The Witch's Heart

by Genevieve Gornichec

  “Come down here,” he said. The water level was high—settling right below his pelvic bone, while usually it barely came up to his knee.

  Angrboda slipped down into the water, not taking her eyes off him. “You’re going to do something.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said innocently, and she shook her head at him.

  When she was in the water, he began to splash her, and when she shrieked and backed away, he laughed and sprang forward and dunked her. When she surfaced, he ducked when she tried to spit water in his face as he had done to her, and she settled for splashing him profusely instead.

  Then he pulled her close, and she ran her hand down the thin trail of hair on his lower stomach. His lips were level with her forehead, as always, and he kissed her there.

  “We’ve been alive a long time,” he said suddenly. “I mean, a thousand years ago, we were around. Not as we are today, but we were here. And for at least some of the gods, some form of them was worshipped by humans in Midgard even back then. Don’t you agree?”

  Angrboda shrugged, then nodded. “Does this trouble you?”

  “A little,” Loki conceded, and pushed her long wet hair back from her face. “It’s just . . . I’ve known you for so long, and yet it feels like no time at all. Will the rest of our time pass just as quickly? Will we change again and again as we have before, or are we stuck the way we are now forever, because more people will remember us this way?”

  Angrboda said nothing. She tilted her head up to look at him, and his nose brushed hers, and in his eyes she could see that this was concerning him more than he would like to admit.

  “What will they think of us a thousand years from now, if our stories are remembered?” he whispered. “Will I be counted the best among the gods, or the worst?”

  She took his face in her hands, ran her thumb over his ruined lips. “Don’t dwell on it. It’s out of your control what people will think of you a thousand years in the future. What is a thousand years to us, anyway? The humans may pray to Odin and Thor and even Skadi, but those people will all eventually die, whether from battle or sickness or old age. And what of these stories of which you speak?”

  “The people die. The stories continue, in poetry and song. Stories of their deeds. Of their gods.” He tore away from her then, angrily. “Why am I not worshipped like the rest? What are gods if they’re not worshipped? What does that make me? Reckoned among them, but not one of them. Never one of them.”

  “Is that really all that matters to you?” Angrboda demanded. “Worship and being well-known? Is that really why you make mischief, just for attention? Just so people will remember you in some far-distant future?”

  “It beats hiding in a cave at the edge of the world, being scared of everything,” Loki shouted in her face now, his scarred lips twisting in scorn. “You don’t understand. You’ll never understand, because all they will remember of you is the name you chose for yourself, Angrboda. Not that you were Gullveig, not anything else. They will know you only as my wife and the mother of monsters, because you choose to be nothing more.”

  Angrboda felt as though he’d just kicked her in the chest. She wondered at just how much her face had crumpled, because Loki’s cruel expression had dissolved into a look of alarm.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said unsteadily, reaching out to touch her arm. “Please—”

  Her voice was deadly quiet as she twitched away. “Monsters?”

  “Boda, I—”

  “Monsters?” Angrboda slapped him hard across the face, and then she stomped out of the water and pulled her dress back on as he reeled. “You may say whatever you wish about me. But you leave our children out of—”

  But then Angrboda heard Fenrir howl, and a few seconds later he bounded out of the trees, Jormungand slithering along beside him. She could hear Gerd and Hel tromping through the underbrush not far behind.

  Mama, there’s someone here. There’s someone in our woods—I heard them, I can smell them, Fenrir said to Angrboda, and she hugged him tightly as Jormungand brushed her ankles.

  Gerd and Hel appeared a second later, and Hel sprang at her mother and latched onto her waist tightly, whimpering.

  “You all need to get back behind the boundary,” Angrboda said with mounting apprehension. She tried very hard to keep her voice even. “Right now.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Gerd said, panting. “They all just took off, one right after another. I tried to make them go back, but—”

  “Loki?” came a shaky voice from the opposite bank, and all of them turned.

  Out of the shadows on the other side of the stream stepped a woman in a cloak of feathers. Her clothing was fine, as if she’d just come from a feast, and her chestnut hair was done up and threaded with gold.

  Her soft brown eyes were huge in the moonlight, and they were fixed directly across the river: on Angrboda’s children.

  “What are you doing here?” Loki asked her, thinly veiled panic on his face.

  “I got lost,” said the woman, turning her gaze ever so slowly from the children to him. “I followed you when you left Asgard—I borrowed Freyja’s falcon cloak. I just wanted to know. I finally just wanted to see for myself. Now seemed as good a time as any, with everyone drunk on the victory of Thor’s hammer returned. Everyone except you.” She took a few tentative steps forward. “Who are . . . they?”

  Angrboda could feel Gerd slink into the shadows behind her, and her arms tightened instinctively around her trembling children.

  For she knew who this woman was. She had seen her before in a dream, and her face stirred up images of that part of her vision she’d tried the hardest to lock away: Loki’s binding. His torment. The woman at his side.

  The woman who was not Angrboda.

  “Who are they?” this woman asked again.

  Still in the river, Loki raised his hands, palms up in surrender, and took a step toward her. “You know of them. I’ve told you about them. This is not a surprise to anyone.”

