

The Incurable Caress

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella's Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch's Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The Bad Samaritan – The 13th Month – The Silvered Mare – SpinDell

Swan Moon – The Unicorndoll – Lesser Nefertiti – My Shrieking Skin – Stone in Love

Font of All Lies – The Bared Heart – The Fairy Paintbox – An Angelic Alphabet

Forewarnings and Three Grapes – Death of a Fairytale Princess

Text copyright© 2019 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Thank you for your support.

# Chapter 1

The waters swim about the boats as if either alive, or alive with all manner of unimaginable creatures.

Huge humps of water rush past the low-hulled boats, threatening at times to swamp them. They could be mistaken for the swelling waves of unusual currents, only they follow no regular pattern, serve no will but her own, if needs be ominously circling a boat before, at last, and thankfully, leaving.

But then, anyone first sighting the boats as the high, arching heads emerged from the white mist would also mistakenly swear they were a flock of dragons, the steady rise and fall of their wings accompanied by little more than the sound of parting waters.

The soul of each dragon is its men, for just as she needs them to grant her movement, they depend upon her to protect them.

And one of those dragons is different to all the rest.

For the makeup of her soul contains a girl.

*

Gytha was more far seeing, more wary, than even the wide eyes of each dragon ship; especially when she was asleep, as now.

For she'd taken wing, flying on ahead of everyone else, seeking out any ships of the Usurper King who might give warning of their approach.

Naturally, the ravens, still tightly cooped up in their cages, had been appalled that she'd apparently taken on their role of searching out land.

'So you hate us every bit as much as Noah did!' Wé had hissed as Gytha had spread her vast, white wings in preparation for taking off from what laughingly passed as the ship's deck.

'I no longer know of this Noah,' Gytha had sighed resignedly, accepting that her beliefs had been shaken long ago, perhaps never to be restored. (Even her newly learned principles were obviously mocked by many, going by the naming of these malicious ravens!)

'He sent out our forebear long before any dove!' the other raven, Wyly, snarled with the venom of a creature raised to distrust man. 'And all so he could take the raven's wife as his own!'

Gytha had ignored them, realising such deeply imbedded resentments could never be eradicated by her own apathetically weak arguments.

Once in the air, she could briefly forget the simmering anger that was not simply tainting but also seeping into all things. A refreshing wind momentarily blew it from her mind, her senses, her flesh.

Untouched by this higher breeze, the mist lying below her spread out everywhere like an eerie sea, the odd patches where it cleared rising like islands amongst it all.

It could be a mass of clouds that had descended towards and enveloped the earth. Or it could be that she was flying higher than she supposed, passing soaring mountain tops.

Either way, she was grateful that – in her own particular way, naturally – she'd effectively left the claustrophobic confines of the ship behind her for at least a while.

It was good to be away from the stench of men.

*

# Chapter 2

The ship, so small, so crowded, so damp – so filled with the swelling sweat of unwashed men, who strained each day at the oars, or fought with the billowing sail, only to have no choice later but to sleep where they'd worked – hardly seemed capable of dealing with these shallow waters, let alone be capable of taking on the raging waves of the oceans.

Unlike the ship Gytha had recently arrived on, personally belonging to King Sweyn of Denmark, this ship of Asbjorn's, his brother, was in a sorry state too.

Although numbering three hundred ships, and backed by the forces of the earls still rebelling against the Usurper King, the original invasion force had fared badly in a land deliberately laid waste, ensuring there was little food to be had. Asbjorn had eventually accepted payment from the Usurper to leave, only to remain moored in the river for months, awaiting King Sweyn's arrival.

King Sweyn had been welcomed by the rebels, especially when he'd more or less declared his brother to be a traitor for taking the false king's gold; and yet he'd put Asbjorn in charge of this attempt to secure and then launch an attack from the island of Elig.

Unlike the princes, her far more naive brothers, Gytha suspected King Sweyn's purpose, even though he was their cousin.

Unlike their poor dead father, the king disposed by the Usurper, King Sweyn had a royal lineage.

He could quite easily take the throne for himself.

*

The island was much easier to find than Gytha had feared.

It was not only of a much greater size than she'd imagined – with the monastery at Elig surrounded by more than enough land to support an army – but it also rose up out of the mist every bit as clearly as it stood out against the shallow sea.

Swooping low across the farmed land, Gytha took care to draw as little attention to herself as possible, not wishing to discover what might happen if someone fancying a tasty meal attempted to bring her down with a swiftly aimed arrow.

Not that the rebel forces holding the island faced the starvation suffered for so long by the Danish fleet.

The soil was quite obviously extremely fertile, providing harvests more than capable of sustaining a large population. There were vineyards here too, while sizeable herds of cattle, sheep and pigs were in abundance. Game of all kinds flourished in the forests and the island's surrounding reed marshes, and the supply of fish was guaranteed in an area so awash with streams, rivers, and wide sheets of open water.

Here, of course, the sea didn't completely envelope the land, yet it was an island nevertheless, for it was otherwise surrounded by bogs and unstable ground crisscrossed haphazardly by every kind of waterway. The few narrow causeways running like wavering threads winding their way through all this had been blocked with peat bulwarks, any one of which was obviously easily defended by even the smallest unit of armed men.

No armed warriors could safely navigate such treacherous ground, least of all the heavy cavalry forming the backbone of the Usurper's army.

Even to Gytha's untrained eyes, Elig island appeared to be the perfect place to launch the new invasion from.

But whose claim to the throne would the invasion be backing?

Gytha wouldn't dare to hazard a guess.

*

Goodwin, Gytha's eldest brother, still presumed the throne was rightfully his.

But on the death of their father five years ago, the earls had immediately hailed Edgar Aetheling – a boy of seventeen, just like Goodwin – as their new king.

King Sweyn's fleet had earlier aided Edgar's rapidly failing cause, while her exiled brothers' two unsuccessful invasions had been supported by the armies of King Diarmait.

When Goodwin and Edmund had finally fled to Denmark, they hadn't received the warm welcome that Gytha, along with her grandmother and aunt, had received earlier in the year.

But then, despite the first brief joys of reunion, even Gytha had found it hard to warm to her brothers' aggressive demands and arrogant airs.

They'd changed so much since she'd last seen them; and Gytha instinctively feared that it was a change engendered by more than just the agonising frustration of losing so many battles.

Every time she took on her guise as a swan, she found it harder and harder to resist the caressing voices in her head, promising her so much, so much power.

How much harder must it be to fight those impulses when your familiar is a wolf?

*

# Chapter 3

Hidden beneath the thick veil of low-lying mist, the fleet of small ships was far harder to find than any island.

Fortunately, as they'd promised earlier, each dragon head was calling out to her in a song not unlike that of the whales.

It whistled through the reeds like a stiffly unrelenting wind. It reverberated and echoed off the firmer slices of land.

Gytha swopped low once more, only this time she was instantly enveloped by the damp, motionless mist. Completely sightless, she was now entirely dependent on the song to serve as her guide.

The muddy waters flashing beneath her at great speed were so close she could have landed on them with nothing more than a flick of her wings. A filthy brown, the waters offered back no reflection, no sense of refreshment and replenishment.

They rippled still with the coils of serpents rushing about their own business.

Ahead, the first of the dragon heads abruptly emerged from the mist.

'Hail Princess Gytha!' the dragoness called out, obviously recognising the girl despite her transposed form. 'I'm glad to see your safe return!'

'Good morning Thorgerd!' Gytha gleefully cried back, preparing to rise up, to closely skim past the elegantly rising head as she sought out Skaldmaer, her own ship.

Then she faltered, a touch startled; out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of darkness against the silvery mist, such that she briefly wondered if the ravens had been let loose after all. Then, her reason abruptly told her, it could only be her own shadow, cast against the solid sheet of fog; for it was of her size, maintaining her speed, and was elegantly feathered.

But it wheeled off, which no shadow is supposed to do.

A bird then, huge, and black.

And in all other respects but colour, appearing as perfectly similar as a twin.

A _black_ swan?

Surely there could be no such creature?

*

Gytha would have followed the unusual bird, even as it allowed itself to be entirely swallowed up by the silent mist – only she abruptly found herself winging her way through the massed ships, each with rising oars, a soaring mast, and labyrinthine rigging, anyone of which could clip her wings if she foolishly attempted wheeling about amongst them.

Besides, sweet Skaldmaer now lay directly ahead of her.

'Gytha, my girl!' Skaldmaer elatedly called out, adding motherly, 'Even you shouldn't take wing in a mist like this!'

'I wouldn't want to see you heading the wrong way, and end up floundering on some hidden mudbank!' Gytha replied with a laugh, swooping as close as she could to the dragoness's sorely battered head.

Skaldmaer's responding smile was a little crooked, the result of an injury sustained in stormy weather, rather than one of her many battle scars.

Gytha kept her wings out flat and straight as she soared over the heads of the rowing men, bringing them in tightly at the last moment as she dropped down gently onto the shields and sheet protecting her sleeping human body.

The crouching man slipping one slab of crystal over another until it glowed brightly, revealing the sun's position despite the shrouding mist, ignored her interruption; but the man kneeling alongside, a local sent to help them navigate through the mingling of invading sea and mudflats, was clearly startled.

How much more shocked, Gytha wondered, will he be when I vanish right before his eyes?

He gasped as Gytha the swan seemingly dissolved in an instant into yet more minute droplets of mist.

But he breathlessly shrieked in fear when Gytha woke up beneath the sheet and stirred, as if she were rising up from the dead.

*

# Chapter 4

Gytha had no need for finery anymore.

She wore the drab grey cloak, the starched white wimple, of the Wé Nun.

There was an irony in this, of course; for she'd been quietly if resignedly appalled when King Sweyn had insisted that she would be sent to the convent.

If it had to be the case that she was destined to be a Bride of God, she'd politely and respectfully declared, then she would far rather return with her grandmother and aunt to Flanders, where her elders intended to join the Nunnery of St Omer.

Hearing of Gytha's stern avowal, her grandmother, whom she'd been named after, took her aside to offer whispered assurances that it wasn't any ordinary convent she was being sent to; 'Rather, it's one where girl's displaying only an ounce of your natural ability are _trained_ in its use!'

Indeed, just as her grandmother also told her, it was a talent so revered and thought so necessary to the wellbeing of the nation that any girl of any rank revealing such innate skills would be forcibly removed from their families.

Fortunately for Gytha, it was soon recognised that she would require only a few years of instruction at most to master the gifts bequeathed to her by her mother, Queen Swanneschals. Yet even this shortened time of instruction was hurriedly cut shorter still when her increasingly anguished brothers had insisted she would have to accompany them on their next raid, enabling their own transformations to be conducted in a hopefully safer environment.

It was her brothers who anxiously looked her way now as she rose up from beneath the sheet that had covered her sleeping body.

'Well?' demanded Edmund grumpily. 'Is it, as we were promised, a safe haven for us to launch a new attack from?'

Gytha could forgive her brother's surliness; he, unlike Goodwin, appeared wholly aware and fearful that their regular transformations were endangering them. His twin, Magnus, had already been lost, vanishing amidst a battle such that, at best, he was now feared dead, or, far worse, he had slipped farther into the darkness.

'Yes, it's easily defended,' Gytha replied calmly, realising Edmund needed the reassurance that his next transformation wouldn't be required just yet. 'There's already a substantial force occupying the island.'

She caught Edmund's silent sigh of relief.

Godwin, however, growled with a ferocious disappointment.

*

'Gytha; my sisters tell me they sense the presence of others like us!'

Of course, Gytha was the only one to hear Skaldmaer's urgent whisper. In such a confined space, she had to brusquely push past her brothers as she rushed towards the head of the ship.

'Where? Where are they, Skaldmaer?' she anxiously asked, seeing only the shrouding mist on all sides.

'Over to your right; and swiftly approaching!'

'Asbjorn!' Gytha hissed over her shoulder, quickly seeking out King Sweyn's brother amongst the men. 'The Usurper's men are closing in, approaching in their own ships!'

*

'How could they see us? How could they know we were here?'

Asbjorn peered blindly into the veiling mist as he stood alongside Gytha. Her brothers had joined them too, so that they were all now standing by Skaldmaer's elegantly held head.

Gytha thought back to her glimpse of the black swan.

'The Usurper could have his own Wé or Wyly Nun working for him.'

'If they can see us, they won't attack us,' Godwin declared with bitter assurance, for it was obvious in the set of his jaw, the sparkle in his eyes, that he would have preferred an encounter. 'The Usurper can't have amassed a fleet our size so quickly.'

'And if they can't see the extent of our force?' Edmund responded cautiously, his expression one of deep anxiety approaching fear, raising a disgusted sneer from his elder brother.

'No matter which way it is, I suspect they know their heads will roll if they don't attack!' Asbjorn guffawed with grim satisfaction.

With practised moves of fingers and hands, he signalled to the men seated behind him to prepare for an attack.

Even as the three men stepped from Skaldmaer's head, they were reaching into the pouches at their waists, withdrawing handfuls of henbane seeds and petals.

Unlike the others, however, Edmund hesitated before crushing them into the paste they needed to affect their transformations.

'Is it worth it; for a short battle?' he asked warily. 'Must we lose ourselves as men once again?'

'You'd rather lose me my rightful kingdom then, Edmund?' Godwin replied disdainfully.

He was already rubbing the concoction into every area of bared skin he could reach as the two men serving him swiftly unstrapped the bindings on his clothes.

Gytha had experienced the effects of a little paste spread on naked flesh: a numbing, followed by a mild sensation of flying. She'd soon decided she had no need of it.

As Asbjorn similarly allowed himself to be quickly stripped by his men, smearing the henbane juice everywhere about his own body, he observed Godwin with undisguised distaste.

Even if Asbjorn could excuse Godwin and Edmund for once causing him and his men of the Tingmannalid to flee for their lives at a time when they'd been enemies, he'd never forgive them for killing his brother, Bjorn Ulfson: a tower of a man who'd been both wolf and bear!

He hid his angry snarl by slipping on his helmet, an elvin creation boasting the hard jaw and hollowed eyes of a bear woken too early from his hibernation.

Ignoring the mistiming of the placing of his helmet, his attendants continued to hurriedly re-buckle his padded garments, wrapping him in mail and furs. Gytha caught a last glimpse of his bared flesh, an upper arm graced with the tattoos some warriors had taken to having inscribed on their skin, another if more dangerous means of breaking down the barriers between man and nature.

It allowed transformation without the need for armour: yet it also increased the chance that a change could occur unbidden, at any time, rather than just for the purposes of battle.

Why would Asbjorn need such an ability? It wasn't as if he needed to work hard upon a farm, or crafting buildings or tracks.

Why would he take such a risk for so small a gain?

And then, although she had, naturally, decorously turned aside as her bothers' flesh had been almost entirely bared, she now spotted the marks upon their skin that were far, far worse.

For these weren't the art of man, of injections of urine-soaked soot or other dyes.

These were the burnt and deeply embedded etchings of the dark elves.

As she had feared, then, her brothers were gradually succumbing to the Caress.

*

# Chapter 5

On every ship now men were preparing for battle.

Asbjorn had got word to the others of the expected attack with a series of easily recognised signs; the waving of a lamp, the rise and fall of certain oars.

The ravens, Wé and Wyly, made no effort to contain their excitement, licking their claws as if already savouring the blood they would soon be coated in.

'I desire the fresh flesh of the slain!' Wyly cawed happily.

'I think I prefer my meat well hung,' Wé chortled in humorous reply, referring to his fondness for feeding on those dangling from the gallows. 'But who's to complain, when men prepare to fatten their battle-starlings?'

Gyth ignored them. She realised they were playing upon her fears that her brothers might yet die in the forthcoming battle, despite the advantages their transformation would grant them.

In armour crafted by the light elves, her siblings already had the appearance of being semi-transformed, with wolf fur cloaks and helmet plums of fluffed tails. But, of course, far more effective than even this was the artful shaping of shadows and highlights magically engendered by the runic cavorting of elongated beasts, the knotting and plaiting of creatures made serpentine in their stretching and coiling. It was armour that appeared to have no obvious edges of form, other than the snout, eyes and ears of helms that could have built around wolfen skulls, so realistic were they in the effect created.

Alongside Asbjorn's great bear there also stood now a boar, somewhat humped, such that his tusked maw was projected hard forward.

There would be others upon the rest of the ships, Gytha realised.

How many?

She'd never asked; a failing, no doubt, that could be put down to the sharp curtailing of her instruction.

She would find out soon enough; for she would be expected to ensure none of them slipped too far into the grip of the dark elves.

*

From beneath the closed helms of Gytha's brothers, there now came the first sounds – the chattering teeth, the shivering – of the beginnings of their transformation.

They would be sweating heavily too, Gytha realised, despite the chills invading every part of their bodies.

She looked, worriedly, towards Edmund, catching a glimpse of the panic in his eyes even as they became darker set, callous, and hungry beyond the slit of his visor.

The armour plates shifted across his body, their linking designed to accept the increase in muscle, the changes in size.

In that briefly shared gaze, she was sure he was begging her for help.

Yet she was far from certain that she'd be able to grant him the protection he desired and deserved.

Her instruction had been cut short. Of necessity, of course, as despite her short stay at the convent, her innate abilities still set her above what were little more than novices.

All the more accomplished nuns had perished or been lost to the Caress in earlier conflicts.

In the hope of gaining a little comfort, she instinctively reached for the brightly enamelled Yggdrasil Brooch hanging from a necklace against her grey cloak, the only colourful item allowed a Wé Nun. It was her 'Terrible Steed', a charm drawing on the Nine Spells of Mother Gróa, her only guide and aid should she fall too deeply into the darkness.

'I stood at the door of earth-fast stones as I chanted these songs for you. Be mindful of your mother's words, let them dwell in your breast; and luck-everlasting in life shall you have.'

As she touched the brooch, recalling Mother Gróa's promise, Gytha felt a slight twitch of movement there; which shouldn't be possible – not in this realm.

