I pressed my hands to my ears to block his agonized screams, but they only grew louder as the sunlight struck his forehead like a spearpoint, scorching the old soot mark from so long ago.
Once more Malina had branded her attacker.
“Run, Brother, run!” roared the Sun—so close now I had to close my eyes to slits. And yet her heat didn’t burn my flesh, but only bathed me in gentle warmth. I felt like a babe snug in its mother’s hood.
Taqqiq scrambled to his feet, gasping, “Sister, Sister—”
“I said RUN!”
And run he did.
With Malina on his heels.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
I had no strength left to revel in my victory.
I staggered across the quickly melting world, my vision blinded by the glare of sunlight on ice. I had not intended to survive this journey; I had not thought of how to get home. Taqqiq had spoken true about one thing: I had no strength left to transform.
I stumbled to the edge of the icy plain, hoping to catch one final glimpse of my friends below. Instead, I saw only black clouds, roiling like soup in a pot. Malina’s light streamed overhead, warming my shoulders, but it did not yet strike the earth.
Please, Sila, I prayed to the Air. I must see.
As if in response, a hole opened in the clouds. I watched Brandr struggle to his feet, Sweet One by his side. The sea ice lay still and calm, no longer rocked by the tides. He would survive.
I wanted to cry out to him, to beg his forgiveness. I cannot keep my promise. I will not return.
A bolt of lightning shot through the sky, throwing his features into sharp relief. He stared up at the Moon. He couldn’t see me, I knew, and yet tears filled his eyes as if he heard my words. Thunder rolled across the sky. Another cracking spear of lightning. Brandr’s face jerked toward the knarrs—I followed his gaze. The Norsemen aboard no longer looked scared. Instead their jaws hung slack, their eyes glazed, as if the lightning had burned their souls from their bodies.
Again the drumming of thunder, like the footsteps of giants racing across the sky.
I watched the faces of the Greenlanders, stark and pale in the lightning’s glare. I watched as their features snapped apart and then back into place, forming something beautiful and terrifying and altogether new. The Norse were men no longer.
They were gods.
One by one, the Aesir leapt easily over the side of the knarrs and advanced on my friends.
Where once stood Freydis’s husband, Thorvard Einarsson, now strode red-bearded Thor. He swung his war hammer across the sky, striking lightning bolts from the stars to light their path. Other freemen now followed in his wake, each one transformed into a god I recognized from Brandr’s tales: Magnor became Tyr, the god of war, his sword held high in his one remaining hand; keen-eyed Bjarni, the wound in his shoulder somehow healed, transformed into Heimdall the Watcher, carrying a huge, curved horn beside his bow. Another freeman, slight and pale, became Freya, waist girdled with vines and flower-studded hair streaming across her shoulders. The metamorphosis rippled outward, striking one man after another. Old Olfun was next, his body growing tall, his hair long, but his eye still missing. Two ravens curled from the sky to land on his shoulders. Odin. All-Father.
A new figure jumped from the Greenlanders’ boat. One I’d never thought to see again.
Ingharr. He stumbled at first, clutching at the bloody wound I’d drilled through his stomach. But even as I watched, his skin knit closed, his back straightened. Barley sheaves twined their way through his long yellow hair. The viciousness of his gaze faded away, replaced by a gentle warmth. Frey. The god of growing things, who’d once given away his sword for the love of a giantess.
The thralls who stayed on board the ship observed the procession with interest, but not shock. They can’t see the gods before them, I realized. Like Brandr, they aren’t true believers. Only Freydis watched wide-eyed and pale, her hands clutching at her hair. She saw. She would be the witness.
The transformation struck her next, painting her green skirts with swirls of silver and gold, darkening her orange hair to gleaming bronze. Her thin figure rounded; she grew even taller. But her features remained sharp and imperious, and her eyes were the same steely gray. Frigg—wife of Odin, proud foster mother of Thor and grieving mother of Baldur—did not subsume Freydis as the Aesir had done to the other Greenlanders; she simply cloaked the woman in new glory.
Frigg-and-Freydis watched the carnage unfold with none of the other Aesir’s fierce joy or bloodlust. Her voice was little more than a whisper, yet Sila’s breath carried her words to my ears as if she stood beside me on the Moon’s edge:
“Ragnarok.”
