The Monstrous Child Page 8

  After all this time she mentions a seeress? I could not believe I’d been down here for so long and had not known that she existed.

  ‘Actually it’s best to leave her be: seeresses hate being disturbed,’ said Modgud. ‘Especially this one.’

  What did I care what a long-dead seeress liked or didn’t like? She could tell me what my future held. What’s the point of being queen if you can’t have your own way?

  26

  STUMBLE SLOWLY through the sleet over the frozen ground to her grave mound by the hall’s east door. I’d passed it many times and never wondered who was buried there. The nameless dead, swirling like smoke, scatter as I step through them. It’s like walking through mist, pushing through the massed cobwebbed ghosts.

  Her mound is ringed with stones, in the shape of a ship. Modgud says she’s grumpy, but I can force her up. The great seeress, older than time, can surely tell me what I so desperately need to know.

  I mutter a few charms, sprinkle herbs on her mound. There is a stirring, and a clinking, and slowly the gleaming spectre rises out of her grave. She looms above me, clutching her staff. Her face is chalk white, twisted in rage. The charm belt about her waist shudders and chimes as she trembles. The air smells ranker, and feels colder, with her there.

  ‘Who forces me up?’ she moans, her eyes tightly closed. ‘Why have you brought sorrow upon me? It’s death to mortals to raise the dead. On you and your children will be my curse for –’

  ‘Open your eyes, Seeress,’ I snap.

  ‘You can’t make me,’ she said.

  ‘Wanna bet?’ I say.

  Her milky eyes flutter open. She grimaces.

  ‘Ugh. You’re so ugly.’

  I resist, but the taunt hits me, like an axe to my belly.

  ‘Have you seen yourself?’ I hurl back. It’s quite something when even a corpse calls you ugly.

  The seeress smiles, showing her shattered teeth. She gleams in the murk like a spluttering candle. The stink of the henbane buried with her wafts towards me.

  ‘What do you want, daughter of a pig?’ she moans, shaking her bald head, so that the wisps of twisted hair still clinging to her scalp shudder like dangling worms.

  One advantage the dead have over the living is that you can’t threaten them.

  ‘Make it quick, Hel.’

  I do nothing at speed, but I hesitate because … there is something familiar about her. Her harsh voice. Her insults …

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  The seeress hovers above me, crackling with hate.

  ‘I am long dead; I’m not daft. I named you myself.’

  It’s my mother.

  I start to shake.

  I stare at the spectre, and try to connect this enraged corpse with Angrboda, my gorgeous mum. The anger is the same; the body … different.

  There’s a lot I could say. I say none of it. I feel a rush of pleasure that I am alive, however grimly, and she is dead.

  ‘What does my future hold?’ I ask, finally.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ she says, waving her knotted staff.

  I want to scream at her.

  ‘Obviously I do, or I wouldn’t have summoned you,’ I pause. ‘Mother.’

  The seeress snorts.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ I say, kicking away one of the stones marking her mound. I’m glad to see her flinch.

  ‘Nothing good,’ she gloats. ‘You brought me nothing but misery.’

  ‘And you?’ I say. ‘What do you think you brought me? Why didn’t you rescue us? You didn’t even try.’

  ‘I was dead,’ said Angrboda. ‘The gods killed me after they kidnapped you.’

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ I screech.

  ‘You disgust me,’ she said. ‘I will say no more.’

  ‘And the End of Days? How long must I wait for my revenge?’

  ‘See my lips?’ she said. ‘They’re sealed.’

  ‘Will anyone live afterwards?’

  ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out. As you will, Wolf’s Sister. I am no longer prepared to speak. Now let me sleep.’ Slowly she begins to sink back into the ground.

  ‘Wait. You owe me this much. Will I see Baldr again?’

  Her pale lips sneer.

  ‘You will. I don’t want to speak and I will say no more.’

  For a moment I cannot breathe. I clutch my hands to my face. I feel as if a million suns have come out at once. But each answer gives rise to another question.

