The goddess snorted in amusement. “You couldn’t handle any trial I gave you.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve handled quite a lot of things others expected to break me.”
She narrowed her eyes at me once more. “If you want to free a shade from its fate, then you yourself will have to give your fate up, blindly. I will let you have a trial, but only in time shall you know what I want you to do, only in time will you be able to complete your mission, and until then, your fate should hang in the balance like a fraying thread.”
“What do you want us to do?” Soren asked, but the goddess shook her head.
“Not ‘us,’” she said. “Her.” She pointed one crooked finger at me before beckoning me forward. Unease crawled through me like insects down my spine the closer I got to the roots of the world tree and the goddess of death herself. Looking down, I noticed the ground right below the roots crumbling away and leaving spots of dark nothingness in its pathway.
“Ginnugagap,” I whispered in awe below my breath at the darkness.
“So, you know what this is, then,” Hel said.
“Of course. I was raised on these tales,” I said. “As every human child was.”
“Then you know what it means when I tell you to jump into it,” Hel said, smiling a wicked smile. “Jump into the yawning grave and meet your fate inside of it.”
My eyes widened, and I hastily took a step back as the soil beneath my feet began to crumble and fall into the primordial void. They said while the stag created the creatures and worlds that lived in Midgard, the Ginnugagap, or yawning grave, was what lingered before there were gods and other worlds and would be there long after. That on one side of the void sat Niflheim, the land of ice, intense cold, and mist, and on the other sat Muspellheim, the land of fire, heat, lava, and smoke. And in between the two sat a nothing that was something—a space between spaces that took you wherever it desired. To jump into the gap between two worlds would be to give up all control and knowledge of what surrounded you, what held you to the world, what made you even you. Yet this was my task. Not to jump into the gap, but to complete whatever Hel desired of me while I could be in an entirely different world as an entirely different being seeing through entirely different eyes.
Looking down at the gaping void, I couldn’t suppress a shudder. In tales, the gap was supposed to be filled with roots from Yggdrasil, the world tree, but there was nothing peering back at me through the yawning, obsidian nothingness. Only a feeling of terror deep in my stomach that got larger and larger the more I peered into it.
It radiated darkness and despair—the darkness of the unknown and the despair of not being able to ever know. The vast void led to somewhere at the same time as leading to nowhere at all.
“That’s suicide,” Diaval hissed. “How is she supposed to know what you want her to do in the gap? How is she supposed to know what her tasks are?”
Hel’s ghoulish gaze raked over Diaval, but the she-goblin didn’t waver. “Your friend is the stag. If anyone can survive a jump into the gap and wherever it leads, where it follows, and understands my own messages that come after for her, then it is her and only her.” Hel let out a surprisingly ladylike laugh.
“Do you accept this?” Hel asked.
“So, the gap isn’t the task by itself, is it? It’s what awaits me on the other side?” I questioned, brows furrowed. “It’s the choices I make inside?”
“Janneke,” Soren said, “don’t do it. We can find another way.”
“Janneke, I’ll gladly sacrifice myself for the good of the Permafrost,” Rose said.
I turned back to my friends. “No words of protest, Seppo? Diaval?”
Seppo shrugged. “If anyone can do it, it would be you. You never cease to amaze me with how powerful you are. I don’t doubt you.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe in her—” Soren said, but I held a hand up.
“I know. It’s your instinct, your fear, and it’s perfectly understandable.”
“I won’t lie and say you’ll be okay,” Diaval said. “I don’t know what will happen. But if this is our only option, then I trust your strength.”
I took a deep breath in and let it out sharply, then nodded. “I accept your tasks, Hel.”
Carefully I picked my way around the roots of the world tree to find part of the gap that would be the easiest to jump through. As I did, the hair stood on the back of my neck from Lydian watching me. For once, he didn’t look like he was about to taunt me. Instead, an intrigued expression crossed his face, as if he couldn’t quite understand what I was doing. A flicker of respect passed his expression and was gone in almost an instant.
I found a spot between the roots big enough for my body to fall through without banging anything on the way down and turned back once more to look at the people I loved. I wasn’t sure what type of world I would enter into once the gap had me in its grasp, but in case they didn’t exist there … I made sure to memorize their faces down to the shadows below their eyes. Soren gave me a small, reassuring nod. My mate believed in me.
Turning back to the gap in the world tree, I took one more deep breath and jumped into the darkness.
13
THE YAWNING GRAVE
I WASN’T SURE, but I was expecting to feel like I was falling when I jumped into the void. Instead, it was almost like I was rising, floating, my body caught in the air and held there in some space and time that existed solely for that moment. My eyes were closed, and when I opened them, I still didn’t see myself fall even though the roots of the world tree should’ve been rushing past me. They went down and down and down forever, and yet still, no matter how far I traveled down, I didn’t feel like I was falling.
Reaching out, I grabbed one of the roots and my vision went blurry, transporting me to another place in time.
Specifically another place in another time, as I stood in front of my parents and watched as they tanned hides and sewed them together, dyed white wool and white pelts of animals; even the shoes themselves were made of white leather. A me who was not really me shivered in the body I stood in.
