Frigg was delighted. As far as she was concerned, Wildfire had been tamed by love. Sigyn, too, was delighted, and prepared for a life of domestic bliss. Freyja was rather less happy – she’d just lost her favourite handmaid, the plain one she liked to keep around because she made Freyja look prettier. As for Yours Truly, he was in shock, stunned at the speed of his downfall, trying to work out just how he’d been caught, and how he might manage his escape.

For a start, until that point I’d had no idea how much women talked to each other. Nothing was private any more: my personal habits, opinions, tastes and every intimate detail that a loving wife could discover and share with her various cronies.

Was I ungrateful? Perhaps I was. But Frigg, who was wise enough in other ways, had totally failed to understand my nature or, indeed, my needs. A month of living with Sigyn in her little place in Asgard, all chintz and roses round the door, of eating Sigyn’s home-made cakes, of listening to Sigyn’s views on Life, of sleeping with Sigyn (lights out, of course, and veiling her charms beneath an assortment of almost impenetrable flannel nightdresses), was enough to confirm my initial belief that Frigg was wrong and that what I really needed was the love of a very bad woman.

And so I went in search of one, telling my wife that I needed space; that it wasn’t her fault, it was me; that I just needed to find myself; and, in my bird Aspect, I ventured out as far as the forest of Ironwood, that stretches over a hundred miles between the plain of Ida right up to the shores of the One Sea.

Ironwood was a good place to hide. Dark as night, and teeming with predators and demons. Most of them had glam of some kind, stolen scraps of Chaos, bartered from other realms or brought into the Worlds through Dream. The river Gunnthrà ran through it; it was swarming with snakes and ephemera. It was a dangerous place, but it was as close as I was ever likely to get to Chaos again, and I made for its shelter with relief.

My quest was not a romantic one. While I was among the Rock Folk, I’d heard a rumour that Gullveig-Heid, the renegade Sorceress of the Vanir, had established a stronghold in Ironwood in the hope of attacking Asgard. I thought that if I could contact her, then maybe we could join forces – but Ironwood was a vast place, hissing with glam and signatures, and Gullveig – if she was there at all – had shielded herself with so many runes that finding her trail was impossible.