“Well, isn’t it?”
“Almost certainly,” Heimdall said, “but since he isn’t with us, I wonder what brought him to mind. You fancy him, don’t you?” Sif and Thor had played together as children when Odin was paying a state visit to Vanaheim or her parents had taken the family to visit Asgard and had occasionally seen one another since.
“If I did,” Sif said, plainly annoyed by the question, “it would be no business of yours.”
Heimdall grinned. “That’s not a denial. If Thor returns your feelings, maybe you should talk to our parents. Odin might look with favor on a union between his house and a noble family of the Vanir.”
“I said leave it alone. When I marry, if I marry, it will be without any prompting from you. What do you know about courting anyway? I don’t see women lining up for you. Well, except for Myrgiol back home, but she had a nose like a woodpecker and a laugh to match.”
“That,” Heimdall said, “is a filthy slander.”
They continued to tease one another as the horses winged their way toward Yggdrasil. For a time it was enough, but all the while Heimdall felt the inimical hugeness of the World Tree and the gulf gnawing at him. It became steadily harder to think of what to say next or remember why he should say anything, and the lengthening pauses before his sister’s replies and even in the midst of them showed she was succumbing to the same mind-devouring power.
“Do you remember… Odger?” Sif asked. “He used… to go ice skating with us.”
Heimdall struggled to dredge up an appropriate reply. “Yes. I remember him. Why?”
“Just… I remember too…” Her voice trailed off as if the surrounding silence had encroached on it and smothered it.
For a while, his thoughts fading and blurring into blankness, Heimdall didn’t care that his sister wasn’t talking, but then a flicker of alarm reminded him he should. “Sif!” he shouted. “Sif!”
She didn’t answer. Insensible, she was swaying in the saddle as if she were a scarecrow, and he was sure it was only due to the instincts and training of their two steeds that they were still riding along side by side and not lost to one another in the vastness of the gulf.
He cast about. Just as it was difficult to think, so too was it difficult to perceive and understand what he beheld. But there was a world spread out before him, undeniably larger to the eye and therefore nearer than any of the Nine had been before. He frantically urged Golden Mane toward it, and another round gate opened before them. They flew through, and Sif and the roan emerged from their own portal a moment later.
For a moment, his mind filled only with the relief that came from escaping the void, he closed his eyes and slumped in the saddle. Then it came to him that the air was smoky and hot, so hot that sweat was already pouring from his body.
He regarded the land spread out below him. It was a barren expanse in which nothing grew but heat and fire. Lava flowed from erupting volcanoes in the distance, and flame leaped from huge pits in the ground. Awful as the vista was, he was still grateful to have escaped the void but likewise alarmed to have blundered into a world as hostile as Jotunheim and frustrated that he and Sif had failed again to reach their destination.
To judge from her reaction, Sif primarily felt the frustration, for she snarled a string of obscenities. “This has to be Muspelheim! In our daze, we flew too low on the Tree.”
Heimdall struggled to find something good to say about that. “At least now we know the horses can reach any of the Nine Worlds, not just Asgard and Midgard.”
“Yes,” Sif said grimly, “and I suppose it’s time to try again.”
Despite their inhospitable surroundings, Heimdall felt a pang of trepidation. “You don’t think we should rest again first?”
“Where?” she asked. “Do you see somewhere cool and comfortable that I’m missing?”
“No.”
“Then, horrible as the emptiness outside is, we need to go. We’re going to cook if we stay here.”
“You’re right.” Heimdall addressed himself to Golden Mane. “Take me back to Yggdrasil!” Their fiery surroundings persisted. “Come on, my friend! Yggdrasil!” As before, they remained in Muspelheim. He looked around. Sif and Bloodspiller were still flying along beside him.
“What’s wrong?” she called.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we’ve pushed the steeds too hard.”
Sif frowned. “They don’t seem tired. They’re flying as fast as before.”
“Maybe the power to cross between worlds is different. Separate from their physical stamina.”
“So what do we do?”
“Wait a while. Give them a chance to recover their magic.”
“I hope we have a while.” Sif pointed.
Heimdall looked at the place she was indicating. Their progress had brought them near a kind of encampment. He would gladly have given it a wide berth, but columns and drifting veils of smoke and the glare of magma and leaping flame had concealed it hitherto.
The tents and lean-tos glowed red, seemingly built of lava that had hardened but retained its heat, or even some sort of solidified flame. Their forms gaunt and angular, sheathed in fire or made of it entirely, the fire demon inhabitants were agitated at the sight of the Asgardians and winged steeds above them. They clamored to one another in their hissing, crackling language and rushed about grabbing javelins and bows.
“Yggdrasil!” Heimdall cried. Sif shouted the same. But neither Golden Mane nor Bloodspiller opened a gateway.
Well, in that case, Heimdall thought, maybe the horses could climb higher than a fire demon could throw a spear or loose an arrow. He urged the black steed to ascend, Sif followed, and the first blazing missiles dropped back down short of reaching their marks.
With every wing beat, the Asgardians were leaving the fire demon tribe behind. Relieved, reasonably certain he and Sif were now safe, Heimdall took a cautious look backward.
