Winterfire

Chapter Twenty-six

Lif

I’d allowed myself to be carried in the talons of a giant falcon to an impossible mission in Helheim. I’d walked on knife blades to cross the most treacherous river in the Nine Worlds. Now, I was in the den of some mad bookkeeper who demanded my finger as payment to enter the Underworld. I was past the point of thinking. I could only keep going.

I laid my left hand on the writing desk. I turned it this way and that, and then curled all of my fingers under the thumb except the pinky. In a flash, I raised Breyta above my head and brought it down hard on my pinky finger.

I screamed and fell to the floor, Breyta still clasped tightly in my hand. Then I fainted.

When I awoke, I was lying on Mordgud’s couch, covered with a soft, warm shawl. My hand was well bandaged in clean, white fabric. It was not bleeding, but it throbbed. Breyta was across the room on Mordgud’s desk. I closed my eyes and was about to fall asleep again when I remembered the slumber enchantment of this room. I shoved my good hand into my pocket and touched the bag of runes. I came fully awake at once and sat up on the couch. Mordgud was sitting at the writing table, writing.

“Ah, you’re finally awake, sleepy head!” she said with mock congeniality.

“How long have I been asleep?” I asked. The light outside the window had not changed, but the way I felt, I could have been asleep for minutes or days. Mordgud put down her quill and smiled again. “We don’t pay much attention to time here,” she said. “We have no clocks, and the outside light is forever dusk. I can tell you that I had time to stitch your wound and bandage it. I had time to treat your finger in herbs to preserve it for your return, see?” she held up a glass jar, such as my mother might have used to can peaches. Suspended in some kind of pale green fluid was my finger. I looked away from it; I’d said goodbye to it forever just before chopping it off. It was no longer any part of me.

“So that’s it?” I said. “That can’t have been too long.”

“Oh, and I had time to weave on my loom. I made that shawl you’re wearing.”

“What? That must have taken you days and days!” I jumped up from the couch, found my pack, and frantically shoved Breyta into it.

“Oh, don’t be so upset!” said Mordgud, chuckling softly. “I am an extremely fast weaver; not at all like those slowpoke Norns. I’m sure it’s been more a matter of hours than days. But, I can see you’re in a hurry, so come along then. You held up your end of the bargain; I’ll hold up mine.”

I followed her out the same door I’d come in through, but the scene outside was completely different. The river was gone. A stone path wound through a lovely, autumnal forest. Inviting benches were spaced every dozen steps or so, each more enticing than the last. I had to keep Breyta clasped in my right arm and the bag of runes in my bandaged left hand to keep from sitting down; I knew if I sat, I’d sleep.

Eventually, the forest thinned. The path continued across a field scattered with wildflowers. There were no benches here to lure me off the path, but even worse, dry, springy, moss-covered circles dotted the landscape. Somehow, a sunbeam seemed to fall on each one of them. They were even more alluring than the benches in the forest had been.

Apparently, to travel through Helheim, one had always to strongly resist the urge to get comfortable. Every couch, bench, and even spot on the ground called out to one: Stop! Rest! Go on later! Maybe that is the real essence of Helheim. Just give up. Stop trying to move forward. Just make yourself comfortable and stay put.

Even with the surety of this notion, I still had to keep both of my hands on the two objects from home I carried in order to resist the pull.

Up ahead, I began to catch glimpses of the sunlight glinting off a vast, dark lake. With each step, I could make out more and more of the geography. We were moving gradually  down hill, toward a gravelly beach. I could not see the far coast of the lake, but from this side, a narrow spit of land— like the causeway at Lindisfarne— lead to a peninsula. The land was bare of trees, but covered with irregularly spaced mounds of dirt that dotted the gray, rocky ground as far as I could see.

When we reached the causeway, I saw that beside nearly every hummock sat a person. There were a few people who looked to be in their teens and several looked about the age of my parents, but the vast majority of the people were old. There were no infants or even small children.

“Mordgud, who are those people and why are they staring at us?”

“Those are the dead, my dear,” said Mordgud. “They’re not watching me; they’ve seen me a hundred times. I’m nothing of interest to them. But you? You, they understand, are not dead. They are fascinated with the living. They rarely see any of you here.”

As we stepped off the land bridge onto the peninsula, all the wide-eyed, anxious—looking faces turned toward us. Several opened their mouths and seemed about to speak, but Mordgud stopped walking for a moment and raised both hands above her head, palms facing outward. “I lock your jaws!” she said, and I saw several hands clap over their mouths and then reach out imploringly toward Mordgud.

“Why did you do that?” I said. “They want to speak! They’re begging to speak! Please, unlock their jaws.”

Mordgud smiled down at me, rolled her eyes, and shook her head. “Of course they want to speak! I have listened to their pleas a thousand and one times. It’s always the same: give me another chance to live, I promise I won’t waste my time, I will be a better person, I will take care of my family and friends, I will leave the world a better place than it was when I entered it, blah, blah, blah. It’s too late for their talk. Even if I could send them back— which only Hel can do –I wouldn’t. If I sent one back, then the others would pester me until I sent another and another and another. It would never end. A squandered life speeds by, but the regret for having lived such a life never ends.”

We walked, weaving between the mounds, in no pattern I could discern. Each mound looked like every other; after a while, even the people crouched beside the mounds began to look the same. I followed behind Mordgud and tried to find something— anything— remarkable about the land or the people, but it was no use. Rather than encouraging me to sleep, as the other parts of Helheim I’d seen had done, the monotony of this place grated on my nerves and set my mind and body on edge. With each passing minute, the urge to jump, to scream, to run, grew stronger.

After what seemed like an hour of walking, we came upon two barrow mounds set close together. I had to drag myself through the dirt as I squeezed between them. I closed my eyes to protect them from the falling soil, and when at last I emerged on the other side, Mordgud was gone and I found myself standing alone on a black, stone path.

“Mordgud,” I called quietly; this didn’t seem like the kind of a place where one should shout. I took a few cautious steps on the path and fog swirled all around me. I looked behind me, but the mounds were gone. I turned to the front, but could see nothing before me. There was only the black path beneath my feet. “What am I doing here?” I said aloud, but the thick miasma swallowed my voice; I’d hardly made a sound. I wished I could be anywhere but on that black path, but there was no help for that. I had to go forward.

I’d walked only a dozen steps on the path when a staircase rose before me. I climbed the steps and stood before a large, wooden door. I could just make out the walls the door was set into, but the mist was so thick I couldn’t see their tops. I stood on my toes to lift the brass knocker— a depiction of Yggrdasill, the World Tree Honir had told me about, upside down— and let it fall three times. A large woman, taller even than Mordgud, opened the door at once.