The Monstrous Child (2 page)

3

I AM NAMED

OU STILL WITH ME
? Good. Hang in there – it’s worth the journey. Just think of all those foolish mortals who try to unearth the secrets of the dead, and lucky you – you get them without risking your life sneaking down beneath the World Tree before your days and deeds are finished.

So where was I? I’m born, I’m naked, I’m lying on the
freezing ground looking up into frightened faces. I’m cold and angry. All around me I hear wailing. But I’m quiet. Even then, I wasn’t one to make a fuss. There’s an awful smell, sweet and foul.

The wolf cub sniffed me, then snarled. I tried to move my legs, my black feeble legs, which barely budge, my hands curled into red fists. Mum kicked him away. I doubt I looked good enough to eat, but with Fen you never knew.

Fen howled. Hard to believe, but he was like a puppy then. A puppy with big, slashing teeth, but still … You could pretend he was just playing. That he didn’t mean it when he ripped open your face.

My other brother, Jormungand, slithered over to me and hissed. He always scared me, my brother the snake. Even now those words are horrible to write … my brother the snake.

Mum, screaming, kicks him away too. Stomp on his head, Mum! Go on, you can do it. That would have saved so much fuss and bother. But no. Jor lands
smack on the table. Bowls and cups and drinking horns fly everywhere. Fenrir snarls at Jor, hackles up, jaws dripping. Jor bares his fangs, spitting poison. The two of them, always spitting and fighting. Always eyeing me, as if I were a hunk of carrion they’d like to devour.

Have you gathered how much I hate my brothers?

Hiss. Growl. Hiss. Growl. Hiss. Growl. Amazing I learned to talk, really, with the conversation that went on around me.

Hello! Is no one going to pick me up?

Nope. Seems not.

I remember the cave filling with visitors. They were frosty and snow-covered, stamping their feet and shaking out their sleet-heavy cloaks, spraying slush everywhere. Someone, not Mum, finally lifted me with their icy chapped hands and I was swaddled in furs, only my top half on show. My mother huddled in the corner, rocking back and forth on her haunches.

‘Angrboda. What a pretty baby.’

Oh, how nice. Who said that?

Great. It’s Dad’s brother. My
blind
uncle, Helblindi. Compliments from a blind god. Brilliant. He’s standing next to my father, Loki (hi, Dad! Glad you could make the party), who is definitely wishing he wasn’t here and pretending he has nothing to do with any of this.

My mother’s grey eyes flash. She’s fierce, my mother. You do not want to mess with her.

‘Unwrap it,’ she says. Pokes me with a stick.

The cave is suddenly silent.

A troll picks at my swaddling with her flabby hand and holds up a torch. I hear her suck in her breath and step back. The troll behind her screams. Another swaybacked ogre, his nose broken with huge twisted knots like the horns of old rams, skulks off on his bent knees.

What? Even a
troll
recoils from me?

Who are you, you ugly troll, to scream at the sight of me? Am I so hideous, so revolting, that the foulest creatures alive can’t bear to look? What am I?

Loki turns away. ‘Kill it,’ he says.

‘You let the others live. Why start now?’ says Uncle.

‘It’s half corpse,’ says Dad.

‘She’s a goddess. She won’t die easily,’ says Uncle.

Dad hesitates. I start to cry.

Can we just pause here for a minute? My dad wants me killed. And Mum isn’t even lifting her head. It’s the father’s choice, if the baby lives or dies. But come on, Mum. Defend me. Protect me.

No? Nothing?

I try to kick off the rest of my swaddling. Why don’t my legs obey me? They feel weak and wavery, as if they are part of me, but somehow not.

‘Have it your own way,’ says Dad.

Yay. I get to live. I seem to be the only one who’s happy about this.

My mother raises her head. She doesn’t touch me.

Loki shrugs and sprinkles water on me. My uncle names me Hel. It means
to cover
. Stupid name, but believe me it could have been so much worse. I could have been called Blood Hair, or Dung Heap, or Mud Face. Giants don’t give great names. My own mother
Angrboda’s name means
distress-bringer
. What was my grandpa thinking? Who’d name their own wee girl
Distress-Bringer
and bury anguish in her name? It’s almost as if you’re asking for trouble. You’re sprinkling the naming water on the screaming brat, and calling on the Fates to bring misery. Isn’t there enough sorrow in the worlds without seeking it? You’re shaking your fists at the Fates and shouting, ‘Yoo hoo, ladies, look down, do your worst.’

