Chapter Three
Three Years Later
It’s trash day. The best day of every month.
I get to spend the entire afternoon with the hound. I’m quite fond of him, not that anyone would ever know it.
“Stay behind, beast,” I command imperiously as we descend the last of the root steps passing from Niflheim into Midgard, the realm of humans. Asgard and Alfheim are far above, but Odin has eyes everywhere, black wings on the wind. I can never be sure.
We pass through fields thick with rye, tall enough to conceal the two of us, and only when the skies are clear and no one else is around do I let my hand stray to his head.
I’d scratch behind his ears or trail my hand down his neck if I was braver, but this is all I allow myself.
I’m afraid to press for more. Too intimate.
“You think they bought it?”
He nudges against my leg with a snuffle, and I laugh, nearly knocked off balance by his size.
We enter the same cave as always and set a small fire.
It took two years for me to dare follow him rather than part ways after the trash duty. He always split off from the pack, and it intrigued me. One day, I just continued following him into the cave.
He tried snarling at me again to chase me off, but I stood my ground. After a tense standoff, he changed. In a flash of fur and feral sounds, a naked boy appeared. I didn’t see that coming. He is a shifter. Not a powerful shapeshifter like Father, but rather something between hound and human.
That was the day I learned his name.
Garmr.
Today, after reaching the back room of the cave, I light a torch in the back. Only then does he shift. After a hideous cracking of bones and long howl, a man of eight and ten unfolds before me. He’s naked as the day he was born, but that is nothing new.
“You’re hurt,” I say, just stopping myself from reaching out to touch the long gash from his shoulder to his ribs.
I work hard not to show anything beyond mild curiosity.
It is only by chance and doggedly following him around that I’ve learned a few of his secrets.
Such as, he’s a shifter. Also, this cave holds his mother’s grave, and each month there are new glass beads and gifts left beside it.
Odin’s hounds are not people. They have no personal belongings, so Garmr lets me have the beads each month. To me, he is the dearest of friends, perhaps my only one. But to him? I’m sure we are little more than compulsory companions.
He is beautiful and cursed.
I am a goddess bound for tragedy.
All I have are the hours I steal with him in the dark. It will never be more than this. I am sure of it. My life was never promised a happy ending. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“It’s nothing, Hel.” He shakes his head and rolls his injured shoulder, turning to wrap a cloth around his waist. Despite living as a hound every other day of the month, his modesty remains. Perhaps more for my sake than his. I never ask. “Another match with some new warriors. It is what it is.”
My teeth clench. Odin loves to pit Valhalla’s newly arrived slain warriors against his hounds to test their mettle. It makes me sick, the carnage and violence, purely for entertainment.
Garmr doesn’t speak much about being a hound. I’ve often wondered, is he the only shifter or are they all? Who else knows about him? But I use my questions sparingly.
We settle beside the mound and start tonight’s fire.
Our work for the day is done, dragging the detritus that clogs the well to a fire along the sea.
The gods throw their bones and leavings down the well of Yggdrasil, but it begins to smell, and once a month, Sif sits on the floor of Valhalla and braids the hounds into her hair.
She lowers them gently down the well, and with their mighty teeth, they gnash at the ancient stones until every bit of stuck trash falls below, where a net above Alfheim catches everything they don’t manage to consume.
It’s how Garmr found Níehoggr all those years ago and saved him for me. Odin’s punishment ended up being my greatest blessing, tasking Garmr and I to drag the gods’ trash to Midgard to burn. Odin hates the smell and humans are easy to confuse.
The first fire is a fast thing, which leaves us an entire afternoon to sit at his mother’s grave and just . . . well, we talk.
It’s wonderful.
Not that he needs to know that.
Garmr picks up a wooden vessel set beside the wall, bulbous with a thin neck. He looks inside the opening, sniffs it, then brings it to his mouth and gulps.
“Uh—” I throw a hand out to make him stop, but his throat works through three long swallows before he sets it, and himself, down in a big, cross-legged heap.
“Good stuff.” His grin is lopsided. He pokes at the fire, rousing it just so. The easy nature of that smile, still present on his face, makes me bold.
“Why did you used to growl at me?” I ask. It’s something I’ve wondered for so long but never dared to ask. Can he sense my evil nature? Has Odin poisoned him against me? Am I quite ugly?
“Valhalla is not safe for you.”
That . . . is not what I expected. My face must betray my surprise. Restraint is my hallmark, and I lose it around him. It is annoying, and my hackles rise. My hands press at my hair on both sides, ensuring everything is in its right place.
“I fear no god nor creature here or elsewhere.”
It’s a lie. I am scared often, nearly daily. Father has only taught me to conceal it well. Hold the coldness tight inside. Hold the rage even tighter. Keep it secret. Make it a precious thing that fuels me. Never let them see the real feeling.
“I found that out, didn’t I?” he says, and the sound of his chuckle makes me dizzy. “I'd hoped to scare you away from a place full of gods who hate you. Come to find out, you knew all along, and you don’t scare easy.”
“You should be afraid of me.”
There’s still a handsome grin on his face, and for some reason it’s grown. There are three lines on each side of his mouth. He looks so lovely in this form, it makes me, oddly, angry.
