Giants of the Frost (9 page)

Vidar had returned from Loki's late in the morning. He had never been more attractive, with a wild gleam in his dark eyes, a flush of color high on his cheeks. Clearly, he had decided to go to Midgard and to ask Loki for assistance. She longed to know what attracted him to the mortal world. His restlessness had started around the time she had seen him drawing runes in the magical water of Sjáfjord. He had seen something there, something that beckoned him compellingly enough to put his trust in Loki. Now she watched Vidar from behind her door. He sat by the fire, carving a small piece of wood. His expert hands were concentrated on the task, but his eyes told another story. He was daydreaming. She watched his fingers move, the tendons in his wrists, and a swelling of tenderness and desire for him caught her breath.

"Aud, I can feel your eyes on me," he said, not looking up. "Is something wrong?"

"No, no." She stepped out of her room and hovered uncertainly near him. "I had hoped for a day to myself. To walk…" She gestured toward the west.

He turned from his work and smiled at her. "Of course, Aud. Take your time. Gather your thoughts." Aud slipped on her shoes and pinned on her cloak. She hesitated near the door to the cool outside and glanced back. He had returned his attention to his carving. She could see now what it was: a bird, curved over itself to grasp its own K claws in its beak. Beautiful work, lovingly rendered. Was it a gift for her? A flutter of excitement stole over her. He looked up again, saw her gaze and hid the carving under his sleeve. "Go on. Enjoy your day."

"Do you never wonder, Vidar, where I go?"

With a patient sigh, Vidar put his work aside and turned to her. "Aud, I have given you every reason in the past few years to trust me. You've been sentenced into my service, but I feel no need to belittle you, to mistreat you, or interfere in your affairs. I am happy for you to take a day for yourself and I don't mind how you spend it."

Aud moved forward and knelt before him. "Yes, yes. You're always kind and respectful. But do you not
wonder
where I go and what I do?" She wanted to ask, "Do you not think of me when I am away?"

"You head west," Vidar said, his dark eyes growing soft. "I have seen you. You head toward Vanaheim." He stood, drawing her to her feet. "Go, Aud. I will enjoy the solitude." He led her toward the door and ushered her into the cold bright morning and on her way. So he thought she went to Vanaheim. He knew she was forbidden to return to her own land, so perhaps he imagined she lingered pitifully on the border. She trudged up the slope. He was partially right in that her destination was the border of Asgard and Vanaheim, but not so that she might gaze longingly at her homeland. Her destination was the World Tree. In truth, if Vidar did ask about her destination, she would have to lie. The Norns had been very particular about secrecy.

Last night's rain had cleared, the sky rinsed to pale blue. The World Tree was a three-hour trek west from Gammaldal, across the plains and through the thick pines, then winding up farther and farther into the drenched mountain passes and across the plateau of grey volcanic rock where only tardy tufts of yellow grass grew.

In time, she could see it, an ancient sentinel rising from the next valley. A vast ash tree, half a mile high, with twisted black branches that sent sinister, whispering shadows to the west into Vanaheim, her own home; to the east into Asgard; to the north into the islands of Jotunheim and the realms of the dead; to the south into the elven lands where Helgi's father lived. The tree's leafless boughs bent to the wind, and its labyrinthine roots snaked in and out of the earth as though injecting it with poison. Aud took a breath on the grassy verge, then set her foot upon the first of the three hundred and thirty-three wide stone steps that led down to the base of the tree. How she despised each of those steps on her return, ascending relentlessly, until her heart pumped so hard it pressed her ribs.

She descended in silent contemplation. The Norns expected her to return to them two or three times in a season bringing news and stories and gifts from the outside world. In her apron she had a collection of flowers she had dried, some river stones she had polished and a hair clasp she had carved under Vidar's tutelage. Above her, the giant branches swayed, dimming the sunlight to eerie shadows. The tree was ancient and monstrous, stubborn and eternal. Between two of the enormous black roots, she spied the tiny opening and entered the tree, leaving the pale sky behind her.

Aud knew the dark underground maze by feel. Her eyes adjusted to the absence of light, but there was little to see. Twisting passages weaved amongst the roots, the earth and stone and plant matter. No passage was a consistent height or width: some narrowed so tight that Aud had to turn sideways to fit, some so low that she had to walk bent until her back ached. Aud could not estimate how long the journey took to the abode of the Norns; each time it seemed longer, the return shorter. But, winding through the dim passages, she never once faltered on her route. It was burned into her mind like memories of ill times.

