Every once in a rare while, a story practically writes itself. One moment, an editor is prompting you, and the next, the story springs fully formed from your head and splatters itself across the page. This is not one of those stories. When Navah and Dominik asked me, I agreed because I wanted the opportunity to work with them, not because I had any clue what to write about. As a result, writing this story was akin to jumping out of an airplane, then stitching the parachute as I plummeted, hoping to finish it and deploy it in time to avoid splatting on the ground. If you’re reading this, then I am, presumably, not an unsightly stain upon this good earth.
Navah and Dominik helpfully suggested Norse mythology. I decided on apples because they were symbolically important across a bunch of cultures. The intersection of the two, of course, is the goddess Idunn, who tends the golden apples that keep the Norse gods immortal. And, honestly, that’s about all we know about her. She has surprisingly little to do with the one Prose Edda story that features her. In that, she is kidnapped, replaced with an acorn, and rescued. What I wrote isn’t so much a retelling as much as it is a reaction. I wanted to see what might happen if Idunn were her own rescuer instead. As it turned out, in order to free herself, she needed to fight the system. Kind of like life . . .
JOHN CHU