Runemarks

by Joanne Harris

  “You have to mend it now,” he said. “Your dead are escaping. Your realm is at risk.”

  “There are always plenty of dead,” said Hel. “I can bear a few losses.”

  “But the rift is widening. If Chaos gets through—”

  “It won’t,” she said. “Dream will contain it.”

  “It may not, Hel. You broke your word.”

  Hel’s word is unbreakable. Balder knew this, as everyone did; it was one of the axioms of the Middle Worlds.

  But it seemed the unbreakable had been broken—and now there was turmoil in her realm. He knew what that meant—that the forces of Chaos were very close and that if nothing was done to halt it now, then the rift between the Worlds would widen and tear, opening up similar rifts between the Eighth World and the Seventh, and then unraveling through the fabric of the Worlds like a ladder in some fine lady’s silk stocking until, at last, the Chaos was everywhere, and Ragnarók would come again.

  Hel the Half-Born knew it too. The promise of Balder had blinded her to danger as well as to consequences, but the face of the deathwatch was beyond argument. Slowly but nonetheless relentlessly as Dream flooded the land, the hands of the deathwatch were moving together, and when they met…

  She spoke aloud, in a voice still rusty from underuse. “I can buttress this tower if Chaos breaks through. Seal it off from the rest of the Worlds. We can be beyond Order, beyond Chaos. You and I—my love—alone.”

  Balder’s expression, though habitually sunny, was bleak. “I can’t,” he said. “To stand by and watch the Worlds swallowed up, one by one, for my sake—”

  “You don’t have a choice,” said Hel grimly. The six seconds on the deathwatch had dwindled to three. “There’s nothing either of us can do…”

  So many times she’d dreamed of this moment—Hel, who never dreamed—and now the dream was within her grasp…

  “There is,” said Balder. “Pay Loki his debt.”

  For a moment she stared at him. “Do you know what you’re saying? No one can stop what’s happening now. Even if I were to take your life…Besides, this is Loki we’re talking about—Loki, whose mischief caused your death—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Balder said. “You broke your word to bring me to life. What kind of a basis is that for a meaningful relationship?”

  “But here you can be safe,” protested Hel. “You can have anything, do anything you ever wanted. My face offends you? There are glamours I could use to make myself beautiful. I could look like anyone—Sif, Freyja even—”

  Balder’s eyes went cold as midwinter. “Tricks,” he said.

  Now Hel’s living eye twitched in growing annoyance. Tricks? she thought. What does he think the others use? Does he really think Freyja’s hair was ever naturally that shade? Or that Sif’s waist doesn’t benefit from a little tight lacing?

  For the first time she began to wonder whether she hadn’t made a big mistake bringing Balder to this place. She should have drugged him first, she thought; a single draught of the river Dream would have ensured his cooperation, at least until the danger was done.

  Still, it was too late for that now. Balder was looking out of the window again, searching, his eyes narrowed in concentration. For a second he thought he saw Loki suspended over a pit of snakes and Odin desperately holding on to his hand—

  With a flick of her dead fingers, Hel made the window disappear. A fine silk tapestry, cleverly and lasciviously embroidered with scenes of lovers, now hung in its place.

  Balder saw it and turned away. “Send me back,” he said in a flat voice.

  Hel ignored him and with another gesture made a banqueting hall appear around them, the tables set with fine crystal and pomegranates (a traditional favorite in Hel) and honey cakes and oysters and sweetmeats and wines of every color, from spring green and deepest amber to rose gold and tulip black.

  But Balder looked at them in disgust. “Do you really want to please me?” he said. “Then let me go!” And once more he turned away, and Hel, gnashing her teeth, made one last gesture in the air—

  “My love,” she said, and stood before him as Nanna, his wife, who had died upon Balder’s funeral pyre rather than live for a day without him, and nothing could have been sweeter and more joyful than her smile, and nothing as soft as her gleaming hair; but Balder closed his eyes in loathing, and tightened his lips and said nothing at all.

  Hel gave a cry of rage and disappointment. She looked at the deathwatch, its hands now separated by nothing but the smallest whisker of time.

