“No!” shrieked Sigyn, lunging against her valkyrja.
The sound or the movement or the place seemed to break Loki free, and he wrenched and struggled against the armored women pinning him. But they were already binding him, winding pale tissue about him. The trapped snake hissed at their struggle, and Loki screamed as the venom struck him.
Sigyn fought, but she was no match for an armored shield-maiden, and she fell sobbing against her captor. Euthalia tried to push free. “No!”
“Euthalia! Why?”
Euthalia blinked, recognizing the woman who held her. “Hildr?”
Hildr’s face bore no shame, only confusion. “You wished to stop Loki from opening Ragnarok,” she said. “Now we do that. The world is saved.”
Loki howled in agony.
The valkyrjur moved away from the Jötunn and the snake, regarding their work.
Freyja laughed and straddled Loki, looking down upon his torture. “Mock me now, Lie-Smith,” she challenged as he writhed and contorted between her thighs. “Mock me now.”
He shook his face clear of dripping venom and grinned at her. “Still like a she-goat in a herd of rams.”
Freyja’s face twisted and she slapped him hard. She cried out and jerked her hand back, shaking burning venom from it and cradling it to her chest. Loki laughed.
Freyja snapped an order, and the valkyrjur started toward their loom. Sigyn dashed forward, snatching up the abandoned bowl and extending it over Loki’s head. He gasped and relaxed trembling onto the stone.
Freyja stopped and smiled upon Euthalia. “Don’t look so distraught, little Greek,” she said smugly. “Nor surprised. The valkyrjur are all my handmaidens, and it was you who brought me the flesh of Loki’s flesh, the skin of Jörmungandr to bind him anew. And now Ragnarok is forestalled and all is well.” She inclined her head toward Loki’s prison-bed. “All is as it was.”
Euthalia swallowed. “Vidar came to me.”
Freyja’s smile became a mask.
“We love one another, and we will love one another regardless of your curse,” Euthalia said. “I know now it was you.”
Freyja’s mouth twisted. “Who told you that?” she asked sourly.
“Loki. And I believed him,” Euthalia added quickly. “He does not always lie, not when the truth serves him better.”
Freyja glanced toward the wracked body and gave a tiny shrug. “He is well-served now.” She started forward.
“I know something else as well,” Euthalia said. “I know Odur left you.”
Freyja went rigid and cold, an icy frost in the shape of a goddess. “What?” It was not a question.
“I know your husband Odur left you, and you go out at times to seek him,” Euthalia said. She kept her voice soft, not sharing her knowledge with the valkyrjur. “I have heard you crying through the worlds.”
Freyja opened her mouth but said nothing, torn between shock and shame and fury, unable to react lest she betray her shame to her proud shield-maidens.
Euthalia held her eyes. “I hope you find him,” she said evenly. “And I hope you are reunited with him.”
Freyja stared at her, lips shaping a word which never quite came, and then she strode back to her low wagon and called to her cats. They turned and leapt forward, and the goddess swept out of the cave.
The valkyrjur followed, but for Hildr. She watched Euthalia, waiting.
Euthalia raised a finger to her, requesting a moment. Then, taking a breath, she went to stand beside Loki and Sigyn.
Loki spat at her and launched into a stream of accusatory invective as acidic as the venom dripping over him.
Euthalia ignored him. It was lies; it did not hurt her. She looked at Sigyn. “Will you come?”
Sigyn looked at the bowl and at Loki, and she shook her head.
“But…” He had shoved her away, had been willing to kill her with the others in Ragnarok. He had hesitated only for his children.
Sigyn shook her head again. “I stayed with him,” she said. “I will stay with him now.” She looked at him. “I love him.”
Loki smiled at her, tenderness creasing the scars. And Euthalia’s blood chilled as she watched them. He needed Sigyn, needed her desperately, and he gave her that tender smile, that dangling tidbit to lure her to stay. Was it a lie? Did he even know himself if it were a lie? And when he was released again, when Ragnarok could not be stayed any longer….
She touched Sigyn’s shoulder. “Come with me.”
Sigyn shook her head. “I’m sure.” She hesitated, and then she met Euthalia’s eyes. “I know. But I will stay.”
Euthala nodded slowly. She turned away.
Sigyn stopped her with a word. “Wait—take care of Narfi for me?”
Euthalia followed her eyes to the wolf, watching them from the edge of the lamplight. But his wide eyes were less intelligent, less understanding than they had been. He was slipping.
Sigyn understood. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she rubbed her cheek against her shoulder as she held the bowl steady. “He may not be himself,” she said, her voice cracking. “Maybe never. But please, just make sure he’s safe.”
Euthalia embraced her, careful not to jostle the bowl. “Of course I will.”
“Tell Vidar I’ll see him in the end,” Loki said. “But oh, you won’t see him, will you?”
She looked down at him. “He came to me today,” she said evenly. “To pull me from Hel’s hall. I will see him tonight in our home.”
Her answer frustrated Loki. He managed a sneering grimace. “How you must hate me now.”
