by Danielle Monsch, Cate Rowan, Jennifer Lewis, Jeannie Lin, Nadia Lee, Dee Carney
“It was her doing that my parents were poisoned. She drugged me, had me chained in the dungeon, and swore she would murder the rest of my family if I refused her demand to get her with child.”
Mai gasped.
Tyr looked down, red creeping over cheeks that had gone pale while he told his story. He couldn’t be embarrassed about sex given how well he kissed, which left only one reason for him to avoid her eyes. The shame in his voice nearly knocked her out of the chair when he whispered the next part.
“I tried for the sake of my brothers and sisters, but the knowledge of who and what she was meant that I could not do what she wanted me to do.”
Silence lay in ugly, heavy layers between them.
There was nothing she could say that could undo the horror of what he’d gone through, but she meant to undo his guilt and self-disgust the only way she knew how. With honesty and care and a little humor. “Well, thank god. After all, who wants to get it on with some cow-tailed troll? Ew. Gross. I think I’d be more concerned if you could rise to the occasion with that hell-whore.”
He gaped at her and she winked.
“You don’t think badly of me for even trying?”
“Good grief, no, Tyr! She held your family hostage so she could be a monster baby mama. That’s, like, a hundred shades of twisted freak.”
“I’m not sure I understood all that, but it was my fault, my blindness, my idiocy that this tragedy befell us, so it was just that I suffered.”
She ached for the pain in his voice, but the idea that he was at fault got Mai riled at him for the first time since the story began. “No. You quit that right now. So you got blindsided by a magical slut. It happens. But when you woke up, it’s not as if you rolled over and played helpless. You did what you had to do. There is no shame in that. You protected your family with the only thing you had left to use. Did your family ever get free?”
“Yes. When she realized that I would not give her the child she wanted, she decided to torture me a different way and cast a spell using the stone to transform me. That’s the meaning of the rune, kenaz. It symbolizes change and she twisted it to make me what I am now. For a thousand years, each sunrise and sunset brings change. She cast the spell at sunset and I became an animal, enraged with pain. As clever as she was at manipulating people, I’m not sure she quite understood what she had wrought. I broke the manacles that chained me like they were made of straw. I broke the chains on my brothers and sisters and they ran from me in terror. And Huldra…Huldra writhed on the floor in her own pool of agony. Magic always demands a price and she paid it in flesh.”
The shame on his face was wiped away by a predatory stare. “She had been using her foul magic to keep her young, but this wiped it all away. She aged before me – a hundred years in only moments. I could have killed her then. She was down, screaming in the filth, covered in the scabrous rot of her evil deeds. She was hardly even human.” He paused. “But then, neither am I.”
Very deliberately, Mai got out of her chair and knelt before him, forcing him to meet her gaze. “Never think that. Humanity isn’t about how we look, it’s about how we act. You saved me from the river. You brought me back from the edge of death. There is no greater evidence of humanity than that.” She put her hand up to his cheek, soaking in the warmth of his skin, the weight of the magic around him. “Thank you. Thank you for my life.”
*
There was no way he couldn’t kiss her. Cradling her face in his hands was a calling from on high. Taking the breath from her lips was a holy mission. Tasting the life on her tongue was the resurrection of his soul. He wanted to bury himself inside her so deeply they occupied the same spirit. Her cool, slim fingers threaded through his hair, igniting a fire in him that threatened to consume them both until suddenly, Mai pulled back with a yelp.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as she yanked off the blue shirt he had given her and clapped a protective hand over her chest.
“Something burned me. Ouch.” She pulled the collar of the gray undershirt down to expose the pale upper slope of her unbound breast, showing a slight redness now. She frowned at him and they looked down at the shirt she had discarded, a thin trail of smoke rising from the fabric. When he kicked it over, they found the problem. The runestone was literally burning a hole through the pocket. Tyr used the tongs from the hearth to pick up the stone, glowing red with heat.
“That can’t be good,” she said.
“No, it’s not.” As he spoke, the acrid stink of his witch-bride’s magic thickened the air, the heavy smell bringing back the memory of pain and helpless rage.
Tyr and Mai stood together as the solid door of his home, hidden to all who were human, smashed into splinters before the marauding feet of Huldra’s henchmen. The same two who had driven Mai into the river.
Tyr pushed her behind him, determined to protect her from the stone trolls Huldra had called to her service. “Get back, Mai. Back to my den. The wards there will protect you.”
“I don’t see how, Tyr, son of Halvar.” A voice he hadn’t heard in a thousand years slid into his ears like a rusty blade. “Your pitiful spells haven’t helped you so far.”
The woman who had torn his life out by the roots walked in on a blast of frigid air, fouled and filthy ice trailing in her footsteps. But this was not the bride he had left behind. No, this Huldra was hideous with the rot of centuries upon her. Her pure skin was mottled black and green, her flashing dark eyes red and oozing. Her black hair, once her greatest vanity, straggled from her shrunken skull in lank patches, grey and rough. And the tail she had tried to conceal all those year ago lashed around her, the tip clubbed and scabbed over.
