Mythic Journeys

by Paula Guran

  Bjarni does not see who threw the spear that pierces the dread raven’s skull. Its cry turns his bowels to water; he finds himself ducking to avoid a swarm of beaks and claws that are no longer there. In an instant the skies clear, revealing the sun, allowing Bjarni to once again get his bearings.

  Impossible, he thinks, as the raven plummets from the heavens, lands like doom at his feet.

  The thing lies on the planks, its wings spread in the relaxation of death. Drops of blood spot its beak and the right eye hangs from its socket. One by one, men lower their weapons, catch their wind, and creep over to behold the creature they’ve felled.

  Salty breezes play with the ship’s rigging. Fresh spray douses the remaining men as the sail billows and grows taut. Bodies clunk against the hull; none look overboard to determine if the corpses are human or otherwise. For a time, all is quiet.

  “Snorri Sæmundarsson!” yells Bjarni. Seeking out his steersman, at last he relinquishes his post. The captain’s hands are stiff, curled around an invisible haft. He fumbles for a missing man’s battle-axe, deeming his dagger not up to the task at hand. Spots dance before his eyes as he crosses the deck; the comfort of his disbelief in the supernatural now as dead as the abomination they’d slain. Bjarni rounds the carcass carefully as if it might turn draugr and spring back to life. “What have you brought upon us?”

  The axe makes short work of the hatch, and Bjarni kicks the splintered wood away from the opening. From below there is only the gentle susurrus of waves and then a cry, poorly suppressed, clearly grief-stricken. It comes from the passengers. No. It comes from under the grey cover.

  He lowers his eyes and meets Snorri’s frightened, knowing gaze. The man’s companions are all concentrating their attention on the dome and the wailing that comes from within it. Bjarni can hear them speaking in quiet tones, as if to soothe a wounded animal, but in no tongue he knows. The sounds are similar, they seem like ones he should recognize, but the words, the language escapes him, transformed somehow the instant it hits his ears.

  Bjarni’s long strides shrink the distance from stairs to sitters; before any of the quartet knows it, he has breached their circle and has a firm hold on their precious cargo. Anger fuels his movements. His footing is sure. He drags the thing upstairs and tears away the grey skin while Snorri and his companions are still fighting their way up the steps.

  Beneath is a bird cage. Made of polished antler, carved and stained the hue of honey, each rail wound with silver wire. Inside, not clinging to a perch, but huddling at the bottom on a folded piece of gold cloth, is a bird.

  A raven, in fact, twin to the dead one on the deck, only white, completely and utterly without pigmentation. A formidable creature that looks at Bjarni with liquid silver eyes and makes his heart clench. It opens its beak and a sound between a wail of grief and a howl of rage issues forth. Bjarni, acting on instinct, brings the axe down, driven solely by the gods-given need to destroy.

  His tired arms betray him. The weapon smashes through the delicate antlers, shards flying. The silver wire becomes smoke once the spindles are broken, but the blade misses the raven altogether. As Bjarni draws back for a second blow, the bird flies at the breach in its prison, growing larger and larger as it passes through the wreckage, transmuting into something other.

  Bjarni grunts and his grip on the axe is gone. The weapon falls with a loud crack, splitting to pieces on the deck like a dropped frost-cup.

  The woman is so pale she hurts the eyes, shining with the same sheen as ancient ice. Her hair is long and silver-white, and her face . . . For the briefest of instants, her face is thin and fine, translucent as the porcelain bowls Bjarni often obtains in the East. Blue highlights accentuate her high cheekbones and in place of eyebrows are long white feathers. Her irises swirl, now snow, now mercury. Then she settles. Her features firm, fill out, become almost human, but not quite, set apart by the perfection of her beauty. But it shifts, ever so slightly, vibrating from within, as if something prevents her from holding form too tightly. She wears a long-sleeved dress of arctic hues and a tunic that glistens like woven dew. Two oval box brooches adorn her chest, one on each side, just below her slender collarbone. Delicate chains link these hinged pieces to a third ornament, nestled between her breasts.

