The Monstrous Child Read online

  So. One hateful, frightening brother gone. A shadow crossed my mind, which I brushed off. Who wouldn’t dispose of Jor, given the chance? But I couldn’t get the image out of my head, Jormungand tumbling out of Asgard, flailing and falling and spitting and smashing smack into the salt sea and then sinking down to the bottom. I imagined him growing and growing, circling the world, squeezing Midgard beneath the waters.

  We’ll be safer without him, I thought. It had to be done.

  You always think the hammer is going to hit someone else.

  I stayed sitting by the sun-dappled pool, uncertain of what to do, where to go, watching the glimmering goddesses walking lightly on Asgard’s springy sweet earth. I felt like dung on their dainty shoes.

  The Asgard children, a gaggle of young immortals, came out from behind their parents’ thrones to gawp.

  We eyed each other.

  I’d never met strangers before. I felt shy, uneasy. I was a goddess, same as them, but they’d been born here, and I was born in Jotunheim. Would they think me more giant than god and shun me? (I really hate children. They’re cruel, and they mock. I hate grown-ups too, of course. Actually, don’t get me started: I hate everyone.)

  Fen shook himself and bounded off into the meadow grass of the splendid plain surrounding us. Most of the brats ran after him, shouting. Fenrir rolled on the ground. Washed his face with his paws. Played dead.

  I watched Thor’s red-faced sons throw a branch for him, laughing when he jumped up, snatched it in his fierce jaws and snapped it in two. I’d seen him do this many times, play with a dog or wolf and then suddenly bite its head off. He should have been a storm god, raging and pillaging, just for the pleasure of destroying. He’d have loved that.

  One-Eye’s thuggish-looking boy, Vidar, approached him. He wore the strangest shoe, thick with leather scraps bound on a sole of iron. In all my time with the gods I never heard him speak. Probably because the little toad thought I wasn’t worth speaking to. Vidar whistled at Fen. The wolf hesitated, trotted a few steps towards him, then stopped, his grey fur bristling, his tail rigid, then retreated, snarling. Vidar burst into tears and his mother whisked him away.

  Thor’s beefy daughter Thrud, with sticky-out teeth like tumbled rocks, looked at me, recoiled, and ran to join her brothers chasing Fen in the meadow.

  I just wanted everyone to go away and leave me alone, but two boys remained. They whispered and pointed. I pulled my bearskin robe around me, despite the heat, trying to hide my legs. I heard the names they called me behind their hands. Cripple girl. Rotten herring. Death daughter.

  They crept closer, and their mother turned and gave me a look of hate.

  ‘Keep away from that monster,’ Sigyn hissed, shooing her boys from me. That’s how I met my half-brothers for the first time. I didn’t know Dad had other children in Asgard. I didn’t even know he had a wife. I just stood there, shaking, my mouth gaping. Dad’s other family. The ones he can dress up and show the world. We embarrassed him. We shamed him. That’s why he isn’t here. We’re like the uncouth country cousins breaking into the great hall expecting a rousing gift-filled welcome and then stopping short as no high table seat is offered and our kin won’t acknowledge us.

  I don’t think they needed to be told to keep away from me. I’d never been the most popular girl at the feast. In fact, I’m not usually at the feast. Somehow the messenger never arrives to invite me.

  Now it’s just me, and a single god, Hod. Everyone else has fled.

  I stumble over to him. He’s blind, oblivious that he’s alone.

  ‘Where’s Loki?’ I ask.

  ‘Loki has business with the mason building our walls,’ said the blind one, crinkling his nose, looking in the wrong direction.

  ‘Will he be back soon?’

  Hod shrugs. ‘Loki comes and goes.’

  How awful to be blind, I think.

  Then someone shouts at me:

  ‘Leave this sacred place. Council is over. What are you waiting around for?’

  It is Heimdall, watchman of the gods. His gold teeth flash as he orders us away. I wonder if one day a dwarf will come and tear out his teeth, to fashion into bracelets.

