Winterfire

Chapter Eighteen

Lif

Gradually, I came to believe in the coming Ragnarok. According to Honir, all of Midgard would either burn to the ground or be swallowed by the sea. “The gods and the Frost Giants will engage in a battle that neither side will win. Remember: there is not just one world, as you were lead to believe. There are nine, and they all cluster in the branches and roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree. These worlds have always had enmity between them, but in the final battle that shakes Yggdrasil to its core, the inhabitants will try to destroy each other.”

According to Erna, the knowledge that the Ragnarok would happen came from the Norns, the three mysterious sisters who sat by the fire in Mildred’s kitchen. “Between the three of them, when they toss the runes, they can see the past, the present, and the future.”

The Norns had barely glanced at me when we were introduced in the kitchen, and for many months afterword, they didn’t even look in my direction. They muttered something to each other in low tones in a language I didn’t understand and sometimes, they rattled runes. They passed around a small bag of runes, drew a few of them out and placed them on the hearth. Then the three of them would study the resulting pattern and converse in their unfathomable language.

Perhaps because they ignored me so completely, while everyone else at Folkvanger monitored my every movement, I became fascinated with the Norns. I set out to learn as much as I could about them by observation alone, since I had never seen anyone in the house actually having a conversation with any of them. Their hands and faces, brown and wrinkled as prunes, were the only thing that hinted at their ages. Their bodies, clad always in the same voluminous dresses they wore every day, were as small as twelve-year-old children. They wore their white-blond hair twined into dozens of skinny braids that erupted over their heads.

They came and went at all hours, and it was hard to predict their appearance. Erna said their names were Skuld, Urd, and Veröandi. “Skuld is always weaving on a small loom, Veröandi just sits, staring into the fire, and the Urd repeatedly leaves the kitchen through the back door, struggling with an enormous vessel, only to return some time later, still carrying the vessel. Once, I asked if I could help carry the bucket for her, but she gave me a nasty look. You’d think I’d offered to cut her hand off for her! I never offered to help again.”

After sitting quietly in a corner of the kitchen for several days without learning anything beyond what Erna had already told me, I decided to try to speak to the Norns.

“Miss Norn,” I said to the one named Skuld. Skuld’s black eyes flickered over to me and dismissed me. Just like that, she was apparently finished with me. She wouldn’t even look at me again. I was embarrassed and quietly left the kitchen.

The next day, I approached the one called Veröandi. I hadn’t really learned anything from my attempts at conversation with Skuld the day before that I could use, but I decided to take a different approach: “You have a lovely name, Veröandi. What does it mean? I’ve never heard it before.” If possible, this sister’s glance was even faster than her sister’s had been the day before. In fact, it hurt as though she’d slashed at my face with a razor-sharp knife instead of glancing at me with her eyes. My hand flew instinctively to my cheek. I felt my face flush and I wanted to dash from the room to examine it in a mirror, but I forced myself to walk casually over to the chopping table, pick up a slice of carrot Mildred was cutting for soup, and eat it as I left the kitchen. As soon as I was safely out of earshot of the kitchen, I ran all the way up to my room to the mirror. Even though my face felt like it had been cut, I knew Veröandi had only looked at me sharply; she’d never touched me. Incredibly, a fine, red line ran down the left side of my face from the corner of my eye to just below my lips.