  While the first two are the finest specimens Bjarni has seen, the latter is a dull lumpen thing that looks like a stone.

  She is a head taller than Bjarni, than any other man on the ship, even her four fellows, whose human guises have been discarded. They stand lithe and elongated, facial feathers worn proudly as warriors’ tattoos, silver hair moving with a will of its own, expressions haughty as outcast princes.

  “Mymnir,” mumbles Snorri helplessly. “My Lady.” She snarls at him and he cowers.

  “You have failed, vísla.”

  “But, my Lady, my Queen . . .” He searches for words, eyes watering. “I gave my blood to protect your passage!”

  And he had, too. In the early dawn before the ship set sail, he knelt beside the vessel and chanted to the hull. He grated his palm across barnacles encrusted there, smeared red into sea stains. Others saw him, thought it a fine idea, a good gift to the gods. Within a week, every man who set to sea sliced the fat pad of his hand and gave a little of himself to Njorðr.

  “Wasn’t enough, was it?” Her face fluctuates as she speaks, the brow feathers there and then gone again. She shoots him a last warning glare, then turns her gaze to the dead raven and makes her way towards it. The sailors fall back as she moves among them.

  Bjarni watches, trying to rub away the pain in his sword arm; it feels like a frozen blade has pierced his flesh. He tries to speak but his mouth will not move. Like a sleepwalker, he follows the woman, stopping a few feet from where she crouches, her long hands reaching out to the heavy body. Her fingers glide across coal-black plumage, keeping contact on each stroke as long as she can, mewling all the while. Bjarni thinks he catches a name; it might be Huginn, but he cannot be sure, for the cold in his arm has crept upwards and is infecting his neck, face, ears. Everything sounds as if it comes across a great distance.

  At last she rises, cradling the bird, its blood staining the blue of her dress. In a few steps she is at the rail. Without warning she heaves the carcass into the sea, where it bobs while the air leaves it, then sinks like unwanted treasure.

  When she turns back her glare is dark as burnt wine. “Put us ashore.”

  “There is no land,” Bjarni manages, his tongue thick in his mouth.

  “There.” With an imperious gesture she points behind him and he turns, looks beyond her four companions and the sniveling vassal, and sees a beach and trees. Seagulls flying, surfing, nesting on rugged rocks and cliffs. The captain takes heed. He nods to his men, who readily tack the sail. A helpful breeze springs up as if commanded and sweeps them in like flotsam on the spray. This land could be filled with the richest of kings, Bjarni muses, but for once trade does not enter his mind.

  “Anchor at the ready,” he yells, scouring the coastline for a likely bay in which to moor, in which to offload his passengers.

  Mymnir watches as the ship pulls away, leaving the six on the coast with only their packs. She had not demanded food or drink be left, but Bjarni hadn’t questioned it. Too ill, she imagines. The knörr gets smaller and smaller and, when she judges hope might just have entered their hearts, she raises her arms and begins to sing.

  The wave is strangely silent. It does not displace the liquid around it, as if it has been made separately from the ocean, a thing apart that hammers the vessel, overturns and smashes it, sending Bjarni and his men to join the black raven on the seabed.

  Mymnir nods, satisfied. Away from the presence of iron weapons, from all that damned dampening metal, her powers grow stronger. She can feel the surge through her limbs, the settling of her form. She watches until the sea calms, until only memory can claim there once was a boat there, crewed by those with souls. She turns her back to the waters, skewering her guard
ians with a hard stare.

  One of them, Harkon, bows and speaks, his voice coldly musical. “Forgive us, Lady, we did not expect a threat from the humans.”

  “No indeed. Too consumed with feeling sorry for yourselves. Too concerned with what has been burned and lost. You chose to come with me, all of you, so look forward or gods help me you will look upon nothing ever again.”

  “Yes, Lady,” Eiðr says, and they all bow, even Snorri, although he is without Fae grace and his movements are comical and clumsy. “Your brother, Lady. How did he find us?” Valdyr asks, brow creased.

