The Monstrous Child (18 page)

41

RAGNAROK: THE DOOM OF THE GODS

HAVE BEEN ASLEEP
. I have been asleep as long as time. And then I wake. A poem an ancient skald recited to me long ago echoes in my head as I feel the worlds shifting.

Corpses pour down from Midgard, tsunamis of the dead. I let them speak. An avalanche of frantic ghosts, jabbering about hard frosts, winds, floods, drifting snow. Biting winters. So much slaughter, so many wars. Mountains crumbling and crashing down, seas gushing forth and spewing over the lands.

I dare not hope.

I hear the battle horn booming, echoing through the worlds.

I hear three cocks crow. One in Asgard. One in
Jotunheim. And one in Niflheim, rust red, rousing the gods, the giants, and the dead to battle, and I know the End of Days is here.

The End of Days.

I shout for my servants. I haven’t spoken for so long that I have no voice.

The world tree Yggdrasil shudders and shakes, then a jagged crack like a thunderbolt wrenches apart the wailing tree while the worlds quake and all bonds break.

I hear Fen howl in victory as his fetters snap. I hear Jor thrashing out of the overflowing ocean, blowing poison through the air and the water, hear the waves rear up to the skies and flood Midgard as Jor writhes in his fury, splashing venom.

All the monsters, the forces of chaos, are let loose. The dragon crawls out of the swamp, tail whipping, hungry for blood.

My dog, Garm, the bellowing untrainable wolf-dog, roars. Garm, who’d rip out my heart given the chance. I think,
he is barking to save me, to make me leave, to
remind me, GO GO. Get out before the flames
. I hear his chains snapping, his mad howling echoing as he races from his cave to join the battle.

The walls of my hall start to fissure and crack. Fire blazes out of Surt’s kingdom as the giant demon rides forth, Asgard-bound, the blast of scorching smoke and the crackle of embers everywhere in his burning wake.

I shout again for my servants. Still no one comes.

I must go. It’s happening and I’m not ready.

I drag my useless legs into the shaking hall. No restless ghosts. No hissing snakes. Just the roar of walls toppling and crashing around me, of benches sliding and tables splitting. My fortress walls collapse; my great iron gates shriek as they clatter to the ashy ground.

I catch a glimpse of Baldr, Nanna, as they flee.

Baldr.

Hel has emptied. I see the last to leave, my seeress mother, rising from her grave mound to join the army of the dead.

I’ve been left behind.

The dead have gone, mad for vengeance. The corpses over whom I reigned for so long have obeyed the cock’s summons and sailed off in a ship made from dead men’s nails to join the spear-clash in Asgard as the gods make their final futile stand.

Fen’s jaws will gape so wide they will touch both the heavens and the earth. He will swallow One-Eye with those jaws before Odin’s son Vidar rips him in two. I suddenly remember Vidar trying to play with Fen in Asgard.

I have outlived the one who banished me to Niflheim.

My banishment is over.

But I don’t have time to gloat as my quaking kingdom dissolves around me.

I stagger through Eljudnir’s ruins, stepping through the rubble and smashed stones and the crushed bodies of snakes. Great billowing clouds of savage smoke engulf me.

Niflheim has become a furnace. I smell burning cinders, watch ash raining down like clouds of flaking skin.

I am free to go. I am free to go.

I leave everything.

Soot covers the precipices and valleys, fluttering like a shower of burnt stars. I’m walking through the funeral pyre of my world.

I approach the Echoing Bridge, still glowing in the smoky gloom, but glowing with embers now, as a stream of molton gold rains into the river below. Modgud isn’t there. She’s vanished, along with everyone else. Modgud. I’d forgotten about her. It’s strange how someone living can just fade from your mind, as if they’ve withered and died.

The river hisses and sparks. The water is alight, and a wall of fire blocks the fog road.

I wait a moment on my side, because I want to hold the thought of freedom in my mind. Just in case I’m wrong, and One-Eye’s magic outlives his death and I remain trapped here.

I am too scared to move. What if –

I’m like a hawk freed from a cage, a wolf cub freed from a trap. I can’t believe the door is open; I want to
stay and bite.

I put out my hand and touch the glowing railing. It’s hot, so hot. But I’ve touched it.

And nothing holds me back as I set my foot on the smoking bridge for the first time. My stumbling steps stomp and echo. I can’t breathe.

I quicken my pace until I am lurching across. I’m suddenly frightened that I won’t make it. I totter, grip the melting railings to heave myself over. I’ve never felt such panic. If Nidhogg were tracking me, I don’t think I could have felt more fear.

