“Let us alone,” they said at length. “We are tired, tired, tired.”
The winds, surprised, carried the new sound to Gladsheim, and whispered it all round the banquet-hall where the Æsir sat, and then they rushed back again, and blew all through the grove.
“We are tired,” said the leaves again; “we are tired, we are old; we are going to die;” and at the word they broke from the trees one by one, and fluttered to the ground, glad to rest anywhere; and the winds, having nothing else to do, went back to Gladsheim with the last strange word they had learned.
The Æsir were all assembled in Valhalla; but there were no stories told, and no songs sung. No one spoke much but Loki, and he was that day in a talking humor. He moved from one to another, whispering an unwelcome word in every ear.
“Have you noticed your mother Frigga?” he said to Baldur. “Do you see how white her hair is growing, and what a number of deep lines are printed on her face?”
Then he turned to Frey. “Look at your sister Freya and your friend Baldur,” he said, “as they sit opposite to us. What a change has come over them lately! Who would think that that pale man and that faded woman were Baldur the beautiful and Freya the fair?”
“You are tired—you are old—you are going to die,” moaned the winds, wandering all round the great halls, and coming in and out of the hundred doorways, and all the Æsir looked up at the sad sound. Then they saw, for the first time, that a new guest had seated herself that day at the table of the Æsir. There could be no question of her fitness on the score of royalty, for a crown rested on her brow, and in her hand she held a scepter; but the fingers that grasped the scepter were white and fleshless, and under the crown looked the threatening face of Hela, half corpse, half queen.
A great fear fell on all the Æsir as they looked, and only Odin found voice to speak to her. “Dreadful daughter of Loki!” he said, “by what warrant do you dare to leave the kingdom where I permit you to reign, and come to take your place among the Æsir, who are no mates for such as you?”
Then Hela raised her bony finger, and pointed, one by one, to the guests that sat round. “White hair,” she said, “wrinkled faces, weary limbs, dull eyes—these are the warrants which have summoned me from the land of shadows to sit among the Æsir. I have come to claim you, by these signs, as my future guests, and to tell you that I am preparing a place for you in my kingdom.”
At every word she spoke a gust of icy wind came from her mouth and froze the blood in the listeners’ veins. If she had stayed a moment longer they would have stiffened into stone; but when she had spoken thus, she rose and left the hall, and the sighing winds went out with her.