Thor's Wedding Day

by Bruce Coville

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Me and My Goats

  Loki the Falcon

  Thrym’s Demand

  The Wrath of Freya

  The Council of the Gods

  Goat Girl

  Journey to Jotunheim

  Goats Everlasting

  The House of Thrym

  Skalpa

  Journey in the Dark

  Brock and Sindri

  The Hidden Hammer

  Thor at the Banquet

  Just Rewards

  A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2005 by Bruce Coville

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York, 10003

  www.hmhco.com

  Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Matthew Cogswell

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Coville, Bruce.

  Thor’s wedding day/Bruce Coville.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Thialfi, the Norse thunder god’s goat boy, tells how he inadvertently helped the giant Thrym to steal Thor’s magic hammer, the lengths to which Thor must go to retrieve it, and his own assistance along the way.

  I. Thor (Norse deity)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Thor (Norse deity)—Fiction. 2. Giants—Fiction. 3. Goats—Fiction. 4. Hammers—Fiction. 5. Loki (Norse deity)—Fiction. 6. Mythology, Norse—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C8344Tho 2005

  [Fic]—dc22 2004029580

  ISBN 978-0-15-201455-1

  ISBN 978-0-15-205872-2 pb

  eISBN 978-0-544-63539-5

  v1.0315

  For

  Todd Hobin:

  musician, artist, friend

  1

  Me and My Goats

  When Thor was angry his bellow could shake the birds out of the trees. I know, because I saw it happen the morning he awoke to find his hammer missing.

  I was in the goat yard, giving Gat-Tooth and Tooth-Grinder their morning feeding. I had been working for Thor for about three years at that time, providing service in return for a terrible mistake I had made while he and Loki were visiting my parents’ cottage.

  Although my service was a kind of punishment, in some ways I think I had the better part of the bargain. After all, even the table scraps of the gods make for fine dining. Despite the hard work, I was as well fed as I had ever been in my life.

  On the other hand, there were the goats.

  Not only were they big—they had to be, to pull Thor’s cart—with shaggy coats and huge, curling horns, they were also ill-tempered. Gat, at least, was willing to teach me things, even if he did tend to nip me whenever I said anything he considered to be stupider than usual.

  Grinder, on the other hand, said I was nothing but a foolish kid who would be gone before much more time had passed, and not useful for anything other than shoveling dung.

  “Which is why I can’t be bothered to talk to him,” he told Gat more than once—making sure that I was close enough to hear, of course.

  You’d think they could be more polite to the person who carried away their dung each day. Without me it wouldn’t have taken long before they were up to their knees in their own droppings. But having watched things in Asgard, I had come to the conclusion that the more basic the job the less it is appreciated—no matter how important it is.

  The real reason Grinder wouldn’t talk to me was simple: He was not willing to forgive me for that mistake I had made three years earlier.

  In a way, I couldn’t blame him. He did still limp, which was a daily reminder of what I had done to him. On the other hand, I was starting to suspect he was exaggerating the limp, just to bother me.

  I tried to make it up to him by being as kind and helpful as I could, but Grinder was having none of that. A goat, once offended, is not easily won over.

  Anyway, I was currying down Gat—I always did him first, and why not?—when the first shout of rage came thundering from inside Thor’s house. You should understand that Bilskirnir had 540 rooms, so it took a mighty shout indeed to reach all the way to where we stood.

  (I had once asked the goats why anyone needed 540 rooms. Grinder had not answered, of course. Gat simply said, “It’s to give the mortals who work for him something to clean.”)

  “Uh-oh,” said Grinder now, speaking to Gat, not me, naturally. “Sounds as if His Royal Thunderosity woke up on the wrong side of the stall this morning.”

  Gat’s answer was lost in another bellow.

  This time we could make out the word: “Hammer!”

  “What could be wrong with his hammer?” wondered Gat. “The thing is unbreakable. Work that brush a little harder, Thialfi. My back itches this morning. Ahhhh!”

  As I brushed Gat, I thought about Thor’s hammer, which was known as Mjollnir. (The gods had a habit of naming not just people and animals but things.) The hammer was sacred, and most precious to Thor. In fact, there were times when I thought he loved it more than anything in Asgard—including his wife, Sif, who was so beautiful it made my heart ache just to watch her walk by.

  Not that he didn’t have reason to love Mjollnir. It was the most powerful weapon the gods had against the fierce giants who were their great enemies. These giants were called Jotuns, and Thor was never happier than when he was using his hammer to bash in their skulls. All the gods agreed that Mjollnir was the key to Asgard’s safety.

  A third bellow, and a cluster of birds fell from the nearby tree. The startled creatures barely managed to stretch their wings before they hit the ground.

  “WHERE IS MY HAMMER?”

  “Oh my,” muttered Grinder. “This is not good. This is not good at all.”

  A moment later, Thor came raging into the goat yard. His red beard was shooting off sparks, and the ends of it were curling and uncurling with the energy of his anger. A small thundercloud had formed over his head. Since he was nearly seven feet tall and bulging with muscles, the sight of him in such a fury was enough to make my knees buckle.

