“I reached out a hand and touched her cold, wet cheek. ‘Dry your tears,’ I told her. ‘And behold…the Hammer of Thor!’

“She stopped crying then, and reached out her delicate hands and held the hammer tightly. I had reckoned I could have my fun with the lady and still get the hammer back into the hall before Thor woke up. But we would need to get a move on.

“‘Now,’ I said. ‘About that kiss.’

“For a moment I thought she had begun to cry once again, and then I knew that she was laughing. But the noise she made was not a sweet, tinkling, maidenly laugh. It was a deep, crashing noise, like an ice sheet grinding against a mountainside.

“The maiden pulled my shoes from the hammer and dropped them to the ground. She held the hammer as if it was a feather. A wave of cold engulfed me, and I found myself looking up at her, and to make matters worse she wasn’t even a she any longer.

“She was a man. Well, not a man. Male, yes. Yet big as a high hill, icicles hanging from his beard. And she—he, rather—said, ‘After so long, all it took was one drunken, lust-ridden oaf, and Asgard is ours.’ Then the Frost Giant peered down at me, and he gestured with the Hammer of Thor. ‘And you,’ he said in a deep and extremely satisfied voice, ‘you need to be something else.’

“I felt my back pushing up. I felt a tail pushing its way out from the base of my spine. My fingers shrank into paws and claws. It wasn’t the first time I had turned into animal form—I was a horse once, you know—but it was the first time it was imposed on me from the outside, and it wasn’t a nice feeling. Not a nice feeling at all.”

“It was worse for us,” said the bear. “One moment you are fast asleep, dreaming about thunderstorms, and the next you’re being scrunched into a bear. They turned the All-father into an eagle.”

The eagle screeched, startling Odd. “Rage!” it said.