by Livi Michael
‘Berry!’ screamed Aunty Dot, as Cerberus and Fenrir, looking like one four-headed, eight-legged monster, plunged past her towards the abyss.
She clung to a lamppost, but the lamppost was charging away from the city as fast as it could. Letting go of it, she rolled over and over in the rubble, narrowly avoiding a swimming pool that flew past her head.
Fenrir howled as he hurtled towards his mistress, and Cerberus released his grip and howled with him. Hel howled back. All the remaining buildings of the earth were flattened by the mind-blasting noise.
Then, in the midst of the fury and chaos, Aunty Dot suddenly realized that Orion must have forgotten to blow his horn.
‘ORION!’ she shrieked, then, in the kind of voice that only a stressed-out Norn can produce, she bellowed, ‘O – RI – ON!!’
High in the heavens, far above the chaos and storms of the city, Orion was rising. He felt peaceful and happy for the first time in centuries. Was not his soul on its way to the Elysian fields? He rose blissfully accompanied by his beloved hounds, Canis Major (Sirius) and Canis Minor (Procyon), and together they radiated a pure and tranquil light. Now that his soul was at peace he was receptive to the beauty of the blue planet, which seemed to him exquisitely serene.
Then suddenly the peace was shattered by a universe-splitting yell.
‘O – RI – ON!!!’ yelled Aunty Dot, the Norn.
Rudely interrupted, Orion glanced down with his supernatural eyes and took in the terrible scene below. All at once he remembered that he had forgotten to do something vital.
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘If I don’t do something, the heavens will be rent asunder and the stars will fall into the abyss!’
‘WOOF!’ said Canis Major and Canis Minor.
‘But what was it I had to do?’ he mused. ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’
He was starting to panic when Canis Minor nipped him.
‘The horn!’ snapped Canis Major. ‘Use the horn!’
‘B-but I don’t know if I can!’ Orion protested. Canis Major rolled his starry eyes.
‘Try!’ he said.
Orion’s fingers fumbled at his belt. He raised the glistening horn and blew, and a note of astonishing sweetness and clarity, unbearably pure, flew out of it, halting the stars in their courses.
On earth, Hel raised her gory arms just as Cerberus and Fenrir flew into them, and all three collapsed backwards in a sheet of flame that burst from the abyss. Black smoke belched forth, wrapping the city in a vast and terrible silence.
39
The End… and a Beginning
Meanwhile, back in Niflheim, Sam and Jenny were crouched together under an overhanging boulder as the world collapsed around them. The earth quaked and split apart, giant rocks cascaded down and they were deafened by rumbling, crashing, grinding noises. It was like being in a very small bedroom, with the world’s loudest rock group playing all around your bed. Sam huddled beneath the boulder, hoping very much that it wouldn’t come crashing down on top of them, and clutched Jenny, who was quivering all over.
‘Never mind, Jenny,’ he whispered, during a momentary pause. ‘As long as we’ve got each other, we’ll be all right.’
Jenny briefly licked his hand. But she didn’t feel Sam’s confidence. She was aware, as he couldn’t be, of what the terrible noises meant. She knew that only Ragnarok could shake the foundations of Niflheim, and if Ragnarok was happening, then she had certainly failed. She thought, in despair, of her friends, who had gone into the unknown so bravely to help her in her impossible task and who would now face certain doom. She had lost Baldur, her beloved master, and now she had sent her friends to their deaths. And she thought of Fenrir, and of what the nine worlds would be like under his rule. It was hard not to feel that somehow all this was her fault and she couldn’t stop shuddering in Sam’s arms.
Then, as suddenly as it had all started, it finished. The thundering noises were replaced by a deafening silence. Sam and Jenny didn’t move. There was more silence.
Timidly, Jenny peeped out from the crook of Sam’s arm. They were almost entirely surrounded by rubble. There was just a little space between the overhanging boulder and the avalanche of stones.
Sam looked at Jenny and Jenny looked at Sam.
‘What do you think?’ Sam whispered. He was afraid to speak too loudly, in case he set off another cascade, but nothing happened. ‘We’ll have to get out of here somehow,’ he murmured, and, setting Jenny down on the rubble, he stood up.
