by Kim Wilkins
I gathered my courage and moved into the woods, scanning every inch around me for a glimpse of you. Until the very last moment I thought it might be possible you had survived; convinced myself of it so deeply that the sight of your hair, catching the moonlight at the foot of a rock in the clearing, almost failed to register.
But it was you. I ran to you and skidded to my knees. Odin had done this, I knew his work. You had run from him, he had chased you here out of the cover of the trees, and he had killed you with an axe blow to the back. Blood stained your hair, but the dogs hadn’t found you.
I removed the axe and turned you over, pressed myself against you and sobbed like a child. As the night deepened and the ice melted from the trees, I held you. You were cold and your head flopped about and your skin was blue instead of cream. I was covered in soil and moss and blood, my clothes were damp and I shivered with the cold and the shock. Every possibility of comfort had evaporated eternally. I laid your body down and sat back to stare around me like a simpleton.
A gleam of steel caught my eye. I rose and moved toward it.
Hjarta-bítr, rescued from the sea, thrust into the ground a bare five yards from where you had died. My hand closed over the crosspiece and I pulled it from the ground and felt its familiar weight in my hand. In an instant, I had thought of the one thing that might bring a glimmer of satisfaction.
To take this blade and plunge it into my father’s heart.
I released Arvak near the stables of Valaskjálf. The salty wind leaped down my throat and dried the last of the tears on my cheeks. As I strode up toward the hall, my heart pounded in my ears. Dark clouds gathered out at sea and crowded in on me, blocking out the stars. I trudged up the hill and saw the outline of the hall, and it seemed as though the walls themselves were quaking. My intention, to kill my father, was poison and ruin to our world. Lightning flashed, illuminating figures running from the hall. Odin knew I was coming, he was clearing out the usual crowd of revelers. By the time I flung the door open, the sky had fallen all around me. Hail began to beat off the roof, thunder split the heavens.
Fires still burned, mugs of mead littered tables, half-eaten meals cooled, but the hall was as silent as death.
Outside my father’s door, twenty of his servants formed a barrier.
“Stand aside!” I shouted, drawing my sword and noticing a smear of your blood on my wrist.
They all gazed at me mutely.
“Stand aside at once or I will remove your heads from your bodies.”
A man, grey and stooped, stepped forward. “You will not enter your father’s chamber,” he said.
“Stand aside, old man.”
He shook his head, planted his feet. I felt the hurricane of pain and anger and injustice tighten within me, lashed out and felled him. When I kicked the body aside, another took his place.
“You will not enter your father’s chamber.”
One after the other they stepped forward, and I mowed them down without thought, tasting the satisfaction like a drowning man tastes air, until there were only five left. Then Odin’s door quietly opened. My heart jumped, but my father did not appear. Instead, another ten servants filed out.
It finally occurred to me what was happening.
My sword, waiting for me in the clearing.
These willing victims, falling at my feet in a pool of blood and sad resignation.
Odin wanted me to kill them. He wanted me to be a killer again, to be the son he had nearly lost to love. I gazed around me with a sick heart. Blood zinged on my tongue, my hands were smeared, my shoes were soaked in it.
I had tried to become something different, and with the tiniest effort my father had drawn me back to him.
My breath stopped in my lungs. I surveyed the sullen faces of the servants in front of me.
I quietly turned and strode from my father’s hall.
Twenty-Four
Victoria, that is where your memories cease. You had been plunged into that dark world that allows neither thought nor remembrance, neither pain nor love. Like all those left behind on the living side of the veil, I had to continue breathing. I trust you will allow me to finish this tale.
Outside Valaskjálf, rain still thundered down. I left Arvak in the warmth of the stable and made toward the drenched woods. You must understand that I was not in any rational state of mind. Only the rhythm of my footsteps held my thoughts together; without them, I would have descended into the madness of formless grief. Instinctively, I headed west, to the place where fate is made, to the World Tree. As the night deepened, the rain eased and the clouds opened on cold stars. My breath came in short gasps, my whole body ached. Miles from home, the ugly arms of the tree beckoned. The valley opened and I descended, one foot after another, until I stood at the base of the tree. I leaned for a moment, my hands pressed against its rough, lichen-dotted bark. The lack of motion irritated me; I began to circle the tree, climbing over roots and hacking at drooping branches.
