The Witch's Heart

by Genevieve Gornichec

  “Thank you,” he managed, his voice thick with emotion.

  Angrboda said nothing and did not look back.

  * * *

  • • •

  Once she was outside and the door shut behind her, Angrboda looked to the west, where Surt’s inferno had reached Ironwood’s border. A wall of fire had crossed the river and was burning up the gnarled gray trees of her ancient forest. From the thick clouds of smoke pouring into the sky and the orange flames in the distance, Angrboda judged that she had mere minutes left.

  Suddenly she was Gullveig upon the pyre again: throat clogged with smoke, heat upon her face, a stabbing pain in her chest where her heart used to be.

  For a moment she felt short of breath, and the memories threatened to overtake her. Her knees started to give, the old wound in her temple pounding in agony.

  But she took a deep breath and steeled herself, not tearing her eyes from the fire.

  It’s different this time.

  My heart is so much more than it once was, even if it now beats outside my chest.

  And I will burn not for the gods’ will, but for my own.

  The wall of fire moved ever closer. Within the clouds of smoke billowing up into the endless darkness, she caught traces of something rising: tiny, glittering specks floating higher and higher until they separated from the smoke altogether and disintegrated into the black sky.

  That was when she saw the shades marching toward her from within the flames, ghostly figures that began to dissolve as they advanced. Gods and giants and all beings of the Nine Worlds. Even from this distance, she could see the relief on their faces. They were finally free.

  Only three souls made it all the way to where Angrboda stood. The first was the she-wolf, who made as if to nuzzle her, but her muzzle passed right through Angrboda’s body. I tried, Mother Witch. I tried to keep her safe.

  “You were glorious, my friend,” Angrboda replied, tears pricking her eyes. “Be at peace.”

  You know, I think I will. She could’ve sworn the she-wolf was smiling as she disappeared.

  The next to approach was Skadi, whose hand went right through Angrboda’s cheek when she reached out. Angrboda leaned in as close as she possibly could without passing through Skadi’s ghostly form.

  “I told you I would remain by your side no matter what,” Skadi whispered to her, their faces barely an inch apart. “So here I am.”

  “I must do this on my own,” Angrboda whispered back. “Don’t wait for me.”

  “But I always have.”

  A sob bubbled up in Angrboda’s throat, and she clamped a hand over her mouth, forcing it back down. She needed all her concentration for what was ahead and could not cast her mind back. She could not afford to feel guilty. Not now.

  “You have indeed,” Angrboda managed. “But not this time.”

  Skadi began to dissipate from the feet up, but she was smiling just as all the others had been. “I’ll see you again soon.”

  “Soon,” Angrboda echoed, and she reached out as the last whispers of Skadi’s soul dissolved into starlight. “Goodbye.”

  And then she was gone, and Angrboda dried her tears—but too soon, for the last ghost, of course, was Loki.

  The wall of fire was mere yards away from engulfing the clearing when he stepped into her view. He looked just as he had that day by the river when he’d given her back her heart, that day at the beginning of time when everything had changed.

  “Angrboda Iron-witch,” he said, an impish slant to his grin. “You intend to stand against this?” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the encroaching inferno.

  “I do,” Angrboda replied with more calm than she felt.

  “Aren’t you scared?” Loki asked, for now he was upon her, a hand hovering just inches from her cheek as if he wished he could touch her.

  Angrboda gave him a tight smile. “I’ve been through worse. Shouldn’t you be going?”

  “You don’t want me to stay with you?” Loki asked, head tilted sideways in curiosity.

  “You’ve never stayed with me,” Angrboda said gently. “I’ll endure this as I’ve endured everything else in this life. Perhaps I will see you in the next.”

  “But what if there’s nothing after this?” Loki’s voice was barely audible above the roar of the fire behind him.

  Angrboda thought of the ghosts smiling as they left this burning world; she thought of Odin and Thor and Freyja and the giants, disintegrating and becoming part of everything around them.

  She’d seen a new world rise from the ashes of the Nine, and even though the old gods were gone, they would be a part of every tree, every rock, every drop of water, every snowflake. And so would the giants and the valkyries and everyone else who’d ever lived.

  Including her.

  “What comes next for beings like us?” Loki wondered.

  Angrboda tore her gaze away from the fire and looked him in the eye. A sudden peace had settled over her unlike anything she’d ever felt before.

  “Eternity,” she said, and just as he leaned in as if to kiss her, he was gone, as though a gentle gust of wind had carried him off into the sky.

  Then she was alone.

  The fire was coming faster, roaring its fury. Every bone in her body screamed to put up the shield now, do it—save yourself while you still can—but if her practicing had shown her anything, it was that her sudden bursts of strength were only temporary. Unless she waited until the very last second—until the flames were directly upon her—she would not be able to hold her shield up long enough for the cave to withstand the fire.

  Her face began to redden, to blister. Her dress whipped about and the hem caught fire, and as the tip of her braid caught as well, it unraveled, her hair fanning out behind her.

  And then, suddenly, it was time. She could wait no longer.