  10

  SGARD WAS A building site. Everywhere I roamed I heard hammering and pounding, saw walls rising, masons shouting and roofs being thatched with silver and gold. The vast half-built palaces cascaded into the distance, glowing in the sunshine. My storm-home was bleak and dim, blue-cold. Here, all was brilliance and warmth, golden pillars and shining roofs. This was the beginning of eternity, the start of the gods’ reign. They’d conquered the giants and established their dominion over the nine worlds. Now they were building their heavenly stronghold and I was joining them.

  ‘Go on, give us a smile,’ yelled a spike-nosed builder, standing high on a roof.

  ‘Why so grim?’ another giant shouts down at me.

  There’s nothing that makes a girl feel less like smiling than some oaf leering at her to change her face. My face isn’t the problem.

  I ignored them and lumbered past, hoping they’d fall to their deaths.

  Everything here was so much taller, brighter, better. I wondered if any of these palaces would be mine. I hoped I wouldn’t have to share with Fen and Dad. If I were allowed to build a hall of my own, I’d already found the perfect spot: by a stream, in the shade. I smell like a corpse whenever the sun leaves her tomb. I prefer it when the moon leaves his grave mound to circle the sky. Vast, sweltering Asgard was my home now, and I would try to belong. I allowed myself to dream.

  I wandered like an exultant ghost. I still could not believe I would be living in this gilded kingdom. Only one palace was complete, Gladsheim, where the gods and goddesses had their thrones. I peeked inside. Everything in the great council chamber was made of gold.

  I watched some children squealing as they played with a rolled-up bearskin outside Gladsheim. They threw it back and forth amongst four, while a fifth tried to grab the hide. Then they saw me, dropped the bearskin and ran away.

  Nothing I wasn’t used to. I heard the roarings of a river, thought I would cool my putrid legs in it. But as I headed for the water a gargantuan hall loomed up, far bigger than any I’d passed. In front of it stood the most beautiful tree I’d ever seen, glistening with gold foliage.

  But what caught my eye were the hundreds of gigantic doorways being carved into the walls.

  I peered in. You could march 250 trolls standing side by side through each one, easily (well, that is if you could get trolls to march, which is unlikely, but you get the picture).

  Gleaming swords, heavy, carved, lit the hall. Rainbows of light bounced off the blades. The rafters were made of spear shafts and thatched with overlapping golden shields.

  Row after row of empty benches stretched into the distance. So many tables, so many shields and axes and lances and swords, glowing red-gold mail coats, helmets too many to count.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked one of the masons, hewing and lashing bright shields to the roof.

  ‘This is where Odin’s chosen warriors will come, to feast and drink and fight,’ he replied, wiping sweat off his brow.

  I didn’t know what a warrior was. A new race of gods, perhaps? But I didn’t want to show my stupidity and ignorance. Even the dullest-witted builder knew things I did not. (I’d been shut away in a cave. I knew nothing.)

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Who will they be fighting?’

  The mason shrugged. ‘I don’t ask questions – I just do what I’m told, take the gold and get out.’

  No one stopped me entering.

  I curled up on one of the long wooden benches and I slept.

  11

  HEARD A HISS and immediately woke. I feared for a moment my snake brother had returned. Mercifully, not. There were winged women lurking in the shadows. Big, ugly, broad-faced harridans wearing helmets and chain mail. One polished the rows of curved drinking horns, snug in their holders. Others sat at a loom made of weapons and entrails
and skulls. I sniffed the rich smell of roasting boar, and bubbling honeyed mead in a gigantic vat.

  ‘What are you doing? Get out. You don’t belong here,’ screamed one, and her voice was like a raven’s venomous cackle. ‘This is the feast hall of dead warriors. We Valkyries choose who comes here, and we most certainly don’t choose you.’

  She glared at me with bloodshot eyes. I have a good sense of smell, and I smelled death on these women. The benches were waiting for the battle-dead.

  ‘Brynhild, she’s nothing, leave her,’ said another.

  ‘I’m a goddess,’ I said. ‘Daughter of Loki. And you’re what? Servants? Barmaids?’

  The woman spat and glared at me with her narrow red eyes. ‘We are shield-maidens. We decide who lives and who dies in battle. We are the choosers of the slain.’