  “Then go!” she screamed, and in an instant her citadel was gone, and Balder was standing once more in the desert with the river gleaming and churning all around him and Dream, in all its gorgeous disarray, laid out at his feet.

  Loki, he thought. And plunged headlong into the rapids.

  Meanwhile, Odin’s strength was fading. The pull of Loki’s dream had intensified, as if to combat his attempt to escape. Below him Odin could see the rift between the Worlds, now a vortex through which the gulf of Chaos could be glimpsed, like the pupil of a monstrous eye.

  Hang on! he said, but his arm was numb, his hand slick with Loki’s sweat, and it was hopeless, he knew; they would both be sucked into the gap between the Worlds, where the blackbird shadow would blot them from existence as if they’d never been at all…

  Well, said Loki between gritted teeth. At least you tried, brother—which is more than I was expecting from you, to be totally honest…

  Now Loki was clinging to Odin by his fingertips. He could feel them slipping, one by one: index, median, annular…This little piggy went to Chaos, thought Loki with a sudden desperate crack of laughter. This little piggy stayed at home—

  Hold on! said Odin one last time. And then the fingers slipped from his grasp and he was left clutching shadows while—

  —another hand reached out from behind him and grabbed hold of Loki by the hair.

  Got you—said a voice Odin thought he recognized, and he had just enough time to marvel at how very like Balder’s that voice was when there came an almighty crashing sound, as if every door in the Nine Worlds had suddenly been blown shut, and all these things happened at once:

  The hands on the deathwatch snapped together.

  The rift between the Worlds closed as if it had never been there at all.

  The river Dream pulled back, leaving an untold acreage of mudflats of evaporating dreamtime across the deserted plains of Hel.

  And the dreamers suspended there awoke with a start, and some awoke to their former selves, and some paused as dancers in the middle of some complicated fugue who find themselves unexpectedly partnered with a total stranger as the music comes to a sudden stop.

  Maddy awoke sobbing on the far shore of Dream but could no longer recall exactly why she had wept.

  Frigg awoke in the body of a woman who had seemed to her at first both plain and middle-aged but who, with the rune Ethel shining brightly from her arm, made middle age and plainness into virtues far greater than the most transcendent beauty.

  Dorian Scattergood awoke to find the sign Thuris emblazoned across his scarred right arm and Ethel watching him with a quizzical expression on her face—a face that was no longer quite hers, but that nevertheless radiated beauty and love.

  “Thor,” she said, and held out her hand.

  Adam Scattergood awoke feeling perfectly normal—except for the tiny voice that whispered and whined at the back of his head…

  Brave T ýr awoke to find himself three feet shorter than he used to be.

  Sugar awoke to find himself clutching Fat Lizzy desperately in both arms. For a moment they stared at each other, nonplussed, then the potbellied sow gave a squeal of outrage as around her an Aspect began to form—that of a shapely, well-rounded woman with hair the color of ripe corn and a face now twisted with fury and disbelief.

  Sif, the Harvest Queen, awoke in a state of rage that, if expressed in the Middle Worlds, would have leveled trees, blighted crops, and kille
d every flower from Malbry village to World’s End. As it was, there were no trees or flowers, and she was only able to scream in a voice that would have shattered glass had there been any: “A pig? You brought me back as a stinking pig?”

  Loki awoke in his own skin and laughed until his guts were aching and—

  Hel hissed—Men!—and closed her eyes, while around her the dead settled back like dust, to lie silent and undisturbed for another long age.

  7

  Silently Maddy let her eyes wander over the mudflats of Hel.

  Dreamstuff still littered them, looking like the usual flotsam and jetsam of any river or sea, but the little group that stood assembled on the shore of Dream knew better than to investigate too closely the shining fragments, the not-quite-rocks, the seductive vapors that had been left behind.

