Ravens' Will

by Terry Graves

  “But mum’s looking outside,” the little boy protested. “It’s not fair.”

  “I’m old, and I can do whatever I please,” the mother replied without taking her eyes off the window. Her husband had not come back yet from the hunt; and with this blizzard he would not come until morning, if he had half a brain left. That’s what she had kept saying since it got dark. She turned around and tried to erase any sign of concern from her face. “Now, please, help me put them to bed.”

  The old woman got up from the chair, sighing with effort. She shook her arms, as if she was shooing away the hens in the coop. “You heard your mother. Ivar, Nefja. It’s time.”

  Later that night, Nefja saw Ivar opening his eyes. The room was dark and the fire had extinguished. She was lying next to him, and he kicked her. They were very little and still shared the same bed.

  “You heard that?” he whispered.

  “I hear you,” Nefja said, scornfully.

  But for a minute neither of them moved. They listened to the wind jolting the thatched roof of the house, hitting the wooden walls. Carried by the murmur of the tree branches, she thought she had heard a voice calling them. Perhaps it was their dad, she wondered, who had finally come back from the hunt. He had promised them a wolf pup, if they found a den. He always made the same promise, but never did.

  “Just a peek,” Ivar said, “it won’t harm us.”

  “We’re not supposed to,” Nefja replied. But her brother was a tad older, and when he leaned and unfastened the window shutter, she did not complain. She closed her eyes at first, but felt the impulse to look and she opened them to see the snowflakes soft and light, as if made of duck down. They seemed to dance with the wind, not as strong as it had looked a moment ago. Almost inviting.

  “There’s someone outside,” said the boy, “and it doesn’t look like dad.”

  Nefja said nothing to this, but closed her eyes again. She noticed how the bed got lighter when the boy got up and she heard him making noises while searching for his cloak and his boots in the dark. I should tell, she thought, but everything was so quiet that she hesitated. She was still undecided when the door opened and closed with great care. Just a gentle whisper, a gust of cold from outside, and her brother was gone.

  Now Nefja felt her heart bumping in her chest. She rose from the bed and climbed to the window. Ivar was walking down the street with the cowl shut tight against his face, but there was no one else. Under the moonlight, the snow shone silvery and unreal.

  That hideous glint.

  Nefja overcame her fear and left the bed. Mother and Grandma were sound asleep. She heard their soft breathing while she groped for her own footwear, her mantle, her cloak. She left the house and closed the door behind her, and felt the frostbite against her skin and shuddered.

  She looked around. Her brother was nowhere to be found, but his footsteps had been captured by the snow, so the girl followed them. She wanted to call for him, but something in the air forced her to press her lips together.

  She reached the end of the street, where the footsteps disappeared abruptly. Confused, Nefja looked left and right. Then, she raised her head. Despite the darkness, the sky was of a light gray, the moon just a minted coin behind the shroud of clouds. Against the bleached background, Nefja captured a big shadow, gliding over her like a dragon with outstretched wings.

  She screamed, cowered and ran madly around, not knowing where her feet were taking her. Someone grabbed her from behind and she squirmed and fought and yelled until she heard the voice of her father calling her and she turned around. She saw his concerned face, his frosted beard, his cheeks blue because of the cold.

  “Nefja! Nefja! Where is your brother?”

  But to that question, she could only cry.

  BOOK 1

  Fimbulvetr

  ONE

  Kai had never seen Gerda so scared before. Alarr had joked about it. He’d said the girl had seen a bear and got it confused with a ‘giant’, or fled in terror from a frosted tree. You’re starting to see trolls and elves under every rock like your father, he said, that kind of disrespectful boring talk. But Kai knew better and had hugged her friend, because even Gerda, who usually despised anyone’s help or pity, was in need of a hug from time to time. The girl had buried her head in his shoulder and trembled, on the verge of collapse. It’s real, she had whispered into his ear. It’s real and it’s alive. And Kai had believed her.

