Winterfire

Chapter Fourteen

Lif

Every day, after my lessons, I took long walks out side the hall with Thor. To my surprise, Thor took me to the very harbor to which I’d planned to run. He showed me a complicated route that involved traveling along the branches of several trees, but his way took less than half an hour.

“You see, Missy, the Bifrost Bridge is not the only way in or out of Asgard; you were wise to think you might have been able to escape via the harbor.”

I could not hide my shock; he had known my plan. He winked at me and continued. “The Bifrost is too flimsy for a man of my… proportions. I know I don’t look heavy, but I am soundly made. A chunk of solid granite my size weighs considerably less than I do.”

“Are you saying the Bifrost Bridge, the bridge that Freyr and I rode across on a horse, cannot bear your weight?” I smiled. Thor’s sparkling eyes and quick smile gave him a look of constant delight. When I was with him, I always felt important, as though my welfare and happiness were Thor’s only concerns.

“That is exactly what I am saying, Missy. Beyond this harbor—and I won’t tell you precisely where—flows a deep, fast river, the other side of which is Midgard. That is the path I take when I want to leave Asgard. None of the sailors can leave the harbor and enter the forest of Asgard, by the way. It’s enchanted. Now, let us go see what’s going on at the docks today, if that’s okay with you.”

Every sailor docked in the harbor knew Thor and seemed happy to see him. After only a few trips to the docks, I began to recognize the sailors, too, and I noticed that even the men who had just seen Thor the day before greeted him as though it had been months since they’d seen him last. By extension, after only a few trips to the docks in Thor’s company, the men treated me with affection and respect, too. I looked for Lucan and inquired after him. It was always the same answer. None of the sailors I spoke to had ever seen him.

I had grown up near the sea, but everything here was new to me. At home, we had fished in the ocean, but the few, small fishing boats never went out far enough to lose sight of the shore. Here, there were dozens and dozens of ships in the harbor all the time. New, beautiful ships arrived and departed daily. They were sleek, polished vessels, pointed at both ends. They rode low in the water, and some had both sails and oars, so they could move no matter what the weather. “They can easily maneuver in and out of estuaries,” said Thor. “That makes them useful for trade.”

I remembered how the ships had crept, unseen and unheard, up onto the beach at Lindisfarne. “Or for attack,” I said. Thor looked down at me and nodded.

“Sometimes,” he said.

 Many of them had a dragon carved into the bow like the one that carried Lucan away, but that didn’t make me hate them. On the contrary, I came to love them with their brightly colored, square sails and their perfectly matched rows of oars.

One day as we walked along the docks, Thor pointed out an especially striking ship that had just come in early that morning. A great, gilded dragon’s head was carved into the bow and a dragon tail, into the stern. A row of red and white shields hung along each side of the ship. The great square sails were red and blue, like the wings of a dragon Honir once described for me.

As we approached the ship, a man stepped nimbly up onto the oarlocks and ran all the way from one end of the ship to the other. He stepped off and began winding a rope lying in a heap on the deck. With the rope neatly coiled, the sailor hefted it over his shoulder, stepped back onto the oarlocks, and skipped agilely back to the stern. For some reason, as I watched this man, an image of Lucan appeared in my head. Perhaps it was because I was pleased by the sight of the trick and wished I could describe it for him. Perhaps it was because Lucan loved the sea, and I knew he would be impressed with the sailor’s stunt and would set out to learn it himself if he could see it. But I believed it was more than that. Lucan is alive, I thought to myself.

Every day, I asked Thor why I’d been brought to Folkvanger, but he never gave me a satisfactory answer. “You are here,” he said, “because it is your destiny.”

“Thor, remember when I tried to run away and I hit the tree?” I said.

“Of course I do, Missy. You were out cold for hours!”

Although Thor was massive, and at times, powerfully angry – more than once, I had witnessed terrifying tantrums involving the uprooting of small trees and the tossing of boulders as large as my old rowboat – he had never given me reason to fear him. I did not feel the need to guard my speech with him, the way I did with Mistress.

Somehow, I knew Thor would do anything in his power to protect me. I cannot speak for the other men I saw on the docks or in the little village beside the harbor who clearly adored him, but part of my growing admiration and love for Thor came from the feeling of self-worth he inspired in me. I told him the truth.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly ‘out cold.’ I heard you and Mistress talking about me. I heard you say that I have some special task. You said I may be able to do something that you cannot. What is it? I’ll do it now! My parents need me at home! They don’t have enough to eat without me to hunt and fish. They cannot survive another year without a summer!”

Thor sat down on the dock we’d been walking on and dangled his feet above the water. He looked up at me and patted the spot beside him. I sat down and waited for him to speak.

“Child, how far has Honir gotten in his history with you? Has he mentioned Ragnarok? The Doom of the Gods?”

“Yes, but aren’t those just stories Honir tells me?”

“No, they are not just stories. I am in his ‘stories,’ am I not?” asked Thor.

“Well, yes, but he says you’re some ‘god of thunder,’” I answered.

“And you think I am just a normal man?” said Thor. He smiled as he spoke. Then he stood up, reached over his shoulder, and withdrew the curious weapon he carried all the time. “This is Mjölnir,” he said, looking around. “It is a war hammer made by the dwarves. Do you see that rocky crag, beyond the forest, high above Folkvanger?”

“I see it. Is that where it came from?” I asked, but instead of answering, Thor hurled Mjölnir. It sailed high up in the air. It seemed to pick up speed as it rose higher and higher. It flew for at least two minutes, faster and faster and higher and higher, and when it struck the mountain, there was a deafening explosion. Sparks and boulders burst from the peak and rained down the cliff face. Gasps and shrieks emanated from the sailors in the harbor and the people in the village as they pointed toward the explosion.

My hands flew up to my face involuntarily, and I sucked my breath in and held it. Then I  saw a giant spark, like a star, speeding right for us. Thor stood with his great arms folded across his chest, smiling down at me. He didn't even glance at the star. I began to see that when it struck, it would blast a huge hole in the ground. "Run, Thor!" I screamed, but as I tried to turn, Thor stopped me with his great hand.

"Watch," he said. He let go of my arm and took one step away from me. Then he raised his right hand above his head and caught the falling star. The force flung his arm back and Thor spun halfway around. “Ugh!” he said. Then he turned back to smile at me. He held Mjölnir, smoking, in his hand.

“Lif, the end is coming. The last great battle, Ragnarok, is near upon us, and Honir has not been making up the story he told you. If anything, perhaps he has tried to minimize the scope of the destruction. It is real, and it has already begun. I’m sorry to tell you that neither you nor I can save your family; if they were not killed when the Danes attacked, they have undoubtedly died of starvation and cold since. We have all we can do to try to save ourselves, and to preserve what goodness we can. The Norns foretold three events that would herald the beginning of the end: the birth of Loki’s three evil offspring, the death of Baldur, and finally, the Fimbulvetr. We are now in the third year of the three-year winter, and the other events happened long ago. Soon, massive earthquakes will break the bonds of Fenris. Jormungandr will rise from the sea. United with those abominations, the giants will attack the gods. A new, peaceful world may arise if we can destroy the evil in this one. That is all we can hope to do. With every muscle, every thought, and every wish, we must destroy evil. You must do your part, too, little one.”