Whatever had caused it – perhaps she'd imagined it, perhaps it was a flexing of her own flesh – it caused her to look up into the mist filled sky.

She caught there a flash of shadows, as if glimpsing once more the fierce fluttering of the black swan against the grey fog. This was smaller, however, she quickly realised, more raven-like in its shaping.

The bird dropped lower, swooping into a smooth curling about Skaldmaer's mast, doubtlessly wishing to appear aimless and innocent in its moves.

Yet Gytha wasn't to be fooled.

She sensed here a purpose, a consciousness; a creature of the Wyly Nun.

And yet this was no real creature.

It was far more like a tattoo, etched upon the fabric of life itself.

*

# Chapter 6

This raven wasn't of flesh and blood but, rather, one of a purely artistic creation.

Its body, its wings, were formed of swirling, curling patterns, much as the light elves used on their armour, or the dark elves upon human flesh.

Yet this creature required no base, no foundation, for it to be etched upon, it seemed.

Gytha had never come across or even heard of such a thing before; well, not alive and well in this realm, at least.

She wouldn't have believed it possible if she hadn't seen it for herself.

She was aware, yes, that the Wyly Nuns' talents differed to those of the Wé, The Sacred Nuns.

The Wyly Nuns' gift and training focused on granting will and desire to the animals themselves.

This alone was why Gytha was capable of talking to Skaldmaer and her sisters, and her ravens too: because a Wyly Nun had granted a permanence (and therefore also, thankfully, a _limit_ ) to their understanding. For there was little to fear, of course, when such a creation depended upon man for its movement, or its food.

It was the wolves, bear and boars they brought to awareness that were dangerous and must always be controlled and – ultimately – limited in their time as almost fully conscious creatures.

Yet this raven was wholly created by woman, Gytha sensed: its very body somehow woven from the strands of the physical world, using elvin devices to both shred and then meld the barriers between the realms.

It was a creature, then, of a veritably _complete_ darkness: a construct somehow granted life in the world of men.

*

From deep within the mist, there came a rushed, shrieking whistling, as if a whole host of banshees had been suddenly set upon them.

The grey veil split here and there, erupting with bursts of orange flame – fire arrows, and what appeared to be hundreds of them too.

With each leaving behind them a darkly curling tail of smoke, they thudded into decks, hulls, shields and even men. The worst, naturally, where the dulled plop of arrows striking the furled sail, suspended lengthways just above the narrow central deck, for the flames had both the material and the time to begin to spread before they could be removed and doused.

Those hitting the sea, thwarted in their purpose, hissed angrily, but there were remarkably few of these.

For now, from what Gytha could see, a darkly patterned raven flew about each ship.

*

Alongside her, Gytha's brothers were breathing heavily, struggling with the impulse to give their transformation full rein.

The boar was gnawing at the edges of his great shield, whimpering a little as he strained to hold back an urge to howl.

Gytha couldn't put it off any longer; she returned to the inadequate protection of her sheet and shields.

She lay down beneath them.

She slipped over the border into the darkness of Niðavellir.

*

# Chapter 7

Taking on her familiar of the swan, while remaining within her own, natural realm, granted Gytha an incredible sense of freedom.

The seductions of the Caress lay relatively far away, for her body lay asleep while her consciousness took flight.

Naturally, it was always there; the whispering, the promise of even greater powers, if only she would just...

And this part of the promise, of course, always remained unheard, fading away to nothingness no matter how hard she tried to reach out to hear its endearments.

It was the Caress's strength, and your own increasing weakness, that only differed, depending upon the state of the transformation acquired.

Once you'd accepted your gift, and utilised it, you'd also set in motion the possibility that you would eventually succumb to the calling, the promises.

Holding off, or at least delaying, its overtaking of your soul was all you could hope for now. And even then you could fall into madness, so loud and persistent was the growing urgency of its calling.

You wished then, she'd been reliably informed, that you'd retained the borders of your being, even if they were ultimately only imaginary.

And to linger on the border of realms: how much more dangerous is that?

Niðavellir could itself have been a construct of the dark elves.

To them it is as a much a world of light as ours is to men.

A world of supposed solidity and – until they wish it otherwise – unchangeable form.

But the Nun can see here only the underlying devices that grant it its apparent nature, the whirling workings of symbolic representation. It's chaotic, hard to define; the edges of one thing almost indistinct from the beginning and end of another.

As such, the border is a violently fluid sea lashing at what – from an erroneously temporal perspective – appears to be the immovable rocks of man's reality.

Preparing for their transformation, her brothers unknowingly waver between the two worlds, partially clinging onto the realm of men, partially drawing on the symbolic intertwining of Niðavellir, letting its ever-shifting matrix tug and pull apart the established weave, letting it remould the body to its own, new – or should that be ancient? – instructions.

It is the animal within man – his older self – that Niðavellir itself draws upon.

*

No one else but Gytha – and, if she were close, the Wyly Nun – would hear the pained bewailing of the dragon ships.

They had been declared enemies only through the works of man, and therefore felt sorely abused that they were about to cause each other uncalled for injuries.

Only the Nuns were conscious, too, of the increasingly wilder inducements of the Caress, for the men and beasts being called to seek enhancement of their powers only heard it as their own longings.

The final stages of change couldn't be held off any longer.

And once the beast is let lose, it cuts down everything in its path, incapable of differentiating friend from foe.

So Gytha sighed with relief as the looming dragon heads of the Usurper's fleet at last appeared from the silvery shrouds of mist.

*

A great howling, a thunderous roaring and bellowing, went up from either side, the beasts eager to draw blood, the men needing courage.

There was a deafening clattering, too, of swords and spears on shields, of cumbersome oars unfortunately colliding, the ships now spinning into a complicated wheeling, each seeking to gain advantage as they closed in upon each other.

Oars shattered, cracking as loudly as tumbling trees, the ships crashing into each other, the hulls booming hollowly.

The hybrids of either side were the first to act, running across irregular pathways of oars, or leaping from one narrow platform to another with astounding ease. They clashed and fought with snarling ferocity, uncaring of any risk of personal injuries, wielding axes, hammers, spears and swords, for the Usurper's beasts – animals given the minds of men, rather than the minds of men given the countenance of animals – had also been heavily armed and armoured.

Of course, no untamed beast could be forced to don armour; it was only when changed that they willingly accepted the extra protection it offered.

It wasn't armour, then, that precipitated change, but etchings upon the beast. And once again, this quite naturally couldn't be accomplished by normal means, but only by calling on the elves' darkest arts.

True consciousness came from the higher realms; and yet the Wyly Nun necessarily delved far deeper into Niðavellir to draw out the strands required to successfully achieve her melding.

The darkness swirling about the border was thicker, more cloying than anything Gytha had previously experienced. Naturally, its boundaries weren't clearly defined, but rather flickered like dark flames licking at the edges of another reality, apparently unsubstantial and impermanent, yet silently wreeking the utmost damage.

For its strands tore at the threads of the realm of man, particularly those apparently hidden away inside each being, as these were the most fluid and therefore weakest of all. Men and beasts, in their growing rage, actually invited these darker aspects to wind ever deeper under their flesh, pulling them in, tugging on them, seeking to gain from their extra power and strength.

It was a deadly, inner conflict they remained unaware of, even as their more natural rooting shredded and split, the snapped and unravelling weave instantly and elatedly replaced by a darker weft, an oily-black warp.

Gytha couldn't repair a tear in the fabric of someone's being. Neither was it wise to attempt to control someone's rage while they fought for their lives. She couldn't pull free a serpentine strand already deeply embedded within someone's inner being.

Yet she flitted swiftly from one of her charges to another, thankfully easily passing over a sea that didn't exist in Niðavellir. The dark threads whirled everywhere about her, as leaves spin about within a swirling wind; then with a practised twist of an arm, a tweak of a wrist, she rapidly gathered up these opportunistic threads, every one of them seeking to probe the weakened shells of men as carrion feed on the fallen.

Once entwined, even the dark grain of Niðavellir gains a substance that can be cast aside, where it hangs or drifts uselessly until it manages to disentangle itself.

As their lives are in many way in her hands, Gytha recognises that she should share her protection amongst her charges equally, and without favour.

And yet, she's torn, naturally.

For her brothers need her aid more than anyone.

And whose fault is that if not her own?

*

# Chapter 8

Gytha could have joined a convent long ago.

She'd shown she had the necessary skills, inherited from her mother, just ten years ago.

She'd fallen into a daze, awaking with tales of soaring over a sparkling spring, and landing in its silvery waters.

Ironically, if she'd been only slightly lower born, she would have had no choice in the matter about joining a nunnery. A friend who'd she'd regularly played with, displaying only the most feeble of powers, had been taken that very same year.

Abbess Bryghtwyde had approached them as they'd both danced upon the grass, their necks and hair garlanded with chains of daisies.

Bryghtwyde had smiled at their childish antics.

Then she'd happily – and then sternly, at the first signs of tears or refusal – informed Gytha's friend that she'd been chosen to be a Bride of God.

'It wouldn't be fair,' she'd added, with a sly glance towards Gytha's mother, utilising years of practise in persuading parents to peacefully and gratefully give up their children, 'to allow such potential to remain unfulfilled.'

Under Bryghtwyde's persistent and accomplished coaxing, Queen Swanneschals might have relented and allowed the abbess to enrol her daughter in the convent; only she'd already recently suffered the loss of a son not long after he'd been born, a painful bereavement that was still raw to her.

Besides, not only had Swanneschals' own remarkable powers grown quite naturally, without any need of any convent training, but of late they'd also abruptly and remarkably intensified – for even without a hint of previous instruction, she'd been successfully wafted off to the Holy Land, aided by the Mother of All Mothers herself.

Here she'd seen the humble house where Mary, _Chryselakatos_ – demurely spinning the scarlet thread for a Temple Veil destined to be rent – was told she would put a clothing of flesh about a most special child, a child who would live forever.

And with the help of the angels themselves, who'd corrected the measurement and fitting of the timbers, Swanneschals had rebuilt the house on her own lands on the banks of the River Stiffkey. And so here, whenever she visited, which was often, Queen Swanneschals would forever witness the most beautiful vision of all: of a mother tenderly holding her new born child, one promised her by the announcement of an attendant angel.

And being the Mother of All Mother's, Mary had promised: 'Whoever seeks my help here will not go away empty-handed.'

Of course, back then there had been no urgent need for Gytha to develop her skills.

Her father had the magical Raven Banner to aid him in battle, the excitedly screeching raven almost invariably bringing victory to the men it was carried before (if only an inevitable death to the one who carried it).

Ultimately, when no one else would carry the banner for him, Gytha's father had bravely taken it up and raised it himself.

Unfortunately, whenever the raven drooped listlessly, the banner could also correctly prophesise defeat.

*

Flowing in the liminal space between the realms, Gytha worked as quickly as she could, scooping up the threads of darkness, spinning them into strands too cumbersome to be a danger to the hybrid warriors.

It was an exhausting and, perhaps, thankless task: for which warrior would know, let alone admit, that she had saved them from slipping deeper into the darkness?

Many already appeared lost, if it were to be judged solely upon the frenzy of their attacks. No mercy was given, none expected; the morals of beasts.

As for the actual beasts of the Usurper – the real wolves, bears, and boars – they seemed little different from the animals made of men, in appearance and nature, in viciousness and strength.

Only on the borders could a difference be ascertained.

For, bizarrely, Gytha's side was one of darkening souls, clad in the glistening armour of light; while their foes were dark in their elvin-tainted flesh, yet glowing inwardly.

Threads of light spun endlessly towards these intensely battling creatures, potentially granting them an ever-growing awareness, an enlightenment that could only result in a belief that they were obviously special, perhaps even god-like in their ability to grasp ideas and mould all possibilities.

How, then, could they ever be expected to give up such a gift?

Perhaps for the first time, they truly sensed the relish of the pain they were inflicting, the power they had, experiencing new emotions, a new agility in thought. They had a purpose, too, one driving them to ignore their own gouged flesh as if it were all nothing more than injuries sustained to unfeeling sections of armour. Blood spurted and rose up everywhere, scattering and diffusing on the wind as a veiling scarlet mist.

Through the raging forest of fiercely thrashing axes and spears, Gytha at last caught a glimpse of her own opponent; the Wyly nun, moving swiftly about the battle, sweeping up the probing barbs of an as yet unformed consciousness.

It was a struggle, Gytha realised, far harder than her own. For the coils of darkness moved relatively sluggishly, if more slyly, than the sharper, incisive intrusions of consciousness.

*

A loud cheer rose up from the ferociously fighting men.

The warriors led by Gytha's brothers had bravely unfurled the Raven Banner, lifting it up into the breeze. Instantly, its previously purely silken white took on the aspects of a black raven, one aggressively flying on before them with fiercely beating wings, a loudly cawing beak.

The raven would help them carry the day!

Its magical qualities were known to all men. No one could doubt now whose forces would prevail.

No one, that is, but the Wyly Nun, who had her own sources to draw upon.

She, of all people that day, knew there was one _particular_ weakness in a battle such as theirs.

*

# Chapter 9

The waters flowing in between the warring ships churn restlessly, the crashing waves foam flecked, the sea itself a whirl of colours, from the greens of disturbed lichens to the crimson of spilt blood.

At the best of times, it's impossible to catch every detail of heavily rolling waters. Yet these chaotically surging waves are naturally completely undefinable, the already confusing reflections and refractions of light constantly disturbed by the splash of colliding hulls, of falling weapons, and tumbling men.

Amongst such muddled scenes, ever-shifting shapes and symbols of every kind can be seen everywhere by anyone actively seeking them out.

The devices form in an instant, exist but briefly – then dissolve to become something new, or perhaps meld into those nearby.

Grant them a slightly longer life, and they begin to take on substance. Enjoin them, then, with those abutting them, ensuring their individual existence can't be so easily snuffed out. Cajole them constantly to readily blend with yet other shapes, all the time creating ones of more originality.

In this way, fresh segments are formed, airy scales building up about an idea of a new form of life.

And as the scales vary in size, some become those of the great forehead of a vast, beast-like head. Meanwhile, increasingly smaller ones swiftly collect about dark holes that – as other fluidly moving symbols suddenly still, hardening – become eyes, ears and a huge maw.

Abruptly soaring up on a whirling spout, the head first gains its neck, and then an angrily breathing chest. Then come limbs, two powerfully muscled arms. And on the ends of these limbs, why, then the shapes, the symbols, become talons, and claws.

Rising up higher and higher until it looms over the tallest masts of the greatest ships, it takes up within its swirling waters the flotsam of broken yards and split shields, wooden shards that rapidly become embedded with a fraction of the massed arrows and spears otherwise harmlessly sent its way. Yet despite the creature's apparent invulnerability to this onslaught, it suffers no trouble itself when it viciously brings down an arm upon the closest ship, pounding it into a shower of shattered, splintered wood and scattered, squealing bodies.

The men striking the water, like every other one before them, only briefly and fruitlessly attempt to save themselves. Their sodden clothes and leaden armour almost instantly drag them under, taking them down to the bed where Ran's nine daughters are hopefully waiting to embrace them.

The towering creature moves on, demolishing another ship in its way with equal ease and casualness, the rain of arrows desperately sent against it as useless as every other attempt to bring the beast to a halt.

It has a purpose, it seems to Gytha, for it moves in one direction only, rather than lashing out at any ship that foolishly draws too close. If a boat could slide quickly enough to one side, the monstrous beast would simply stride on through the waters, ignoring what could have been yet one more easy target for its pummelling fists.

It is one particular ship that the beast seeks out: Skaldmaer.

Skaldmaer shrieks, but in warning, not fear.

'It's _you_ it _really_ seeks, Gytha!'

*

A nun asleep was almost as vulnerable as a sleeping man, provided you worked quickly – and _brutally_ – enough.

Remove her from the game, and even the most powerful magical influences – yes, even those of the Raven Banner – might possibly be ignored.

Most nuns had died in this way. While they slept, they were naturally at their weakest, their most defenceless.

At least the wise Skaldmaer had managed to warn Gytha of the danger she faced.

And in an instant, Gytha was by the side of her own body, preparing to slip inside once more, and wake before the arrival of the swiftly approaching beast.

But what good would waking do?

There was nowhere to run.

There was no way she or even the men clustered about her could hope to fight off a creature so immense, so impervious to arrows and spears, that it could have been conjured up to bring the world to an end.

She had no idea what to do.

And the raging beast was already closely bearing down upon her.

*

# Chapter 10

There was another problem, Gytha abruptly noticed.

Amidst all the chaos, with every man intent on fighting off the approaching dragon, no one seemed to have even noticed that one of the enemy wolves had somehow managed to come aboard the ship.

Thankfully for the already woefully embattled warriors, the wolf obviously had no interest in attacking them for, bounding swiftly yet silently along the central decking, its fiery stare was firmly set on Gytha's sleeping body.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, its gaze flicked towards Gytha herself, as if aware of her presence, despite her supposed invisibility.

With a snarl, a flexing of powerful muscles, a blurring of legs, it leapt up high, launching itself directly at a horror-stricken Gytha.

Instinctively, if uselessly, a surprised and foolishly panicked Gytha raised her arms up before her face and throat. She heard the wolf's jaws snap shut with a grinding of teeth, expecting now to feel her flesh shred, her bones to break, even though this shouldn't be possible in her borderless state.

But there wasn't any pain; the wolf had somehow missed, and instead had grabbed a large mouthful of Gytha's long hair. Yet it wouldn't let go and so, as the wolf's leap ended with a soft landing on its paws, Gytha was violently spun about and forced to helplessly bow low.

Refusing still to loosen its grip on Gytha's hair, even as it deftly spun about, the wolf began to back up along the central decking, dragging her along, pulling her farther and farther away from her defenceless body.

It was no ordinary wolf for, strangely, it had six legs. And as it backed into the warring men, it slipped through their bodies as if they had no substance.

It was a wolf of the darkness, then, Gytha realised at last.

*

# Chapter 11

The men Gytha had been forcibly dragged amongst immediately took on a shadowy appearance, a mass of interlacing symbols and threads hardly different to the ship and sea surrounding them.

