Even then, I didn’t think I could get up and search for my escape anyway. My body was heavy and tired, and my eyes already were slipping closed again. Soren brushed my forehead with his lips. “Sleep, Ebba. You need it. We’ll be here when you wake up.”
The man who must’ve been my brother grasped my hand tightly with his own. “Sleep, little wild thing. You’ll feel better soon. I’ll catch your favorite, and we can have rabbit stew for dinner.”
So, some things in this life were the same across all prospective futures. Perhaps the scenarios were different but deep inside … I was still me and I was surrounded by love and warmth and normalcy and the lack of the burden of the entire world, because here, if the world were ending, then no one paid any notice to it or even knew of its changing.
I would need to rip myself away from this warm, comfortable place, and I feared I may not be able to do it. Just give me a day, I prayed. Just give me a day to enjoy this and live in this soft, wonderful world. It wasn’t like I could get up to search the source of my escape anyway. I was still incredibly woozy when I even tried to sit up. I doubted I could move anywhere. I had all the reason to linger in this beautiful world a while longer.
“Jannek.” Both I and the man who was my brother turned. Of course, he’d be the one named Jannek, wouldn’t he, since I was considered a girl and my name was Ebba. “Stop crowding everyone and go and actually do those chores I asked.” My mom’s exasperated voice was the same in both worlds.
Jannek shot me an apologetic look before getting up and climbing back down from the loft. I watched him go, wondering what else was different about this world where I wasn’t needed to fulfill a male role, where Soren was already human, and where life lacked the magic of the Permafrost.
“Sleep, love,” Soren repeated, and my eyelids grew heavier and heavier until I complied and drifted off to sleep.
For a few days, I was still too weak to even get up. Soren had to help me with the simplest of tasks that always had me blushing with embarrassment. My sisters and brother visited me on the regular, telling me of their day, and I lay there marveling at the normalcy of it all.
When I slept, the voice would come, reminding me of my trial by iron, but it sounded fainter and fainter as I began to move around. My body was different now, not because I was pregnant and uninjured; it wasn’t as muscled as it had been in my previous life. While I was still athletic, I was softer and I doubted my arms could ever pull back the bowstring on a regular bow, much less a goblin-forged bow.
Once I was cleared to do light chores, I was put in charge of sewing and mending the clothes of others, which was something I’d never done before, not in my other life at least. I did manage to get the hang of the patterns pretty quickly and blamed my clumsy stitching on my recent illness and pregnancy. Sitting inside all day—or sometimes outside if the weather was nice—bent over my work while the men played their hunting games, had me bouncing my knee and tapping my foot, looking around at every place I could, trying to count the number of rushes on the floor. My body itched for the sport and the contact, the thrill of the hunt, even if it was in this weak body where I doubted I could pull back a bowstring.
“I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow your stitching got worse,” Avette joked from where she sat beside me.
“And she’s so antsy!” replied Sigfrid, one of my middle sisters who I’d never gotten along with, even in my other life.
I glared at her but didn’t have any answer. While I didn’t have my previous skills from my other life, I lacked the skills most women my age would’ve developed by this point. So, throwing an axe at her head was out of the question.
“Don’t tease her,” Ika scolded. “She’s getting over being sick. Besides, it’s her first child. You were an anxious mess during your entire pregnancy. You couldn’t stitch a straight line even if Freya above led your hand.”
Sigfrid rolled her eyes, but my other sisters giggled and I found myself laughing too.
“Besides, I bet her baby will come out more handsome than yours did,” Jerry teased, bringing back the memory of Sigfrid’s squalling newborn with his pinched red face and hungry mouth.
She sniffed. “It’ll come out a freak, like its father.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Soren’s not a freak.”
“Even if he were,” Ika said, “he’s a very attractive freak.”
“Ika!” Avette scolded. “Stop being mean to Ebba, Sigfrid. No one likes a bully.”
