“Finally, I might be allowed to tell my own story.”
—Sigyn Odindottir
The Nornir took us in. They fed us, warmed us, and healed our wounds. We bathed, and they found us clothing, which I could only assume they’d woven themselves. And when it was done, they sat with us as we mourned what we had lost.
Váli kept his distance for days. I’d scared him, I think. And when he eventually did make the effort, he refused to speak to me about his father. In a moment of confidence, Hreidulfr told me that Váli didn’t blame me. Not quite. But he had watched me push in the knife.
Give him time, he’d said.
All that was left was time. Time in which I was alone with my thoughts and my regrets. Everything I had ever done. My son and his love had solace in each other while I had no one. Each day we spent below Yggdrasil festered in me like an open wound, because even if Váli didn’t blame me, I blamed myself.
We hoped to stay there for only a few days at first. I itched to go back above, to see what was left. But the root had sealed itself off, full to the bottom with charcoal and broken pieces of Yggdrasil. None of us knew if there was even a realm above to return to. When we asked the Nornir, they refused to say. That was their way with most things. We asked them why the sun still shone under Yggdrasil when it had been destroyed in Asgard. I asked if Loki had found his way to Hel. We asked for the runes to return Váli to his true form. It seemed like every answer was beyond their ability to give.
Our days turned into weeks and then months, and then eventually, I lost track of time. It never rained at Urd’s Well. We slept in comfort under the stars, in a warm summer that never changed. We caught fish in the sea to compliment what food the Nornir gave us. They fed us all manner of vegetables and fruit, as well as some familiar golden apples, but where it all came from, they refused to say.
There was too much time, too much peace. I worked at my seidr, trying to find some energy left in the ground. It took a long time to find it, for it to replenish. When it did come back, it felt correct. Like a missing piece of me had returned. But I longed for someone to share it with. Someone to sit knee to knee with while I twisted the runes into new shapes that suited the blackness in my heart.
◦ ● ◦
I was watching the water once more, sitting in my comfortable solitude. The swans bobbed in the corner of my vision, almost mesmerizing, but I wasn’t really watching them. I was looking inward. I barely heard the footsteps as they approached.
“Would you mind a little company?” Skuld’s voice was unmistakable.
I looked up at her and forced a smile. “Of course not. Join me.”
She sat down next to me, her bare feet hanging over the edge. “I think you might stay like this for the rest of your days if I let you.”
I didn’t look at her. “I suppose that’s true.”
“I can’t allow that. It’s not your fate to waste away, little goddess. There is more out there. We would see you thrive.”
I looked up, watching her face closely. “See me thrive? How can I be anything more than this bitter shell? I’m trapped in this paradise of horrific, endless quiet.”
The young woman gave me a sly smile. “You always ask me about the past, Sigyn. What you could’ve done differently. What would have changed. But that direction gets you nowhere. I can tell you something about your future, though, if you want to know it.” She held up a finger as I opened my mouth. “But be warned. Knowing means the end of this ‘horrific quiet,’ as you call it. There’s no going back.”
I looked up, watching the waves disappearing into the horizon that travelled to nowhere. Did the water fall off the edge there, as flat as a serving platter? “Tell me.”
“If you go above, back through Yggdrasil, the realms are waiting.”
I turned to her. “Really? Why didn’t you say that before?”
“Because they needed time to return, to grow. It wasn’t safe.”
“And now it is?”
She bobbed her head, considering. “Safe enough.”
“When can I go?”
Skuld smiled. “As soon as you can dig yourself out.”
◦ ● ◦
The tunnel was entirely blocked. The charcoal was piled deep, spilling out onto the grass. I summoned up a lantern and threw it inside. I’d managed to dig some of it out, my hands and arms charcoal-dust black. I hadn’t even made a dent and some pieces were bigger than I could lift alone.
“What are you doing?” I turned to find Váli behind me, sitting on his haunches next to Hreidulfr.
I looked back at the mess in front of me. “I’m getting out.”
“Ma’am, we don’t even know what’s up there. Could be the whole of the realms is under water.” Hreidulfr scratched his beard, eyeing the debris.
“Skuld says it’s not. I need to know.”
He shook his head. “Ma’am, I gotta say—”
“Hreidulfr!” I turned in time to see the fear flash in his eyes. “If you call me ma’am one more time, I’m going to rip your tongue out.”
