The Monstrous Child (5 page)

12

HE LIKES ME, I KNOW HE DOES

FOLLOW HIM
. Quietly.

Day after day I creep out of Valhall, watch where Baldr goes, and contrive a reason to be there.

Baldr’s shadow, the gods call me. What do I care? Because he likes me. I know he does.

He talks to me about the gods, asks me questions, tells me things. He makes me laugh. Laughter feels strange
in my throat. When I’m with him, I forget I’m a monster. (He says that maybe the healing goddess Eir could help my legs. I’m filled with hope, but of course she can’t. If I’d been ALL dead that would have been a different matter. Just my bad luck, as always.)

‘Well, Hel,’ he said.

(It rhymes! He made my name rhyme.) His hair is white gold, his brow smooth and fair. He is One-Eye’s son. I don’t hold that against him. After all, we don’t choose our parents, any more than they choose their children.

‘There’s something you need to know.’

13

ONE DAY HE'D BE MINE

Y HEART POUNDED
.
He's going to tell me he loves me
.

‘Do you know what is prophesied about Fenrir?' said Baldr.

I hid my disappoint ment. My face was still.
He's not ready yet. I understand. Of course I understand.

‘What prophesy about Fen?' I said. ‘That he rids the world of rats?'

‘That he will kill Odin at the End of Days,' whispered Baldr. ‘During the Last Battle at Ragnarok.'

I know that Fen is vicious, but how could he ever be powerful enough to kill the Wizard King?

‘Fen?'

‘And Jormungand will kill Thor.'

That I could believe.

‘Who foretold this?'

‘The Fates,' said Baldr. ‘That's why you were all kidnapped.'

My throat tightened. Did I
want
to know my future?

Of course I did. Who could resist? I know, I know, a man's fate should be safely hidden from him, but I am bolder.

‘What about me?' Maybe, just maybe, they'd said that Baldr and I …

‘Nothing.'

For a moment, I was insulted.

‘So I don't kill anyone?'

‘Not that they mentioned.'

I nodded. What could I say? I wasn't exactly the axe-wielding type. Anyone could outrun me.

And then I thought,
Am I so unworthy the Fates have
nothing
to say about me? Just my hateful brothers?

On the other hand, that meant Fenrir was in danger, and I wasn't.

Did I care that my remaining brother needed to beware? Are you joking? I was delighted at the thought of being an only child.

I smiled up at Baldr. He alone of the gods had been kind to me.

His voice was like honeyed mead, dripping into my mouth.

He had a wife. He had a son.

I didn't care.

One day he'd be mine.

14

CRÈCHE OF HORRORS

T HAD TO HAPPEN.
One day Dad returned, leading a colt with eight legs. My trickster father, Loki. The sly one. The giant's son. My bad blood.

I watched as he swaggered through Asgard, teasing and laughing, slapping gods on the back. Whispering jokes and gulping mead. Boasting about how he'd enticed the wall-builder's stallion away by changing himself into a
mare. (As if you'd want to
brag
about that.)

‘And now, thanks to me,' he gloated, ‘we saved Freyja, the sun and the moon, and got our Asgard wall built for free! That disgusting giant couldn't build the ramparts in six months without his stallion to help so he lost the bargain as well as his head.'

So the lazy, two-faced gods cheated a poor giant out of his promised reward. Oath-breakers.

What a surprise. Not.

‘That's a fine horse,' said One-Eye.

‘He's yours,' said Loki. ‘He's my son, Sleipnir, and the greatest horse alive. He can outrun anything, and take you anywhere you want to go, even to the land of the dead and back.'

I listened, horrified, as Dad shamelessly added a HORSE to his menagerie. What next? A boar?

But One-Eye smiled and nodded. The colt trotted over to him.

Then Dad saw me. His face went grey, as grey as Sleipnir.

‘What is IT doing here?'

One-Eye put his arm around Dad and murmured in his ear. They walked off together into One-Eye's gleaming hall.

Thanks, Dad. Great to see you too.

Let's pause and take a closer look at just some of Dad's children.

Eight legs (Sleipnir)

Four legs (Fenrir)

No legs (Jormungand)

Corpse legs (yours truly)

I'm getting a leggy theme here. What's next in the progeny department, Dad – a centipede?

What lovely siblings I have. My new half-brother is an eight-legged horse that Dad gave birth to while he was prancing around as a mare. (His saga gets worse and worse, doesn't it?) Then my full bad-blood brothers: a wolf and a snake. Then assorted man-eating hags.
(I never asked him about the ogresses. I guess I didn't really want to know the answer. Would you?) Dad and all his hideous brats, popping up everywhere. What was he trying to do, create his own crèche of horrors?

He got away with everything, my flickering, deceitful, shape-shifting father. Sometimes he was a handsome god. Sometimes an old woman. Sometimes a mare, or a salmon, or a fly.

That's Loki, turning a disaster into a triumph.

Shame he could never work the same miracle on me.

I used to pretend I could shape-shift like my father. I'd look at my half-dead body, close my eyes and imagine myself transformed into a whole living one. Not even anything special, just legs that were ivory-pink instead of festering, gangrenous black.

So why didn't the gods just kill us, Loki's monstrous children? Stupid question.

We were related to the gods, the children of a god. You don't pollute a place like Asgard with gods' spilled
blood. Even bad blood.

