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Heimdall is born in the waters of the world’s edge. He has nine mothers, named Gjálp, Greip, Eistla, Angeyja, Ulfrún, Eyrgjafa, Imðr, Atla, and Járnsaxa, and no father. For as long as he can remember he has possessed sight unparalleled by any in the Nine Realms. He doesn’t consider it to be a gift. He knows that it’s a curse.
When Heimdall was very small, he hid under his bed and cried because there was a jötun maiden being quietly murdered by her husband in a little cottage five hundred miles away. When the jötun was done killing her, he buried her body in the garden and wept for the rest of the day. In the morning he hung himself from the apple tree that his wife had planted.
Heimdall’s mothers couldn’t understand what had upset him so. They couldn’t coax him out from under the bed, so Ulfrún, the smallest of them, climbed in beside him. She ate all her meals there for a week. At night she traded places with Imðr, who had the toughest back, and for seven nights Heimdall slept to the tune of Imðr’s snores. After that he ventured out again, though he flinched whenever Greip tried to offer him an apple.
When Heimdall is four centuries old, he leaves Jötunheimr and ventures out into the Nine Realms, to experience for himself the worlds that he has always seen but never touched. Múspellsheimr is hot, Niflheimr is cold, Hel is terrifying and Miðgarðr is beautiful but somewhat lacking in sentient beings. In Vanaheimr he finds a horse with a golden mane and ivory hooves, and he names it Gulltoppr. In Ásgarðr he finds a young prince named Odin Borson, and a purpose.
He stays in Ásgarðr for a long time. Odin is a strange, serious youth, but Heimdall sees something in him worth following, and when Odin ascends his father’s throne he swears fealty and never looks back. Three thousand years after Odin takes the throne of Ásgarðr, they go to war with the Vanir, and Heimdall sees horrors that he could never have imagined. And yet in the midst of all that bloodshed Odin finds something beautiful: a little Vanr maiden with shining blonde hair and a mean right hook. The maiden is called Frigga and Odin takes her for a wife. (Although it would perhaps be more accurate to say that Frigga takes Odin for a husband.)
They return, victorious, to Ásgarðr, and with the weregild paid to them by the Vanir Odin builds a mighty bridge, a rainbow bridge that spans all the realms. Odin calls it the Bifröst and appoints Heimdall as its gatekeeper. Partway between Ásgarðr and the end of the universe they build a gate, which Odin dubs Himinbjörg. From then on Heimdall does not leave Himinbjörg for any reason, not for feasts or weddings, not for holidays, not even for sleep. Once again Heimdall stands at the edge of the world, guarding Ásgarðr from any who might seek to harm it.
He stands there for eons, until life blooms on Miðgarðr and dies on Álfheim, until Odin’s beard starts to thin and tight lines etch themselves into the skin around Frigga’s mouth.
And then the Jötnar invade Miðgarðr.
Miðgarðr has been under Ásgarðr’s protection for as long as anyone living can remember, and Odin does not take lightly to the attack. He brings all the strength of Ásgarðr against the invading forces, directed by Heimdall’s endless gaze, and he does not rest until the Jötnar have been driven back to Jötunheimr. Even as his wife sits at home with a pregnant belly and a dagger in her hand, Odin brings a spear against Laufey Skull-crusher and forces him to surrender. Odin Allfather loses an eye and gains the Casket of Ancient Winters – and something else as well.
As Frigga gives birth alone in the palace of Ásgarðr, Odin ventures into an abandoned temple and finds a runty Jötun babe, the child of Laufey. Heimdall watches as the child’s blue skin turns pale, and his cries lose the hollow resonance of Jötun speech and take on an Asgardian guise. The child is a deceiver from birth, and Heimdall, to whom everything is violent, naked truth, cannot help but immediately distrust him.
Against Heimdall’s advice Odin brings the child home, and raises him side by side with his own newborn son. At first he hopes to put the child on the ruined throne of Jötunheim, to restore peace between their two realms, but as the child grows Odin loses that dream and develops another. Disregarding Heimdall’s warnings – for the first time since their youth – Odin never tells the child the truth, raises him to be a true liesmith, and those in Ásgarðr call him Loki Silvertongue and Loki Scarlip and Loki Worldwalker. The child is sweet, and mischievous, and scholarly, and Heimdall knows from the beginning that Ásgarðr will ruin him.
When Loki is three hundred, strange blurred spots begin to develop in Heimdall’s eternal vision. Nothing is hidden entirely from his sight, but some things are partially obscured. A ball, a book, a plate of leftovers, and eventually a wolf, a horse, and Loki himself. Heimdall has no proof, and as yet Loki has done nothing truly alarming with his newfound power. So Heimdall ignores it, and when he and Loki cross paths they trade pointed barbs, each refusing to extend any kind of trust to the other.
Thor’s coronation is interrupted by Jötnar entering the weapons vault, right in the heart of Ásgarðr. For the first time in Heimdall’s long life an enemy has evaded his watch. He is furious beyond belief and he knows exactly who to blame.
Loki learns the truth of his existence, and flies into a rage, as Heimdall could have predicted. He encases Heimdall in ice and allows Jötnar into the very chambers of the Allfather. Heimdall manages to escape the ice, but the effort costs him dearly, and the next thing he knows he’s waking up in the Healing Room with Frigga silently seething at his bedside.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her, because if there’s one thing Heimdall can admit about the tragedy of Loki Laufeyjarson, it is this:
He saw it coming.