Giants of the Frost (53 page)

"I couldn't let that happen," he said, adopting the mocking voice again. "Now sit still. I told you, we're going somewhere you've never traveled to before."

Accept, accept
. She drew a deep breath and relaxed in the saddle. Time passed. At length, they drew to a halt and she heard Loki dismount and approach.

"Are you ready?" he said.

"I am," she replied.

He helped her down and unpicked the knot in the scarf. "Look, Aud. See where we are?" The blindfold fell away from her eyes and she was standing in the apple orchard near her home in Vanaheim. Her heart filled with air.

"No, no, Loki!" she cried.

"Shush, girl. Listen," he said sternly, "those hags owed me, you remember. I told you I'd bring you somewhere you'd never traveled to before."

When she turned puzzled eyes to him, he leaned close and said, "Aud, it's the past."

"The
…
?"

And then she heard it. In the distance. Helgi crying because he'd woken up alone. The sound she made echoed loudly in her ears: a gasp, a sob, a whimper.

"Go, then," Loki said. "I'll untie Arvak. You see, I'm not so bad, am I?" But she barely heard him, because she was running, running so hard that her knees shuddered under her weight and her blood sizzled with heat and longing. She burst into the house and there he was, three years old, huddled by the bed.

"Helgi, my darling Helgi," she cried, and the alarm and surprise in her voice made him cry harder. She clung to him and he soaked her shoulder in tears and the world stuck in her throat.

"Mama, Mama," he said, "you were gone for so long."

"I know, my darling," she replied, pressing him tight against her, "but I'll never be so foolish again."

[Midgard]

Wellington is right at the bottom of the north island of New Zealand. It's beautiful here in late summer, and it's a long, long way from Othinsey, from Bifrost, and from Odin himself. A long way from Vidar, too, I know. But I'm a practical girl—in the last life, in this one, and in any more to come. Gunnar pulled every string he could to get me a job here. In the end, all the Meteorological Service could offer me was sixteen hours a week hosing out the hydrogen chamber and mopping up the storeroom. I'd prefer to be busier. The empty hours get inside me, hollow me out. Gunnar keeps me occupied: if he's not making jokes about how ridiculous I look in waterproof overalls, he's leaving his clothes and books all over the little flat we share, for me to pick up.

But we're not lovers. Gunnar would like it very much if we were, and I am so very fond of him. But I've known a love infinitely greater, a love potent enough to eat the sun. I know that that love is gone and cannot return for a thousand years. I know a thousand years is longer than I can imagine, that it takes me beyond the horrors of old age and death and decay and the wide nothing after it. I know all this, and yet I save my heart.

I often dream of Vidar, when I'm burrowed down in sleep. We're together, his hands on my hands, on my body. His eyes are dark and serious, and he says to me that he will be mine forever. No matter what happens, he will make certain that we are together, and that I'm not to be afraid of death, or silence, or his father. That he'll find me and bring me back to him. I die a little when I wake, and lie there a long time, empty and nauseous, and wonder if it's just a dream. Then I rise and check in the little box under my bed: a wolf's tooth, a rune, two wooden carvings and a shard of a thousand-year-old axe blade. Proof that impossible things happen.

Why shouldn't impossible things happen, after all? We travel through our weary lives with an illusion of secure places and choices, because to acknowledge otherwise would make living unbearable. But the elements are still in play, all the time, a collection of glowing rainbow colors that fall into black precisely when we don't expect them to. There was a time, not so long ago, when I thought I could explain everything. Yet it never occurred to me that I couldn't explain even the basics. Life, love, fate. What I do know are these things. Love is mighty. Souls, once they touch, always save an imprint of one another. The sun rises and sets on my world and on his.

I wait and I hope. Foolish hope. It's all I can do.

[Seven Years Later]

Vidar's fingers worked expertly, fitting the gate into the lintel. He ignored the occasional snarl of Odin's dogs; they were annoyed to be tied up so long while Vidar mended the gate. It was dusk and they were keen to be free, to be hunting in the woods. Vidar took his time, testing the latch and adjusting the hinge. Hoofbeats from the edge of the forest barely registered. Visitors were always coming and going from Valaskjálf. Such visits had little to do with Vidar, who had spent the last seven years in service to his family. The drunken fools had barely noticed the signs that Vidar had noticed: a dark cloud gathering in the west, the distant howling echoes that traveled on the wind, the boiling seas and the long, harsh winters. A thousand years might yet pass before the long twilight that signaled the end, but it was coming. Without doubt, it was coming.

Vidar stood back, realizing that the hoofbeats had not thundered down the path to the stables. He looked around. A chestnut stallion. Two hooded figures on his back, one adult and one child. He peered into the semidark. "Arvak?"

Vidar dropped his tools and began toward the hem of the forest, where the two riders sat motionless. The dogs began to howl, realizing that their freedom was still suspended. Vidar checked around him nervously. Nobody watching. In the shadow of a mighty spruce, he stopped and reached a hand for the horse's nose.

"Dear old friend," he said, surprised to find himself so choked on emotion. He had thought his heart hardened to stone.

The first rider pushed back her hood. It was Aud, her body ripened by womanhood and happiness, with the elaborate tattoos around her eyebrows that indicated her full initiation into the Vanir magic. She was a seidhr princess now, the most powerful of her family.

