Endure (20 page)

Questions zing around in my head. I try to organize them into something practical, something that makes sense.

1. We are in Hel.

2. Some people/animals/dwarves are happy here.

3. However, my friends are frozen here. Frozen does not equal happy.

4. I am not frozen. Why didn’t she freeze me? Or freeze me when I first saw her in Bedford? Instead she pummeled me.

5. It makes no sense.

I must look confused, because Hel explains, “I have more power in my own realm. Here I can freeze others into submission. They are not injured, just frozen. I can unfreeze them, and I shall, after we talk.”

“They aren’t hurt?” Staring at Amelie’s strained face and Astley’s awkward pose, it’s hard to believe they aren’t in pain somehow.

“No. And they are invulnerable to attack.”

It is better than death, I guess, but it’s not that encouraging having them frozen like this. I look around and try to take in where we are. We are in the woods, a forest really, and the trees are tall and covered with ice. It even encases their trunks with a shiny, see-through barrier and drips from the limbs in long, jagged points. There are no animal sounds, no wind. It’s as if the world is waiting to see if it’s worth it to move.

The land rolls gently here. There are no steep mountains, no obvious crevices to plunge into. The sky is a dark gray, as if there is a constant storm, and I wonder, logically, if there is a sun. The Norse said Hel was beneath the earth, so no sun should be able to come in, yet . . . how can trees grow then? How could there be any light at all?

I take a step backward and turn toward the root that must be from Yggdrasil, which is the giant tree in Norse mythology that connects the nine worlds. One of the worlds is here, Niflheim, a land of harsh cold and fog. The branches on this side are actually the root system that holds up the mythological tree on the earth side. Although, you’d think that someone on earth would notice a magical, massive tree. Maybe it’s glamoured. The branches on the Hel side snake through the forest, many feet above the ground. Extensions of it shoot off every so often. A stream runs on the ground directly under the branch, somehow not frozen like everything else, somehow moving. It makes no sense, but it’s so real. Giant bite marks mar the tree.

Hel reaches up and gestures toward one of the marks with her hand. “A giant worm did that.”

“Níðhöggr.”

She smiles. “You have been studying.”

“My friend Devyn does most of the research,” I say. “Obviously not quite enough research or I might have known about the whole ‘freezing us’ thing.”

“So you know about me then?” She twists her hands together and waits for me to answer. She’s so huge and intimidating, much more so than the gods at Valhalla. Still, even though she’s just frozen my friends, there’s something I like about her, something more interesting than Odin and Thor and the others.

I pause for a second, trying to figure out what to say. I stomp around on the spot, trying to stay warm, and finally say, “Only what I have heard.”

“Which is . . .” Her gaze widens.

I finish her sentence for her as the wind howls around us. “That you rule here. That you have huge mansions. You are the daughter of Loki and Angrboða; the wolf Fenrir and the serpent Jörmungandr are your brothers. You serve a dish called ‘Hunger,’ sleep on a bed called ‘Sick Bed,’ and wield a knife called ‘Famine.’ Although that sounds kind of hokey to me . . . all that stuff. You are waiting for the world to end. So why?” I ask her. “Why do they want the world to end?”

“You don’t think it’s just because it has been prophesized?” Her eyes gleam.

“Nope.” I cross my arms over my chest, shivering. I check out Astley and the others, frozen in midmotion. I wonder if they can hear us, see us. I wonder if they are cold too.

She snaps her fingers and dwarves run at me with giant furs; before I can move they’ve dropped them and wrapped them around me. “Thank you. But my friends.”

“Are fine, I promise you.” She smiles and it’s both beautiful and grotesque, depending on which side of her mouth you’re looking at. “You are the only one unprotected right now and if you die from cold, then you would end up with me forever. I don’t think you’d like that. Not now. There is so much intention in you yet, so much you want to do, to save.”