  Silence passed, indicating otherwise.

  “Sigyn,” Loki said to her, “this is Angrboda. And these are our children.”

  “Does she not know I’m your wife as well?” Angrboda said loudly. “You refer to me as such but do not introduce me that way?”

  Loki winced and looked over his shoulder at her. “She knows. I’ve not lied to either of you. That’s the truth.”

  “You had not told me of the nature of your children,” Sigyn said through gritted teeth. “I trusted you to be honest with me. I trusted you to—”

  She sounded frightened, and Angrboda could not stop herself from asking, her voice loud and clear and cold, “And what is the nature of my children?”

  Sigyn turned to her then as if seeing her for the first time. Her expression was perfectly blank, but Angrboda knew that she was passing judgment.

  Angrboda had pictured this meeting so many times and always told herself that, if she ever found herself face-to-face with her husband’s other wife—as she was sure she eventually would—she would handle the situation with as much dignity and grace as she could muster. But now, in that moment, Angrboda found her own face twisting with disdain as the other woman appraised her.

  “Well?” Angrboda demanded.

  At her tone, Sigyn’s expression contorted to mirror Angrboda’s, and the two women stared each other down with outright contempt. Angrboda’s sons picked up on this immediately and sprang to their mother’s defense: Fenrir leapt forward past Gerd and growled, baring his teeth, and Jormungand hissed and reared back as if to strike.

  And this seemed to tip Sigyn’s final verdict in favor of fear.

  “They’re feral,” she said, backing away from the riverbank. “They’re . . . they’re monsters.”

  Angrboda’s vision flashed red.

  She was free from Hel’s iron grip in an insta
nt and launched herself through the water, meaning to wring the neck of the woman across the stream, wanting nothing more than to rip her limb from limb—but Loki grabbed her by the waist and forced her back toward the bank.

  “Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “I swear, she’s not usually like this—she’s just scared. She doesn’t know—”

  “Let go of me!” Angrboda snarled, thrashing. “Let go of me, let go! Did you not hear what she just said?!”

  Loki cringed, for he himself had said something similar mere minutes earlier. “You don’t understand—”

  “Enough,” said Angrboda. Mother of monsters. His words were unforgivable. But hearing this sentiment echoed by a stranger—by a goddess—had caused something within her to come undone. Her fingers twitched at her sides as she stared the woman down and channeled every ounce of fury in her heart.

  You called my children monsters . . .

  And I’ll make you swallow those words.

  She closed her eyes and went still in Loki’s arms, rooting around in the back of her mind for the place where she’d sealed all the things she’d learned from her vision of the end of the worlds. When she found it, she released it and let the knowledge course through her.

  Head bowed, brow furrowed, eyes squeezed shut, she searched through it all until she found what she was looking for. And she smiled.

  “Boda?” Loki said cautiously. His grip on her loosened a little, but not enough for her to break free if she wanted to lunge at Sigyn again. “Are you—?”

  Angrboda’s wet hair was dangling in her face, head still bowed and eyes still shut, as she addressed the woman across the river.

  “You think you have the right to judge me, to judge my children, to judge my people,” Angrboda hissed. “You and your gods think you always have the right of things. But I know better—so there’s something I’d like to share with you.”

  Angrboda whipped her head up, and when she opened her eyes, her pupils and irises had gone a dead white, causing Sigyn to gasp and step back before the witch even spoke.

  And when Angrboda did speak, it was not just with her own voice; her words echoed with a deep, hoarse whisper, a cacophony of the dead speaking in unison with her.

  “Despair, Sigyn,” rasped the witch, “for your gods will forsake you in the end.”

  “Loki,” Sigyn whispered, “what is she talking about?”

  Loki had released his grip and stepped back from Angrboda, his expression knitted with confusion and concern. Then he seemed to realize in an instant what was happening—like his memory of what she’d told him of seid had all come rushing back—and he grabbed her by the arm and shook her. “Stop this, Boda.”

  She ignored him.

  “Knowing the future would be too much of a burden.” It was something Angrboda wouldn’t wish on anyone—anyone else, that is.

  But Sigyn had proven herself more than deserving of such a burden this night.

  And although the witch knew what was to come, she would share only this scrap of prophecy, and this alone:

  “Your sons will suffer greatly at their hands,” Angrboda intoned, her attention still fixed on Sigyn. “Do you want to know more?”

  “This isn’t the way,” Loki said, shaking her more fiercely. “Snap out of it!”

  “What is she talking about, Loki?” Sigyn said. “What’s wrong with her? And why are her eyes so—?”

  Angrboda raised one hand and pointed a finger at her, and Sigyn suddenly shrieked and collapsed to her knees, digging her hands into her hair.

  “Stop this now— What are you doing to her?” Loki said with increasing panic, taking Angrboda by the shoulders, stepping between her and his other wife. “Angrboda, please—”

  Sigyn was still wailing, keeping her eyes shut and shaking her head as if willing the vision to go away. “No, no, no! I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to know!”

  “Brother will slay brother,” Angrboda intoned, ignoring Loki completely.

