The Monstrous Child (6 page)

16

QUEEN OF THE DEAD

TUMBLED INTO THE
dark and huddled within its folds. Murky black. Mist. Ice. The stink of sulphur. Did I lie stunned and shocked on the clammy rocks for hours, nights, weeks, years? Who knows? Time means nothing to me. I fell out of time long ago.

I’d always been lost between worlds and never more
than now. Half alive. Half dead. Half goddess. Half giant. And now I was trapped in Niflheim, the ancient fog world beneath the worlds. A living queen presiding over the dead: that was One-Eye’s cruel decree. I howled like a wolf pack, screaming at my bad fate, hurling curses at One-Eye and the merciless gods until my throat was parched and all I could do was choke and rasp. Remember, I was only a child. I was no more than fourteen winters old. They entombed a living child in a gigantic grave mound. I didn’t think about Jor trapped beneath the waves, or Fen raging in his fetters, chained to a boulder deep underground. All of us monstrous children, each in our own prison, waiting for the doom of the gods and our deadly revenge.

If I am in a charitable mood – which is rare, but when I am I think,
If I knew that someone or something was out to kill me, I’d do whatever I had to do to stop them
.’

So, fair enough, do what you want with my evil brothers. But I wasn’t out to kill anyone. The Fates said
nothing about
me
. There was no prophesy. No threat.
SO WHY WAS I THROWN DOWN HERE?
What danger did I pose?

None.

Yet the gods feared me. The great gods, so scared of a crippled girl that they had to exile her below the worlds.

One-Eye had clearly said Niflheim. That I’d reign over the dead. Just what I’d always wanted, to rule the fateless. I mean, who wouldn’t long to spend their eternal life hanging out with corpses in a land of perpetual winter’s night? I’m to be a queen. But of whom? Odin said
people
. What are people? I had never seen or heard of such creatures. Whatever they were, I was ordered to be their host. What did that mean? Provide canapés and nibbles, wheel out a welcome feast? Would I be managing a zoo filled with ghostly beasts and headless trolls?

And then I thought,
Where are all these decomposing guests, anyway?

I peered through the swirling death mist. I was
surrounded by sheer cliffs and hills of dizzying steepness. Above me, no sky, just the spreading roots of Yggdrasil, the ash tree, whose leafy top branches I’d seen in Asgard. I felt as if I were in some claggy cave, but more dismal than any cave I’d ever known. And so cold. Colder than Ironwood. The icy air stung my throat. It was like breathing knives. I opened my clenched hands, and black sands etched with silver poured from my fists.

All around me burned fires, hissing and spitting in the gloom, strange fires that gave no heat but offered pinpricks of light. The noise was terrible: moaning winds, tumbling rocks, lava spurting high above islands dotting a boiling river studded with ice. I covered my ears while the ancient fog world belched, steam shrieking as it burst from fissures in the rocks into the fetid air. For once, the toxic smell wasn’t me.

From somewhere far, far away I heard the rumble of water. A waterfall?

Why hadn’t I listened when giants told tales of how
Niflheim existed long before the worlds were created? I knew nothing about it. I’m an immortal goddess – what did I care where mortal things went when they died?

I couldn’t take in the full horror of my vicious fate, the wretched outcome of my bad blood. Yet I, guilty of nothing, was banished to this storm-wracked world. I would never see the sun or the moon again. I would never smell anything fresh or sweet. I would never feel warm. I would putrefy here.

I would never see Baldr again.

I sat on the rocks and cried. I only stopped when the far-off howls of a dog joined my shrieks.

I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. But the dog sounded unearthly, frightening, a wolf of Ironwood, and I didn’t want to be caught in the open like this.

I crept away on my hands and knees through the scouring sleet, feeling my way along the cliffs. I pushed through the blackness, like wading into curtains of squashed flies. Eventually I found a cave and crawled
inside. I crouched against the slimy walls and huddled there, bellowing my hate for One-Eye and the gods. The cave – a dank, fumy hole – echoed my wails back to me till I was surrounded by sobs. Stench seeped like silt into every crevasse.

Was this cesspit to be my home? Never. Anywhere had to be better than this despairing place.

And then another thought struck me: maybe I could discover a way out, a way back to the world of the living.