Staring at her, I try to figure out what she’s getting at. She seems . . . sad? But who wouldn’t be if they were banished down here? The whole act of being banished seems sadness inducing.

I attempt to calm my shivering and say, “I honestly don’t think it would be that bad to be here, except for the cold.”

She squats down in front of me. “Do you know why that is?”

I don’t answer. She whistles. A carriage, deep red and pulled by giant frost-covered elephants, trundles toward us through the trees of ice. Icicles hang from the reins that connect the elephants to the sled.

“It is warm within the mansions of Hel.” She reaches out her hand for me to take. And she must see my hesitation because she chuckles. “Do not worry. It is not the flaming hellfire your culture speaks of. You will see.”

I take her hand even though it’s the decaying one and try not to vomit from the way her naked bone feels beneath my fingers. Instead, I focus on the side of her face that is whole.

“See?” she says as she helps me into the sled. “This is why you are chosen. Not because of who your father is, not because you turned pixie queen. It is because you choose to look beyond the ugly. You choose to see the good even in monsters, Zara White. That is why you are different. That is why you are important.”

She puts more blankets over my legs and tucks them in beneath me before stepping in. “Take us to Hel,” she tells the driver, a woman with black, frost-covered hair. The elephants snort and then move forward through the snow and ice. Hel turns to me, brings my face close, and breathes upon my skin to warm it up, the way a mother would.

“Sometimes the monsters are not monsters,” she says.

“I know.” I nod. “And sometimes the monsters are within us all, even in those we think are the most good.”

“You are shivering too much. Do not talk until we get to Hel and you are warmed.”

And so I don’t. We rush through the fog. It slaps at my cheeks like tiny pellets of ice, stinging the skin. I don’t see any animals other than the elephants. I don’t see any life, including any sign of giant worms. Thinking about Astley and the others, I say a tiny, silent prayer that Hel was not lying and that they are indeed safe.

She touches my arm through the blankets. “What is wrong?”

“My friends.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment and we crest a hill, revealing huge, amazing mansions that gleam almost golden, dotting the landscape, shining with the suggestion of warmth. They remind me of French chateaus that kings used to visit, bringing their entire retinue.

“Hel is beautiful,” I gasp.

She smiles, revealing gums and teeth. “I will send for your friends, Zara. But if they become threats to my people, I will freeze them again. Understand?”

My heart beats a bit warmer even though the temperature hasn’t changed. “I understand.”

Hel has many mansions, each beautiful and elaborate and full of beings, but not so full that they are crowded. Tigers and bears stroll alongside each other, apparently peaceful. Old men lounge by fireplaces reading. Young women smoke cigars by the stairs. People wear modern clothes, ancient clothes. Some are missing flesh, like they were bitten by something. Some have marks from their illnesses upon their cheeks. But their eyes are lively and they seem content. I could stare and stare at them, I think.

“Not what you were expecting?” Hel ushers me through the front hall and into a long room full of mirrors. Gold trim glistens along the edges of the ceiling. A fire roars in a white marble hearth.

As I settle into a leather chair I say, “Not at all.”

The flames in the fireplace flare and give off the most beautiful heat in the entire universe. For a second, I let myself close my eyes and just breathe in the warmth.

“So, why did you come to Hel, Zara White?” Her question and voice are suddenly formal. When I open my eyes, I can tell that her posture is more rigid as well. She stands by the fire, waiting.

“We wanted— We wanted to know how to stop the apocalypse.” It sounds stupid when I say it like that.

“And you thought I would just tell you?”

I smile. “Um . . . yeah. We were hoping.”

She laughs. A slow-walking woman with hair like straw shuffles into the room carrying a tray of what looks like hot cider. I take one and thank her. One sip and I’m instantly warmed. Standing up, I investigate the room. We’re alone, but the mirrors show dozens of us. My hair is dripping onto my coat. It must have been frozen and it’s thawing now.

“I shall give you a choice,” Hel says, placing her own porcelain cup onto a silver tray.