I knew this prophecy. The Fate of the Gods. The final battle between Aesir and Jotuns.
Taqqiq was right: Loki had lied. Muirenn’s kind smiles were simply the Trickster’s ploy. He’d used me to bring Brandr and Sanna and all her animals to fight in a war far greater than the one Freydis had imagined. A war I barely understood. One that would bring nothing but carnage to my world. What use were wolves against gods?
To the west, the hordes of Jotunheim gathered beside their long-forgotten brother, Loki. Ice Bear and Raven, Walrus and Hare, Ringed Seal and Whale, all assembled behind the Shapeshifter in his silver-clothed glory, black hair twisting in the wind.
Loki raised a hand to my inuksuit.
The stone Frost Giants lifted their massive legs from the earth and turned their blank faces to and fro, seeking their enemies among the Aesir.
My wolfdogs crouched for the kill. They didn’t follow Loki’s orders, but mine. I had told them to defend Brandr—they would follow my wishes to the death.
My flame-haired friend stood beside them, holding his sword. He didn’t notice the stone Giants, much less the silver-robed Jotun.
“Run!” I screamed down at him in vain. “This is not our battle! You can’t win!” But Brandr was as powerless in Loki’s trap as I had been. He couldn’t hear my pleas. Couldn’t see the truth of the enemies before him. He thought he fought the Greenlanders who had murdered his brother. He had run from them before. This time he would fight.
I took a deep breath, trying to will myself a raven so I might fly to my friends. But not even the faintest glimmering of power coursed through my flesh. I had gone from lemming to bird to wolf to woman, all in one day. I laughed bitterly. Loki had left me stranded here, powerless, on purpose.
I watched as Odin strode across the ice toward Brandr. White Paw leapt in front of him. She threw back her head and howled. Her fur stood on end, her body swelled, her teeth lengthened. She was more than my wolfdog now; she was Fenrir, too: Loki’s monstrous wolf-son, fated to fight the All-Father in the battle to end all battles.
Powerless in the face of prophecy, White Paw bounded toward Odin, her jaws wide. Wolf and god rolled across the ice, spear and fang flashing in the lightning.
At the same time, Sweet One and Floppy Eared lunged forward to defend Brandr from his next attacker—one-armed Tyr. Suddenly my two wolfdogs merged in my vision, becoming a single, slavering dog of shifting black and white. Garm, the hound of Hel, grabbed at Tyr’s leg with its immense jaws, worrying the flesh until the god’s blood ran through its teeth to stain the ice below.
The ice cracked and strained as the creatures of the deep rose to join the fray. A great slab thrust from the sea with a sound like thunder. Fanged Whale burst forth to grab red-bearded Thor in its toothy maw. Sanna rode upon the beast’s back, her thin legs straddling its vast head, her long black hair streaming like seaweed across her shoulders. She was at once the Sea Mother and a hideous Norse ogress, riding a beast whose fangs lengthened like swords and whose tail grew sinuous and scaled—Jormungand, the sea serpent that encircled the world.
I sank down onto the ice, the battle far below blurring with my tears. The crash of sword and shield, the howling of wolves, the screaming of man and beast, warred with the thunder.
If I couldn’t help, then I did
not want to see.
There on the edge of the Moon, I buried my face in my hands and waited for the spirits to do with me what they would.
It didn’t take long.
An unseen force yanked on my boots, dragging me toward the edge. I slammed my palms against the ice, wishing for a wolf’s claws or raven’s talons to hold me in place. I screamed and scrambled, but still I skidded closer to the lip of the Moon.
Brandr must be pulling on my human body, I realized, trying to wake me from my trance while my soul is still here in the spirit world.
“Stop!” I shouted. If I awoke now, I’d be soulless, undead. But he couldn’t hear—and I couldn’t fight back. My mind spun as my two braided worlds suddenly ripped apart. My legs now dangled over the edge, my feet swaying above the infinite expanse of empty sky. I flipped onto my stomach and dug my pitiful human fingers into the slick surface of the Moon. My nails ripped free. The force on earth kept pulling. Torso dangling, shoulders straining, only my fingers left to clutch at the ice. No breath left to scream.