They started to climb. It wasn’t easy, because the stones kept shifting and sliding beneath them. Every time Sam got a grip, stones above him would loosen and come tumbling down, bouncing off his shoulders and head. Jenny kept clambering up, then sliding down again, but eventually she caught hold of the bottom of Sam’s jumper with her teeth and he could haul her up. Together, they began to squeeze through the gap at the top of the rocky pile.
They emerged, bruised, battered and shell-shocked, into a world completely unlike the one they had left. There was no swirling mist, no black bridge, no shore of corpses. There was no sign of the root of the great tree. Instead there was a kind of rocky path climbing steeply upwards into darkness. Great stones and rocks jutted out from the path, almost like a makeshift ladder, but it was too dark to see where it led.
Sam looked at Jenny and Jenny looked at Sam.
‘Well, we can’t stay here, that’s for certain,’ Sam said in a low voice, and he tucked Jenny under one arm and began the steep ascent.
‘I wish I could see where I was going,’ he said, as he clambered up. He had stopped whispering, but he was already out of breath and his voice came out in gasps. ‘A – bit – of – light’d – be – handy.’
And no sooner had he said this than a light began to shine. It was dull yellow, not golden so much as a dirty mustard colour, and it seemed to be coming from Sam’s jumper, soiled and muddy though it was.
‘Weird,’ murmured Sam. Then he saved his breath for climbing as the strange, muddy yellow light all around them grew stronger and more golden with each step.
Slowly Aunty Dot picked herself up. She brushed the dust and rubble from her tunic and, seeing that the small, horned helmet had rolled away from her, picked it up and replaced it firmly on her head. Then she found her spectacles, miraculously undamaged, in the pocket of her tunic. She used the hem of her tunic to wipe them clean, put them on (the frame was slightly bent), looked around and saw… the devastated city.
Buildings had crashed and tumbled to the ground. Cars and other vehicles lay piled in heaps of wreckage. Shops and houses had spilled on to the street, their contents scattered over the roads. Smoke and dust billowed everywhere. Worst of all, there were no signs of life. The ruined city was empty and desolate.
Painfully, because her knees hurt, Aunty Dot began limping through the rubble and chaos that had been the city. She hardly knew where she was going or what to do, but as she passed one ruined building she caught sight of a wheel and a handlebar poking out of the wreckage. Her bike!
Moments later, she was tugging it out of the wreckage. It was more battered and bent than ever, but it was still recognizably her bike, the basket hanging drunkenly off the frame. It wobbled dangerously as she pushed it and the seat was at a crooked angle, yet she clambered on to it and was soon pedalling lopsidedly through the ruined streets.
Through the devastation of Ragnarok careered Aunty Dot on her rickety bike, calling, ‘Sam! Jenny! Pico! Flo!’ but nobody replied.
‘Boris!’ called Aunty Dot. ‘Checkers! Oh, someone answer, please!’
But no one did, and soon she came to the great gaping hole left by Hel in the middle of the main street.
She stood over it for a moment, looking almost as desolate as the city itself. Then she leaned right over the hole, as far as she could without falling in, and called something in an old, strange language.
And a light began to shine from the darkness.
It grew and intensified in brightness, until it was as thoug
h the sun was shining underground. Someone was climbing out of the hole.
‘Sam!’ cried Aunty Dot.
‘Hello, Aunty Dot!’ said Sam. ‘What have you got on your head?’
‘Oh, Sam!’ breathed Aunty Dot. ‘Sam!’
It was all she could manage to say, because she felt quite tearful and overcome. And because she was dazzled by the light that now seemed to be shining not only from Sam’s jumper but from his whole body – streaming from his face and hair and hands.
‘The Shining One returns!’ whispered Aunty Dot.
‘Eh?’ said Sam. ‘Give us a hand, will you?’
Speechlessly, Aunty Dot extended her hand. And the beautiful boy rose from the abyss, his face shining like the sun, his small dog still tucked under one arm. The light from his face bathed the ruined city in pink and gold, so that even the dust and smoke seemed illuminated and slowly began to clear.
‘Blimey,’ said Sam. ‘What’s happened here?’
