Part 3: Chapter 6: Norsalicious Backstory Herein
Hopefully not too boring?
Chapter 6: Witches’ Ball
At nine-thirty, the Crays’ front door closed. By ten, the last guests had been shepherded through the scare-house, past the candle-lit mirror, and into their parties - the young people to the basement, the adults to a politer cider-and-doughnuts gathering in the parlor.
The caterers and cleaners Aunt Valerie had hired went to work dismantling the house of horrors with their brooms and scrubbers and garbage bags. While Imogen blew out the two candles, Stephen pulled off his Headless Man costume and disappeared into the kitchen.
Imogen knew Aslaug was hiding in there. She cocked one eye at the doorway and then headed the other way, downstairs to the basement. She saw no reason to remove her hunchback costume, even if the black hood did make her look like a hangman. It was nice to be incognito for a change.
The vast basement was only about a quarter finished. A decade ago, Aunt Valerie had used her own money to fit out one end with maple floorboards, built-in bookcases, couches, a television, a woodstove, and a small hot tub and cedar sauna. Because there were no walls, only a curtain on a long rod, anyone who used these amenities was conscious of being very close to the dark, unimproved part of the basement, with its rough stone walls and vaulted ceiling and cranking furnace and piles of stored crates and trunks and musty smells. Val didn’t mind at all, but neither Imogen nor Fiona liked watching TV down there alone.
It was perfect for a Halloween party. The curtain had been removed and the rod strung with life-sized, clattering skeletons and fuzzy fake spiders and bats. The ancient crates and trunks had been pushed to the sides and stacked high. The hot tub was full and steaming like a witch’s cauldron, surrounded by leering Jack o’ Lanterns. The plasma TV played slasher movies on a loop, while the couches had been replaced by folding tables that groaned under the weight of candy apples and popcorn balls and sugar skulls from Mexico and doughnuts and coffee and spicy cider and a pyramid of black-and-orange-frosted cupcakes from the best bakery in the city. Between the tables, a manhole-sized real iron cauldron sat on a fake fire, full of fizzy punch made with fresh limes and cranberries, the exact color of blood.
Imogen ladled herself a glass and made a face. Somebody had spiked it, all right. She took another swallow.
Never in her life had she seen more than a handful of people in the basement. Now it was positively crowded, full of juniors and seniors and a few sophomores and freshmen who had managed to slip through the cracks, though they weren’t supposed to have been sold tickets. You couldn’t walk more than a step without treading on somebody’s superhero cape or brushing against fake fur. Imogen noted that most of the girls were dressed as something sexy: cats in bodysuits and ears, Catwoman, old-fashioned Playboy Bunnies in flowing puce or magenta negligees, fembots in miniskirts and boots. She told herself she was grateful for her warm, concealing Quasimodo get-up.
Over on the unfinished side, on the concrete floor, people were dancing to the silly mix of pop and novelty Halloween songs Valerie had made - mostly groups of girls, egged on by boys who stood on the sidelines. The tables were a sloshy mess. Girls made little laughing screamy sounds when they encountered Valerie’s decorations, some of which came from her friend at a movie special-effects house in California: a severed head holding a lighted candle in its gaping mouth, with skin that felt real; furry prop rats and tarantulas; a bowl full of human intestines and kidneys that looked wet but proved to be just shiny latex; a miniature blood-stained guillotine.
No one noticed the little hooded hunchback. They were too busy having fun. Imogen saw some of the basketball players contorting their huge forms over a deep steel vat, bobbing for apples. From the way the people around them were cheering and screeching (“Go Jakey! Bite that big red one! Bite it!”), she suspected that vat had been spiked with something, too.
As she watched, Billy Corcoran elbowed aside the basketball players. He thrust his dark, curly head into the vat and came up nearly a minute later with a Granny Smith between his jaws, wet down to his shoulders and panting. The girls chanted, “Bill-ee, Bill-ee!” The speakers on the walls sang: In the after-life, you better be ready for some serious strife…
Billy removed the apple from his mouth and handed it to one of his fans, who took a bite. Despite his triumph, he was not smiling.
Imogen followed his eyes to a spot on the dance floor, right where the stacked crates began. Kristen Hawke sat on one of them, her legs dangling in pink tights. She kept her hands resting on the waist of Jeremy Bliss, who stood in front of her, and the pair swayed back and forth in a rhythmic way that could perhaps be called dancing, though it had nothing to do with the song.
Both Jotun touched, Imogen thought. Does Billy know? Does he guess that’s why they’re together?
She felt like a doctor giving a diagnosis - and that was part of what had changed tonight. What had seemed like superstition, and maybe half a silly, scary game like Bloody Mary, had become a matter of testable facts. She had seen the eyes in the mirror herself. She had marked them on the list.
“You find all your witches?” said a hoarse voice behind her.
Imogen whipped around and stared into the slitted eyes of Orin Crenshaw, the red-haired boy who had picked the fight with Stephen back in September. The one who lived in the trailer park. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel jacket, carrying a hockey mask in one hand and a real pitchfork in the other. He looked as if he knew exactly who she was.
