The Songweaver's Vow

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  She flinched back, scrabbling for purchase, and the snake tore the ground away, dropping soil and stone into the foaming sea below. Euthalia crawled backward from the eroding cliff edge, her eyes on the enormous head as it shook debris from its mouth and hissed in rage as the hook flexed in its jaw.

  The rope on the hook snapped tight, and Euthalia tore her eyes from the monster to see that Thor still stood, rope about his arm, grinning with unnatural joy as he wrestled against the strength of the enormous beast. He had escaped to the other side, letting Jörmungandr bite where he had stood.

  Where Euthalia had stood, she realized.

  Jörmungandr, caught by the rope, twisted his head one way and then the other. His eyes blazed, but not with the fearful intelligence Euthalia had seen in Fenrir. This son of Loki would not treat or negotiate with his tormentors. He sought only to kill and to free himself.

  She glanced down to where endless coils of serpent were writhing up from the sea, grating through the hole and heaving the ocean aside as it came.

  “Thor! Cut it loose!”

  Hymir was shouting from his place on the ground beyond Thor, but the Æsir ignored him. The singing rope burned against the leather bracer, steaming faintly with the seawater.

  Euthalia got to her feet. She could run back to the tree, to Yggdrasill, she could—

  The serpent struck again at Thor, mouth wide to expose fangs longer than a man’s height. Thor dodged aside, frantically gathering slack rope, and pulled one arm back to deliver a hooking punch just behind the snake’s nostril. Jörmungandr, unfazed, twisted and lashed his body against the cliff.

  Euthalia’s foothold crumbled.

  She screamed and flailed for grass, stone, anything which might save her. Her hand struck sleek scales. She wrapped her arms about the broad, broad curve of the serpentine body and fell, sliding along the scaly curves and being carried with the coiling body.

  She tumbled off the writhing snake and into the ocean, and the cold took her breath. But the waves bore her up again with Jörmungandr’s fury, and she gasped air and looked about for safety. She could see the snake rising from the Wyrmhole to her left, and somehow she knew that hole was death. If she were drawn into it, she would certainly be crushed against the stone sides by the massive serpent—and if she somehow escaped that, who could say what horrifying oceanic pit it opened onto below?

  She kicked hard, but the swelling water lifted her and carried her back, away from the rising cliffs. She could see the wide stone ledge, marked with seaweed and bristly plants and pocked with wear, and then frothy water crashed over it once more and she was swept toward the Wyrmhole, and she could not even scream for her mouth was full of seawater.

  And then something moved beneath her, caught her, and she clutched again at the thrashing body of Jörmungandr. The great serpent lunged upward from the sea, bearing her high, and she fell as he twisted over the battered cliff.

  She hit the ground hard, and for a moment she could only choke and spit and try to clear her vision. When she looked up she saw Thor braced against the serpent’s head, feet planted on the lower jaw as he hauled back on the rope fixed in it, holding himself in place as Jörmungandr shook his head in pain and rage. Hymir ran for them, a sheep-sized boulder in his arms, and leaped to bring it down on the serpent’s skull. Jörmungandr shook off the blow and struck Hymir aside with a swipe of his head.

  “Cut him free!” shouted Hymir again.

  Thor shook his head and shifted his grip on the rope. Jörmungandr reared high, higher than Euthalia thought possible, carrying Thor with him. Thor took one hand from the precious handhold to pull the hammer from its place on his belt. Euthalia saw him raise the weapon, silhouetted against the sky, and bring it down against the serpent’s head.

  There was a crack like thunder and Jörmungandr actually staggered beneath the blow. Then the serpent’s head snapped and Thor was flung high and hard, the rope burning free of his arm. Jörmungandr bellowed with fresh rage and shook his head, and then he tipped his enormous eye down to search for the fallen Thor.

  Hymir was already running. Euthalia looked past him and saw he was not running for Thor but for the rope lying slack between Thor and Jörmungandr.

  “No!” shouted Thor, rolling to his feet. He ran to seize the end of the rope near him.

  Jörmungandr opened his mouth and hissed, a sound like a steaming ocean. Blood ran from his maw where the hook had torn him.