  And now Alarr had seen the giant as well and had turned silent, pensive, and no longer in the mood for jesting. How was that for a change.

  The hand that came out of the frozen lake was about their height, white as the virgin snow and covered in wrinkles, almost translucent. The wrist was bent down and the enamel of each fingernail shone in the clear morning like a precious stone.

  Kai looked around, but the woods were silent, the place deserted. Spring was a treacherous season for skating and the thaw had come early that year, but the lake had been frosted since he could remember. The ice was solid and many inches thick.

  Further away, the mountains rose high and magnificent into the sky with their sheer cliffs and ridges, a thin line of pure blue that cut the landscape like the blade of a dagger. Their peaks were engulfed in clouds and mist, white and refulgent under the pale morning sun.

  At first, Alarr had tried to convince himself that his eyes were betraying him, that perhaps the hand was part of a colossal stone statue from an ancient and long-forgotten race. Giants were the fabric of tales, creatures of yore at best, he had said. Who believed in those things anymore? Most of Veraheim’s youth had been born during the harsh winter years and had no time for stories; they only thought about treasure and land. Their utmost desire was to join a ship to plunder the coastal villages of the southern regions and return in autumn with the spoils of war. Not that any of them did it. Those were the foolish dreams of people who had never yielded a real sword or carried a shield.

  Kai, who had done none of these things either, indeed believed in trolls and elves and giants.

  “It has to be dead,” Alarr muttered, lingering to the last thread of hope.

  “It’s not,” said Gerda.

  Runa walked around the wrist, trying to find the place where the head should lie buried, and said nothing, which was what Runa did most of the time. Then Kai slid across the ice with her until they reached the rim of the lake, away from the giant. “We have to tell someone,” he said.

  “That’s what I did,” Gerda replied.

  “I meant someone else.”

  “You mean Solfrid,” Gerda said, disdainfully, “that old worthless hag with her bags of sand.”

  “Solfrid, sure. But also Sveinn, the elder, our parents. Everyone.”

  How long would it take for someone else to find him? Weeks, Kai thought, perhaps months. The ice was too thick for making a hole to fish and the lake too far away from the paths that led to Veraheim. Kai could not even recall the last time they had gone there to skate. They were probably much younger, two or three years at least, in a time when they did not have so many obligations and chores to attend to. The giant’s hand would have been out in the open for quite a while, but nobody had seen it. Or, if someone had, they had kept it to themselves.

  No, it was their secret, theirs and theirs only.

  “Now, wait a moment. Have you heard what Gerda said about the golden crown?”

  “Everybody has heard her, Alarr. But you’re not going to slay a giant to get to it.”

  “I won’t have to, because the giant is dead. It has to be. Nothing could survive under the ice, it will freeze to death.”

  “Frogs can,” said Runa. Her voice was soft and beautiful, but with no inflections. “They make burrows deep into the ground. If you dig a hole in this soil, you will probably find frogs and toads under the frost line.”

  “Then they would have been there for a long time and will be dead all the same,” Alarr insisted stubbornly.

  “They only look dead. Their hearts wo
n’t beat, their lungs won’t breathe. But if you pick one up and hold it into the palms of your hands for a while, the heat of your body will force it to come back to life. I’ve done it.”

  “Hogwash,” Alarr said, but with far less enthusiasm.

  “They call them frost giants for a reason, you big idiot,” Gerda faced the boy, “but if you don’t believe me, you can go there and see it for yourself.”

  Alarr gazed upon the lake, at the horrid shape that protruded from it with its white spidery fingers, stiffed and frigid. He did not want to look at the giant’s face, but he was the largest one of the lot, and the bravest one — albeit Gerda would have thought differently — and he had to prove it. His arms were as wide as logs from the hammer and the anvil, his skin already tanned by the heat of the forge’s fire, his beard thick and long. If there was a single hero in the group, thought Kai, it had to be Alarr. And Alarr knew that this was his role too. He stood up straight, picked up his walking stick, and held it in the air like a club.