  The Vanir had joined them from their vantage point in the heart of the desert, and there had been some discussion over what had happened—discussion that had proved for the most part inconclusive. Skadi was particularly resentful, given that Odin was now beyond revenge, and Loki…

  “Basically, what you’re saying is that I’m not allowed to kill him,” she said for the fourth time. She had already tried this argument on Njörd, Frey, and Bragi, and now it was Heimdall’s turn to try to placate her (none of the others had managed yet).

  Heimdall showed his golden teeth.

  “Why?” said the Huntress. “Because he saved the world? Well, if that’s your excuse—”

  “It’s not.” That was Idun, breaking in, sounding unusually down-to-earth and taking Skadi by surprise. “You can’t kill Loki,” she said simply, “because Balder wanted him to live.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Balder?” said Skadi.

  Idun nodded.

  There was another silence, during which Idun thought, with some surprise, that Skadi’s ice blue eyes looked a little misty. It was no secret that Balder had broken hearts while he was alive, but—

  “Balder wanted him to live,” repeated Skadi in a doubtful voice.

  “He sacrificed his life for him—for all of us,” said Idun.

  There was another long and chilly pause.

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Skadi. “You’ll be saying he’s in charge next.”

  “Well,” said Idun. “Officially, as the General’s second in command—”

  “Oh, bite me,” growled the Huntress, and put away her mindwhip before slouching off across the sand.

  Adam was watching all this from afar. He felt surprisingly unafraid—he thought that perhaps the events of the past few days had cured him of fear forever—but his eyes were narrowed in hate as he watched, his skinny body curled up beneath a rock some distance from where the gods were standing.

  No one had paid him the least attention; no one had searched for him, called, or even noticed that he was missing.

  That was good, said Adam to himself; if he took the wide road across the plain, he would be long gone before anyone remembered he’d been there at all.

  He moved quickly and with a peculiar confidence quite unlike the Adam Scattergood who had left Malbry half a lifetime ago. He remembered that Adam with some contempt now—that boy who was afraid of dreams. Now he stood reborn—a man, perhaps even the Last Man—and he was aware of a great responsibility. In one hand he held a golden key, and he kept his fist clenched tight around it as he began to run, low and fast, across the colorless expanse of Hel while in his mind that little voice still whispered and coaxed, promising:

  Worlds…

  The dead gave him a wide berth, which didn’t surprise Adam one bit.

  Meanwhile, Maddy was trying to come to terms with recent events. It was hard enough to believe that they had survived at all—and yet more so to accept the four newcomers from across the river, the Æsir, who stood in Aspect among them.

  Thor the Thunderer, who also happened to be Dorian Scattergood; Frigg the Mother, who had once been Ethel Parson; Bright-Haired Sif, the Harvest Queen, whose sigil Ár was echoed on the belly of a potbellied sow; and finally T ýr, One-

  Handed no more, but who seemed to be having problems with his host.

  “I can’t be T ýr,” protested Sugar-and-Sack. “That’s Brave-Hearted T ýr. T ýr the Warrior. I mean, do I even look like a warrior? There’s been a bloody mistake. You’ve mistaken me for someone brave.”

  “You were brave,” Maddy told him. “You stole Mimir’s head.”

  “I didn’t mean to!” said Sugar in alarm. “It was the Captain made me do it! He’s who you want, not me!” Around and above him the Warrior’s Aspect stood tall, and his colors—which were a vibrant red with a hint of goblin gold at the edges—glowed fiercely. On his left palm a runemark burned—T ýr, reversed, bright as blood. “Take it off!” said Sugar, holding out his hand.

  The Mother smiled. “It isn’t that easy.”

  “But I’m not me anymore!” wailed the reluctant Warrior.

  “Of course you are,” said Maddy gently. “You’ll carry his Aspect, but you’ll always be you. Just as I’ll always be Maddy Smith, though I’ll also be Modi, child of Thor. Think about it, Sugar. You’ve done a wonderful thing. All of you have.” She looked at Ethel, Dorian, and Fat Lizzy—looking very strange in the Aspect of Bright-Haired Sif—and then at Loki, who was standing alone with his back turned.

