The Winter Riddle

by Sam Hooker

  “I told you, you shouldn’t worry about that. There are no debts between us.”

  “I think the pendulum’s swung the other way,” said Santa.

  “That’s not the way that favors work with witches,” said Volgha.

  “Maybe not,” said Santa, “but being hunted wasn’t part of the plan. If she usually forgets about these things, you can make sure she’s forgotten this time, can’t you? Call it a gesture of goodwill toward your neighbor?”

  She frowned at that. Santa had made several gestures of goodwill since they met, and refusing this one would lose her the moral high ground. She did enjoy the moral high ground. It was an excellent vantage for looking down her nose at everyone else.

  “Oh, all right,” she said. “You did go through a lot, and the summoning was a great success.”

  Well, it worked, anyway, cawed Redcrow.

  “Thank you,” said Santa. “Are you hungry?”

  “I am,” Volgha answered.

  I am, too! Does he have any anchovies?

  “I don’t know,” said Volgha, “I’ll ask. Redcrow won’t shut up about anchovies. You don’t have any, do you?”

  “I don’t,” said Santa. “They’re not very common in the North Pole. How does he know about them?”

  “That’s an interesting story,” said Volgha.

  Krespo laid out a spread of dried meats and hard cheeses. No anchovies, but Redcrow contented himself with some salted pork. Osgrey seemed to be asleep.

  As they ate, Volgha told Santa and Krespo all about their adventures in Midgard and Asgard. Santa confessed that he’d never been to Asgard before, and was more than a little bit envious.

  Volgha cocked her head to the side, as if studying him. “Vaethul and his brothers said that you used to be quite the warrior.”

  Santa said nothing, almost loudly enough to warrant a shushing.

  “Used to be, eh?” he said after a while, if only to chase away the silence.

  You’ve offended him, cawed Redcrow. This is getting interesting.

  “Well,” Volgha hastened to clarify, “that is to say that you no longer choose to walk that path. Not that you couldn’t. If you wanted to.”

  Santa glanced at her and gave her a smirk. “You may have been right the first time. I never wanted to be a warrior in the first place, and it was a long time before I was able to walk away from it. In any case, it was all a long time ago. I’m done with it.”

  Volgha nodded, suddenly very sorry she’d brought it up.

  “The snow up here is starting to melt,” said Santa, grasping for a new topic of conversation. “We have to maintain trenches around the tent, like a moat.”

  “I’d noticed that,” said Volgha. “The frost must have melted from the howling eggs shortly after it started getting warm up among the clouds.”

  “So it’s the high places,” said Krespo.

  “That seems to be the case.” Volgha shrugged.

  “You said that Odin asked about Niflheim in particular,” said Santa. “The Vikings say he banished the frost giants there ages ago. Why would he be concerned about it?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Volgha. “He didn’t seem to care if it would be too hot for the frost giants. Is there anything else there?”

  “No,” said Santa. “That’s kind of the point. He banished the frost giants to a barren wasteland, never to return.”

  “That’s what I thought. I’ve never been there because there didn’t seem to be any point in going.”

  “Could we go there now,” asked Krespo, “have a look around?”

  “Not much point,” said Santa. “It’s a long way from here, and we wouldn’t know where to begin searching through all the nothing that’s there. It would be a waste of time.”

  “I could go,” said Volgha, after a few moments of thought.

  Oh come on, cawed Redcrow, it’s a long way away, it’s bitter cold, and we haven’t—

  “Oh, quit your moaning,” said Volgha, shooting an irritated glance to Redcrow. “We don’t have to go physically. I could just scry the high places, see if anything is amiss.”

  “There’s really only one high place,” said Santa. “A tall mountain at its center. Would it be difficult?”

  “Not really,” Volgha answered. “I’ll just be able to look around, but with Redcrow’s help, I’ll get a better range.”

  So you are volunteering me. Typical.

  “You complain a lot, do you know that?” said Volgha.

  As would anyone in my position!

