The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [24]
But this book isn't a manifesto. I'll leave the promises and the pledges for the actual election campaign. The one pledge I'll give you now is that if you thought my first term was a wild ride, well heck, mister, you ain't seen nothin' yet!
Eight
A couple of days later Odin returned. And he brought a walking stick with him. Nice-looking chestnut one with a crook handle.
"For you, Gid. Time you got up and stretched those legs. Don't dither. This is the grand tour."
The castle was well lit, airy, with bare beams, white plastered walls, and little in the way of decoration apart from tapestries, usually showing a forest or a hunting scene. All the furniture was solid oak, the chairs richly carved and adorned with images of animals and helmeted warriors. Spiral staircases wound everywhere, and Odin took me on such a twisty turny route through the building that within about five minutes I'd completely lost my bearings. I couldn't have found my way back to my room if you'd paid me to.
There was a huge kitchen, and next to it a splendid banqueting hall with a high vaulted ceiling and tables and benches to seat a couple of hundred. These were arranged in long rows leading to a top table dominated by a single massive chair, a kind of wooden throne, backed up next to a large open hearth.
"Yours, I take it," I said, with a gesture at the throne.
Odin twisted his mouth. "I preside at mealtimes, yes. Someone has to. Things can get rowdy. Someone must very evidently be in charge, to maintain order."
We went outside. It was a crisp, clear day, the sky bluer and the sunshine brighter than I could remember them being in a long time. Snow lay knee-deep all around, but a series of paths had been cut through, tidily spaded out.
We followed one of them towards a vast tree which stood a couple of hundred metres from the castle. It was, honestly, the biggest fucking tree I'd ever clapped eyes on, and - surely an optical illusion, this - it seemed to expand as we approached, the squat, gnarly trunk thickening, the branches increasing in number and spreading, the leaves multiplying into infinity, the whole of it rising higher and higher from the ground, arching up further and further into the sky. I didn't think I was imagining this, but probably I was. The tree was growing, swelling, right before me. From a distance it had looked as though it would have given a Californian redwood a run for its money, but up close, absolutely no contest. It was the daddy. The mother of all evergreens. The three roots anchoring it in place were the size of buses, and you could have built a house inside that trunk - not just a house, a ruddy great mansion - and still had room to spare.
"That," I said, gazing up, "is reasonably large. What is it, a cedar?"
"An ash," said Odin.
"That was going to be my next guess." I shivered. It was chilly in the tree's shadow, chillier than elsewhere. Barely a chink of sunlight penetrated its maze of bare branches. But that wasn't the only reason I shivered. No form of plant life had any right being so enormous. It was wrong. Unnatural.
"It has a name," Odin said.
"Thing that size, it bloody well ought to. What's it called, then? Treezilla? Humong-ash? King Conifer?" I was quite pleased with that last one.
"Yggdrasil."
"Come again?"
"Yggdrasil."
"Bless you."
"I suspect however many times I repeat the name, you'll keep pretending to mishear."
"Try me."
"Yggdrasil."
"About a quarter to eleven."
That wolfish grin. "You have quite an... insistent sense of humour, Gid."
"Keeps me sane," I said. "Just about. Yggdrasil, eh? Well, it's better than Bert or John, I suppose. Tree like this, an ordinary name just wouldn't cut it. How old?"
"As old as the world."
"No, but really."
"Really." Odin winked - or maybe blinked. With that left eye of his hidden, it was hard to tell. "Yggdrasil sprang up at the