Bet they wished they could. Bet they wished they had. But you can't change your fate. You can only try to hide from it.

For a while the gods thought they could tame Fen. Maybe they hoped Asgard's balmy air would sweeten his breath and ease his rage. Ha. I could have told them that was a non-starter. Especially as he got bigger and bigger, less and less playful.

Instead, they came up with subtler plans.

15

DEATH TUMBLE

HE GODS GATHERED
in one of their glorious meadows and whistled for Fen. I saw Tyr and Heimdall lugging a massive, iron-linked chain between them. It clumped and thudded, each fetter broad as an oak trunk. I remember the breeze, warm on my skin and the smell of apple blossom.

Fen sidled up.

‘Wolf,’ said Tyr. ‘Are you eager for fame?’

Fen said nothing, watching them with his burning yellow eyes.

‘Are you as strong as this chain? I’ve bet you are – Heimdall insists that you’re not.’

Fen sniffed the chain then sat back on his haunches.
He’s got bigger
, I thought.
A lot bigger
. His mighty paws no longer looked too large for his body.

‘If you can break it, you’ll be renowned for your strength throughout the nine worlds.’

I watched Fen eye up the fetters. The gods gathered round, eager for the sport. Magni, Thor’s son, tried to push one of the links, and gave up.

Suddenly Fen bared his terrible teeth.

‘Bind me,’ he said.

Fen let the gods wind the heavy fetters round his neck, his legs and his hairy belly till he was trussed like a ham. I could feel Fen playing with them as he sank beneath the chain’s weight. I knew he was pretending; I don’t think the gods did.

‘Ready?’ they asked.

Fenrir flexed his muscles. The chain shuddered, but didn’t crack.

The gods held their breath.

Fenrir lashed against it, straining his muscles, bracing his heavy paws. Then suddenly the chain exploded, every link shattering, flying through the air like rocks. The gods leaped back. Magni shrieked and burst into tears as a link gashed his shoulder. His father slapped his face.

The next day, they tried again. This time with a chain twice as strong as the first, a chain with links so huge that even Thor struggled to lift them.

Again Fenrir, eager for fame, and keen to mock, let the gods bind him.

There was a clinking and clanking as my brother heaved and strained. This time I knew he wasn’t pretending. He dug his paws into the ground, filled his chest with air, straining and growling and flexing every muscle in his body. Then – TWANG! – the bonds burst, the links breaking into a thousand pieces.

The next time they tried it was with a fetter as soft and smooth as a silken ribbon, but woven by dwarves with cunning and magic, from the sound of a cat walking and a woman’s beard, the roots of a rock, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, the spit of a bird. Deep dwarf magic, infecting chains with what is invisible and unheard. Fen of course was suspicious, but he craved glory and renown. (Let his fate be a lesson to all fame-seekers.)

‘You’re sure to be able to break it,’ said Tyr. ‘And, if you can’t, we’ll free you.’

(We all know how much a god’s oath is worth. Stupid, proud Fen.)

Fen agreed. ‘On one condition,’ he snarled. ‘That one of you place his right hand in my mouth.’ Actually, he should have insisted one of them stuff their head in his maw.

The gods shifted nervously. I certainly wasn’t volunteering. I wanted nothing to do with the gods and their games. Dad also kept quiet.

Tyr looked round at the cowardly gods. All avoided
his eyes. Then he stepped forward and slowly put his right hand in Fen’s mouth. Fen I knew wanted to bite it off immediately, just for fun. The others wound the ribbon tightly round Fen’s neck and legs and body.

I couldn’t breathe. I prayed to the ancestors that Fen would be bound and I’d be rid of him.

‘Go on, Wolf, break free!’ urged the gods.

But the more Fen strained, the tighter the ribbon imprisoned his body. He twisted and grunted and fought, but he was caught.

‘Free me,’ growled Fen, panting.

The gods laughed instead, whooping and rejoicing at his binding.

All except Tyr, who screamed when Fen bit off his hand and swallowed it.

Then Fen threw back his head and howled. He bared his steel-sharp teeth and thrashed and roared his eternal vengeance. Fires burned from his eyes and nostrils. He looked nothing like a cub any more. He looked like a wolf of Ironwood.

The gods recoiled. I also lurched back, and that’s when Odin seized me by my hair and hurled me high into the sky over Asgard’s high walls.

Dad did nothing to save me. His mouth was full of air.

‘Hel!’ bellowed One-Eye. I heard his voice as I somersaulted through the clouds, the citadel of Asgard shrinking in the distance. My death tumble. My skyfall.

His voice was like the crashing of the ocean onto jagged rocks. ‘You will rule the worlds below the world. You will provide drink and lodging to all those sent to you, host everyone who dies of sickness or old age. They are your people – you are their queen. Go and rule Niflheim.’

What was this fearsome decree?

Day slowly turned to night, and still I tumbled through the air, a shrieking, screaming speck falling through the universe into a geyser of light plumes rising into the darkness. Billowing blood-red, seaweed-green and sun-orange lights poured up like a
roaring curtain as I tore through the swirling spirals of colour. The sky was studded with stars.

I heard a wolf howl and then I crashed through the worlds into the void of eternal darkness. Icy frost reached for me, and I fell into its shrouded embrace.