"The Witch's Heart"

Genevieve Gornichec's retelling of Nordic mythology works best when the characters dealt with the all absurdities in a deadpan way, but the rest is all too human to the point of mundaneness. The theme of loss recalls "Hamnet".

• “Perhaps it’s because you’re pathetic and I have an overwhelming urge to care for pathetic people,” Angrboda said under her breath. “Almost like your urge to keep talking when you should probably stop and think instead.”
• That was one of many reasons she’d vowed to avoid using seid. If she went too far, she’d risk brushing up against Yggdrasil: the tree connecting the Nine Worlds, the axis of the universe. It was now Odin’s own means of transport, and she dared not go anywhere near it.
• It stared back at her with abject misery. “Huh,” said Angrboda. “What brings you here in such a form, Loki?” I’m in trouble, said the mare in her head. “What sort of trouble?” You’ll see in a few months. Angrboda considered this. “Loki,” she said, “please don’t tell me you shape-shifted into a mare and lured the builder’s supernatural stallion away so he couldn’t finish Asgard’s wall in time to win his prizes.” <> A beat of silence passed. The mare flicked its tail, irritated. And here I thought you didn’t do your prophecy magic anymore.
• found that her previous fear of being used had dissipated enough that she could joke about it in tones of fake seriousness: “But you’ve taken advantage of me already of your own accord. Now it would be your duty to take advantage of me, as my husband.” “And usually I’m not one for such responsibilities, but I think I may be able to handle this particular obligation,” he replied, just as seriously. “Don’t the Aesir have responsibilities? As gods to the humans and such?” “Eh,” said Loki. “I only became Odin’s blood brother for lack of anything better to do. I figured that gods did interesting things. It was for boredom, mostly.”
• news of the baby was on the tip of her tongue, but she held it back; this wasn’t how she’d pictured telling him. He might be quite expressive while in animal form, but something in her wanted to see his face when he heard, so she could gauge more accurately how he felt about the whole thing.
• Angrboda stared blankly down at their hands and said nothing. He had never asked to speak before. Loki asking if he could talk was much like a fish asking if it could swim while in the act of doing so. But Loki seemed to be gathering his thoughts, which Angrboda had rarely seen him do, as words seemed to continuously spill out of him.
• “She came to Asgard demanding blood, but . . . she came to a compromise with the Aesir. She took a husband from among them and demanded to be made to laugh, which I alone succeeded in doing, at my own peril.” He pointed at the stars. “And Odin took her father’s eyes and made them into stars. They’re just there, you see?” But Angrboda wasn’t looking at the stars. She was remembering the story that Gerd had told them, about what fate had befallen Skadi’s father, and she recalled her friend’s grief and rage and lust for revenge. As a result, she had a hard time believing what she was hearing.
• For some reason the news of Skadi’s marriage made her angrier than she would like to admit. A new feeling twisted in her chest—something like envy, not unlike what she felt when she’d first spoken Sigyn’s name.
• “She was made to choose her husband by his feet alone. She was hoping for Baldur, Odin’s own son, the youngest and fairest of the gods.
• Loki said. “My testicles have suffered enough on her behalf, thank you very much. I tied them to a goat to make her laugh. She has a rather sick sense of humor, don’t you think?” Angrboda blinked at him. “Why . . . would you tie your testicles to a goat?” “I was telling a story,” Loki said defensively.
• “He’s probably not going to make it,” Loki said very quietly, putting his hand on her stomach. “He probably could if he was bigger, but . . .” “Don’t say such things,” Angrboda snapped. “Not right now. Hand me a scrap of cloth from that pile.” Loki obliged and sat down at her feet again, hiking her dress up to her waist. “I’m just being realistic. I’ve been where you are, remember, although I suppose it might’ve been a bit different for me as a horse.”
• “He’s a wolf,” Loki said unnecessarily as he cut the cord with a knife. He then held said wolf in a blanket like he wasn’t sure what to do, and a dozen different emotions flashed across his face, one right after another.
• “Well,” Loki said as he looked on, scooting over to sit beside her. “Do you find this odd? I find this odd. Why is he a wolf?” <> “We’re odd. He’s odd. Does this displease you?” Angrboda asked evenly, not looking up. “Not in the least. I’m just . . . confused.” “I was arguably more confused when you showed up here as a mare and gave birth to a horse with eight legs.” Loki had nothing to say to that.
