The Witch's Heart

by Genevieve Gornichec

  “In a manner of speaking,” Angrboda said, putting a hand on her forehead. Cold, cold—her daughter’s skin was ice. “I harbored a lot of hatred toward him for a long time after what he did. But in the end, I realized that we’re all victims of fate.”

  Hel looked away but didn’t move her head. “I came to the same conclusion after Papa came to me. Thank you for not telling him all the terrible things I said to you. Why would you even want to save me, after the way I treated you?”

  Angrboda smoothed back her hair. “Because I’m your mother.”

  When Hel squeezed her eyes shut, several tears leaked out, and Angrboda wiped them with her sleeve. Hel was too weak to bat her away and said, anguished, “It’s not fair. My entire life was wasted down there, and when we finally could’ve seen each other I kept you away . . . and now we’re all doomed . . .”

  “I have a plan,” Angrboda whispered. “I’m going to protect you, Hel.”

  “That’s what Papa said. Baldur doesn’t know, though. But he came with me anyway. To see me safely to you, if you could help me . . .” Hel closed her eyes again, and this time her voice began to fade. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mother, but I doubt I’ll live long enough to see Ragnarok . . . let alone . . . live through it . . .”

  Angrboda bit back a sob at the words. Hel had passed out, her chest barely rising and falling underneath the mountain of blankets. When Baldur returned with a bucket of water and some kindling, he found Angrboda sitting there, eyes not moving from Hel’s unconscious form as she tried to assess just what was wrong with her daughter.

  Is it sickness, or something worse?

  “How is she?” Baldur approached her and crouched at Hel’s bedside. He glanced down at Hel, set his mouth in a thin line, and then looked up at the witch. There was something in his expression, something in his eyes—the warm blue of the summer sky, the exact opposite of Odin’s—that gave Angrboda pause. Then something began to nag at her.

  And that something was the problem of Baldur being here in the first place, when Angrboda had expected only Hel. Could save only Hel.

  “She’s asleep.” Angrboda did not take her eyes from her daughter. “Why are you here?”

  “Well, as you said, Yggdrasil is thrown off its axis and the dead can come back—”

  “No,” she said, turning to face him, “why are you here?”

  “She wouldn’t have made it on her own.”

  “And why do you care?” Angrboda narrowed her eyes. “And where is your wife? Didn’t she die with you?”

  “She did,” Baldur admitted.

  “And where is she now?”

  Baldur took a deep breath and seemed to steady himself. “If you’re trying to dig up some underhanded motive for my escorting your daughter into your care, I’m afraid you won’t have much luck.”

  Angrboda could’ve said any number of things to refute that, but she only sighed. “Well, if you know Hel so well, what do you think is wrong with her?”

  “Her heart. It beats irregularly, and with much effort,” he said with such certainty that Angrboda made a sound of surprise, which made him look up from Hel and shrug. “Hel is a witch like you, like my mother, like Freyja. Did she ever show her power as a child?”

  “Never,” Angrboda said, scowling. That’s not true—she’d had that vision, when she’d been tied to the tree after her children were taken: the vision of Odin depositing Hel down in Niflheim. Hel had demonstrated her power to the creatures and dead things who’d come for her in the night.

  She’d raised her chin and stared them down.

  Then she’d gathered them all up and made them her subjects.

  “Her power is tied to her realm,” Angrboda whispered. “And her realm is empty and gone. And now . . .”

  Her memory of that vision, though, suddenly slipped to the one that had come just before: of the youngest son of Odin tossing her daughter a golden apple and flashing a brilliant smile.

  “It’s good to meet you, little Hel. Welcome to Asgard.”

  “She’s been deteriorating for the whole of Fimbulwinter, ever since I arrived in her realm,” Baldur said, his voice strained. “And I’ve had to watch. I suspect she’s had this condition since birth, but her power has masked it. Until now.”

  Angrboda’s breath caught in her throat. Little Hel, running around in the clearing, short of breath. Fingertips blue.