It was only the strands of consciousness, both of the light and the darkness, that had any real sense of substance here. The wolf thankfully seemed aware that he should avoid these obstacles, either deftly ducking beneath or slipping through them.

He was taking Gytha deeper beyond the boundary, though she couldn't see why, or even guess at what his purpose could be.

It wasn't as if she'd had any hope of defending her sleeping body.

The wolf at last released her hair from its mouth, allowing her to stand up straight; yet he made no further move, other than to stare up into her eyes with what appeared to be a strangely pleaful expression

There was an easily detected intelligence there, naturally, and yet there was also something else, Gytha thought: kindness, even love.

Had the wolf been trying to help her after all?

If so, it obviously failed to understand the nature of her problem.

Once her body was either shredded or consumed by the monster, the last breath of the life she'd been allowed to borrow would, like anyone else's, evaporate back into the source of all life.

There could be no return to her previous life for her.

Neither, though, would she be allowed to continue freely wandering through the other realms.

A sorely damaged body would cause her to quickly waste away, while still being entrapped by its hold upon her. She could only be entirely free of her body's shell once it had been completely destroyed, becoming material for new life – and even then she would find herself confined to whichever hall or field of the dead had been chosen for her.

The wolf panted hard, his tongue hanging loose like an eager, patiently waiting hound. He half turned, then spun back, his gaze now more pleading than ever,

Did he want her to follow him?

The wolf turned away again, only this time he bounded over the edges of what was a ship in one world, a space of urgently interacting symbols in another. Then he rushed across a sea of rapidly surging and tumbling threads and whorls, soaring up the whirling internal elements of the dragon, as if it served as little more than a convenient staircase.

Gytha only briefly wondered what she should do.

She couldn't defend her sleeping body from being devoured.

Perhaps, if she followed the wolf, and _willingly_ stepped inside the dragon, there might be _something_ she could do.

*

The storm of symbols and strands whirling everywhere about Gytha remained ungraspable, no matter how hard she tried to tear them free of their neighbours, in the hope it might lead to the dragon's fragmentation.

She could pull on and disengage a few of the less firmly embedded strands of a darker consciousness, but that was all, and it had no discernible effect. The enlightening consciousness of the _hugr_ was, ironically, far more deeply entwinned, far more immovable, as it would undoubtedly remain until the complete disintegration of this unnaturally created substance, formed entirely of interacting coils and whirls that had never been designed to be used in this way.

And yet all other threads of consciousness, where they still remained free, wisely kept their distance, she realised – for the enjoined strands here had somehow always been a part of its original make-up.

None were seeking to probe ever deeper.

None sought to join them by piercing the outer shell from outside.

It was a weirdly _lifeless_ consciousness.

Clambering up in furious pursuit of the wolf, wondering where it could be headed, and why, Gytha began to fear at last that this had been a hopeless escapade all along; how could she be expected to deal with a combination of elements lying beyond the understanding of even a Wé Nun?

The wolf was now nearing the very crown of the soaring beast, where denser, more stolid symbols could be seen to be holding off all but the most shallow intrusions of a looser, fluidly formed air.

It came as no surprise to Gytha, of course, that the wolf effortlessly burst through this false bordering of substances.

But as it did so, the wolf's upper half instantly vanished.

And when its hind quarters followed on, these immediately disappeared too.

*

Gytha paused.

It would be foolish to follow the wolf, when she had no idea what had just happened to it, when she still couldn't be sure if was here to help her or not.

Yet she was as good as dead now anyway, no matter what course she took.

She rushed up after the wolf, leaping from one branching set of ever-shifting symbols to another, like leapfrogging across rapidly shattering ice floe. It was only as she neared the very peak of the dragon's swirling interior that she warily slowed, tentatively lifting a hand high above her head, reaching up into the lighter spaces beyond, ready at any moment to snatch it back if she felt any change in temperature, anything that implied danger or injury.

She felt nothing; nothing at all.

Even though it now appeared to her as if her hand had been neatly severed from her outstretched arm.

She glanced down, as if peering through the eyes of the dragon, onto the warriors aboard Skaldmaer. They seemed so small, a nest of disturbed, panicked insects, releasing yet another shower of arrows that briefly and uselessly curved up towards her.

The beast was close enough now to reach out for and grasp the ship's mast, wrenching Skaldmaer up out of the water. Men toppled against each other, with many tumbling or even deliberately jumping overboard.

Gytha's own body, too, was on the move; for it slid out from beneath its protective shields, slid down along the narrow pathway of central decking.

The mast cracked; Skaldmaer screamed in agony.

As the mast snapped in two, leaving the beast clutching nothing but its upper part, Skaldmaer fell back towards the sea, hitting the waves hard and at an angle. More men than ever were brutally cast over the sides, while those managing to remain onboard fell everywhere in a chaotic mass.

Gytha gasped in horrified surprise: something unseen had tightly closed about her raised hand!

Then, with a sharp, violent jerk, she found herself being rapidly pulled up through the monster's crown of swirling symbols.

*

# Chapter 12

Even as her hand was released, Gytha continued to briefly soar up through the air.

Fleetingly glancing back, she glimpsed what seemed to be a more overall, more overarching vision of the frenzied battle that was taking place far below her.

Before she could take it all in and make any sense of it, however, she found herself falling towards a plainly tiled floor, which she hit thankfully softly if clumsily, such that she tumbled and rolled.

Rising swiftly to her feet, and turning about, she saw that she was in an immense hall filled with women, most of whom were working on a massive, upright loom.

One woman, standing close by, was balefully glaring at her.

'What are you _doing_ here?' the woman sternly demanded,

'Someone pulled me up–'

'That was _me_ ; your hand was disrupting the flow of everything!'

The women worked on the tapestry so deftly, so rapidly, that it was forever changing; moving, in fact.

It was, as Gytha had first noticed, a scene of the battle. Yet blood poured from beneath it as if it were responding to every injury being inflicted.

And what an odd loom it was too, with spears as heddle rods, arrows as pegging, and real swords to beat the weft into place.

Awed by its detailing, Gytha moved closer, taking in the shattering of shields, the piercing of armour, the fear of men seeing at last their _fylgja_ , the animal spirt born along with them as their afterbirth, and realising their death was ordained.

There were the bears, the wolves, and the boars of course, many of these being identities the men had discovered they could shape-shift into in moments of peril, their images here melded such that there was no discernible difference between them. But there were horses too, even women, and the odd pig of the glutton, or the goat of the common man.

The _hamingja_ , the luck of each man, a gift frequently passed on from a family's most fortunate ancestor, was also faithfully rendered amongst the fine interlacing of threads, again personified as a maiden.

Every warrior was being accurately recorded here in each of his many forms.

One thing _was_ missing though.

The great beast.

It was nowhere to be seen in this vast rendition of the battle.

*

_'Why_ were you disrupting the threads?'

Gytha's gaze was dragged away from the scene as the woman once again insisted on an answer.

'The wolf,' Gytha replied. 'I followed the wolf.'

Looking about her, she realised for the first time that the wolf wasn't anywhere to be seen. Nor were there any signs that proved it had actually been here.

'Six Legs?' the woman answered curiously. 'You mean your brother?'

'Brother?' a horrified Gytha repeated. 'But who was killed? I never sensed it! The last time I saw them, they were both still alive!'

'Now you're asking _me_ questions?' the woman snapped irately.

Gytha ignored her; her eyes had been drawn once again towards the incessantly growling, moaning machine, where the darts of wood rushed back and forth along briefly deep gashes, like so many arrows uselessly piercing the flesh of a looming creature.

It was monstrous too, of course, in the way it seemingly dictated the lives of the warriors portrayed, as if every thread was of shredded skin, or spun intestine.

There was no need to render the beast within the scene.

The loom itself; _that_ was the all-devouring monster.

*

# Chapter 13

_'This_ is why my brother brought me here!' Gytha gasped in shocked realisation. ' _You're_ controlling the beast!'

'But _you_ were the first to call on otherworldly aid!' the woman retorted accusingly, pointing toward the fluttering Raven Banner in the tapestry.

'Not me! My brothers!'

Even as she said it, Gytha recognised that it was a weak excuse.

'Still; there it _is_!' the woman declared triumphantly.

Taking in the shrieking banner, Gytha noticed other things about the tapestry she'd previously missed.

There was nothing representing each man's fourth and most important quality; his will, the _hugr_ that, in the right man, becomes the intoxicated battle frenzy of _óðr_ that Óðinn's Swans will soon be eagerly flocking to collect.

Naturally, it would only be freed when the ravens had had their fill, the incarcerating bodies becoming once more the raw material waiting for a new breath of life.

Gytha looked towards the meticulously working weavers with new understanding

_Of course_.

_These_ were Óðinn's Swans: the Valkyrie.

Determining who would die, and who was fit to join them in the final battle of Ragnarök.

*

'The _animal_ hybrids; _they're_ of no use to you, are they?'

Gytha glared accusingly at the nearest Valkyrie.

_'That's_ why you've taken the Black Swan's side!' Gytha irately continued, receiving no reply from the now thin-lipped woman.

'Her powers are greater than yours,' the Valkyrie coolly replied. 'She's accepted the Caress.'

'But in helping her, you're creating the _very_ wilderness we _all_ fear; even you, I would hope.'

Hearing this, a few of the weavers turned from their task, looking her way. Like Gytha, they were obviously aware of the true meaning of a wilderness; 'the place of self-willed beasts'.

'Many of us agree with you on that!' one of the weavers confidently declared, switching her gaze to one of accusation as she glared at the lone Valkyrie.

'We're helping the consciousness take form in uncalled-for ways, Sigrún!' another also accusingly added.

The lone Valkyrie, Sigrún, held her ground.

'The Black Swan can retrieve Óðinn's Eye...'

Her voice faded off towards the end, giving everyone present the opportunity to consider the significance of this claim.

Óðinn had sacrificed his eye long ago, in payment for the wisdom he'd received from Mimisbrunnr, the Well of Memories.

'Yet Óðinn himself obviously believed he could manage without it...' Gytha sternly pointed out.

'While we create fresh problems for ourselves, and all because we fool ourselves into believing she _might_ retrieve it,' a weaver appeared to firmly agree with her.

A third weaver turned back towards the still rapidly moving tapestry.

'I've made _my_ choice!'

She reached into the weave, her fingers effortlessly slipping through what appeared to be tightly woven threads, clutching at a figure there; and when she pulled her hand back, she'd cleanly plucked the man away, leaving many threads hanging loose.

'We can't be sure we'll receive the warriors we need,' another said, turning to rip away other parts of of the weave, 'not when we're pulling so many of the threads controlling them!'

Sigrún fumed, yet made no effort to stop them.

And so another Valkyrie turned to tear away her own portion of the threads.

And then another, and another still.

And in less than a moment, every weaver was elatedly gouging at and excitedly shredding the great beast who'd terrorised Gytha's warriors, the scraps rising up everywhere like a colourful rain storm.

*

# Chapter 14

The many torn threads were obstructing Gytha's vision, particularly around the edges.

They loosely interlacing strands were so close to her face, she wouldn't have been surprised to learn that she had somehow returned to her place deep inside the tapestry.

Through the threads, however, she saw a rapidly darkening sky. A darkening caused by a hurriedly gathering mass of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of excitedly shrieking ravens.

She was lying on her back, she realised. And at a worryingly unnatural and crazy angle too.

She was back inside her body.

A sickly, rancid smell lay thickly about her, trapped inside the cocoon-like layering of the heavy canvas that had fallen across her. She would have been trapped beneath the heavy sail too if it hadn't been so badly damaged in the battle. Reaching first for the knife she kept in her waist belt, and then up towards the shredded areas lying about her face, she began to gradually cut herself free.

When she at last emerged from beneath the collapsed sail, unsteadily rising to her feet and looking everywhere about herself, she saw that the battle had ended, perhaps a while ago too.

Broken-backed or demasted boats lay in every direction, haphazardly scattered, and mostly stilled. Some ships were aflame, the black plumes spiralling up from them adding to and merging with the dark clouds of carrion, each blending seamlessly with the other. Other ships had shredded sails, flapping uselessly, the once proud dragon heads broken and dipping sadly towards the reflecting waters. Most, like Skaldmaer, were beached, lying at ungainly angles amongst islands of marshy land.

Skaldmaer's head was still raised, but her neck was nevertheless broken, for it was twisted, such that the dragoness could have been a swan proudly looking back upon her brood.

The ravens were at their thickest, the blackness dense and impenetrable, about each wreck, where piles of fresh meat had been thoughtfully provided for them to feed upon. Skaldmaer had her own thick shroud of wildly fluttering, black-feathered birds, for bodies were chaotically strewn everywhere here too.

The cage of the two ravens, Wé and Wyly, had been broken at some point, and now lay empty.

No doubt they too were feeding on the flesh so painstakingly prepared for them by the butchering blades of other men.

Were her brothers amongst the dead being so hungrily gouged at, so excitedly shredded?

Or had their bodies been carried off to await funerals more fitting for the sons of a king?

Certainly, although the battlefield had obviously been abandoned in a hurry by both forces, leaving behind both dead and countless valuable weapons, someone had made sure to take the Raven Banner.

Warily making her way across Skaldmaer's precariously angled interior, Gytha began to search amongst the strewn bodies, carless of the ferociously pecking and clawing ravens, who seemed to have temporarily forgotten the difference between the living and the dead.

There was no sign of the elaborate armour worn by her brothers. No sign, either, of Asbjorn's bear-like helmet and plating.

Even so, as she neared Skaldmaer's prow, Gytha heard a pained groan, a calling out of her name.

'Gytha? You're well – thank goodness!'

Gytha couldn't fail to recognise that unmistakable tone of tenderness.

'Skaldmaer?' she said hopefully, looking up towards the dragoness's agonisingly and unnaturally twisted head.

Skaldmaer didn't answer; she couldn't only manage an exhausted sigh.

Gytha stepped closer, carefully placing her arms about Skaldmaer, embracing the dying dragoness as gently as she could.

'Men have brought you to this, Skaldmaer: I'm sorry!' Gytha wept.

'Yes; you _should_ be sorry, girl!'

Gytha was startled by the venom in the accusation.

But it wasn't Skaldmaer who'd spoken; it was a nearby raven.

'Wé?' Gytha asked unsurely. 'Or is it Wyly?'

_'I'm_ Wyly,' sternly replied a raven perched upon Skaldmaer's head.

'I thought you'd be happily feeding on the feast set out for you!' Gytha scoffed bitterly.

'We've had our fill, thank you!' Wé gaily declared.

'You've been a _most_ generous hostess!' Wyly added with a grim, knowing chuckle.

'Go, go; get _out_ of here!' Gytha shrieked, leaping up with flailing arms to chase the darkly minded birds away.

The birds effortlessly avoided her wildly whirling hands, rising up off Skaldmaer's broken body, briefly hovering before Gytha at a safe distance.

'We _must_ meet up again!' Wé cried out mockingly.

'I've never eaten so _well_!' Wyly guffawed.

Then, chortling all the more, they spun about, and flew away.

Skaldmaer gasped silently, her final breath drawing close.

'I hear once more, Gytha, wise words once spoken by Óðinn...'

'There's no need to speak, Skaldmaer,' Gytha reassured her, noting the difficulty she was having in keeping her throat clear.

'Wé and Wyly, fly each day over the spacious world,

For Wé I fear, lest there's no coming home,

But I fear...more still...for...Wyly.'

The last words were delivered more painfully than ever.

For they were Skaldmaer's very last words.

*

# Chapter 15

Gytha cried as she gave Skaldmaer a final, heartfelt embrace.

Skaldmaer may have been 'self-willed', and yet she'd certainly been no 'beast'.

Beyond Skaldmaer's twisted neck, Gytha saw through her tear-filled eyes that the Valkyrie appeared to be taking shape amongst the whirl of dark feathers shrouding the wrecked ships. Their embrace of each, newly arising man was every bit as heartfelt as her own embrace of Skaldmaer.

She could see it in all its true glory, or horror, if she simply slipped between the borders; yet she didn't wish to see the reality, for her own imaginings were bad enough.

The Black Swan, she somehow knew, would have eagerly embraced the opportunity.

Gytha wiped away a last tear as she once more rose to her feet.

What had Skaldmaer meant by her odd retelling of Óðinn's fears for his ravens, Hugin and Munin, 'thought' and 'desire'?

Was she simply saying that Wé, like Hugin, would search for hanged bodies? And that Wyly would seek out the slain, just as Munin did?

If Wé failed to return, it could only because he'd thought he'd found all the hanged corpses he needed.

Whereas Wyly, of course, would have discovered all the slain he could desire.

Or was it just that a world bereft of desire is one of hopelessness?

*

Gracefully swooping low over the sun speckled waters, Gytha at last began to sense that she was clearing her mind of the immediate memory of the many horrors she'd witnessed.

This, naturally, was the quickest way to catch up with the fleet that had left her behind. Transformed into a swan, she could cover distances remarkably swiftly, while gliding easily over the waters or marshy land that would have been impassable for anyone on foot.

She landed regularly, of course, whenever she saw a small clump of land firm enough to take her weight, briefly becoming herself once more. It was the only sure way to prevent the darker strands of the Caress probing too deeply, too permanently, for in her fully transformed state even she could be fooled into mistaking them for her own whispering thoughts and inducements.

Despite these frequent pauses, she saw the many glittering spears and armour of an army on the move far earlier than she'd expected. She'd felt certain that the island still lay quite a way ahead of her. More remarkably still, the closer she drew towards the assembled men the more they appeared to be wending their way directly across the top of the water, as if navigating an invisible bridge.

It was only as she wheeled down towards the swirling waters once more that she at last realised she hadn't reached the island but, rather, a causeway still under construction, the self-willed beasts of the Black Swan busying themselves in the collecting, piling up and interlacing of branches and earth clods. It was the beasts of burden – the ass, the ox, and great bulls, walking on two legs – who chiefly toiled away at this new task, aided by men who regarded these hybrid creatures as suspiciously and warily as if they were enemies, not allies.

