INTRO
 
Welcome to CHAPTER 51 of the Kinsmen Die podcast, home of fantasy fiction based on Norse mythology that’s written and read by me, Matt Bishop.

In this podcast I read my first novel, Kinsmen Die, one chapter at a time. And, with each episode, when it makes sense, I provide some commentary about the source materials I’ve referenced in the text.

This week we’re back with Frigg. The last time we were with her, she was visiting some newly built longships along the river. She was attacked by the Sons of Muspell who set fire to the ships. Frigg’s daughter Hermod chased after them. Frigg’s son Baldr got Frigg to safety and then braved the flames of a burning ship to rescue a child. Frigg thought her vision of Baldr on a burning ship was coming true but it did not.

We rejoin her now the morning after those events.

Chapter Fifty-One
Frigg
“Hár Frigg. Hár Frigg! Please wake up. It’s your son!”
Frigg lurched forward, bedclothes falling away. Light from the thrall’s witchlamp stabbed at her eyes. She blinked, thoughts scrambling like startled rats. It was Baldr, she knew it, had he finally—
It was Gná. A witchlamp blazed in her hand. “Lady Nanna sent me, Hár Frigg. It’s happening again. She can’t get Jarl Baldr to wake up!”
Frigg surged out of bed. “Odin! Wake up!” She kicked the bed frame even as she whirled her cloak around her shoulders. She bent and tugged on her boots.
Odin was already awake, a knife bright in his hand. “Get that light out of my eyes.” His eyes narrowed like they did when he spoke with his familiars. “What’s wrong?”
Of course he’d be unruffled. And where had the knife come from? “Baldr needs us. Get moving!”
She spun on her heel and dashed out of the bedchamber. Behind her, she heard Odin say, “Go with her! I’ll be along.”
Three thuds of her feet on the planks and she was in the hall, running between pillars that rose like ships’ masts. Her feet beat a quick rhythm across the platform where their chairs stood empty. Thralls beginning their work looked up in shock before bowing low. She ignored them, swept past the fire pits, dodged between the last pair of pillars, and slipped through the middle doorway into day’s first promise of light.
Baldr and Nanna were staying in a small house down the road. Smaller longhouses sat on the eastern quarter of the Old Hill’s bare top.
She stretched out her arms, winter’s breath cold on her skin, and flickered into her falcon shape, the rapid rhythm of her feet became the beating of her wings.
Hadn’t she just made this same flight a few nights ago? This had to stop. They had to figure out what was happening.
There. Third on the left. A thrall beside an open door.
She flared her wings before the house, booted feet touching frozen earth. She set one hand on the low roof, and turned back, looking for Odin. She saw only the long shadows thrown by Sól’s first rays.
She ducked inside.
Nanna sat sobbing into the embrace of an older Aesir, a house thrall. The woman looked up when she heard Frigg approach. Gray hair peeked out below her simple white cap. She gestured with one hand toward a second thrall, a golden Alvar, who stood, hands clasping and unclasping, between the weeping Nanna and the recumbent form of her son.
Frigg inhaled sharply. The room seemed to spin, and she staggered forward to kneel beside her son. His skin was white. His mouth sagged open, and his eyes stared sightlessly.
“Where is Eir?”
“On her way as well, Almother,” Gná gasped from behind her. “I sent Fulla to fetch her.”
She reached out a hand, caressing his brow as she had when he was a boy. Cold as stone. “Is any of that elixir here?”
Trembling, she laid her other hand on his chest and pressed it down, feeling for something. Anything.
There. Yes. Just—there. The slightest movement.
The door banged open. Startled, she glanced over her shoulder. Odin stepped in, stooping to avoid the lintel.
“It’s like he’s dead, Odin,” she said. Again.
Was that her voice? So calm. And yet what was that roaring in her ears, that pounding in her chest? She must push it away, push back from it, like standing in a skiff with one foot on the dock. Just push back and float. Let the current take her. Maybe the wind. And drift.
“Get that cover off him, Frigg.” Odin jabbed a finger at the Alvar. “You there, thrall, keep these doors open.”
Frigg stood slowly, drawing the blankets back. Baldr wore a knee-length tunic. The drifting skiff on which her mind had embarked rocked on the steep swell of her emotions.
Odin stepped closer and touched her shoulder. She met his eyes.
“I’m going to take him outside,” he said. “I want clean ground beneath my feet and Sól above me.”
She nodded.
The Alvar thrall slipped behind her, pulled the pins securing the second half of the main door, and shoved it open. Light and chill air swept in.
Frigg’s eyes fell on the older Aesir. The woman held Nanna tight and smoothed her hair.
Odin got his arms under Baldr’s knees and shoulders and easily lifted him out of bed. He staggered slightly, caught his balance, then turned and walked quickly from the longhouse out into the light.
Frigg hurried to a clear spot and spread the blanket. Odin knelt and eased Baldr’s body down.
He looked up at her. “I can feel his heart, Frigg. It beats slowly, and it is fading.”
She knelt opposite Odin, their son’s body like a corpse between them. Odin set one hand on Baldr’s brow. With the other, he reached out for hers. She gripped it like she might a rope thrown from shore, riding the growing waves, her little skiff tossed this way and that.
Eir hadn’t believed that Sól’s light had anything to do with reviving Baldr; she’d said it was the elixir that had revived him. 
She looked up from her son’s pale body. Odin’s face, stony at the best of times, was like the ice-covered cliff beneath Heimdall’s tower. This dream—this nightmare—of Baldr’s was even worse this time.
Odin gave her hand a comforting squeeze then dug in his satchel. He withdrew a spindle and shears and unspooled two arm lengths of thread. The thin strand of witchthread luminesced in the wan light of dawn. He clipped the thread, tucked the spindle and shears away, and brought one end of the thread to his lips.
He spoke a word, and the thread flared gold. He began to sing.
As he did, he caught up the other end of the thread and touched it to Baldr’s chest, plunging it in and then pulling it back out as if he were sewing. He passed the string up to Baldr’s head, plunging it into one temple and out the other. Then he brought the thread back down to Baldr’s heart and tied it off.
He came up onto his knees then, one hand on Baldr’s chest and one on his forehead, and kept singing as melodiously as the songs he’d sung to their children.
A golden glow ran round and round between his hands along the thread. With each pass, color returned to Baldr’s body.
The glow faded. The thread vanished. Odin stopped singing. He removed his hands, and Baldr gasped. With that intake of breath, color and warmth rushed back into her son.
Baldr’s eyes flew open, and he tried to sit up.
Odin supported the back of his head, looked into his son’s wild eyes, and said, “It’s all right, Baldr. You’re back.”
Yet again. She flung her arms around Baldr and hugged him tight. She had brought him into the world; why did someone—or something—keep trying to steal him away?
From the door to the longhouse came a familiar shriek. Nanna rushed toward them, the old thrall following stiffly in her wake. Nanna flung herself at Baldr—Odin barely moved in time—and hugged him to her.
From within Nanna’s embrace Baldr smiled tiredly and croaked, “I’m all right, Mother.”
She wiped her tears away and smiled. She was so very tired of hearing those words.