  Thor snatched up the rope and twisted it about his leather-bound wrist once more. Jörmungandr jerked backward against the renewed pressure, shaking his head in fury and pain. Thor roared incoherently and lifted Mjöllnir in challenge.

  Jörmungandr’s head remained in place, held by the agonizing hook and Thor’s strength, but his body began to rise and coil about him, gathering on the cliff edge. Euthalia’s breath choked in her throat as she saw loop after loop edge over the cliff and spill across the grassy plain, obscuring the wide sea behind.

  Jörmungandr was leaving the sea. He would cross the world and destroy everything. He could not but destroy everything.

  Thor laughed with manic joy and tightened the rope another twist about his wrist.

  Hymir reached the taut rope straining between them. He made a mighty leap into the air, and at the pinnacle of his jump he brought his axe down against the rope. Strung so tightly, it parted like a released bowstring.

  Thor tumbled backward with the release, shouting in fury. Jörmungandr recoiled and slid off the cliff, sending towers of spray into the air.

  “You fool!” roared Thor. “You coward!”

  Euthalia peered over the edge, afraid to look and equally afraid not to, and saw Jörmungandr sinking again into the Wyrmhole, mouth open and hissing in bloody agitation.

  She waited, staring, more than half expecting the serpent to rise again from the hole, but the waves settled into their usual pattern of advance and crash and retreat, without the turmoil of an angry beast below.

  Hymir was on his knees, panting, his axe beside him. Euthalia decided to emulate him and dropped heavily backward to sit on the grass. Her limbs felt weak and cold, though she told herself it was just the frigid water.

  “You released him!” shouted Thor, closing on Hymir.

  The Jötunn looked up at him. “Yes, I did. Because your fight was not going to prevent Ragnarok, Thor—it was going to open it. Jörmungandr would have destroyed Midgard if we had not cut him loose to return to the sea.”

  Thor squeezed the haft of his hammer and gave an inarticulate cry of rage. “But now he is gone!”

  “And we should be grateful for it,” answered Hymir.

  Gone. And Thor had not killed him, and Euthalia had not collected his scales. Thor had not prevented Jörmungandr’s attack, and Euthalia had not found the material to prevent Fenrir’s.

  Freyja would beat her, but that was only pain and humiliation. If the Æsir feared Fenrir enough to bind him, his impending attack would be worse than Freyja’s punishment. Fenrir’s attack would kill her friends. Would kill Vidar.

  My husband, my love, I only ever fail you.

  She turned away from the sea and started toward Yggdrasill, leaving Thor and Hymir arguing on the rocky grassland. Jörmungandr had gone, and they had failed.

  She reached the enormous tree and looked at the craggy bark. It would be a long, long climb, and she dreaded asking Thor for help.

  Her wet clothes clung to her, making her shiver. The shade of Yggdrasill blocked all sun.

  She set one hand to the bark, testing a grip, and then twitched backward as a squirrel ran down to her. It paused, peering at her at eye level.

  “Ratatoskr?” she asked, feeling foolish. Was it even the same squirrel? Did it understand her?

  The squirrel chattered and darted downward, pausing where the tree slipped into the earth of Midgard. It looked up at her and twitched its fluffy tail.

  “Are you—are you waiting for me?”

  The squirrel scampered downward and then
upward again, peering up at her.

  “But that’s the wrong way,” she said. “I have to return to Asgard.”

  The squirrel made an exasperated noise and ran downward again.

  “All right!” Euthalia pulled a handful of wet skirt through her legs and tucked it into her belt, and then she stepped onto the rough bark. She started climbing downward after Ratatoskr—if it even was Ratatoskr and not another red squirrel.

  I am following a squirrel, she thought, and felt foolish. And yet, I just fought a sea serpent. So perhaps a squirrel is not to be wondered at.

  They descended into the earth of Midgard and the shade rapidly became the subterranean dark. They had not gone far when the ground opened about them and Euthalia perceived they were in a cavern.

