To my surprise, the Old Man agreed that he needed a few days away from home. He was looking tired, I thought, and the long hair under the hat he wore seemed more than usually grey. And yet he seemed pleased to leave Asgard; to dress in his oldest, shabbiest clothes; to carry his ancient haversack; to pretend he was just a journeyman, selling his wares as far as World’s End. Perhaps that was all he wanted, I thought; the illusion of normality. But that’s the problem with being a god – you lose the knack of being human.

And so we crossed Bif-rost and set off on our way – I with a cheery little wave to Heimdall, who watched me go with clenched teeth and a look on his face that, if looks could kill, might have left me, if not dead, at least with some nasty bruising. We headed for the Northlands on foot, into our old hunting grounds, where summer was ripe for the picking and there was plenty of game to be had. We found the river Strond as it ploughed a furrow between the mountains, and walked down a gully of waterfalls into a shady forest. We’d come in the Aspect of three of the Folk, unarmed and without signs of status. And I’ll admit, it was fun to leave Asgard behind, with all its tensions and politics, to hunt with a sling and a pocket of stones; to sleep on a blanket under the stars. It was fun to pretend to be someone else; someone who didn’t matter. And yet, it was still a performance. Odin and I both knew it. It was a kind of play, a dream of how things might have been if he and I had been capable of trusting each other for a change. And so we hunted, and sang, and laughed, and told heavily edited stories of the good old days, while each of us watched the other and wondered when the knife would fall.

We followed the river, and as evening approached I managed to bag our dinner, using my sling and a single stone; a fine otter as it sat by the riverbank, eating its catch of fresh salmon. I picked up the dead otter and the salmon (which was almost as large as the otter itself), and, rejoining the others, suggested we stop and make camp.

‘We can do better than that,’ Odin said. ‘There’s a little farm not far away. Let’s offer to share our food with them in exchange for a dry bed.’

That was typical Odin. Don’t ask me why; he liked the Folk. Any excuse to talk to them, to pretend to be one of them, he’d take it.

I looked at my catch and shrugged. ‘All right. Let’s see what your friends say, shall we?’