But Heimdall stayed silent. He left the hall with the dignified walk of a man with a serious case of piles and I knew I’d made an enemy. Some people would have laughed it off, but not Heimdall. From that day on till the End of the Worlds, nothing would ever make him forget that first humiliation. Not that I wanted to be friends. Friendship is overrated. Who needs friends when you can have the certitudes of hostility? You know where you stand with an enemy. You know he won’t betray you. It’s the ones who claim to be your friends that you need to beware of. Still, that was a lesson I was yet to learn. Then, I was still hopeful. Hopeful that in time I might be able somehow to prove myself; that one day, they might accept me.

Yes, it’s sometimes hard to believe that I was ever that innocent. But I was like a puppy who doesn’t yet know that the people who have adopted him will keep him chained in a kennel all day and feed him nothing but sawdust. I find it takes a little time to learn that kind of lesson. So, until then, remember this: Never trust a friend.

Lesson 5 Bricks and Mortar

LESSON 5

Bricks and Mortar

Never trust a labourer.

Lokabrenna

AND SO, Your Humble Narrator received a grudging acceptance, though it was hardly the warm welcome that the General had promised me. It wasn’t just that I was racially different, or physically less imposing, or radical in my opinions, or unfamiliar with their ways. It was simply (and I say this in all modesty) that I was a whole lot cleverer than the rest of the folk in Asgard. Clever folk aren’t popular, by and large. They arouse suspicion. They don’t fit in. They can be useful, as I proved on a number of occasions, but among the general population there’s always a sense of vague mistrust, as if the very qualities that make them indispensable also make them dangerous.

There were a few compensations to having corporeal Aspect. Food (jam tarts were my favourites); drink (mostly wine and mead); setting things on fire; sex (although I was still extremely confused by all the taboos surrounding this – no animals, no siblings, no men, no married women, no demons – frankly, it was amazing to me that anyone had sex at all, with so many rules against it). There was also sleep, which I enjoyed; and flying above the battlements in hawk Aspect (and occasionally shedding a well-aimed load onto Heimdall’s golden armour as he stood watch on Bif-rost). This, I discovered, was humour, another new sensation for me – and in its way even better than sex, although here again, it was hard to know where to draw the limits.