Winifred Hodge Rose
(This is a chapter in my serial novel, Gridhr Jotun-Kin. Click on the menu-header above with this title, and the list of chapters will appear in order, beginning with the Prologue.)
Thrymheim mountain range lay at their backs in the distance. Before them coursed a wide, deep river gorge running from north to south; the churning and thrashing of white water reached them from several miles away. On the other side of the gorge ran another mountain range, parallel to the river.
Gridhr ruefully eyed these formidable barriers ahead of them and turned to her cousin. “Now what?”
Skadhi grinned back. “You’ll see! Have you ever seen a bridge?”
Gridhr shook her head mutely.
“We’ll, we’ve got a ways to go yet before reaching it, but soon you’ll see for yourself.”
Curious, Gridhr walked ahead eagerly for awhile, but felt unusually weary by the time they reached the promised crossing. Her weariness vanished, though, as she gazed open-mouthed in amazement.
Before her, as the sunset light gathered in the sky, she saw an immense bridge. The pylons were simply enormous unshaped boulders rising from the turbulent river. Across the pylons lay rough slabs of rock, unfitted and unsmoothed. Between these uneven, tilting slabs, waves slapped and leaped upward through the wide gaps. The red-gold of the setting sun flashed off the river, refracting through the spray and mist rising up around the bridge.
“Rainbows,” Gridhr breathed, partly joking and partly in awe. “I see that we Jotnar have a rainbow bridge, just as they say the Æsir do!”
Skadhi laughed in surprise. “I never thought of it that way! But then, I’ve never seen it thus, with the sun striking the spray just so. How beautiful! Our own rainbow bridge…” A smile was in her eyes. “But there’s no Heimdal here, warding it. Just as well,” she laughed. “Is the bridge natural? It doesn’t look so.”
“No, it was made by giants in times long gone. I would have enjoyed watching its making.”
“A mighty deed,” Gridhr agreed. “And crossing it will be a deed as well! I’d just as soon wait until morning.” Gridhr was beginning, now, to feel the effects of her pregnancy.
“I have no intention of venturing across that in the dark, myself! Let’s set up camp here for the night.”
Gridhr slept with the rushing sound of the river in her ears, scenting the freshness of spray-saturated air drifting through the night. Even the thunderous vibrations of the river, reaching her through the ground itself, were soothing to her weary body.
She woke early, just as dawn was breaking, and lay quietly watching the lightening sky. A speck circled directly above her, gradually floating lower toward the earth. Soon Gridhr saw that it was a great silver falcon. Several times, as it circled her, Gridhr felt a warm shadow pass over her, though the sun had not yet risen to cast any shadows. At last the falcon left its circling and drifted east, along the path they would be heading. Gridhr smiled, feeling a great peace in her heart.
That quiet peace stood her in good stead as she faced the massive, primitive bridge with its tumbled piles of boulders serving as steps at either end. All the rivers Gridhr had encountered before had proven no great challenge for her height and strength to ford or swim. This one was a very different matter. Taking a deep breath, Gridhr gripped her staff tightly and set off behind Skadhi.
She soon discovered that the constant spray from the river had nourished slippery mosses and algae on the bridge, creating precarious footing and even more precarious purchase for the necessary leaps across the gaps between slabs of rock. Neither the supporting pylons nor the slabs had been more than very roughly leveled, which caused many of the slabs to tilt unevenly. Gridhr slipped to her knees several times when leaping from one slab to another with their awkward angles. The thunderous rapids below her, the wind gusting down the gorge, the spray billowing up all around, and the morning sun in her eyes, all combined to bewilder and disorient her. She very soon decided that she preferred to admire the bridge from dry land rather than from the middle of the river. However, there was no other way to cross, and her journey’s call beckoned her forward. Soaked, bruised, and shaking, she was glad finally to reach dry land.
Two days of climbing brought them to a plateau just below the top of the range east of the great river. Gridhr and Skadhi stopped for an early evening to celebrate their ascent, and gladly settled down to sleep by the fire after their supper. Gridhr was just drifting off when a loud crack of thunder and lightning startled her awake. She sighed and burrowed her head under the cloak she had rolled around herself. But it was no use. Tremendous claps of thunder, blinding lightning and whipping gusts of wind soon heralded a downpour of hail, rain and sleet. There was no sleep to be had. Grumbling, Gridhr and Skadhi stood up and peered around during the lightning flashes for better shelter.
“I don’t see anything, do you?” Skadhi muttered.
“I see something, but it’s not shelter,” Gridhr said grimly. “Take a look.”