The banter, the comments, the insults thrown easily back and forth like a … like a family, gods, how I missed that. Squabbling with my sisters, the time I got to spend with them, even if it was doing a chore I didn’t particularly like and wasn’t very good at. I would take this part life. I would take it forever.
Just give me another day, I thought. Just one more day of this. Please. I’ve never known this peace.
But that night, I found something hard under my pillow—an iron knife. Escape this world by iron. I gripped it in my hands, forcing back the tears in my eyes that threatened to spill over.
Soren came over to me, already in his bedclothes—which consisted of a light pair of pants—and any other time, I’d stare at him, but this time something inside me felt like it was breaking. I didn’t want to leave this light and happy world. I couldn’t. It wasn’t a trick more than any other universe the roots held within them were a trick, and maybe if I stayed here, then Ragnarök would never come. Inwardly I knew that wasn’t how it was going to happen, but gods did I want it to, practically needed it to.
There was some comfort. A version of me would remain here after I was gone. This was one of the many simultaneous paths happening all at once, after all. Jealousy struck me like a brand at the luckier version of me, so soft and calm and safe.
But this version of me wasn’t made to be soft and calm and safe. It was meant to be a bloody fighter who stood even with both legs broken, who fought even with no more breath, and who brought balance to the chaos that controlled the nine realms.
As much as I wanted to, this version of me couldn’t stay here.
“What’s wrong, little heart?” Soren asked, his head against my shoulder as his body cradled mine.
“I don’t want to go,” I whispered, voice cracking. “I don’t want to go and yet I have to go.”
He turned me to face him, pushing some of my hair behind my ears. “You don’t need to go anywhere, little heart. Why would you think you have to go somewhere?”
“You don’t understand!” I sobbed, gripping the knife in my left hand with a pained expression. I just want this moment. Just this moment, please. Just this love.
“Shhh.” He quieted me down, his forehead pressing against mine, his nose rubbing against mine. “You’re here, you’re safe, you don’t have to go anywhere. Breathe and lie here with me, okay? Breathe and lie here with me.”
Escape by iron. Prove you are worthy of Hel’s favor. Kill him and escape by iron.
No. No, I couldn’t possibly kill him. I could do anything else, anything else, even kill myself, but him? Soren? No. No matter what form he took, no matter what life we lived, I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him.
Then fail the trial and let the world burn.
I blinked back tears and clenched my hand around the knife. It would be one stab. One quick stab right in the eye, deep inside to his brain, and he would be dead. One quick movement and I would be back among the roots. One more painful task and I would be free, home, ready to save the world.
Soren still had his forehead pressed against mine, and I took my chance at surprise, slashing with the iron knife at his face and hearing him scream. It broke my heart, shattered it to a million pieces, as he clutched his injured eye in pain and looked at me incredulously.
Finish it. Finish it! Gouge out his eyes and win.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at the betrayed expression on his face. I couldn’t watch as people came into the loft, alerted by the screams. I couldn’t kill Soren.
I gritted my teeth and turned the iron knife on myself, slashing deep lines in my wrists. Blood gushed out of the gashes in my skin faster than I thought possible, and the screaming and shocked voices quickly became a background to the pain and dim feeling that I was floating away.
I closed my eyes and let myself float. I was done.
I woke up back in the gap, staring at the opening hundreds of feet above me. Would I need to climb to get there? Did I even have the energy to climb anymore? My bones felt brittle, like an old woman’s, and something inside me ached and ached and ached, though I could not pinpoint where.
I wanted to go back. To the nice, safe world. To the world where Lydian never came for me and I still slowly fell for Soren. I wanted to go back to those bright, happy spots that led to certain doom one way or another once Ragnarök hit. It would be worth it to feel the comfort again.
Deep inside, the voices from the roots called to me in sympathy before sighing and apologizing that my destiny was so painful.
