18. Forest
Forest
Imade a fool of myself.
Passing out the way I did, a prisoner to memories I’ve lived and can’t recall—It’s indecent.
And the way Nicholas and Wren had to take up the slack, drag me from the bookstore all the way to the shoddy little apartment.
And then losing myself on Helene’s bed...
Shoulders hunched against the rain and sleet, I head down the block until the dim glow of the town is a beacon in the blackness.
Then I shift.
The change floods my system with magic gifted, not inherent. Fingers shrink and turn the color of the space between stars. My face melts as the raven’s beak sharpens my nose, and I take off through the gloom, wings beating hard.
Wind batters me, and drives me askew along with the hail. Fools are out tonight.
And since I’m one of them, it makes perfect sense.
The unease of foreboding trails me out of town like a mob.
It’s not enough. The memories of our first meeting, of Helene walking like the first breath of spring across the battlefields of Asgard, aren’t enough. I have to know more. I have to know why—
What brought us to this location? What’s still left for me to discover in the empty holes in my head? And why are there gaps in the first place?
If I’m meant to unearth the memories then why aren’t they all coming back to me at once?
The raven’s cry scalds my throat.
I dive through the rain, the slushy mix coating roads until they’re perilous for anyone stupid enough to leave their homes tonight. Soon the peak of the old colonial house, tipped with a rust eaten weathervane, swims into view through the storm.
Another sharp kraa sees me flying through the space between peeling columns and changing in one breath. I land as a man, the rafters raining down dust and moisture from boards in need of replacement.
A keen twist and the antique brass knob clicks, the door creaking open to the rental.
I had adequate awareness to procure the site for myself, near Helene even prior to understanding her or her significance. How?
With a thought, magic ignites the wick of the kerosene lamp and casts the parlor into half-light.
Between sagging couches and an empty hearth this room holds more than brittle pages. My den of treasures. My safe spot for this latest round of trials before the wheel of fate crushes us all.
Again.
How long have I rented this dwelling? How many times have I been here? With Helene? With the rest of them?
I bend at the waist and grip the handles of a steamer trunk, prying it out from the lowest berth of an armoire. The pelt from dead game drapes over the top as I drag it to the sofa and push open the lid.
I’ve never understood why I kept Sigrún’s notebooks. Only that it was important I did. All her ink has faded to brown, the words of fate and fire.
A new and different type of memory keeper.
Stacks of journals draw me forward, the covers inlaid with pressed flowers.
The first journal holds the remains of Myosotis, Forget-Me-Not.
A thought and magic banishes age, restoring the flower to its former glory, each word preserved from the ravages of time.
A second thought fills the hearth with flame. Flames roars to life only to deepen the shadows.
“Bless Sigrún for her accounts,” I mutter.
My voice echoes back to me eerily, followed by a clang of thunder. I grip the book and squeeze tight enough to turn the pages to sawdust. With a careful breath, I loosen my hold.
This never gets any easier, the calling in my bones, the inner monologue in my head to push me forward. A sound without words.
One thing I can’t forget? Her.
Her face, her smile, the energy of her soul, a twin to mine.
Kissing her in the store had been a wish fulfillment and a lure home. Fighting with her was everything. We moved as a unit, our movements mirroring each other.
Does she know it, too?
I shouldn't have left.
“A detail of the lives we lost.” I glance at the other journals, hundreds of them, a call from every lifetime.
A fallen Valkyrie’s account of meddling gods.
There is nothing they do best if not interfere with any and all they see as under their fist. No matter where one goes in the Nine Realms, there they are. Permeating their power through the worlds.
Poisoning the tree.
And with the veil thinning...
But that’s not my thought. Is it? The veil? It’s another's worry.
Wind batters the boards of the house. This is better than some apartment in the town center, isn’t it? I chose it for its combination of proximity and isolation.
The realization thins and solidifies. I remember dark wood and metal. Shelf upon shelf of books and trinkets I’ve collected over the years.
A high attic loft, where I can take off from the widow’s walk.
I kick the trunk lid closed. These journals belong in a museum where some modern beast has been built to preserve history. Like me.
I’m a relic from a time gone by.
Me and the pages, the careful notes here.
Disoriented, I collapse on the couch, knees weak and ankles crossing.
“And what will reading about the past do, Forest Ulfson?” I sneer at myself, at the journal. “The words are faded and the memories worse, nothing but a thin layer of dust between me and the weight of the years.”
