“And the most humble, too, no doubt,” Angrboda observed, with straight-faced sincerity.
Loki studied her for a moment as if trying to decide whether she was joking. When her expression didn’t change, his wry smile widened into an appreciative grin.
“You know, Angrboda,” he said, “I do think we’re going to be the best of friends.”
* * *
• • •
Angrboda made her home on the far eastern side of Ironwood, where the trees clung precariously to the steep mountains bordering Jotunheim. She stumbled upon a clearing near the base of one such mountain, where she found an outcropping of rocks that led into a cave quite large enough for her to stand in. Upon entering, she realized there was a hole carved into the rock above her, under which sat the remains of a hearth.
It was all eerily familiar. Like it had been waiting for her.
She rebuilt the hearth into a long fire with stones she gathered from the woods. The cave itself was as large as any modest hall in Jotunheim: spacious enough for furniture and with plenty of room for storage near the back, where the ceiling was lower. By day, the inside of the cave was illuminated by the sun coming in through its mouth; by night, she kept her hearth fire lit against the total darkness of her new home.
“A cave?” Loki said, blinking, the first time she showed him inside. “Why not build a hall?”
“I’m hiding. A hall would be too obvious.”
Loki just shrugged at that. She noted that he didn’t comment on whom she was hiding from—even though he was one of them. She knew she should’ve been worried as soon as he’d revealed his association with Odin, but something told her that he wasn’t what he seemed, and that instinct was what kept her from fleeing to find another cave every time he departed hers.
Angrboda saw him now and again after that first day, whenever he would come by Ironwood. He was a natural shape-changer, as she soon discovered, and he could make rather good time from Asgard to Ironwood when he took the form of a bird, and he didn’t just drop by for nice banter. Sometimes he stayed a night or two, comically snoring facedown on her floor using his balled-up cloak as a pillow.
She rarely slept.
She didn’t know how much time had passed since they’d met by the river, but her light ash brown hair had grown long and straight and fine; she often put it in a thin braid draped over her shoulder or pinned it back in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. Her cave-dweller-pale skin had healed quickly after her burning, giving her the look of a much younger woman, but the dark circles under her eyes were ever present.
She’d put her heart back where it belonged, too, by leaving her body enough to numb the pain but staying connected enough to move her hands. She’d opened the wound where they’d speared her, and so there remained a vertical raised scar between her breasts.
But it still felt like something was missing from her. Like that hole in her heart had not yet fully healed.
She got along fine regardless. There was a stream that branched off the river beside which she’d first met Loki, and it meandered near enough to her cave that it wasn’t a hassle to go back and forth to fetch water and wash what few articles of clothing she had. She’d accumulated a meager pile of furs on which to sleep, too, but not enough food to eat. Animals were scarce in Ironwood.
One day she was out checking the snares she’d placed among the trees, and when she saw that they’d yielded nothing, she wandered over to the stream to catch some fish. For hours she sat by the bank, bored out of her skull and with no bites on her line. She had nearly dozed off against a tree when suddenly an arrow whizzed past her head and planted itself in the bark three inches from her face.
After a shocked pause, Angrboda looked around, wide-eyed, for the source.
Another giant emerged from the trees across the stream: a woman, broad-shouldered and dressed in a short woolen tunic and pants, with a bow in her hands, a pack on her shoulder, an empty quiver at her hip, and a bunch of fat rabbits hanging from her belt.
“You’re not a rabbit,” said the woman. She seemed a little too disappointed.
“You nearly killed me,” Angrboda replied, blinking furiously.
“What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you know this place is dead?” Although she appeared no older than Angrboda, the woman looked down on her as though the ancient witch were nothing more than a naughty child.
Angrboda did not appreciate this and stared right back at her in silence.
The woman appraised her for another moment before saying, “Why don’t you grab my arrow out of that tree and come share a meal with me? It’s the least I can do after almost shooting you.”
“Worse has been done to me,” Angrboda said, throwing her makeshift fishing rod aside. The stream was shallower than usual this season, and she needed only hop across a few rocks to get to the other side.
While Angrboda started the fire, the other giantess deftly skinned two of the rabbits and introduced herself as Skadi, daughter of Thjazi, and added with pride that she was known in Jotunheim as the Huntress for her skills with archery and trapping. She was pretty in her way, with thick pale hair in two braids under her fur-trimmed cap, and strong, skilled hands. Her eyes were a glacial blue.
Skadi just nodded when Angrboda introduced herself, only the slightest hint of confusion in her expression at the name.
“So, do you live near here?” Angrboda asked as Skadi started boiling the rabbit meat in a small iron pot she’d drawn from her pack.
Skadi shook her head. “I live in the mountains, but farther north and farther inland. Where are you from? I can barely understand your accent.”
“I’m very old,” Angrboda said truthfully. “Older than I look. If you’re from the mountains, where are your skis?”
“It’s not snowing here yet. I had to leave my skis along the way.”
“What brings you here, then? There’s naught but small game in these woods, and it’s scarce enough. Surely the mountains are better hunting grounds for you.”
