The Monstrous Child (10 page)

24

PUTRID TIME

HEN YOU HAVE ALL
the time in the world, how do you live knowing that each moment will pass exactly as the one before? And the one now. And the one after. Each slow drip of putrid time, on and on and on and on and on and on and –

How do you bear it? Even when you’re queen?

When you live in a stinking pitch-black world, a living
being imprisoned inside a massive grave mound filled with the howling dead, you become a thing more dead than living. If beauty annihilates thought, then I have nothing but thoughts.

I keep alive because of …
him
. Imagining a life with him. Living with Baldr in my mind. Our happiness. Our joy. We talk. We laugh. I remember when I heard him singing, his mellifluous voice. I remember his beautiful mouth.

This is my hideous, horrible life:

I slump on my High Seat. I lie on my damp bed. I visit my treasure room. I drink. I brood. I watch my slow servants.

HERE –

IS –

GANGLATI –

BRINGING –

ME –

A –

GLASS –

OF –

WINE.

NOW –

HE –

IS –

PICKING –

UP …

You get the idea. Wanna trade places?

Didn’t think so.

Once I watched the dead throwing a ball, using a seal’s head glowing with heat, with flying sparks and fat dripping like tallow. That I had never seen before and I was diverted.

Then they stopped, the head decayed, and nothingness resumed.

Sometimes the bodies take up drinking horns and hold contests. They pour mead into their gaping mouths,
which leaks through what flesh remains and dribbles onto the ground. The newly dead take time to shuck off such mortal pursuits. I watch them drink and drink, oblivious that their putrefying bodies and jutting ribs hold no liquid. They soon tire.

Bet you can’t wait to join us.

Every now and then, when I think I will go mad, I listen to the stories told by skalds, for the brief time they can remember their sagas, declaring ancient histories of mortals and gods and giants.

Even the dead cease their relentless drone when a newly arrived skald stands in the middle of my hall and tells how the world began or how Odin sacrificed an eye for wisdom (the dunce).

I don’t like poets, with their weasel words.

I’ve had enough of being described as monstrous – and worse. The mead of poetry sours when poured down my throat. Not surprising, since poetry was a gift to people from One-Eye. Any wonder I hate it? I will keep my own history. I can bind time better than any.

But, mostly, I hate. I have time – oh yes, more time than anyone, god or mortal – to stew. I am not time-fettered. The memories of the dead fade, until even their names vanish. But mine have sharpened. I live for vengeance. I breathe it in great gasping gulps. I dream of vengeance, feed on vengeance, let bile fill my veins. I drink poison, hoping others die.

I warm myself with plans and schemes. Will any giants avenge my kidnap and steal Thor’s splotchy, buck-toothed daughter, Thrud? Wouldn’t that serve old red-beard right? Or what about Freyja’s simpering Hnoss, with her fat legs and pouty lips? Let her try living in my mother’s cave for a bit. See how long she’d last …

And so my thoughts circle round and round.

But, more than that, so much more than that, night after night, year after year, century after century, I think about Baldr. If only I could see him again. My thoughts about him are infinite. I know that he loves me. I know that I love him. I’ve never loved anyone before. When I feel I am drowning in despair he is the one thing that
keeps me from hurling myself in Nidhogg’s way.

I lie on my dank bed and close my eyes, my pillow scrunching and crackling under my head. I think of Baldr’s beauty. His kindness. His loving eyes. The way he picked me up and spun me round. He has got under my skin and into my heart. I can shut out the misery of the dead next door and be alone with my thoughts. I pull the bed hangings tight across, and dream of love.

Baldr. My lovely Baldr. How can I lure him here? He needs to die. But gods don’t die. Maybe, just maybe, One-Eye will send him, seeking wisdom, and I’ll find a way to keep him. What a wonder that would be, a god in Hel. How the gods would suffer without him. How I would rejoice with him.

I need to cling to something, some small hope of happiness, of freedom, while I lie here rotting in my prison beneath the worlds.

I am low in spirits. I think I will visit Modgud.

25

MODGUD

ODGUD ISN’T A
friend
. I’m the Goddess of the Underworld; I have no friends. I don’t want any friends. I am fine by myself. I am cradled by hate and fury; I need no one. But, every millenia or so, I leave my hall and journey to Gjoll, the boundary river between the living and the dead, to see her.

The giantess always looks the same. She does not age,
does not grow taller. Time is still for her, as it is for all here. She is always pleased to see me. I think she is the only creature I have ever known who is.

We sit by the glowing bridge on the riverbank, watching the shadows. The ground is freezing and the wind moans over the blasted hills. Neither of us speaks. The dead still stream across, silently, a never-ending line of arrivals. The fog road, dotted with fire, the last vestiges of the world of the living, looks so close, and yet for me it could be a million miles away.

‘So how goes it?’ says Modgud. Her watchful eyes are tiny pinpricks of light.

I have no idea where she learns this language. So far as I know she never talks to the dead other than to ask their name and lineage. And yet she speaks words and phrases I have never heard.

