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The birds were not singing love songs anymore after Siegfried had left; the only music to be heard was the wailing of the wind and the roar of the fires that still encircled the mountain top. Brünnhilde could not see Siegfried anymore, yet she could not bring herself to sit down and wait patiently for him. She entertained herself by whistling along with the memory of Siegfried's horn-call, chasing the echoes from across the valley, for there was nothing to be done until he came back, and no matter how mortal she was, she had not yet learned boredom.
Presently the sound of the fire changed and the clouds of smoke formed the shape of a man stepping across the enchanted boundary of the mountain top. He was dressed in a dark cloak and a hat whose wide brim obscured one half of his face. His lone visible eye reflected the flames as if lit from within.
"Greetings, my child," said the visitor, raising a hand as if trying to push the smoke away from around his face.
"Father?" said Brünnhilde, turning around. "I did not expect you. What brings you here?"
"Does a father need a reason to visit his favourite daughter?"
"When last we spoke," said Brünnhilde, "you did not look favourably on me, but wanted to leave me asleep here for any man to find. I did not dare to hope that you would think of me differently now."
"Then you do not know me as well as I thought," said Wotan. "Even when circumstances have forced me to hide it at times, your happiness was always most important to me, for I know you are as loyal and true as any son would be."
"It is true that I have aspired to this," said Brünnhilde. "If I have failed, it has only been because of my failure to correctly read your wishes."
"My wishes have never been complicated," said Wotan. "But I shall speak most plainly, then, to make it easier for you. I have heard from my messengers, the ravens circling above us, that Siegfried has been here, and that he has given you a ring as a token of his love. Is this true?"
"It is true," said Brünnhilde. "He woke me from my enchanted sleep, and stayed with me for a while, and when he went away on his next heroic journey, he left me with this ring. Look at the way it shines in the light from the sun! It is my most treasured possession."
"A fine trinket indeed," said Wotan. "I am glad he gave you something which is not only of value to you, but to the whole world. He knew you would have great use for it, and that through it, you would be able to help others as well."
"I find it hard to see what use the ring has other than as a token of love," said Brünnhilde, "but nevertheless I am glad for it."
"I forget that your former powers are closed to you now," said Wotan. "The ring you wear has power, and in the right hands it will be responsible for setting everything to rights that is wrong with the world. I am glad that the fates made your hero bring it to you, so that you might give it to me, and through me act as the saviour of this world and others."
"You want me to give you the ring?"
"When you do, your ordeal will be at an end and you will again be known as my favourite daughter and welcome in Valhalla."
"It was a gift to me," said Brünnhilde. "I am not so sure that he would like me to give it to another."
"You are my daughter," said Wotan. "Surely your hero cannot complain that you let me have the ring, when it is I alone who can use it for its true purpose."
Brünnhilde hesitated. "It was a gift to me," she repeated.
"You are a foolish child," said Wotan. "As your father, I have every right to claim whatever trinkets men have spoiled you with. Now give me the ring!"
Brünnhilde took one step forward, then faltered. Her hands, raised together to pull the ring off her finger, drifted apart, and she shook her head as if to clear it. "I will not," she said, as if trying out these words for the first time. "I will not give you the ring."
For a moment, they stood before each other silently, each unwilling to back down, while the echoes across the valley whispered about the ring. Then Brünnhilde drew back, shaking her head as if to clear her mind.
"You are not Wotan," she said at last. "If he had commanded me as you did, I would have obeyed, although unwilling. Yet I opposed you, and you did not strike me down, and thus you must be someone else. Show yourself!"
The fire blazed higher then, with smoke billowing in great clouds around her. When the air cleared, the figure in front of her was a creature of flame, breathing in time with the flickering lights.
"Loge!" said Brünnhilde. "I should have guessed; for you are almost as cunning and devious as my father. I assume that it is on his orders you are here?"
"I sincerely wish that it were," said Loge. "Sadly, your father gives no orders, and gods and men are left without guidance, since not even the Norns know the future anymore. Wotan's spear is broken, Yggdrasil, the world-ash, has been cut down for firewood, and we are all anxiously awaiting the flame which will kindle the funeral pyre of the gods. We fear for Valhalla, all who live there. It was the truth that I spoke, earlier, when I said that the ring on your finger was needed to set the world back on its path again. If I acted deceitfully, it was only because the matter is so desperate. Our only hope lies with your ring."
"If my ring is what you need," said Brünnhilde, "and you are free of my father's orders, why not just ask me to come with you to Valhalla?"
"The ring is evil," said Loge. "I did not want to upset you by telling you this, but Siegfried made a grave error by giving it to a mere mortal, who cannot hope to contain its powers. Wotan is the only one who would dare to try, which is why it must be brought to Valhalla immediately. You would do better to stay here."
"You speak as if I did not know you," said Brünnhilde, "as if you were not rightly called a master of lies, who is second only to my father in his ability to bend people to his will. I see no reason to trust you in this, least of all because you tell me it is urgent."
"If you do not believe me, I know someone who will," said Loge. "What if I were to tell your father that the ring of power sits on your hand, and that when I asked you for it on his behalf, you refused? Do you dare hope that he would not humiliate you even further than he already has, by taking it from you by force?"
"He would not," said Brünnhilde, but she did not sound very sure of it. The sound of the winds rose sharply, as if to disagree.
Loge smiled, noting her hesitation. "I meant what I said earlier," he said, almost kindly. "Wotan will surely be so grateful for your help in bringing him the ring, that he will let you come back where you belong, to forget your foolish mortal hero and ride again with your sisters. This part of your life will have been but a bad dream from which you can wake up."
Brünnhilde looked around her, at the forbidding rock face and the circle of fire surrounding her remote prison. "Siegfried gave me the ring," she said slowly, and the echoes called back, "The ring, the ring".
"He asked me to wait for him."
"For him," the echoes answered. "Wait for him."
"How can I be sure that I am doing what is right?"
"What is right?" asked the echoes.
"There is no need to make the mountains answer for you," said Loge. "They will say anything you tell them to. You may as well listen when they tell you to give me the ring."
He stopped, waiting for the echo. But this time the mountains were silent, and only the wind howled.
"It is a bad sign," said Brünnhilde, "when not even the lifeless rock agrees with you. I have already betrayed my father once. I do not know his mind anymore; for all I know, this could be a test of my affections for him, where I am supposed to deny you the ring in order to prove my loyalty to him yet again. But I have grown tired of his games, and of yours, and my answer is still no. I will not give you the ring, not for any reason."
"You are putting your life, and the lives of others, into the hands of an untried warrior instead of trusting your father, who is wiser than all living beings," said Loge. "He will not easily forgive this second betrayal."
"I have made my choice, and accepted it," said Brünnhilde. "I am not Wotan's anymore, but Siegfried's, and his happiness is what I seek, not my father's."
Loge's reply was drowned in the sound of a horn, calling from far away.
"There he is!" said Brünnhilde. "Now, go away and tell the gods that they must not expect my help, for I am another man's helper now, and if I am as true to him as he will be to me, then I shall want nothing more out of life."
She stepped around Loge, going up to the highest point of the cliff to gaze down into the valley where Siegfried's horn still echoed between the mountains. Loge let the fires blaze higher, although he must have known it was to no avail, and above them, the ravens circled, screaming of war and destruction and doom.