  “Before. It’s been since before her birth.” Angrboda stood suddenly, lurching forward on unsteady legs. “I need some air. Please, watch over her.”

  “Always,” Baldur said. He let her pass and then took her chair.

  Angrboda caught a glimpse of them as she left—Baldur reaching out to caress Hel’s face, Hel stirring at his touch. The witch paused and listened.

  “You’re a ridiculous man,” Hel rasped, “to have dragged me all the way out here when you didn’t have to.”

  “Who says I didn’t have to?” he chided.

  “Me. I say you didn’t have to.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  “Don’t contradict me. You’re still somewhat dead, which means I’m still your ruler.”

  “You’re still somewhat my ruler. Now, stop talking and save your strength.”

  “You cannot tell me what to do.”

  “We’re not in your realm anymore, so technically I can do as I please.”

  Angrboda could bear no more. And as soon as the cave door slammed shut behind her, she dropped to her knees in the thawing snow of the clearing.

  Many realizations hit her at once.

  The first was that there was a reason Hel had almost died in her womb, and that her legs were just fate’s cruel manifestation of Angrboda’s folly. There was a real reason that Angrboda had to call her daughter’s soul back from the dead before she was even born, a reason that Hel had been dying in the first place. Maybe Baldur was right; her heart hadn’t formed as it should have—and now that Hel was grown and had no magic to compensate for it, this condition would kill her.

  The second realization was that Baldur had gotten close enough to Hel to hear her heartbeat. To know that something was not quite right.

  And Angrboda knew then, in the way that a mother just knows, that it would be useless to save Hel if she wasn’t going to save Baldur, too. A much younger Baldur had won little Hel’s heart ages ago with that dazzling smile. Angrboda had seen it herself in her vision.

  And so had Loki, who had actually been there.

  “Why did you do it, then? Why did you kill your brother’s son?”

  “The gods took everything from us, Boda. I thought it was high time I took something from them.”

  So he had. Loki had taken Baldur from the Aesir—and delivered him to a lonely woman sitting on a dark throne. A spot of warmth for the frigid being ruling the coldest realm of the worlds.

  Angrboda couldn’t breathe.

  Loki really had known exactly what he was doing all along—but did he know? Had he been in on Odin’s scheme the entire time? He claimed not to know what she’d seen, what she’d told Odin, but—but—had he known? Loki and his many faces—had he and Odin been playing her for a fool?

  That was it. That’s why Odin wasn’t trying to prevent Baldur’s death.

  Angrboda thought as she knelt there in the mud, as the last slivers of the dying sun and moon were slowly swallowed up by ravenous wolves.

  Because the safest place for Baldur is with Hel.

  So this was how he was to survive Ragnarok.

  Let Hel hold what she has.

  “Your father has given you a great gift, my daughter,” Angrboda murmured, looking down at her pale, calloused hands in the fading light. “But it’s nothing if you don’t live to enjoy it. If you both don’t live to enjoy it. And so . . .”

  Angrboda put her chin to her chest and looked down at
the scar between her breasts. The pale blue dress she wore had been modified for when she’d been nursing Hel and Fenrir: The keyhole neckline extended downward across her sternum. She had not taken it on her wanderings, so it was one of the last of her garments that had not gone completely threadbare; she required two delicate penannular brooches to secure it shut.

  This suited her purpose today of all days. Without hesitation, she unsheathed the freshly sharpened knife at her belt.

  And so I shall do what I must.

  As the last of the light went out in the Nine Worlds, Angrboda Iron-witch held her breath.

  The knife cut down.

  And the bowstring released.

  * * *

  • • •

  Yggdrasil writhed, and she saw it all from there.

  Armies marching onto the plain of Vigrid where it all was to end. First come the gods, with shining Asgard at their back: the Aesir, the Vanir, the elves, some dwarfs. The valkyries. Odin’s berserkers and his einherjar, the slain legions of Valhalla; and Freyja’s men, who make up the other half of the slain.