“Why are you not?” I ask.
“You are of death. At least, that is what the gods say in their halls. So is my mother. She passed away giving me life.” He glances from the flames to me and the firelight dances across his dark eyes. “I wonder, do you know her? Her name is Sigrid.”
I shake my head. “Humans die and are no more. If they go somewhere, it is unknown.”
“Unknown.” He cocks his head, not unlike the hound he is every other day.
He didn’t expect that answer. No. He didn’t expect me to not know.
I am of death. The rumors whispered among the gods must be so loud that even the hounds must hear.
The princess of death. It was an insult Hother said one day that stuck.
So maybe I smell like the earth, and perhaps I like to tinker with dead animals.
It’s to bring them back to life, not that they’ll ever know that.
I should have concealed my lack of knowledge from Garmr. It’s best if he thinks I know things. I am a goddess after all. This time with him is disarming, the secret and intimacy of it all. It makes me soft.
"She's not gone,” he continues, patting the ground. “I feel her still."
What do I say to that? It is a touch of human madness in him, surely. They die and are no more. Everyone knows that.
“You're drawn to the well,” he says, glancing up at me, snaring me with his gaze. He watches me, I realize with a start. Not just here, but back on Yggdrasil, when he shouldn’t be. Is it as much as I watch him? “I've seen you casting objects in it. Are they cursed?”
They're trash, I think. Just things my fingers pick up and drop for no reason. A seed. A needle. A flower. A coin.
“Blessed,” I say, bluffing like my life depends on it. Another lie. I’m not thinking straight. That one was for no reason. No, it was to impress him.
His face softens. I let out the smallest exhale, knowing he bought it.
“You're scared of the well,” he says. “How deep does it go?”
“It is unknown,” I answer. Wait, he said I was scared?
“If I could fly like you, I would go.”
“I'm not afraid.” I bristle.
“So you would go with me?” he asks, one corner of his mouth tilting up, the same way Father’s does when he talks to those he’s charming. My cheeks flash hot. Is he-? He leans forward. “You’d keep me safe?”
I swallow. He’s talked me into a corner. Father would be disappointed to see this.
“Only trash goes down the well.” Charm was never my strong suit.
“You’re scared.”
“I fear nothing.” This conversation is veering wildly off track.
“No man nor creature, you said. But the well was not on your list. I fear many a man, god, and creature. Yet I would travel down there in a moment if I could. It is the only place she might be.”
His mother. His dead human mother consumes his thoughts. How tragic. “I like you alive much better.”
His eyebrow crooks and he stirs the fire until sparks dance between us. “High praise, my lady.”
He flicks a bead across the dirt floor toward me.
“Who leaves these here?” I ask, emboldened to ask more questions than ever before.
“My grandmother.”
“For you?”
He shrugs. “For me. Or her. Or something else entirely. I do not know.”
“How did you end up in Asgard?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I had trouble as a young boy in my village. I ran away one day, and Odin’s wolfhounds found me.
I turned.” His fingers snap together. “Like that. No explanation. But it was easy, so easy to run with them. Much easier than . . .” His arm sweeps to the outside, the golden light of afternoon turning dusk streaming in.
“The hounds know I'm different. I think, at least. They sleep at the hearth of the gods.
They speak a simpler tongue with simpler thoughts.
I sleep dug into the ground. I still speak as a human and think . . .
I imagine him running away, lost and confused. “Like a boy.”
“A man,” he says.
“Odin knows?” I ask. He must. The All-Father has eyes everywhere.
“I would be dead. A beast in his hall is one thing. A human? Little better than mud?” He scoffs.
“Sometimes I wish he'd find out. Throw me down the well once and for all. Perhaps death is a kinder place.” He takes another swig of the drink left at the grave.
“This makes my tongue loose. My mind spins.
I know you said a dead human is neither here nor there, but I swear to you, Hel.
She's still here. She's a heartbeat in the ground.”
His eyes are wide and flashing. This is the most he’s ever said to me. I feel as drunk as he must be.
“The earth is the connection.” I clap a hand over my mouth and mumble, “I mean, what do I know?”
“Is it?” He scoots around and grabs my hands. Gods, he’s warm and so much larger than me. His heart is a terrible drum. “The princess called death. You are the daughter of the cleverest of them all. You must know.”
“I know so little in truth,” I whisper. “The earth and life and death.” None of this Father taught me.
It’s only what I feel when I stitch together animals and make my little pets.
“What if the earth is all one connected thing? Never lives. Never dies. Only cycles. And we’re all connected.
” I shake my head and try to pull away, but he holds me fast. Our fingers are entwined, both muddy and work used.
It feels nice to have someone to talk to.
He must think I’m mad with the way I ramble on, not careful with my words at all. I look up and that’s not what I see.
Only connection. Understanding.
Perhaps we’re both touched by madness then, burdened with questions no one can answer. His secrets are safe with me. Perhaps mine are as well. I peer up at him and whisper my ignorance, something I never admit to anyone, even Father. “Is it terrible that I don’t really know?”
His solid grip squeezes my fingers. It feels nice. “If you call it terrible, that tells me one thing is certain.”
“What?”
“One day you will.”