She shook her head. “I pity you.”
It was the worst truth she could have said. Loki screamed obscenities after her until she had followed Hildr all the way to the mouth of the cave, where they mounted and rode away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Euthalia sat in her wooden house, wrapped in the bearskin she had been given on the boat so long ago. She faced the door and waited, watching the light fade from the chinks in the walls and the rawhide-covered windows.
He came in the dark.
He knocked at the door, asking permission to enter. She called, “Come.” There was no one else in her empty village, and no one who would be coming so late.
He opened the door and stood silhouetted in the frame, a blacker mass against the starry night behind him. “May I enter?”
“I have just said so,” Euthalia said. “And besides, it is your house.” His hesitation worried her.
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him and working the wooden latch more thoroughly than it needed. “I was glad—today—Euthalia, love, I should have told you. From the beginning. I should have asked for your patience and understanding rather than your obedience.”
“I should have respected your wish even when I didn’t understand it,” she said, “as I could see it was so important to you. I should have asked you again rather than believing another.”
He crossed the room and knelt beside her trunk-seat. “Forgive me for not trusting you?”
“Of course I do.” She kissed him, and when he lingered she pulled away. “And you—do you forgive me for not trusting you?”
“You know I—”
“And for freeing Loki and opening Ragnarok and nearly bringing about the end of all things?”
He hesitated. “You sound as if you do not want my forgiveness.”
“That’s not true,” Euthalia said, and her voice grew tight with her stomach. “I do want it. I want it badly. But I need to know that you forgive me for everything, because—because it’s a lot. And I couldn’t bear to think that you might kiss me now and later, in months or years to come when you are angry, you might hold it against me. That you might secretly resent me for what I have done. And it would not be without reason, I know, but I—but I want to know if you forgive me.”
Vidar remained silent a moment, and Euthalia’s heart sank. Her throat closed and tears stung her eyes, despite her best admonitions that she could un
derstand perfectly well, that she had no right to expect forgiveness for an error which had nearly cost the world itself.
“It is a fair question,” he said, and she caught her breath. “I think it is one which deserves consideration, as when I think on it, I see I too would want to be certain of my lover’s forgiveness and love.”
Euthalia nodded, even knowing he couldn’t see her in the dark.
“But Euthalia, I cannot blame you any more than I can blame Loki, or Baldr, or my father Odin, or any other of them. You never acted in malice, and often you acted in kindness, thinking to do good by your actions, and it was others who twisted them. So even if I wished to blame you, I could not.”
Her heart began to beat again. “Then you forgive me for all of it?”
“I forgive you as wholly as you forgive me,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “Is that enough?”
“It is more than enough!” she answered.
He leaned toward her, but she placed a hand on his chest to stop him. Then she caught his hands and guided them toward the wooden piece in her lap. “I was not sure I could break this myself,” she said. “I would prefer it we tried it together.”
Vidar’s fingers wrapped around the slat, felt across the runes carved into its surface. His fingers tightened about the wooden piece and Euthalia’s hands on it. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s.”
He lifted the wooden slat, his hands against hers, and snapped it down sharply over his bent knee. It splintered and came apart, dropping from their hands to the floor.
Euthalia thought she might taste the heart pounding high in her throat. “Did it—”
Vidar placed a finger against her lips, signaling her to wait. And then she heard the scrape of flint and saw a spark jump. She caught her breath and could not release it.
After a few tries the light caught, and Vidar lifted the filtered lamp and set it to one side, illuminating both of them. The yellow light fell over his broad-planed face, shadowing beneath his beard, sparkling in his eyes.
He was handsome.
She grasped his face in her hands, feeling, savoring, claiming him. She pressed the smooth, healthy flesh, the firm bones, the thick eyebrows. She ran her hands through his dark hair and kissed his light eyes and devoured him in love.
“I would love you even if I could not see you,” she breathed. “I went to the end of the world for you.”
He chuckled, embarrassed. “And I would love you if I could never look upon you,” he answered. “But I will confess that I do greatly enjoy looking upon you.”
She wrapped the bearskin about the two of them, and in the lamplight they kissed and touched and loved, gazing upon one another as if afraid they would disappear in an eye-blink. Outside, an owl called over their wooden house, and the unbroken moon passed overhead with cool, uninterrupted light.
AUTHOR'S NOTES
The Myths
There is a great deal of knowledge we simply don’t have about Norse mythology, due to the fragmented and filtered versions we have recorded. (See my blog post on the subject.) In several places I have chosen to be somewhat flexible in interpretation or have opted to use a later (and thus better-known) version rather than an earlier (and probably more accurate) telling of a particular scene or story (as in the death of Baldr). I have done this mostly where the accounts we have are in conflict, and I have tried to remain more true to the aspects which are more generally agreed upon.
Áss is the word for a single god of the Æsir, and so should be the correct singular noun. While it is certain that Loki would embrace its usage were he aware of modern cultural connotations, I have elected not to use it to avoid its homophonic and visual disruption to the modern reader. As a writer, one doesn’t want a dramatic scene interrupted by a prurient giggle-snort.