"Vidar," she said slowly, smiling. She turned to the boy behind her. "This is my son, Helgi." She glanced around, nervous. "Join us in the woods. I would talk to you without the eyes or ears of Valaskjálf to witness."

Vidar followed her into the trees, puzzled. Night deepened overhead, and the shadows in the forest pooled to black. She dismounted at a small clearing overgrown with tiny saplings. Vidar sat on a flat rock while she helped Helgi down. His hood fell back to reveal a solemn-faced, blond boy, who stood protectively close to his mother.

"How did you find each other?" Vidar asked.

Aud shook loose her long, dark hair. "Fate, it seems, is not so immutable as I had thought." A barb of pain to his heart. Fate had treated him cruelly.

"I'll be quick, Vidar, because I know that your family will miss you if I keep you too long. You are well?"

"As well as I could be. Given my situation."

"Good. Good." She smiled, and an unaccountable glint of excitement came to her eye. "These last seven years, I have thought of you every day. Not because I love you. Those feelings have long since grown cold. I have thought of you, because I played a part in the awful mess…" She trailed off and wouldn't meet his eye. "I have borne a burden of guilt. All my magic, all my hard work in seidhr training, has tended toward one thing."

Vidar waited, expectant, puzzled. In the distance, the dogs barked on.

"Rescuing you, Vidar."

He shook his head. "I can't be rescued. I'm bound by fate."

"Listen now. Have you seen your brother Thor in the last few days?"

"No. He went riding. Hunting, I think."

"I know where he is." She smiled again, as though she could barely keep inside some delicious secret.

"He's with the Norns."

His confusion made him unaccountably irritated. "Aud?" • She grasped his hand in her cool fingers. "Urd loved Thor. I always remember her speaking of him, so fondly, so tenderly. Seven years ago, the Norns hid themselves from me. I knew if I wanted to deal with them, I had to have the right bait. Two days past, I put Thor under an enchantment—he thinks he loves Urd—and I set him to wander in the World Tree, following him secretly." She giggled. "You should have heard him: drunken love songs echoed through the roots for days. Finally, Urd caught him. And when she did, I caught her." Vidar's heart was starting to speed.

"I made a deal, that if she would grant me one change of fate, I would leave Thor under the enchantment for as long as it would last. If she refused, I would remove the enchantment immediately. By that stage, he had taken her spindly hand and was pressing his lips into it fervently. She agreed."

"What fate have you changed?" he asked, trying to still his blood, which pounded so fast past his ears that he couldn't hear the sounds of the twilit forest around him.

"You know, Vidar. We tried it once before." She reached into her cloak and pulled out a length of colored thread. Stepping forward, she began to wind it around his wrist.

He stared at it, hot with anticipation.

"You will be a man, Vidar. The moment you step onto Bifrost. You will be mortal, you will grow old, you will die. Your fate has gone to Vali. By the time Odin notices you're gone, the new destinies will be in place and he'll remember you only as the son who disappointed him greatly, who he is proud not to miss." She tied a knot in the thread. "But the enchantment on Thor will not last forever. My magic is not yet that strong. I hope, for your sake, that it may last a mortal lifetime. But you must live your life with Victoria, knowing that it could all end at any moment." She patted his wrist and her dark eyes met his.

"And in that lesson, lies the real truth about being mortal."

Vidar felt tears prick his eyes. That morning, there had only been the crushing weight of fate upon him. Now, a path had been opened, unexpectedly, sweetly.

Aud handed him Arvak's reins. "I wish you luck, Vidar. She is a long way from Odin's Island. But you found her once before, in the depths of Niflheim. I'm sure you will find her again." Vidar finally regained his ability to speak. "I haven't words to thank you, Aud."

"There is no need for them, Vidar. I treated you badly. This is restitution." She turned to her son. "Helgi, as we discussed?"

Helgi nodded and Aud tousled the boy's hair. "My son, it seems, has enough elvish magic from his father's side to make us quite an unstoppable pair. Give us five minutes to go ahead and distract Heimdall. Then go, and don't look back."

They raised their hoods and scampered off. Vidar's hands trembled as he adjusted Arvak's stirrups. He realized he was panicking; if Heimdall would not let him pass, this new promise would be broken. He didn't know if his tired heart could endure that again.

Vidar mounted Arvak, leaning forward to pat his neck. "I'm glad to have you with me, old friend." He turned the horse toward Bifrost.

Thundering down the path, he saw the tall pillars. At the north pillar, two hooded figures stood next to a statue. No, it wasn't a statue, it was Heimdall, frozen. Aud gestured that he should move, and quickly.

"Go, Arvak. Forward."

The ground shuddered beneath him, the colors on the thread around his wrist glowed. The air seemed to tremble around him, the sweet weight of mortality pressing itself into his immortal flesh. The cliffs edge loomed ahead, the night sky opened.

With a flash of hot colors, the ground dropped away and the stars exploded at Arvak's hooves. The thread turned black, and Vidar was on his journey.

About the Author

Kim Wilkins
was born in London and grew up at the seaside in Queensland. She has degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing, and has won four Aurealis awards for fantasy and horror. Her books are also published in the UK, U.S., and Europe. Kim lives in Brisbane with her partner, her son, and two spoiled black cats.

You can write to her at [email protected], or find more information at www.kimwilkins.com.