Váli snapped his teeth. “You don’t speak to him like that.”
I sighed and rubbed my palm across my face, surely leaving smudges. “I’m sorry. I just...I need to get out of here. You understand that, don’t you? I can’t be trapped for another eternity. There’s nothing here for us.”
“Nothing but peace and relaxation?” Váli gave me a sideways look. “I can’t believe you. We finally have a good life, and you want to drag us back into the mud.”
“You have a good life, Váli. You two have each other. I have nothing but my regrets. I can’t stay here knowing that this doesn’t have to be the end of my story. That there may be something up there, waiting for me. I don’t feel finished. Do you?”
I turned back to the pile and pulled a thick piece of charcoal from the top. I hefted it up and walked past them to throw it onto the grass. “Don’t you want to find the runes to reverse what was done to you? Wouldn’t you like to be a man again? If there’s nothing there, we come back. If there is...we talk about it. Alright?”
The two shared a long look. Finally, Hreidulfr shrugged and moved to pick up a heavier piece of half burned wood. “Seems fair to me.”
Váli sighed and fell into line, following us out with a thick branch in his teeth.
◦ ● ◦
We dug for nearly a week. The first day was simple, but overnight, we woke to the sound of the top of the tunnel collapsing downward. We’d been lucky. Every day after, we hauled out wood in shifts. Once we reached three paces in, I cast a gust of wind upward to loosen the wood and send it tumbling down, safeguarding against the inevitability of a cave in.
The work was tiring, but it gave us something to do, something to busy my mind. On the fifth day, I cast a gust of wind upward and the avalanche lasted half the time it normally did. We cleared out another pile, and I cast the wind up again. It brought down a rain of twigs and nothing else. We’d reached the end.
The next morning, we fastened our long-abandoned weapons to our belts and went to the mouth of the root. The Nornir followed.
I turned to them. “We might be back nearly as soon as we’ve left, but I can’t take the risk of not thanking you. You saved us all, and we could never repay you.”
Urd waved the compliment away. “Hush, child. Go on up. See what awaits you.”
I nodded. “We’ll come back to bring word of what’s happened and—”
Skuld crossed her arms, a playful smile on her face. “We already know what’s happened. It’s only for you to find out.” She took my hand and turned it upward, placing a long scroll in my palm. It was one of their tapestries. “Open this when you’re above.”
Urd gave me a smile. “We’ll see each other again when we’re meant to, yes?”
I nodded. “Yes. Thank you.” I gave her hand one last squeeze and turned toward the surface.
◦ ● ◦
The climb up was treacherous. There were still branches and bits of coal along the floor that hadn’t fallen. We used the lantern to guide us and stepped slowly, though the anticipation was threatening to kill me. I needed to know.
Of all the things I’d expected, I hadn’t expected light. We were near the surface and somehow, the sun was shining through the debris of Yggdrasil.
The mouth of the root was blocked. We pushed, and the large block of charcoal fell to the ground in a puff of black dust. The door to the outside was still open, but Yggdrasil was gone, only fragments of Her trunk still standing. We walked out into the crisp autumn air.
We turned together to look up. The shade of Yggdrasil’s branches was gone. Her trunk had been burned away, along with everything else. But there was something new. Wooden tendrils grew out of the ground around what was left of the trunk, circling upward. They bound together in the centre, some heading outward toward the sky. Tiny leaves sprouted from some of the branches, shimmering purple and blue and hanging among them were tiny, golden apples. The beginning of a new world tree.
Whatever had happened during our time below, the world was young again. There was a new sun being pulled across the sky. The forest that once surrounded Yggdrasil was long gone, and thousands of tiny saplings grew in its place. The wall around Asgard was clear as day without the forest to block the view, and it had crumbled to pieces, some sections barely standing at all.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
The boys followed without a word, all of us in awe of what we found. Idunn’s home was gone as if it had never been there. We looked up, beyond the saplings, toward the hill where Valhalla stood. Had stood. The great halls of Odin and his sons were nothing but rubble.
We walked through what was left of the streets. Nature had taken much of it back. Only a handful of old homes and shops were still there. I didn’t recognize the flowers or herbs that popped up from the ground between the stones. So many new things had learned to thrive there. Did they even have names?