Something wriggled in my brain and screamed at me to leave, that my thoughts weren’t welcome here—where was here? Why was I here? Why was I thinking I’d be anywhere else but here? Hadn’t I been observing my parents doing this for weeks? Hadn’t I been listening to my mother sobbing when she thought that we were all asleep? And the other members of the village—the men and the women—hadn’t they treated me somewhat nicer or at least with more respect? And why had my sisters repeated my name to their children so often when they would hear it for their entire lives anyways?
I fidgeted in the open hall of my home, unable to stop my fingers from shaking. Why would I be anywhere else? Why was I even thinking such a thing? This was my home. This was my body. There was nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong at all. I must’ve caught a fever or something because I was led back to a space by the fire by my sister, blocking off the actions of my parents, and giving me a place to rest.
“Janneke,” my mother said softly, coming forward. She gracefully knelt beside my bed and bent my head forward as she kissed my brow. We’d never really got on as well as me and my father had. Too different of people, too different of personalities. But I loved her. She loved me, and I could feel it in her kiss. But her eyes were watering. “My sweet girl.”
Blinking in surprise—it wasn’t often I was referred to as my birth gender—I frowned at her. “What’s wrong? Father, Mother, what’s the matter?”
Both of them were close to tears. Worry gnawed in my stomach as they looked at each other before my father sighed heavily and spoke. I stood shocked and numb as he explained the circumstances of my birth, the goblin that nearly stole me as a child, and the deal he made with said goblin to stop the village from getting slaughtered and to keep me with my family until I at least turned eighteen.
Now my eighteenth birthday was approaching and the goblin was coming to fetch me, take m
e “home” to the Permafrost to do … what? I wasn’t sure, but it couldn’t have been anything good.
It had to be a joke. A really bad joke. There was no way the ground of any area, whether or not it was magical, could bring a dead baby back to life. And a real goblin wouldn’t have given my father eighteen years, he would’ve stolen me right away, probably massacring the village as he did. Not to mention why would a goblin want me to think the Permafrost was my home, anyway? One of my sisters had gone into sudden labor and delivered her child at the creek, and no one was saying the creek was their home.
The same feeling of something wiggling in my mind again hit me. Like a memory just trying to reach the surface. But I couldn’t have because the sick shock to my system had me staggering outside of my home and retching onto the ground until there was nothing left inside of me. Funeral clothes. They were making funeral clothing for me, tailored for the harsh cold of the Permafrost, because that was where they figured I was going. To my death.
“I’m so sorry, my girl,” my father said, his hand on my shoulder. He rubbed my back as I continued vomiting until I was dry heaving on the cold, frozen ground. Hel, if I thought this was cold, then how bad would the Permafrost be?
“When?” I asked, my voice cracking with pain.
“On the next claw moon,” my father said. Both he and my mother embraced me.
Then I was falling again, and my eyes were open into the black void as my body slammed against the roots of the world tree. The roots reached far into the gap and high up into whatever stood above it, and lying on one caused an uneasy feeling—like I was staring into a mirror image. I was both right-side up and upside down, lying on blackness. From somewhere both above and below me, Hel’s voice echoed. “Each root represents a different path your life could have gone. Prove that the current path you’re on—the one which brings you so much insecurity, which brings you to free the shade of your worst enemy—is the one which your heart truly desires. Escape these worlds by root, by fang, and by iron, or stay in them forever.”
With that, my back hit another root and I was standing by the border of the Permafrost, dressed in the funeral clothes my parents had painstakingly made. White leathers, white furs, and an iron knife tucked deep inside the folds of my sleeve so that hopefully I could protect myself in the one way I knew how—protect myself from the goblin studying me with such intensity in his lilac-colored eyes that I wanted to take a step backward.
I knew there was something I was supposed to be remembering, something that was supposed to be familiar about him, safe, but those were fleeting thoughts and feelings that left as soon as they came and slipped between my fingertips like water in a sieve.
The goblin held out a hand to me as if he were trying to coax a frightened animal closer to him, and I raised my chin to meet and keep his gaze as I took an unsure step forward, then another, and then another after that until I crossed the invisible line between the worlds.
“Not very hard now, was it?” he said, voice soft, still in the tone of trying to calm a frightened creature.
A blast of coldness hit me the minute I stepped over the border. How is it the temperature is so much colder a few steps away? I wondered as my body began to shake violently, and I clenched my jaw in order to keep my teeth from chattering. I was wrapped in furs from my family and yet they did as much to the bone-deep, chilling cold as if I were naked and exposed.
The goblin eyed me calmly, still. “Noble effort,” he murmured. “And very symbolic, the clothes. But only clothes specifically made in the Permafrost will keep you from freezing to death. Here.” He reached to unclasp the cloak around his shoulders. It was dark and heavy, bearskin maybe, or shadow cat, and I stood still, frozen to the ground by fear, as he brushed aside my hair and placed the cloak over my shoulders and gently closed the clasp in front of me. The cloak did seem to block out most of the chilling blast I was receiving where it covered my body, though I was still unbelievably cold.