  “You’ve been bestowed with power, and that comes with responsibility!”

  Oh, that’s rich, coming from Miss Doesn’t-Want-To-Be-The-Warden.

  “Ugh!” Volgha rolled her eyes and waved a hand dismissively. Santa and Krespo were staring, each with an eyebrow cocked.

  “Right,” said Santa. “Well, certainly nothing to lose by having a peek.”

  Santa and Krespo saw to maintaining the little moat around the shelter while Volgha walked up to the top of the hill with a blanket and her basket. She laid out the blanket, drew a circle of salt on it, and started her herbs burning in the bowl. Redcrow took flight, circling higher and higher above, and Volgha began the incantation.

  There are a few universal recommendations when it comes to magic. They’re not rules per se, but they are ignored at one’s own peril.

  “Don’t cast spells with your mouth full” is a relatively obvious one. That’s a sure way to accidentally summon a thresher demon instead of having the bed make itself. Whoever made those two incantations so similar must’ve had a mean streak.

  “No substitutions” is another, especially when performing complicated wards. Sure, rockwort and elderfrost smell alike, but when one is trying to contain the thresher demon that one has just accidentally summoned, “good enough” usually isn’t.

  The one that Volgha had just overlooked was “Don’t cast spells next to unknown mysterious objects.” To say that what happened next was unexpected would only be true if she didn’t know that she should have been more careful.

  There was a great rumbling noise, and the boxes over the howling eggs started to shatter one by one. Volgha didn’t dare stop the incantation, as she was already halfway past the veil separating the physical and spirit realms. She’d heard of witches who’d gotten stuck halfway like that, and she had no interest in being a cackling spinster for the rest of her days.

  She felt a rush of power unlike any she’d experienced before. Something was pushing her, amplifying her innate abilities. It scared and thrilled her at the same time. She just kept pushing onward, past the veil, toward Niflheim, so close to Redcrow that she had trouble sensing the line that separated their energies.

  And then she was there. It was far colder than anything she’d ever experienced, but some inner radiance kept her warm. She flapped her great red wings against the gusting winds. Her wings? No, Redcrow’s wings.

  Right, her wings. Wait … she was Redcrow. What?

  She looked around, bewildered but unafraid. It was her, Volgha, and it was him, Redcrow. It was as if they’d merged, which was more than a bit unsettling.

  Something was amplifying her power, and that something had merged her physically with Redcrow. Well, metaphysically anyway, as her body was actually still sitting on the hill. They’d been sharing thoughts for a while now, how was this any different?

  She could still feel herself—her physical form, an anchor chanting on the hill—but she was no mere ghost of herself here. She was powerful.

  The mountain wasn’t hard to spot. Volgha flew toward it, but it was a long way off. The wind buffeted her wings, making it hard to steer. She seemed to know that there was a better way to do this, a way to … put herself there.

  She simply moved. It wasn’t flying exactly, she just sort of willed herself toward the peak, and she was there in a flash. She came to a dead stop inches from a frost giant, who was punching a huge block of ice atop the highest peak. His eyes went wide at the si
ght of her. He lost his balance and went plummeting toward the ground.

  Volgha gasped. She didn’t really know anything about frost giants, but sending one plummeting to its untimely demise certainly wasn’t her intention. She hurtled downward after him, stopping a few feet from the ground and using her wings to hover over to the crater where he’d landed.

  He was lying on his back, or rather what was left of it. Frost giants are made of ice and covered in permafrost. This one was now practically shattered, more pile than giant.

  “Ow,” he said, stirring slowly.

  “You’re alive!” exclaimed Volgha, incredulous that anyone could survive a fall like that.

  “Of course I’m alive,” he replied. “I’m just very badly broken.”

  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you like that. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said the giant. “I’ll freeze back together soon enough.”

  “Well, that’s handy. Does it take long?”

  “I don’t know,” said the giant. “Time doesn’t really pass here. It’s always just grey. Who are you, anyway?”