My thoughts circled too. I thought about all the widows I had made over the years, and how their wailing had not touched me. I considered the way I had let my weapons think and speak for me. I resolved that I would become the man you had seen in me. A lover. I vowed I would never wield Hjarta-bítr again.
Around and around I went, hours and hours, until the sky spun and my mind began to trip over itself. Knots in the bark became grotesque faces that seemed to laugh at me. The wind in the branches seemed to be whispering mockery.
“What did you say?” I shouted at the branches above.
The whisper came again, clearer. You are the plaything of fate.
I stopped. “Is that so? Then I disavow my fate and my blood. I go unarmed now into the future.” I drew my sword and held it two-handed above my head, then thrust it with the full weight of my body into the roots of the tree. The tree shuddered once, but it was as a pin to a bear, soon forgotten. The World Tree and the fate-spinners in it cared nothing for my resolution.
One way or another, our paths always lead us back to our fate.
Now I had stopped moving I could feel the weariness in my bones and gristle. I cast a long gaze out over the cold bay to Jotunheim, the shadowed wilderness on the other side. Somewhere beyond those landmarks lived my mother, the other half of my blood. I knew little of her. She was exiled while I was still a child, and I was raised at Valaskjálf. My early years with her were lost to my memory. I sought some connection, some comfort; I sought escape from the pain of your loss. I had not realized such a blow could be struck to me outside the defendable limits of my body. And I sought to move again. I was afraid that if I stood still, I would die from the pain, so I kept traveling—across land and water, forest and field—into the night.
Finally, daylight bled into the sky behind a veil of drizzling clouds. Beyond the woods were the last of a field of drooping flowers, petals in incoherent patterns on the cold grass. I had heard that Gríd grew flowers and followed the field around its edge, down into a hollow where I saw her house, warm and safe like a plump nest. Tightly woven twigs and mud kept out the rain, and a slender curl of smoke emerged from the roof. I was tired, I stumbled and slid, then lay on the ground a few moments, grateful for the enforced end to my traveling. My heart thudded in my ears.
“You must keep going,” I said, my mouth full of dewy grass.
I climbed to my feet, aching all over, and went to her door.
She glanced up as the daylight fell onto her hearth, her eyebrows twitched in surprise. “Come in, child,” she said. “Be warm and dry.”
I hurried inside. She helped me to peel off my wet clothes and gave me a blanket and a cup of warm soup. When I had settled next to the fire, she said, “You’re my son, Vidar, aren’t you?”
“I am, though I’m surprised you recognize me.”
“A mother always knows her children,” she said. “I am thrilled that you’ve come, but I’m wise enough to know that you are here for a reason. You want something from me?”
“I want . . .” My tongue froze. Language collapsed under the weight of grief.
She knelt next to me and her warm hand closed around my arm. “Vidar? You look like a man full of sorrow.”
“I am,” I said. Her warm touch and her soft concerned voice undid me. I bent my head and tried to swallow a sob.
She closed me in her arms. “Ah, hush, my boy,” she said, smoothing my hair.
But I could not hush. My body felt as though it would shudder to pieces, and only Gríd’s warm embrace held it together. She let me cry, then, when I had vented some of my sorrow, she made me sit back and tell her the whole tale. She condemned my father, stroked my hair, and said, “Poor boy,” and I knew that I had found in my mother a strong new ally.
After three days, the storm of sorrow and shock passed and the dark rain clouds, which I anticipated would surround me the rest of my days, set in. In the evening, as I sat by the fire eating my mother’s lamb stew, I said to her, “Perhaps I was foolish to fall in love with a mortal.”