  “Thialfi!” he roared. “What have you done with Mjollnir?”

  I ducked behind Gat-Tooth for shelter. “Nothing, my lord,” I answered, barely able to force the words past the dryness in my throat. “I haven’t seen it. Or touched it.”

  I didn’t point out that this was a silly question to begin with. Mjollnir was so heavy that even most of the gods couldn’t lift it. So I certainly couldn’t have moved the thing.

  “Thor, what in the name of the nine worlds is bothering you this morning?” asked a sleepy voice. Glancing to my right, I saw the lean but handsome face of Loki peering over the stone fence that surrounds the goat yard. Like Thor, the god of mischief had red hair. But Loki’s was also streaked with yellow, which sometimes made it look as if his head was on fire, especially when it caught the morning sun, as it did now.

  He wore, as usual, a vaguely amused expression. Loki had a great fondness for trouble, and I made it a rule to try to stay out of his sight. But in this case, I was glad of the interruption.

  “My hammer is missing!” growled Thor, not bothering to bellow now that he had someone close by to actually listen to him. (I didn’t count, of course, being only the goat boy.) “Someone has stolen Mjollnir!”

  “Nonsense,” said Loki. “More likely you’ve j
ust mislaid it. Come on, I’ll help you look.”

  Gat-Tooth winked at me. We both knew that the real reason the prince of mischief wanted to slip inside Bilskirnir was in hope of seeing Sif not quite dressed. But that didn’t occur to the thunder god, who tended to figure these things out later than most people. Or most goats, for that matter.

  “Come inside then,” growled Thor. “You can poke around all you like, but you won’t find the hammer. If you do, I’ll owe you a very large favor.”

  This was more than enough to whet Loki’s appetite; he took great pleasure in calling for the return of favors in the worst possible way. He and Thor vanished into Bilskirnir.

  “You’re right, Tooth-Grinder,” muttered Gat. “This is not good.”

  Grinder merely shook his head and continued chewing his breakfast.

  I returned to their grooming. I had nearly finished with Grinder when Loki came bolting out of Bilskirnir.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he looked frightened.

  “That’s interesting,” said Grinder. “What do you think, Gat? Did Thor catch him spying on Sif? Or is he actually worried about the hammer?”

  “I don’t hear Thor bellowing,” replied Gat. “And he’s not chasing Loki. So I’m guessing it’s the hammer. Can’t imagine how anyone could have got to it, though.”

  Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach—not from anything I had eaten but from a memory of something I had done. “No,” I whispered to myself. “That can’t be it. It can’t be!”

  The goats looked at me. “What are you muttering about, Thialfi?” asked Gat.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “It’s nothing!”

  I desperately hoped that I was telling the truth.

  2

  Loki the Falcon

  The goats and I found out what happened next thanks to my sister, Roskva, who was a scullery maid at Folkvangar. This was the home of Freya, the goddess of love, who was known for both her beauty and her temper.

  Like so many things, the fact that Roskva had to work in Asgard was my fault. This was because my own labors had not been seen as sufficient to pay for my sin.

  She was still angry with me for our predicament. Even so, the two of us often got together in the evening, sometimes to share a bit of bread, sometimes a song, sometimes to talk about our parents and wonder how they were doing. And always, of course, to gossip about the gods and their doings, which was the most common pastime for mortals who worked in Asgard.

  Anyway, it turned out that Folkvangar had been Loki’s next stop. So it was Roskva who filled us in on what took place there. We didn’t have to wait until evening, though. About an hour after Loki had hurried away, she came trotting up to the goat-yard fence. “Thialfi!” she called. “Thialfi, are you all right?”

  I came out of the shed, where I had been mucking the stalls. (Sometimes I feared I would smell like goat dung for the rest of my life.)

  “Of course I’m all right. Why?”

  “Because Loki showed up at Folkvangar not an hour ago and told us Mjollnir was missing. When I heard that I worried Thor would be in such a temper no one over here would be safe. Oh, hello, Grinder,” she said, glancing down. “How are you this morning?”

  The wretched goat sidled right over to her, so she could pat and fuss over him, which made me want to kick the beast. I had never figured out if Grinder really liked my sister, or only pretended to in order to annoy me. In this case, it turned out his real motive was information. “Tell us what happened when Loki came in,” he said.

  I never knew a goat to be so fond of gossip.

  “Well,” said Roskva, “my lady Freya was just sitting down to breakfast when Loki came bursting through the door. ‘Freya!’ he cries, ‘Freya! You must lend me your cloak of falcon feathers!’

  “Now, the lady knows better than to pay much attention to that one. So she just sighs and says, ‘Listen, Loki, don’t expect me to be part of whatever mischief you’ve got in mind. I got in enough trouble the last time. Here, try one of these hummingbird eggs. They’re delicious.’

  “I think she said this to distract him. But Loki—who usually eats whatever he can get his hands on when he comes to visit—wasn’t having it. ‘I’ve no mischief in mind this morning, my dear,’ he says. ‘At least, none of my own making.’