The spirits of flame had formed a circle around one of their number who was brandishing a staff and probably chanting an incantation although Heimdall couldn’t make out the recitation at such a distance with columns of flame roaring and erupting volcanoes booming all around. The spell brought forth new fire leaping from the earth in discrete lines that drew a jagged arcane figure around the tribal warriors. When the drawing was complete, the fire demons hurtled up into the air. The enchantment had evidently given them the ability to fly.
“Watch out!” Heimdall called. “They’re coming after us!”
Sif looked back and cursed. “Some of them still have bows! Don’t let them hit you!”
They guided the horses, veering back and forth and bobbing up and down to throw off the fire demons’ aim. Shafts of flame shot past them and arced downward. Despite Heimdall’s attempts at evasion, one missile pounded him in the back but failed to penetrate his armor. Golden Mane whinnied as the burning arrow tumbled down his flank and away.
“You see?” Heimdall gritted. “Yggdrasil would be a very good idea.”
Golden Mane neighed again. The Asgardian hoped that meant the horse was trying.
He glimpsed red and yellow brightness from the corner of his eye. Somehow flying faster than his fellows, a fire demon with a blazing lance was closing in on him. Heimdall let go of the reins and, now guiding the stallion with his knees, readied the two-handed sword.
The fire demon turned in flight to come in straight behind him. Twisting at the waist, Heimdall parried a lance thrust and cut at one of the hands gripping the weapon. He half severed the extremity, and the demon shrieked, dropped the spear, and abandoned the chase.
When Heimdall looked forward again, to his relief, a sparkling circle, the glimmering pastel colors a contrast to the glaring brightness of Muspelheim, was opening before him. He and Golden Mane plunged through, and Sif and Bloodspiller followed a second later.
“It looks
different!” Sif called.
She was right. They were flying not far above a gnarled, colossal tubular growth. Well, not far above relatively speaking. They didn’t have a clear view of the World Tree in its entirety, although if he tried, he could make out the trunk rising and rising to inconceivable heights above him.
“I think that before,” he said, “the horses took us to a point from which all Nine Worlds were readily accessible.”
“Readily accessible,” Sif repeated sardonically.
“Well, if we were Valkyries who weren’t bothered by the void and knew what we were doing. This time, though, maybe the steeds only had strength for a short jump. My guess is that we’re flying above a length of the same root that Muspelheim perches on. Or anyway, one of the roots at the base of the Tree.”
“Then what do we do now?” she asked.
He frowned, pondering. “I doubt the horses have the strength for another try at Jotunheim. Even if they do, I don’t know if we could bear it. This time around, we’ve only been here a minute, and I already feel stupor or insanity nibbling at my mind.”
It was so. He might have hoped that with repeated exposures he’d build up a tolerance to viewing the universe in its entirely, a view that apparently only special individuals with extraordinary gifts were ever meant to see. Or that his current vantage point, from which the whole of Yggdrasil was less clearly in sight, would prove easier to bear. But to his dismay, neither was proving to be the case. He struggled against the ghastly feeling that he’d landed Sif and himself in a deadly puzzle they couldn’t solve. What if they never made it to Jotunheim? What if they couldn’t even find their way back to Asgard or Midgard again?
Scowling, Sif said, “So trying for Jotunheim is what we don’t do. What we don’t do isn’t a plan.”
Trying to emulate her stalwart, practical example, he pushed aside his fears and then realized there was at least one more thing to try. “Follow me.” He sent Golden Mane swooping toward the colossal tree root.
As he and Sif descended, he waited for the two steeds to open new portals, but they didn’t, and apparently they didn’t need to. To his burgeoning relief, the root expanded in his sight, seemingly shedding its cylindrical nature to become a more or less flat expanse of land, a gray-brown territory mottled with patches of dull green moss that hadn’t been visible from higher up. The approach relieved him of the cosmic perspective a pair of common Asgardian warriors simply couldn’t tolerate for long.
Brother and sister set their steeds down on what now appeared to be a tableland with hillocks and declivities discernible in the distance. They dismounted, praised and stroked the winged horses, and then, exhausted, slumped to the ground to rest.
Nineteen
“Well,” said Sif after they’d been resting for a while, “since I started following your lead, I’ve been outlawed, hunted, had to fight my fellow Asgardian warriors, trolls, frost giants, and storm giants, and now I suppose you could say I’ve lost my very existence in Odin’s world. Or any of the Nine Worlds, for that matter.”
Heimdall felt relief at the wry comment. It showed Sif was still in her right mind and her morale remained strong. He supposed there was reason for that. Whatever dangers awaited them here on the surface of the root, at least they couldn’t see the whole of Yggdrasil clearly and thus didn’t suffer the debilitating effects of that terrible spectacle.
He smiled a crooked smile. “I didn’t know you were keeping score.”
She grinned back. “I just want you to realize how many favors you’re going to owe me when we finally get out of all this.”
“Believe me, I know.” The glum thought occurred to him that he might never be able to give them when he was called to account for killing the guard, and he pushed the reflection aside. There were far more immediate things to worry about. “Is this the moment when you ask me what the new plan is?”