• Fenrir seemed to at least be trying to control his animalistic urges and was frustrated when he couldn’t, which caused him to lash out further. Angrboda wished so badly that she could help him, but she didn’t know how. She wished that she had been—or at least remembered being—the witch who had mothered the wolves who chased the sun and moon, or that she could find this old woman and ask her for advice. Instead she asked her husband for advice. But as Loki was still going back and forth between Asgard and Ironwood, he found his son’s ferocity entertaining rather than troublesome. He didn’t have to deal with Fenrir every single day.
• Most of the time they were too sluggish to do anything but curl up together and say nothing for a few hours, listening to the snow blowing and the wind howling outside, listening to the fire crackling and feeling its warmth on their hands and faces. There was nothing special about such interactions, but she treasured them all the same. Time had meant little to Angrboda before the children and Loki; but the four of them had given her a new appreciation for those small secret moments that might have seemed ordinary to others but meant more to her every time she noticed them.
• Angrboda raised her eyebrows. “You have an archnemesis?” “He sees everything, Boda. He’s like what would happen if Odin decided to sit in his chair constantly and see all the Nine Worlds, all the time. That’s Heimdall. He makes it really hard to sneak around Asgard. Which I do, often. So, anyway, he suggested that we dress Thor up as Freyja and send him to marry Thrym.” Loki sighed wistfully. “Would that I had come up with such a brilliant idea myself.” “And Thor was content to go along with this?” “Of course he wasn’t. He said it would be a catastrophic failure of manliness, in not so many words. But I told him to shut up and do it, and that I would go with him as his handmaiden.” Angrboda snorted. “So you donned a dress. But you’re a shape-shifter—you’ve taken on female forms before, so why not just change yourself into a woman?” “Because that wouldn’t have been nearly as fun,”
• Then, finally, they brought out the hammer as a wedding gift, and Thor picked it up and killed everyone there.” ..<> “And that’s how Odin’s son got his hammer back,” Loki concluded, “and why I was in a dress. That was earlier this evening—as soon as we got back to Asgard, I left for here. Wasn’t that a great story?” “It ended with a feast hall full of our dead kinsmen,” Angrboda said dully.
• “A little,” Loki conceded, and pushed her long wet hair back from her face. “It’s just . . . I’ve known you for so long, and yet it feels like no time at all. Will the rest of our time pass just as quickly? Will we change again and again as we have before, or are we stuck the way we are now forever, because more people will remember us this way?”
• “What will they think of us a thousand years from now, if our stories are remembered?” he whispered. “Will I be counted the best among the gods, or the worst?”
• “The people die. The stories continue, in poetry and song. Stories of their deeds. Of their gods.” He tore away from her then, angrily. “Why am I not worshipped like the rest? What are gods if they’re not worshipped? What does that make me? Reckoned among them, but not one of them. Never one of them.”
• “You don’t understand. You’ll never understand, because all they will remember of you is the name you chose for yourself, Angrboda. Not that you were Gullveig, not anything else. They will know you only as my wife and the mother of monsters, because you choose to be nothing more.”
• “The way things were was normal for them,” Angrboda said, tears pricking her eyes. “And that was how I had intended it to remain. Myself, Loki, you two, and these woods—that’s all they’ve ever known. Should I have told them right from the beginning how different they truly were? Or was I right to let them think there was nothing wrong with them?”
• “I see you still cover your hair. Does this mean you still consider yourself married to him, then?” Skadi said to her one frosty morning when she came by with her reindeer. <> “It’s more out of habit than anything,” said Angrboda, though she did not know how true that was. “Plus it keeps the hair from my face.” “Right,” said Skadi. “Habit. Please tell me you will make a habit of allowing me to murder him in his sleep?” “He is a rather heavy sleeper, surprisingly enough.” “So does that mean I can—?” “No, you may not.”
• Odin went first to Urd’s well, at one of the three roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree. There he found the Norns—Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, the three sisters of fate—and relayed to them Sigyn’s tale; he asked them what they knew about Loki’s three children with the witch Angrboda.