  “Volgha,” she said. “And you?”

  “Gorsulak,” he said. “Where did you come from?”

  “That’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got nothing but time. It’s been ages since Odin banished us here. Please, don’t skip any details. You have no idea how nice it is to talk to someone from the outside.”

  “Perhaps it’s not that interesting.” Probably not a good idea to tell a frost giant that you’ve come because your pal Odin seemed nervous about what was happening here, especially after you’ve just virtually shattered said frost giant. “I’ve just never been to Niflheim, and I thought I’d have a look.”

  “You’re small,” he said, “like a Viking. But you don’t look like a Viking. They don’t have wings. Or do they? It’s been a long time since I saw a Viking so I may not be remembering correctly. Isn’t it birds that have wings?”

  “That’s right,” said Volgha. “Birds have wings and Vikings do not. I’m neither of those, though. I’m a witch. Well, a witch and a bird, at the moment. It’s complicated.”

  “Oh …” Gorsulak seemed interested in Volgha’s story. She decided to try and keep him talking, to see if he’d volunteer some useful information.

  “I’ve met some Vikings before, in Midgard,” she said.

  “Midgard. I remember Midgard. Full of Vikings, as I recall. We threw boulders at them. It was great fun.”

  “You don’t like the Vikings?”

  “It’s not really a matter of like or dislike,” said Gorsulak. “They charge at us with … pole things, pointy bits on the ends. What do you call those?”

  “Spears?”

  Gorsulak was silent for a moment. “Maybe,” he said. “Anyway, they got on the backs of these four-legged animals and charged at us with ‘sneers’ or whatever, and we threw boulders at them. I don’t remember if we liked each other or not, it’s just what we did. Those were our jobs, I think.”

  “And did you like your job?”

  “I think so. Anyway, I was good at it. We all were. We’d meet the Vikings on the field, we’d hurl a bunch of boulders, and that was that. It must have been Odin that didn’t like it. He was the one who sent us here, I think.”

  Gorsulak raised an arm, turned it one way and then the other, testing the joints. It seemed to be healing nicely, thanks to the bitter cold winds.

  “When I saw you on the peak,” began Volgha, “were you punching a big block of ice?”

  “Was I?”

  “That’s what it looked like.”

  He was silent again. He tried the other arm. It seemed to be solidifying nicely as well.

  “Yes, I was punching something. Thank you for reminding me, little bird. We’ve never been able to reach the top of the peak before because there was too much frost up there to climb it. But it’s gotten hotter up there, and some of the frost has melted away. I can reach it now, which means if I can break off enough of the ice, I can free the horn.”

  “Horn? What horn?”

  “The Horn of Frost.” Gorsulak snapped his fingers, which had just firmed up. “I remember now! Odin put it there to torment us. You see, if we could blow the horn, it would unfold the bridge to Midgard. We could walk across the bridge and get out of this miserable place! Maybe we could get our old jobs back, throw boulders at Vikings again! That would be just lovely.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Volgha could see now what Odin was concerned about, and it concerned her as well. Frost giants hurling boulders around? How long would it be before they ran out of Vikings and turned to other targets? She didn’t have to be the Warden to want to prevent that.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Volgha, scrambling for a feasible reason. “How did you figure out that it was melting up there anyway?”

  “Well, I’d given up on climbing up there a long time ago. At least I think it was a long time ago. Not sure if I mentioned it, but it’s hard to tell how much time passes here. It looks the same all the time.”

  “You did mention it.”

  “I did? Oh well. Anyway, I was talking with the Giver of Secrets, and he told me about it.”

  “Shouldn’t that be the Keeper of Secrets?”

  “I thought so, too, but who am I to tell someone else how to do their job? He’s just an old man that knows a bunch of stuff, and he says that secrets are dangerous. When people know about them, they’re just facts, and facts aren’t dangerous.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true,” said Volgha.

  “The Giver of Secrets says it is.” Gorsulak sat up and shrugged. “Perhaps if we had some sort of Arbiter of Truth on hand, he—or she—could rule on that for us.”

