But I did come across someone else. Angrboda, the Witch of Ironwood. Mad, bad and dangerous, she lived in the heart of the forest, half in and half out of Chaos. Like me, she had left the primal Fire to explore the emerging Worlds; like me, she enjoyed new sensations; and, like all demons, she was alluring. Dark-skinned, long-haired, a ring on every finger and toe, eyes like red-hot embers and every muscle, every nerve charged with a sexual energy that I hadn’t known I craved until the craving was satisfied.

We spent a number of nights together, both in our human form as well as in various animal Aspects, cavorting through Ironwood, hunting, destroying and generally raising Chaos, until exhaustion got the better of me. Angie’s tastes ran to violence, and every inch of me was sore. Not that I was complaining but I needed time to recover.

And so I returned to Sigyn’s arms, her cooking, her love of Bragi’s lute-playing, her attentions and her curious affinity with wildlife of all sorts – Sigyn’s most annoying trait, which meant that she was often surrounded by little woodland creatures, birds, raccoons, squirrels and so on – teeming and twittering constantly.

‘Now, sweetie, be nice to my little friends,’ she would say as I swiped at a fieldmouse climbing up the curtains. ‘You never know, one day you might need that little mousie.’

Yes, before you condemn my faithlessness, that’s what Sigyn was like, folks. And all in all, with Angie’s help, I think I managed to cope pretty well. I lived in Asgard most of the time, and when domesticity became too much for me, I fled to my mistress in Ironwood. The concept of monogamy was not unknown to me, of course, but, like pain, lutes and poetry, I just didn’t see the point.

Sigyn bore with my faithlessness rather well, on the whole, I thought. Of course she liked to complain to her friends about my beastly appetites, but I don’t think she was all that surprised. In Sigyn’s world, men often stray, but always return to their faithful wives, who show their forgiveness by baking cakes, tending wounds and placing hands on fevered brows. Vengeance comes later, in the form of bedtime headaches, snide remarks and that business with the snake – yes, I’ll be getting to that soon enough, so don’t think I got away scot-free. Odin knew what he was doing, all right, when he handed me over to her. But at the time, I was pleased with myself. I thought I’d managed to reconcile my two opposing natures. I tolerated Sigyn whilst enjoying Angrboda and managed to persuade myself that frolicking with her in Ironwood constituted some kind of secret rebellion against the Old Man.