  Just as the wall of flames hit her dead on, she threw out her shield, willing it to surround her home and its occupants—but within moments she realized that she was no match for what she was up against. She’d only ever practiced with her hearth fire, and that was the equivalent of holding her hand over a tiny candle compared with this inferno.

  No, she thought, panicking as flames began to lick the wooden door at her back. Her dress and skin and hair were burning, blackening, her body screaming with agony just as it had on the pyre. No, no, no, no—I cannot fail—I cannot—

  She was down to her last resort.

  Pushing down her pain, she frantically reached out to that deep well of power, the one that had always called to her, the one she had always resisted; now she would have to use it. Against everything she had fought for, in the end she had failed on her own.

  It was the only thing that would save her daughter, this power she’d feared to tap into for so long.

  I can’t do it alone, she thought as she reached out and grasped for that darkness just beyond her consciousness. I’m not strong enough.

  But you are, the presence’s familiar voice replied. It echoed from the deepest part of the primordial well, from the beginning of time itself, and Angrboda finally—finally—recognized the voice as her own. This power is yours, Mother Witch. It has always been yours. You need only reach out and take it.

  Angrboda did.

  And the shield burned bright as the flames consumed her.

  PART III

  When Hel awoke, it was from a sleep like death.

  She sat up stiffly, groaning, sunlight hitting her in the face through a crack in the door. Her body felt heavy, wooden; her muscles screamed with disuse. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and—

  Her legs. Her legs.

  She nearly screamed at the sight of them as she planted her feet on the cave’s floor—feet with muscles and skin attached, not just bone. It was the same with her legs, both of her legs, all the way up to where they jo
ined her hip. She pulled her dress up and pinched the flesh of her thigh, stunned. Is this real? Is this—?

  A hysterical laugh escaped her throat. Then another, and another, until she couldn’t stop.

  Hel couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed.

  She twirled about the cave on her brand-new legs, laughter dissolving into giggles until she collapsed back onto the bed. When her head hit the pillow, she felt something lumpy underneath that she hadn’t noticed in her deep sleep. She reached underneath it and her fingertips brushed smooth wood: a familiar shape.

  Her mood was immediately dampened when she extracted the little wooden wolf. She turned it over and over in her hands like she had as a child, but it wasn’t the same—the texture wasn’t the same, for someone had carved runes into her beloved figurine, and it felt unfamiliar beneath her fingers. She slammed it on the table with a thud that echoed through the empty cave.

  Empty cave.

  She froze and looked around. “Mother?”

  Nothing. Every single item in the cave—including her blankets, face, and hair—was covered in a layer of ash and dust, which Hel brushed off herself. There was a set of footprints leading out the door, but they seemed quite old.

  Hel walked to the door and threw it open, immediately raising an arm to shield her eyes against the blinding sunlight and the dazzling green.

  Green. Hel had never seen Ironwood such a color—the whole of Ironwood, at any rate. When she was a child, her clearing and the surrounding trees had become greener each spring, but now it seemed as if all the trees in the forest had bloomed.

  Haven’t all the worlds burned? Or is this the aftermath?

  How long have I been asleep?

  “Mother?” she called again, stepping out into the clearing. The feeling of grass beneath her feet was nearly enough to make her weep with joy. “Mother, where are you? Baldur?”

  No one answered.

  Just as when she’d been left in Niflheim as a child of five, Hel was completely alone.

  * * *

  • • •

  So Hel made her home there in Ironwood, as her mother had done an age before.

  She had nothing to wear but what Angrboda had left behind, so she was forced to don the witch’s clothes: sad blues, undyed gray wools, plain linen. She wore her mother’s old belts, and the old antler-handled knife, which was sheathed and caked with dried blood, but still sharp and useful after a good cleaning. She donned the amber beads she found—for she did so love shiny things, and she’d never seen her mother wear them—but moved the worn mittens to a worktable in the corner so she could ignore them. For some reason these items were her keenest reminders of Angrboda, and they made her mother’s absence even more glaring, such that it hurt to even look at them.

  She scoured the dust and ash from the cave and began to collect firewood, berries, and mushrooms from the woods. Hel had always had more sympathy for animals than for gods or giants or lost souls, but if she wished to eat, she had to set up snares as Skadi had once taught her. At least until the old garden revived—she had found Angrboda’s store of seeds and rusted tools and made an attempt at planting them.

  By what she estimated to be midsummer, the garden had blossomed beyond Hel’s wildest dreams, and she emerged one morning from the cave to gaze upon it in satisfaction.

  “And to believe I once ruled the realm of the dead,” she mused aloud, examining a particularly fine turnip.

  Then she caught sight of something circling high overhead, a familiar shape that she knew to be Nidhogg: the dragon who’d been one of the very first creatures she’d faced in Niflheim, who had become one of her subjects. Now he was only a reminder of what had been.

  Of what she had been.

  To think, I was once a powerful witch who did interesting things. Her mood soured considerably at the sight of the dragon. And now here I am, smiling at a turnip. Preposterous.