  Was this the same cave where Loki was bound? She held her breath and listened, but there were no voices, no cries of pain. No, this did not look like the same cave; it was smooth with endless wear, without stalactites or stalagmites. The air hung humid and salty. This was a sea cave, enormous and round—

  Euthalia’s heart stopped. This was a passage used by Jörmungandr. It was the serpent’s passage which had worn the stone round and smooth, as much as the ocean. This was one of his endless ways about Midgard.

  She froze, afraid even to breathe lest the sound summon him.

  Ratatoskr suffered no such hesitation. He leapt from the bark and landed running some paces away, twitching his tail and chattering at her. It was so clearly an instruction to follow that Euthalia moved despite her fear, dropping to the sloping stone floor and splashing through a pool of residual water.

  The faint light which had filtered through the crevices of bark faded entirely, and Euthalia slowed as the cave dimmed to blackness. “I can’t see,” she said aloud, hoping the squirrel would understand her. “I can’t see.”

  An impatient chatter came back to her.

  Euthalia took a breath. She had seen no obstructions previously; the cave had been worn smooth, and Jörmungandr’s bulk would have paved the way long ago. She put her hands out before her and crept forward, testing each step but following the sound of the squirrel.

  “Ratatoskr?” she called. “Not so fast, I can’t keep up with you. Ratatosk—”

  Her hand touched scales.

  Euthalia leapt backward and swallowed the shriek which rose in her throat, fighting to keep from rousing the monster with her fear. But surely Jörmungandr had heard her already, heard her stumbling in the dark and calling to the squirrel, to the stupid squirrel, which she had followed into the dark like an imaginative fool.

  She stood frozen in the dark, her heart pounding in her throat, and waited.

  There was no movement in front of her. The scales did not slide rasping over stone. And then there was a sound, a tiny sound much too small to be Jörmungandr, a sound like small claws on rock. Ratatoskr squeaked at her and ran forward again, to where the scales waited.

  Euthalia took a breath and edged forward, hands extended. When her fingers brushed scales, she jumped, but she did not flee. The scales gave slightly beneath her pressure, as if there was nothing substantial behind him.

  Insight came to her with dizzying relief: it was a shed skin. Jörmungandr the serpent had shed like any other, and this was his discarded skin, with the retained impression of his scales.

  She laughed with released tension, and Ratatoskr chattered as if agreeing about her foolishness. Euthalia stepped close to the skin—even empty, it piled high above her head.

  Freyja had asked for Jörmungandr’s flesh. Euthalia smiled with giddy relief and joy and took the tiny utility knife dangling from her belt to begin cutting free a hide’s-breadth of old skin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was an exhausting climb up Yggdrasill, and Euthalia had already worn herself out when she heard voices closing beneath her and looked down to see Thor and Hymir ascending. Thor was still angry, but Hymir had placated him somehow, and Thor only grunted as he caught up to Euthalia and held out an arm to her. She accepted, leaning into his grip, and he shifted her to his back where she clung like a child as he continued to climb, fast and sure.

  She wondered at his inarticulate offer, to a thrall and in his frustration at losing Jörmungandr. Might it be that Thor was not quite the brute she had imagined him to be? Certainly he had participated in the brutal beating of Loki, but that might have been more at Baldr’s inciting than his own. And Vidar had said that Loki had more than earned retribution from Thor. Certainly Thor was not only a bully—facing the enormous Jörmungandr had required courage, not petty cruelty.

  She was tired, now that the battle with the Midgard serpent had ended and after the heart-stopping moment in the dark cave, and she found herself nodding as Thor climbed. She woke herself with a start—what if she should lose her grip and fall?—but the rhythmic motion of his climbing lulled her back to drowsiness. She blinked fiercely and bit the inside of her cheek in an attempt to fend off her exhaustion.

  But she did not notice when they emerged into the sunny realm of Asgard once more, not until Thor stepped off the tree and reached back to dislodge her. He lowered her with neither roughness nor particular care to the ground and then looked to Hymir. “We go and tell them, now.”

  Hymir nodded. “We go and tell them.”

  They started away without looking back at Euthalia.