Gytha spun away from the scene, fearing she might come to the attention of the ravens she'd seen, the ones composed wholly of symbols with no need for flesh.

For the moment, she'd keep low, skimming over the tops of the reeds growing everywhere in these shallower waters.

Suddenly, she caught a flash of silver deep below the surface, darting in the opposite direction across the pebbled sea bed.

A fish, a large one too.

But like the Wyly Nun's ravens, it wasn't of scales, skin and bone.

It was formed of curling symbols.

A spy, then; reporting back to the Usurper's advancing forces.

*

# Chapter 16

The boats of the Danes had already landed on Elig island.

They weren't completely emptied as yet, however, the disembarking men being greeted with cheers by the isle's beleaguered warriors. The exhausted fighters generally responded to this welcome with gusto, but many were too badly wounded to be wholly enthusiastic. Moreover, those who'd undergone shape-shifting were still trembling, their bodies enfeebled, their minds dulled.

Even amongst all this celebration, Gytha couldn't fail to notice the still proudly displayed Raven Banner. With no battle imminent, the raven no longer ferociously cawed, no longer excitedly flapped its wings; but neither did it slump in defeat, or despondency.

It had fulfilled its role, bringing victory.

But it had also, as with her father, caused a death of at least one brother, perhaps two.

Gytha's mother Swanneschals had resisted passing the banner on to her sons, with no wish to bring about the death of those she'd given life.

But the grandmother Gytha had been named after had possessed no such scruples. She'd sternly informed Godwin that a boy couldn't expect to stay forever in the warmth of his mother's wool basket.

'Better to die with dignity than to live with shame.'

Gytha saw now that Asbjorn had survived the battle, as had the Danish bishop Christien, and Earl Osbern.

And there, too, was Edmund.

As weak as a kitten after his transformation. But grinning with joy, as if he had no care that Godwin had been killed.

*

Gytha whirled about Edmund's head before landing close by him. She hoped his wits hadn't been so dulled he'd fail to realise she'd need her nakedness covering on becoming a girl once more.

With an apologetic request, Edmund took a cloak from a nearby warrior, draping it quickly about Gytha as she took on her natural form.

Shape shifting was a necessary part of a battle, but its effects were often only partial, and hidden away beneath layers of armour and furs; and so Gytha's complete and unconcealed transformation from swan to girl raised gasps of surprise and admiration from those close by her. Elig's defenders in particular, made suddenly aware of the presence of a Wé or Wyly Nun, bowed a head in reverence, or even dropped to their knees.

Gytha and Edmund hugged each other warmly, each grateful that he or she had found the other alive.

'I thought you'd been lost overboard when the dragon–'

'When I saw one of you amongst the Valkyries–'

Edmund pulled back a little to give her a wry, puzzled smile.

'No one's claimed us _yet_ , Gytha!'

With a listlessly weak wave of an arm, he drew Gytha's attention to Godwin who, hidden amongst crowding men, acted as if the unloaded chest he was wearily seated upon was his throne.

Gytha was confused; the Valkyries had undoubtedly called the wolf her brother.

'But I...'

_Magnus_!

The wolf could only be _Magnus_

*

# Chapter 17

As with his elder brother Godwin and his twin Edmund, Magnus had been born with a wolf as his _fylgja_.

A wolf that would perish along with him when he died.

He was still _alive_ , then!

But...unlike Gytha, her siblings had never demonstrated any ability to slip over the borders into other realms. It could be a dangerous journey, too, in which any _fylgja_ could easily die, ensuring the death of the body itself.

Besides, why did Magnus's wolf now have _six_ legs?

Óðinn's horse, Sleipnir, born as one with his own _fylgja_ , had _eight_ legs, and similarly slid effortlessly into every world.

Had Magnus achieved a comparable melding?

Naturally, Gytha couldn't be sure.

Yet she knew for certain that, now she knew he was still alive in some form or other, she would have to search him out.

*

Around her now, Gytha picked up worried references to the Black Swan and her magical achievements.

Fortunately, Elig's defenders were aware of the causeway's steady construction, and the unhurried approach of the Usurper's forces. But the Wyly Nun had made sure her sleeping body was safe from attack, as she lay on the very peak of the Gog Magog hills, laid out in a chest carved out of a single tree trunk and surrounded by protective walls of fire.

'Then when she's awake; you must take her when she's awake!' Godwin insisted.

'She never wakes: she's permanently shifting between the realms, or their borders.'

'That's not possible,' Gytha pointed out, stepping closer towards her elder brother, giving him a welcoming smile, 'she _has_ to keep her body alive; it can't be sustained if she's endlessly sleeping!'

'Still,' a man replied with a resigned shrug, 'she manages it – perhaps by witchcraft?'

Gytha would normally have protested that neither Wé nor Wyly Nuns had to resort to witchcraft to accomplish their aims; but recalling her thoughts on Magnus and Sleipnir, she wondered if the Black Swan didn't sleep at all, and had instead brought her parts together into one.

The conversation had come to an end anyway, for cheers were flowing like a wave through a crowd that was shifting and parting, allowing a richly dressed man to make his way towards them.

The man smiled as he saw the seated Godwin, proffering a hand in greeting; only to draw back in shocked horror when he noticed Gytha.

_'You_!' he exclaimed fearfully, stepping back, giving himself room to swiftly unsheathe and direct his sword towards her. ' _You're_ the one in my dreams – the _witch_!'

*

# Chapter 18

Every window was barred, preventing Gytha from flying to freedom, but otherwise her imprisonment was relatively comfortable.

Naturally, her brothers had vehemently insisted that Heriwar, the leader of Elig's defenders, was mistaken in his belief that their sister had been invading his dreams. But equally naturally, Heriwar wasn't going to so readily take the word of the son of a king who'd earlier had him exiled, informing Godwin that proof would be required to save her.

Still, as befitting her high-born position, Gytha had been granted a room in a tower rather than an underground cell. In due reverence to her order, she'd also been provided with a grey gown and white wimple closely resembling her nun's garb. She'd even been allowed to retain her Yggdrasil necklace, if only because no one was aware of its true purpose: and besides, it was of no use in this world anyway, only serving her in any tangible way when she was travelling bodily in the other realms.

'Heriwar's been acting oddly lately, so I've heard,' Godwin told her when he was at last allowed to visit her. 'Any luck, any _hamingja_ passed down through his lineage, is hardly a great prize; he returned from exile only to learn that the Usurper had killed his brother, seized his estates, and made him an outlaw once more. But now, worse still, it's rumoured that he's visited each night by a succubus, who's totally bewitched him. It takes him a while each day to come fully to his senses and put off her wicked influences.'

'How does he know it's a succubus?' Gytha protested, thinking of the tales she'd heard of these nightmares, of beautiful women riding the chests of men as they would ride a steed. 'As he seen for himself the girl's deformities?'

Godwin shook his head. He'd heard too, of course, that such otherwise gorgeously entrancing creatures were revealed, on closer inspection, to have bird-like claws, or serpentine tails.

'Not that I've heard; yet he and his men seem adamant that it's not some helpful loan of someone's _hamingja_ , if that's what you're suggesting. She's a malign influence, leaving him exhausted and confused each morning.'

'But how can he believe _I'm_ responsible?'

'She _looks_ like you, he says.'

'A succubus can take on any form she wishes, surely?'

'Yes – but why _you_ , Gytha?'

Gytha pondered this irritably, annoyed that she was having to defend herself, even to her brother.

'The Black Swan,' she suddenly blurted out. ' _She_ could do this!'

'She couldn't appear as _you_. How would she have even known what you looked like until you arrived here?'

Godwin had already explained that he assumed Gytha was innocent of all the charges laid against her, that he was only trying to help her understand the nervousness of Heriwar and his men; but even so, Gytha was annoyed whenever he seemed to shoot down her every proof that she wasn't involved.

'Then how can I hope to _ever_ get out of here?' she exasperatedly demanded.

'They need a _victory_ to calm them; they're _constantly_ under attack here. But we can now take the fight to them – an attack from the river on Medeshamstede.'

Gytha was fully aware that she should frown upon an attack upon a monastery. She considered this a just punishment, however, recalling how the clergy of St Dunstan's had insisted on removing the remains of her infant brother from beneath their church's eaves, the saint himself proclaiming in a vision that the unbaptised boy was damned.

'I think Magnus is still alive,' she said, her thoughts on the loss of one brother recalling her fears for another.

'Alive?' Godwin was surprised but also obviously cheered by this news. 'How do you know this? Was it a vision?'

'I saw him; somewhere, I think, in Niðavellir.'

Godwin shivered at the thought that his brother was lost in the Dark Fields of King Hreidmar.

'You'll search for him?' he asked hopefully.

Gytha nodded.

'As soon as I fall sleep, I'll go looking for him.'

*

# Chapter 19

As Godwin left, the guard set at the door closed it quickly behind him with a reverberating clang.

As the room became silent once more, Gytha soon began to pick up the familiar scuffling of rodents, a hurried shuffling coming from the farthest corner.

No matter how well built a structure was, a mouse would always find a hole big enough to squeeze its remarkable body through.

Gytha ignored it, deciding she would prepare for bed.

'I could help you escape.'

The seductive whispering came from the corner, from where the mouse had slipped into the room.

Gytha curiously approached the mouse, seeing as she bent closer that its makeup was one of curling, interweaving symbols.

This was how easy it was for the Black Swan to spy upon her enemies.

She could have easily and long ago known of Gytha's appearance, as well as her plans to come to Elig island. And with powers like this, a means of controlling life's threads, how hard would it be for her to conjure up a false Gytha in a man's dreams?

'Why would you help _me_?' Gytha suspiciously asked the patiently waiting mouse.

'I feel sorry for you.'

_'Sorry_ for me?'

'Surely you realise your brothers increasingly loathe you? They envy your powers, resent the way you've failed to help them; and now you've caused a split between them and Elig's warriors.'

'They'd hate me all the more if I helped you.'

'Did I _ask_ you to help me? I said I could help _you_. You could find the only brother who still cares for you.'

'Magnus? You know where he is?'

'Not only where, but also that you can't save him without my help. He's close, so close, to succumbing to the Caress.'

'You know this for sure?'

_'You_ know this for sure!'

Conjured up before her now, Gytha saw Magnus striding through the low fields of Niðavellir.

She sensed he was seeking something, his glare focused, wary.

He turned sharply, as if he too had sensed something, perhaps even her own presence.

He saw nothing, however, for he made no further reaction other than to continue loping off into the darkness.

Had it all been nothing more than her own imaginings? It wasn't wholly inconceivable.

'I can find him on my own,' she declared with a tone of assurance she unfortunately lacked.

The mouse chuckled.

_'Finding_ him is easy!'

The symbols quivered, flowed; and the mouse abruptly vanished, together with the dark hole in the stones he'd supposedly slipped through.

*

_'Finding_ him is easy!'

It was a lie.

Or, at least, it was a lie as far as Gytha was concerned.

Niðavellir appeared to stretch on forever in all directions – including above and below, for there was nothing that could be called land that she could see – once she had slipped outside of its borders.

Which way should she fly?

Even she could only fully enter the realm as a swan; but why would she want to be in human form anyway, when walking would be an even slower way of making her way around such an unnatural landscape?

From the border, it had appeared to her as a dark, forbidding place of swirling symbols, of coiling lines and threads. Now she had slid into it, however, it no longer seemed anywhere near so dark. Yet even in its apparently awesome, endless expanse, it still bizarrely possessed a sense of constant enclosure and constraint, the fearful entrapment experienced while standing in the complete darkness of a closely confining cave..

Stranger still, the innumerable supporting beams more usually found in mines coiled through empty space, serpent like, as if the air itself had been somehow carved into, and the miners had no sense or perhaps need of what should be 'up' and what was 'down'. The fires of great forges similarly roared here and there at the oddest angles, some even apparently hanging upside down, the flames flickering up from their furnaces ruled by its own particular laws.

And as Gytha flew on, she found herself oddly restrained by otherwise undetectable barriers, subtly determining where she would go next, a smoothly curling flight that sometimes flipped her so completely she was sure she must now be flying upside down.

It was a subterranean world of wending, labyrinthine caves, only one whose confining substance of rock or dark soil had been miraculously made invisible.

She would have to turn back, she realised.

If she didn't, she would soon be lost.

She was in a world where something might appear to be directly ahead of you, yet you could never reach it if you didn't know the way.

If Magnus was here, he must be lost too.

And she had no idea how to go about finding him.

*

# Chapter 20

Even turning to retrace her path wouldn't be as easy as it first appeared, Gytha anxiously realised.

She would have to turn sharply about, while ensuring she'd turned through a complete circle; otherwise, the slightest deviation would send her off in entirely the wrong direction.

Moreover, there might well be other unseen pathways linked to this one, invisible passages naturally bypassed when flying in one direction that smoothly directed your flow when travelling the opposite way.

She flew warily, as slowly as possible, hoping she might notice when she appeared to be taking a different route to the one she'd arrived by. Not that even this was easy, as everything lying about her appeared very much the same no matter where she looked, with no obvious let alone familiar points of reference.

Then, abruptly, Gytha caught a dark flash of something _very_ familiar.

The Black Swan.

The Black Swan was flying above and ahead of her, apparently making her own way back towards the border.

*

Following on close behind the Black Swan, Gytha was relieved to find that they seemed to be flying within the same pathway.

Was that how it worked here in Niðavellir, with the passage leading from the border taking the same course no matter where you entered it from the realm of men? Or had Gytha already strayed off her own track?

She feared she might lose track of the Black Swan as they passed though the confused melding of worlds at the border, but thankfully Gytha had made sure she'd drawn up close enough behind the Wyly Nun to keep her in sight.

Would they emerge on the mountaintop where the nun's body lay asleep? Or would they appear near to some fortress or encampment of the Usurper's?

It was night-time, with the land passing below mostly in darkness. Few buildings had lanterns or candles lit by their windows.

The Black Swan began to drop down towards a monastery, surrounded by its attendant buildings and the small town that had gathered about it.

Even in the darkness, Gytha couldn't fail to recognise it all, as she'd flown over it earlier that very morning: it was Elig.

But the Black Swan quite obviously knew the town far better that Gytha did; for she flew swiftly, silently, through the streets like one who made this trip regularly.

She headed towards a building lying towards the end of the narrow street as if she were preparing to slip back in to the border, to slip through walls that no longer presented barriers to her movement – but Gytha saw at last that a window lay open, the room's interior dark and quiet.

The Black Swan deftly landed upon the sill.

In an instant, the bird was a naked young girl.

A girl who slipped into the darkened room.

*

# Chapter 21

From the mingling half worlds of the border, Gytha could see beyond the walls.

So she saw, too, that the young girl quietly approached a sleeping man.

Climbed upon the bed.

Straddled the sleeper.

Then rode him, as if he were a horse.

*

Gytha swept through the misty wall, becoming a girl once more as she landed on a floor she told herself was there, reassuring herself that it could hold her, that it really existed.

'I wondered when you'd come.'

The girl turned towards Gytha, smiling warmly.

Gytha choked back the threat she'd intended to deliver.

She and the girl were so alike she could have been staring into the most perfect mirror.

*

# Chapter 22

_'Gunhild_? Is that _you_?'

Gytha couldn't be sure: it was so long since she'd seen her younger sister.

But who _else_ could it be?

'Doesn't every younger sibling dream of following in the footsteps of her much-admired older sister?' the girl sighed, grinning archly.

_'These_ aren't steps I've _ever_ taken!'

Gytha couldn't tell if Heriwar was now awake or still in some kind of trance.

'Oh, don't worry about _him_!' Gunhild said, catching Gytha's concerned frown. 'He's _wholly_ in my power! You really _should_ try it, you know!'

_'This_ is how you sustain yourself? Stealing the energy of men?'

A shiver of distaste ran through Gytha, one enhanced by the trembling of fear: for Gunhild obviously possessed abilities far superior to her. Gytha had never even considered attempting to forcibly interact with a world she was travelling through by taking on the necessary firmness of substance.

Indeed, if she hadn't witnessed it for herself, she wouldn't have believed it possible.

Gunhild hadn't so much followed in Gytha's footsteps as completely overtaken her.

'Oh, but really, they're _already_ such weak little things, Gytha!' Gunhild chuckled mischievously as she mockingly embraced the dazed Heriwar.

'But why are you helping the _Usurper_? Our father's killer?'

'Why not? He's here to stay, obviously: and he'll return my mother's land! Or do you _really_ believe dear Godwin will wrest back control?'

'He's your _brother_ –'

'Who left me behind at Wilton Abbey, like I was nothing more than a hindrance! Besides, the abbess is obligated to provide knights – and _I'm_ worth a whole phalanx of knights!'

Lithely leaping off the bed, and with arms flung wide open, Gunhild at last gleefully ran towards Gytha.

'As indeed, dear sister, are _you_!'

There was no embrace from Gunhild, however: instead, she sprang up and through the open window in a graceful dive, her widespread arms becoming in an instant black-feathered, powerfully beating wings that slipped without resistance through the framing stone walls.

The Black Swan vanished into the darkness.

_'Guards_!'

Hearing the urgent cry coming from behind her, Gytha whirled about.

Fully awoken now, Heriwar was rising from his bed, wielding the sword he'd dawn form beneath his pillow.

'The _witch_ has escaped!'

*

# Chapter 23

As Gytha abruptly vanished before his eyes, Heriwar was more convinced than ever that she had to be a witch.

Of course, there was no other way for her to escape.

As she slid back into the border, she became the swan once more.

She didn't have time to follow her sister.

She had to get back to her sleeping body.

When her gaoler was woken by the growing hue and cry, he might well decide to take matters into his own hands and slay her.

*

Even as Gytha landed by and slipped back into her sleeping body, the door to her room opened, the man set to guard her stepping in with his sword already drawn and raised.

He was confused, still half asleep, the shouts coming from out in the darkened streets implying that his prisoner the witch had escaped – and the covers on the bed were suddenly rising up towards him!