***

Frigg’s eyes lingered on the thralls bustling in the middle section of the house, where it bulged like a longship’s waist. She closed her eyes and stepped again into that sturdy skiff where, not an hour ago, she had tried to ride out the storm of her fears. Now, to the sound of pots clinking and brushes scrubbing, a gentle wind filled the sail and carried her softly home.
“I remember a line of torches leading up from a sea over which fog drifted,” Baldr was saying, his voice rising. “I could hear a river’s rush, and I felt the press of folk around me.”
Frigg opened her eyes. No visions danced above her son’s head.
“That’s it?” she asked.
Odin just grunted.
Baldr’s eyes fell on her, somewhat distant as if they sought to pick more details from the memory. “I think so. I felt that someone was waiting for me. And I kept looking over my shoulder.”
He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and with a wry grin said, “So, yes, that’s it.”
Nanna patted his chest with one hand, then let it rest above his heart as if loath to be away from its reassuring beat.
“More might come back to you,” Odin said. He sipped from his cup.
Frigg kept her hands folded in her lap. She looked from Nanna to Baldr and then leaned away from Odin’s warmth. A draft from the open door snuck down the back of her dress, and she shivered. Did none of them want to ask the obvious question? Fine.
“What if this happens again tomorrow morning? And the morning after? And the morning after that?” Concerned expressions met hers. “We need to do something about this.”
“By ‘we’ you mean me, of course,” Odin said. He leaned forward and set his cup down beside him.
“Of course I do. At Ithavoll, you said you’d look into it, and you’ve done nothing about it since—”
“That was the day before yesterday, Frigg. We’ve been a bit busy since then,” he said. He shifted on the bench to more directly face her. “Let’s ride down to speak with my uncle this morning.”
“Now.” She made no effort to hide the impatience in her voice.
Baldr leaned in, the firelight gleaming in his eyes. “I’d like to come with you. If not to speak with Mimir, then perhaps I could talk to the Norns.”
Odin shook his head. “Leave Mimir and those three hens to me. Stay here, rest, and deal with whatever you need to on our behalf.”
“I’m sure the envoy would prefer to deal with you and Nanna,” Frigg added, “particularly now that your father’s sent Thor to fulfill his threat.”
“Can I call him back? Such provocation will make it harder to reach an agreement,” Baldr said in a neutral tone.
“Perhaps it will make them more eager to deal with you than with me,” Odin said.
Before her husband could say anything more, she added, “And you can discuss your plan to improve their roads and access to Ifington. Perhaps even more than that—a settlement outside Utgard itself.”
Baldr’s eyes went wide and he looked from her to Odin. “You’ve agreed to that, Father?”
Odin’s frown deepened. “I’ve only agreed to entertain the possibility, to discuss the plan and its details. I have not yet approved anything at all.”
Frigg gripped Odin’s hand hard, and he looked down at her and winked.
Then he looked frankly at Baldr. “Approval would actually be up to you and Nanna—assuming, that is, that I step down as Alfather.”
 
OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 51 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it.

Frigg and Odin were awakened toward morning with urgent news: Baldr’s corpse-like slumber had returned. Odin managed to bring Baldr back. 

We then get a hint of what Baldr experiences during his dreams. 

We also learn what Odin plans to do next — visit his uncle Mimir. And, we have a subplot thread resurface — Odin appears willing to step down as Alfather.

Next week, we’re back with Hodr, the second son of Odin and Frigg. It’s been a very long time since we were with him — Ch 38 — if you recall, he’d been trampled by a horse.

Until then, if you have the time and inclination, please rate and/or review the podcast — that helps boost the show’s visibility. As does sharing it.
  
As always, I’m going to read from both the Bellows and Larrington translations of the Havamal, the sayings of the High One, Odin himself.

Bellows, Verse 51

Hotter than fire between false friends
Does friendship five days burn;
When the sixth day comes the fire cools,
And ended is all the love.

Larrington, Verse 51
Hotter than fire between bad friends
burns fondness for five days;
but it dies down when the sixth day comes, and all that friendship goes to the bad.


I personally found the meaning of this stanza a little obscure, but try replacing “friendship” or “fondness” with infatuation. Say you meet somebody and really hit it off. And then, maybe after spending every moment together for a few days, or five, the passion fades and the friendship is ended.


Thanks for listening.