• So Odin thanked them and went on to Mimir’s well, which lay at Yggdrasil’s second root. Mimir had been decapitated as a hostage in the war, but Odin had smeared his severed head with herbs and chanted a spell over it, which preserved Mimir’s knowledge and wisdom within it, as well as preventing it from decaying. Mimir was Odin’s most valuable adviser; his counsel had always been unparalleled, so much so that Odin had given up an eye to drink from Mimir’s well of wisdom.
• “And then Odin himself tore her from Loki’s arms.” Skadi finally looked at her then. “They cast her down into Niflheim, body and all. I understand Odin has granted her jurisdiction over the dead, being half-dead herself.” “Of course,” Angrboda said, eyes closed. The last pieces had fallen into place. This was her vision of the end times: the massive serpent rising from the waves and the huge wolf breaking its bonds as all the worlds descended into chaos. And the ship of the dead, who were her daughter’s subjects, sailing into battle against the gods . . .
• “Herald of sorrows,” said the she-wolf, amused. Are you sure you weren’t practicing seid when you picked that name? Seems rather prophetic to me.
• The first is that presence of yours—the one who brought you back when you sank too far down—is you. “Me,” Angrboda repeated, unbelieving. You, as you were. As you were meant to be. As Mother Witch. It seems to me that she’s the part of you that you brought back into the light. The part of you that you lost as Gullveig, the part of you that you can’t remember. She—you—led you to me, to reunite us. It was your own instinct that brought you here.
• The feast hall was even more raucous on the inside and was full of a larger variety of giants than Angrboda had seen for quite some time: hill trolls, dark elves, frost giants, rock giants, and the odd dwarf or two, along with a few other giants who were roughly the same size and shape as she was, indistinguishable from a human or god. Their host, Hymir—an enormous man—sat in the high seat and was recounting in a booming voice how he and Thor had gone fishing for the Midgard Serpent... Thor then killed another of Hymir’s oxen and used its head to draw the Midgard Serpent from the sea, and then had broken Hymir’s boat as he struggled to keep the Serpent on his line. Hymir had ended up cutting the line, but that hadn’t stopped Thor from getting a blow in to the Serpent’s skull with his hammer, at which point Hymir realized just whom he’d gone fishing with.
• So they went to the dwarfs to craft a special one, made from the beard of a woman and the footfall of a cat and other such magical nonsense. The trick was that it didn’t look strong, so they thought they could fool him into putting it on, saying there was no harm in it because he’d broken bonds that were made of iron. “But Fenrir was smarter than all that. Before he agreed to put on the fetter, he said, ‘If it’s truly so easy to break, then let someone put their hand in my mouth as a token of good faith that you’re not deceiving me.’ And that’s how Tyr lost his hand, and how the Great Wolf became trapped.” Skadi raised her cup. “My point is, friends and kinsmen, that we giants have outsmarted the Aesir before. We can surely do it again.”
• “Aye, I know of Ragnarok. I see more than you’d think down here. I know of fate, as do Frigg and Freyja and the Norns. You’re not special to the gods because you can access this dangerous knowledge—you’re only the most disposable to Odin. How many more times are you going to let the Aesir kill you, Mother, before you realize that?” Angrboda clenched her teeth. “Why do you mock me so?” “Because I see right through you,” Hel sneered, stepping down from the dais. “You, the wise old witch in the woods, doing no harm so that no harm will come to you. You forget that your enemies strike first, and they strike harder, and they do not give you the same respect that you give them.”
• “Baldur’s blind brother, Hod,” she said, recalling her vision, “who will in turn be slain by Baldur’s avenger. I’ve told you this before, and more besides.” “You will tell me the details of his death. You will tell me all, so I can do him justice.” “Justice,” she said, her chapped lips forming a cruel smile, “will be served when your son enters my daughter’s hall, Odin All-father.” “You are no wisewoman and no prophetess, Angrboda Iron-witch, mother of monsters,” said Odin frostily, pulling the reins to turn Sleipnir around. “A false man visiting a false grave you may be,” Angrboda shot back, “but the only truth here is in my words.”
