Looking a Gift Norse in the Mouth

Here is that letter from Hermes I promised you. May the little charmer never change:

-Dionysus

"Dear Immortal Friends,

I write to you filled with nearly as much pleasure as a god can know. No, I am not in love, except, as always, with myself, but rather what I am feeling is the joyous joy of joyful revenge.

The professed reason for my travels, my freewheeling playboy lifestyle, was in truth a small fib. As some of you hinted, I was on my centennial search for my most favored possession, lost 700 years ago and searched out once every hundred years since.

My shoes! My lovely winged shoes. Although they have been greatly embellished in stories to give all sorts of powers and magical nonsense, they are still my most famous attribute, you know. You see them on flower vans all the time. You know the ones. And they are the only sandals in human history that make fancy shoes of gold look manly.

So when I tell you I found them, you can imagine how high my hopes were raised. Abandoned in a filthy smuggler's warehouse in Turkey, hardly noticed among so much pilfered riches. My contact's description was so precise, I knew it was they. So off I rushed to reclaim, steal back, or if it came down to it, buy my lovely shoes.

I arrived to a most crushing scene. Dirty smugglers and broken artifacts strewn about and nothing stolen intact save the only important piece in the bunch! I coaxed out a description of the perpetrator and I'm sure you can guess: that trickster Loki!

So I turned worn leather heel and headed straight for the rattiest rat hole bar in Norway, and after being directed to three or four deemed by the patrons even rattier, there he was, sprawled feet up on the table like some sort of savage, smirking at me. I beat him soundly about his drunken ears and how he laughed. He said I'd never get them back, he gifted them to someone who would never part with such beauty and value. He slipped up and mentioned she liked them almost as much as her necklace so I knew. He had the gall to say not only did I have girl feet, but they looked better on her! So I cut off his ear. It is enclosed if you wish to return it to him.

After a year or so of careful planning at my seaside residence in France (revenge is such hard business, you know) off I set to where I knew my shoes were being held hostage: Freyja's manor outside Prague.

She greeted me with divine grace, though smugly showing me MY shoes on her ugly pale feet. She immediately informed me her new gift was very dear to her and she would not give them up without a proper war being fought over them. No worries, Athena, though a tempting route, it is one I chose not to take.

I told her we had more important things to discuss, that in fact I had come to give her dreadful warning. I learned the arts of fortune telling and divination from the Thriae, I told her, and in scrying for my shoes, the bones told me… and here I recreated the bones-throwing, and indeed, they told the same story, that the very next day Freyja would hear terrible news about losing all that she holds dear. Now I stressed for her and with gentle suggestion, she had the idea (all by herself of course) to kick me out as a horrible bearer of bad tiding and lock up the house and not answer the phone and therefore hear nothing. I told her she was very wise, and to prove I had no ill will for her to take this gift.

I revealed it with a flourish and she squealed with delight as I presented her a lovely songbird I have named Uskglass, one so talented it could recite all her favorite rock and roll tunes. She took it gleefully inside with her and slammed the door in my face.

The next morning the bird, nearly as clever as I, launched into a series of Freyja's favorite tunes, and she was so moved by his rendition of "Freebird" that she did indeed just that, wanting to hug the poor creature. Once loosed my brilliant Myna bird pecked the goddess at her feet until through her shrieks she kicked them off and he fetched them to me straight away as I awaited outside.

I sent him back to her straight away, and he told her, in perfect imitation of my voice, which I had spent months teaching him, that the prophecy was after all true: she did lose that closest to her-closest to her skin, that is. Adding that I hope she would accept this, and at this point Uskglass like a good bird sticks out his little leg which holds a most stunning giant ruby ring, as an apology and as restitution.

It is hardly her fault I am so disarming and so few can resist my charms, and thus all was forgiven and in truth Freyja was now cross with Loki for causing all this trouble. I begged her one favor, to invite him to visit, as I have trained the little bird to recognize his smirking face and to once that person is seen follow him around endlessly, chatting in my voice about all subjects and topics as I am capable of doing for, as you know, years on end without stopping. I dare say the bird, Uskglass, picked it up so well it can make up its own as it runs out of things I have taught it, and I bet the stars he takes as much delight as I in torturing that wretch Loki.

So there it is my undying friends, the record of my triumph over my trickster counterpart, my evil twin one might say, and the return of my most recognizable possession. I am flying home (on a plane, you devilish smartasses) after a brief stopover in France to wrap up my affairs there. Fake another death. Work, work work. See you soon!

-Hermes

Enclosure"

Dated June 22, 2007