The Witch's Heart

by Genevieve Gornichec

  “More than you know.” Angrboda was tempted to reveal herself to the Huntress, but she could only think of what would happen. She knew the first words out of Skadi’s mouth would be another invitation, and even after years of a hard life on the road, Angrboda knew in her heart that she would not be able to refuse a second time.

  Besides that, it was a matter of respect. Skadi had not wanted to say goodbye, and Angrboda’s mission was not yet complete. She had more to do before they could meet again. And she couldn’t help but wonder if she was running out of time.

  She slept in the kitchen with the servingwomen that night, curled up by the cooking fire with the she-wolf in her elkhound form, and they departed before first light.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day Angrboda’s head felt worse than ever—probably a result of enduring the noise from the feast the night before—and she accepted the she-wolf’s offer to ride on her back, after the witch fashioned a harness out of spare rope so the she-wolf could pull the wagon behind her. Since Angrboda hadn’t gotten a chance to trade anything at Hymir’s, they stopped at a small settlement so she could barter her wares in exchange for some dried fish.

  The villagers’ eyes were wide at her approach. Angrboda felt too weak to cast a glamour to disguise herself and her companion, but it turned out the giants there were willing to trade with her anyway and thanked her as she left. She got the distinct impression that they were glad to see the back of her.

  When she and the she-wolf were fully provisioned and had traveled far west of Hymir’s hall, they took shelter in a shallow cave along a river. Angrboda practiced her protection spell a few more times with varying levels of success, and once she’d treated and bandaged her hand, she sat back against the she-wolf’s shaggy fur and fell asleep.

  It was the dead of night when a voice sounded from the mouth of the shallow cave: “Wake up, sister. I have need of your wisdom.”

  Angrboda flipped over at once and sat up, scowling. Behind her, the she-wolf stirred but did not wake, exhausted from the day’s trek. Their sleeping area was now lit by a single torch, grasped in a hand belonging to a person she had hoped never to see again in her exceedingly long life.

  It was Freyja. And when she caught sight of Angrboda’s face, she drew back, startled.

  “You,” she hissed. “You’re alive?”

  “What are you doing here?” Angrboda was on her feet in an instant, all thoughts of rest forgotten. Her head spun, as it sometimes did when she rose too quickly, and the scar on her temple pounded for a moment as if the wound were new. “How did you find me?”

  Freyja seemed at a loss for words but recovered quickly enough.

  “I asked around,” she said, shrugging, twirling a bloodred strand of hair. “I’m seeking a witch who rides a wolf with snakes for reins, but I didn’t know you were she. You have many names now, it seems.”

  “Yes.” News certainly did travel fast in Jotunheim. “Why are you here?”

  “I’ve told you, I have need of a sorceress’s knowledge. And I suppose that very sorceress is you, Angrboda Iron-witch.”

  Angrboda’s eyes narrowed at the name.

  Freyja gave her a venomous smile. “The nickname Loki gave you has gotten around in your absence. They say you died of grief and are buried in your daughter’s realm. You’ve passed into legend since your departure, sister.”

  Angrboda ignored this. She didn’t know what knowledge Freyja could possibly want from her, but she had a feeling she knew what the woman wanted her to do to get it. Could she not have done this herself?

  But then she realized Freyja had no idea that she couldn’t perform seid. She decided she might as well bluff, in order to divine the true nature of this visit.

  “Come with me to Asgard,” said Freyja after thinking for a moment. “Perhaps we could work something out. Strike a deal.”

  “I will do no such thing,” said Angrboda. Her gaze strayed to Freyja’s companion: a small boar standing at attention beside the goddess. There was something odd about it, she decided. Like the animal form was not its original one. It did not take her long to put two and two together. “Is that where you’re taking this one, your lover in disguise?”