  The seasons passed and there was no sign of Baldur. The footprints she’d discovered leading out of the cave when she’d first awoken were a testament to his having survived—but where was he? Her worry gave way to anger and then to apathy just as a chilly autumn gave way to a mild winter, then a balmy spring.

  Wherever he is, she thought grimly as time went on, I suppose he doesn’t care for me as I cared for him. She was unwilling to entertain the idea that the footprints belonged to her mother. She would have never left me.

  Hel was bathing in the stream one day with her hair braided and tossed over her shoulder when she thought she caught sight of Angrboda, and her heart leapt—until she realized that it was only her reflection in the water. She sighed, disappointed, and began her walk home. Where did she go?

  She didn’t have much time to ponder this, because when she returned to the cave, there was someone waiting for her in the clearing.

  Her breath hitched. She would recognize him anywhere, even before he turned to look at her: his blond hair shining in the sun, his eyes the same beautiful blue as the sky, crinkling at the corners when he smiled.

  He was smiling now. At her.

  She swallowed but didn’t speak and kept her face carefully blank. So she wasn’t alone after all—she was not the only one to survive Ragnarok. A thousand questions were bouncing back and forth in her brain: Where have you been? How long did I sleep? Where is my mother?

  “They say a witch used to live in these woods,” Baldur said conversationally, breaking the lengthy silence. “A long, long time ago.”

  “You’re looking at her,” Hel said. She moved past him, sat down on the stool she’d set at the cave mouth, and picked up the pair of mittens she had been nalbinding, just as Gerd had taught her to do so long ago. She began her work again, pointedly not looking at Baldur, and added, “Although it seems to me that there’s no more magic left in the worlds at all. Where have you been?”

  “You’re angry with me,” he observed. “I don’t blame you. But as it turns out, there’s just one world now, and we weren’t the only ones to have survived.”

  “Is that so?” Hel said, disguising the hurt in her voice with disdain. “I suppose you have more interesting company to keep than me now. I might’ve known.”

  “It’s not like that at all.” Baldur brushed his cloak over his shoulder. Unlike the finery he’d died in, simple traveling clothes were what he was wearing now. “We’ve rebuilt Asgard—or, we’ve built Idavoll, right where Asgard was.” He made a sweeping gesture that fell purposely flat. “A glorious place with a gold-thatched roof. We’ve been pulling all sorts of trinkets out of the ashes. Thor’s sons found his hammer, even. And two of my other brothers survived by jumping into the sea—even Hod made it. More of us survived Ragnarok than I thought. And there’s a waterfall . . .”

  “Wonderful,” Hel said dully, looking down once more at the mittens she was making. “So, what brings you here, then, after so long? What could possibly tear you away from your golden hall?”

  “Listen,” said Baldur. He crouched down until he was at eye level with her. “I had to leave you.”

  “Why?” Hel asked petulantly.

  “Because your mother ordered me to.”

  “A likely story.”

  Hel made to go back to her nalbinding, but he reached forward and pulled the mittens out of her hands, needle and all. When she gave him a furious look, he shook his head. “Your mother saved both our lives, and she ordered me not to move you. She made sure I understood that if I touched you, I’d break the spell she cast to heal your heart. Otherwise I would’ve carried you with me. You know I would have,” he added, with feeling.

  “My . . . heart?” she asked, putting a hand to her chest. She had noticed the tender pink spot of skin between her breasts when she’d first awoken from her long sleep, but it had faded away shortly after, and she’d thought little of it. She’d thought that maybe the pain had gone away with fresh air or t
hat good long nap she’d taken, just as it used to when she was a child . . . She never imagined . . .

  “Hel?” Baldur said worriedly, for her expression had crumpled.

  “My legs, too,” Hel whispered as she stood. “She healed my legs. She carved runes into my wolf . . . She died, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Baldur said, standing as well. “She died protecting you. Protecting both of us.”

  Hel let out a low moan and her chest began heaving with dry sobs. She shoved him away when he tried to embrace her. “But how could she have forgiven me for the horrible things I said to her, just like that? I don’t understand . . .”

  “She’s forgiven you, just as you forgave her,” Baldur said gently. “She saved us both. Isn’t that enough to prove it? What were her last words to you? She whispered them in your ear before she left the cave.”

  “How should I know? I was hardly conscious at the time.”

  “Think,” Baldur said, and it seemed to Hel that he needed to know more than she wanted to remember. She wondered vaguely if he had heard the words himself and only needed her to confirm them.

  She closed her eyes, cast her mind back, and told him. “She said, ‘My child, 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.’ ”

  Baldur held her gaze steadily and whispered, “Those words are the very same ones my father spoke to me before they lit my pyre.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Hel.

  “Ah, but here we are.” Baldur was smiling again as he moved in closer.

  A jolt of hope ran through Hel’s newly healed heart, but she twisted away from him. Hope had never served her well in the past. Hope is for fools.

  “Go back to Asgard, or whatever you’re calling it now,” she said thickly. “Leave me in peace. I have no need for you gods and your nonsense.”

  “There are no gods anymore, Hel. We’re all only men. And I was hoping,” he said, reaching out to take her hands in his, “that you’d come back with me.”