Skadi used her knife to stir the contents of the pot and grinned across the fire at Angrboda. “It’s because of a story we tell here in Jotunheim. They say the witch who birthed the race of wolves is still here somewhere. She’s one of the ancient giantesses of the forest—supposedly they all lived here in Ironwood a long, long time ago. I come by sometimes when I’m out hunting, but I’ve never found anyone. Then I saw smoke rising from the foothills earlier today and couldn’t resist coming to take a look. I suppose it was just you, though. Right?”
“Aye, it was.” Angrboda paused to choose her next words carefully. “I am a witch, but surely not the one you seek.”
“A witch,” Skadi echoed. “What sort of witch?”
Angrboda shrugged.
“What can you do?”
“Nothing impressive, I suppose,” Angrboda mused. “My home isn’t even furnished.” She didn’t have so much as a pot to cook stew in. A witch she might be, but Angrboda was no craftswoman when it came to the tools and furniture she needed to be more comfortable in this new life of hers.
Skadi paused and stared at her—partly with suspicion and partly with the are-you-stupid look that Loki had given her when he’d first seen her new residence. Angrboda kept looking right back at her and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. Night was falling.
“Huh,” Skadi said at last and resumed stirring the food with a look on her face that implied she wasn’t thinking about stirring the food. “You must be able to do something if you call yourself a witch. Some of the witches I’ve heard of can do seid. Like Freyja. Can you do that?”
“You know of Freyja?” Angrboda asked cautiously.
“I’ve heard talk. You hear things when you’re a trader. You know of the war?” Skadi prompted, mistaking Angrboda’s distant expression for confusion. “Between the Aesir and the Vanir?”
&n
bsp; Angrboda nodded. During one of his visits, Loki had told her of what had transpired after she’d fled Asgard.
“I know of it,” she said, “but I hardly know the details. In fact, I’ve heard there was no war at all, just the declaration and then the truce. But how did the truce come to be?”
“An exchange of hostages,” said Skadi. “Njord of the Vanir and his son and daughter, Frey and Freyja, in exchange for two men from among the Aesir. One of whom was Mimir.”
Angrboda’s eyebrows shot up—another familiar name. “Mimir? Odin’s most valuable adviser? These Vanir hostages must be important indeed for him to suffer such a loss.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Skadi said darkly. “The Aesir hardly play fair. Odin got him back in the end—his head, at least . . .”
Angrboda shuddered. “Still, even to make such a trade in the first place . . . what of these Vanir? What’s special about them?”
“Njord is a sea god of some sort, but his daughter, Freyja, is said to be the most beautiful of women, and they say she taught seid to Odin himself.”
“Is that so?” Good. Let them say that, Angrboda thought. Soon no one will remember a thing about the witch they burned thrice, and I’ll be left in peace.
“Yes,” Skadi continued, “and Freyja lives among the Aesir now. I’ve heard she has her own hall and everything.”
Angrboda shifted and pulled her cloak yet closer around her. Freyja—a young woman before the war—had been the first one in Vanaheim to beg Gullveig to teach her seid, and she remembered as much only because the girl had been both stunningly beautiful and astonishingly persuasive. Her face and Odin’s were the only two Angrboda remembered clearly from her time as Gullveig.
“So, can you do what Freyja can, then?” Skadi asked her.
“Yes and no,” Angrboda said slowly, hoping to steer the conversation away from seid. “But I do possess some other useful skills.”
Skadi seemed contemplative. She poured the stew into a small wooden bowl she had with her and handed it to Angrboda, as she herself ate right from the pot.
“I’m trying to think of how to help you,” said Skadi. “For I intend to do so. But I’m a trader. This is a business venture, and the nature of the business is that you have to produce something in exchange for something else. So what can you do?”
Angrboda paused and considered this. Besides seid, what could she do? She didn’t remember much from the time before . . . except for her magic. That was as much a part of her as her very soul and as clear in her mind as her breakfast this morning.
“I can make potions,” she said. “Though I don’t have access to the ingredients at the moment.” She gestured to the thick, barren trees surrounding them. “There’s not much to work with out here.”
Skadi grinned. “One of my kinswomen has a great garden. I could trade my game for whatever plants you desire. Then I could give the plants to you in exchange for the potions, which I can then turn and trade for whatever else you need . . . for a percentage, of course.”
“Of course,” Angrboda echoed, grateful that Skadi was amicable to the idea in the first place. “You’d be doing most of the work, after all. You may take what you wish from your trades—my needs are few.” She paused. “Though I have to wonder what you’d be getting out of all this. I’m very far removed from any trading paths. Or any paths at all, for that matter.”
Skadi shrugged. “You’re not wrong about that. But it all depends on whether or not your potions are any good. If they are, I can make better trades, so the trips will be worth my while. What sorts of things can you make, then?”
“Healing salves, for one, and charms to cure illness,” Angrboda said, and took a sip of her stew—it was delicious, especially since she’d been living off scrawny rabbits charred on sticks over her hearth fire for quite a long while. “And potions to stave off hunger—especially useful in the winter.”
Skadi was impressed. “Those will fetch a high price. Provided that they work.”
“Trust me,” Angrboda said with a hint of a smile. “They work.”