“I was actually going to let you rest for a few more minutes, but if you’re up to it, feel free to dazzle me with your cleverness.”
Frowning, he sought to recall everything he’d ever heard about Yggdrasil itself as opposed the various worlds it supported. Eventually he said, “I don’t know that we should try again to reach Jotunheim in the same way we did before. Unless we’re simply lucky, I don’t see why we’d fare any better than we did previously.”
Sif nodded. “I agree. That’s the last resort. What do we do instead?”
“Supposedly,” he said, “there are three wells to be found down here among the roots. One is Udarbrunnr, the Well of Fate, which the Norns tend to make sure the World Tree continues to flourish.”
Sif’s blue eyes narrowed. “The Three Sisters live up in Asgard, in Nornheim. Everybody knows that.”
“Exactly,” Heimdall said. “So they must have some quick way of getting back and forth. Perhaps it would serve to take us to Jotunheim as well. If we can catch them at the Well of Fate, we can ask them.”
Sif grunted. “If we’d known we were going to end up here, we could have asked them in Asgard.”
“Or, we could have stolen Skidbladnir from Odin’s vault and sailed comfortably between worlds. But we couldn’t know, and now we have to contend with our situation as it is.”
“Go on contending, then. Are the Norns our only chance, other than riding back out into the emptiness and hoping our luck will turn?”
“No,” he said. “Another of the wells is Mimisbrunnr. Mimir’s Well. Legend has it there’s a path to Jotunheim somewhere in the vicinity.”
Sif brushed back a stray lock of her black hair. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Mimir wasn’t a Jotun. He was of the Aesir.”
“I know. But he was also one of the ancient ones like Odin, and, like the All-Father, may have had secret dealings with the people of any number of the Nine Worlds back at the dawn of time.”
“More to the point,” said Sif, “we’re at the bottom of the tree with Jotunheim high above us. How could one of the roots connect to it?”
“That puzzles me too. All I can think of is this is a different reality than the one we’re used to. The rules are different and likely to work in defiance of common sense.”
Sif frowned skeptically. “It’s possible, I suppose. Are we likely to find anything useful at the third well?”
“No. My other idea is that we fly straight up Yggdrasil’s trunk, still too close to see the whole of the Tree at once, until we come to a branch that extends out to Jotunheim and then venture along it.”
“Like ants climbing the trunk of a common tree. Could that work?”
Heimdall shrugged. “If the tales are true, there’s a sort of squirrel called Ratatoskr, another primordial being, that scampers up and down the length of Yggdrasil. If a squirrel can do it, why shouldn’t we?”
“A squirrel?”
“So the mystics say. According to the stories, she carries slander and cruel gossip among other creatures who live up and down Yggdrasil, apparently just because it amuses her to stir up trouble.”
“Like if Loki was a squirrel?”
Heimdall smiled. “More or less.”
“We’ll hope to avoid her, then. I get my fill of Loki back in Asgard.”
“Better get used to him,” he said. “If you marry Thor, Loki will be your brother-in-law.”
Sif glowered. “I told you to shut up about Thor and me. Anyway, if we don’t run out of water or food, one of your notions should work. Finally. Let’s mount up and find ourselves a well.”
The winged stallions flew along the root, and Heimdall occasionally caught sight of other roots sprouting from it along the way. Given the frequency with which he spotted them, he inferred that distance worked differently here, and Golden Mane and Bloodspiller were traveling faster than would have been possible inside one of the Nine Worlds.
Even so, their speed wasn’t so fast that water and food weren’t matters
of concern. Sif had been entirely right in that regard. Heimdall and his sister shared the very last of the contents of her water bottle, and sometime after that, he grew thirsty once again. He suspected the horses, despite their extraordinary hardiness, must be thirsty as well. He pinched the skin near the point of Golden Mane’s shoulder, and to his dismay, when he let go, it took a moment for it to snap back, confirmation that the black steed too was in need of a drink.
A band of dull green appeared up ahead and to the right. Hoping it could provide the answer to the food and water problem, Heimdall led Sif toward it, and as they approached it visibly became a mass of the moss he’d spotted when flying higher up. Down here, it was a veritable range of hills made of moss, the individual strands as thick as his leg.
He landed, dismounted, and took up a hatchet Golden Mane carried among his previous rider’s gear, a tool intended for chopping firewood and similar chores. Going down on one knee, he attacked the surface of the root. To his relief, despite Yggdrasil being, in effect, the structure supporting the entire universe, the wood broke like any other, and eventually, when he cleared away the scraps and chips, he had a basin.
He then chopped strands of moss, and they too yielded to his efforts. When he squeezed them over the basin, water trickled out. It had a brackish taste and grit suspended in it, but he, Sif, and the horses all found it potable.
That, however, was as far as his luck extended. To his disappointment, when he chopped up some of the moss to use as feed, Golden Mane and Bloodspiller spurned it, and he assumed that if they couldn’t eat it, he and his sister couldn’t either. The scraps of tough fiber seemed as if they’d be indigestible even if pounded and thoroughly cooked.
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