Skadhi squinted through the rain and lighting in the direction of Gridhr’s pointing finger. “Rock-thursar!” she exclaimed.
“That’s what I thought,” growled Gridhr.
The big rock-ogres were not far from the two giantesses, almost directly ahead of them at the top of the range. Clearly, they were enjoying the weather and taking the opportunity for a lively brawl. Soon rocks and boulders began crashing down beside the Jotun-wives.
Gridhr snarled under her breath, then shouted angrily, “Hey, you up there! You could hurt somebody with those boulders!”
Startled, the ogres peered down through the blackness. “Who’s that? Who’s there? Ha! Cousins, is it?” They chortled merrily, whacking each other on the back. “Here, have a bun!” one of them shouted, and hurled another boulder at them.
Gridhr dodged quickly. “Bun, is it?” she yelled back at them. “Have one yourself!”
The rock she hurled smacked satisfyingly on the stony chest of one of the thursar. He staggered back dramatically, clutching his breast. “Oh, oh – she’s killed me with a piece of fluff! I’m dead!” This produced gales of merriment from his companions, and another volley of boulders hurtled down.
“Gridhr, that’s enough. Let’s just leave,” Skadhi urged. “It’s late and we’re tired; we don’t need to play games with those stupid oafs.”
Gridhr’s attention was consumed by the thursar. “Oafs! Yes, you – oafs! Why don’t you just toss your heads down here – they’re solider than those little bitty rocks you’re playing with!”
“Oh? Why don’t you just come up and take our heads if you want them? Sturdy girl like you – shouldn’t give you any trouble at all! Some of us even have two heads – we could spare you one, I guess!” Their guffaws and bellowing began to rival the thunder in volume.
“Keep up that noise and you may find Thor coming to join your party,” taunted Gridhr. “Go on – yell louder! Maybe all that thunder is him on his way here!”
An uneasy silence fell among the rock-thursar.
Skadhi grabbed Gridhr by the arm. “Now you’ve done it, my girl,” she muttered in Gridhr’s ear. “They don’t like that one bit! Let’s go!”
Gridhr had to agree that this would be a good time to leave, but as they strode briskly away she nevertheless felt a satisfying sense that she had come out ahead in her encounter with the thursar.
“Cousin, one of these days your temper is going to get the better of you and you may find there is a high price to pay. Look back at all the occasions it’s grabbed you and led you where you might not have chosen to go. The Forebears know, I’ve not got a calm temper myself, but you really beat us all!”
“Oh, and who got us into that tangle with the Geirrodings, anyway?”
“Alright, that was my fault,” Skadhi acknowledged, “but I didn’t go into it because of temper…..it was true anger, seeing what they were doing to the land.”
“So you’re saying there’s a difference between temper and anger?”
“There is, Gridhr – a subtle difference but an important one. At least, there should be, though it’s hard for me to put into words.”
Gridhr plodded silently through the stormy night, unconvinced, and cherishing the warmth that her outbreak of “temper” had given her. The fact that they had to go out of their way to skirt the area where the thursar were, which had been their path, kept her temper simmering warmly until, just before dawn, they found a shallow cave to settle into for a few hours of sleep.
The rest of their ascent passed uneventfully, and a few days later Gridhr and Skadhi found themselves on a high ridge, gazing down into a plateau rimmed by further ridges in the distance. It was furred with dark evergreens, their outlines softened with rising mist from the damp, mossy ground, and spicy green scents wafted toward them on the breeze. The place seemed an inviting refuge after the cold, dry winds of the rocky heights. Clambering down the tumble of rocks and scree below them, they soon entered the gentler ground of the plateau and came to a sizeable stream that gave promise of fresh fish and watercresses. Gridhr prepared the campground while Skadhi hunted fish, and they happily celebrated their first fresh food in some time.
The next morning Gridhr awoke in the early dawn to quiet sounds of preparation around the campsite. Opening her eyes in expectation of seeing her cousin up early, she was startled to see, instead, a small, hairy individual breaking sticks and laying them carefully on the embers of last night’s fire. Hung over the newly-kindling fire was the leather bag-cauldron they used to cook their breakfast of oat grits and water.
Gridhr sat up and hissed, “Who are you?”
At the sound of her voice, Skadhi also sat up with a start and stared at the intruder. He seemed unperturbed by their hostile stares, remaining in his squatting position by the fire, and turned to look at them with small, bright eyes set deeply beneath tangled eyebrows.
“Don’t know a landwight when you see one, eh?” he said in a strange voice, quiet but hissing and rasping.