Yes! The dead arrived from somewhere. If I could find that fog road, or that sea on which they sailed, I could go back to the light. Not to my mother who was probably dancing with joy that she was rid of me. Dear old Dad certainly didn’t want me. But I’d seek somewhere out of sight so even all-seeing One-Eye wouldn’t uncover me. I’m clever, my father’s daughter. I know how to hide. I was alive and the land of the dead was no place for me.

One-Eye had banished me to rule here, but his decree didn’t say I had to
stay
here, did it? Kings and queens travel. One-Eye was always slipping out of Asgard.

I had to escape.

I shuffled through a deep valley towards the sound of water, sidestepping chasms and bogs. I groped my way through the throttling blackness, trying to breathe despite the choking mist, frost crunching under my feet. I passed sulphur lakes, boiling springs, foaming torrents crackling with ice. The only light came from the occasional spurts of flames. And always precipices, fumes, cold and –

Oh, enough local colour. I’m boring myself. Frankly, if you’ve seen one sulphurous pit, hideous precipice and poisonous, hissing, foaming river you’ve seen them all. When it’s your turn to travel down the lonely fog road, you can describe its horrors to your heart’s content.

I followed the sound of water, as far as I could go. My robes were damp and heavy with sleet. I hoped to find a ship, something that would float me out of this nightmare. The noxious air was growing thick and poisonous. I appeared to be stumbling into a squelching pit. I hesitated, not sure whether to keep going or to retrace my steps.

And then I heard hissing.

I froze.

17

DRAGON

OILED ROUND AN
enormous tree root, half in and half out of a seething swamp, was a dragon. It gnawed viciously at the tree roots, which shuddered as if they were alive.

The dragon stopped chewing. He swung his heavy head and opened his mouth, thrashing towards me, splattering me with freezing water.

‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ I screamed. An avalanche of boulders crashed onto his heaving body and sand swirled into his lava eyes.

The dragon stopped. He threw his head wildly about, blinking and shaking. I stood back behind the largest boulder, which had rolled in front of me. I needed to put something, anything, however small, between us.

He sniffed.

‘You’re a corpse,’ he rasped. ‘And not a corpse.’

‘I’m your queen,’ I shrieked. ‘Queen of Niflheim. You will die horribly if you touch me.’

The dragon shook his feathered head, his eyes squeezed shut.

‘And I am Nidhogg!’ bellowed the monster. His breath was venomous and rank. ‘I’m sick of gnawing on tree roots. I want real food. I want corpses. Feed me.’

‘You’ll have your corpses soon enough,’ I said.

‘Make sure you send them here,’ roared the dragon. He curled back around Yggdrasil’s roots and savagely bit them.

‘Never leave this place,’ I ordered.

Nidhogg lowered his gleaming head.

‘Keep me fed. I won’t budge,’ he hissed, blasting me with his poisonous breath.

I crept away from the deepest part of Niflheim, the gruesome sound of the dragon’s crunching gradually fading, and headed upwards, feeling my way slowly through the pitch dark. It was a long while before my heart stopped thudding. What other monsters were lying in wait for me in this infernal place?

Another thought struck me. The boulders that had rained on Nidhogg, and the sand that had blinded him. Where had they come from?

But there was no one to answer me.

My feet kept tripping over the slippery rocks as I clawed my way upwards through the gloom out of Nidhogg’s venomous valley.

‘Get out of my way!’ I screamed, stumbling over a rock for the millionth time and falling in the slimy ooze.

The rock immediately rolled off the path into the crevasse below, landing in the churning river with a
distant
plock
.

Feeling foolish, and for a moment glad no one was here to witness my idiocy, I ordered a boulder to roll.

It did.

Another to stack itself on top of another.

It did.

I appeared to have power here to command stones.

I made rock after rock smash against the cliffs, screaming and laughing as they splintered and cracked. Shards rained down, splashing into the water below. I punched the air, shrieking, clenching my fists.

I had power.
I
had power. I felt the fiercest joy. I could destroy anyone or anything that threatened me.

And I would. Fate, for once, had smiled on me.

At the bottom of the next valley I came upon the river. It was fast-flowing, filled with chunks of ice, crashing and hurtling against one another. Frost rose from the grey water.

And then I saw I wasn’t alone.