I wait.

“You may either know how to stop the end or you may see your father again.”

My heart stops.

“My father or my stepfather?” I clarify because I have a biological father who died in the jaws of Fenrir, and I have a real father—the one who raised me. He died of a heart attack on our kitchen floor.

“Your stepfather.”

In the mirrors my face has paled. My eyes widen with shock and want. I want to yell that’s not a fair choice, stomp my feet, and demand both, but instead I say, “That is cruel.”

“I can only give one. I want you to have the choice.”

“Another test?” I ask.

She shrugs slightly. That’s all the answer she’ll give me, I know.

“Pick one. Your father or the world.”

There are little gold figurines on a side table. They shine in the light and I can’t resist the urge to pick one up. It’s the form of a deer lying down, legs tucked under her body. The weight of it in my hand is soothing and I stare at it so I don’t have to look at a mirror, don’t have to look at Hel.

In the past year, I’ve lost two people that I’ve loved so totally. The first was my dad. The second was Nick. And when you lose someone like that, it’s hard to describe, but it’s like something gets ripped out of your chest and you’d do anything—even turn pixie—to fix that hole in the center of you, to get them back, to see them, to talk to them. Before all this happened, I believed in God in the Judeo-Christian or Muslim sense but I still felt that incredible loss when they both died, and Mrs. Nix too. And there was doubt. There was this big doubt inside of me even though I believed in God. I was worried that they had just stopped existing. Not so much with Nick because I saw the Valkyrie take him away, but with my dad and Mrs. Nix nobody came. They were just gone, forever gone, and now—now I have the chance to speak to my dad, to see him again because he’s here, right here.

“I thought he’d be in heaven,” I mutter, examining the underside of the deer like it has all the answers. “Is there even a heaven? Or are you gods it? The ultimate?”

Hel gently takes the deer from my hand and places it back on the table. She sighs and her hands move to the sides of my face. “We are not all there is. Even Odin, who knows more than the rest of us, does not know everything, despite all the myths that say he does. There is power above us, yes.”

I cock my head a little, moving my cheek closer to her rotten hand. “Promise?”

She smiles, and even though there is jaw bone and teeth revealed in half that smile, it’s still beautiful. “I promise.”

A moment passes and then she drops her hands from my face and she turns away, giving me room.

I love my dad. He was the one who taught me to think, to write about human-rights violations, to care about people’s feelings, to memorize Booker T. Washington quotes. There would be nothing better than seeing him, hugging him one more time, smelling his dad smell and feeling his bristly skin where his beard grows in too fast.

But he wouldn’t want me to do this.

Not if it meant the world could end, although let’s face it, the world has issues. Big issues like sex slaves and genocide, racism, poverty, homophobia and wars, religious conflicts and environmental disasters—but the world is also worth saving because it has writers like Foucault and people like Issie and Grandma Betty. I know it’s not all cuddly puppies and rainbows and ice-cream sundaes, but it needs a chance, as many chances as it can get to survive.

“Tell me what I need to do,” I say.

The moment the words leave my mouth, the loss of not seeing my dad again hiccups through my chest, knives my heart into two. I bend forward from the pain of it.

Hel’s hand touches my shoulder. “Are you sure?”

I nod because I can’t trust my voice not to break. It’s hard for the words to come out of my throat. It’s like they have to push past something big and solid to make themselves heard. “I want to know how to stop the end.”

That’s what he’d want me to do, because it’s the right thing to do. Still, it feels so wrong. My legs crumple beneath me, and I sit down on the ornate couch without really realizing it. Hel reaches out a hand and gently touches my arm, and that’s when I realize that gods don’t work like people do. They barely speak our language. And they rarely make decisions out of empathy. Instead, they force choices upon us, always testing our character, always seeing what we are made of. Gods know that you can’t stop hurt. Gods know that you can’t stop endings and choices and pain, but people keep trying to do exactly those things.