And boy did they ever.

But I am leaping ahead. It’s hard for me to think in a line like you fate-bound ones.

Dad didn’t lift me on his knee after he sprinkled water on me and Uncle spoke my name. There was a murmuring. Mum snatched me instead.

Look, Mum! No claws or scales. Be grateful for what you have.

‘Let’s see it again,’ said Dad.

Again with the
it
.

Angrboda unwrapped me.

‘Uhhh,’ he said, recoiling. He held his nose. ‘Disgusting.’

Mum dipped her drinking horn into Hymir’s brewing cauldron, which he had supplied for my birth feast, and hurled the mead in his face.

‘Leave me and the monsters.’

Dad grabbed her hair.

‘I’ll leave when I’m ready.’

Mum shook herself free. ‘She’s yours,’ she hissed. ‘Like it or not.’

4

WHO HASN'T MET A GIANT WITH THREE HEADS?

OTUNHEIM, MY FROST
world, lies east of Asgard. Girdled with snow and sleet and ice, the wind roars, whipping the blasted trees and piling up snow in drifts against the cliffs. My iron-grey home.

If only our mountain realm had been further out of reach of the slippery gods, I might have been safer. But it was as if they couldn't leave us alone. Thor came to bash
in our heads with his murderous hammer; others came to steal our gold. (We create nothing from precious ore, that's what dwarves are for, but we like its glitter and shine, the cool weight in our hands.)

The gods have always invaded our land seeking wisdom or looking for love. Yeah, you heard me. Can we smash right now the myth that giants are all hideous, ignorant brutes? Anyone who
thinks
giants are the lowest of the low has been spending too much time believing the lying, thieving gods.

Giants lived countless winters before the gods raised up the corners of the earth and formed the heavens. We witnessed what happened, and we kept the sacred lore. Where do you think the gods went to get their knowledge of the past and the future?

Yup. From us.

Where did One-Eyed Odin get his skill in poetry? No prizes – that smooth-tongued, deceiving god STOLE THE MEAD OF POETRY FROM GIANTS! Obviously we weren't using it – we had better things to do than
spew poetry – but it was ours. A few drops spilled as One-Eye made his cowardly escape, from which mortals, unfortunately, learned to compose their twanging verses, hoping for fame. One of the absurd reasons gods think they're so much better than giants is that One-Eye bores everyone senseless reciting great screeds of the stuff. Even mortals get in on the act, yowling and rhyming away.

Poetry. What a waste of time. And
you
don't have time to waste, even if I have an eternityful.

You mortals have so many wrong ideas about giants. For some reason you think
all
giants are gigantic.

Hello?

The
old
ones from whom we get our name were huge. The ones who created the mountains by hurling rocks, and islands when they dropped earth from their aprons while fording the seas. But most of us are the same stature as the gods.

Taller than mortals, obviously, but that's it.

Nor are we all thick.

There are brainless giants and clever giants. What? In which group am I? One thing I will say for Loki's children, we didn't get whacked with the stupid stick. Whereas the ugly stick – yes, I'd say I was beaten long and hard with it.

True, we mountain-dwellers, we rock-dwellers, weren't all specimens of beauty. The god Tyr's granny was a giantess with 900 heads. So what? It happens. (He escaped lightly, inheriting just the one.) And who hasn't met a giant with three or six heads? But we weren't
all
hideous and deformed brutes, whatever the gods say. We weren't all fire demons and flesh-eating monsters. My mother was beautiful. You think Dad would've hightailed after some hag?

Forgive me for getting a little overheated there. Few things make me angry any more. But I don't like hearing my ancestors insulted and I can't abide the lies.

The victor writes the saga.

Remember that.

5

UNWRAP THE BANDAGES

S A CHILD I NEVER
smiled. Ever. Or laughed. Not even when Fen got up on his hind legs and danced before biting a rat in half.

What exactly did I have to smile about?

I once heard a story about a rich giantess who would only marry the giant who made her laugh. She’d chop off the heads of the ones who didn’t. That would be me, surrounded by skulls.