  “Perhaps Óðinn threw—” suggests Per, but is cut off.

  “Óðinn is dead.” She sets off along the shingle, toward an ascending the path that leads upwards, muttering. “I will not die. I will not lie down and accept a fate not of my choosing.”

  Yet she knows that her twin must have followed her, left his post and tracked her down. And if he had, perhaps others might have too . . . No. Theirs is—was—a connection only one god shared, and that one-eyed bastard is a rotting corpse. No, her brother came because he’s prone to fits of temper. Enraged and reckless, he attacked. Enraged and reckless he died, just so she would be forever yoked by his death, forever carrying it around her neck like a stone.

  When they reach the top of the cliff, a flat expanse stretches out before them. In the far distance, a great thick forest bristles; closer, a river courses toward them over meadows and fields to career off the verge in a powerful, frothing arc. Wild grapes hang on vines, thick and lush, richly purple and fat. Mymnir nods.

  “This will do. For now, this will have to do.”

  Snorri, forgotten Snorri, puffs behind them, making it to the plateau at last. Mymnir turns her eldritch gaze upon him and smiles. She waves him forward. He takes heart from that, and obeys.

  One hand she lays on his shoulder and he beams, spine straightening him to new heights; with the other, she unclasps the left box brooch from her tunic and flips the intricate clasp that holds it closed. She releases it—and it floats to the ground, the open lid remaining upright. It settles on the rich green grass and Mymnir squeezes, feeling Snorri’s thin bones.

  “You have been faithful, vísla, and for that I thank you.”

  “My Lady.” Snorri lifts his head to stare into her eyes and does not see how the nail of her index finger lengthens and becomes white, hard as flint and sharp as hate. He barely feels it as it slices across his throat, as the blood pours over the tiny container at their feet.

  Mymnir does not let him fall until he is dry. After a moment, she leans forward and whispers to the kingdom box, which shakes itself like a kitten waking after a nap then begins to hop about, struggling.

  Once the first item springs from its depths—a fountain—others follow much more easily. In short order there are fine houses, more fountains, city squares, trees bearing strange fruit, horses and goats and shaggy cattle, byres and barns, a smithy, benches, paved streets and gardens and, finally, a palace, all glinting in the sun. The ground grumbles beneath their feet, then roars as stone rears from the earth. Jagged peaks push the construct up, so high its new rooftops seem to pierce the blue. Stone vines shoot from the soil, curl around the buildings, securing them to the ridge. Structures sprout granite roots, steeples and turrets are tethered to the mountainside by marble buttresses grown from sheer walls of rock. Mymnir crosses her arms, surveys her handiwork, whistling as it detaches from the continent, opening a league-wide channel between the two shores. Before the dust settles, an alabaster bridge stretches over the chasm, its railings topped with crystal orbs that catch the light, refracting rainbows up and down its length.

  “Not quite Bifrost,” she says, bending down to retrieve the box, which seems to gasp, exhausted.

  “One last thing,” she tells it and a sigh escapes the little thing. She flips it over and onto her unlined palm fall tiny seeds, silver and gold, perhaps a hundred. Mymnir exhales over them then flings them out before her.

  Where each one lands a person unfurls. Maidens and lads, all Fae, all lovely and cold, and each one sinks before her into a deep bow. She nods once again.

  “Home,” she says. Her smile smug, regal. “For now, this is home.”

  “WONDER-WORKER-OF-THE-WORLD”

  NISI SHAWL

  It was near the beginning of things, but it was not really right at the beginning. Life was good. The land was fat, and luscious with grass. The herds of the people were free from any sickness, for there was not yet any sickness in the world. Nor was there any strife, nor any sort of evil.

  The cause of all this was the buffalo, Wonder-Worker-of-the-World. Whenever the people needed anything they would ask him for it. If a man needed a large assegai he would go to Wonder-Worker-of-the-World, and lean upon his big black shoulder, and sing:

  “Ah, my father, it is from you

  Comes all goodness.