  “I’m begging you.” Loki stopped shaking her but kept his hands there on her shoulders as he leaned down, whispering, pleading. “Stop this.”

  But Angrboda still did not acknowledge him.

  Sigyn fell in a heap on the ground, sobbing. “Make it stop . . . make it stop . . .”

  “Angrboda, stop!” said a new voice from behind Sigyn.

  The sound caused Angrboda to snap out of her trance abruptly and stagger, and she regained her balance to see Skadi emerging from the trees on the opposite bank.

  For a moment Skadi looked confused, as if the scene was not what she expected: Sigyn appeared unharmed save for that she was weeping quietly, and Angrboda and Loki were both far enough away that there was no way they could have harmed her.

  Not physically, at least.

  Skadi knelt beside Sigyn, whispered some words of comfort, and helped her to her feet. Sigyn wiped tears from her eyes and shook violently, her expression a conflicted mixture of terror and shame.

  “Are you all right?” Skadi asked her. She cast her eyes across the river at Gerd and the children, and then finally at Angrboda, and comprehension dawned. “Is this— Sigyn, is this the first time you’ve met the—the children?” And the other wife went unsaid, for that much was obvious to all involved.

  Sigyn looked up at her then, hurt in her eyes. “You knew? Even you? And you didn’t think to tell me? I thought you were my friend.”

  Angrboda suddenly felt a deep hollowness in her chest, and her entire body went still.

  And Skadi looked back across the river, her expression set in stone.

  “Get over here, you cretin,” she said icily to Loki as she held Sigyn steady in her firm grasp, “and take your wife home.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Loki snarled, releasing Angrboda, who stumbled backward onto the grassy bank.

  “You really don’t want to get into it with me right now,” Skadi said. Her voice was low and dangerous and did not so much hint at murder as guarantee it. “You’ll end up in pieces.”

  Loki’s glare was nothing short of hateful, so irked was he at his own words getting tossed back at him. But he turned and looked at Angrboda, who had regained her composure and stared him down unapologetically. He looked like he was about to say something, to reprimand her, but then his gaze moved past her to just over her shoulder, and his eyes widened.

  Angrboda whirled around to see what he was looking at and gasped as she remembered—her children were present, and had been for the entire ordeal. For a horrible moment she thought they might fear her now, would look at her the way Gerd was looking at her—aghast, disgusted, terrified—but no, their eyes were locked on their father. Hel’s face was dripping with snot and tears, and Fenrir and Jormungand were both glaring at him with something not unlike resentment.

  They aren’t bothered by what I’ve done. They know why I did it.

  They heard what Sigyn said.

  They see their father going with her.

  He’s broken their hearts.

  Angrboda stepped in front of her children with her fists clenched at her sides, her dress damp in the front from her long hair and soaked at the bottom from when she had stormed into the stream. She faced Loki across the river with a baleful expression.

  “Go,” she said.

  Loki reached out to her, helplessly. “Boda—”

  “Go.”

  So he exited the river on the other side and Skadi pulled off her outer tunic and shoved it at him. He put it on for the sake of covering himself and draped Sigyn’s arm over his shoulder, and she sniveled and leaned against him.

  “I saw her leave after you and then left the feast myself, fearing the worst, as she’d taken the cloak,” Skadi told him in a steely voice, but so softly that Angrboda almost couldn’t hear her.

  “Your fears were justified, it seems,” he responded in a m
atching tone.

  “If they ask, I may be back tonight. And I may not.” Skadi cast a glance across the river, then grabbed him by the collar. She was of a height with him, but much stronger. “If you care anything for Angrboda and your children, you will not tell the gods where I am. And you will not tell them of this night.”

  Loki set his jaw but nodded. He looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with Angrboda.

  She was the first to look away, and then he and Sigyn disappeared into the trees.

  Skadi waded across the river, and all were silent for a time. Angrboda knew her friends were both burning with questions, and she was grateful that neither woman voiced them at that particular moment.

  Then Angrboda said, her voice cracking, “Skadi, Gerd, thank you for tonight. But I would like to be alone with my children right now. You are welcome to stay the night in our home—as I promised Gerd—but if you do, we four will be sleeping outside.”

  “Angrboda,” Gerd began feebly. She seemed less scared now and more concerned. She was holding the dress Loki had arrived in, which he had cast aside, and held it out for Angrboda to dry herself. “We—”

  But Skadi put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and said, “We’ll sleep out in the clearing. Take your bed. We’ll just need some furs to sleep upon, that’s all.”

  Angrboda knelt down to pick up her daughter. Hel’s arms closed iron tight around her neck, and her legs did the same about Angrboda’s waist. She cried into her mother’s damp hair.

  Then Angrboda placed one hand on Fenrir’s head and one hand on Jormungand’s and said, “Let’s go home.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Skadi and Gerd settled in the clearing as they’d said, and inside the cave, Angrboda changed out of her wet clothes and curled up with her three children on the bed. Hel was pressed against her with her face buried in her mother’s chest, and Fenrir was pressed close to Hel, and Jormungand nearly encircled them all, his head resting near Hel’s and Fenrir’s. He still could not talk, but his green eyes were woeful.