Eventually, a faint glimmer of light greeted her eyes. She moved silently up the tunnel and peered around the vast arc of a tree root into the warm grotto that the Norns called home. The room was dim, lit only by the glimmering threads with which they spun and wove. They were identical triplets. Aud could only distinguish between them by the tasks they performed. Closest to the door was Skuld, who, with a distaff clamped between her knees, pulled thread from the ground and spun it. Next was Verda, who picked up Skuld's threads and wove them onto a loom. Farthest away was Urd, who untied the cloth at the crossbeam of Verda's loom, unraveled it and cast the thread, hand over hand, into the gloom beyond their cave. Aud didn't know where the thread came from nor where it went after they had finished with it. It belonged to the World Tree and was as black as the maze around it, unless one of the Norns touched it, when it became dazzlingly rainbow-bright. In the thread were the fates of all men; Skuld worked the future, Verda the present, and Urd the past.

"Look, look, it's Aud," Verda said, glancing up with a smile. Her hands kept flying over the thread, supernaturally fast and nimble. All of them had pale white fingers, which seemed to be jointed in every direction.

"Aud, what have you brought us?" called Urd, dropping her thread.

"Always too quick to drop your work, sister," said Skuld, running a thread expertly between her fingers. Aud had once held a length of their thread in her own fingers. She couldn't read it as they could, but she had tried to separate it into strands, only to find that the strands separated into more strands and so on into vanishing infinity.

Urd shuffled to a corner and found the stump of a deformed candle. She lit it and approached Aud.

"What do you have for us?" she asked.

The other two were there a moment later, their pale red hair glistening in the candlelight, their blinking blue eyes focused on her. Once, they must have been great beauties, with broad cheeks and almond eyes and full lips. Now they were shriveled by age and made pallid by confinement underground. Pleasure came vicariously, through reading the threads of other people's fates.

Aud held out the gifts she had brought them. "Here, sisters, some treasures from the outside world for you."

"Ooh, treasures," Urd cried.

"I'll have that."

"No, me!"

As their wormlike fingers picked at Aud's hands, they squabbled over the flowers and stones and nearly came to blows over the hair clasp. Eventually they sorted out what belonged to whom, and Urd and Skuld settled back to work. Verda, the Norn with whom Aud had made her bargain five years earlier, smiled at her in the dim light. "I suppose you want your treat now?"

"Yes, I do," Aud said. Whenever this moment approached, a deep longing like an ocean current possessed her.

"Here, then," Verda said, reaching into her pocket for a round brooch of rock crystal set in silver. It had once belonged to Aud. "Here's your boy."

Aud reached for the brooch greedily and gazed into it. Out of cloudy shadows, a vision formed. Helgi. He bent over a puddle with a toy boat. Her breath twisted up in her breast; she had to remind herself to exhale. He couldn't hear her, but she said his name anyway. "Helgi. My dear Helgi." After Aud's bargain with the Norns, Verda had enchanted the brooch so that Helgi would always be visible within, then withheld it so that Aud would never tell where they lived. The Norns protected their privacy with good reason.

Annies of people from Asgard and Vanaheim would be on their doorstep in a second, asking them to change this or that about their lives. The Norns' work would be slowed, time would begin to lose its shape, fate would begin to fall apart.

Aud devoured Helgi with hungry eyes: his honeyed skin and his long lashes and the curve of his cheek. She longed to touch him, to hold him. But he would be a man before she could be with him again. In their first year apart, whenever she had held the brooch to gaze at Helgi, she would find him crying for her. In her sister's arms, he asked over and over, "Where is Mama? When will she return?" His questions and his tears abraded her heart, but as seasons passed, a greater pain transpired. It became clear that he had forgotten her.

"He is so beautiful," Aud said. "Look how strong and tall he grows."

"He is a handsome boy, more like you than his father, I think."

"I can barely remember what his father looked like," Aud replied. "Though Helgi has his fair hair."

"It will grow darker," Skuld called. Aud didn't know if this were a grandmotherly assertion or if Skuld had seen it with her fingers on the thread.