The earliest journals are a lost language. Something the gods took back.
I know I’ve learned it firsthand, and every second I’m alive is another reminder.
I gently lift the cover and an additional pressed flower falls on my lap. A lotus, brought by traders, the bloom unable to survive the harsh climate where I first met Helene.
Lotus...
It’s not natural to the gods of Asgard, but a symbol regardless. The lotus emphasizes the cycles of rebirth and the inevitable unfolding of destiny.
A shudder claws through me, and I flip to the next page.
Line after line of symbols stretch to the margins neatly. Audra, Sigrún, whoever she was when she began writing, kept the same habit in each of her lifetimes.
How has my memory returned in part but not Helene’s?
How can I picture Audra penning these journals in stolen moments around campfires, or behind bars, but not Helene?
I’ve salvaged the words for a reason.
This trunk, the others...I’ve hoarded thousands of pages on the struggles of two women, but for what purpose?
Life after life, their two souls have cycled the other, their vows of protection looping them together for eternity. The story is the same, no matter how the language differs or the handwriting.
It’s loss and it’s grief.
And beyond it, always at the center of the tale, is love.
The ache in my chest spreads, and my veins pump hot blood through frigid limbs. Through it all, we come back to one other.
I remember.
Despite the burn in my eyes, I keep reading. I devour one journal and move on to the next, this one with the pressed and desiccated head of a dandelion tucked between the pages.
I can’t...
It’s too much.
I collapse on the sofa shivering, visions swimming in my head. Sigrún paints a picture of lives not necessarily well-lived but necessary. They all build on the last.
Struggle. Hardship.
And before them all, a battlefield, with the acrid metallic tang of blood congealing in the sun. A dry wind rips over the grass and rattles the strands. The dead lie still, and the ravens circling overhead are brethren, my kin. My kind.
I was chosen.
My arms ache to shift, but my mission is clear. I’m tasked to commit this to memory, the great battle of man.
To learn it, remember it, nothing else.
But her...
She’s there, a vision. A warrior of skill but compassion, which is rare.
Women are no stranger to war. They are often as brutal as the berserkers or more so.
And Helene, my god, she tends the wounded.
She flashes me a smile, and the image of her lips, her lifted cheeks, brings another memory to mind.
Those lips on my neck the night before.
Her hands wrapped around my cock and guiding me into her body like a welcome to sanctuary.
It’s all coming back.
Centuries of isolation and loneliness, remembering, only to lose it all.
Sweat beads along my forehead. The journal falls open on my abdomen, bucking with the uneven tick of my lungs.
The loss lives inside of me. I’ve always felt it and never understood why. The love, yes, always the love as well. Need, joy...and sorrow. Without fail.
Why, though?
Rolling to my side brings no comfort and the book slides back into the trunk, landing on an angle. A few more pressed flowers fall free, and the rune etched into the spine is a dull reminder of…
…everything.
The glyph, Ansuz (?)—memory, breath, divine messages. My curse makes me forget her with every death.
Another lock clicks open inside of me. The curse, skitr. That’s it. The ancient symbols, the patterns I missed, the omens, they lead back to the same singular event.
A silver haired man stared hard at me through his one eye, the orb burning an unholy blue. “You would ask this of me?”
His bellow rattles the rafters of his golden hall, and I cower.
Knees aching from kneeling, I latch my gaze on the mosaic floor, as though it’s the only anchor in this desolate space. As though it’s capable of shielding me.
It isn’t.
“Don’t give her away,” I begged it of him, throat dry, voice cracking. “Don’t send my Valkyrie to be with a human. The marriage is a sham, and you know it. How could you order it? He’s unworthy. He is Níeingr.”
Odin laughed. “Your Valkyrie? You would claim her?”
My guts tightened. “She’s mine. She pledged herself to me.”
“The woman is not yours if she can’t be faithful.”
“The others—” I began.
“Lay the same entitlement to her as you. Yes, she is a warrior of the highest caliber, but she will make a better wife to this Yarl than she will to you or them. It is her purpose, and it is my desire. You will mark it as you do everything else in existence.”
I flinched.
The argument scalded my throat, but it was too late. Nothing I said penetrated the thick wall the AllFather erected. His word was law, the mightiest of the Asgardians. And who was I? I was nothing.
I would be nothing more than my station and assigned only that title at his mercy.