  The army of the gods is uniform. They seem to radiate light, from their gleaming chain mail to their polished shield bosses.

  Their opponents look like a torch-bearing hodgepodge in comparison as they march in from the opposite direction: creatures of all shapes and sizes. Frost giants, hill trolls, ogres . . . some human-sized, some not. Beings from other worlds have joined; dark elves and other dwarfs also march among them.

  She cannot see Skadi or the she-wolf among their ranks. She doesn’t want to look. Maybe they were too late getting to Utgard; they only just left Ironwood, after all. Maybe their tardiness will spare them. The witch can only hope.

  Surt appears with his flaming sword, the bridge Bifrost breaking underneath his army of fire giants as they pass, joining Jotunheim and their allies.

  Then there’s Loki, pulling up in a ship of nails filled to the brim with dead souls, who spill out as soon as they reach the shore—and from the water behind him erupts the Midgard Serpent with a roar to shake all the worlds, his brother, Fenrir, appearing at his side from beyond the mountains, the ground shaking with his every loping stride.

  With his sons at his back, Loki struts to the head of the army, defiant—he’s shape-shifted the beard off his face, but not the scars or blisters; those he wears with pride. He grasps arms with the ruler of the citadel of Utgard, Skrymir, and the two of them look west at the enemy across the field.

  “It’s a good day to die,” Skrymir booms.

  “It is indeed,” Loki says with a wicked grin.

  From across the field, Heimdall blows Gjallarhorn, and the battle begins.

  With fire in his eyes, Fenrir makes straight for Odin and swallows him whole—along with his horse, Sleipnir, the Wolf’s own half brother—only to be kicked in the lower jaw by Odin’s son Vidar with his legendary shoe.

  Vidar grabs Fenrir’s upper jaw and tears; the Great Wolf goes down with a cry that rips through the witch’s very soul, and then he dies.

  Jormungand goes for Thor, spitting venom, and after a struggle he incurs a death blow from the great red-bearded god—in the same spot as the previous blow, caving his skull in completely. Thor takes nine steps before the venom kills him, and the Midgard Serpent drops to the ground beside him, crushing members of both armies beneath his massive body.

  She has seen this all before.

  She finally spies Skadi on the she-wolf’s back just as the Huntress runs out of arrows. Somehow they’d found their way to the battle after all.

  Skadi casts aside her bow and unsheathes her father Thjazi’s sword. Thjazi is there with her on the battlefield; he locks eyes with her as he’s impaled upon a spear and dies—again. Incensed, Skadi begins to fight the valkyries surrounding her, and takes several down with her before she suffers one strike too many and slides from her mount just as the she-wolf takes a spear to the heart.

  Skadi collapses, bleeding out on the battlefield for several minutes before she finally dies, right beside her father. Her pale blue eyes go glassy as she stares up into the dark, starless sky.

  Finally the witch sees Loki facing off with Heimdall, the guardian of the now-shattered bridge Bifrost. Loki is quick and evasive—he’s not fast enough to avoid every blow, but most. He is tired; he is pained; he has not had time to recover from his punishment.

  But he’s angry enough that it doesn’t matter. He lands a blow on Heimdall that renders the god’s right arm useless, blood gushing from a deep, fatal cut between his neck and shoulder.

  Heimdall drops to his knees, his sword falling from his hand. Loki pauses and grins with triumph—but that one moment is all it takes for Heimdall to grab the short sword at his belt with his good hand and lurch up to slash Loki across the throat.

  He falls and is lost amid the chaos raging around him.

  Then, at last, at the other end of the plain, Surt overcomes Frey—who had lost his golden sword an age ago and fought with only a deer antler. His opponent dead at his feet, Surt raises his flaming sword to the heavens with a mighty cry. The sword flares brighter and fire spreads from it, engulfing those left alive on the battlefield.

  They scream as they burn.

  Flames begin to spread out from the plain of Vigrid in all directions, consuming everything in their path.