  If he comes to me here, it means he has to die. But how could Baldr die? And yet, and yet, if dead, Baldr would be here, with me, forever. He would be mine. The slow crawl of my nights would be over, if only he were here to share them.

  But if I saw him when he were alive … who knew what that meant?

  Questions spill from my mouth. ‘Will I see him here or above? Will he be alive or dead?’

  ‘That’s all I’m telling you,’ snaps the seeress.

  Is it any wonder I’m not the jolliest of goddesses?

  ‘What happens at the End of Days? My brothers will be in at the kill – but what about me?’

  The seeress glares at me, and begins to dissolve.

  ‘That depends on the mortal hero who will come.’

  More riddles.

  ‘What mortal hero? Come where? Here? How will I know him?’

  Why could she not speak plainly?

  ‘I don’t want to speak and I will say no more.’

  I am full of rage and move to strike her.

  ‘You will obey me, you – you – horrible hag!’ I shriek. ‘Tell me what I want to know. Spit it out, Mother.’

  ‘We’ll meet again when Fenrir and Jormungand break free and all the creatures of darkness storm the citadel of the gods and destroy them,’ she says. ‘When the world ends in ice and fire. Till then I …’ Her remaining words are lost to me as she sinks back into her mound.

  I think … I think I won’t ever raise her again.

  27

  O WHAT’S IT LIKE being Queen of the Dead I hear you ask?

  Fabulous! A laugh a minute, best job in the world, everyone wants to be me …

  What a stupid question. What do you think it’s like?

  Here’s why I’d rather be where you are, and you be where I am.

  1. It’s lonely.

  2. It’s crowded.

  3. It’s smelly.

  4. It’s boring. Nothing changes except once every thousand years or so – who bothers to track time? – when something interesting happens. By interesting I mean – well, you’ll find out.

  5. My abominable guests never leave.

  6. The servant problem. I’m a queen and I live in a hall larger than any of the gods’. Yet my servants are impossible. They’re slow. They’re lazy. They’re insolent. ‘What are you going to do, kill me?’ said one corpse, before he was dispatched to Nidhogg’s mercies.

  7. No one ever says thank you. You build the hall, you brew the mead, you let them through the gate and – no one is ever pleased to see you. Ever. Is it any wonder I look sad and grim? Wouldn’t you if you’d been banished to the underworld for no fault of your own and forced to spend eternity with corpses? Too right you would.

  8. No one treats death like an adventure. No one makes the best of things, as I have had to. They moan and whimper, despite the welcome I offer, which is insulting if you think about it. All that work, all that effort to build a hall, offer mead, and my guests would rather be anywhere but here.

  9. And please don’t get me started about the headless corpses staggering around Midgard when they should be locked up down here. They’re the ones who die into the hills, who aren’t content to sit in their grave mounds and gloat over their treasure. Oh no, they have to rampage around their old home, haunting and killing till the living dig them up and deal with their angry souls by chopping off their heads and burning them. Why not make things easier for you and yours and just come straight down the fog road? Cut out the middleman
, as people say.

  I have to acknowledge that the newly dead are never very keen about being dead. But don’t blame me. I’m not killing people, remember? I’m only the … hostess. Not with the mostess, that’s for sure, zero out of five stars in every survey, but in my own small way I try to make my guests – well, if not comfortable, then not too uncomfortable.

  Just think of me as the proprietor of a haunted hotel where no one ever checks out.

  On the plus side:

  1. I am the best-looking person here. You know what they say about the one-eyed man being king in the land of the blind? Well, in Hel anyone with flesh on their bones has it over the skeletons. Actually, anyone alive is number one. My bottom half is hideous, but compared to the rest I’m the Goddess Freyja times a hundred. I even get wolf-whistled. (Yeah, by actual wolves.)