• “The Aesir require your assistance,” said the other. The she-wolf growled at them, but Angrboda sighed the long-suffering sigh of someone who had been burned, stabbed, killed, betrayed, hassled for information, woken up, and otherwise continuously bothered by the very same group of people who had stolen her children away from her in the night. Will they never leave me alone? If the gods are so great, what do they need me for? “I didn’t know that Odin sent his ravens out to disperse information,” Angrboda said to the birds, who were named Hugin and Munin, Thought and Memory. They flew around the Nine Worlds each day before returning to tell their master all they’d seen.
• “Odin’s son had been dreaming of his own demise, and his mother, Frigg, made everything in all the worlds swear not to harm him,” said Munin. “All but a young sprig of mistletoe, which Loki the Deceiver sharpened into a dart for Hod to use to slay his brother,” said Hugin.
• Angrboda’s eyes narrowed. “You lie. Loki is many things, aye—but a murderer?” “You must do a favor for an innocent,” Hugin added, like it hadn’t heard her. Angrboda sighed again. That’s what I get for arguing with birds, I suppose. “What exactly do they need my assistance with?”
• “Why did you do it, then?” Angrboda whispered. “Why did you kill your brother’s son?” “The gods took everything from us, Boda,” he whispered back. “I thought it was high time I took something from them.” Tears pricked Angrboda’s eyes at this. Even not knowing what would happen, not knowing that he was fated to do so . . . Loki did it anyway. He thinks this is all within his control, within our control, and I envy him this ignorance. And then another thought struck her. Let Hel hold what she has. “Took something—someone—from them,” she said slowly, “and gave it to our daughter.” Loki gave her a wan smile. “See? Everybody wins.” Something about that was nagging her, something Angrboda couldn’t put her finger on. Hel had always been Loki’s favorite. Had he truly slain Odin’s favorite son as a gift for his daughter?
• I suppose it’s always been my lot to wait here for someone, Angrboda thought. Those times when Skadi did stay and spend the night, Angrboda could barely sleep, and it seemed to her that they were separated by more than just the several layers of fur of their individual bedrolls. Part of her was screaming to roll over and have the conversation she’d been meaning to have with Skadi for a very long time—a conversation that would explain the stab of jealousy Angrboda had felt when she’d heard Skadi was married, and much more yet.
• She must’ve seen something there that emboldened her, for she moved closer and said, “Loki may have loved you, if he could, but all he ever brought you was pain. You know it. We both know it. I wished to be more for you, Angrboda. So much more. I loved you then. I love you now. I will love you until I die. And even after, whatever comes then, I will love you still, even though you’re a fool and you’ve used me the same way that Loki has used you. But I suppose that makes me a fool as well.” “We’re both fools.” Angrboda’s heart swelled in her chest. “Things could have been so different . . .” “Things can still be different,” Skadi said fiercely, leaning in close, squeezing her hands. “But the ending remains the same,” Angrboda whispered back. “The ending doesn’t matter. What matters is how we get there. To face what’s ahead with as much dignity as we can muster and make the most of the time we have left.”
• Sometimes it scares me to think that I’m leaving nothing behind in these worlds. That I will be forgotten, like I had never existed at all.” Angrboda had heard similar words from Loki before, but for some reason hearing such a thing from Skadi ignited something within her.
• “But he’s still her father. He was always her favorite, and she his,” Angrboda said begrudgingly. “I’d be willing to bet she’d hear him out.” “You’d be betting the start of the apocalypse. You’d have to free him to get him there, and you know what happens when he’s free.” “It’s worth a try, though, isn’t it?” Skadi looked at her in skeptical silence. “I don’t know how he’s freed, but it happens somehow, and the three winters are just about over. He’ll be loose one way or another, after all. It might as well be by me, for my own purposes. For our child.”
• The resulting thunk did not rouse Loki from his unconscious state—but it did cause someone to stir in the shadows just to Angrboda’s right, and she turned to see Sigyn crawling into the glow of one of the braziers. The woman’s face was a mask of exhaustion and grief as she grappled about in the darkness before finding her bowl—the one she’d been holding above Loki’s head to catch the venom from the snake, to give him some respite from his pain. For the entire length of Fimbulwinter, she’s been doing this, Angrboda thought. Almost three long years.