It seemed to be nearly midday when we arrived at the top of the hill. No one said a word as we stepped through the rubble, looking for something that might be meaningful. I left Hreidulfr and Váli to their search and pressed on toward where the garden had once been.
I heard it before I saw it. I slowed my pace, stepping carefully. There was no possible way. A few of Valhalla’s walls were still intact, more than enough to hide behind. The closer I walked, the louder the noise became. It was...familiar.
I leaned behind the old doorway to the garden and peeked around the edge. The garden was in ruins, but the grass had been cleared in places, giving proper room to frolic. And that’s just what it was being used for.
There were five of them. Three ran around the grass, tossing a disk back and forth for fun. As they turned and ran and jumped, I saw each of their faces. Odin’s son Vidar. Thor’s sons, Magni and Modi. All of them grown up. They’d survived somehow. Had they been hidden away like us, a preservation of the bloodline for the days after?
At the edge of the grass stood two other familiar faces. Baldur and Hod were as fresh and alive as if they’d never died at all. They spoke quietly between each other, peaceful smiles on their lips.
However it had happened, the joy of seeing Hod wasn’t enough to keep my blood from boiling.
A hand touched my shoulder and I jumped. Váli and Hreidulfr had caught up to me. They peered carefully around the corner, and when they’d seen what I had, they backed away. We stepped gingerly, avoiding any noise that might bring the men running. An alcove still stood in what was once Valaskjálf. We stepped in and pressed ourselves against the walls.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Váli was unimpressed. “This is why you wanted to come back.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t know, but it changes everything.”
“What does it change?” Hreidulfr crossed his arms over his chest, worry etched across his face.
I pointed back toward the garden. “Look around you. The realms have a chance to begin again, to be better than what they were. Do you really think that the sons of Thor and Odin are going to allow that? They’ll build Asgard back up in the image of themselves, of the Allfather, and all this will begin again. What are we worth if we allow that to happen?”
“I don’t know…” Hreidulfr scratched at his beard, shuffling his feet in discomfort. “We could just walk away. We don’t need to go back to war again, always looking over our shoulders. You told Loki that if he’d just walked away, he’d—”
“Father was right.”
I looked at Váli, shocked. Everything about those words seemed unnatural coming from his mouth.
Váli hopped up onto a fallen stone, closer to eye level with us, staring at Hreidulfr. “You and I couldn’t even walk together in public before out of fear of being caught. I thought if we just behaved and bided our time, something would change. What they made me do…” He tripped on his words, tried to compose himself. “They killed my brother, tortured my parents, and destroyed the siblings I’ll never know. I’m starting to wonder if any of us were ever on the right side of things.”
“What if we could build something better?” I leaned against one of the only solid walls. “What if instead of building the realms around death and war, we start with life? We could challenge the gods and create something fair. Something free.”
“What about that?” Váli nodded at my hand. “The Nornir had to have known. What does it say?”
If’d nearly forgotten. The tapestry was crushed in my fist. Just thinking of opening it stole the breath from me. Maybe I didn’t want to know what was inside.
I pulled the ribbon and unrolled it.
Inside was a record of my life, from the bottom upward. Playing as a child, years of learning, a lifetime with Loki and my children. But none of that was what stood out. Above Loki’s death, above Ragnarok, above our time with the Nornir, was something that took up the entire rest of the tapestry.
It was a sprawling image of me staring out of the page, clothed in a flowing dress, flame in one hand and glowing light in the other. In the background, a shining city I’d never seen and the shapes of people I didn’t know.
And on my head, a crown.
“What’s wrong?”
I turned the scroll for them to see.
They looked in stunned silence.
“I think that settles it then. Are we agreed?”
Váli nodded, his tail thumping against the stone. We looked to Hreidulfr and waited. He scratched at his beard and hugged his thick arms around himself in silence. When I was sure he might never speak again, he looked up. “I want to believe you. It sounds wonderful. But what can we do about any of this?”
I looked out past the crumbled stone, toward the vibrant, imperfect slate of land that had once been Asgard. We had lost everything except each other, and I knew that no matter what we did here, no matter how much we changed the realms and saved the future, it wouldn’t erase the nightmares. That I’d still wake in a cold sweat and feel for a man who wasn’t there. Still weep for the child I’d lost. No amount of good deeds would balance the scale. But we would do it anyways.
It wouldn’t be easy, but I was ready.
“Hreidulfr, we’re going to fix everything.”