  And as Yggdrasil burned, the witch slipped back into her body and staggered to her feet, cradling her still-beating heart against her chest.

  * * *

  • • •

  When Angrboda went back inside, Baldur recoiled at her bloody hands and the red spot growing slowly outward from between her breasts, staining her pale blue dress a violent crimson.

  He was on his feet in an instant. There was only worry in his eyes—no fear—as his gaze moved to the pulsing bundle she clutched to her chest, wrapped in a strip of cloth she’d torn off the bottom of her gown.

  “Has it happened?” he asked in a low voice.

  “It is done, but not finished,” the witch said vaguely. “Your fathers are slain, and now Surt’s fire comes for us. We have little time. We shall be the last to burn, out here at the edge of the worlds.”

  “So we’re to die after all?” Baldur asked, his shoulders sagging.

  Angrboda stared at him in surprise. He came here not knowing there was a chance he could be saved? Then she remembered Hel telling her: “Baldur doesn’t know . . . he came with me anyway . . . to see me to you safely . . .”

  Baldur’s worried expression didn’t change. Either he was exceedingly good at bluffing, or he really had guided Hel here with absolutely no pretense of surviving Ragnarok.

  He really does love her.

  “Not if I can help it,” Angrboda said at last. “Please step aside so I might say my goodbyes. This shall only take a moment.”

  Baldur acquiesced and didn’t ask questions.

  Angrboda sat down next to her sleeping daughter. The witch undid both her tablet-woven belt and her leather belt, upon which her bloodied antler-handled knife was secured, and set all of these items on the table next to where she’d left her fingerless nalbinded mittens when she’d taken them off to tend to Hel. After a moment’s pause, she also took off the amber necklace Loki had brought her all that time ago, and put it down next to the rest of the cherished possessions she’d been gifted over the years.

  She no longer had need of such things.

  Hel had shifted onto her side, shivering under layers of bedding, her lips and fingertips a worrying blue. She didn’t move, but Angrboda could feel shallow breath against her palm as she pushed the hair away from her daughter’s face.

  “My child,” said the witch in a voice so low that only Hel could hear her, “I’m sorry for what’s befallen you. But when you awaken, it will be in a better world than this one. I have seen it.”

  The witch lifted the
covers and slid the pulsing bundle down the front of Hel’s gown. Hel’s breath came in small, short gasps, her chest barely moving.

  After regarding her sleeping face for just a moment longer, Angrboda slipped Hel’s ancient wolf figurine under her daughter’s pillow. It was worn down by teething and by worrying little hands, but now there were new marks upon it: runes stained copper from the blood that had soaked the knife when Angrboda had carved them out in the clearing just minutes before.

  She would not be there to see her final spell come to fruition, so she’d instilled the figurine with all the power she could muster. She could have carved the runes upon anything—an antler or a stick—but this figurine was also imbued with all the loving intent Loki had when he’d first carved it for Hel all those ages ago, and that made it more powerful that any other object Angrboda could think of to use for her purposes.

  She did not have to hope that its magic would hold up after she was gone. She knew it would. It had to.

  With that, Angrboda kissed Hel on the temple and covered her again, tucking the blankets and furs securely around her frail body.

  Then the witch turned to Baldur and reached out to grasp his shoulders, giving him a hard look.

  “Do not touch her,” Angrboda said. “Do not move her. She will not awaken until the magic has run its course, and not a moment before. If you wake her before it’s completed, the spell will fail and she will die.” She dug her stained fingers into his biceps, dried blood flaking off onto his sleeves. “Do you understand me?”

  “I understand. I won’t touch her.” Baldur hesitated. “But what have you done?”

  Angrboda gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Perhaps one day you will see.”

  He blinked, confused. “But—”

  “I will not be back,” she said, releasing him from her grip. “Under no circumstances will you venture outside this cave. Not until the heat subsides and you can see light through the cracks in the door from the new sun rising.”

  Baldur seemed to realize what she meant to do and looked stricken as she turned to go.