With her vast wings flapping wildly and ferociously, a fully transformed Gytha violently threw herself at the terrified man. And as he crumpled towards the floor in a panic, she flew over him, and out through the door.

Where to go, though?

Her mother's lands.

'Whoever seeks my help here will not go away empty-handed.'

This had been the promise of the Mother of All Mothers.

*

# Chapter 24

Like a spun gossamer, the delicate silken threads of ballooning spiders floated lazily over the fields and meadows, a silver veil mingling here and there with the morning mist rising from the nearby marshes and rivers.

There were droplets of honeydew too, waiting to be collected by the bees, every drop a precious gift of Veðurglasir, the upper, wind-strewn branches of Yggdrasil made gleamingly transparent by the lower, loam-coated roots of Aurgalsir.

Gytha swooped low over it all, this time refusing to pause every now and again to regain her true shape; she let the whispering Caress taunt her, wondering if it was worth resisting any longer. She followed the course of the River Stiffkey, arriving at last by the house of the annunciation that her mother had had replicated on the bank.

It was only when she reached here that she became herself once more, shrugging off her form of the swan, along with the myriad temptations that had continued to harry her throughout the entire journey.

It was so long since she'd been here, she'd forgotten how odd her mother's rendering of the house actually was, almost as if it had been confused with imaginings of a minute castle.

It had three corner towers, with a fourth and taller one rising up in its centre.

Who would really have lived in such a strange house?

Entering via a narrow opening occupying the area where another corner tower might have been placed, Gytha immediately saw that these corner edifices weren't towers after all, but large megaliths. The forth and central tower never even reached the ground, being little more than a hollowed out tube easily supported by nothing but three slender shafts, one each stretching out from the looming stones. Stones marked Sár, Juo and Uks.

As there was no ceiling, the thin, supporting beams of golden oak glowed in the light descending from a sparkling moon, brightly shimmering bridges that appeared to shift fluidly as Gytha arched her head back to stare straight up into the night sky.

It was dizzying, looking directly up like this, each sheen of light arching over her now shivering, apparently rising and lifting clear, taking on a life of its own like glittering threads reaching up to fasten itself in the middle of the moon's hall.

And out of the corners of her eyes, she saw that the stones had become hazier in the shimmering light, taking on other shapes; a mother figure where Uks stood, a hovering, swaddling babe in Sár's place, and a brilliantly illuminated angel where Juo had been.

Suddenly, like strands being plied, the three gleaning threads plummeted down from the moon as one, entwining as they passed through the central turret, their spinning weight a gnarled slip of a branch carved with symbols.

And as the stones whispered in a secret communication, the enwrapping threads took on the form of a child, swiftly growing in the swirling waters of the mother's dark womb.

*

# Chapter 25

'It's _you_ child!'

Cautiously, slowly, Gytha parted the arms she'd instinctively drawn up about her face. She realised she was opening up too from the tight crouch she'd adapted in response to the hypnotically throbbing beat of the all-embracing darkness.

Was it her mother speaking?

Certainly, she felt her mother's presence; her warmth, her protection, her kindness – her love.

Before her, it was no longer a stone throwing out a thread of light, but a gigantic maiden, one whirling the dense waters as if she were thickening them into more substantial strands, each warmly coalescing about Gytha's gently floating body.

Gytha was in a seated position, even though the only seat was the swirling waters.

'For yes, you're _still_ a child to _us_ , of course!'

A second stone, the one marked Juo, had become another maiden, this one holding what appeared to be a long wand with a thread hanging from it. The third, Uks, immediately followed, and she was carving the symbols of being into a small bough of wood which, when released, floated upwards.

'Each new thread of life begins with _us_.'

The first to speak unhurriedly waved an arm, drawing Gytha's attention to the turning umbilical cord rising, it seemed now, from the top of Gytha's own head. The moon, too, had changed, taking on the form of two closely embracing white swans, seen from below the lake they serenely floated upon.

Its light, however, appeared to spread everywhere, the rippling surface of the waters making the milky-white glow appear to coil and loop, like innumerable white-gold or silver rings. And from these rings there seemed to drop a milky dew, denser droplets of the great ash's honeyed resin that slowly descended through the waters like softly falling snow.

'About the breath of life – originally granted by Óðinn, to the boughs that became Askr and Elmbla – and borrowed now from our mother, I wrap the debt of being, That-Which-Is-Necessary, enabling your appearance in the world of men.'

'I grant Hóðrnir's gift: your will, your desire,' said the second. 'That-Which-Is-Emerging, hopefully for the better, once your debt is paid.'

'My gift is that of the blazing Lóðurr's, That-Which-Is, your swan-like countenance formed in the fires of the womb, on which you can at all times be judged. It was the disposition, too, of your sister, until she decided _her_ emergence wouldn't be determined by the fluid of life, the heat of the blood of men.'

Gytha would have asked what they meant; but with a quickening of the rhythmically booming sounds of coursing blood, the enveloping watery mantle abruptly vanished.

She was briefly blinded, as if thrown deep into a constraining tunnel; and when she could see again, she was standing next to a six-legged wolf.

*

# Chapter 26

'Magnus?'

As the wolf gazed back at her in mild surprise, Gytha wondered if he could understand her, let alone reply.

'Gytha,' the wolf said warmly, adding with an air of confusion as he took in the bridge they were standing upon, 'How did you bring me here?'

'Bring _you_ here? I didn't!'

She glanced over the edge of the bridge. It spanned an incredibly wide and torrential river in which swirling weapons of every kind hacked viciously at wraiths attempting to make their way through its raging waters.

It was the River Gjöll, the waters encircling the realm of Hel, the Hidden Goddess of the Stone Heap.

And so this was Gjallarbrú, the bridge stretching over the Gjöll.

'I've come from Urðrbrunnr,' Gytha said, presuming a reference to the Well of Turnings would go some way to explaining why they'd been brought here together.

'Ahh,' her brother replied, 'so _they've_ become involved, have they?'

For the first time, Gytha was aware of a straining tightness about her chest. Glancing down towards it, and following this glance with a quick look over her shoulder, she saw she was wearing the threaded wand of Juo; only it wasn't a wand at all, but a bow, loosely strung so that it stayed in place across her back.

But what use was a bow without arrows?

Behind them, there lay the well once more; but approached on the bridge leading from Hel, rather than upon the shimmering Bilröst bridge, it became the roaring cauldron of Hvergelmir, from which all life had emerged. It writhed, it seemed, with serpents, spontaneously bursting into life. Directly above, where the heat of the waters met and milled with the frozen air of overarching twists of ice, great white millstones churned, grinding out happiness, pain, blazing fire, or whatever else its master Lóðurr could wish for.

The wraiths in the river, however, were making their way towards where Hel had made her home, not towards the well.

Which way was Gytha expected to travel?

_'Why_ have they become involved?' Gytha asked her brother curiously, even though she didn't really expect Magnus to have any definite answer.

'Gunhild,' Magnus replied assuredly. 'They know she's slipping away from them...'

*

Magnus had seen his sister Gunhild as he'd lain badly injured upon the battlefield.

He was slipping in and out of the border lying between the realms.

Gunhild had seen him too, naturally; and she'd approached him, still adeptly plying the strands of consciousness, melding them about him, helping him in the only way she could.

And as she'd tenderly crouched over Magnus in this way, he'd caught glimpses of the real Gunhild he'd remembered from his childhood – but now that Gunhild lay asleep, lying in a hollowed out tree trunk.

She'd taken a last, lingering touch of the grass, her only sense remaining to her; for she was now blind and speechless.

'Why should she give up _so_ much?' Gytha asked, bewildered.

'She sees no need for them,' Magnus replied. 'She spends most if not all of her time now in the other realms...'

Thinking back to Skaldmaer's last words, Gytha realised she hadn't been worried for her lost ravens at all:

'For Wé I fear, lest there's no coming home, But I fear more still for Wyly.'

Skaldmaer's fear had been for the Wé and Wyly Nuns: for Gytha and – most of all – for Gunhild.

*

# Chapter 27

'And yet...she wants Mother's _lands_ ,' Gytha mused, recalling Gunhild's excuse for aiding the Usurper. 'That makes _no_ sense at all!'

'She's confused; she's thrown off all rooting in the world.'

'Where will we find her?'

Magnus shrugged.

'She slips through borders far swifter and easier than I do.'

It was only as Magnus said this that Gytha realised she had a problem.

She'd been brought here unnaturally, still sheathed in worldly garb.

It meant, of course, that she no longer had to fear that her sleeping body might come to harm, or even starve away to nothing if she stayed here too long.

But how could she hope to traverse any borders?

As a swan, perhaps – would _that_ work?

And yet, she found, she couldn't change into her other guise as a swan.

Of course; she was journeying in realms in which no earthly body should be traveling.

Seeing the growing bewilderment on her face, Magnus immediately understood what she was thinking.

He understood, too, where such a course of thought would eventually take her.

'Do I take it,' he said with a smirk in his tone, 'that you're beginning to realise you're going to have to ride me?'

*

A dark mist rising up from the river coursing far below suffused the bridge, such that everything bar a thatched roof of glittering gold was dank and chilly.

Magnus aimed to cross as quickly as he could, bounding along the bridge's long corridor as swiftly as his six, powerful legs would carry both him and his younger sister.

His _youngest_ sister, Gunhild, lay a long and dangerous way ahead, they had determined.

The Black Swan had promised the Valkyrie that she would retrieve Óðinn's Eye. And that eye lay at the bottom of Mimisbrunnr, where Óðinn had given it up in exchange for the wisdom granted him when he drank the well's magical waters.

The well could only be approached by its own bridge, the third of the three-legged roots of the great tree rising up towards Ásgarðr, this one curving high over the land of the frost giants.

And that lay over the borders of the realm of Hel.

*

# Chapter 28

The Yggdrasil Brooch served as a map, an aid to navigating the realms reasonably safely.

It could, Gytha had heard, but never seen demonstrated or mastered, stretch out before you in all dimensions, showing your position, and where you could go next.

Ásgarðr and Vanaheimr curled upwards, rising high above everything else, while the three-legged roots spread out horizontally wide across the centre. Niflheimr and _Múspellsheimr took up North and South._

They had no need of any map at present, for the bridge clearly determined the route they must take. Yet she would surely need the Nine Spells of Mother Gróa to help them safely navigate through Hel.

As they at last neared the end of Gjallarbrú, the banks of the river Gjöll appeared to be aflame, a vast wall of fire blocking the way to Hel's realm and beyond. The closer they drew towards the bank, however, the more it became obvious that the flames were the red shields and banners of warriors immersed in a ferocious battle in which no side appeared prepared to ever give way. The edge of the river itself remained unclear, for the wraiths emerging from the waters were clutching the silvery grey weapons they'd found amidst the swiftly churning current, perhaps eager to make amends for a more cowardly life.

A giantess blocked the end of the bridge and, raising one of her great arms, as if waiting there to collect a toll for their crossing, she caused Magnus and Gytha to come to a halt.

'I see that one of you at least is not really meant for Hel, as yet,' the looming maiden boomed irately, if also a touch curiously. 'This is where the debt for your borrowing of life is finally paid: I suggest you either turn around like the snivelling coward you are or, if you are here to make amends, take part in this Furious Battle of life and death that takes its name after me...'

The way the giantess unhurriedly waved an arm to draw their attention to the battling men reminded Gytha so much of the calmly assured Sár.

'I've heard of you Móðguðr,' Gytha replied calmly, depending now upon the powers of the first spell lying within her brooch, enabling her to cast off anything harmful: in this case pride, which would surely force any man to take up the offer to fight amongst the endlessly warring men. 'But, unfortunately, I doubt that you've ever heard of anyone or anything as humble and unimportant as my sister and I...'

'Ah, so _you're_ the sister, are you?' Móðguðr replied, eyeing Gytha suspiciously then – noticing the girl's surprise that she was known to her after all – adding, 'What could be more important than the humbling of Óðinn, signified in the loss of his eye?'

They should head downwards and northwards from the bridge, she told them, indicating the way they must take to remain safe.

It was a precariously narrow, chaotically weaving track: one lying between the towering mounds of the fallen forming the Nágarðr, the 'Corpse-Fence'.

*

There was no one else taking this track, both Gytha and Magnus noted; not even the wraiths they'd seen earlier battling through the tumultuous waves of the roaring river.

It made them wonder if Móðguðr was being wholly truthful, doubts that magnified as they warily progressed along the meandering and quite often frighteningly narrow path.

Then, too, there were the voices: so sad, so cajoling...

'Gytha; I recognise you, my child...'

'Why do you take such a course when you could accompany us...'

They were voices Gytha and Magnus were sure they recalled. And when they looked towards the piled corpses, they thought too that they saw movement there; the raising of a hand, or even a head.

'You ignore us?' the voices wailed as Gytha and Magnus continued to stride past.

'How can we hope to meet up again in Hel's vast realm?'

It would only take a moment to seek out those they had loved and lost...

Yet they possessed the will to resist the temptation to wander, if only thanks to the second of Mother Gróa's spells, guarding them 'on all sides...when with mocking words you are met'.

Apparently irritated by Gytha's indifference, the stacked bodies began to tumble and roll alongside her, a wave of urgent movement at first keeping pace with even Magnus's swift stride, but then rapidly speeding up, rushing ahead now as if preparing to block the path and direct them instead towards a gateway guarded by a hound so immense that he effortlessly blocked the entrance.

Here, now entirely divested of their weapons and any last shreds of form by the ferociously fast churning they'd suffered, the wraiths emerged freed of every constraint, exhaustedly shuffling between the space lying beneath the hellhound's splayed legs.

There was a great roaring, but not from the hound, which remained nonchalantly silent; it was the rush of water, as you might expect of a powerfully turbulent river, or the hurrying, urgent tones of a mill run. It was a surging offshoot of the Gjöll, flowing underneath the fallen to grant them the last semblance of a tumultuous life, a fiercely rolling current that would have easily caught up Gytha in its unforgiving grip if she'd been foolish enough to step even slightly away from the path.

The third spell promised to bridge just such a river; and close by the hound, the mass of weapons and armour stripped from the dead were now becoming entangled, creating a soaring hillock of snarled chainmail interspaced with viciously protruding blades and spear points.

It was a bridge leading to nowhere in particular, however, as well as being a quite obviously dangerous one to traverse. Gytha failed to see how it might help them.

Before she could point this out to Magnus, he'd eagerly leapt up onto the lower levels of the mound, bounding up higher with every flex of his muscles, slipping though and in and out of the labyrinthine maze of ominously sharp blades as if it were all a gleeful challenge for him. Now and again, he'd leap completely over the shorter obstacles, and Gytha had to fiercely cling to his thick fur to ensure she wasn't thrown clear, just as she often had to duck or swing aside to avoid the worst and most prominent of the glittering points.

And the mound was continually shifting, the blades abruptly dropping or rising, as if wielded by battle-ready warriors.

Magnus was panting with exhaustion as they at last neared the mound's peak. Gytha sighed with relief, believing he would rest for a while, allowing them to work out a slower, safer journey down the other side of the hill. Rather than slowing, however, Magnus spurted forward into a furious gallop, rushing through a winding alleyway formed by walls of razor-like steel.

At last, using every drop of the momentum he'd gained in his charge, Magnus threw himself up into the air in a bounding leap; and to Gytha's horror, she saw her brother was aiming to land on the muscularly rippling back of the giant hellhound.

*

# Chapter 29

As he came to the end of his tremendous leap, Magnus landed heavily, unsteadily, such that every one of his six legs had to flex and bend as they strove to maintain balance and gain a firm grip; and then, in an instant, he was charging off once more, flowing over the rolling muscles of the great beast's back as if rushing over undulating hills.

Of course, Gytha realised, it was far from wise for anyone living to enter via the gate leading to Hel's realm; but was this course of action any more sensible?

Just what was Magnus expecting to happen when they finally came to the end of the hellhound's immense back?

Where could they safely leap to _then_?

She could hear now the loud cries of the black and red cockerel who was said to crow for the dead.

Was it welcoming them?

For if they leapt from the back of the soaring beast, they wouldn't be entering Hel as the living anyway.

*

Magnus swerved down the valley formed by the beast's rising flanks.

There was no change of pace, no doubt in his mind that this was the right thing to do.

Then, suddenly, they were precariously dashing along the top of the beginnings of the beast's tail, the way narrow enough as it was, but rapidly narrowing all the more as the end rushed up towards them.

The hound, if he'd sensed their presence, could have maliciously flicked his tail, sending both Gytha and Magnus flying up into the air. Yet instead it seemed to be unconsciously aiding them – or was this the effects of the fourth spell, turning the hearts of enemies away from their hostility? – for the tail was steadily lowering, the distance to the floor lying beneath them now hardly anything to be feared at all.

Magnus leapt once more, this time landing confidently and securely on a flat, solid ground; and then he ran on – for who was to know how long even a spell might keep them safe?

*

Might her other brother also be here, the one who'd died so long ago, buried beneath the eves of a church in the hope he might be baptised by drops falling from its roof?

Gytha felt that, despite the importance of her mission, she should seek him out.

Yet what good would it do?

Unlike the rest of the dead ending up here, infants were soothed by the Maiden of the Dead.

Gytha's intrusion wouldn't be appreciated.

It would be far better for them to avoid the Hall of Hel. She might care for children, but for them she would surely only have contempt and loathing for daring to enter her realm uninvited.

Instead of quickening his pace, however, Magnus seemed to be finally wearying. He was slowing, while panting more heavily than ever, as if every stride was an increasingly hard struggle.

'Magnus; should we rest?' Gytha enquired nervously; then made a quick grab for the wolf's thick fur once more as he began to fiercely buck, ferociously snapping and snarling at his own feet.

He was trying to dislodge a whole, writhing nest of serpents that had begun to swiftly coil themselves about his legs.

Yet every time he bit into a snake, its blood flowed clear like a stream released from its confining banks, creating a wholly new serpent adding to Magnus's entanglement.

