by James Comins
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Story of Sigfuss
or, There’s Only One Kind of Promise
She and Annie walked across the busy street. Passersby still didn’t seem to see anyone except her. Maybe gods could only be seen by ... something. She didn’t know how it worked. Talvi passed them furtively, heading the other way. Annie sat on the steps of a giant domed library. Lenna sat beside her. The green lichen beside them unraveled and faded where Annie’s afternoon shadow lay over it. Annie amused herself by murdering a little snail over and over by moving her forefinger back and forth.
“So,” she began, looking at Lenna from a mile above her. Lenna swung her feet, kicking the step below her with her heels.
“So we had to destroy these stone carvings,” she said.
“Oh yes?”
“Uh huh. And the ceiling was falling. Andy said to cast a spell on it. But I didn’t want to.”
“Mmmwhy not?”
“Because it was Brugda’s spell. Even when it doesn’t hurt people or cut things up, it was still Brugda’s spell.”
“I thought you were getting along with her these days.”
“That’s not the point at all! I promised myself I wouldn’t use her sort of magic. I don’t like--” She kicked a pebble. “You shouldn’t hurt the snail.”
“I don’t even think it has a brain.”
“It doesn’t like being melted. I can tell.”
Annie leaned her elbows on her spindly knob-knees. “So you promised yourself not to use Brigid’s magic. You can make exceptions.”
“No you can’t! Once you make a promise you must never break it. I’ve never ever broken a promise.” Lenna frowned. The black halo dimmed the light around her. She was lying again. She used Brugda’s magic at the ice fountain beside Nupsstaður, and after the ceiling had collapsed. It had been so long since she had lied that she had almost forgotten about the darkness.
“Why can’t you break promises?” Annie looked down at her sideways.
Lenna’s eyebrows flew. “Because, because that’s not the way the world should be! There must be no promise-breakers.”
“Look at me. I promise to never kill the snail again.” Annie waved a hand, and the snail deliquesced to an empty shell. Pop. It was a pair of poky stalks again as the shadow moved aside.
“You promised! And you said!”
“Yup. I broke my promise not to kill the snail,” said Annie.
Lenna slapped the library steps. “Why?”
Annie shrugged. “I felt like it.”
“Miss Morgan. That’s not good enough.”
“Why are promises so important?” asked Annie.
“You can’t trust anyone who breaks promises. Like you.” Lenna stood and ran to the pedestrian crossing at the intersection.
“Hey! C’mon!” called Annie. Lenna darted across the busy street toward the Liffey. “Watch for cars!”
On the other side of the lane Kaldi scooped Lenna up. She hugged his neck. “Tell me,” he said.
“Annie Morgan breaks promises.”
Kaldi set Lenna on her feet and tipped his head sideways. “What kind of promises?”
“There’s only one kind of promise. The, the kind that you make!”
Kaldi had a faraway look. “I understand promises, Lenna. I’ve been thinking about them myself. Would you talk to me about them?”
She nodded.
“Listen. Long ago, I promised that I would always look after Mother. It was a promise I swore on a sacred ring, on a sacred altar, in a sacred grove. I told no one.” His broad chest heaved. “Now I find she isn’t even my real mother. What should I do, Lenna? Do I abandon Brugda? It was a promise based on a lie.”
“But no one should--” Lenna looked up at the baleful sadness in Kaldi’s eyes. “What does Talvi say?”
“He tells me I should abandon Brugda. He tells me she can manage. He even offered to look after her with Aitta if I stay in Ireland with Mother Bagohn. I tell him there’s an oath, and he says I have to let it go. How?”
Lenna heard a buzzing sound. It was Annie and some fruitflies, scowling down at her with her arms crossed. Kaldi lifted his head to the goddess.
“How do you break a sacred oath?”
“You asking me?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You stop caring.”
“Miss Morgan!” said Lenna indignantly.
“That’s hard advice,” said Kaldi. “I’m certain I’ll never stop caring. But it’s advice well-taken.”
“I mean, will anything happen to you if you break your oath?” Annie asked.
Kaldi rubbed the lenses of his octagonal brass glasses on his sleeve and shoved them back on his bridge. “It’s said there was a scholar named Sigfuss,” he said. “Wandering the world for truth, he came to a castle owned by three wise kings. He told the gatekeeper that he longed for knowledge and asked whether the kings would part with their secret wisdom. The gatekeeper made him swear an oath on a magic ring that he would share none of the things that he might learn inside--for the three kings knew many secrets. Sigfuss swore the oath on the gatekeeper’s ring and was led inside.
“The first floor of the great hall held a throne of bronze. The king on the bronze throne told Sigfuss the secrets of the making of the world. He told the story of Ymir, the giant who emerged from the vast, still ocean that waited between the heat of Chaos and the cold Void. He told the story of Audhumla, the mother-cow whose rivers of milk nourished Ymir. The story of the parent-gods Buri and Börr, who grew out of the giant’s armpits and who in turn begot the gods.”
Armpits. Lenna snickered. Kaldi smiled.
“These were great and terrible secrets, but the gatekeeper said they were the least of them all,” he went on. “Sigfuss was led to a second floor. He knelt before a throne of iron, and the king there told him secrets of the Æsir gods and the Vanar nature-spirits and the frozen-yet-walking Yotun and all the creatures they met in their adventures. It is said that Sigfuss wept at the truth and power of the secret stories of the gods. But the gatekeeper said these were not yet the most important.”
Talvi and Pol had migrated over and stood on the grass beside the sidewalk, listening.
“At the third level, the king was sitting on the floor. Sigfuss asked why this was so. The king said his throne had not yet been built. As Sigfuss sat beside him on the cold stone, the third king whispered the secrets of magic. He spoke of how the world Changes. He said that there would come a day when all magic would end forever and the world would stop Changing. This was Ragnarok, the day of the destruction of the world.
“The gatekeeper led Sigfuss down the flights of stairs. He held the scholar’s arm as he climbed, since the man’s knees were shaking. The gatekeeper reminded Sigfuss of his oath and sent him on his way.
“When Sigfuss looked back, the castle had vanished. So the scholar, satisfied in the completeness of his knowledge, went home and raised a family. For twenty years he told no one what he had heard. But when his son Sæmund had become a man, Sigfuss sat him down and told him all the secrets he had learned. He didn’t stop until he had spilled out all the stories he had been holding back all those years. The moment Sigfuss finished telling the story, he forgot everything in his head--and not just the secrets. He forgot his family and his own name. They found him later in Paris, pretending to be a grand duke.”
“Sounds like a good reason not to break your oath. Right?” said Annie.
Lenna thought. “But that isn’t awful. He got to tell the stories and be a grand duke.”
“Yes, but he forgot his own family.”
“Is this church magic?” asked Lenna suspiciously.
“Yes,” Kaldi answered firmly.
“So what would happen if you break your promise?”
“If I abandon Brugda? People would abandon me.”
Lenna hugged him. “We won’t abandon you. Not ever.”
Kaldi smiled. “Let’s rescue Binnan Darnan.”
> “Okay!”
Baldur waded to the bank beside them. “I can bring you there in a single step, four at a time.”