Gríd sat beside me and held my gaze in hers. “Vidar,” she said, “you didn’t lose her to her mortality. You lost her to Odin. We are all mortal. Certainly, Midgard mortals are more vulnerable, but how many Vanir folk have you killed? And what of your brother Baldr, killed with a dart of mistletoe? And what will befall us if Ragnarok should come? We can all die, Vidar. We probably will all die. Don’t allow your father’s blindness to become yours. You are not invincible.”
Her words sank in, and rather than being frightened I felt relieved. Eternity is too slow, too empty to contemplate. “What do you think of Ragnarok, Gríd? Do you think it will really happen?”
“I think our time will end, as all times do,” she said, “but I think it will happen slowly and feebly. As men on Midgard stop telling our tales, we will fade to sad shadows and dissolve.”
I stared into the fire, turning over what she had told me. “Is there something beyond this life, Gríd?”
“I don’t know. Nobody comes back to say.”
“For mortals? I mean, Midgard mortals? Where is Halla now?”
“She is deaf and blind to any world, in a long and profound sleep, a shade in the keeping of the mistress of the underrealms.” She patted my knee. “She doesn’t suffer, Vidar.”
Gríd stood and moved away, making herself busy collecting plates and cups. Her words vibrated in my mind, sharp and urgent. A shade in the keeping of the mistress of the underrealms.
“Vidar?” Gríd said. “You’ve gone very pale. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
I shook my head. “I’m not frightened, Gríd. I’m excited.”
“Why so?”
“In a day or two I will leave you for Niflheim. I’m going to ask Hel if she’ll give Halla back.”
Gríd did not behave as some mothers might, wringing her hands and wailing and discouraging me. Instead, she asked me if I was very sure, and then set about offering practical help. She sewed me a woollen cloak with an oilskin overlay; she packed me a bagful of salted meat and dense black bread; she made me a fur hat and resoled my shoes. As she bustled about, she told me of Niflheim, of the obstacles along the way.
“You’ll have to walk for many weeks across the barren plains,” she said. “So ration your food carefully, and drink wherever you see clear water, because the hot springs closer to Hel’s cave are poisonous.” “Try to keep warm, though there is very little shelter.” “The journey down, I’ve heard, is very taxing and you might feel as though you’re wandering forever.” “Don’t miss the entrance to the cave; it’s tiny. Many have gone before you, looking for a mighty and grand gate, and have wandered farther and farther down the path past the entrance and died from hunger weeks later.” “Watch for Garmr, the ferocious dog who guards the cave.” “Don’t try to swim the river Slíd. It’s full of dead men who have tried before you. Use the bridge, but beware. Those in the river will be jealous of your beating heart.” “I have heard that Hel lives behind a gated wall, but then who knows which of these stories are true?” And interspersed with all this advice were her constant self-reassurances. “You are brave and strong, Vidar. I know you’ll come back to me.”
She knew, as I did, that the journey was dangerous, that many had attempted it and lost their lives. I accepted that I might die, but the symmetry appealed to me, Victoria: at the end of this venture, we would either both be dead or both be alive. There was no pleasure in having one of us on either side of that divide. Wherever you were, was precisely where I wanted to be.
On the morning of my departure, I noticed Gríd pulling on her own cloak and thick shoes.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m accompanying you down to the water,” she said.
“You don’t need to.”
“Yes, I do. You need me to help you across to Niflheim.”
“I will swim across to Niflheim.”
She shook her head. “Vidar, a freezing sea lies in your way. Not the mild little bay between Asgard and Jotunheim.”
“Then I will stay a while longer and make a rowing boat.”
“The waves would crush it. You need a longship.”
“I can’t row a longship by myself.”
“I know. That’s why you need me.” She smiled. “Trust me, my son. Now, are you ready? Do you have all your things? Where is your sword?”
“I left it behind in Asgard,” I said. My stomach turned over as I remembered the last time I had used it.
“Then do you have a spear? Or a knife?”
“I have no weapons, Gríd. I go to Niflheim unarmed.”
An expression of fear and sadness crossed her face, then was banished. “If you are very certain—”
“I am.”
“Then let’s be on our way.”