Wearily, I grabbed onto one of the tree roots and let visions flash before my eyes. I didn’t see any of them. I pulled myself up root by grueling root, until there was some form of light, some form of voices, and I emerged from the gap to the world I belonged in, covered in a wet, dark fluid as if I’d been birthed into the world again.
Gasping, I lay on my back as my chest heaved, and the others stood with shocked silence when they saw me, confusion, hopefulness, terror on their faces. Soren rushed to my side, and I almost winced before realizing this wasn’t the Soren from my other life. This Soren’s hair was tinged with blue and his skin had a grayish hue, his eyes were lilac, and both of them were intact in his face.
“Janneke,” he breathed a breath of relief. “Are you okay?”
Unable to speak, I nodded and closed my eyes. I couldn’t get the images out of my head. The other futures that were as real as my own.
From her throne on the roots, Hel tsked at me. “So close,” she said. “You were so close to gaining your shade. Your blood may be of the Permafrost, but your heart is foolish and human, child. All you had to do was kill him, that was all.”
I growled at the beastly goddess. “I could never kill Soren, in this life, in the next life, in another life! You know that! You set me up to fail because you want Ragnarök to happen!”
From his cage in the roots, Lydian laughed like a hyena. “Oh. She has you there, goddess mine.”
“I don’t understand,” Soren said. “What is she talking about?”
He aimed the question at Diaval, but it was Rosamund who answered, his eyes looking strangely vacant. “She forced Janneke into a bunch of alternate universes in which she had to escape to come back to us, to prove that she was willing to do whatever it took. But each of those universes were as real as this one, and her final task to prove herself—kill you—she couldn’t do. She tried but merely gouged out your eye.”
Soren absentmindedly rubbed a hand over his eye, and I shuddered when I realized it was the one I stabbed in my ordeal. “How do you know—? Right,” Soren corrected himself. “Seer now, I forgot. Say, if you’re a seer, can’t you guide us? We don’t need Lydian, then.”
Lydian laughed. “Is Rosamund a liminal creature? He’s another hunk of meat on your plane of existence to be consumed by those who destroy the failures.” He shook his head. “I had better faith in you all, I did, I did. But turns out, it was for nothing. Not when you pick the heart over the head.”
“I’m disappointed,” Hel said, “but not surprised. Frigga could not bring back even a beloved god to the world above, the likes of you could not do so for a lowly shade. And you have crossed the deathly waters into my domain, making your fates linked to mine. If you try to leave—not that you even could—I would know in a second. But,” she said delicately, “I won’t leave it up to chance anyways.”
The goddess merged back into the tree roots, and Lydian screamed in pain as the roots entered his skin and dragged him back with her. I sat, head in my hands, muttering curses.
“Don’t be mad at yourself, Janneke,” Diaval said. “You’re not the first person who couldn’t complete Hel’s challenges. You won’t be the last.”
“We’ll find a way,” Seppo said, patting me awkwardly on the back.
Soren crouched down to my height. “I, for one, am really glad you couldn’t kill me, even in an alternate universe. I love you, Janneke.”
He reached around me and held me tight, warming my body up from the blackish goo I was covered in. For a moment, there was the singular feeling of peace, like we were the only ones in the entire world.
Something rustled around us, but I paid no mind as I buried my head in Soren’s shoulder and let out a sob. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Soren said. “You have no reason to be.”
The rustling came again and along with it some odd, foreign sound. It could’ve been a growl despite the way it echoed, almost like a human’s screech mixed with barking.
“Diaval,” Rosamund said, “remember back before we crossed the river when you mentioned the giant wolf?”
“What of it?” Diaval asked. “Also I was technically wrong before. Garm’s a giant hound, not a wolf.”
“That doesn’t make it better, Diaval,” Seppo said, staying close to Rosamund.
The humanlike animalistic growl got louder as something invisible stepped through the shadows, only showing itself through the paw prints in the muddy earth.
“Well, I think we may have a problem with it,” Rosamund said. “Unless I’m the only one who can actually see it … because a giant dog appeared and it doesn’t look … nice.”