Besides, the serpents attacking them now formed an endless line, stretching so far back it was impossible to see where they were coming from.

And in a moment, both Magnus and Gytha were hopelessly ensnarled in their massed coils.

*

# Chapter 30

Through gaps lying between the slithering strands of their living cage, Gytha saw that both she and Magnus were now being swiftly drawn back along the long serpentine line, the snakes acting in concert, spinning and coiling about each other like threads being plied into a single, thick cord.

Entrapped in the serpentine whorls, Gytha and Magnus were now moving so quickly that, in a moment, they were being drawn through the fiercely raging waters of yet another river, one into which glaciers poured as huge, moving mountains of ice. This was the fearsome Slíðr, surging along the Valley of Venom, where wraiths once again struggled to wade through a vicious swirl of swords turning beneath the waters – for these were amongst the most unfortunate wraiths of all, inescapably fated to leave even Hel behind as they headed towards the far colder, much darker wastelands of Niflheimr.

'Where are they taking us?' Magnus asked worriedly as they were at last pulled clear of the tumbling waters, only to find the pace of their abduction increasing, their movement now swift and effortless as they travelled over a writhing bed of serpents stretching out in all directions.

'To Náströndr, the shore of corpses,' Gytha replied miserably. 'It seems, after all, that only the dead can safely enter Hel.'

*

With each serpent spitting out a corrosive venom, new streams, even rivers, were being formed for the wraiths making their way through the wasteland to wade through. Here they were beset by creatures resembling huge wolves who tore relentlessly at the travellers.

Náströndr was a hall that was itself a weave of writhing serpents, with a roof dripping poison. The grim and massive dragon Níðhoggr also waited here, ready to suck each fading apparition clean of the very last of its heat.

'The _fifth_ spell – why isn't it working?' Gytha moaned dejectedly. 'It's supposed to be a loosening charm, releasing limbs from any binding!'

'There's so many serpents, and they're continually shifting!' Magnus pointed out. 'We might have been released countless times, only for other serpents to instantly replace them!'

'Then...how do we stop the snakes coiling back around us?'

'They move so quickly – it's impossible to track their every move!' Magnus observed resignedly, adding a little more hopefully, 'What about the _sixth_ spell – can't that help?'

Gytha shook her head.

'That's for when we're on a stormy sea; it calms the wind and waters!'

If Magnus were still capable of giving a hopeless shrug, he'd probably have given one now.

'Then Mother Gróa hadn't accounted for _this_ problem; living chains of serpents!'

*

# Chapter 31

The silvery sheen of an apparently endless blanket of squirming serpents vanished, replaced in what seemed an instant with ground as intensely dark as drying blood. The rapidly retracting strand of coiling snakes remained, however, the caged Gytha and Magnus continuing to smoothly roll along it as if traveling on a single rail.

The almost pitch-black ground had another unusual characteristic, Gytha saw, as it remained stuck to any serpent writhing up from its cloying embrace. As if aware and prepared for the ground's abnormal qualities, the snakes forming the main strand had cleverly split their tasks, allowing the upper layers to keep up a reasonably smooth flow of movement even as the lower layers slithering through the dark goo were becoming increasingly sluggish.

'It's Amsvartnir,' Gytha whispered in awe, looking out across the dark expanse of incredibly slowing moving waves. 'The black-red sea!'

'Hah; a sea with neither wind nor water! So the sixth spell's of no use to us here either!'

Reaching through a gap created where the serpents lying beneath her now moved so much slower, Gytha dipped her hand into the languorously rolling wave. It wasn't just the colour but also the sticky consistency of drying blood.

'It holds them back!' Gytha proclaimed excitedly watching the serpents struggling to pull apart once they'd been coated in the thick pitch-like substance. 'And the slower their movement, the more chance the _fifth_ spell has to work!'

She took up a handful, and then immediately another, smearing it over any nearby snakes. And as the serpents' slithering slowed, the gap lying beneath became larger still, until both she and Magnus could scoop up armful after armful, coating every snake in the cloying substance.

The serpents were no longer moving quickly enough to replace any coiling hold that Gróa's loosening-charm had caused to come away from a leg or an arm. The gaps lying between the serpents grew ever larger too, the ones towards the base of the living cage now so large that there was no longer enough threading snakes to hold the combined weight of the captives; and with a sickening slurp and a dull plop, Gytha and Magnus fell free into the glutinous soup lying below.

*

The vast majority of the writhing serpents were travelling too fast to realise, it seemed, that they had lost their captives.

Or maybe it was simply a case, Gytha began to fear, that they recognised slowing would result only in evermore of them becoming thoroughly ensnared in the gooey substance forming this dark sea. Like her and Magnus, some of the snakes had been left behind, caught up in the sticky hold of the pitch-like waves.

Gytha could hardly move, now far more constrained than when she'd been trapped in the serpent cage. And yet both she and Magnus were moving, if only where the unhurriedly flowing waves wished to take them.

It took them quite a while to utilise what little movement they could each draw upon to come close enough to at last reach out and cling together, ensuring they wouldn't drift apart. Unfortunately, a number of the nearest serpents appeared to have had a similar if far more malicious idea, for they clearly intended to attack the entrapped pair as soon as they'd managed to pull themselves within striking distance.

Being lighter, smoother, and far more simply formed than either Gytha or Magnus, they managed to move so much easier amongst the cloying substance too, even as the waves began to grow in size.

'We need to reach land – and soon!' Gytha observed fearfully to her brother, worriedly watching the gradual gathering of serpents, their slow advance.

But there was no land in sight.

Whenever a lazily rolling wave at last took Gytha and Magnus up out of a trough, cresting high enough for them to gaze everywhere about them, the sea appeared infinite in its reach, the horizon blending seamlessly with a dark, thickly veiling mist.

And from somewhere hidden deep within that mist there came the bitter, hated-filled howling of the monstrous wolf Fenrisúlfr.

*

# Chapter 32

The howling grew in intensity, the unrushed rolling of the viscous waves steadily drawing Gytha and Magnus towards the rocky isle of Lyngvi, where Fenrisúlfr had been enchained.

Gradually taking form amidst the murky sky, as if from the gathering together of thicker, ever darker shadows, Fenrisúlfr loomed over them as high as a soaring mountain. He furiously writhed and frenziedly wrenched at the unbreakable chains holding him. Yet, apart from his pained, frustrated howling, there was strangely no sound of this struggle, for the chains had been forged by the dwarves to be light and soft to the touch.

Fenrisúlfr's rabid drooling, flowing out from between gnashing, grinding teeth the size of a burial barrow's protective dolmens, cascaded down as a foaming waterfall, furiously pounding away at the pitch-like waves lapping between the monster's feet.

Plummeting from such a great height, the foaming spittle had worn away the rocks over the many years of Fenrisúlfr's entrapment. Now they pulverised the dark waves, hacking at the bloody pitch like a corrosive rain, beating the black sea into a bubbling, boiling cauldron, churning it endlessly.

And as with any type of churning, as the pitch was agitated into a deeply rolling current, yet more, fresher waves flowed in to take its place. It was a languorous movement of the sea, yet irresistible, each refreshed wave abruptly pummelled into a true liquid, and even partially rapidly vaporised.

The serpents caught in the pitch's embrace suffered similarly, liquefying in an instant, before becoming a hissing, dissipating white cloud.

Gytha and Magnus exchanged brief, terrified glances.

They were already coming under the spray of the outer edges of the main column of tumbling drool, the large, heavy gelatinous drops striking the cloying pitch as solidly as small boulders, drops falling ever more frequently and thickly as Gytha and Magnus neared the broiling waves lying between Fenrisúlfr's feet.

What type of clouds, Gytha wondered, would they be transformed into?

*

# Chapter 33

As the drops of Fenrisúlfr's drool fell more heavily about them, churning up the crimson waves of pitch, Gytha noticed that her movement was at last easier, the sea's viscosity weakening with every strike.

Moreover, the liquefying effects of the incessant pounding of the plummeting cascade were also spreading out from the very centre, the previously thick pitch taking on an increasing fluidity.

Noticing this too, Magnus was already carefully utilising the slow, unpanicked splaying of limbs he'd learned as a child to avoid being sucked down into the quicksand found amongst the marshes.

It was a form of swimming, but far slower, an ability garnered by anyone brought up close to dangerous wetlands. You moved calmly, unhurriedly, crossing marshy ground that would otherwise hold fast anyone foolish enough to try and stand up straight.

They both moved steadily, then, across the more liquefied tops of the waves of dark pitch.

They headed for where the foaming drool ran off as a river across the black sea, for this was at least moving, and flowing farther away from Lyngvi.

When they at last exhaustedly slipped into the swiftly rolling spume, both Gytha and Magnus sighed with relief.

They were on the move again, albeit completely subservient now to the will of the River Ván: 'Expectation'.

*

The foaming stream of glutinous drool ensured that both Gytha and Magnus were surprisingly buoyant, riding across the tops of the bubbling waves. When it began to rain heavily, however, its liquefying effects were this time disadvantageous, as both girl and wolf found themselves slipping time and time again beneath the surface with increasing regularity, sometimes for so long that they resurfaced gasping for breath.

A sharp wind was also growing in strength and ferocity, whipping the waves into an ever-faster rapid-like flow, until it was a river running far wilder than any man might know. Gytha and Magnus tumbled incessantly in the raging waters now, and they would surely have drowned if the both the wind and rain hadn't abruptly calmed.

The Ván was rushing now into a far greater, wider river, one shining as brightly as any lighting strike, taking on its glistening hues from the surrounding banks of ice, its enveloping snow-topped crags. Broken floes, glittering like broken shards of the moon, floated along with the rivers raging flow, and as Gytha and Magus were swept alongside one of the larger islands, they managed to grab hold of its edges.

Painfully, exhaustedly, they hauled themselves up out of the swirling waters.

They lay down, needing to sleep.

They would have died here, had it not been for the seventh spell of Gróa, preventing the deadly cold from draining their limbs of their liveliness.

*

This was the River Leiptr; running by the ice-cold stone of Uth.

As the exhausted siblings slept on, the flowing waters took them across the border into the land of the frost giants.

If they'd been awake, they might have glimpsed in the far distance the rich-red glow of the eternally roaring fires of _Múspellsheimr_ _,_ or even caught, shining even more brightly than the sun, one of the higher-rising streaks soaring up from the Flaming Sword of the swarthy giant Surtr.

Yet neither woke until the floe was a mere fraction of its earlier vast size, when they were at last travelling through the relatively warmer land lying near the edges of Útgarðr. The river's current was also far more subdued here, and when the island of ice became conveniently lodged against an outcrop of land, Gytha and Magnus agreed they should take this opportunity to hop onto firmer ground once more.

They couldn't be sure how much longer the floe would support them and, as it was growing dark, it would be doubly dangerous to have to wade through a cold, flowing river when they wouldn't be able to see where they were heading.

Freed of the cold's numbing pain at last, Gytha was abruptly aware of another discomforting ache; the anguished gnawing of her own stomach.

She was hungry.

She hadn't eaten in ages.

And looking about her at her dismal surroundings, she couldn't see where she could expect her next meal to come from either.

There was only a scattering of bushes, and even fewer trees. But worst of all was their sheer size.

As befitted a land suitable for giants, everything here grew taller, thicker, larger.

Fruit would be out of reach, unless they came across any that had fallen. Nuts would probably be too hard for her to eat, as would any seeds. Any vegetables here would be rooted firmly under the ground, while mushrooms and fungi would possibly be poisonous.

And as for game; well, Gytha could only hope they wouldn't come across any insects, let alone any rodent, bird or hare.

*

# Chapter 34

The eighth charm offered protection against the ills you might find yourself up against when overtaken by darkness.

Gytha had always assumed it referred to either some creature of the night or, perhaps, a possible moment of weakness when you were more susceptible to accepting the worst of the Caress.

As she hungered, while still cold, damp and exhausted, she realised it could well mean the darkness of despair.

Maybe, despite the darkness, they should have taken the risk to keep on moving, rather than deciding it would be safer, if slower, to settle down in the same place for the night.

Maybe she should have travelled here as an out of body experience. She would have had no charms to aid her, naturally, but would she have needed them anyway if passing through the borders as a high-flying swan?

It would only be her sleeping body suffering the pangs of hunger, something she could have easily dealt with, provided she returned in good time.

Magnus had no idea of the torment she was going through. He felt no hunger.

And yet, at the moment, he was shifting about far more uncomfortably than even Gytha.

He peered out into the darkness warily, as if attempting to focus on something he'd heard out there, or perhaps scented.

His senses, naturally, were far superior to Gytha's.

She'd sensed nothing untoward hanging out there in the darkness.

He said nothing, however, perhaps because he didn't want to startle or alert whatever was hidden out in the darkness, drawing attention to their presence.

Gytha followed his gaze, hoping she'd be able to see if any creature was stalking them.

Surely, if there was, the eighth spell would protect them?

*

There _was_ something there!

It moved only slightly, swaying a little, moving up and down.

When Gytha listened carefully, stilling as much as she could the rapid beating of her heart, she could hear its own ponderous clucking, its throaty gobbles.

There was a harsh scraping, the sound claws or knives make on stone.

A hen?

A cockerel?

But of what size would it be here, so close to the wood of Gálgviðr?

Was it the famed Fjalar, the Deceiver, whose loud crowing would herald the twilight of the world?

Magnus was also moving now, keeping stealthily low and silent as he set out to cautiously approach the creature.

Gytha followed on close behind, wishing she had an arrow to place within her bow.

Wishing she'd been taught how to _use_ a bow.

The creature's cluck had become more of a hollow glugging, its moves more of a steady bobbing.

And the closer Gytha drew near to it, the more she became confused and uncertain regarding its nature.

Magnus still lay ahead of her, partially blocking her view.

He snorted, deliciously, a laugh of sorts perhaps.

Gytha cautiously peered around him.

She laughed too, in relief and at her own foolishness.

It was nothing but a wooden barrel, given a semblance of life by the rippling waters that had forced it against an outcrop of rock.

*

'Beer; it's beer.'

Magnus could smell the strong scent of mead seeping through the wooden staves.

He glanced back over his shoulder at Gytha.

'Nutritious,' he said, 'as long as you don't have too much.'

So Magnus had realised that Gytha would be hungry after all!

Working together, they managed to drag the heavy barrel up from the water, rolling it up onto the bank. Once they'd upended it, Gytha used a sharp rock to break its top open, cupping her hands to take out a draught of the honeyed-ale.

It was far more refreshing than she'd expected and, as she took drink after drink, found it was also surprisingly swiftly tempering her hunger.

But was this really so surprising? Weren't the honoured housed in Valhöll nourished and made wise drinking the mead of Heiðrun's udders after she'd fed on the manna the great ash secretes, a sugary dew that itself rose up from the wells of life and memory lying beneath the roots? And didn't bees themselves make their nutritious honey from that very same honeydew that fell each morning across the meadows?

Gytha felt so at ease with the world that she failed at first to realise that Magnus was once again warily peering out into the darkness, as if alerted to approaching danger.

There was movement out there, combined with the increasingly obvious sounds of an unhurriedly approaching steed, the clank of armour and shield.

The more the rider's shadowy form neared, the more he loomed over them. He also appeared to be weirdly tree like too, for branching boughs spouted out from either side.

'Who's been drinking Suttung's ale?' he angrily boomed.

*

# Chapter 35

'A Jötunn!' Magnus fearfully hissed under his breath.

The giant, riding upon a great stag, reminded Gytha of Juo, for he also carried a bow, albeit this one was strapped across his back.

'I didn't know it was anybody's ale!' Gytha admitted apologetically. 'I'll return the remainder, and pay for what I've taken!'

'So you think ale just appears for anyone to freely drink of it?' the giant replied scornfully. 'And what payment do you have in mind, seeing as how Suttung paid for it with the life of his parents?'

_'No_ ale's worth such a price!' Magnus growled.

'It is if you're left with no _choice_ in the matter!' the giant furiously retorted. 'The dwarves drowned his father, and brained his mother with a millstone! _They_ paid with ale they'd brewed from the blood of Kvasir, a wise man born of the mingling of Æsir and the Vanir saliva when they made peace.'

'Surely you can't expect me to pay with my _life_?' a horrified Gytha exclaimed.

'You stole the blood of Kvasir; and so why shouldn't I take yours from you?'

*

The eighth spell had ensured Gytha had been fed in her darkest hour.

The ninth aptly promised eloquence and wisdom when conversing with a wise and terrible giant.

And didn't this ale, with its mingling of the wisdom inherent in both the dew of the ash and the brewed blood of Kvasir, also promise astuteness and inspiration?

'I'll give you your payment,' Gytha flatly declared, much to Magnus's dismay, 'if you can show the way to Mimisbrunnr.'

'Ah, so it's the rememberer you _were_ after, is it?' the giant replied with a barely restrained chuckle. 'That's your way,' he added assuredly, pointing into nothing but the most impenetrable darkness of all.

'I can't see _anything_ ,' Magnus stated sourly as he peered as hard as he could into the night.

'Of course you can't,' the giant said. 'Because there isn't _anything_ there!'

'You mean there's _nothing_ there?'

Gytha tried to see what lay ahead of them.

'Nothing at all!' the giant somewhat gleefully repeated. 'Although, admittedly, there might be _something_ far far far below; no one who's ever fallen into it has ever been seen again, _that's_ for sure!'

'It's a chasm then?' Magnus asked, seeking clarification. 'Then how do we cross it?'

'That's _another_ question now, isn't it?' the giant frowned irritably.

'I asked if you can show the _way_ ,' Gytha pointed out. 'Surely that means you need to direct us to the bridge that crosses it?'

'There isn't one; well, not a _permanent_ one, anyway.'

'So how did Óðinn cross over?' Magnus asked.

'That's a _third_ question!'

'His eye? He paid to pass with his eye?' Gytha hesitantly observed. 'And that's a _statement_ , _not_ a _question_!'