The edge of the water was a six-hour trek from Gríd’s house, and as we made our way we talked lightly and lovingly. All our exchanges so far had been full of sorrow, of longing and loss. Now we took the time to know each other better, to fill in the details of a lost history. I would often catch Gríd looking at me, as though she were trying to memorize my face and voice. I knew she thought I would not be returning, and perhaps I thought that too.
The sun was low in the sky when I heard the first strains of the ocean’s roar.
“I need to explain something to you, Vidar,” Gríd said, “for we are fast approaching the shores of the sea. Some years past, when your father had taken a lover but I had not yet been exiled to Jotunheim, I was very angry with him. I went to Midgard, intending to raise an army against him. The first willing warriors I found, about two dozen, I swore into my service. Then, as my temper cooled, I thought better of the idea and forgot about those warriors, until the first of them appeared at my door here in Jotunheim. He had been killed in battle, and turned away from Valhalla because he had sworn himself Odin’s enemy. He was mine. Then another appeared, and another. I sent them to wander in the woods, but they kept reappearing, asking me for orders. When all had come to me, some killed in battle, some dead from age and disease, I sent them down here to build a longship.”
We crested the rise and the landscape before me was layered thickly in mist. The water scraped and frothed on the pebbled shore and the long grass stood sentinel in the still air. Gríd raised her fingers to her lips and whistled once, loudly. I tried to focus through the mist, out to sea. A horn blew in response.
“They wander the sea, to and fro, with empty eyes and souls, which cannot rest until Ragnarok. This is my fault, my carelessness. I am responsible for them until that day, though they require nothing from me but orders.”
The slender prow of a warship cut through the fog, a painted dragon’s head with its tongue lolling forward. Round wooden shields lined the sides and dark shadows of men pulled the oars.
“They will take you to Niflheim and wait, either for your return or . . .”
I turned to her. Her skin was washed in pale amber colors by the setting sun. I took her hand. “Allow until the firs
t shoots of green appear on the elms near your house, Gríd. If I haven’t returned by then, you may call them back and mourn me.”
She squeezed my fingers. Her black hair whipped behind her in a sudden gust of wind. “I will, Vidar.”
The ship grated to a halt on the pebbles and Gríd led me down to the water.
Each pallid face was turned toward me, with hollow eyes and motionless blue lips. Some were young men, scarred and maimed by battle. Some were old and crooked, with palsied hands that shook on the oars. The stout, bearded steersman had a horn hung around his neck and sat in the stern of the ship. Gríd waded out to speak with him while I waited on the shore, trying to avoid the warriors’ empty stares. Then she turned to me and indicated that I should climb inside the ship.
Gríd came to the side as I settled on one of the boards between two oarsmen. “They will take you to Niflheim. It is seven days’ journey if the weather is in your favor. Don’t bother trying to speak with them, they won’t answer you. Don’t give them any further instructions, I have told the steersman all he needs to know.” She kissed her palm and held it up to me. “Good-bye, my child, and take my blessing with you.”
“Good-bye, Gríd,” I said, reaching out to touch her fingers with my own. My arm brushed against the arm of the man next to me and he was as cold as a stone. “I hope I will see you again.”
The ship moved off, the water caught its weight and the oars began to draw.
“I hope so too.”
I watched her standing on the shore until the mist swallowed her.
All around me, dead men rowed in silence as if of one mind, with no need for orders or discussions. The wind picked up and we sailed out of the fog. Far from the cover of the coastal waters the sea rolled and tumbled beneath us. The sun sank and dark clouds moved in. The only light was the pale splash of the water against the prow, fainter than starlight. I huddled into my cloak and tried to stay warm, but it seemed that the cold flesh surrounding me leached my own body of its heat. The sea roared, the wind moaned, the smell of salt was thick on the air. Beneath the boat, I felt the occasional bump and slither of a lost thing, and sometimes thought I heard the splash of a creature’s tail or limb just off to starboard. None of the crew spoke or looked around, nor did they move from their seats or drop their oars. I might as well have been utterly alone. Land receded completely, and mine seemed the only beating heart in the universe.