  ‘No wonder you smell, Carrion Girl,’ I said. Yeah I know, pot calling the kettle black, blah blah blah.

  ‘We will bring the bravest here to Valhall, the hall of the slain, to fight for the gods in the Last Battle at the End of Days, when the forces of chaos overrun Asgard,’ said another.

  I went rigid. The Last Battle? What Last Battle? Who are the forces of chaos? Why was there always so much I didn’t know? We were at the beginning of eternity, and already time was collapsing towards an ending.

  One-Eye entered, his wolves padding beside him. I recoiled but I’d been seen. Of course I’d been seen – the Great Wizard sees everything.

  Had I done something wrong sheltering in Valhall? You can never tell what One-Eye is thinking. But Dad and he were blood-brothers. Surely he’d never hurt me.

  ‘She can sleep here,’ said One-Eye. ‘Until I find a better home for her.’

  The crones muttered and spat.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I was afraid he’d change his mind, so I backed out of the nearest door, stumbling. And collided with someone.

  I felt arms grab me, steadying me. I regained my balance, turned, gabbling thanks, and I saw him.

  His eyes were blue like glaciers. I’d never seen eyes like that. Golden light blazed from him.

  I felt the air prickling against my skin. My hands reached up to hide my flushed cheeks.

  He looked at me and smiled. Baldr, most beautiful, most glorious, wisest and kindest of the gods.

  ‘Hello, Hel,’ he said.

  He knows my name. I was speechless.

  I see it in my mind, again and again. I hear how he said my name, like it was just a name, like I was just a goddess, not a filthy walking corpse.

  And then he picks me up and whirls me around until I am laughing and dizzy and he is laughing.

  I feel like I am flying. My robe swirls around me. No one has ever picked me up. No one has ever touched me.

  I cling to him. He smells of blackberries and apples and scythed grass. I grip his white arms. I have never felt so light. I have never felt like a creature of air before.

  He sets me down and I fall over.

  My cursed legs.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says, grabbing my hands and pulling me to my feet. His hands are warm. I’m trembling. And I think, He forgot about my twisted legs. That’s why he plopped me down.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  I nod.

  He beams at me. His smile is a tiny bit crooked. I have never seen anything or anyone so lovely.

  ‘My son loves being whirled about,’ he says.

  I am panting. Slowly catching my breath. The world is swimming and shimmering about me. I hear his words and I don’t.

  He has a son. Does that mean he also has …

  ‘Where is he?’ I ask.

  Baldr smiles. ‘Forseti is with Nanna.’

  ‘Nanna?’

  ‘His mother. My wife.’

  I’m good at hiding my feelings. My face is still. I bend down to straighten my skirts, covering my trembling legs.

  His wife. Of course he has a wife.

  I look at Baldr, the sun haloing him with light, smiling at me (smiling!) and I know. He sees past my deformity: he doesn’t see a monster, he sees a girl. He tells me that my hair is beautiful, that it looks like shooting stars. I have a feeling inside me as if ice is crackling. I take a deep breath, hoping to breathe him in, keep some bit of him with me. The most beautiful of the gods, the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, ever, even in my dreams, is there, in front of me, not screaming, not trying to run, not recoiling in horror. But smiling.

  And then his smile broadens, deepens. I want this to last forever.

  Then I see. He isn’t smiling at me. He’s smiling at someone behind me.

  His son I hope. Fathers smile at their children. (They do, don’t they? I never know for sure about such things.)

  I am frightened to turn round. Because so long as I don’t I can still hold the hope in my heart that Baldr’s smile is for me.

  ‘Nanna,’ he says.

  I try to look as if my heart hasn’t cracked. I watch as he goes up to her, and wraps his arms round her, nuzzling his face into her hair and whispering something. She smiles.

  Vicious feelings erupt in me. I hate Nanna. I hate her nervous sideways glance, her stupid whiny itty-bitty voice, the way her rat-brown hair oozes from her scalp, her pink pig ears, the way she constantly touches him, every gesture flaunting he’s mine, mine, not yours, mine.

  I don’t despair.

  Maybe if he gets to know me, I think.

  Maybe …

  12

  FOLLOW HIM. Quietly.