“A landwight? But what are you doing beside the fire? That is a housewight’s place…if there were a house here. I thought landwights stayed away from people.” Gridhr still felt sleepy and confused, and the dim, misty light didn’t help.
“Oh? So you think it’s only housewights who appreciate a warm fire from time to time, and a nice bowl of porridge? I smelled your campsite and reckoned I’d come and see what was to be seen.”
“See what was to be seen? Or eat what was to be eaten?” growled Skadhi.
“Look, I’ve started your fire going and have breakfast simmering over it. I’ve brushed around the campsite and have fresh water waiting for you. This is what a housewight does, right? And he’s given porridge for his efforts, preferably with butter or cream, but I don’t see any of that in your packs. That’s alright; I’ll settle for the porridge.”
“You’ve rummaged through our packs….” Skadhi rubbed her face tiredly and gave up. Wights went where they wanted and did as they pleased. She could have gotten rid of him by seriously threatening him, but she knew that he would lay a curse of bad luck on them if she did. All the wights who encountered them thereafter would notice the curse and make their lives a misery with mischief and thievery. It wasn’t worth it.
Gridhr’s attention had shifted suddenly away from the scene in front of her. A strange fluttering had started in her belly. Was she ill? She didn’t feel ill, just strange. She lay back and stared up at the sky, waiting to see if it came again. It did.
“Skadhi?” Gridhr interrupted Skadhi’s grumbles as she sifted through her pack to see if any of her belongings were missing. “I feel very strange.”
“What’s wrong? Are you ill?”
“I don’t think so, but my belly is quivering.”
Skadhi stared at her thoughtfully, then shifted her gaze to the landwight. They hadn’t yet eaten any of his cooking, so he could not have poisoned them. Had he cursed Gridhr?
The landwight held her gaze for a moment, then shuffled over to squat next to Gridhr and stared at her. Both Gridhr and Skadhi tensed to grab him if he showed any threat, but he ignored them and instead sniffed the air around Gridhr, taking his time about it.
“Babies,” he said, and returned to stirring the porridge.Gridhr and Skadhi looked at each other, then at the landwight. “Babies?”
“You’re carrying babies, right? Babies play, right? Well, there you are.”
Babies playing? Again the fluttering came, and suddenly Gridhr remembered hearing about this – the quickening, the first time a mother could feel her child in the womb. Was that what this was? For the first time, she wished she had an older woman of experience with her. Up until then, her childbearing had affected her so little that it had not occurred to her she would need any advice or help. Now she had it – in the shape of a landwight! A male one, at that! Gridhr shook her head at the strangeness that had pursued her ever since Odin had appeared to her all those weeks ago. Well, she would take good advice where she found it, and it was true that people often went to the landwights for rede. If the landwights felt well-treated they gave very good rede; if not, they led folk astray.
“I think he’s right, Skadhi, and I’d say he’s earned his porridge!” Gridhr grinned wryly at her.
“Alright, alright, master wight! You’re welcome to your porridge; eat it in good health! What shall we call you, anyway?”
The landwight gazed thoughtfully at them for a moment; then he grinned, showing his brownish, pointed teeth. “You can call me Porridge.”
Gridhr and Skadhi burst out laughing. “Porridge it is! Let’s eat,” Gridhr chuckled.
Porridge continued to take a very active interest in Gridhr’s babes as they journeyed, to the bafflement of Gridhr and Skadhi. He wasn’t female, he wasn’t even of their own folk, but from a very different tribe. Why would he care? They asked him about it several times, but he simply looked at them inscrutably, though once he said that they might know more about it later. His interest most often took the form of songs that he would sing to them, or teaching tales he told around the campfire in the evening, clearly addressing himself to the children in the womb. Sometimes he would even jabber to them animatedly in some unknown language, presumably landwight-speak, waving his hands, stamping, dancing, swaying, crooning, clicking, and vibrating his voice strangely.
Gridhr and Skadhi privately discussed his behavior, keeping in mind the mysterious but dangerous efforts of Gjalp and Greip to, apparently, attack the babes or steal something from them. Was Porridge up to the same kind of strange attack? But the two Jotynjur agreed that the whole feeling from the landwight was a healthy and well-intentioned one, and Gridhr could also feel the health and liveliness of her babes. Whatever the landwight was up to, it did not appear to be harmful, and it was clear that Porridge felt his actions were for the good of the children. Not to mention that it made him a lively and amusing companion on their way! Gridhr had no idea that the landwights possessed so much lore, and listened with interest to his tales and songs.
