A Mermaids Tail

13.Mimir

Losing the eye hadn't exactly been the most painful experience but neither was it the most pleasant. He'd torn some cloth from a shirt and tied it around his eye for the time being, he'd find something else more appropriate later. Choosing to lose his eye hadn't been a difficult one either, not with what the stood to gain from it, Narfi was still surprised and suspicious that Nari had managed to bargain a deal with Mimir, but it seemed he'd been telling the truth. He'd also said that the full effects of the exchange would not be immediate, and this was becoming evident now, Alicia was looking around as they walked along the long passageway in the rock by the lights of a few torches with wild eyes and fear on her face. He slowed to a stop, grabbing her face gently and looking into her eyes with his, "What is it?" he whispered softly.

She looked at him blankly before her eyes rolled back and she collapsed, dead-weighting against him. Nari appeared at his side and helped lay her down gently, "We can't move her when she's in this trance state Narfi, if her soul leaves her body and can't find it again she'll be lost in the Nether."

"Vali, Nari, we'll proceed alone the rest of you hold fort here," Narfi kissed Alicia's closed eyes gently before standing, "And if any harm comes to her it'd best be over your dead bodies or I'll skin you myself," he added in a growl before pushing past Vali into the darkness of the tunnel ahead.

Narfi hadn't noticed it fully until before now but the further into the dark and away from the torchlight he went the more attuned to the light his eyes became. Speeding up until the torchlight was nothing but a faint spec he found that he could see the rock of the passageway as if it was bathed in a faint moonlight. He stood marvelling at this until the light grew glaring behind him and the effect faded.

"Are you ok?" Vali asked catching up, "You could stay I can handle him."

"I'm fine, I'd rather we stay together, if they're going to come it'll be for us first you can be sure of that."

Nari caught them up and the three brothers made their way northwards along the winding passage, having to turn sideways at some points to squeeze through it became so narrow, constantly hunched to avoid banging their heads against the low, solid stone roofs.

Behind them Alicia lay twitching slightly, Vali's men sat blocking the tunnel from both sides, closing her in while Nattfox tended to her, cooling her brow with a damp cloth and burning plants and oils to release a relaxing aroma into the air. Nattfox had seen this type of thing before, her family had a long line of Seers, although she herself hadn't the gift, and recognised the trancelike state Alicia was in. It happened when the soul went on a journey beyond it's shell, yet the tethers that held Alicia to her physical form were delicate and Nattfox new that even the slightest disturbance could sever her from it completely. Nattfox just hoped that whatever it was Alicia was doing that she did it quickly. However Alicia was far far far away from this place, feeling as if she was waking from a deep sleep, her surroundings strange yet similar, and somebody else was there with her, she felt their presence, heard shuffling and muttering, warily she opened one eyes ever so slightly, stretching out her fingers to feel around her. She found herself to be lay on a wooden floor, but as her fingers wandered she discovered knots and rises and bumps in the wood, however no seams, it was as if the whole floor was one huge wooden slab. Her eye only making out the worn grain of the wood, she opened it and then the other. The seamless wooden floor rounded into the walls and then curved into the roof, without a sign of craftsmanship or human hand, it was as if the room was made by the wood that formed it. A deep blue light came from the centre of the wooden room where a well rose from the ground like a tree stump with a little old man shuffling around it muttering to himself. His head was bald and a long thin beard grew from the end of his chin which he fiddled with and twisted with his left hand as he looked into the well. A floor length robe of ashen colour dragged along behind him adding to the shuffling sound of his feet beneath it.

"Hello?" Alicia called out meekly the old man jumped.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded looking affronted.

"I... I don't really know," Alicia admitted with a sigh, "Where is 'here'?"

"Here is my well, my dear Alicia, and I am Mimir," the old man bowed courteously at her.

"You're the one we made a deal with?" Alicia asked stepping forward.

"In a way," the old man replied.

"Why am I here?" She looked around the room as she spoke.

"When the bargain was made you were given the tiniest of sips from my well, in doing so you gained the knowledge that was requested, however there was not trade from you and one who received the eye is not of this place, it seems the Well has taken it upon itself to claim payment," Mimir gestured to his Well, "sit while I try to understand the Well," as the old man spoke chairs grew before her eyes from the wooden floor next to the Well and she seated herself as Mimir did the same. "All this commotion up and down the tree, unsurprising the Well us acting out really, it's a time if great unrest."

"Why? What's been happening?" Alicia asked the old man as he gazed into the luminescent, navy blue water.

"Come now Alicia you needn't but so coy with wiser, older, men. The boys you've encountered so far may fall for your doe-eyed innocence but I am a little harder to fool," Mimir smiled still gazing into the Well.

"I don't know what you mean," Alicia replied difficultly around the lump growing in her throat.

"Very well," sighed Mimir with mock boredom, "we shall continue this little game of yours a while longer, I am rarely around others, let alone youth, so it does not bore me, as of yet at least." He stirred the water as if dragging a cloth through it for a moment then spoke again, "If a mortal human being was to drink the waters of Mimir's Well, their minds would crumble inside their heads and they would be more or less instantly brain-dead, most can't handle it's immense knowledge. However other races, like the Aesir, can. Like the time long long ago when Odin came to me seeking the knowledge of the universe, he drank long and deep, at the cost of his right eye, and gained the knowledge he sought. Since others have sipped but none drank so deeply as the Allfather did. You yourself had the tiniest drops touch your lips, but your head didn't crumble did it?" the old mans grin was reflected in the water, distorted and twisted.

"But I'm not a human being, I'm a mermaid," protested Alicia.

"Well at last we're getting there!" He clapped his hands quickly and it made her jump, "True you are not human, you are a merperson, but unfortunately for them merpeople are mortal, ask your Captain friend about that." The comment made Alicia's eyes flicker with recognition and she grimaced as the repressed memory began to surface. "Look into the Well Alicia," the old man urged, "it will let the memory flow before your eyes."

Alicia gazed into the waters and as if the waters held the events of that day, it played out before her all over again.