  Day after day I creep out of Valhall, watch where Baldr goes, and contrive a reason to be there.

  Baldr’s shadow, the gods call me. What do I care? Because he likes me. I know he does.

  He talks to me about the gods, asks me questions, tells me things. He makes me laugh. Laughter feels strange in my throat. When I’m with him, I forget I’m a monster. (He says that maybe the healing goddess Eir could help my legs. I’m filled with hope, but of course she can’t. If I’d been ALL dead that would have been a different matter. Just my bad luck, as always.)

  ‘Well, Hel,’ he said.

  (It rhymes! He made my name rhyme.) His hair is white gold, his brow smooth and fair. He is One-Eye’s son. I don’t hold that against him. After all, we don’t choose our parents, any more than they choose their children.

  ‘There’s something you need to know.’

  13

  Y HEART POUNDED. He’s going to tell me he loves me.

  ‘Do you know what is prophesied about Fenrir?’ said Baldr.

  I hid my disappoint ment. My face was still. He’s not ready yet. I understand. Of course I understand.

  ‘What prophesy about Fen?’ I said. ‘That he rids the world of rats?’

  ‘That he will kill Odin at the End of Days,’ whispered Baldr. ‘During the Last Battle at Ragnarok.’

  I know that Fen is vicious, but how could he ever be powerful enough to kill the Wizard King?

  ‘Fen?’

  ‘And Jormungand will kill Thor.’

  That I could believe.

  ‘Who foretold this?’

  ‘The Fates,’ said Baldr. ‘That’s why you were all kidnapped.’

  My throat tightened. Did I want to know my future?

  Of course I did. Who could resist? I know, I know, a man’s fate should be safely hidden from him, but I am bolder.

  ‘What about me?’ Maybe, just maybe, they’d said that Baldr and I …

  ‘Nothing.’

  For a moment, I was insulted.

  ‘So I don’t kill anyone?’

  ‘Not that they mentioned.’

  I nodded. What could I say? I wasn’t exactly the axe-wielding type. Anyone could outrun me.

  And then I thought, Am I so unworthy the Fates have nothing to say about me? Just my hateful brothers?

  On the other hand, that meant Fenrir was in danger, and I wasn’t.

  Did I care that my remaining brother needed to beware? Are you joking? I was delighted at the thought of being an only chil
d.

  I smiled up at Baldr. He alone of the gods had been kind to me.

  His voice was like honeyed mead, dripping into my mouth.

  He had a wife. He had a son.

  I didn’t care.

  One day he’d be mine.

  14

  T HAD TO HAPPEN. One day Dad returned, leading a colt with eight legs. My trickster father, Loki. The sly one. The giant’s son. My bad blood.

  I watched as he swaggered through Asgard, teasing and laughing, slapping gods on the back. Whispering jokes and gulping mead. Boasting about how he’d enticed the wall-builder’s stallion away by changing himself into a mare. (As if you’d want to brag about that.)

  ‘And now, thanks to me,’ he gloated, ‘we saved Freyja, the sun and the moon, and got our Asgard wall built for free! That disgusting giant couldn’t build the ramparts in six months without his stallion to help so he lost the bargain as well as his head.’

  So the lazy, two-faced gods cheated a poor giant out of his promised reward. Oath-breakers.

  What a surprise. Not.

  ‘That’s a fine horse,’ said One-Eye.

  ‘He’s yours,’ said Loki. ‘He’s my son, Sleipnir, and the greatest horse alive. He can outrun anything, and take you anywhere you want to go, even to the land of the dead and back.’

  I listened, horrified, as Dad shamelessly added a HORSE to his menagerie. What next? A boar?

  But One-Eye smiled and nodded. The colt trotted over to him.

  Then Dad saw me. His face went grey, as grey as Sleipnir.

  ‘What is IT doing here?’

  One-Eye put his arm around Dad and murmured in his ear. They walked off together into One-Eye’s gleaming hall.

  Thanks, Dad. Great to see you too.

  Let’s pause and take a closer look at just some of Dad’s children.

  Eight legs (Sleipnir)

  Four legs (Fenrir)