* * *
• • •
As it turned out, Angrboda was correct: Skadi bartered her potions around Jotunheim and received so much in exchange for them that she would often show up at Angrboda’s cave with household items—knives, spoons, linens, woolens, a cooking pot, an ax for woodcutting—and game, which she had either caught herself or traded for. Their arrangement was such that Skadi brought her large wooden boxes filled with small lidded clay pots, padded on all sides with unspun wool so they would not break in transit. Angrboda filled the pots with her potions and passed them back to Skadi, who gave her a new box of empty pots in return.
Some of the items Skadi brought back gave the witch cause to believe her potions were making their way beyond Jotunheim. Skadi said she did have a few contacts who traded with dwarfs in Nidavellir and dark elves in Svartalfheim, and even with humans in Midgard. The items from Midgard included such things as fine textiles Angrboda had never even heard of.
“This one is called silk,” Skadi had informed her when she’d arrived with a particularly beautiful, shiny length of fabric. “The humans traverse vast oceans in their longships for the sake of trading. This cloth has come quite a long way.”
“I have little use for such finery as this,” Angrboda said, awed as she ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the silk. She ended up trading it back to Skadi for something far more precious: a small pot of the finest honey Angrboda had ever tasted, and which she hoarded like a dragon.
In addition to teaching Angrboda how to set a proper snare to catch fresh game, Skadi eventually started towing logs down from the higher mountains on her sledge and leaving them outside Angrboda’s cave. When Skadi had a nice large pile of logs, she declared that they were going to build some furniture.
“I don’t know how to build furniture,” Angrboda said lamely. I’m certain I could figure out how to magic something together, though it wouldn’t be pretty.
“I’ll show you. I have the tools,” said Skadi, and produced them from her pack. “Trust me, we mountain women know how to do everything.”
And so Skadi built her a table and two benches, and a bed frame, which was then tucked against the wall and laden with blankets and furs atop the two swaths of linen Angrboda had sewn together and stuffed with straw for a mattress. Skadi made her a smaller table and cabinet for her potions soon after, but the Huntress’s best creation was her last: a sturdy chair to place near the fire. Angrboda carved it with patterns and swirls and placed furs on the seat to make it more comfortable.
Skadi also brought her ample candles to light her dark cave—and especially her worktable, as it was against the cave wall such that she had her back to the center fire as she mixed potions. The candles had come just in time, for the long dark of winter was on its way. Angrboda usually spent this time huddled in the back of her cave, surviving on one of her hunger potions, which she cobbled together with what small plants she could find in Ironwood. Those potions had worked well enough, but their taste had left much to be desired—the ingredients had never been quite right.
But now she had Skadi to provide the plants to make her concoctions palatable, and anyway, she didn’t need to take her own hunger potions any longer; thanks to Skadi, she also had a store of dried meat and some goats for milk. The goats arrived well-fed, for which Angrboda was grateful, as there was little greenery for them to graze on in the mountains and the forests at the edge of the world.
Maybe things will be different this year, Angrboda hoped. Every spring Ironwood seems a bit greener. But perhaps it’s just my imagination.
* * *
• • •
Loki still came to bother her at his leisure. She was fine with that, as she enjoyed his company, though she did find him to be a little much at times. Peace and quiet were the only companions she could rely on; L
oki was interested in neither peace nor quiet, but then again, he didn’t seem to be all that reliable himself, and one of his favorite pastimes was complaining about how uninteresting she’d become since leaving her Gullveig roots behind.
He was, however, slightly taken aback when he barged into her cave one day to find it completely furnished, and she relished the look of surprise on his face as he took it all in.
“You’re just in time for dinner,” she said as she stirred the stew pot over the hearth.
“You even have a table now? You’re really moving up in the world, aren’t you?” he exclaimed. “Where did you get all these things, anyway? You even have a door! I thought you’d never get one.”
Angrboda shrugged. She hadn’t wanted anything too noticeable to mark the entrance of her cave—which looked more or less like a pile of moss-covered rocks jutting out of the mountain base, with smoke rising from the unseen chimney hole—but she’d decided she rather did need a door of some kind, so Skadi had nailed some wood together into a panel to cover the cave’s mouth.
Angrboda tried not to let it unsettle her that they’d found a set of ancient iron hinges already secured in the entryway when they’d measured it for the door. Skadi had seemed perturbed herself at the find, but had said nothing except to deem the hinges functional before securing the new panel to them.
“I’ve been trading,” Angrboda said presently. “Potions for possessions. It’s quite lucrative.”
“Trading with whom?” Loki asked, arching an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you have other friends now, too? I’m impressed.”
“As you should be.”
“How are things here?” Loki poked a rabbit hanging from the ceiling. “Boring? Menial?”
“More or less.”
“I see you have a garden now,” he said, smirking.
“I do at that,” she replied with a smile and ignored his condescension. Earlier that year, Skadi had brought her some seeds, gardening tools, and even a simple straw hat with a wide brim, and Angrboda had gotten to work. She was quite proud of the garden, too; she grew just enough to feed herself with fresh root vegetables, cabbage, and herbs for seasoning.
The Witch's Heart Page 2