  He stood up slowly. Even allowing for the fact that his legs had just rebuilt themselves from thousands of tiny pieces, Volgha felt that he was taking his part in the impending apocalypse a bit too casually.

  “But since we have no Arbiter of Truth,” Gorsulak continued, “I’ll simply say that I don’t want to stay here. None of us do. And since I’ve got nothing else to do, I’m going to break the ice away from the horn and use it to get to Midgard. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Frost giants are immortal, you know. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  He gave his legs a few experimental stretches, then twisted his torso at the hips a few times. He seemed to be all in working order, so he stepped out of his crater and started walking to the foot of the mountain.

  “Sure, that’s one option,” said Volgha, flitting along behind him, “but have you considered the benefits of leaving the horn alone? You could get really hurt if you fell again, you know.”

  “I must’ve fallen from up there hundreds of times before,” said Gorsulak, still plodding toward the mountain. “It hurts, but I always heal. It just takes time.”

  “But isn’t it better here? It’s so cold, you must heal faster here than you would anywhere else.”

  “Maybe, but it’s boring. We lived for a really long time before we came here, and even if it’s a bit more dangerous out there, Niflheim is dreadfully dull. Better to have the threat of death than no reason to live, if you ask me.”

  “But certainly we can come up with something that can make Niflheim more livable. I could even help, if you—”

  “Hey.” Stopping, Gorsulak turned to face her. “It sounds like you don’t want me to get the horn for some reason. Why would you want me to stay here, stuck in this boring place?”

  “Well, it’s just that—”

  “I get it,” said Gorsulak, taking a step toward her. “You’re a friend of Odin’s, aren’t you?”

  “No! I mean, I’ve met him, but—”

  “Right, you’re just a casual acquaintance of Odin’s having a stroll in Niflheim, definitely not here to make sure the frost giants are staying where they belong!”

  “I’m just
saying, this seems like a pretty decent place for a frost giant to live!”

  “So you know what’s best for us? Just like Odin and his precious Vikings, you can’t stand the thought of us giants doing an honest day’s work. You’d rather lock us away, out of sight out of mind. Well, forget it!”

  Gorsulak turned on his frosty heel and started walking away.

  “Wait,” said Volgha, still following along. “If you’d only let me—”

  “Enough!” Gorsulak spun around and hurled a mighty fist toward her. She dodged it easily, thanks to her new-found agility. This only enraged him further, and he kept advancing and swinging as she turned and dodged.

  “Please stop and listen to me,” Volgha said as she flitted and dodged. “I’m far too quick, you’ll never hit me.”

  “I will!” Gorsulak shouted between punches. “Haven’t you been listening? I’ve got all the time in the world! It doesn’t matter how long it takes, little bird. Even if neither of us ever tires, you’ll eventually slip up, and I’ll crush your bones!”

  He was right, she realized. It might take a very long time, but infinitesimal odds always pan out over a long enough timeline; and all the while, the snow atop the peak would continue to melt. If Loki’s riddle wasn’t solved, Gorsulak would eventually gain the horn by simply climbing the mountain again—and he had nothing but time.

  “You’re right,” she said. She dodged away one last time and flew up out of his reach. “I can’t beat you. Not this way.”

  “Or any other,” he spat. “Fly away, little bird. Fly home and wait for the boulders to come raining down on your little nest!”

  Volgha closed her eyes and let herself slip back across the veil. She felt Redcrow’s mind pulling back from her own, felt the blanket below her legs again, and opened her eyes.

  The last lights of what must have been a terrific display of magical wisps died away, and she could hear the wind howling in the giant eggs. There were glowing runes on them, runes that she didn’t recognize. They were fading away as well, leaving only a collection of white stone sculptures to sound across the wind.

  What just happened, asked Osgrey, and where have you been?

  “By all the spirits,” exclaimed Santa, standing with Krespo a few yards away, “what was that?”