  “You’re confused,” said Freyja, but anger flashed across her face for a second before she wiped it primly away. She shifted, and her famous golden necklace gleamed in the torchlight. “This is but a boar, Battle-swine, whom the dwarfs made for me. I would learn the lineage of my protégé Ottar, so that he can claim his kingship in Midgard. Will you tell me what I wish to know, or what?”

  “Why not ask Frigg? It’s said that Odin’s wife knows the fates of all men.” Angrboda suppressed a smirk, but she was suspicious. Lineage? That’s all she wants to know? When Freyja didn’t answer, Angrboda sighed and said, “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you’ve come all this way for nothing. I’ve not been able to perform seid since the night Thor slew me and Odin forced himself upon me to gain knowledge of the end times, and that’s a fact. So I suppose you’ll have to go elsewhere to find out what you want to know.”

  Angrboda did not know how much Freyja knew about that night—the woman had gone ahead with the rest of the gods and had not seen what happened to her—and therefore tried to gauge her reaction.

  “It’s a terrible business,” Freyja said, feigning sympathy, “that you were so resistant, and the All-father had to resort to having you killed again to finally get the information he needed.”

  So she does know. Angrboda sat up straighter. Maybe she also knows, then, why I cannot perform seid. Here it was, what she’d been searching for all this time: finally, a fellow practitioner of magic, standing right in front of her.

  Maybe she’d be willing to help me, if I paid her price. The thought of asking Freyja for help made her want to vomit, but as she saw it, it was the only choice she had.

  “Did you know Loki tried to bargain for your life?” Freyja continued when Angrboda was silent, clearly mistaking the other witch’s pensiveness for despair, and deigning to add fuel to the fire.

  “Speak not of Loki to me,” Angrboda ground out.

  Freyja ignored her. “It was so sad. He agreed to distract you so I could bind you while we gathered up your little monsters, and he was so very upset when Thor put his hammer to your skull instead, on Odin’s orders. I daresay the Trickster hasn’t been the same since.”

  “Then add that to the oaths the gods have broken,” Angrboda snapped. “Do you know why I can’t perform seid, then? Did Odin do something to me that night? Did he—trap me somehow, in my body, and make it so I’m unable to travel?”

  Freyja looked at her now with something not unlike pity.

  “Such things we women are made to endure,” Freyja said quietly, and with such feeling that Angrboda almost felt a twinge of feminine kinship with her. “No, he did nothing to you besides the obvious. It seems to me that it’s fear that’s holding you back. Fear of being forced down and held under. I’ve tried going as deep as you have, but I cannot. None can. If you tell me what it is I need to know, I will guide you down as far as I can go. Do we have a bargain?”

  “I accept,” said Angrboda.

  “Excellent.” Freyja’s mouth quirked smarmily to one side. “Although I’m sure you regret teaching your seid to the Aesir and Vanir near the beginning of time, it seems it’s paid off for you in the long run, hasn’t it, now that one of your apprentices of old is the only person who can help you . . . ?”

  “Just get on with it,” Angrboda muttered.

  Freyja put her torch down on the remains of Angrboda’s fire to light it again and then knelt across from her, her gold eyes gleaming. The mysterious boar settled down beside her. From her belt she took a small drum and began to beat it in a slow rhythm—the rhythm of a heartbeat—and chanted the ancient words Angrboda had taught her long ago.

  Ang
rboda needed no drum or spoken words to perform seid herself, but when she closed her eyes, she could feel the power of the chant. Part of her bristled with fear as she felt herself sinking down and out of her body. She started to shut down, to resist.

  Freyja’s chanting grew more forceful, and Angrboda felt the woman’s hold tighten on her. Her physical body began to panic as Freyja dragged her down. And while the other witch’s body in the material world was still chanting, Angrboda could feel her presence there with her, in the place below.

  But then Angrboda sank further. She could feel Freyja watching her from above, hovering near that pinprick of light at the surface.

  See? Freyja said, above her own chanting voice. You just needed a little push to leave your body. Like ripping a bandage from a wound.