  2. My hall is stuffed with precious gifts. I may live in a dung heap but it’s girdled with gold.

  3. I’m the boss. Whatever I say, goes. Even One-Eye can’t order me around here.

  4. I never have to see my family again.

  5. Everyone smells worse than I do.

  6. No one recoils –

  Wait a moment. I am interrupted …

  Oh gods. Just what I don’t need. Not another shaman chanting charms, trying to yank spirits back up to the living and taking on the shape of a reindeer or a bird to sneak into my kingdom. Frankly, I prefer the birds to the snake forms those sons of mares also assume. (And I’ll draw a veil over the time some poor idiot took on a whale’s body and blundered down here, though that provided a lot of fish oil for the lamps.)

  Sorted. One more shaman who won’t be bothering me again.

  Idiot.

  Let this be a warning to you.

  People are always trying to raise the dead and get their help, hoping the ghosts will teach them spells or reveal what is to come.

  ‘Awake at the doors of the dead, Mother,’ some feckless son will mewl.

  And that poor spirit, safely passed into the earth and long gone from the world of men, will have to heave her weary bones and obey.

  The living like tormenting the dead. The dead know the future, what is fated for those whom fate can still trouble. That’s a cruel gift, since it’s too late for them.

  So the living try to rouse them and make them tell secrets, reciting runes to drag the ghost back into the body. The old wood-stick-carved-with-runes-under-a-corpse’s-tongue trick, to make it talk … Pulses, can I advise against this? The newly dead HATE being yanked back into the bonds of their bodies and won’t thank you for disturbing them.

  In fact, they’ll curse you. I don’t care if they do, because I certainly don’t care about them or about you. But it disturbs the peace here. And I don’t like being disturbed.

  So don’t say you weren’t warned.

  Such a bad idea to summon the dead. Really. Don’t do it. They’ll only get angry, and insult you, and foretell your death just to serve you right.

  Trust me. You don’t want to know which day is the one decreed for you to journey from life to death. If you know, you’ll watch it coming closer and closer. It’s gonna happen, okay? Just live your brief, precious life. You’ll find out soon enough when the Fates have snipped your thread.

  And as for trying to get down here before your time is up? NOOOOOOO! Even worse. You’ll be lost between the worlds and that’s a dangerous place to be.

  What’s the rush?

  You’ll be here soon enough.

  28

  ONIGHT, FOR THE first time ever, candles flicker in my rain-damp hall. The hearths are lit and whale oil glows in the lamps, casting rays of light in the watery darkness. (Unfortunately, because misfortune tails me everywhere, that also means I can see my guests.) A poet waits before my throne, bony hands gripping his harp, about to play and sing at my command. Barrels full of shining mead stand brimming and ready. Drinking horns are slowly being filled. Gold rings flash on the benches and tables and fresh rushes have been piled on the fetid floor.

  I am holding a feast.

  Modgud had suggested it after I told her all about my evil mother.

  ‘A feast?’ I said.

  ‘A hall-warming feast.’

  ‘You mean a hall-cooling feast.’

  ‘Call it what you like,’ said Modgud. ‘You’ve built a kingdom, raised a hall, welcomed so many guests. It’s always so gloomy and sad here. Why not?’

  I’d heard tell of feasts. Of course I’d never been to one. But I had mead. I had gold. We could have singers and skalds like Egil, son of Bald-Grim, and Audun the Plagiarist, reciting poetry and telling sagas. I probably had enough plates and cups ripped from graves to lay before twenty thousand.

  That brought me up short. Who would my company be? Assorted skeletons and corpses … Not exactly crème de la crème. Not exactly a who’s who of humanity.

  ‘Would you come?’ I asked.

  Modgud shook her head.

  ‘I can’t leave the bridge. But you’ll visit again and tell me all,’ she said. ‘What you wore. How your hall was decorated. That way we will enjoy it twice.’

  A chance to be a tiny bit happy.

  Why not? I thought. Why not.

  So many silver spoons, so many bowls, so much gold piling up. Why not make an effort just once?

  So here I am, covered in jewels, wearing furs and fine, soft robes threaded with gold and silver, swishing to the ground, enduring the plinky plink of a harp and watching my guests trying to dance without ripping each other’s rotting arms off. My servants, Slowpoke and Lazybones, move at their sepulchral pace filling mead horns.