  “I’ll go and see,” he said, “but you all will come with me.”

  Gerda studied the color of the ice. Black, and it would be too thin to support their weight. White, and it meant that pockets of air or snow would be trapped under the surface, weakening it. But it was clear, bluish, and Gerda pushed aside a lock of hair from her forehead and placed one foot over the frozen water, then the other.

  Kai peered at the flat wilderness that opened in front of them. He had a bad feeling about all this. There was something in the air, a staleness that churned his stomach. Solfrid had taught him to trust in these hunches. Fear wanted to drive him away, but fascination was much, much stronger.

  And so they went, two maidens and two young men, across the lake and under the falsely reassuring light of the morning sun. They marched slowly as if they were scared of slipping, but that was not the motive. Alarr was first, holding the stick. It was a fine piece of oak, solid and knotted, but which would not withstand a giant. Gerda and Kai were in the middle, reassuring one another without the need for words. Runa brought up the rear. They reached the hand and walked past it, and stopped and looked at the blurry figure that lay beneath them.

  The giant’s head faced the sky only a couple of feet under the ice. His eyes were wide open, framed by a thick wild mane and a beard that extended in all directions like a bunch of kelp. His features were crude and coarse, but there was some beauty as well; the kind of magnificence you expect from a sunset, or from the flowered meadows or the majesty of the mountains with their snow-covered peaks and their frozen rivers and rainfalls. The golden crown on his head glittered with its many jewels as if it was on fire.

  They stared for quite a while. The giant did not move.

  “It’s dead,” said Alarr.

  “It isn’t.”

  “We could stay here the whole day and not get a straight answer,” said Kai, “or we can go back and check for a pulse at his wrist and we’ll know for sure.”

  They thought about it and decided that it was worth a try.

  “But before we do this, we have to agree upon something first,” said Alarr. “If he’s alive, we will go back and tell. But if he’s dead…” He paused and looked gravely at Kai, “…we will keep it a secret.”

  Kai shook his head. “No way.”

  “We found the giant. The crown belongs to us, it is ours by right. But if we tell, they will take it away. We should be smart.”

  “You’re an imbecile,” said Kai. “A big, greedy, imbecile.”

  Alarr faced him. He was taller and wider-shouldered than Kai, but he did not step back. They were friends, after all, and had known each other since they were children. They had fought many times before. When it came to fists, Alarr had always won and that was a lesson Kai was not going to forget easily. But things changed when it came to smarts.

  “I don’t know, Kai,” said Gerda. “It is not the stupidest idea Alarr has had.”

  “Yes, it is. The kind of idea that will get us all killed. Perhaps the giant is alive but has no pulse, like Runa’s frogs. Perhaps he’s dead and comes back to life when we free him. Perhaps it remains dead, but the crown is magical or cursed—”

  “Magical?” Alarr’s laugh was so loud that he had to press his hand against his belly as old men sometimes did. “Yes, magical like the piece of glass that you carry around your neck. That’s what you meant?”

  Instinctively, Kai’s fingers sought his necklace. It was cold, always colder than his surroundings, the kind of cold that burned his skin. But the feeling was strangely reassuring, because every time he felt that twinge of pain in his chest, he remembered vividly the night he had received it and it was as if the Snow Queen was with him once again.

  “Think whatever you want,” said Kai, “and laugh if you must. But that does not change facts. Now we all have seen the giant and we don’t know a damn thing about him. Still, you want to scavenge the crown from his head as if you were the son of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer. You know I speak the truth.”

  Kai thought Alarr was going to push him. Then they would have had to fight, no matter what, a simple matter of pride. And he did not want to. He would have lost and Alarr would have made him eat a bunch of snow and would laugh about how weak he was, how puny and insignificant. What he wanted was for his friend to listen to reason, but his eyes glittered with greed and the promise of gold. A full-fledged true Norseman, Alarr was. He gazed at Kai, irate, with his nose just a couple of inches away from the boy’s forehead. Then, Alarr’s expression relaxed.