Their path took them far from all that Gridhr had known, through territory that was unfamiliar even to Skadhi. Though Skadhi had chanced before on Ironwood, she had not traveled by the route that their kinswomen had told them to take now. Gridhr never forgot the feeling of strangeness–of beauty and wonder, too, but always of strangeness –as she slept and woke in unfamiliar places with scents, sounds, sights that matched nothing she had known. Even, as they traveled north of east, the stars began to change, shaping new tales in the shining night sky that Gridhr had never before read. She and Skadhi spoke of them as they traveled, and Skadhi was able to tell her some of the strange sky-tales, but not all.
“Angeyja would know them,” Skadhi told her, “if you ever chance to come across her. Her knowledge of star-lore is told far and wide. But she is hard to find, as are many of the wise. Angrboda too might know. But I don’t know that you would care for her, or care for long speech with her, though we may well come across her in Ironwood.”
“Why is that?” asked Gridhr as they walked.
“She…..” Skadhi blew out her breath in a sigh of exasperation. “Angrboda–there is something very ill about her. She is a great shape-changer, and boasts that she will people the dark forests of the world with wild, hairy offspring of herself. Sometimes she has fits, and bellows at the sky in her hatred of Sunna and Mani–the Sun and Moon. In her fascination with the stars, she resents those greater lights for drowning them out with their shining. She is not fond of Jord, the Earth, either: it is said that Angrboda moans in her sleep and threatens to strangle her, hiding in the great circling sea of Midgard until she grows great enough to get a death-grip around mother Jord. And there are other rumors, worse even than these, that speak of Angrboda’s wish to descend to the holy world of Hel and rule the peaceful dead there, according to her own angry will. Those are the kinds of tunes Angrboda sings, though no one knows why, and they make folk uneasy.”
Gridhr could certainly see why, and shivered at the strange tale. Angrboda was someone she had no eagerness to meet, star-lore or no star-lore. She hoped they would stay far away from her. “Are there others like her in Ironwood?” she asked Skadhi in some trepidation.
Skadhi looked at her, sensing her uneasiness. “No, not really, Gridhr. There are quite a few other Jotunn-wives there, yes–enough so that there is a name for them: Jarnvidja–the Dwellers of Ironwood. But they are not all like her, though all of them are…..different, you might say. Jarnvidi is a place very much off the beaten track, and folk do not go there, nor choose to live there, without a reason that makes them rather different from the dwellers of settled Jotunnheim. Our kinswomen Ividja and Sveipinfalda live there too, as we know now from their telling, and while they are Jotunn-wives with strength of goodness and beauty of soul, still they are not like other folk–you must agree.”
Gridhr thought of these things as they walked, and wondered what they would find once they got to their destination. After all, she knew very little of the kinswomen they sought in trust and hope.
As they neared the boundaries of Ironwood, Porridge grew less lively, seeming uneasy and, as time went on, reluctant to go farther. He often disappeared for hours at a time, only reappearing when they made their camp for the night, and his tales changed from loud and lively to muttered and whispering, spoken mostly in his unknown tongue.
Soon after, a warm summer afternoon changed everything. Gridhr was striding along blithely, grateful for the shady trees, growing more dense as they approached the forest, when she felt a sudden dizziness and fell heavily to the ground. A strange, bell-like sound echoed in her head, her body buzzed, her stomach felt sick, and everything around her wavered in her sight. She was vaguely aware that Porridge briefly placed a trembling, long-fingered hand on her belly, muttered something, and was gone.
“Skadhi!” she called fearfully.
“Here!” Skadhi called back, though her voice sounded weaker than usual, and wavery.
“What’s happening? I feel so strange, I can hardly move.”
“Angrboda,” muttered Skadhi.
“What? I can’t hear you, Skadhi. Where are you?”
“Angrboda,” Skadhi repeated more loudly. “We must have reached the boundary of her steading. Here, let me help you up.” Her usual brisk stride was slow and shaky as she moved toward her cousin and helped her to her feet. “That was her boundary we felt, Gridhr, that knocked you to the ground.”
“What kind of a boundary is this? I see nothing around us like that.”
“You know what I think this is, Gridhr? She has her own little world here, partly separated from our world, and we fell into it.”
“What? How could…..”
“….And the fact that we did fall into it is not a good sign, Gridhr. The whole point of her boundary is to keep people away from her place. If it let us through, that must mean she wants us here, and that bodes no good for us. I’m worried that this is another trap like that of the Geirrodings, but Angrboda is far more powerful than they. You’ve got to pull yourself together, cousin. We have a fight ahead of us. Where is Porridge?”
