The Lost Gods

by Francesca Simon

  Woden sighed.

  ‘So much time has passed since we last visited Midgard, this shrouded world I created with my brothers,’ said Woden, ‘and everything has changed. I do not recognise my creation. While Asgard has been frozen in time, Midgard has moved on. The dwelling places of men, their chariots, their halls, their garments, all has changed.’ He shook his head. ‘I granted them boldness and wisdom, and I marvel at what they have created. They have made roaring metal tubes which fly without a falcon skin. How did they discover such magic? They have light and heat without fire. Their towns are monstrous and filled with trollish screeches. It’s a strange new world we have awoken to. At least there is still war.’

  ‘That’s one good thing,’ said the Goddess Freyja. ‘Plenty of fresh supplies for the Choosers of the Slain to bring back to Valhalla.’

  Freya looked carefully at the Gods. Last time she’d seen them they’d been dying, tottering ghosts, clothed in fluttering rags. Now they were young again. Their cloaks and tunics were weird, about 5,000 years out of date, but then what could you expect? What in the name of the Gods were they doing in her sitting room? They should be in Asgard, not here in London plonked on saggy sofas and scowling like sulky teenagers sitting on a wall outside an off-licence.

  Then, remembering that Woden could read her thoughts, she blushed and looked away.

  The Goddess Freyja clicked her spectacular necklace of twisted gold, frowning. Thor looked out of the bay window and drummed his fists on his muscular legs. Was it her imagination, or did they seem strangely reluctant to speak?

  ‘We don’t want to be here in Midgard,’ said Woden after a long silence. ‘Asgard is our home. But we are … desperate.’ He winced.

  Desperate? That was a shocking word for a God to use. Freya could not hide her astonishment.

  ‘Our worlds are in danger. Grave, terrible danger,’ said Woden. Freya felt chilled. She chewed on her sleeve. The ticking of the old carriage clock on the mantelpiece suddenly sounded very loud. ‘We would not be here otherwise.’

  Why did I have to let them in? thought Freya. Why of all days couldn’t I have been somewhere else? I should have gone to Mum’s Fane choir.

  ‘Your fate catches you wherever you are,’ said Woden sharply. ‘Listen carefully.’

  Must I? thought Freya. She’d learned the hard way that whenever Gods ordered her to listen, it was to tell her things she didn’t want to hear.

  Next Time You Create a World, Do It Better

  ‘Long, long ago, in the age of Ice, frost giants trampled over the earth, which we had formed from the body of Ymir, the forefather of all giants,’ said Woden. ‘We defeated those evil destroyers, and buried them deep in layers of ice and frost, tightly bound in frozen fetters. But now the glaciers are melting. Drip. Drip. Drip. The frost giants are stirring and breaking free of their icy bonds. Once they are free they will march here, slicing through the land to reclaim their kingdom. Thrym. Fornjot the Destroyer and his fearsome offspring: Jokul the glacier. Jarnhaus the Iron Skull. Kari the north wind. And countless others. The giants are unleashing their fury, howling for vengeance against Gods and men. This world will once again be burning ice, bitter winds, and biting flame. ‘Can’t you smell them?’ He sniffed. ‘The ice in the evil air.’

  The Gods shuddered, as if trolls had trampled on their grave mounds.

  Freya thought about the freezing cold summer, the freakish storms, the pictures of polar bears clinging to tiny shards of icebergs, the eerie sounds of cracking ice.

  The murderous giant Thjazi, who’d so nearly killed her, flashed into her mind. She flinched.

  ‘Why don’t you fight them? You’re the Gods. You can’t let the world freeze over.’

  Woden’s baleful eye blazed.

  ‘We have made a tactical retreat.’

  Freya gasped. ‘You’ve run away?’ This was getting worse and worse.

  ‘I said, a tactical retreat,’ roared Woden.

  ‘You talk too much, mortal,’ snapped the Goddess.

  ‘The battle-brave warriors of Asgard, the fallen heroes, the Einherjar, will fight them first,’ said Woden. ‘Shields will be split. Swords will gnaw like wolves through armour. But alone they will be helpless before the might of the giants.’

  What was he saying? That the Gods had abandoned Asgard and Midgard to an army they knew could never win? Freya thought her head was going to explode with dread.