  I know. Angrboda realized then that they had succeeded. She was back, back here in the place where she’d been for nine days and nine nights, from which she’d never wanted to leave. She had needed only Freyja’s little push to break her own mental block, and now here she was. She could reconnect with Mother Witch. She could contact Hel. She could access that deep well of power at the very bottom, tip once more over the precipice Odin had forced her over—but this time she could control it. All of it.

  But first, she had to send Freyja on her way.

  I’ve forced you down, but no farther, said Freyja, her voice fading. She had stopped chanting. The rest is up to you. Remember our bargain.

  Angrboda did. She reached out for what it was the other witch wanted to know, and the dark place told her. Her eyes opened, white and dead, and she began to speak the truth of Ottar’s ancestry—and then something changed. The words changed; the images changed. The dark place was telling her, once again, of the ending of the worlds.

  She had gone further than she’d intended and now she was being called deeper, back to the void.

  She surfaced before the dark place could pull her in, and her eyes returned to normal. Freyja was staring at her. Angrboda glared and said, begrudgingly, “Thank you.”

  Freyja nodded once as she stood and took a horn from her belt, muttered some words over it, and fed it to the boar. “So that he remembers the names you’ve spoken, and his lineage,” she said. “But not the rest. That was only for my ears.”

  “You must go, too,” said Angrboda. It did not surprise her to learn Freyja’s boar was not just a boar, but truly Ottar in disguise. She suddenly felt tired, drained. “Get away from here. You have what you want to know.”

  “And more,” said Freyja. “You told me of Ragnarok. Not as much as you told Odin that night, but some.”

  Ragnarok. The doom of the gods, the word meant.

  “By your expression,” said Freyja, “I take it this is the first you’ve heard of such a thing? How can that be, if you’re the one who spoke the words and made them so?”

  Angrboda shivered. “It’s only the first time I’ve heard my vision called by such a name.” She folded her arms in an attempt to still her shaking hands. “Thank you. Again. For helping me recover my seid.”

  “You’re welcome. I hope I don’t come to regret it, although I’m sure I will. I could just as easily have forced you, as Odin did—”

  Angrboda rolled her eyes. “Oh, go away. Back to all your lovers, for they are great in number indeed.”

  “I’ll burn this cave to ashes,” Freyja snapped, “should you continue to insult me.”

  “All the worlds will burn. Curse you and curse the gods. And curse your Ottar as well.”

  “At least Ottar will thrive while mortal men still do,” Freyja spat, and she turned and walked from the cave, the boar in question at her heels.

  When she was gone, Angrboda sat up straighter and let the effects of what had just happened sink in.

  I can do seid again. I’m still myself.

  And now that she had this ability once more, she had much to do. And the first thing was to pay her daughter a visit.

  She slipped from her body—this time with such ease that she felt almost giddy with relief—and reached out in that form until she could touch Yggdrasil, and the tree took her down, down, down.

  * * *

  • • •

  There was darkness and ice and blowing snow, and she was walking down a pathway of icy, crumbling stone. As she continued to walk, she realized the pathway was a bridge, and if she looked over the side, she could see rushing rivers and empty valleys below.

  Her hair flowed around her as if she were underwater. Though her surroundings were black and gray and desolate as far as the eye could see, she had a feeling that it was not missing any color.

  She knew, without seeing herself, that her eyes had gone white, as they always did when she was in a trance. When she was somewhere only the dead should be.

  Finally she reached the last bridge, which was thatched with gold, and beyond it milled the souls of the dead: the wicked, the unlucky, the old and the young and the sick. The ones who had not died in a glorious battle, the ones who had not been chosen and escorted to the halls of the slain in Asgard by the valkyries.

  But a pale maiden, clothed in black, rose from the shadows and stopped her at the end of the bridge, and she could go no farther.

  “I am Modgud, the guardian of the bridge. Only the dead can enter here,” she said, studying the witch. “But you—you are neither dead nor alive. What business do you have in Hel’s realm?”