40
A Tangled Thread
‘Well,’ said Aunty Dot. She looked at Sam and started to speak, then changed her mind.
‘This’ll take some explaining,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I might need some help.’
She took a small horn from her belt and blew a short, noisy blast.
‘What’s that?’ Sam started to say, but just then the air in front of him parted like a curtain and out stepped Aunty Joan.
Except that she was dressed like an elf. All in green, with pointed ears.
‘Hello, Sam,’ she said.
Sam blinked at her.
‘Where’s Urd?’ said Aunty Dot.
‘I’d blow again, a bit louder if I were you,’ said Aunty Joan. ‘You know she’s deaf.’
Aunty Dot blew her horn again, louder and longer this time, and even before she’d finished, everyone could hear Aunty Lilith’s voice.
‘Yes, all right,’ it said irritably. ‘I’m coming. I’m coming. Keep your hair on.’
The air parted again and Aunty Lilith climbed out backwards, carrying an enormous horn.
‘Hello, Sam!’ she said cheerfully. ‘Fancy seeing you here. And Jenny too!’
Sam was speechless.
‘He wants to know what’s going on,’ said Aunty Dot, and the three aunts exchanged significant glances.
‘Don’t we all,’ said Aunty Lilith. ‘Go on, then. Tell him.’
Aunty Dot raised her arms, then let them fall again. ‘We are the three Norns,’ she said.
Sam looked at her blankly.
‘On earth, you know us as your aunties – Lilith, Joan and Dot. But in another world we are the Norns, Urd, Verdandi and Skuld. And in yet another we are the three Fates. Don’t worry too much about it,’ she said, as Sam looked stunned. All you really need to know is that we preside over the past, present and future. Over the lives of men and gods, and the fate of the earth.’
‘Wow,’ said Sam.
Aunty Joan smiled her worried smile. ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘But it does have its down side.’ She sighed. ‘Let me start at the beginning.’
‘I should start at the beginning, if I were you,’ said Aunty Lilith.
Aunty Joan sat down cross-legged on a patch of grass and, once they were all sitting with her, she began.
‘In the beginning there was only Ginnungagap, the void. Ymir was the first being to come out of this void and he fathered a race of giants, as well as Odin’s own father, Bor. So great and terrible did Ymir become that Odin was forced to slay him, and from his body he created the universe. In order to support the universe, he created an ash tree, Yggdrasil. It supports, links and shelters all the nine worlds. And he asked us, the three Norns, to look after it, with sacred mud and water from the holy well.’
‘But…’ Sam started.
Aunty Joan smiled at him kindly. ‘Yes?’
‘But – I thought you said that there was only the void,’ Sam said, wrinkling his forehead. ‘Where did this Ymir bloke come from? Come to think of it – where did you come from? And what is a Norn anyway? None of this makes sense.’
Aunty Joan sighed and smiled at the same time. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Mythology is like that. You can’t ask it questions – it just doesn’t work that way.’
She petted Jenny, who was feeling for the first time that things did make sense. She had always known there was something unusual about the aunts.
‘Suffice to say,’ Aunty Joan went on, ‘that we Norns were also born from the void and are almost as old. You see, as soon as anything begins to be, it has to have a past, a present and a future. And that’s where we come in. We preside over the fates of men and gods. We were the natural choice to look after the world tree. Without us, it would wither and die. And all the nine worlds would be destroyed. Do you see?’
‘No,’ said Sam. ‘But go on anyway. It’s kind of cool. Just the three of you – and all that power!’
Aunty Joan looked faintly gratified. ‘You’ll find us in most mythologies,’ she said. ‘In theory the gods rule, but in practice there’s always a group of three women somewhere who actually pull all the strings.’
‘And cut ’em and spin ’em,’ put in Aunty Lilith, who was using the enormous horn as an ear trumpet, so that she could hear.
‘Yes, well – that’s the point,’ said Aunty Joan. ‘In return for us looking after Yggdrasil here, Odin accepted that the fate of gods and men rested with us. We were left in charge of the Thread of Destiny.’
‘Women’s work, he said,’ sighed Aunty Dot, and Aunty Lilith snorted. ‘Typical man,’ she said.