  ‘You said you defeated the frost giants once before,’ said Freya. Her voice quivered. ‘So why don’t you do it again? Why aren’t you stopping them?’ What are you doing in my sitting room when you should be defending Asgard? she wanted to scream.

  ‘Tell her,’ said Thor. Freya was shocked to see him brushing away a tear. His gigantic fist clenched his hammer.

  The Goddess rolled her eyes as she nervously clutched and unclutched her ringed hands.

  ‘As you can see, our youth is restored,’ said Woden. Freya waited for the ‘thanks to you’, which didn’t come. ‘But our divine power has not returned. Thor can barely lift his hammer. Heimdall cannot hear the grass growing or fish breathing. I cannot see into the future, or raise the dead. I cannot even paralyse my enemies in battle or blind them. With the last of my strength I tried to sow panic on the bridge between our worlds this morning, and … did not succeed. I can’t even turn into a hawk or a boar any more.’

  ‘Our strength kept our enemies bound; our weakness has released them,’ growled Thor. His face flushed an angry red.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ said Freya. ‘Why are you weak?’

  She had a sinking feeling she didn’t want to hear the answer. What did their troubles have to do with her? Let them find someone else for once, she thought fiercely.

  ‘It seems we need—’ Woden’s brow furrowed as if he had just waded through sewage ‘—the worship of the sons and daughters of men.’

  Thor and Freyja wrinkled their faces in disgust and horror.

  ‘This is so demeaning,’ muttered the Goddess. ‘So inglorious.’

  ‘But you are still worshipped,’ said Freya. ‘My mother is your priestess. The Queen of England is head of your Fane. Britain is a Wodenic country. I go to a Fane school. Want me to recite the nine commandments?’

  ‘NO!’ said Woden.

  ‘Be quiet, you ugly herring,’ hissed Freyja. ‘The All-Father is speaking.’

  Freya resisted the urge to stick out her tongue at the snapping Goddess. Why oh why had she been named after such a mean shrew?

  ‘I’ve sent my ravens far and wide to bring me news of what this world we created so long ago has become,’ continued Woden. ‘And what I have learned is that we are no longer woven into its warp and weft. How could this happen? Why has this happened? There is no fervent hum of worship and love and fear, no stream of savoury sacrifices reaching our nostrils. Our idols and temples are neglected. We are rarely in people’s thoughts. During our long absence, for reasons I do not understand, mortals began to live without us.’

  ‘The ungrateful trolls!’ spat Freyja. ‘After all we did for them, this is how they thank us? They never pray, they never sacrifice, they—’

  ‘We never gave the children of Heimdall much thought,’ interrupted Thor. ‘So long as they worshipped and built temples and brought offerings, all was well. We gave them good harvests – mostly – wealth to the lucky few, Valhalla for the brave, the chance to win glory which alone outlives death, victory to one side or the other in battle, and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement.’

  ‘Actually, I blame you, Woden,’ said the Goddess. ‘Next time you create a world, do it better.’

  Woden glared at her.

  ‘You think you’re so smart let’s see you try it.’

  ‘I still can’t believe we have to kowtow to mortals,’ said the Goddess, flicking her hair and glaring at Freya. ‘So beneath us. How did we ever give the driftwood such power over us? Humans are so frail, so fragile, so momentary, and the Wolf and the Snake can swallow them
all – and yet only their worship makes us truly divine. Aaarrrghhh! It seems we are fated to n-n-need them,’ she added, stumbling over the word.

  You’d think she was saying she needed a head transplant, thought Freya angrily.

  ‘Gods without worshippers are just legends. Nothing more,’ explained Thor. He looked woefully at his hammer, trailing on the floor. ‘Fate is harsh.’

  ‘We will not dwindle to stories told round a hearth fire,’ said Woden. ‘We have seen off other gods, false gods, those Greek weaklings – ha. And don’t get me started on those Roman and Egyptian sons of mares …’ He snorted and his one eye blazed. ‘Jupiter. Minerva. Osirus. Amun-Ra. They’re all sleeping with the trolls now. Our Temples built on top of theirs, as they should be.’

  Woden glared fiercely out of the window, as if seeing his mighty Temples looming above Jupiter’s crumbling stones.