  “Let’s vote,” he said, solemnly.

  They kneeled on the ice forming a circle, as the elders did in the great hall, and looked deep into each other’s eyes. Alarr’s were small and bright and honey-colored. Runa’s were gray and as big as the wide Arctic skies from the stories. Gerda’s were auburn-brown, with red shades that shone fiercely under the light. Kai’s were blue and clear, but not cold. Or so people used to say.

  They stayed like that for a while, and then voted. Kai had expected this to end in a tie. He thought Gerda and Alarr would vote to keep the giant a secret, and Runa and he would vote to tell.

  So he was surprised when Runa voted against it.

  “I don’t want to tell,” she said, “but I don’t want the crown either. What I want is to leave and forget all about it. Perhaps next winter the blizzard will bury it and we will never see it again.”

  That was what Kai would have wanted as well, for the giant to be gone. But it was an unrealistic outcome. Winters were becoming milder and milder and the giant was just three or four miles away from the village. Someone would have found it, eventually, and better them than the bandits that crawled in the paths and hid in the heart of the forests. Kai could understand why Runa wanted this, for she was the only one who had tasted the touch of the iron in her skin and the kiss of the fangs of a famine war dog. She had seen death already, not by sickness or by age, but by sword. And she had the proof in her face for her and everybody else to remember. But they had voted already and the vote was sacred, so there was nothing else to do. Once a vote had been uttered in the circle, it was bound by common law and could not be changed.

  Gerda leaned back and looked for the knife that she always carried in the leg of her boot. It was plain and simple, unadorned, but for the four of them it carried a meaning no one else would understand. That was the knife they had used for taking oaths since they could remember. Her father had given it to her for scaling fish when she was five but, since then, the girl had used it for everything else: for sharpening sticks to make fake swords and spears and arrows for Runa’s bow, for throwing at the thick trunks of the trees, and for carving messages on their bark. And for oath swearing, too. One would have thought that village girls and boys like them would not have the need to swear oaths very often; but you would be wrong.

  Gerda went first. She slid the tip of the knife across her palm and drew a bright red line. She handed it to Alarr next, who did it fast and carelessly and then pressed hi
s hand into a fist to stop the flow of blood. Runa closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and barely scraped her skin. She gave the knife to Kai, who looked at it for a moment before cutting himself too. Then the four of them extended their arms in silence and joined hands in the center of the circle. Blood dripped down their fingers and was spilled on the lake’s frozen surface, forming dark crimson speckles.

  “It is done.” Gerda cleaned the blade of the knife and put it back in her boot. “Now, all that is left is to decide if the monster is dead or not.”

  “I am not dead,” said the giant beneath them, and his deep voice reverberated as if a thunderstorm had been trapped under the ice, “not dead at all.”

  Kai’s heart skipped a beat. The voice resonated, so strong he could feel the vibration in his butt. He looked down but saw no sign of movement. The beard of the creature was thick and covered his mouth, so there was no way to know where the voice came from.

  Kai noticed that their hands were still dripping blood. The giant can smell it, he thought. Jötnar feast on the flesh of men. He hastened to scrub them on his trouser legs.

  “Who are you?” said the giant. If a mountain was to speak, that is how it would do it. “The ice is thick and I cannot see you well.”

  “Nobody say a word.” Runa’s lips moved slowly and barely a sound came from them. “He can do magic with your names.”

  They stood still, in silence. Alarr grasped his stick so hard that his knuckles went white. Kai could feel the giant’s eyes staring at them intently from below, like a shark which had just spotted a seal swimming across the sea’s surface. He wanted to get up and run, but he seemed to be stuck, paralyzed, and he did not know if it would make things worse.

  “Very well,” the giant insisted, after a while. “I’ll introduce myself first. I’m Fyrnir, son of Bergelmir, who was grandson of Aurgerlmir.”

  “I’m Gerda,” Gerda said, and the other three gasped, horrified. “Daughter of Hallbjorn. A freewoman.”