  She did not mind. She was a thrall, she was a woman, she was a hindrance to their task and had been only a literal burden to them. They owed her no special courtesy now that they had returned to Asgard.

  She, however, must report to Freyja. She got to her feet, shook out her damp skirt, and started toward Sessrúmnir.

  Freyja appeared to be deep in thought when Euthalia arrived. “Mistress,” Euthalia said, prompting her to turn away from the hearth, “I have brought it.”

  Freyja stared at her a moment, as if sorting through her memories for what it was Euthalia was to have brought. “Yes?”

  “The flesh of Jörmungandr.” Euthalia unbound the rolled skin from the shoulder strap she had cut for it and held it out. “As you wanted.”

  Freyja took it gently, staring. “You—how did you?”

  Euthalia wasn’t ready to explain that she had followed a squirrel into a cave. “You said it was important.” She nodded toward the skin, like a roll of vellum or parchment. “How will it help?”

  “Jörmungandr and Fenrir are blood,” Freyja answered, examining the skin. “Blood binds.”

  Euthalia thought of Loki bound in place by the entrails of his son, unable to break free. It seemed logical that the strength of Jörmungandr might likewise hold his brother Fenrir.

  “Leave me,” said Freyja shortly, still looking at the skin.

  Euthalia was only too happy to obey. She went to her own corner and curled into it, head leaning against the wall, and slept.

  Euthalia woke with a sense of satisfaction and contentment she had not felt in a long while.

  She remained still for a moment, testing the feeling. She had found the flesh of Jörmungandr, simultaneously fulfilling her mistress’s impossible demand and securing Vidar’s safety by helping to bind Fenrir, prophesied to fight him. Yes, she had done well, and now that she had slept, she realized the grand extent of her accomplishment.

  She should ask Freyja now. Now, while her mistress was both pleased with Euthalia’s obedience and success against all odds and too distracted with her own concerns to engage in petty cruelty. She should ask Freyja how to break the curse on Vidar.

  It would require careful presentation and more than a little flattery. But so much depended on it. All depended on it.

  Euthalia rose and washed, brushing the dried sea salt from her clothing as best she could. It needed a proper laundering, but she was a thrall now with a thrall’s possessions, and laundry would have to wait until she could take the time to wash and dry what she wore.

  But it did not matter. The cloth would loosen with wear, and she would ask today how to free
Vidar from his curse. Then she would do whatever was required, and he would return to her and forgive her, and they would love again.

  Freyja was sitting on a stool in the sun, combing out her hair. Euthalia approached her. “Good morning, mistress. May I help you?”

  “Yes.” Freyja held out the comb.

  Euthalia took it, a well-made thing of finely-carved antler, and took a place to one side where she could watch Freyja’s face. “Will they bind Fenrir soon, now that the necessary pieces have been gathered?”

  “What? Oh, yes, I suppose so. The dwarfs have been hard at work forging a chain unlike any other.”

  Euthalia felt mingled unhappiness and joy. Fenrir had spoken well and fairly, demanding to know where to find his father, and they had lied to him. It felt wrong to chain him against nothing he had done, but what he might do. And yet, he was prophesied to fight Vidar—and she would do all she could to prevent that.

  “Of course, having a chain is one thing,” Freyja mused. “Putting it about a wolf is another.”

  Euthalia’s hands slowed with the comb. She had not considered this difficulty.

  “But that is always the trouble,” Freyja continued. “Plans are simple. Actions are less so.”

  Euthalia swallowed. “I wish to know something of plans and actions,” she said. “You promised that if I would serve you, you would help me to free Loki and to find my husband.”

  Freyja’s mouth curved. “Yes?”

  “I wish to know how the break the curse on Vidar.”

  Freyja raised an eyebrow. “A curse?”

  “I know the nature of it, that it shows itself only in love. That is a horrid curse, brutal and cruel. I do not know what monster made it, but I know I will unmake it. I only need to know the way.”

  “Only,” repeated Freyja with some amusement. “Who told you of this curse?”

  “Odin,” said Euthalia, wavering between admission and pride. She had gone behind her mistress’s back, but she had been resourceful. “Odin told me of the curse, and he told me it could be undone.”