  ‘But now we are weak,’ whispered Woden. ‘We are lost Gods. We need worshippers. Lots and lots and lots of worshippers. We NEED to be revered and feared and idolised, and for our names to be on everyone’s lips and engraved upon everyone’s hearts. You must help us regain our followers. Once we recover our divine strength, no frost giants can withstand us. You will be our guide to this strange new world.’

  The three Gods looked at her expectantly, as if all she had to do was open the door and a stream of devotees would pour in. Freya stared at them, open-mouthed. Were they mad? Had they lost their minds as well as their powers?

  ‘How am I supposed to get more people to worship you?’ asked Freya. Who did they think she was? A guru? A televangelist? She was just a schoolgirl. She had a vision of herself with a whip, lassoing people on Oxford Street like runaway steers, forcing them into Fanes, corralling stragglers and pushing them inside.

  ‘You must find a way,’ said Thor. ‘It’s not your place to question us. It’s your place to obey.’

  ‘We DEMAND to be worshipped,’ screeched Freyja. ‘We are the Lords, your Gods. We created you from driftwood. We demand recompense.’

  Freya cowered under the onslaught.

  ‘But … you can’t make people worship you,’ said Freya.

  ‘Oh yes we can,’ said Woden. ‘Just watch. I’ll unleash such floods …’ Then his shoulders slumped. ‘In the good old days we would have smited you all for your neglect; sent tsunamis and hurricanes and pestilence but … we can’t any more.’

  ‘You want to force people to worship you?’ asked Freya. ‘Scare people into worshipping you?’

  ‘The ways of Gods are not to be understood by mortals,’ said Thor.

  ‘Frankly, we don’t care why we’re worshipped,’ said the Goddess. ‘But worshipped we must be. We all know what happens to Gods when people stop fearing them. They just fade away, fateless. Maybe a rustle in a bush somewhere, or a breeze.’ Her lip curled.

  Freya’s mobile phone, which she’d left on the coffee table, lit up, with the ring tone of a barking dog. It was her father, calling from work in Dubai.

  ‘It’s alive!’ the Goddess Freyja screamed.

  Thor leapt up, raised his hammer and smashed the phone and the coffee table with one crashing blow. Then he picked up the flattened phone as if it were radioactive and hurled it across the room into a picture, shattering the frame. He dropped the hammer to the floor, breathing heavily. His red forehead beaded with sweat.

  ‘No!’ wailed Freya. ‘My phone.’

  ‘What is that thing?’ hissed Woden, stepping back. ‘How did you hide a dog inside it?’

  ‘It’s a phone, it lets you talk to people wherever they are,’ said Freya. ‘Look what you’ve done. The picture. And Mum’s table. She’ll kill me, what can I tell her?’

  ‘The Hornblower can hear people at a distance,’ said Woden. ‘Like Heimdall. Can you hear the frost giants?’

  ‘Not unless they have phones,’ said Freya. ‘What about my phone? It was my birthday present. What about Mum’s table?’

  ‘You see how much we need a guide,’ said Woden. ‘This new world bewilders us. To be restored to power we must understand it better. We need to study people, walk among them. We learn fast. You will guide us.’

  There was a long moment of silence. Freya’s mind was spinning. She felt dazed.

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You are definitely asking the wrong person. You must speak to the Queen or the Prime Minister. I can help you send a letter, maybe my Mum can …’

  ‘You alone can know our secret,’ thundered Woden. He towered over her. ‘You are the Hornblower. You are fated. You will do as your Gods command. We need to make people worship us again. We need to understand this strange new world and become like new Gods.’

  Because the Gods commanded, did that mean she had to obey? She looked at him. Why is it always me? she thought. Can’t someone else do the Gods’ dirty work?

  ‘Not me. Not this time,’ she pleaded. ‘I have to go to school, I—’

  ‘We created you, and we can destroy you,’ bellowed Woden. ‘Don’t imagine that I am totally powerless. I can no longer send earthquakes or flood Midgard, but I can certainly bring destruction to one hearth.’

  He looked around her sitting room.

  ‘One charm from me and death and sickness will dwell here,’ said Woden.

  ‘Then who would help you?’ asked Freya. She was taken aback by her own belligerence.

  ‘If you don’t, you and everyone in Midgard will die when the frost giants arrive,’ said Woden. He looked at her fiercely. ‘And since you murdered the giant Thjazi, you will be the first.’

  Freya went rigid. ‘But I didn’t—’

  ‘His death won’t go unavenged.’