What has survived of Norse mythology is not clear on the sorting of the human dead to Valhöll, Folkvang (another of Freyja’s halls), or Helheim, and indeed the punishment of the wicked in Helheim appears only in later sources. It appears in the older sources that they were all closely related or perhaps even synonymous at times. In this story, I have kept Valhöll in Asgard and used a later and less pleasant version of Helheim.
The story Bragi tells on Euthalia’s first night in Valhöll, of the seið-kona magically concealing her son, is the story of Katla and Odd in the Eyrbyggja saga.
Loki’s Family
Narfi and Nari are the names given to Loki’s unfortunate sons in the Lokasenna. In the Prose Edda, the names are generally translated “Váli and Nari or Narfi.” There may also be some source or translation confusion with Odin’s son Váli, conceived especially for the purpose of avenging Baldr’s death by killing Hodr, so I have opted to use Narfi and Nari, to make them distinctly Loki’s offspring. Likewise, sources differ on which brother became a wolf and which died; I have chosen to make Narfi the wolf, per the Lokasenna.
Almost nothing is known of Sigyn, other than that she held the bowl over bound Loki’s head. I have elected to make her human in this story, and to give her an opinion on her obscurity.
Eisa and Einmyria are sometimes listed as additional children of Loki, daughters by another wife called Glut. However, this seems to be based on a confusion of Loki with another entity called Logi or Loge. A fourth child with Angrboda, devoured by the mother, is my own invention.
Garm is the hound of Hel, sometimes suggested to be an equivalent figure with Fenrir, though I have kept them separate in this story and instead opted to make him another of Hel’s siblings.
The Old Norse
Many of the names we know these entities by today are not original to their time and place. While they have largely been adapted to modern English alphabet and pronunciation, I have tried to preserve the original flavor where I thought it would not prove too disruptive to the reader (Baldr in place of Baldur, and Valhöll for Valhalla, for example).
I have listed here the original Old Norse (transliterated) and the most common modern adaptations. Definitions or explanations are included.
Ásgarðr – Asgard, the world of the Æsir
Baldr—Baldur, a son of Odin and Frigg
Bifröst—Bifrost, the rainbow road guarded by Heimdallr
einherjar—the dead chosen by Odin and the valkyries for Valhalla and the fight at Ragnarok
Folkvang—another hall belonging to Freyja
Gefjon—Gefion, an Æsir goddess
Glaðsheimr—Gladsheim
Heimdallr—Heimdal, a sharp-eyed Æsir god who guards the Bifröst
Höðr—Hodur or Hodr, a son of Odin and Frigg
Jörmungandr—Jormungand, also called the Midgard Serpent
Jötnar—plural of Jötunn
Jötunn—literally “devourers,” often translated “giant” though the source material does not specify general unusual size and this may be conflation with the Greek Titans
Mjöllnir—Thor’s magical hammer, forged by the dwarfs
Naglfar—Ship of the Dead
Nágrindr—Corpse-Fence
Niðavellir—Nildavellir, the dark dwelling place of the dwarfs
Óðinn—Odin, in later sources the chief god or “Allfather” of the Norse pantheon
seiðr—seidr, a form of magic associated strongly with weaving and women, used particularly for illusion, delusion, or other mental effects
Sessrúmnir—Freyja’s hall
Skaði—Skathi or Skadi, a Jötunn who married into the Æsir
Skíðblaðnir—Skithblathnir or Skidbladnir
Þórr—Thor, a son of Odin (and half-Jötunn)
þræll—thrall (slave)
Urðarbrunnr—Urdarbrunnr, the Well of Destiny (urðr, wyrd)
Urðr—Urd
Valhöll—Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain
Váli—Vali
Valkyrja, valkyrjur—Valkyrie, Valkyries
Verðandi—Verdandi
Víðarr—Vidar
Yggdrasill—Yggdrasil, the World Tree which holds all the worlds in its branches
and Urdarbrunnr in its roots
Ευθαλία = Euthalia, a Greek name carrying the meaning of “well-blooming” or “flourishing.” It is also the name of a genus of butterflies. The butterfly is the symbol of Psyche in Greek mythology, and thus a symbol for the soul in Western art. Psyche married the god Eros who forbade her to look upon him, and her midnight peek opened many tribulations for her before they were reunited.
Ῥαψῳδός = rhapsōidos or rhapsode, a stitcher of songs in ancient Greek
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura VanArendonk Baugh is an award-winning writer of speculative fiction, mystery, and non-fiction. She lives in Indiana with two dogs and a prepper stash of emergency dark chocolate. Her works have earned numerous accolades, including 3-star ratings (the highest possible) on Tangent’s “Recommended Reading” list. Laura speaks professionally on a variety of topics, from animal behavior to folklore to writing to cosplay. Find her, get a free story, and read more about the research and background of this book and others at www.LauraVAB.com.
Table of Contents
copyright
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
The Songweaver's Vow Page 25