Aud continued to gaze, despising each blink which robbed her of an instant. Finally, Verda reached for the brooch. "That's all for now," she said. "Tell us stories of outside, and you may see it next time you return."

"Please, a little longer," Aud begged. "It may be hard to get away again. Vidar already loses me once a week to Loki and—"

Urd shrieked and threw her hands in the air. "Loki? No, no, not Loki." The other sisters clucked in a frightened chorus: "You know Loki? You see him?"

"I see him weekly," Aud said, wondering what the fuss was about. "I spend a day with him telling him stories—"

"Stories!" Verda's white hand grabbed Aud's wrist, her pale eyelashes blinking rapidly. "You don't tell him stories about
us
, do you?"

"I…" Aud considered the version of events she had related to Loki. "I told him about Helgi, yes."

"No! We're done for!"

"He'll find us! Whatever shall we do?"

"Please, sisters, please," Aud said, her hands held palm up in front of her. "Don't worry. He doesn't know I see you. I haven't given him a single clue to where you live."

"He's too crafty, too cunning," Urd said. "He'll take a tiny hint and work it out from there."

"No, no, I promise you."

Slowly, after repeated reassurances, the Norns began to calm. Finally, Aud asked them, "Why are you so afraid of Loki?"

They exchanged worried glances.

"We owe him," Urd said.

"What for?"

"Never you mind."

"If he finds us," Skuld said, "he'll expect payment."

"You know, Aud, that we don't change fate for just anyone," Verda said. "We did it for you because we like you and because you were prepared to bend your neck to the punishment."

"To restore the balance," Urd added.

"Because we don't conceive fate, we only make it manifest in the world," Skuld said, indicating the threads all over the floor. "The threads of fate are mysterious and eternal."

"But Loki…" Urd began.

Skuld took over the story. "We owe Loki a favor. Whatever he asks us, we have to grant. The consequences could be dire. He could ask us to unpick the past and make him the king of Valaskjálf. He could ask us to respin the future so that Ragnarök comes early. He could interfere in the lives of too many. He has no sense of right or wrong."

"He must never find us," Verda whispered, trembling at the thought. "Never."

"You must be so careful."

"Don't you tell a soul where we live."

"I'll break your brooch!" Verda threatened. "You won't see your little boy for a thousand years."

"We shan't tell you a thing about him."

"Beware of us, Aud."

Aud shook her head. "I won't tell anyone. You know I won't. I've never betrayed your trust. And don't I bring you pretty things from the world outside?"

Verda touched the carved hair clasp, which she had pinned at the back of her neck. "Yes, that's true."

"Perhaps we shouldn't worry," Urd said.

Skuld fixed Aud with a snake's glare. "She'll give us no reason to worry." Aud reached out. "Verda. May I see Helgi once more before I go?"

"No," snapped Verda, returning to her loom. "You've upset us all with your talk of Loki."

"Go home," Urd said, resuming her work. The bright thread flew from the loom to the floor. The candle guttered and dimmed.

"Come back with more presents," Skuld said. "I'd like a hair clasp too."

"And me," said Urd.

"I'll bring them as soon as I can." She looked longingly at Verda, but the brooch was not forthcoming. She tried to burn the image of Helgi into her mind, knowing it was all the comfort she would have until her return. In the meantime, she would cherish the ache of his absence.

As Aud returned home through the dark passages, up the steep steps and across the passes and plains to Gammaldal, she considered the images of Helgi in her mind's eye. He looked well, he looked happy. She had done the right thing. He was alive, even if he was beyond the circle of her arms. The memory of his accident haunted her with sickening regrets. If only she hadn't let him ride Steypr.
If only, if only, if only
. By the time they met again, she would be a stranger to him, where once she had been the center of his bright world. Her heart was as leaden as the sky before a week of rain.
If only
. From the top of the slope of Gammaldal she spotted a figure in the water of Sjáfjord. Vidar. She paused to watch him and felt a warm morsel of consolation. What a blessing that he had taken her in. His kindness had eased her first few years in Asgard, calmed her desperate unhappiness, taught her that good still existed in the world. Slowly, slowly, her heart had expanded again after the shock of losing Helgi and she had fallen unexpectedly in love.