“What are you doing here, witch? I thought you long dead from the sickness of your evil deeds.” There was no trace left of the fey spirit who had enchanted him in the forest. The truth of her wickedness was now on display for all to see.
“You have the rune I need, my dearest love.” Hearing the words she had used so long ago made bile rise in his throat. “I need it to restore me to my rightful beauty.”
“You were never truly beautiful. It doesn’t matter how you look on the outside, your filth corrupts you.”
Huldra hissed, a viper on two legs, and when she raised her hands, an ice-filled wind blew sharp knives around him, cutting into his flesh and freezing his blood before it ran. He turned to wrap his arms around Mai and protect her from the blast, but found that she needed no protection.
A golden being of flame, she held the rune in her hands and wasn’t touched by the fierce blast of cold that swirled around her.
“Pathetic mortal,” spat the troll. “How do you wield the power of the stone?”
Mai didn’t answer, but began to speak a language he hadn’t heard since he left his home. The old tongue touched a memory and he picked her up, heedless of the fire, and barreled through the whirlwind of ice into his den. He slammed the door behind them and whispered the spell that would block the intruders for as long as possible.
“Mai, you can’t do it.”
The moment he’d touched her, she had returned to a woman of flesh and blood, the fire dissipating into her skin and leaving no trace. She blinked and frowned at him.
“Why did you stop me?”
“You began a spell, a prayer to Odin, but I’ve never seen it so powerful. Mai, mitt hjerte, you cannot use the magic.”
“Why not? Why not change you back, make you human again? Isn’t that what you want?”
Her cry pierced him to the heart, but he had to make her understand. “More than anything, but not yet.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense, woman!” He roared with frustration. “Huldra set the trolls to kill whoever carried the stone. It’s your misfortune they caught up with the stone while you were transporting it. They thought they’d killed you when you went into the river, but you lived and now you have it in your hand. As long as you hold it, they’ll keep coming after you until the world en
ds unless I destroy them. If you change me, I can’t fight them as a human. The bear at least has a chance to end this.”
He watched as she absorbed what he’d told her, sorted through it, tried to find a flaw in his reasoning. And found none. Her shoulders slumped.
“Then what am I supposed to do? Hide in here while you go out and get pummeled by trolls?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.” He’d tie her down and lock her away if he thought it would keep her safe, but the mulish set of her shoulders said otherwise.
“No. Not gonna happen. There has to be something I can do to help. What if I can stop Huldra?”
*
“And how do you plan to do that, min elskling dødelig? Are you a powerful witch?”
“No, I’m a powerful scholar.” The words he’d used sent an arrow to her heart. His darling mortal, he called her. She understood his fear for her, but she couldn’t sit in here like a damsel in distress, waiting to be saved. She stepped up to him, her hand over his strong heart. The heart she’d do anything to keep safe.
“Listen, min elskling bjørn. The answer is here somewhere in your carvings. I found the spell to change you in here, but it needed the power of the stone. Maybe there’s a spell to stop her, too.”
“As long as you stay here behind the wards while I take care of the trolls.” He dropped his forehead to hers and gathered her close. “I couldn’t live if something happened to you.”
“Same goes.” Mai stood on tiptoe to kiss him, trying to express with her lips what she felt in her heart. With a rough sound, he pulled her up, lifting her with an arm under her hips until she could wrap her legs around him. Twined around his body like a spring vine, she couldn’t mistake the hard tension in his body for anything except desire.
If only the insane pounding on the door would stop. “Ok, that’s getting really irritating.”
Tyr drew back and laughed, a sound she’d never heard from him before, but it rolled through her on a wave of joyous warmth. “I think I must love you, Mai. How could I not?”
“Good question. I must love you, too,” she said, finding that his words turned the world right side up again. “Now go kick some troll butt while I get rid of your psycho ex-wife.”
“I don’t know if the door will hold until the sun sets. I need to change before I go out there.”
“I think I can help with that.” She didn’t know where the certainty came from, but it was so simple. So simple to place the softly glowing runestone against his heart and let the magic come.
Mai had seen him shift before. She’d watched him twist in agony as his bones broke and his flesh stretched unnaturally. This was different. Beauty and grace transformed him into a being of such pure power and strength that she could barely look at him in the shining glory of his white pelt. He shook the last glimmers of magic from his fur and stood tall, stretching to his full height before dropping back down to four vast paws tipped with gleaming black claws.
She ran forward and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in the thick, soft fur. He turned his head to snuffle at her hair and she stepped back, smiling through her tears. His arctic eyes, terrifyingly human in this animal form, watched her for a moment before focusing on the door. She stepped back and his hackles rose. He roared, his battle cry penetrating the wards to strike fear into the stone hearts of his enemies. Mai opened the door and he leapt forward into the fray.
*
The pounding of his heart drowned out the silence in his home. The stone trolls were dead. The remnants of their bodies returned to the dull earth from which they were made, and around him lay the dregs of destruction. His house was torn to pieces, but he barely noticed. Staggering and bleeding, he retraced his steps to the den where he’d left Mai safe.
“No.” The word was quiet, whispered, almost shattered. Mai.