I plummeted off the Moon—and into oblivion.
BOOK FIVE
RAGNAROK
The tale of the Ragnarok has its ending. The skalds spread the story far and wide through the realm of the Norse. As they tell it, the legend grows and shifts, until it little resembles what really happened that night upon the frozen sea. Only those with the eyes to witness know how much it has been changed. Only two women, one small and dark, one tall and fair, can see the truth.
The Fate of the Gods unfolds.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
I fell for what felt like an age.
Ripped from one world into the next, I plummeted earthward, powerless to help myself. The stars whirred by, streaks of white and blue and pink. The air rushed cold across my face, freezing my tears against my cheeks and eyelashes. I could no longer blink. Could barely breathe. My thin Norse clothes ripped from my flesh. I fell in tatters.
I looked upward, toward Taqqiq’s looming eye. No longer white, it hung like a drop of blood in the dawning sky. Slowly, so slowly, a round black shadow eclipsed the reddened orb, covering him from my sight and me from his.
Malina had finally caught her brother.
As the Moon’s light dimmed, the stars grew brighter. One by one, they shot across the sky, falling from their assigned places like snow in a blizzard.
I had no breath to scream.
Ataata, I thought, is this what you saw for me? Have I made you proud? Am I not a great hunter, to have brought down the Moon? The victory meant nothing. I had saved no one.
Ohhhhh-mat. Ohhhh-maaaaat.
At first the voice sounded like Brandr’s, welling up from the earth to embrace me at the moment of my death. Then the voice echoed overhead—from the falling stars themselves.
Omat!
Omat!
A chorus of voices, calling my name. I recognized my grandfather’s. I recognized my father’s. The woman’s voice I did not know, but it seared me like hot oil, and fresh tears froze against my eyes. My mother. Only once before had I heard her voice, in the moment of my birth. Now, at my death, she called to me again.
I floated on their cries like a kayak on salt water. My fall slowed, stopped. I hovered in midair. Only when I felt the tug on my shredded dress did I realize that the voices had summoned help. Owls, ravens, falcons flapped around me in a swirling cloud. They grabbed my ragged clothes and bruised flesh in their beaks and talons, their wingtips scraping my cheeks.
Slowly, slowly, they lowered me to the earth, their sharp talons drawing blood until my spirit form rested safe in my worldly body once more.
I felt ice against my back. My head rested on a pillow of frozen wave.
The voices of my ancestors faded. The cloud of birds lifted like morning mist and disappeared into the sky. I dragged a hand upward to melt the ice from my eyelashes and cheeks, blinking as my eyes unfroze.
Something pawed weakly against my arm. I turned slowly toward the disturbance that had ripped me from my trance and almost cost me my life. I blinked as the blurry shape slowly resolved before my eyes. Not Brandr, I saw now. A wolf. White Paw? Sweet One? I could barely tell. Her coat was black with blood. Where her mouth should have been, only a gaping hole of ragged flesh remained, half her jaw hanging loose and broken. I reached out one tentative hand. Air whistled through her mangled mouth—the closest she could come to a whimper.
“No, White Paw. No,” I gasped, gathering the wolfdog’s head in my arms. “What have they done to you?”
A god had torn her apart. But not before she had fulfilled her task. Odin, I saw now, lay sprawled across the ice not far away, his throat torn out by a wolf’s teeth, his one eye glazed. The Far-Seer would never see again.
I wiped the blood from my friend’s eyes so she might see my face—and so I might watch her gaze slowly dim as the spirit fled her body.
I clutched her to my breast, this animal I’d once carried in my hood, now grown so large that I could barely lift her ruined head in my arms, so large that she could destroy the All-Father himself, so large I’d thought her invincible.
I opened my mouth to howl my grief. I wanted to mourn her as she would have mourned me. But no sound came out. Only a weak, choking breath, thick with tears. Heedless of the blood, I pressed my cheek against hers and lowered her head to the ground. Inuit have no words for final parting, and for once I felt the lack.
“Farthu vel,” I whispered in Norse to my friend. Farewell.