‘My hall is filling,’ I say. ‘It’s awful.’

‘Tell me about it,’ says Modgud, sighing. ‘It’s a non-stop procession of corpses down here.’

‘So much for those whining poets singing
warnings that guests mustn’t overstay their welcome, as loved becomes loathed if they sit too long at another’s hearth.’

‘The dead don’t listen,’ says Modgud.

‘Once they find you, they stay forever,’ I say. ‘Hint all you like; they don’t budge. Yank ’em out, show ’em the door, they slip right back in.’

‘Why don’t you line every bench with red-hot pokers?’ says Modgud. She is smiling.

I grimace. ‘They’d still make themselves comfy.’

I’m finding it difficult to speak of why I’ve come back to Gjoll after so many winters have passed. What could I say? Instead I ask:

‘Why do you stay here? Why don’t you leave?’

Modgud looks astonished.

‘And go where?’

‘Anywhere,’ I say.

‘I can’t,’ says Modgud. ‘I’m the Warden of the Bridge.’

There was another long silence. We listened to the
pounding water and the wind-blown shades passing over the bridge.

‘Even if I could, where would I go?’ says Modgud.

‘Have you ever tried?’

Modgud’s salt-white face pales.

‘No!’

She looked around, as if we might be overheard.

‘OK. Once. Oh, I was terrified. That flames would consume me. That my body would crumble into dust. I’ve never been above. I’d like to see Midgard. Even just for a moment.’

‘Go on, then,’ I say. ‘I won’t tell. Who are you guarding this place from, anyway? You think the living are going to stage a mass invasion?’

Modgud’s face droops.

‘I can’t cross the bridge any more than you can.’

I’m not sorry. Who was it who said that misery loves company? They were right.

Modgud picks up a stone and lobs it into the raging river.

‘Why did you do that?’ I ask.

Modgud shrugs. ‘I like the
plop
sound.’

I pick up a small black rock. It feels smooth and heavy in my hands. It is good to touch something that isn’t dead, even if it isn’t alive. Something that doesn’t hold a death stench.

On impulse I hurl it into the river. The rock bounces and splashes before sinking in the torrent.

We sit on the steep bank and lob rocks into the water. I don’t understand this game, but the plop of the stones in the river is strangely soothing.

Plop.

Plop.

Plop.

Plop plop.

I could do this for nights.

Plop.

If the dead were startled to see their queen lobbing rocks into the water, they did not show it.

A shivering corpse meanders across the shining
bridge. Modgud drops her pebbles, holds up her arm and the spectre pauses.

‘Before you go further,’ she says, ‘your name and your lineage.’

‘I was Helgi, son of Sigurd the Abrupt,’ says the dead man.

Modgud nods.

‘Pass by,’ she says, lowering her gleaming arm.

The corpse vanishes into the vapour.

‘Slow night for once,’ she says, sitting down again beside me on the riverbank.

‘What news of the worlds above?’

Modgud shrugs.

‘Many warriors have passed here, more than usual. There is much fighting.’

The longing to say Baldr’s name out loud fills me.

I won’t say anything, I vow.

‘Have you ever been in love?’ I ask.

‘I don’t think so,’ says Modgud.

I wait.

But Modgud does not ask me.

Suddenly I feel that if I don’t speak his name I will burst.

‘There’s someone who loves me,’ I blurt. ‘And someone whom I love.’

Of course I didn’t say that. I hide my feelings, my true self. No one may see them.

But I want so much to say his name, to have his name fill my mouth.

‘I’m in love,’ I say. The words stick on my tongue like wet clay.

I instantly regret it. If I could recall the words and lock them back up I would.

‘What is love?’ says Modgud.

She’s asking
me?

‘Love is when you can’t think about anything except the one,’ I said. ‘It is aching with love-longing. It is to have no thoughts in your head but about them. What would they think, what would they like, why aren’t they here, who are they with, over and over until you are
driven mad and you would kill everyone in the world if it meant they lived.’

Modgud’s white-lashed eyes widen. She shakes her head.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Who would I love?’

And then it all flooded out. I told her everything. I’d been bursting to say his name. Baldr. Baldr. Baldr.

‘Even I have heard that name,’ says Modgud.

‘Is there any way – do you suppose I might – do you think I’ll ever see Baldr again?’

‘Why don’t you ask the seeress?’ said Modgud.

Seeress? Seeress?

I thought I had met everyone there was to meet down here.

‘What seeress? Where can I find her?’

‘Gods brought her body and buried her deep in that grave mound by your eastern door,’ said Modgud. ‘She remembers the age before the beginning of the worlds and can see far into the future.’

After all this time she mentions a seeress? I could
not believe I’d been down here for so long and had not known that she existed.

‘Actually it’s best to leave her be: seeresses hate being disturbed,’ said Modgud. ‘Especially this one.’

What did I care what a long-dead seeress liked or didn’t like? She could tell me what my future held. What’s the point of being queen if you can’t have your own way?