My nature is sombre and fierce. That’s who I am, not some jolly skipping elf, beaming and twining daisies to crown my golden locks. My hair is silver, by the way. Coiling and curling past my shoulders. Strong like a fishing line. My hair is the only part of me others want to pat and pull. I hate being touched so no one dares, but I can see it in their faces. I tried to comb it once, with my mother’s comb, and the walrus ivory splintered. She walloped me for that. Maybe Dad gave her the comb (unlikely – Dad wasn’t exactly lavish with gifts). I can’t see why she made such a fuss. I thought, Why do you beat me? Get another comb. Who cares, it’s just a comb. She’s the mother of a snake and a wolf and a half-corpse, you’d think she’d have more serious stuff to get upset about.

I rarely went outside. I hated being shouted at as I lurched around on my corpse legs, wind-blown and bent over in the hail, my ice-white hair shrouding my face, hoping no one would notice me.

Fat chance.

‘Aren’t you the lovely one?’ said a two-headed troll, smacking his rubbery lips.

Compliments from a troll.

It was easier just to stay hidden in our cave.

When I say ‘cave’, I’m exaggerating. Did you imagine I lived in a dank pit like some ogre? Underground like a dwarf in a furnace? Ha. Our cave was more like a great hall than some low hole. Remember who’s talking to you. Hel. I’m a goddess.

Unfortunately (a word bound to me with iron fetters), wherever I shuffle about in our cave the smell hits me. Heavy. Foul. Overlaid with the perfume of rancid wet dog (thanks, Fen) and anything noxious and maggotty he’d dragged home from Ironwood on which to snack.

And then, of course, there was me. I brought my own stink with me wherever I went. We kept a smoking lamp, filled with oils, to mask the odour but it never did.

We’ve been avoiding the subject. Let’s take a look at my bottom half, shall we? You know you want to. Go on, have a good gape at my carrion legs. I’ll lift up my furs
and unwrap the bandages, set aside the rosemary and mint I use to try to hide my stench. What colour will my twisted legs be today? How much more decayed the flesh? They moulder and stink, blotched with gangrene. And yet they never rot away: corpse legs suspended in life. My immortal flesh never peels off. It just stays attached, reeking and putrefying.

And what about my face? What about it? I have two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Do you really think anyone gets close enough to me to take a second look? One whiff and they’re off.

Seen enough? Smelled enough?

Sometimes I dream my legs are whole. I run, or fly, I move gracefully through the worlds. Then I wake and I’m back to my monstrous self, jerking like a cart with a broken wheel. Walking is hard for me. I spend a lot of time lying on my mat or sitting on a cushioned chair, a bearskin pulled over my legs. I watch the slaves gut fish and hang it to dry on racks by the fire. (Yes, of course we had slaves. We weren’t savages. They fetched firewood
and water, fed and cleaned the animals, made butter and cheese, brewed ale and mead. Occasionally one of them would unwrap my bandages and wrap my corpse legs in fresh ones – as if new cloth could make any difference.)

My father visits every so often, but then I’m banished immediately. He picks Fen up by the scruff of his neck and hurls him out of the cave. Jor slithers away before he can be caught. I move towards him –

‘Go away! You stink of death. My gods,’ he’d yell, before sweeping my mother up in his arms. Mum is kinder when Dad’s not around. When he is, I might as well be a fish bone.

I remember huddling on the floor while Mum and Dad screamed and hurled benches and platters. Once Dad smashed a plate of food to the floor, which no one touched for nights. Even Fen left it alone. And I thought,
Just go away, Dad. We don’t need you. Just go away
.

When they fought, it was easier for Fen and Jor to scuttle out. I couldn’t really move, so I hid, made myself small. Dad cursed Mum for breeding monsters.
She cursed him for siring us. ‘Trolls take you!’ they screeched at each other.

I would take cover under a bench, humming oh so quietly to myself, sending my thoughts far away. I’d heard that two of the goddesses had falcon capes that gave them wings to fly and I wished with all my heart I had one too.

When it was just Mum and us, which was more and more often, what can I say? Once she made a rattle of bones for me. I clacked them together a few times, more in shock because I’d been given a toy. Then I dropped it and Fen chomped it up. Mum never made me another. Actually, I didn’t need any noisemakers. What with the hissing and the howling and the fighting and the shouting, there was enough noise to fill the cave without me adding a few rattles of my own.

I’ve heard there are parents who smother their children with love. Give them the choicest tidbits. Wrap them in the softest furs. Tickle them under the chin and call them ‘dumpling’ and ‘honey lamb’.

Ugh. I can’t imagine that.