  Freya’s mind flashed to the giant’s murderous claws, his hideous daughter, the fire and the blood.

  ‘Skadi, icy with fury and burning for vengeance for her father’s death, will join the frost giants on the rampage,’ said Woden.

  ‘Skadi?’ squeaked Freya. She’d hoped no one would ever mention that revolting giantess again. ‘Can’t you do something? You’re the Gods. I did it for you. You can’t just let them kill …’ Freya couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘You are not important,’ said Woden. ‘The giants are rising to re-conquer their ancient kingdom. They must be stopped. If you don’t help us, the world ends … for us all.’

  Freya hung her head.

  Was there any way she could wriggle out of this?

  ‘No,’ said Woden. ‘No one can defeat fate.’

  Freya started gnawing on her sleeve, the familiar hollow fear in her stomach starting to squeeze her guts. How could one girl have made so many enemies? Speaking of which …

  ‘Where is Loki?’ whispered Freya. She didn’t even like speaking his name out loud.

  ‘Keeping well out of sight,’ said Woden. ‘Beware. When Loki makes an enemy he never forgets.’

  Suddenly the Goddess let out a piercing scream. Freya jumped. Had Loki glared through the window? Was an iceberg ploughing down the road? Had the frost giants arrived?

  ‘Look at me,’ gasped the Goddess, rushing over to the gilt mirror hanging over the mantelpiece. ‘I can see myself! What magic is this, I must have one of these, I—’ Freyja’s voice trailed off as she gazed in wonder at her reflection. ‘I look a mess. My hair! My face! My clothes!’ she wailed. ‘I bet I smell like a stray donkey. Tell your slaves to heat up the stones in the bathhouse immediately and fetch water.’

  ‘We don’t have a bathhouse,’ said Freya. ‘But—’

  ‘How did I guess?’ wailed the Golden One. ‘What is this filthy place you’ve brought me to?’ she snapped at Woden. ‘I want to go back to Asgard and my lovely palace.’

  ‘There won’t be an Asgard to go back to unless we succeed here,’ said Thor.

  ‘I can run a bath for you if you like,’ offered Freya. Anything to stop her whining.

  ‘Run a bath?’

  ‘Fill a tub with hot water,’ said Freya. She wished she dared to just put in cold.

 
‘An indoor hot spring,’ said Freyja. She brightened. ‘Well, go on then,’ she added. ‘I’ve never seen such shocking hospitality. I keep waiting for you to bring me hot water and a towel. What dreadful times you live in.’

  Grimacing, Freya trudged upstairs to the bathroom and turned on the taps. The bathtub wasn’t the cleanest, she was pleased to see. Should she put in some bubble bath? What the Hel, she thought, squeezing in a few squirts of Body Shop Jasmine. Not that Freyja deserved any.

  She found a towel – why were all their towels so stiff and threadbare – and shouted down.

  ‘Bath’s ready.’

  The Goddess flounced in and eyed the steamy white and grey tiled bathroom with the wood-panelled tub and the wallpaper peeling around the door.

  ‘First good smell I’ve sniffed since I’ve been down here,’ she said, inhaling the jasmine. ‘Who will wash my back?’

  ‘You’re going to have to wash it yourself,’ said Freya, and she walked out, shutting the bathroom door behind her.

  She found Thor and Woden examining the television.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Woden.

  ‘A television,’ said Freya.

  ‘Is it a weapon?’ asked Thor, inspecting it gingerly. He lifted it up in one hand as easily as if it were a cardboard box. ‘Do you hurl it at your enemies to crush them?’

  ‘No,’ said Freya. ‘It’s a … it’s a magic box. Could you – could you put it down?’ It was like looking after toddlers.

  Thor dropped it. The TV thudded back onto its stand. Freya prayed it wasn’t broken.

  ‘What magic does it do?’ asked Woden. ‘I am the father of magic, and I am mystified.’

  Freya grabbed the remote and switched on the television.

  The Gods jumped as the TV thrummed into life and the sound radiated into the room. They stared at the screen. Thor cautiously crept over to peer behind it, as if someone noisy might be hiding there ready to leap out.

  ‘Ooh, bad shot,’ said the sports commentator.

  ‘What magic is this?’ gasped Thor. ‘You are seeing people who are not here. Are they ghosts? Are their spirits trapped within this magic box?’