  It is from you

  Comes this long spear.”

  Then he would take the assegai and go away to hunt.

  Or if a woman needed a length of colored cloth she would come to the buffalo and lean upon his shoulder and say:

  “Oh, my father, it is from you

  Comes all goodness.

  It is from you

  Comes this fine cloth.”

  Then she would take the cloth for a body wrap.

  So things went on, and for a while, Wonder-Worker-of-the-World thought that things were good, and then he saw that they were too good. “These people will never do anything,” he said. “Whatever they ask I must give them, but I do not wish that they should not be able to get anything for themselves.” So he went away from his people, and they were left on their own.

  At first the people were confused, but then they found other ways of getting the things they needed. They found they could make spears and spin cloth and dig for metal in the ground.

  And it was ever the custom, when they got what they needed, to sing:

  “Oh, my father, it is from you

  Comes all goodness.”

  Thus it was with most of the people. But there were those who were lazy, who thought badly of Wonder-Worker-of-the-World because he left them. They took what they wanted from those who made it and killed those who tried to keep what they had made. Murder and theft came into the world and with them many other evil things: sorrow, hunger, disease, and so forth.

  Again, there was confusion among the people. Things became worse and worse. The fat land became thin and worn out with the people’s struggle. The grass was trampled into bloody dust.

  An old man who remembered the early, easy days said “It must be that we have offended our father, Wonder-Worker-of-the-World. He has given us everything, and we have returned nothing to him. We must give our father a most valuable gift. Then he will see that we love him, and all will be well once more.”

  Now this old man was quite wrong, but no one knew that. Everyone believed him. Some thought that if the people gave back to the buffalo some of what he had given them, he would take away all misery and confusion. Others thought that if the gift were great enough, their father would come to them to stay, again taking care of all their needs.

  There was much discussion as to what the proper gift would be. At last it was decided that the only suitable thing would be to give him one of themselves. So they chose a beautiful, strong young maiden named Untombinde and clothed her in finely woven wraps. They put golden ornaments in her hair and on her breasts. Then she was ready and they had to learn how to send their gift to Wonder-Worker-ofthe-World.

  The old man told them, “You must kill Untombinde. Kill her. It is the only way she will come to our father, who is gone from among us.”

  Again, the old man was wrong, but again all believed him, because he was so old.

  The people took up all their weapons and gathered in a circle. Untombinde stood at the center, filled with fear. The people took a step towards her and she fell to her knees. “No,” she cried. “Do not kill me!” B
ut the people with their weapons drew a step nearer, and she fell onto the ground. Then she felt a sinking feeling, and she lifted her head. She saw that she had sunk into the earth as high as her waist. She screamed again and again. The people stepped nearer and nearer, and held their weapons high to strike. She felt the earth pull her down, so that now only her head was above ground. Untombinde gave one final scream, and down came the knives and death clubs. But they did not kill her, for she was safe under the earth.

  Untombinde was riding on the back of an enormous buffalo.

  She knew it was her father, Wonder-Worker-of-the-World. At first everything was black around her, but gradually she came to see. The road was shining like starlight. The plants and trees along the way were like the moon behind thin clouds. All glowed softly with a dim beauty.

  Wonder-Worker-of-the-World took her to his kraal. He said “I asked my people for no gift, but since they were so evil as to try to slay you, you will stay with me and be my wife.” He showed her where they would sleep, and where the garden was, and many other things to do with their life, some of which were wonders.

  The buffalo had three wells. One of them was sweet and one was salty and one was sour like beer. Untombinde had to water the vegetables from the proper wells. She had to learn songs to sing to the spirits of the garden, those which would encourage the vegetables to grow.

  The buffalo had three fires: a red fire, a green fire, and a black fire. Untombinde had to tend the fires. Each needed a special fuel. Wonder-Worker-of-the-World told her that bad things would happen if the fires went out. “And if it is the black fire which dies,” he told her, “it is all over for the both of us.”