ve her. Looking up, she saw a
mighty eagle, the largest eagle that had ever appeared in the sky.

She drew back toward the gate of Asgard. Then the great eagle swooped
down; Iduna felt herself lifted up, and then she was being carried away
from Asgard, away, away; away over Midgard where men lived, away toward
the rocks and snows of Joetunheim. Across the river that flows between
the World of Men and the Realm of the Giants Iduna was borne. Then the
eagle flew into a cleft in a mountain and Iduna was left in a cavernous
hall lighted up by columns of fire that burst up from the earth.

The eagle loosened his grip on Iduna and she sank down on the ground of
the cavern. The wings and the feathers fell from him and she saw her
captor as a terrible Giant.

"Oh, why have you carried me off from Asgard and brought me to this
place?" Iduna cried.

"That I might eat your shining apples, Iduna," said Thiassi the Giant.

"That will never be, for I will not give them to you," said Iduna.

"Give me the apples to eat, and I shall carry you back to Asgard."

"No, no, that cannot be. I have been trusted with the shining apples
that I might give them to the Gods only."

"Then I shall take the apples from you," said Thiassi the Giant.

He took the basket out of her hands and opened it. But when he touched
the apples they shriveled under his hands. He left them in the basket
and he set the basket down, for he knew now that the apples would be no
good to him unless Iduna gave them to him with her own hands.

"You must stay with me here until you give me the shining apples," he
said to her.

Then was poor Iduna frightened: she was frightened of the strange cave
and frightened of the fire that kept bursting up out of the earth and
she was frightened of the terrible Giant. But above all she was
frightened to think of the evil that would fall upon the Dwellers in
Asgard if she were not there to give them the shining apples to eat.

The Giant came to her again. But still Iduna would not give him the
shining apples. And there in the cave she stayed, the Giant troubling
her every day. And she grew more and more fearful as she saw in her
dreams the Dwellers in Asgard go to her garden--go there, and not being
given the shining apples, feel and see a change coming over themselves
and over each other.

It was as Iduna saw it in her dreams. Every day the Dwellers in Asgard
went to her garden--Odin and Thor, Hoedur and Baldur, Tyr and Hei