack me after he and his two buddies hiked up to my mountaintop café yesterday,” the eagle told her. “So I carried him off. We made a deal. If I let him go, he’d bring me something powerful. You.”

  “Me? I’m not powerful,” Idun protested in confusion.

  “Your apples are. Without them the gods will become old and weak. But now that I have them—and you to grow more apples from their seeds—I will stay young forevermore! See, I’m not really an eagle, but a giant in disguise. Ha-ha! I win. The gods and goddesses lose.”

  Idun wasn’t surprised to hear that this overgrown eagle was actually a giant. Given many giants’ deep dislike and distrust of goddesses and gods, they were always threatening to storm the newly rebuilt wall around Asgard. So it also wasn’t surprising that the giant liked the idea of the gods becoming old and weak.

  Idun’s heart sank. Should she tell this eagle-giant that the apples weren’t likely to have the same youthful effect on him as they did on goddesses and gods? No, then he might just drop her. Devastated by Loki’s deception and betrayal, she exclaimed, “Then Loki lied to me? There never was any special Midgardian magic apple grove?”

  “Is that what he told you? Ha-ha! That boy is slick,” said the eagle. “And a bad seed through and through.”

  As she was carried farther and farther away, Idun’s mortification over falling for Loki’s trick grew. He’d only agreed to come with her to plant seeds because doing so had fit in with his own plans to hand her over to this eagle! “I’m starting to think you might be right,” Idun murmured. She’d been such a fool! And so proud of herself for thinking she would be the one to help Loki be a better person.

  Obviously Skade, Sif, and Freya had been right about Loki too. He was a bad seed! And now she’d put the health and well-being of her three best friends as well as the other goddesses and gods at AA in jeopardy. They were all dependent on her apples to maintain their youth!

  Half an hour later, Idun’s captor deposited her inside his mountaintop café. “I suppose I should properly introduce myself since you’ll be my guest from here on out. Name’s Thiazi,” the giant-in-disguise told her. “I prefer being in eagle form to being a giant, actually. Birds just have more fun, you know? There’s the flying thing. And the claws,” the eagle added, flexing his. “And though I don’t like to speak ill of my own kind, on the whole, giants tend to be a rather sour lot.”

  He was kind of right. Angerboda was a thorn in everyone’s side at the academy. Even Skade, a half-giant herself, agreed that most giants were grumpy troublemakers. Still, Odin had asked students to try to get along and give each individual a fair chance. For the most part, everyone tried to do as he’d asked.

  “Um… I’m kind of cold. Do you mind if I sit by the fire?” Idun asked.

  “Sure, go ahead,” the eagle said, parking her half-full eski in a corner. “Sit wherever you like.”

  Even though Idun was super tired and scared, she carefully studied the room, looking for possible ways to escape or weapons. Or something that would help her warn her friends. Like maybe smoke signals? Unfortunately, the firepit was only full of warm coals at the moment, but she would save the idea for later.

  Idun pulled out a chair at one of the café’s four round tables and sat. The café was pretty bare of decoration, though there were a couple of posters on its walls. One was a map of the nine worlds. A big X had been marked on the border between Midgard and Jotunheim. The words YOU ARE HERE had been printed next to the X in large block letters.

  The other poster had the word WARNING! written at the top of it. Beneath the word was a picture of the head of an eagle in profile with a magnifying glass held up to its eye. MY EAGLE EYE IS WATCHING YOU! read the words below the picture. Not exactly friendly!

  Extending a claw toward Idun’s eski, Thiazi snagged one of the golden apples of youth. Clacking his beak as he munched on the apple, he told her, “I can’t wait to add your apples to new recipes I’ll be developing.”

  “Ooh! I would love to help you make those for your customers,” said Idun. And for the Valhallateria, too, she thought to herself. If she ever got free, that was.

  “Ha! No way. My secret recipes will stay just that. Secret. I’ll tell you the names of some, though, just to whet your appetite. Of course, my café is already famous for my oxtail soup. Soon I’ll add apple crumble, stuffed apples, apple peel soup… I could go on and on. Since Loki visited yesterday, I’ve come up with endless ideas,” said the talkative Thiazi. “However, my customers will never actually get a chance to eat anything I prepare because I devour everything I cook before they can taste even one bite. Joke’s on them!” He cracked up laughing.

  Huh? This eagle-giant was decidedly cuckoo! “What will you do when my eski is empty? You can’t keep me here and get more golden apples, you know!” she protested. “Their seeds won’t grow more magic apple trees. My grove in Asgard is the only one in all the nine worlds. And I am the only one who can pick the apples.”

  Thiazi just laughed. “Not a problem. You Norse gods and goddesses are powerful, but you’re not immortal. Within a couple of days, Loki and all the others will have aged so much that they’ll be too weak—or too dead—to try to stop me from doing whatever I want. It’ll be a snap for me
to fly you to the grove to pick more apples every morning.”

  “What if I won’t pick more apples?” Idun challenged.

  Thiazi glowered at her. “You’d better. Or you’ll grow old just like the rest of your friends.”

  Clasping her hands together, Idun leaned forward in her chair. “Please, I have another idea,” she begged, as worried for her friends as for herself. “If you’ll return me to Asgard, I promise I’ll give you a share of the apples I pick every day from now on. Forever.”

  “Yeah, right!” Thiazi said, clacking his beak. “Like Odin would ever let you do that!”

  “I’ll convince him,” Idun said, really hoping she could. “C’mon. Be a good guy!”

  “Like how you gods and goddesses were good guys to Ymir?” he scoffed. He was obviously one of those giants who forever harbored ill will toward Asgard because the gods had helped create the nine worlds out of their ancestor long ago. Deaf to her pleas, Thiazi told her, “I’m flying off to the sea to go fishing. I’ll be back before dusk, and we’ll make apple-baked fish with oxtail gravy. Sound good?”

  He was leaving her alone? Idun perked up. “Sure! I’ll straighten things up around here and maybe cut up any ingredients you’ll need.”

  “Nice try,” said Thiazi. “But if I left you here in the main part of the café, you might find a way to escape.” So saying, he herded her into a small pantry full of cooking stuff at the back of his café. Then, after giving her a single one of her own golden apples to keep her from aging, he shut the pantry door and turned a key in the lock.

  “Wait! Please, you have to let me go!” She banged on the door for a long time, but to no avail. That evil eagle had flown the coop, er, café.

  10 Where’s Idun?

  MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE BRANCHWAY, it was lunchtime and Bragi was getting concerned. “Anybody seen Idun?” he asked her friends when they crossed paths on the way to the Valhallateria.