Episode I: The Beginning of Everything
A Mythic Fantasy Action-Adventure Story
THE IMPATIENT BANGING echoed off the golden sandstone walls and blue granite floors of Sökkvabekkr Hall in Asgard, waking me for the third time in three days. Only Odin would dare pound on my doors before noon. Rising from my sunken bed in the sand alongside the flowing waters of wisdom, I waved one door open.
The Norse God of War marched into my great room. “I think I’ve done it!” he said. His voice boomed in the cavernous space and caused the sand to drop from my flesh, exposing my nakedness.
I shivered and reached for a mossy kaftan. “I’ve told you a hundred times to lower your voice in this hall.”
“Sorry, Sága,” Odin said, smirking and refusing to avert his eyes.
Had this been the fun-loving drinking companion I’d known for over a millennium, I would have grinned at his lewdness, but this was not him. This Odin was a drag, and frankly, a pain in my ass. He was the one who received the order of corrective action from the Council, but I was the one who received him every day after.
A glimmer in Odin’s shadow caught my eye.
“Ugh,” I said, wrinkling my nose. As if a visit from the frenzied war god wasn’t punishment enough, he’d brought along the spectral human, too—some well-known historian and writer from medieval times whose name I didn’t bother to recall. As usual, the specter scowled at me. For a thing raised from a death mound after nearly eight-hundred years, he was neither appreciative for the second chance at existing, nor was he any fun at all.
The specter cleared his throat.
“Right!” Odin said. “In the spirit of cooperation, we’ve made some radical changes to the texts as directed. I think everyone will be very pleased.”
I bit my lip to prevent an errant sigh. “Please, won’t you both come through and sit on the veranda by the water? I’ll have some mead while you tell me this exciting news.”
“Women shouldn’t drink alcohol,” the specter said.
Odin shoved him forward. “Shut up, Scribe. We agreed you wouldn’t speak such earthly nonsense in her presence. I need her on my side.”
They followed me out to the bar. I provided Odin a goblet and pitcher of mead before I downed a goblet of the same and sat with a store of my own. I would need it. “How many radical changes have you made?”
Odin paused mid-drink. “Oh, we didn’t count. But you’ll be delighted to know that you are now second among goddesses. We discussed making you first, because of your undying love and affection for me, but Frigg would be incensed if I did that. I hope you understand.”
I crossed my arms, holding the golden goblet near my face to disguise the involuntary tightening of my lips over the attempted flattery. “Uh-huh. Go on.”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “We put in the part about the gods and goddesses having equal power. Read her that part, Scribe. It’s wonderful!”
The specter cleared his throat again. “No less holy are the goddesses, nor is their power less.”
Odin beamed. “See? We are equals!”
“Really?” I asked, setting the goblet down on a stone table. I dug my feet into the carpet of sand to cool them. “You realize, of course, that if you are still called All-Father in this version of the story, we are not truly equals, right?”
Odin’s smile straightened. “It’s just a name, Sága. Can’t you let that one slide for the good of all?”
“For the good of Odin, you mean,” I said, staring straight into his only eye. “The problem is that you are not an All-Father. Such a title never existed in any of the nine worlds before Christianity. You are a God of War, just as I am a Goddess of Wisdom. None among us is All anything.”
“Lunacy!” the specter said. “There must be one supreme god or all the universe will descend into chaos!”
Odin winced. “I told you not to—”
“Is that really true?” I asked, my eyes bearing down on both of them.
“Yes. It is,” the specter said, crossing his arms.
Even after spending time among the gods and goddesses in Asgard, he wouldn’t let go of earthly power structures. The specter’s chosen words never failed to insinuate that one being had to be less than another to achieve some depraved sense of order. I didn’t appreciate nor understand it.
I lifted my feet from the sand and stood. Perhaps this visit could be more amusing than the others. “Let’s find out the truth of it, shall we?”
The specter’s half-dead eyes widened when I plucked a small salmon from the water, marked it with a bind rune, and flung the cursed fish, tail-first, into his mouth.
“If you should think or speak a word that is wise and true, the salmon will speak it aloud for all to hear. But if the words you think or speak are ignorant and false, the salmon will speak none of it. Silence shall be the curse of the liar,” I said, sitting down. I leaned forward. “Now, tell me again, if you dare, that there must be a single supreme god.”
The specter strained to speak, but no words came out.
“That’s what I thought,” I said, looking at Odin. “This thing lies to you and you listen?”
Odin pouted.
I sighed. “What of the murkiness involving Auðhumbla and Ymir?”
The war god’s jaw twitched. “Well … because I remain the All-Father, we couldn’t revise that part. How would it look if something else killed Ymir and not me? I mean, me, Vili, and Ve created man and woman from logs after I formed Midgarðr from Ymir’s dead body. So, in order for the Midgarðr creation story to make any sense, the Scribe and I decided that I have to be there as close as possible to the beginning of everything.”
“But you weren’t there,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “You weren’t alive, dead, or a god of any kind when creation happened, except the creation of these fictions written about you, of course.”
The specter grunted, his form turning an impressive shade of pink for a transparent thing as he strained against the curse in vain. He pulled at the fish, trying to dislodge it.
I smiled at the spectacle until Odin slammed his goblet down on the stone bar top.
“No one alive today in Midgarðr knows any of that!” Odin said, pacing. “I didn’t think you would be so difficult to convince, Sága. Are we friends no longer?”
“I am being your friend,” I said, jumping up. “If you present these tales to the Council unchanged, they will not be as kind as I am in response. Just do what they demanded in the decree so everything can return to normal. So that we can go back to normal!”
The specter huffed when the salmon refused to speak untruth yet again. My amusement now spoiled by the seriousness of the situation, I summoned a wave of water to wash the silent specter out the door. Then, I turned to face my old friend. “Please, Odin. Be reasonable about this. Your pride is going to ruin everything.”
His eyes turned cold. “I’m disappointed in you, Sága. After fifteen-hundred years of friendship, I thought I could count on you.”
My stomach lurched when Odin turned his back to me and stomped out. My mouth opened, but I was as speechless as the specter.
a note from the author…
Hello! Welcome to the Sága's Fable Mind series! I hope you enjoyed the first episode of Sága’s Fable Mind: Series Prequel. Like many doomed women in mythology, Sága just angered a god...the God of War. Is there anything worse than that? Find out in Episode II: Liar, Liar!
📰 Want to know what precipitated The Council’s orders? Find out here and here by reading The Wyldwood News.