She had fought for me—for those I loved. It was up to me to save them now. I pushed myself to standing, swaying with exhaustion and grief, and stumbled toward the crash and roar of the battle before me.
“Brandr!” I screamed. “Where are you?”
Nearby, Loki fought with Heimdall, the great Watcher of the Aesir. To my eyes they were gods indeed, larger than life, clothed in silver with weapons of gold. Yet as they wrestled each other, I saw another reality layered upon the first. Flashes of the bodies they inhabited: Muirenn’s hunched form in her ragged woolen dress, and strong, stout Bjarni. Beneath the glorious conflict of gods lay the ludicrous scrabbling of an old woman and a young man.
Loki caught my eye and stumbled for a moment, shocked to see me alive. Heimdall lunged at him; Loki snaked his arm around the burly god’s neck and squeezed tight before turning back to me. “Welcome to the battle you’re too late to stop!” the Trickster crowed. “You’re more clever than I thought, little Inuk.”
“Why?” I demanded. “I stopped Taqqiq from destroying everything—and now you’re doing it instead!”
“I’m simply ridding your land of the Norsemen, just as you—”
“Stop your lies! I can see the gods before me and the men within them.”
“Omat the Inuk thinks she sees the truth, yes? Well, the truth is that this battle has been foreseen since Odin fashioned the world from Ymir’s skull.” Heimdall struggled and roared in his arms, but Loki just squeezed tighter and saved his rage for me. “Now leave, Inuk! You have no place here!”
“Not until I find Brandr.”
“Freydis to dream. You to lead. Brandr to swing the sword. Your lover is mine.”
“For what?” I demanded. “You think you can defeat the Aesir?”
Heimdall smashed his elbow into Loki’s face. Blood splattered the Trickster’s braided mustache as he leaned close to the other god’s ear. “I can defeat you all,” he hissed. “All that time Odin spent preparing for the Ragnarok, he never realized we would fight here, in Jotunheim. On my ground. That is why I will win.”
“We took you in,” Heimdall gasped. “Odin treated you like his own son.”
“And then he bound me beneath a serpent’s dripping venom. After I gave Baldur a swift death, Odin gave me eternal suffering. And this is his reward.”
I had seen enough of vengeance.
I left the wrestling gods behind and threaded my way through the chaos, searching for my friend. I thought to create Freydis’s nightmare tonight
—but a different horror has come unasked for and swallowed me whole. This is what comes of playing with stories.
The inuksuit strode across the ice, towering Frost Giants given life by the Shapeshifter himself. Huge wolves darted between their feet—wolves, I knew, that had once been sheep. On their backs rode Valkyries in glinting breastplates, their swords spraying chips from the Giants’ stone legs. Singarti and his pack joined the fray, teeth bared as they leapt upon their enemies. The ice swirled with fur and stone, blood and steel. All the prophesied destruction had come true. One of Fenrir’s brood, a wolf in troll’s skin, will swallow the Moon. So I had heard Galinn explain in Brandr’s memories. That was me, a wolf’s child in the flesh of a mortal who had taken down Taqqiq himself. Yet even when falling wingless through the air, I had not felt so helpless.
I could barely tell friend from foe as I ran. The Aesir had brought wolves, just as I had. Odin’s raven companions looked no different from those who flew in my own dreams. And always, the vision spun from one reality to another—a wolfdog become hound, a woman become ogre, a whale become serpent and whale once more.
Finally I spied Brandr amid the maelstrom. His red hair gleamed in the crackling lightning, and he held an unfamiliar golden sword that flashed like a sunbeam. As bright as flame, he danced around Frey, the god of growing things. The yellow-haired god held Ingharr’s iron weapon, dull and nicked. No match for Brandr’s shining blade. For an instant, Frey’s form shivered and shifted in my vision. I saw Ingharr’s body within, battered and bloodstained, but moving easily despite the many wounds Brandr and I had inflicted on him. The Aesir were powerful indeed to heal their worshiper so. Magic sword or no, this was a battle Brandr couldn’t win.
Brandr’s cries of rage rang above the clash of sword and shield and thunderclap, demanding justice for the death of his brother.
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