  Am I having a good time?

  Do you really have to ask?

  The glutton, unless he stands guard, will eat himself to death. No fear of gluttony here. No one will be racing for the buffet table and stuffing their faces. It’s a feast, but no food is offered. And yet the visitors will never, ever, leave.

  What am I doing?

  The skeleton skald rises to start his poem. That will pose a challenge – a skald is meant to proclaim poems to honour his chieftain and his glorious deeds. I allow myself a tiny smile as I wonder how the poet will contrive to praise me. For what? My beauty? I don’t think so. My kindness? Don’t make me laugh. And which great deeds exactly will he hymn? My grave-goods snatching? My pitiless reign? My kidnap by the gods and my exile here? Wait, I’ve got it! My shapely legs, the envy of women everywhere.

  Yes, I’m definitely entering into the party spirit.

  It’s far better, truthfully, that I am my own skald. They say all rulers must have one, for who else will sing their praises or scold them for their errors? Who else will write their names upon the gates when they are gone? Yet my fame does not concern me. I alone, of all goddesses, am known to all. No one wants to know me better. I need no greedy poet to spread my fame. Somehow I don’t think you’ll forget me, poems or no.

  But for tonight I am content to listen. Audun the Plagiarist starts with the saga of how the giants created the worlds – good move. If he’d begun by praising the gods, I’d have had his skull.

  The dead gradually cease their dancing and gibbering, and pause to listen. My brooding hall is silent, except for the poet describing how Midgard was created out of the great void from the body of the giant Ymir. Yes, you heard right, a giant. Midgard was made from his skin. The sea from his blood. The mountains and rocks from his bones, and the trees from his hair. Look up! See the sky? That came from Ymir’s skull. Those little fluffy clouds? Ymir’s brains. (So every single one of you, still living, walks on a giant, eats food grown from a giant, bathes in water from a giant, lives surrounded by a giant.)

  Just saying.

  And who created the world of gods and people? asks the skald. Who was big enough, mighty enough, to kill a giant like Ymir, hurl his body around the cosmos and carve out Midgard from the slime with his flesh and blood and bones? Why, none other than Odin, son of the giantess Bestla, shaped the world. And using the body from his own kinsm
an on his mother’s side. That’s a family gathering I wouldn’t want to be at, he sings.

  ‘So where’s Uncle Ymir? Haven’t seen him lately.’

  ‘Uhhmm, dead.’

  ‘What do you mean, dead?’

  ‘Dead. We chopped him up …’

  I am actually enjoying this poet’s words, telling the tale of my giant ancestors. Even the corpses grin. Though that could just be rigor mortis.

  And then music strikes up, the benches are pushed back and suddenly everyone is dancing and stomping. Someone sweeps me off my throne and before I know what I’m doing I’m dancing too. Everyone wants to dance with me. I drink a horn of mead, then another, and another, admiring my glittering hall as I whirl from partner to partner, closing my eyes and pretending that each one is Baldr, the music roaring in my ears and filling my soul.

  Maybe my life isn’t all bad.

  More mead! More dancing! I want more, more –

  Then I hear Garm baying, louder than I’ve ever heard before. Crazed and frantic with fury, his yowls reverberate from his cliff cave down to my hall. I hear him straining and lunging against his chains, aching for the kill.

  Then hoof beats. The pounding of an eight-legged horse is like no other. In Hel, it sounds like thunder. The frozen earth hums under Sleipnir’s hooves. My half-brother is being ridden –

  I jerk to a standstill. The music stops. The swirling dead fall silent.

  My enemy is here.

  29

  NE-EYE HAS COME. Why? Why has he come? Why has he travelled down the gods’ rainbow road to the long, sloping path the fateless walk between Midgard and Niflheim? To join our revels? Impossible.

  The hall is in uproar. The dead smell the heat of the living; they sense the presence of the Lord of the Gods, Father of the Slain. I’ve never heard such shrieking, such wailing, such terror. Winds gust. The candles splutter and go out.