I should have known how no amount of begging would sway him. His moods and whims were capricious, yet he condemned Loki for the same mercurial nature.
And I certainly should have known she would never agree to the match, to be stripped of her status and given away as a meager bride.
She was cursed, as well as me.
“No.” I stood, shoulders proud. “No more. She is mine.”
Odin considered me. “You would disgrace your position? My esteem?”
For her?
I had walked as a man, exiled from the god’s favor, wandering aimless. Then accepting the role. Now I wondered if it was better not to be found than to endure this.
There was nothing I could do to protect her. Nothing besides instinct and soul deep recognition, a knowing that I’d burn down whatever pantheon stands in my way before I let anything harm her.
I stood in the great hall with Odin before the air sucked free of the room, the two of us pulled into a vacuum of his magic.
Odin landed us in his great chamber of Valhalla with another laugh, this one darker and gruffer.
He clapped me on the shoulder and pushed me in front of him. “Then see what it is you’re choosing. What you have to lose.”
Magic drew his warriors to him, pulling them from their missions and leaving the souls of the worthy to perish and head straight down to Helheim.
“Hellevi!” The AllFather bellowed her name. “Step forward.”
She did so after only a brief hesitation with her chin lifted and golden hair obscured by a Valkyrie’s helmet. My heart gave a lurch to claw through my ribs and reach her.
I pulled free from Odin, and his sorcery stalled me in my tracks, pinned my lips shut.
Ek ann tér, Hellevi. I love you. She knew. She had to know.
Her gaze whipped to mine and lingered a second too long.
“Good news, child. I’ve changed my mind.” Odin held court.
A hush fell over the room.
Then the barriers melted. Valhalla faded away to a smaller hall with soot-darkened walls and a rough stone fireplace belching a paltry heat against the frigid north winter. At the head of the room stood a man in traditional ceremonial garb, his hands clasped in front of him.
A rust-stained sword hung from his belt, beard a tangle, braids decorated with small bones.
At Odin’s appearance, he collapsed to his knees.
My heart dropped with the motion.
“You will not serve as your sisters to guide the souls of the fallen. Instead, meet your husband to be. The petty feud between the Yarl and his enemy cost the lives of many innocents and has come to resolution thanks only to this man and his bravery.”
I shuddered. Yes, the feud ended, but what was the price? Was the price paid with people, and who started the argument in the first place?
The Yarl is unworthy.
Odin should not have forgotten this, should never have forgiven it, let alone rewarded it.
Or perhaps he remembered, but it was a sickening joke he chose to play.
Hellevi stood before the Yarl in his finery, still wearing her Valkyrie armor. Our eyes locked and this time her eyes held terror and a low-burning fury.
I tried to shake my head and tell her to run. To wait for my cue to detach free and we would fight against the gods themselves, damn them all.
My own anger burned the hottest fuel. Never had I hated the man who owned me, who worked me. I did that day.
Hellevi scoffed in Odin’s face. “Marry a man without honor? To do so would run counter to everything I am, will ever be, make a mockery of my life. An Argr." She spit. “He cannot pull his own weight.”
Odin bristled with power.
The bridegroom opened his mouth, his fat cheeks ruddier as he struggled to his feet. “You’d refuse me?”
A public embarrassment. The AllFather never stands for it. Odin would punish every single body in this room to maintain his pride. His magic pulled at me, a tide ebbing away from a black shore.
“Ek ann tér, Ulfson” Hellevi shouted, pulling her attention from me a final time and in the same breath—
Her sword.
It couldn’t end this way. She wasn’t the only one refusing. I tore free of the thrall but it was too late. Dealing with Odin, it was always too late.
The curse...
A shout drags me out of memory. Mine.
I swallow past the rawness in my throat. No amount of compulsive swallowing soothes the burn. Waking from the memory is like swimming through tar. Emotions drown and bind me in suffering.
With a low swear, I swipe my palm to my sweat slicked face.
The details specific to the curse swim at the periphery of my awareness. Somehow, she was cursed, and I lost my position as Odin’s raven.
Muninn. The raven of Memory. My job was to carry Odin’s memories across the realms, to maintain his fountain of knowledge. Without a Muninn, the AllFather had nothing. I’d been chosen.
How does it tie into Hellevi?
No, Helene.
The ache has returned unrelieved. Whatever the specifics, that is where my answers are. Wherever it hurts the most.