  “I’ve business with my daughter,” said Angrboda. “Let me pass.”

  Modgud stared at her for a long moment before stepping aside.

  So Angrboda continued along the path until she came to huge walls and a great gate, and she slipped inside.

  She soon found herself in her daughter’s hall, dark and fearsome and carved into the side of a cliff, lit by a phantom glow that came from nowhere. Hel, it seemed, had inherited her father’s dramatic flair.

  The inside of the hall, though, was surprisingly inviting. The dead milled about as they had outside—laying great golden decorations on a long table, goblets and plates and all manner of finery, with the honey-sweet scent of mead in the air. Angrboda frowned at the sight of this activity. Surely this isn’t for me . . . is it?

  Angrboda made for the rear of the hall, where a young woman in a long black dress sat in the high seat. Her skin was white and her hair was long, trailing down almost to the floor as she sat, and it was as black as pitch and wavy. Under the dress, her legs were crossed, and Angrboda could not see what her feet looked like.

  She knew this woman to be Hel, though. Her eyes were the most obvious giveaway: green and bright, just like her father’s, though they were sunken. And she possessed the same circles under them as her mother did, though they were black where Angrboda’s were gray.

  But for all Hel had looked like Loki as a child, she now was the spitting image of her mother—gravitas and all.

  And she was staring Angrboda down with a look of solid contempt. In the shadows behind her, dark figures moved: misshapen things, some not even remotely human. Hel’s servants. A child’s creations.

  Her only friends in this deep, dark place.

  Angrboda swallowed heavily, at a loss for words under Hel’s vicious gaze. All she could manage was a nod at the bustling skeletons and a shaky “Are you expecting company?”

  “That’s none of your business,” said Hel, and Angrboda was startled at her daughter’s hoarse, shrill voice. Then again, the last time she had heard Hel speak, the girl had been five years old. “So you’ve finally died, then?”

  She realized then that there were to be no cries of joy, no tearful embrace. Mother and daughter simply looked at each other across the hall.

  Hel considered her for another moment before her pale face broke into a disdainful grin. “No, of course not. All this time I thought that the gods had really killed you . . .”

  “Until this very nigh
t, I had no way to reach you,” Angrboda said. “Not even dying brought me here.”

  “For so long I thought you were dead. I mourned you,” Hel went on, as if she hadn’t heard her. “I even built a monument to you at the eastern gates. But I could never find you in my realm, so I wondered . . .” She leaned forward, her white hands clutching the sides of her chair in a death grip as she leered. “You have some explaining to do, Mother.”

  Angrboda took a deep breath to cover her internal wince. The last time Hel had spoken to her, she was “Mama.”

  Now she was “Mother,” and when Hel spoke the word, it was as cold as ice.

  “I couldn’t leave my body, as I had before,” said Angrboda. “I had no way of seeing you, nor of contacting your brothers—”

  “A likely story,” said Hel. Her expression was distant, like she was remembering something from ages past. “I waited to see you here. I’ve waited forever. You were dead. I thought you were just lost, but you never came. I knew my father would never come for me, but I thought you were different.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “He called us monsters. But I’m not a monster. My brothers were monsters, but I wasn’t. I was just a little girl.”

  “Hel—”

  “You should have come for me, Mother,” said Hel loudly, and she stood and glared down at Angrboda from the dais.

  “Hel, please—”

  “I’d hoped you would come. But you didn’t.”

  “If you knew what’s been done to me, you wouldn’t speak to me this way,” Angrboda said, her voice breaking. This was not going at all how she’d planned.

  “Do you know what’s been done to me?” Hel shot back. “I should’ve never been born, but you—you had to meddle. Yes, I know what you did now; I’ve seen it myself. The dead know all. I was dying, and you summoned me back with your magic. Now here I am, with power over life and death but only a sad half-life to call my own, cast away from all the worlds, alone forever. Where have you been all this time, Mother? Where have you been while I rotted?”