‘Actually, none of us likes spinning,’ said Aunty Joan. ‘I always wanted to try woodwork.’
‘A bit of pottery’d be nice,’ said Aunty Lilith wistfully.
‘We just got a bit bored,’ said Aunty Dot. ‘Two million years of spinning and weaving was definitely enough.’
‘So you took to climbing the tree,’ said Aunty Lilith.
‘That’s right,’ agreed Aunty Dot.
Aunty Joan said, ‘As soon as she learned that each branch ended in a different world, there was no stopping her. She was always the adventurous one. And once or twice she talked us into going with her. Which is how we first came into your world.’
‘But -’ said Sam, but Aunty Joan lifted a hand to stop him.
‘When we went exploring with Aunty Dot,’ she said, ‘yours was the first world we came to where we didn’t have much to do. You may think that your world has troubles of its own, and indeed it has, but it’s a holiday camp compared to the others. Look at the Nordic world – all bloodbaths and valkyries. And look at the Greek myths! But in your world there was much more freedom – everyone getting on with his or her own thing. No one knew about us, or expected us to weave their destinies. We came and went as we pleased. They’d forgotten about us, you see. That’s the thing about your world, Sam – it’s a place where people forget. Different gods and religions come and go. Some of them set up home here and no one even notices. We loved it. We bought a nice little house and planned our retirement. We even fostered a little girl – your mother, Sam. And we took up knitting, just as a change from all the spinning and weaving.’
‘I signed up for that pottery course,’ put in Aunty Lilith. ‘And the line-dancing.’
‘And Aunty Dot took to looking after dogs, which was her real passion. Then one day we sent Aunty Dot to the shop for more wool, for our knitting, and she forgot all about it. We sent her out again and she bought the wool, but she must have got them mixed up and she gave us the wrong wool by mistake.’
Aunty Joan gazed meaningfully at Sam, but he didn’t catch on.
‘Unfortunately,’ Aunty Dot said, ‘it was the wool we used for your jumper, Sam.’
Sam stared at her as the penny finally dropped.
‘You mean?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Aunty Dot, nodding slowly. ‘Your jumper is knitted with the Thread of Destiny, so the fates of three different worlds have become horribly tangled. Just the t
hree of them, thankfully – if we’d carried on knitting, who knows what might have happened to the other six. Anyway, that’s when Jenny managed to catch the dart that should have slain Baldur.’
‘Horribly tangled’s right,’ said Sam, looking down at the monstrous yellow mess. ‘You might not be very good at spinning and weaving, but you’re terrible at knitting!’
‘Well – we’re still learning the art,’ said Aunty Joan defensively.
But Sam was looking at his jumper with new respect.
‘Do you mean to say,’ he said, ‘that this jumper’s knitted out of – fate?’
‘We do,’ said the aunts.
‘Cool!’ said Sam. ‘What happens if I pull this bit here?’
‘No – don’t do that!’ they chorused in alarm. ‘You might cause a war – or an earthquake!’
‘Cool!’ said Sam again, but he stopped pulling the thread.
‘Actually, we do have to unravel the thread,’ said Aunty Joan. ‘But very carefully – one stitch at a time. We don’t want to send all the worlds into shock.’
‘What worlds?’ said Sam, still confused about this.
‘There are nine of them altogether, Sam,’ said Aunty Dot. ‘You hear about them in mythology. The world of ancient Greece, the Old Norse world, Egypt and Babylon, the Aztec and Inuit worlds -’
‘That odd little world that none of us understands,’ put in Aunty Lilith.
‘Then there’s your world, of course,’ said Aunty Dot. ‘And the underworld, which seems to be a kind of mishmash of all the worst aspects of the other worlds. But every aeon or so, all the worlds are supposed to renew themselves. Which is where Baldur comes in.’
‘Who?’ said Sam.
Between them, the aunts explained that Baldur was the son of Odin, and Ragnarok was the doom of the gods, the last battle at the end of the world, when the forces of chaos and destruction were unleashed.
‘But so long as Baldur dies,’ said Aunty Dot, ‘the world can renew itself, and the golden age begin.’