  Maddy went over to him, but he did not look at her. Instead he watched the river Dream, with its islands, eddies, skerries, and rocks, and for once there was no trace of laughter in his eyes, but only a bleakness that Maddy could not identify.

  “Cheer up, you escaped,” she said at last.

  Loki kept right on not looking at her. Across the river the Black Fortress of Netherworld was already rebuilding itself, piece by piece, turret by impossible turret.

  “Just wondering what else escaped,” Loki remarked, without taking his eyes from the Black Fortress.

  “More of the Æsir, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Maddy thought he didn’t sound particularly convinced.

  “Or Balder, do you think?”

  “Balder’s dead.” He looked at her then, and there was anger as well as bleakness in his eyes. “Balder died to save me. Or rather, he died to ensure Hel’s word was not broken—the word that keeps the balance between Order and Chaos in this place.” He paused for a moment. “The smug bastard.”

  In spite of herself, Maddy smiled.

  “Well, I hope he doesn’t expect gratitude. I never was much good at that. And as for the General…” He paused again, his eyes moving to the place where Odin had fallen. “If he thinks this puts me under any kind of obligation…”

  There was a silence, in which Loki glared fiercely into the middle distance.

  “It’s all right,” said Maddy. “I’ll miss him too.” And, hand in hand, they walked to the shore of Dream, where the funeral was being prepared.

  8

  There should have been a ship, Maddy thought—a long gray ship to set on fire as they pushed it away from the shore; instead they made do with a flat piece of floating debris, some shard of the fortress that had fallen away. They laid Odin’s body on this makeshift barque, along with his staff and his hat, and then all of them, the lost children of Order and of Chaos, watched as finally Loki stood at the foot of the boat and torched it with wildfire.

  No one spoke as the river took the last of Odin One-Eye into fire and darkness. No one dared voice the hope that he might somehow have escaped into Dream—though if he had died in Hel, Maddy thought, then surely Hel would have claimed him as she had the rest, and there would have been no body to burn.

  But Hel was in her citadel, and no amount of calling or petitioning could persuade her to show her face again.

  And so all remained lost in thought; the ragged survivors, Æsir and Vanir, pale, bruised, and grieving.

  Is this really how it was supposed to end? thought Maddy. The General dead, the balance regained, the O
rder wiped out, and us, the gods of yesteryear, standing like beggars on the shore of Dream, waiting—waiting for what?

  She looked up, angry at the tears that threatened. And saw—

  —the gods, in full Aspect, all twelve of them, standing like columns of color and light, heroes and heroines of the Elder Age. And as Maddy watched, the tears began to stream down her face—Maddy Smith, who never cried—and in that moment of grief and uncertainty she felt a sudden and unexpected lurch of joy.

  She had always been a lonely child, playing alone, keeping apart, hated and feared even by her own Folk, even by her father and sister. During all her years in Malbry there had only been One-Eye to take her side, and then only for a few days in the year. She had never expected things to be different; had always believed she would die alone, unknown and uncherished, friendless, childless, fatherless.

  But these people standing by the riverside…

  She watched as one by one the Vanir stepped forward to pay their respects. The Watchman, the Reaper, the Man of the Sea, the Healer, the Poet, the Huntress, the goddess of desire; slowly they passed, one by one, to salute the little barque as the river took it and to cast their runes of luck and protection into the river Dream.

  And now came the Æsir. All filed past: the Thunderer, the Mother, the Harvest Queen, the Warrior, the Trickster…

  These were her family, Maddy thought. Her father was there, and her grandmother; her allies and her friends. They shared her grief; they were bound to her, as she was to them, and she knew—suddenly and without any doubt—that whatever came, fair weather or foul, they would face it together.

  It isn’t over, Maddy thought. This battle has been fought many times already and will be fought many times again. Who knows what new face the enemy will take? Who knows how it will end next time?

  All she knew was that she wanted to be a part of it—was a part of it, whether she wished it or not—just as the leaves and roots of the World Tree play their part in the balance of Order and Chaos. Everything was linked: sorrow and joy, healing and loss, beginning and ending, and all the seasons in between.