He was still looking at me, somewhat expectantly. Did he want me to thank him? I wasn’t about to thank him when he was ripping me away from my family and home and everything I’d ever known.
This man, this goblin, was taking me to what was most likely my death. Thanking him for a stupid cloak was out of the picture.
“You’ll be happy there,” he said, as if he could read my mind. Maybe he could. “You were born to be in the Permafrost. I know it. You’ll know it too. Now come on, we won’t be walking far. I have horses up ahead.”
The utterly preposterous promise brought a bubble of laughter I was barely able to hold back. Who was he to say I’d be happy, that I was meant to be born there? I knew myself and my own mind much better than he ever could, and both of those things filled me with the desire to run straight back across the border into my own world. Hel, I would now if I didn’t fear for the safety of my family.
He didn’t look back as he started north, and with a twisting in my stomach, I realized all I could do was follow him. If I went back home, I’d risk my family and village getting slaughtered, risk my father dying from breaking the oath that he made, risk this goblin’s wrath. So, I forced myself farther north into the cold region as the trees and shrubs began to become thinner and thinner, sparser, until there were no more green leaves coating them but merely skeletons waving somberly in the wind.
He didn’t lie. We didn’t walk for long before we came upon the horses, somehow perfectly obedient despite not being tied down. His—I figured it was his since it was a giant destrier—was solid black with a black mane to match and shaggy fur around his hooves. The gray mare beside him was slighter and smaller though still bore the distinctive shaggy fur that fell over one of its eyes. I ran a hand through her hair and she pressed her nose into my hand.
“Do you need help getting on?” he asked.
“I can get on a horse,” I bit out, not wanting to talk to this goblin more than I had to, despite the annoyance bubbling on my lips. Of course I could get on a horse! It wasn’t like children in my world weren’t taught to ride from a young age either! It was one of the few things encouraged for both boys and girls. If this was a sign of things to come, I would end up in the grave from sheer exasperation alone.
Something tickled in the back of my mind as the anger faded. A word repeated over and over and over again. Root. Something about a root. A feeling like I didn’t belong and a root. But I could barely make sense of the current situation I was in, much less the hypothetical one that kept brushing my consciousness.
We rode hard that first night and camped out when it got dark. He started a fire that glowed an unnatural blue color—normal fires didn’t light in the Permafrost, he explained, though I hadn’t asked—and was roasting a rabbit carcass on it. He’d nearly dug into it raw before realizing that we had different eating habits, and cooked it instead. He needn’t have bothered. I wasn’t in the mood to eat anything he had to give me even if my stomach cramped from the lack of food.
Instead, I wrapped myself in some of the furs he’d thought to bring and leaned on a bedroll with a saddlebag as a cushion. I had the iron knife. All I had to do was wait until he was asleep and then shove it in some soft place. His gut maybe or in an eye, his throat even. It wouldn’t be hard. The blade was sharp enough. I needed the courage to do it and not worry about the consequences if I failed.
“You must hate me so very much,” he said, noticing my deep frown.
I would’ve laughed in any other circumstance. “As if anyone likes the person who takes them against their will to do what—what will I be? A thrall for you? Shall I call you master?”
“You’re not going to be a thrall,” he said. “And my name is Soren.”
“What then? A concubine?” Gods, the mere thought of that had me shiver in distaste. The white hair, the blue lips, the blue-gray tinge to his skin was weird enough to be around, but to be forced to lie with that …
“I’m quite capable of getting sex from willing participants,” he said dryly,
“so, no.”
“Then what?” I spat out. “What’s the point of you taking me? What will I do when I’m there?”
He shrugged. “I hadn’t actually planned that out entirely. I know you need to be there, with me. The rest will come.”
“You’re very cavalier about the future of someone whom you’ve ripped from their home.”
“The Permafrost will be your new home. My home will be your home.”
“And how do you know that?” I asked sharply. “Can you tell the future?”
He wasn’t making it easy not to stab him. Did he really think it was that simple—that easy? That I’d forget my home, my people, my species, and grow to love the Permafrost and his freezing pile of stones like it was my own? I knew what went on with humans in the Permafrost, and it was not something I’d call pleasant. I’d even seen two humans who managed to escape from the place where they’d been held, telling stories of monsters who eat uncooked flesh of any creature they desired, including themselves, of the brutality, the fights for food, the jobs they were forced to do because goblins themselves couldn’t do them. If he thought I would be happy there, his brain was a crock of shit.
“You don’t have to believe me now,” Soren said, obviously reading my facial expression, “but you will sooner or later. I know that.”
I shook my head and turned my face away from him, pressing it on the saddlebag that rested against the roots of a large, lightning-struck tree. Again, with the knowing. He had the stones to go into this situation and declare that he knew how I would feel, if not now, then in the future. He didn’t know a thing about me or my life or what I wanted. Unwillingly, warm tears slipped from my closed eyelids and down my cheeks, dripping down onto the dead roots.
Roots. There was something about roots. Even with the emotional pain trying to break my chest into two, I still remembered that. Something about roots was important, and I didn’t know why it kept buzzing in my head.
Goblin King Page 13