“I felt him touch my belly, just after I fell, and then he was gone. He’s been so nervous and distracted lately, he must have known this was coming. I think he may be gone for good.”
“You’re probably right. This is not the kind of thing any of the smaller landwights can deal with, and it isn’t his journey, anyway.”
Even in the midst of looming danger, Gridhr felt sad at the thought of losing their wight-friend, but there was no time to think of it further. Ahead of them, Gridhr saw strange ripples in the air, as though a great, dark, underwater beast were swimming rapidly toward them through rough water.
“Angrboda! That must be her, that uncanny ripple in the air!”
Gridhr and Skadhi gripped their staves and prepared for battle, one such as Gridhr had never experienced. Angrboda came at them as a whirlwind, sweeping out of the ripple and twining them round in a wind of power. Howling and rushing filled the air, strange colors swirled around them, and Gridhr’s throat felt like it was stuffed with wool so that it was hard for her to speak or breathe. Her eyes blurred, her senses were confused.
She pushed her power, her megin, into and through her staff, and shoved it against Angrboda’s wind, but the megin was sucked out of her staff into the wind and only strengthened it further. It was impossible to call to Skadhi to ask her what to do, and in any case, judging from the violence of the whirlwind, it didn’t seem that Skadhi was having much more success than she was. Gridhr called frantically to her beast-friends, but they seemed unable to penetrate Angrboda’s boundary. A heavy branch, caught up in the whirlwind, whacked against her right shin which buckled from the blow; it felt broken. She was down on her knees now, trying to balance, trying to stay upright.
Gridhr felt shredded, blurred, as though she were disintegrating. She cast desperately around and within herself for anything to hold onto, to keep herself together against the withering blast. She did have a core, she did, she did…..and curled within it were her two children, bright with life. Somehow she must hold on, protect them at all costs, no matter what, no matter how. Bright with life, they were, brighter and brighter, shimmering and growing greater to her inner sight.
One of those bright lights began to turn from gold to red-gold, deepening its color, and as it did, Gridhr heard a low tone vibrating throughout her being that gave her a sense of hugeness, of great, echoing spaces full of power. Her throat cleared and that deep, echoing tone burst forth through her and into the wind. A bubble of stillness formed around her, shaped and held by the mighty galdor, the sung spell, that flowed from her throat on its own red-gold wind of power. Silence, blessed silence, surrounded her.
Still holding the note, Gridhr pushed more megin through her voice, seeking to extend the stillness to her cousin. Achingly slowly, the stillness spread farther, and there…! Skadhi was sheltered within it, too. She had fallen to the ground with her head against a rock, seeming unconscious, but Gridhr could not yet attend to her. Still holding to the red-gold light that poured forth the galdor, still focused on the children within her, Gridhr wondered what to do next. The whirlwind continued to batter the world outside her bubble.
The other light within her now changed its hue, turning from gold to a clear, deep blue, like the purest night sky just before the moon reaches up over the rim of earth. And within herself, Gridhr felt a call, high and clear, echoing through worlds upon worlds like a shooting star. For a moment, Gridhr was completely out of herself, out of that place, nothing more than a crystal bell echoing to that high call. Then gently as a feather, she floated back within herself again.
Outside the bubble, Gridhr heard baying and howling like a giant wolf. Gigantic shadows vaguely milled around, dim and blurred within the turning winds but shooting out sparks of light. There was a huge thump, as though a giant foot stamped down; then complete stillness. Gridhr fell swooning to the ground.
“Awaken!”
The high, distant voice echoed in her ears. Gridhr pulled her eyelids apart and saw that she was still surrounded by the red-gold glow, though there was no whirlwind wuthering around her now. But there was something….a redder, baleful gleam within the protective light. Eyes! There were a pair of black eyes, surrounded by bloody red, peering at her, accompanied by hissing curses. Gridhr shivered and flung up her hand against them.
“Ward! Ward!” she cried; the protective glow intensified, and the eyes and the hissing faded.
Gridhr suddenly remembered Skadhi and turned anxiously toward where she lay, unconscious. Gridhr saw now that the rock by Skadhi’s head was not anchored in the earth; it must have been caught up in the whirlwind and hit her in the head. Gridhr scooted over on her hams, not able to walk because of her broken leg, and felt around Skadhi’s head. There were no ominous soft spots and only a little blood; as Gridhr gently examined her, Skadhi groaned and opened blinking eyes.
Gridhr drew breath to speak to her, and then caught it back as she was again overcome by dizziness, wavering, ringing, nausea. Half-swooning, she closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she lay in a different place.