“You hear that? Nothing. Tyr may have killed my trolls, but there is no way he survived. He’s not coming for you. Give me the stone and I will let you live.” Huldra’s words dripped like poison in his ears.
“No.”
His Mai’s steadfast refusal to falter gave him the strength he needed to go on. Silently, he padded to the door of his den. The wards were gone. He felt the ragged edges of the protective magic he’d built scrape against his mind as he passed through. Huldra may have blown through his defenses, but it would have cost her.
“Give me the stone. With its power, I can become what I was always meant to be.”
“Ugly? You’re already that. Evil? You’ve got that covered, too.”
“Bitch!” Huldra shrieked and hurled a killing ice storm at Mai where she knelt at the hearth behind a line drawn with soot from the fire. The ice battered against an invisible wall, but the wall wavered. The magic was faltering.
“I’ve been called worse, you bovine skank.” The magic might have weakened, but Mai hadn’t. Tyr wasn’t sure what a skank was, but the invective drove Huldra mad. Well, madder than she already was.
“I will rule the world with that stone. Transform it to my wishes. Change those who defy me to worms!” Again, she threw her fell power at Mai, and this storm was more powerful than the last. His love would die if he didn’t save her and the idea built in him a rage he hadn’t felt since his first transformation. It burned past the pain, past his wounds, past thought, and gave him the strength to stand and roar out his challenge.
Exhaustion had carved shadows on Mai’s face and the sight enraged him even more. But she looked up at him and smiled. “I knew you’d make it,” she whispered.
“No! The rune will be mine!” Huldra wailed, and for the first time, he saw true terror hold her in its grip.
“Don’t bet on it, psycho.” Mai held the runestone in her palms and began to chant, her voice sure and strong.
Hail Odin, the All-Father. Giver of wisdom, let me drink from the well of magic.
Power blasted into Tyr, lifting him up and holding him captive. The stone glowed brighter and he feared Mai would burn, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it because he was crushed in the grip of the magic that made the world as the form of the bear was wrung from his bones. Screams accompanied the pain, his and Huldra’s. Through it all, Mai’s voice carried him, giving him a strong pillar to cling to as his body became a living flame.
Then it changed. The pain became something other than agony. The fire of the runespell held him in its white heart then began to die and the heat of the raging bonfire became the friendly warmth of the hearth.
In the death of sound that followed, the stone floor of his den felt cold and rough under his body. He rolled his head around, pressing his face to the stone, enjoying its soothing coolness.
“Tyr?”
He fought to open his eyes and blinked until things came into focus. The floor was cold underneath him, but the front of him was warm. Hot, even, where small drops of fire splashed onto his cheek. He raised a hand to wipe them away, but they kept falling.
“Tyr, wake up.” Small hands traveled over his shoulders and chest and the drops fell faster. Consciousness rushed him and his vision cleared. Mai. Her blond hair was disheveled, sticking up in clumps from her ruined braid. Her face was blotchy and wet from crying. Smudges of soot smeared across her cheeks and forehead.
He’d never seen anything more beautiful.
Slowly, he pulled himself up until he sat with her cradled in his lap, making shushing noises into her hair. “I’m here, mitt hjerte, min elskling. I’m here. What happened?”
While he’d been burning in the crucible of flame, Huldra had gone through the same process. But she had been deemed as dross and burned away in the purifying fire, leaving only a lump of ashes that swirled away in the breeze that cleansed the den.
Mai told the story with only a few residual, endearing hiccups that shook his heart and when she was done, Tyr took his time running his hands over her, finding for himself the bumps and bruises she’d acquired. When he touched a gash on her upper arm and she fl
inched, he snarled and it was her turn to soothe him.
Soothing turned into something else as they clung to each other in the wreckage and soon she was as naked as he. They cleared the bed of most of the debris, but when they were done, it looked as if another battle had taken place. This one, however, was a battle they both won.
When his breathing had almost returned to normal, Tyr looked over at his woman, flushed from head to toe and extra pink where he’d rubbed her with his beard. He grinned, pleased with his handiwork. She grinned back and traced the faint red marks where her nails had left trails down his chest.
“So,” she said with a teasing glint in her eyes. “Magic is real.”
“Very.”
“Shapeshifting bears, too?”
“Yes, shapeshifting bears, too.”
“How about fairy tales?”
“Some parts, yes,” he answered.
“Which parts?”
He leaned down until their lips were only a breath apart. “The part where we live happily ever after.”
Fin
Story Notes
Raise your hand if you’re a fairy tale nerd like me. Good! (You don’t know what I’d give to see if you actually raised your hand.)
I started on this brand of geekiness at a very early age when my parents gave me a beautifully illustrated edition of a collection of Norse fairy tales called “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe.
The title story is about a snow bear who asks for the hand of a beautiful peasant girl with only the instruction that she should never try to look at him at night. Of course, she does, and the snow bear, who is actually a prince who becomes human at night, is whisked away to a castle that’s east of the sun and west of the moon to wed the daughter of the troll who bespelled him. The peasant girl, who, naturally, has fallen in love with her furry sweetheart, must travel by the winds to reach the castle before the wedding takes place. Through many trials and tribulations, it all comes right in the end and goes exactly the way fairy tales should go.