'Hår I call him; the "One-eyed",' the giant guffawed. 'So what will _you_ be willing to pay for your Hår Bridge, young miss? There's not going to be much of you _left_ to cross any bridge!'

'I'd have to know what I'm receiving in _return_ ,' Gytha said.

'What you get in _return_?' the giant furiously scoffed. 'Why talk of _returns_ , when we're discussing a _punishment_ for stealing?'

'I wasn't _aware_ I was committing any crime!' Gytha snapped in exasperation.

'Well _I_ wasn't aware that _lacking_ awareness absolves you of deceit! Haven't you heard how this Mimir you seek forfeited his _head_?'

'It's true that was no fault of his!' Magnus agreed. 'Óðinn's brother, Hóðrnir, should have more rightfully lost _his_ head!'

'How little you know!' the giant exclaimed exhaustedly. 'No wonder your need to visit the Well of Memories!'

'I know the Vanir had accepted Hóðrnir and Mimir as hostages after the war with the Æsir, believing Óðinn's brother to be as wise as Kvasir,' an annoyed Magnus replied. 'But Hóðrnir could only offer advice after a discussion with Mimir; and so the Vanir sent the latter's head back in disgust at being tricked!'

'Yet if Hóðrnir really _is_ so foolish, then why is he given responsibility for Víðópnir's winding bones of fate? Would _Freyja_ marry a fool?'

'Yet he remained silent when–'

'Now _I_ think it's a _prudent_ man who – despite the almost unappeasable _desire_ of _anyone_ to appear knowledgeable! – insists on remaining _silent_ if he doesn't have recourse to the _memories_ of what's passed before to guide him!'

'Would an honourable man let another suffer for what appeared to be _his_ failings?' Magnus persisted.

'There's only _one_ weapon capable of killing the wily Hóðrnir! The Lávaðeinn, the "Blood of Wélundr", the evil cudgel taking its name after the smith of the Sacred Grove who fashioned it in his hallowed flames, specifically to destroy Freyja's halls. And so Hóðrnir appreciates the suffering that Mimir's wife Sinmara – the pale giantess also known as Eir Aurgalsir, the healing goddess of the gleaming loam – puts herself through. For she keeps the branch safe in the water-nurtured Lóðurr's Chest, secured with nine locks!'

'Suffering?' Gytha repeated unsurely. 'All she has to do is release this Lávaðeinn...'

'So you would welcome the end of the world?' the giant chuckled grimly. 'For Hóðrnir is also the golden combed cockerel Víðópnir – whose crowing in the hall will be the second heralding of the twilight of the world. And when he plunges like a dying sun into the cold and endless darkness of Hel, he'll crow again, as the third and final heralding.'

'A paradox,' said Magnus. 'She can't achieve satisfaction without bringing everything to an end! The fate of the world hangs on a paradox!'

'A paradox indeed,' agreed the giant with a satisfied smirk, 'and tied to yet further paradoxes: none of which it's my role to go into here! I've spoken enough! There's still your debt to pay, young girl!'

As the giant glared at Gytha, Magnus took a step back, his muscles instantly tautening as he took up an aggressive stance, his growls a warning.

'Her _blood's_ too high a price to pay!' he snarled. 'If you _must_ take payment, you can try and take it from _me_!'

'But _you_ have so _little_ , if any, left, I see...' the giant nonchalantly sneered. 'And yet, as the 'Mighty Weaver', Vafthrudner, I can _return_ enough to help you regain life; if only your sister is prepared to _apportion_ a part of her _own_ to you...'

'Agreed!' snapped Gytha before Magnus had time to protest.

'No!' Magnus yelled, even though he feared it was already too late, that the deal was already pronounced sealed and done, for the giant had taken the bow of his back, had strung it too for some reason.

'She's _made_ her decision!' the giant growled before Magnus could make any further protestations.

'It's a gift worthy of the price I have to pay,' Gytha replied as resolutely as she could manage.

Leaning low down off the back of his great stag, the giant reached with surprising deftness for one of Gytha's long hairs that were rising and falling in a gentle breeze. And as he sat straight in his saddle once more, the hair instantly straightened too, hardening in his hand until it could have been an arrow of steel.

Yet the hair hadn't been neatly plucked from Gytha's scalp. For it trailed behind it a scarlet thread, unravelling from somewhere within Gytha.

A thread that continued to wildly spin from somewhere deep within her as, taking his new arrow, the giant calmly fired it high into the air from his bow.

And as the thread rapidly spooled out of her, Gytha felt as if she were being torn apart, unwoven.

It was her blood; the fluid of life, the heat of her body.

The giant really _was_ taking her blood as payment.

*

# Chapter 36

How high would the giant's arrow soar?

Would it take Gytha's very last drop of her blood? Of her life?

Certainly, it seemed to be flying far far higher than Gytha had ever seen any normal arrow fly.

And it was increasingly feeling as if every vein, every bloody sinew, was being hurriedly ripped from her entire body.

She gasped with relief and agony and horror as, at last, the end of the thread jumped clear of her head, whipping wildly as it leapt free. It coiled frenziedly, as if alive – but then, wasn't it indeed alive? – a lashing serpent stretching out in relief as it was finally released from its tight confinement; and as it furiously writhed, it abruptly whipped out towards a startled Magnus.

Like some insidious worm, the loose end pieced Magnus's flesh, burrowed itself deeply within – and then Magnus himself was torn away from the ground, wrenched up into the air by the swiftly disappearing arrow and its trailing thread.

*

# Chapter 37

'Where's he gone? What have you done?'

Gytha could only watch helplessly as Magnus rocketed away from her. He was already almost too small to see and then, in the blink of an eye, he seemed to have vanished completely.

'He's returned to life,' the giant replied sternly, 'as you wished.'

'Then...he'll be as he was once more? Back in the world of men?'

The giant nodded.

'Not within the lands where he originally came from,' he admitted, 'but to the lands men call Mazowsze, where he'll found a great dynasty.'

He gazed down at Gytha with an expression that could have been read as one of sadness or admiration.

'Which would have been your fate, until you generously granted your portion to him.'

Gytha sighed resignedly.

'Magnus was only trying to help our sister; he didn't deserve to be trapped here.'

'And _you_?' the giant asked. 'Do _you_ deserve to be – as you put it – "trapped" here?'

'I failed to save my sister...'

'Did she _need_ saving?'

'What can you tell me about her?' Gytha asked hopefully.

'Information is valuable; and I'm not sure you have the wherewithal to pay for it, especially as there's still this matter of debt to be paid...'

'My _debt_?'

Gytha was shocked.

Hadn't she already paid with her _life_?

What else must she part with?

Before she could ask, the giant leant low towards her once more from his saddle.

And, taking another long strand of Gytha's hair, he began to painfully extract yet more scarlet thread...

*

It was the blood, the heat, granted by Uks that she was being forced to part with, Gytha realised.

And with it then, she presumed, she would be forfeiting every sense but that of touch; her sight would vanish, along with her hearing, and the ability to speak, to taste.

Facial expressions; that capability would disappear too.

Yet although she winced as the giant calmly continued to wind her bloody thread about the now arrow-like hair, she saw that she could see still see, still heard the towering man's satisfied grunts, still tasted the bitterness of failure upon her tongue.

'How much _more_ do I have to pay for a drink of beer?' she railed with a fearsome scowl. 'What _more_ could you have of me?'

The giant merely smiled at her furious response. Then, as he bent low yet again, this time to hand her the arrow-like hair, he said:

'You wanted your Hår bridge, didn't you?'

He glanced back over the apparently endless blackness of the chasm.

'Why else do you think Juo granted you her bow?'

Gytha followed his gaze, contemplating his words, recognising that she was supposed to fire the arrow across the wide, open space, just as he'd let loose the first arrow and thread so agonisingly drawn from her body.

'A bridge only a hair wide?' Gytha asked unsurely as she strung her bow. 'Besides, how can I cross borders now I've lost Magnus?'

'Do you doubt the progress you've made?'

Although she remained at a loss, unable to make any reasonable sense of the giant's statement, Gytha slipped the hair arrow into place within her bow, pulled back the string – and let loose the ridiculously fine shaft, sending it speeding into the darkness.

She winced, almost screamed in agony.

The scarlet thread was once again rapidly spooling out from her body...

*

# Chapter 38

The unravelling thread ran down across Gytha's scalp, zigzagging chaotically.

Next it tore down her forehead, her face, as a loose strand is pulled from a tapestry.

It rippled down her entire body, arriving at last at the end of her foot.

Then, suddenly, the unravelling came to an end, the thread abruptly taut, a crimson tightrope stretching out across the dark chasm.

She could still see.

Could still speak.

'If I've given up the fluid of life, the gift of Lóðurr...then why have I retained my senses?' she asked.

'The senses we rely on in one world are not always of use in another; they can, indeed, become a hindrance...'

'But my sister–'

'Your sister journeyed here while her body slept.'

Gytha anxiously looked out over the great expanse, the incredible length of the thread stretching out into the darkness.

'If I fall...'

The giant shrugged, as if her failure meant nothing to him.

_'Don't_ fall,' was all he said.

*

Gytha tentatively placed one foot onto the thread that had been drawn out from the other.

She briefly wondered if she'd be able to raise what was now the rear placed foot, wondered if it would be held fast by the thread she was standing on.

But her foot moved freely; and as she lifted it clear of the ground, the tread abruptly appeared to have been extracted from the foremost foot.

As she carefully placed one foot in front of the other, the thread constantly released the rear most, switching instead to the one placed to the fore.

And in this steady but sure way, Gytha began to step out across the darkness.

*

As Gytha made her next step, the dark ground supporting each side of her foot abruptly vanished – and suddenly she was precariously held high by nothing more than the hair-fine scarlet thread.

And as she brought her rear foot to the fore, the thread behind her vanished too, apparently requiring no visible or tangible support.

Her growing nervousness alone ensured she sensed she was losing her balance, in danger of lurching to one side, of foolishly trying to correct it with a heavier lean to the other side, of sending the thread treacherously swaying.

She calmed herself, and walked on.

But...was she indeed being truly foolish?

Surely this was, in reality, a test of intelligence, not endurance, or a skilful litheness?

If she was no longer encased in her bloody layers – why then, she could once again simply become a _swan_ , and _fly_ across the great divide!

But... _no_!

She _couldn't_ transform into a swan, no matter how hard she willed it.

Of _course_.

She hadn't just given up her life fluid.

She'd also sacrificed Lóðurr's _other_ gift – her _disposition_ , her swan-like countenance: her _fylgja._

She could no longer – _ever_ – be a swan!

*

# Chapter 39

Gytha couldn't look back to see if the giant was still watching her.

She would fall, she knew it for certain, if she did.

Was he expecting her to fall too?

He'd be hidden in the darkness now too anyway, he was so far away.

But he might still be able to see the sparkling thread partially stretching out across the darkness. And so, if he could, he'd know she was still steadily making her way across the vast chasm.

She alone, she realised, was the thread's support.

It was her fluid of life after all.

It was her bridge, and her bridge alone.

No one else could safely navigate it.

And once she had passed over it, it would be no more.

*

As if she'd been walking through the darkness of night, Gytha at last began to see the first glimmering of what could have been dawn. But, more thankfully, it was Glasisvellir, the Glittering Plains of Mímir's realm.

Her thread led her directly into the midst of a small copse where, with what could have been a relieved sigh, the scarlet strand finally vanished. The plucked hair, flexible once more, lay amongst the remains of a small fire that someone had lit at the base of one of the trees.

The tree had at some point had an animal face carved into a section where a circle of bark had been removed.

It had been a sacrificial fire, then? Making this a sacred grove?

Yes; there was an outer circle of six trees, planted in slightly off-set pairs. They could have been placed at the points of an enlarged version of her brooch laid flat out upon the floor.

Moreover, where the crook of each root illustrated on the brooch caused it to almost turn back upon itself, the three trees of the Alvit 'All-Wise' ring had also been sown, doubtlessly long ago.

Then, in the very centre, there stood the Preaching Tree. A cup had been placed before it upon a raised stand, set there to catch the seeping of sugary resin.

Another ring enwrapped the tree, a protective, perhaps even healing ring, it seemed to Gytha – for it was formed by a gleamingly white root, one of many spooling out in great loops from Yggdrasil's base, like so much pure wool falling out of an over packed basket.

Obviously, this was also the Gallows Wood then, as it lay at the foot of the ash giantess whom Óðinn had hung himself upon for nine days.

Other fires at been lit in the grove, seven in all, and each set before a tree. And on each of these trees another animal face had been diligently carved. Only two, plus the central tree, remained pure and untouched.

Would anyone dare light a fire beneath an Aurgalsir root?

Coated in the rich loam formed by Óðinn and his brothers from the flesh of the older god Aurgelmir, the root glistened brighter than any ring forged of silver or gold. And as it gracefully looped back through the wood, it joined evermore winding coils of the whitened roots, each gleaming with a milky moon-like light all of its own.

They wept, Gytha thought, dripping tears falling like a light flurry of snow.

And they fell about a well.

Mimir's Well.

_Mímisbrunnr_.

*

And yet...

Gytha paused, doubting what she saw lying before her in the midst of the well.

Two large white swans, so close to each other that the graceful curving of their necks formed a perfectly symmetrical shape.

Yet that would mean she had somehow returned to Urðrbrunnr, the Well of Turnings, rather than having arrived at Mímisbrunnr, the Well of Memories, as she'd hoped and planned.

It was only as she drew closer to the well that Gytha at last realised that what she'd taken to be elegantly arching necks where thick white brows and deeply set sockets enclosing closed, sleeping eyes. The apparently feathery bodies were similarly parts of a giant's huge head, this time the puffed cheeks and beard.

The mouth lay hidden beneath the water's surface, as did the giant's entire body unless, of course, as seemed most likely, this was Mimir himself.

About him, as he drank endlessly from the waters, the surface of the well rippled as if alive with watery serpents. There were boughs of floating, whitened wood too, embellished with symbols, symbols that gave each a life.

And so, as the writhing ripples threaded about a bough, it rose from the waters as a misty child, waiting to be led to its mother and the fires of her womb.

And as one child left the pool, as he or she followed a thread leading them safely along a root serving as a gently meandering pathway, another carved bough bobbed to the surface.

Towards the far edges of the well, Gytha saw that there was indeed a snowy swan here after all. She briefly wondered if this might be Gunhild, made as white as anything else around here by the magical effects of the waters.

Then she saw, no, it wasn't Gunhild: for a black swan was calmly swimming close by, with not one feather transformed by the waters.

With a graceful, gracious curling of her neck, Gunhild glanced Gytha's way.

And suddenly, excitably, the black swan was hurtling across the water towards a startled Gytha.

*

# Chapter 40

Within the dark flurry of feathers, a transformation took place, from bird to young, naked girl.

Gunhild land lightly at Gytha's feet – and elatedly threw her arms about her sister.

'Gytha!' she exclaimed happily. 'I _knew_ you'd come to rescue me!'

*

# Chapter 41

_'Rescue_ you?'

Gytha unsurely repeated Gunhild's words.

Certainly, she had come here in the hope of _saving_ her younger sister from her own worst instincts; but _rescue_ implied that Gunhild was being coerced, or held against her will, didn't it?

Gunhild wily looked back over her shoulder to where the white swan was still placidly swimming by the edges of the pool.

'It's Hóðrnir himself, I'm sure,' Gunhild whispered conspiratorially. 'Not that he's revealed himself, naturally; he can be _such_ a deceiver, after all!'

_'He's_ keeping you here?' Gytha queried uncertainly.

'Oh no, no: he's here because he's _concerned_. Most of the nine locks of Lóðurr's chest have been _opened_!'

'But Sinmara won't ever release Lávaðeinn, the weapon that can kill him, I've been told; so how are the locks being opened?'

'Ah, then you've not been told the _whole_ truth it seems; for Sinmara _will_ release the weapon to anyone who brings her Víðópnir's sickle – a tail feather gleaming brighter than the very last edges of an eclipsed sun! Although, of course, this golden sickle can only ever be brought to her by someone capable of killing Víðópnir in the first place...'

Gunhild's voice trailed off, allowing Gytha to contemplate this paradox.

'But why is this sickle so important to her that she'd risk the whole world's destruction?'

'But that's yet just _another_ paradox, isn't it?' Gunhild nonchalantly replied. 'For the child she's _really_ hoping to protect, Viðrga, would die anyway.'

'Viðrga?'

'Ahh, I see there's a _great_ deal you don't know about all this,' Gunhild sighed resignedly. 'The creator of Lávaðeinn was Wélundr, yes? Well, while enflamed, he got Sinmara's daughter Böðaviðr drunk, made her his Maiden of the Sacred Grove – and soon she was carrying his child, Viðrga. A son obliged to avenge his father, even though it will lead to his own sure death. Unless, of course, the thread of blood revenge woven into his fabric by Uks is severed with Víðópnir's luminous sickle...'

She faded off here, looking towards Gytha once more, allowing her sister to work out the implications of this weaving of one paradox with another.

'They why is it _now_ that the locks are being gradually opened?' Gytha finally asked suspiciously. 'Is it _you_ Gunhild? Are _you_ responsible?'

'Me?' Gunhild was appalled by her sister's suggestion. ' _How_ would I do it, even if I _wanted_ to?'

'I've heard how you've been offering to return Óðinn's Eye, Gunhild! _That's_ why you're here, isn't it? To retrieve and offer Óðinn's Eye as a bargain for more power?'

Gunhild was more scandalised than ever by Gytha's new accusation.

'The eye's still there, I assure you!' she said, pointing back towards the well. 'Don't you think someone other than me could have retrieved it by now if it was really so important to them?'

Gytha moved closer towards the waters, peering down into what she'd expected to be its darker depths.

Yet there was a strong, gleaming light there, such as a brightly reflected full moon can appear to lie deep beneath a well's surface.

Óðinn's Eye.

There were other luminous shapes gathered about the glittering eye, moving gracefully, unhurriedly. Björt, Blid, and Frid, the three sisters charged with protecting the unborn souls of children.