  “His voice was so serious that Freya put down the egg she was peeling and looked at him for the first time. ‘Why, Loki!’ she cries. ‘You look frightened. Have you finally done something so bad Thor is going to ignore the Allfather’s orders and beat you senseless?’”

  “I’d like to see that,” snickered Grinder.

  “Most of Asgard would like to see it,” agreed Roskva with a giggle. “And Loki’s certainly caused enough trouble to deserve it. But he just says, ‘There’s trouble aplenty, Freya, but I had no hand in it this time. It’s that dunderhead, Thor. He’s lost his hammer!”’

  I started to protest Loki’s speaking about my master that way, but Gat—who had come up to listen, too—gave me a warning nip. So I stayed quiet.

  Roskva continued her story. “Well, now it was Freya’s turn to look frightened. ‘Is that what Thor was bellowing about this morning?’ she cries. ‘We heard him clear over here. He knocked four partridges out of that pear tree.’

  “‘It was indeed,’ says Loki. ‘Now, lend me your cloak so I can go in search of Mjollnir.’

  “‘If that cloak were made of gold, I would lend it for this mission,’ says the lady. And I could tell she really thought it was important, because she didn’t yell for any of us to bring it, but went to fetch it with her own hands.”

  Given what Roskva had told me about working for Freya, I knew this was a good sign that the goddess was serious. She never lifted a finger except to adjust her mirror.

  “Anyway,” continued Roskva, “a moment later Loki is shrugging himself into the cloak of feathers. Oh, Thialfi, it was awesome to see! Soon as Loki had that cloak fitted over his shoulder, he begins muttering to himself. Before I could take a breath—Cook and I were watching all this from behind the kitchen door—a shimmering comes over him, almost a kind of haze. His nose, which is so much like a hawk’s already, grows stiff and hard. Then his hair rustles itself into feathers!”

  Her eyes were wide with the memory of this transformation. “Next thing I know, he’s feathers all over. He gives himself a good shake, and suddenly he’s in the shape of a falcon, his eyes all round and golden. Then he gives a piercing cry, flaps his wings, and flies out the window. Wish I could do that. I’d fly away home to see Mother and Father.”

  I felt a stab of guilt at those words, of course.

  “Freya turned and saw Cook and me watching. But instead of getting angry, as she usually does, she just said, ‘Pin your hopes on that one, my dears. If he fails—Asgard falls!’”

  Roskva shuddered at the memory. “Is it true, Thialfi? Is Asgard really in danger?”

  I wanted to tell her no.

  But that would have been a lie.

  Thor was pacing in the goat yard when Loki returned some hours later. Another small cloud had formed over my master’s head, and bits of lightning kept flashing out of it, so the goats and I were standing as far away from him as we could.

  Now, even though I knew that Loki had transformed himself into a falcon, when I saw a great bird settle onto the goat-yard fence, I grew a little nervous.

  My fear only increased when the bird shook itself and the air around it grew all blurry. But a moment later, Loki stepped down from the fence, a cloak of falcon feathers draped over his shoulder.

  I rubbed my eyes and stared, until Gat-Tooth bit me on the elbow and whispered, “Try not to look like such a gawping fool, Thialfi. You’ll embarrass us.”

  “What else would he look like?” muttered Grinder. “At least it’s natural.”

  Thor hurried to Loki’s side. “Have you found Mjollnir?” he asked, his voice desperate.

  “Found it . . . and found it not,” said Loki grimly.


  “Don’t talk in riddles, Loki! They make my head hurt. What do you mean, ‘Found it, and found it not’?”

  Loki sighed. “I know who has the hammer, but I don’t know where he has hidden it.”

  “Who has it?” bellowed Thor. “I’ll have his guts for garters. I’ll bash his brains from his body and feed them to the fishes. I’ll—”

  “Do all that and you’ll never find the hammer,” said Loki. “Now take a breath, shut your gob, and listen to me.”

  Thor muttered but did as Loki suggested. He breathed deeply for a moment, and the small storm that had been forming over his head drifted away. “All right,” he said once it was gone. “Tell me. Who has stolen mighty Mjollnir?”

  “Thrym,” said Loki, taking a step back.

  “Thrym?” cried Thor. “That drooling fool? That blithering bean brain? That festering fart-monger? How has that wretched giant gained Mjollnir?”

  “I don’t know how,” said Loki. “I know only that he has it.” He hesitated, then said, “Well, I do know one more thing.”

  “What?” roared Thor, and I could tell it was all he could do to keep from grabbing Loki by the neck and shaking him. “What?”

  “I know what he wants in trade to get it back.”

  “Well for Asgard’s sake, let’s give it to him!” thundered Thor.

  “It won’t be that easy,” said Loki. “Now settle down, and let me tell you this from the beginning.”

  3

  Thrym’s Demand

  Hands clasped behind his back, Loki paced in nervous circles. I stood behind Gat, pretending to brush him and hoping to stay unnoticed so I could listen as the lord of mischief told his story.

  “Stop walking and tell me what happened!” bellowed Thor at last.