“Fuck,” Diaval said.
Fuck, indeed.
15
THE WORTHY DEAD
THE GROWLING-SHRIEKING SOUND intensified as the invisible creature took slow, stalking steps toward us. The only way we could tell was the paw prints appearing in the sinking mud. Immediately, we formed a circle, each of us guarding the others’ backs so there was no way we would be taken from behind.
“Hold the circle,” Soren said, swords out. “Whatever happens, hold the fucking circle.”
“So, Diaval,” Seppo said in a tone of voice more suited for a friendly conversation than a battle. “When were you going to tell us that the giant dog-wolf thing we might have to fight would be invisible to the living eye?” He unhooked his featherstaff from where it hung on his back, the long, wickedly sharp blades locking into place.
“I figured we’d cross that road if we came to it,” Diaval said, her hands crackling with the blue lightning that signified her magic.
“You didn’t once think, ‘huh, maybe it would be good for everyone to know we may be fighting an invisible monster’?”
“Now is not the time for arguments,” Soren hissed at the two of them. “Bicker about Diaval’s lack of transparency later. Right now, we have a giant invisible hound to deal with, so draw your weapons and get ready.”
I drew my twin axes. While I still wasn’t nearly as good with them as I was with the bow, it would’ve been foolish to attack an enemy I couldn’t see with arrows. That was how you wasted all your ammunition. I was skilled enough to stay alive with my axes though, and that was all that mattered.
From beside me, Rosamund’s eyes had the glazed look over them again. His weapons were in his hands, but he wasn’t paying attention to the growling or looking wildly around. Instead, his eyes were tracking something that none of us could see, and I had a feeling I knew what it was.
“What’s it look like?” I asked Rose out of curiosity.
“Big, mean, and scary,” Rose supplied. So much for that then, I guessed.
“Okay,” I shouted. “Here’s the plan. Rose can see the thing. He’s going to tell us where it is, what it’s doing, when to attack or dodge. Got it?”
There was a general murmur all around as the others agreed. The paw prints now were circling us, a hound circling its cornered, captured prey.
Despite the m
any monsters I’d fought in my life, fear leapt in my throat as I watched the paw prints in the mud, knowing that without Rose, we were absolutely helpless. The eerie growling turned into a shrieking cry one more time before the monster became completely silent.
“On your left! Swiping paw!” Rose cried out, and Seppo parried the blow as best he could with his featherstaff. The weight of the hound’s paw had him staggering backward, but he still held his featherstaff strong in front of him, keeping the hound from doing any damage.
Diaval, quick as a snake, slunk under where the massive beast supposedly was and chanted a spell too quiet for me to hear. But whatever it was, it did the trick as the hound yelped and backed off, leaving Seppo room to breathe. His arms shook with the effort of holding back the giant creature’s blow.
“Janneke, Soren!” Rose called out, and immediately Soren and I pivoted until our backs faced each other. My blood was pumping so intensely that the sound vibrated in my ears. I once again pushed down the terror that came with the invisible creature growling and snapping its jaws somewhere we couldn’t see but already so close.
“It’s lunging!” Rose said. “It’s going to reach over to Soren, I think!”
Which gave me an opening as I stood before Soren. Like Rose said, I swung upward with my axe and a yelp came from above me as the giant creature began to ooze blood from a wound in its belly. But the yelp left as quickly as it came and was replaced by an infuriated snarl. Slathering jaws and wickedly sharp teeth quickly filled my imagination as hot breath blew on my face.
It was an eerie sight. Blood dripped from seemingly nowhere as the hound stalked, painting the muddy ground red. Up close, blood and saliva dripped from its jaws, and I froze in terror. Only to be pushed away as Diaval made another chant, and a burst of blue kinetic energy hit the creature. The energy continued to spark around the creature almost like it had been wrapped in glowing lights.
Goblin King Page 15