'It serves as a sign to all who come here that Óðinn paid a price for his wisdom,' Gunhild explained. 'And if it's returned, why, what do you think happens then Gytha? A promise to return it wouldn't be a gracious _offer_ , but a _threat_ – for Óðinn's _wisdom_ would _also_ be returned to where it came from!!'

'Then...what _are_ you doing here, Gunhild?' Gytha snapped exasperatedly. 'We came to _help_ you; because we thought you'd fallen to the Caress!'

'We? You mean Magnus? Has he been fully returned to life?'

Gytha nodded in reply.

'The giant at the bridge; he gave him back...he gave him _my_ life, Gunhild!'

Had Gytha sacrificed her life for nothing? It certainly seemed so if, as now seemed increasingly likely, Gunhild had never really sought power for herself after all.

But then again, Gunhild had implied she needed rescuing.

But from what?

Gunhild had travelled here out of body. Why didn't she simply fly back?

'Your _life_?' Gunhild said, as if astounded by the sacrifice her sister had made. 'But Gytha – look what you've _gained_!' she added, indicating the still slumbering giant Mimir. 'The chance to achieve wisdom beyond the wishes of any man! '

'I didn't come here to ask questions, to set myself above every other man!' Gytha retorted with increasing exasperation. 'I wanted to help you return to the world! Rather than lying blind in some chest somewhere.'

There was a sudden loud crack, the snap of twigs; for a fire had spontaneously burst into life at the base of one of the trees in the Sacred Grove.

And out on the waters of the well, the previously placid swan erupted into a frenzied flapping of his great wings.

*

# Chapter 42

As the fire blazed, part of the tree's bark shrivelled, fell away.

On the bared wood, symbols appeared, graphic shapes moving and melding.

And when the fire died out as abruptly as it had sprung into life, the previously untouched tree was left with a face of an animal carved into its trunk.

The swan, too, had calmed now. He was once again casually swimming about the well's edges.

'How did that fire start?' Gytha asked curiously. 'And why was Hóðrnir so startled, so worried?'

Gunhild shrugged.

'The fires simply start like that, as if lit by invisible hands.'

Gytha moved away from Gunhild a little, heading back towards the Sacred Grove.

_'Eight_ trees,' she said, as if to herself, as if pondering things. 'Of _nine_.'

'Are you saying...that you think these _trees_ are the locks? The _nine_ locks?'

'Böðaviðr, the name of Sinmara's daughter; it means "Preaching Tree". Lóðurr's water-nurtured chest is _Böðaviðr_!'

'Then, you're saying Lávaðeinn...is the _child_ , Viðrga?'

'Why else would Hóðrnir be here, be so worried?'

'But how do we prevent the last lock from opening?'

Gytha looked towards Mimir's great head.

'We _ask_ for help; from the wisest of the wise.'

*

'At _last_ you ask for my aid!'

Mimir woke as he heard, deep within his sleep, Gytha's request for his help.

'We believe the trees of the sacred grove are the nine locks – that Sinmara is the great ash herself – and the chest itself is Böðaviðr, the Preaching Tree,' Gytha reverently replied. 'But how do we prevent the last lock from being opened?'

'Fortunately, you cannot open the last lock!' Mimir chuckled.

'Can no one open it?'

'Of course it can be opened; and you came so close, having opened the other eight!'

'Me?' a startled Gytha replied. 'I've had _nothing_ to do with their opening!'

'The locks are the magical songs I taught Óðinn himself, each one opening as you utilised the charms bringing you here.'

'The Yggdrasil Brooch? But wait, no, you're _wrong_ – I've already used up _all_ nine charms! The eighth was the sustenance I received, the ninth when it aided me in bettering the giant...'

Mimir guffawed richly.

'You say _I'm_ wrong? Perhaps the eighth shouldn't have been awarded to you after all! For that was when you resisted the Caress!'

'No, no; I was starving, I–'

'The _giant_ set the beer to flow towards you! He took your life for it! And you call that _besting_ him?'

'Even so, there was no darkness of the Caress for me to resist–'

Mimir laughed once more.

'The whisperings of the Caress don't come from out of the _darkness_ ; it emanates from the _light_! It becomes _man's_ darkness when he flatters himself that it makes him god-like. Yet _you_ came _here_ – where wisdom is there for the taking! – to return your _sister_ to the world!'

'Then...you must help me ensure I don't open the ninth lock!'

_'Easily_ done!' Mimir chortled. 'For although the _ninth_ promises the wisdom to best a wise giant, _you've_ chosen the wisest of all to pit yourself against!'

'Then – why is Hóðrnir here?' Gytha asked worriedly, glancing over towards the elegantly floating swan. ' _He_ reads the winding bones of _fate_ ...'

'Well, I...' Mimir paused, lost for an answer.

And flames burst into life at the base of the ninth tree.

*

# Chapter 43

As the ninth fire died, and another animal visage appeared upon the tree, a new fire was lit by the foot of the Preaching Tree.

And as her mother released her protective embrace, released the Aldin fruit into the flames to help her in her labours, Böðaviðr's long withheld waters at last broke.

*

Hóðrnir, transforming from a swan into a sun-bright cockerel, cried out bitterly as he rose up like a soaring flame from the darkness of Gallow's Wood.

*

With a cry of elation, Gunhild became a black swan once more; and flew at terrific speed after the fleeing Hóðrnir.

*

# Chapter 44

'What? What's _happening_?' Gytha wailed, as she was left alone by Mimir's well

'You ask _me_ this? Where's the help of the ninth charm when you need it?'

Mimir replied bitterly at first, but then, calming, continued more thoughtfully.

'Your _sister_ fooled you; she knew you'd come to "rescue' her, and that in doing so you'd use the portal she'd prepared on your mother's lands – thereby, too, bringing the Yggdrasil Brooch's unlocking charms with you. I'd entrapped her within her _own_ paradox, you see. She wanted to know how to release men from the winding bones of fate – and I'd made her promise me her body, to ensure she could _never_ achieve it!'

'But without fate, there'd be chaos! The world would effectively end anyway!' Gytha gasped, even as it dawned on her that Gunhild's body was being protected as much from herself as from everyone else, that Mimir had been thankfully preventing her from retrieving it. 'But how can she achieve it anyway? She's left the child behind!'

Glancing over towards the Sacred Grove, she saw that the babe who only moments before had been nothing but a bough entwined with bloody threads was now already an infant, growing and maturing in the passing of each second.

'There's a bargain to be made, don't you see? The only way to prevent the end of the world now is to _change_ it completely! Viðrga's threads of vengeance, his destiny to avenge a slight to his father, are unfathomably entwined within the threads of _all_ men! Hóðrnir will have to cut the threads of _everyone_ to be sure _his_ life and therefore the life of the _world_ is saved. And if _he's_ not prepared to do it, why, then how can he refuse your sister, when she sacrificed her body to become the purest example of Hóðrnir's own gift of _óðr_?'

Why was this so important to Gunhild, this severing of the sinews of fate?

Because...it would release Godwin and Edmund from their foolish following of the Raven Banner.

It might, too, have prevented Magnus from suffering his original fate to die on the battlefield.

And their other brother, the unnamed boy who'd died before he'd even had a chance to a make his mark on life – what could he have been without the cruel dictations of fate?

Yet was the life of a child, of an individual man, worth endangering the whole running and systems of the world order?

What right did man have to reorder the sacred structures imposed by the gods, the creators of the world?

She stared into the deep abyss of the well.

And as the wise glare of Óðinn's Eye peered back up at her, it dawned on Gytha how her sister's scheme could be foiled.

*

# Chapter 45

'The flames surrounding my sister's body: are they of _you're_ making?' Gytha asked Mimir.

'There are no flames – only the red shields of the fallen raised from Hel. Their task was to prevent your sister bringing about the possible end of the world; yet what they successfully prevented, you enabled through your foolishness.'

Gytha refused to be goaded by his scorn. She had far more important things to discuss.

She glanced over towards the Preaching Tree, where a fully grown Viðrga had at last parted from his tearful mother's protective embrace.

She could have been witnessing, she realised, Líf and Lífþrasir emerging fully formed from Hoddmímis Holt, the 'hoard of Mimir's wood', directly after the battle of Ragnarök.

'And this chest she lies in,' Gytha sternly continued, 'carved from a single trunk, as I've heard it; can it _restore_ life?'

Mimir growled thoughtfully.

'I _know_ what you're asking.'

*

# Chapter 46

The Danes, told by the Usurper that they could keep the treasure stolen from Medeshamstede as payment, returned home, congratulating themselves that their invasion hadn't been entirely in vain.

The Usurper's rule of the country was now assured.

Gunhild, her body and sight completely restored, as Mimir had promised, had now set her sights solely on her mother's lands, not on severing the threads of fate.

Naturally, Mimir hadn't wished to give up his fee for granting wisdom, but he'd appreciated its necessity in this particular case.

Besides, with his return of the fee, he'd also hurriedly withdrawn all of Gunhild's newly acquired knowledge too.

And so, once again, Gunhild was as firmly enmeshed in the threads of life as any other man, woman or child.

*

# Chapter 47

Not that Gytha sees her sister's, or the Dane's, return for herself.

Her own return to the world of men is not so relatively straightforward; her payment not so readily reimbursed.

'Your payment wasn't made _directly_ to me,' Mimir pointed out huffily when she asked him how she could live once more amongst her family, her friends. 'For it wasn't only _wisdom_ you acquired, but your progression _beyond_ the constraints of the world of men: which is more generally the _result_ and _aim_ of your time there anyway!'

Where to go now? Gytha wonders forlornly.

The realms are no longer safe for her; not that they were ever truly safe, of course. But now, or soon at least, they will erupt into an almost endless war.

The fate of the world – of every world, including the world of men – lies firmly and only in the hands of the gods.

They and those joining their ranks will fight to preserve as much of it as they can.

Which, fate informs us, won't be much at all.

Gytha unpins the Yggdrasil Brooch, hoping it might grant her an idea, or at least a clue, as to where she should travel next.

_'What is your desire_?' it seems to whisper as she holds it in her hands.

Yes, what _does_ she desire?

She desires, curiously, to be reborn in the world of men.

She desires the life that had originally been set out for her.

For when our thread of life has been so intricately woven amongst so many others, we fear any unravelling of everything that has become so familiar to us, so loved by us.

Any loss, then, is a profound one for us.

A tear, a great hole, in our own life.

_Hello_.

An as yet unborn child has appeared by her.

Smiling, and reaching for her hand, as if he _knows_ her.

And as their hands touch, Gytha realises she knows him too.

It's her brother; the brother who'd never had the chance to make his mark on life.

*

# Chapter 48

'The last spell...' the boy says kindly to Gytha.

She shakes her head sadly.

'The ninth spell is used; and wouldn't be of any use anyway.'

'The Preaching Tree; the promise of the mother. And isn't a mother's promise as powerful as many a spell?'

Although resignedly smiling at the boy's perceived naivety, Gytha thought about this, saying finally:

'Whoever seeks my help here will not go away empty-handed?'

Isn't that the promise that had brought her here?

Is that what her brother meant?

That it was also the way to return?

Her brother grinned.

'Mother Gróa: _her_ words. Where did she say she was as she conjured up the charms?'

Gytha recalled the words.

'I stood at the door of earth-fast stones as I chanted these songs for you.'

There was more, too, of course; the mother's plea that her words should always be remembered.

'Be mindful of your mother's words, let them dwell in your breast; and luck-everlasting in life shall you have.'

Yet still, even though she recalled those words perfectly, she remained entrapped here by Mimir's well. No tenth spell had thankfully restored her to the world, as she'd hopefully believed her brother's words had implied.

Her brother smiled, as if fully aware of her thoughts, her befuddlement.

'If it's luck that's promised,' he said, 'then it's a Warden Tree we need to make our offerings to: or, better still, the great irminsul pillar of Jörmunr.'

Still grasping her hand, he led her towards where the serpentine coils and loops of Aurgalsir stretched down towards the well's edges.

Like her daughter the Preaching Tree, Sinmara was still weeping over the birth and loss of Viðrga, the dewy resin falling everywhere now like a heavy rain of sleet.

'You approach me for help,' Sinmara sighed, perfectly aware of their intentions, 'even though you're responsible for my sorrow?'

*

'My own thread to life was severed,' Gytha's brother pointed out to Sinmara. 'Couldn't my sister, who willingly sacrificed her own thread for others, take now what should have rightfully been mine?'

'You think the granting and taking of life is so easy, so effortless – so, as you claim, _rightfully_ yours?'

'I don't ask it for myself, but for my sister.'

'Why would she desire such a strange thing when, why, here she is – _freed_ of all constraint!'

'While alive connections are forged, lives woven together – parting is painful for so many, no matter how beneficial an individual's progression might be.'

'I have no desire to aid someone who's caused me such pain; yet as her strange desire is to return to a world of pain, I've no reason to prevent such a foolish aim.'

Gytha's brother more tightly, more reassuringly, grasped her hand.

'Then if you're not _against_ her return to a life of pain, would you be willing to _aid_ it?'

For a brief moment, Sinmara was silent.

Far away and unseen, she was stretching out her snake-like roots, her coiling boughs, sensing what was going on in the world she wholly enveloped, reaching out for answers.

'Your mother,' she said eventually, her tone at last empathetic; 'she had hoped and prayed long and hard that her _hamingja_ could somehow be _yours_ ...'

*

# Chapter 49

A gleaming thread led Gytha's brother safely along Aurgalsir's labyrinthine roots; and as he was holding his sister's hand, she went with him too.

The glitteringly white, looping coils constantly wove through and wound back upon themselves in an elaborately serpentine curling. But, at last, one particularly thick and meandering stem abruptly wove crookedly upwards, steeply coiling up into the ash giantess herself.

And here they travelled upwards along channels of rising sap, emerging in a cradling of glassy boughs.

It was night, the moon full and bright.

And the thread, naturally, was connected to that moon.

*

Her brother's clasping hand was no longer so firm in its grip, Gytha realised.

His hand was smaller.

_He_ was smaller.

He was becoming ever younger as they made their way across the branching stems. Soon, if this continued, he would no longer be capable of walking.

*

The many, branching boughs shone in the moon's light like so many, uncountable gleaming threads.

Gytha's brother was now a babe. Gytha had swaddled him in her white wimple, once she'd remove it and dashed all its starching away. She carried him tenderly, amazed by his astonishing weightlessness. Surely it was only the enwrapping threads of her wimple that gave him any sense of real substance?

He was a new breath of life, That-Which-Is-Necessary, about which an appearance most be woven.

Yet _she_ wasn't the mother.

Where was his – _her_ – mother?

To become wholly a part of That-Which-Is, to gain a countenance, the very beginnings of a new life requires the fires of the womb, the heat of the blood of a woman, of a mother.

The innumerable threads of glittering light playing about Gytha were now like so many coalescing symbols, so many magical signs.

Wrapping now about each other, merging into some other form.

A woman.

A mother.

'I knew you'd come; that I'd hold you in my arms as a mother is supposed to do.'

_Gytha's_ mother.

*

# Chapter 50

Tenderly, Gytha passed her tightly swaddled brother into his mother's lovingly cradling arms.

The guiding thread had brought Gytha and her brother back to where their mother had set the three stones of Uks, Sár, and Juo.

And, as luck would have it, she'd been waiting there all this time, waiting for nothing but this particular moment in time.

For she'd been promised this moment so very, very long ago.

'Whoever seeks my help here will not go away empty-handed.'

*

# Chapter 51

Although Gytha wasn't aware of it, she glowed as brightly as the moon, as if with an angelic luminosity.

For devoid of the heat of men, in no need of its route to growth, she was the ultimately desired _óðr_ ; That-Which-Is-Emerging.

If Gunhild were here to offer advice, if Gunhild still retained her own desires, she'd be able to tell Gytha that there's no need for her return to the pain of this world.

But then, Gytha's desires are hers, and hers alone.

And who can fault that, when the thread of her life had led to this; a newly born child at the breast of a tenderly cradling mother, with an angelically caring daughter in attendance.

All three, embracing each other as one.

_Becoming_ as one.

We are, naturally, our own beginning, our present, and our end.

The three threads are being plied as we sacr _é_ dly speak, our desir _ó_ us whispering a secret communication.

Then the cord that had originally linked them, child, mother and daughter, that had brought them all here, swiftly retracted, threading back towards a _hår_ moon.

*

# Chapter 52

Gytha still wore the simple grey gown of a Wé Nun.

Her pure white wimple, of course, had vanished.

As had her Yggdrasil Brooch which, at some point in her journey, had been lost.

Or denied her.

Or used entirely up.

It was of no concern to her.

She no longer needed it.

There could be no more travelling through the many realms.

The realms were at war.

And while the gods and their allies gamely fight on, man's world continues to obliviously _turn_.

End

End Note

The more conventionally associated names of the Three Norns were later additions, based on erroneous associations with the Classical Fates. 'Norn' more closely means 'to communicate in secret', while _Urðr_ stems from 'to turn', such as turning points in our lives. In its genitive singular form, even the similarly used _Uröar_ is indistinguishable from the genitive singular of _urö_ , 'a pile of stones', and the mother of all three, Madder-Akka – 'earth, ground, ancestral-female,' and goddess of childbirth – was worshipped upon three flat stones (some of the earliest forms of judgement and prophesy, even at Delphi, were determined using small stones). It was only after the Norse were converted to Christianity that a word for 'soul', _sál_ (possibly related to _Sár_ ), was deemed necessary.

If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll's Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella's Slipper? – AmeriChristmas – The Vitch's Kat in Hollywoodland

Blood of Angels, Wings of Men – Patchwork Quest – The World Turns on A Card – Palace of Lace

The Wailing Ships – The Bad Samaritan – The 13th Month – The Silvered Mare – SpinDell

Swan Moon – The Unicorndoll – Lesser Nefertiti – My Shrieking Skin – Stone in Love

Font of All Lies – The Bared Heart – The Fairy Paintbox – An Angelic Alphabet

Forewarnings and Three Grapes – Death of a Fairytale Princess