• “I shouldn’t have told you what I did,” said Angrboda, looking back to Sigyn. “It was wrong of me to put this knowledge on your shoulders, and for that I am truly sorry.” “I provoked you,” Sigyn said, staring down at the clay bowl in her hands. “I was just so angry.” “But I should have known better. I lost my temper. I thought of the worst possible way to get back at you for what you—for what you said about my children, and I went through with it when I should have taken a step back and thought things through—” “It was bad for the two of us to meet the way we did.” Sigyn closed her eyes. “We both lost our children in the end. But the difference is that I was the cause for you losing yours. I thought I was doing the right thing. I’m sorry.” “No,” said Angrboda. “You were not the cause. Ultimately, it was the Aesir alone who were responsible for their crimes against our families.”
• “I was so angry at you both. Especially Papa. I’d planned to throw him into an eternal river of ice or a very deep crevice when he finally came to my realm. But when he showed up, he looked such a fright that tossing him into a bottomless pit actually might’ve been an improvement, and that rather took all the fun out of the idea.”
• “Don’t contradict me. You’re still somewhat dead, which means I’m still your ruler.” “You’re still somewhat my ruler. Now, stop talking and save your strength.”
• Many realizations hit her at once. The first was that there was a reason Hel had almost died in her womb, and that her legs were just fate’s cruel manifestation of Angrboda’s folly. There was a real reason that Angrboda had to call her daughter’s soul back from the dead before she was even born, a reason that Hel had been dying in the first place. Maybe Baldur was right; her heart hadn’t formed as it should have—and now that Hel was grown and had no magic to compensate for it, this condition would kill her. The second realization was that Baldur had gotten close enough to Hel to hear her heartbeat. To know that something was not quite right. And Angrboda knew then, in the way that a mother just knows, that it would be useless to save Hel if she wasn’t going to save Baldur, too. A much younger Baldur had won little Hel’s heart ages ago with that dazzling smile. Angrboda had seen it herself in her vision. And so had Loki, who had actually been there.
• “The gods took everything from us, Boda. I thought it was high time I took something from them.” So he had. Loki had taken Baldur from the Aesir—and delivered him to a lonely woman sitting on a dark throne. A spot of warmth for the frigid being ruling the coldest realm of the worlds.
• That was it. That’s why Odin wasn’t trying to prevent Baldur’s death. Angrboda thought as she knelt there in the mud, as the last slivers of the dying sun and moon were slowly swallowed up by ravenous wolves. Because the safest place for Baldur is with Hel. So this was how he was to survive Ragnarok. Let Hel hold what she has.
• Then there’s Loki, pulling up in a ship of nails filled to the brim with dead souls, who spill out as soon as they reach the shore—and from the water behind him erupts the Midgard Serpent with a roar to shake all the worlds, his brother, Fenrir, appearing at his side from beyond the mountains, the ground shaking with his every loping stride. With his sons at his back, Loki struts to the head of the army, defiant—he’s shape-shifted the beard off his face, but not the scars or blisters; those he wears with pride. He grasps arms with the ruler of the citadel of Utgard, Skrymir, and the two of them look west at the enemy across the field. “It’s a good day to die,” Skrymir booms. “It is indeed,” Loki says with a wicked grin. From across the field, Heimdall blows Gjallarhorn, and the battle begins.
• Angrboda gave him a tight smile. “I’ve been through worse. Shouldn’t you be going?” “You don’t want me to stay with you?” Loki asked, head tilted sideways in curiosity. “You’ve never stayed with me,” Angrboda said gently. “I’ll endure this as I’ve endured everything else in this life. Perhaps I will see you in the next.”
• It was the only thing that would save her daughter, this power she’d feared to tap into for so long. I can’t do it alone, she thought as she reached out and grasped for that darkness just beyond her consciousness. I’m not strong enough. But you are, the presence’s familiar voice replied. It echoed from the deepest part of the primordial well, from the beginning of time itself, and Angrboda finally—finally—recognized the voice as her own. This power is yours, Mother Witch. It has always been yours. You need only reach out and take it. Angrboda did.
• She closed her eyes, cast her mind back, and told him. “She said, ‘My child, I’m sorry for what’s befallen you. But when you awaken, it will be in a better world than this one. I have seen it.’ ” Baldur held her gaze steadily and whispered, “Those words are the very same ones my father spoke to me before they lit my pyre.” “That’s impossible,” said Hel. “Ah, but here we are.” Baldur was smiling again as he moved in closer.