Leaping flames barricade the exit, hissing and snapping. I won’t be stopped: I walk through them.

My legs are on fire.

And then I reach through the blaze onto the other side, gasping and choking. I beat down the flames, roll on the ground.

I’ve escaped.

The long fog road back to the world of the living lies before me.

I don’t look back. I have a memory of someone who looked behind him and … and …

The memory is gone.
Too bad for him
, I think.

I stumble up the fog road, climbing through the deepest, darkest valley, now fire, now ice, pockets of rustling embers lighting my path. My feet slosh through the ash like melted snow.

There’s no rush. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t run. There’s a whooshing in my ears, and I realise it’s silence. The empty burnt-out kingdom of death falls behind me with every step.

Tears keep springing to my eyes, and I wipe them away. My legs tingle and ache. I am not used to movement. But I won’t stop. The stink of burning keeps wafting up, even here.

My enemies are all dead. What I longed for, hoped for, waited for, has happened.

How do I feel?

Empty.

I’ve spent an eternity hating. I am bitter and toxic
with hatred. I search for the hate within myself, and I find it has gone. I start to cry. I never, ever, cry. Not since the first moments when I arrived in Niflheim, not since Baldr rejected me. But now that I have started, it’s as if all the tears that have been dammed up inside me are pouring out.

Great gulping sobs burst from my belly.

I have lived an eternity of hating, and for what? Hate has ruled me, gnawed me. I spent eternity lying on a stinking bed. Sunk into myself, plotting and moaning and … dying. The greatest skalds and poets and musicians and thinkers were mine and what did I do? Nothing. I bewailed my bad fate. I loved so desperately, so terribly, and I let that love devour me.

Where did all that love go? All that hate?

What was I thinking?

I am two halves, life and death. And I chose death.

I thought it was love that moved me. Whatever I felt wasn’t love. I know that now.

42

BRAVE NEW WORLD

LOST COUNT OF
the nights I spent struggling up the fog road. One of your years is my eye-blink. Time is different for me. Always was. Always will be.

What will I find when I finally reach the top? Would Midgard be as burnt as Niflheim?

Will there be a sun? A moon? Am I passing from one grave mound into another?

I have been walking through pitch dark. Even with my goddess eyes, I can barely see one foot in front. Occasional sparks illuminate the road, like dying stars.

And then it seems to me that I can see two feet ahead. Then three, then four.

The closer I get to the top the more light I see. Faint glimmers of soft, shining light.

A new sun has risen to replace the old.

I heave my body faster and trip over Garm’s broken chains, rusting on the ground. I pick myself up and press on until I emerge at last from the cave into sunshine. Great golden sheets of sunshine.

My legs buckle, and I collapse, drunk with light.

I breathe fresh air, so sweet in my graveyard lungs. I breathe and breathe as if I cannot get enough. I’m dizzy with air, intoxicated by its crisp tang. Everywhere there are signs of fire and flood: scorched earth, blasted and toppled trees, seaweed, dead fish, shells, driftwood. And yet there are flashes of green, tiny buttons of moss pushing their way out of the
blackened ground. And red poppies, flecked with ash. In the distance I see the careless ocean, retreated back to its basin.

I sit up, stretch out my shaking legs, lift my face to the red-orange sky. Floating above the acrid reek of burning is the scent of new grass. And –

Something has changed.

I don’t smell me.

My legs are still withered, but I don’t stink any more. And beneath the charred skin I see – a flash of pink.

Now I smile.

I am the last of the giants. I am the last of the gods. I am destruction and creation, death and life. Daughter of a giant. Daughter of a god.

Death has ambushed everyone else. The Nine Worlds are empty.

A shadow crosses the sky. I look up and see the shining serpent, Nidhogg, flying over the plain, carrying corpses from the Last Battle.

I’ll deal with him.

His corpse days are done.

In fact, I think death is done. I will banish death. I am the last goddess and it’s down to me to remake the world.

The old gods didn’t know how to create a better world. They couldn’t change their story.

Can I?

I don’t know. But I can do better than One-Eye. I won’t be hurling
anyone
into Niflheim for a start.

Asgard is burnt-out, empty, corpse-strewn, and I don’t want to live there. I am a mountain-dweller, and that’s where I’ll go.

I will strive to do better with my new world. I have never created anything but I can try.

I see two fallen trees, an ash and an elm, their roots ripped from the earth. I raise them, first one, then the other, and slowly, clumsily, begin to carve.