“Find what?” she asked. “And who exactly are you supposed to be?”
“Witches,” said Orin. He had a mountain man’s accent, and he smiled a thin, bleak smile, but it wasn’t as hostile as she’d expected. “And who I am is Jason Vorhees, from Friday the 13th, parts two, three and on to infinity.”
“I know who Jason is. I didn’t know he had a pitchfork.
“If he don’t, he should,” said Orin. “Bet you’re wondering how I knew about the witches’ test.”
She shrugged.
“My grand-mama who lived way out in Fauve Woods, she told me. If you had a visitor after dark you wasn’t expecting, even a friend, you’d make ’em look in the mirror between the candles. Common sense, she said. Said it was the only way to know for sure they were who they said they were.”
“And not a witch?” said Imogen. It was getting hot under the hood, and she took it off and tossed her sweaty hair. In a party like this, she was fairly sure no one would notice her, even though she was the hostess. No one but Orin.
“Witch, ghost, goblin, whatever,” said Orin, still smiling. There was a glint of something deeper in his smile, possibly an actual sense of humor. “Or ice ghost,” he added. “They hide in the mountains, right?”
“Never heard of those. What do they do in the summer?”
Orin shrugged. “Go deeper in the mountain, I figure. Always cold in there. Anyways, ’m I one?”
She didn’t understand, but only leaned closer. He repeated, “Am I one?”
“Mmm,” said Imogen. He was beginning to make her uncomfortable, and she decided it was safer to tell the truth. “No.”
“Sure?” She could smell tobacco on his breath. “’Cause sometimes, see, a person doesn’t even know.”
“You’re not a witch.”
“How’s your friend? He recovered yet from being my punching bag?”
“I remember it happening differently.”
“He’s freakin’ nuts,” said Orin. “Takes stones to stand there and let somebody hit you. Am I a mountain ghost?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” He relaxed his bony jaw and began drifting away from her. “That goth chick has my pal Billy whipped good and proper. It makes you wonder. About all of them.”
“Are you talking about Kristen Hawke?”
But Orin only bobbed his head and drifted farther. “Wicked good party, huh? Thanks for havin’ me.”
Imogen wanted to tell Stephen about this conversation. She went upstairs with plans to get him alone and ask if he thought Orin Crenshaw might be a threat, and if so, what they should do. There was no point in alarming Aslaug, who took everything too seriously.
But when she found them in the kitchen, she realized a private conference would be dicey. Fiona had joined them and was devouring a cupcake with a rapt expression, oblivious to the caterers rinsing their steel trays in the sink. The teapot steamed in the center of the round table.
“That’s your fourth,” said Stephen, who was perched on the edge of the butcher’s block with one of Fiona’s books open in his hand. “How do you stay so skinny?”
“I count her fifth!” said Aslaug, and giggled. “Go on, OK, Stephen? I need to know.” She sat with an afghan around her shoulders and her long legs drawn up and crossed in the chair, both hands gripping a mug.
Imogen had a funny feeling, as if she were invisible. They looked like they’d been here for hours, which made her wonder exactly how long she had been wandering around the party, talking to nobody but Orin Crenshaw. She could feel the floorboards shivering under her feet and hear faint laughter and squeals. None of the other three seemed to notice.
Stephen read from the book, “Now no one thought himself capable of understanding why Brynhild had requested with laughter the deed that she now lamented with tears.”
Aslaug looked up then and saw Imogen. She almost looked straight at Imogen, but dropped her eyes at the last minute. Imogen could see they were glistening, and her cheeks were pink. “We’re reading this weird old story,” she said. “It’s about Sigurd. It’s badly written, but it’s so sad. It explains about being Jotun-touched.”
“It’s not badly written,” said Fiona. “It’s a central Norse saga.”
“Well, it kind of goes all over the place. Like a soap opera, but with no continuity,” said Aslaug. “It’s making me sad anyway. It’s not poetry, so I can actually understand what happened. The Norse were into fate, weren’t they?”
Stephen slammed the book shut, though Imogen noticed he kept his place. “Want me to go on, or not?”
“Let’s tell Imogen what happened, first,” said Aslaug.
Imogen considered plowing ahead and telling them about Orin Crenshaw. But Stephen would bristle if she mentioned his name, and Aslaug and Fiona would need to be told all about the fight, which would embarrass Stephen further. The last thing she wanted was to make him miserable when he actually seemed to be having fun. “What’s the book?” she asked.
“Saga of the Volsungs,” said Stephen. “It’s just one version, you know - the poetry one is older and better. But this one’s pretty easy to understand. I’m reading her the part about Sigurd and how he met his doom.”
So Imogen sat down at the table and poured herself a cup of tea, and listened while Aslaug retold the story with Stephen and Fiona helping. It was a complicated story, because there were alternate versions of several parts. “Like deleted scenes on a DVD,” said Aslaug. “Or fanfiction.”
Fiona rolled her eyes at the mention of fanfiction, and Stephen looked mystified. But the comparison must have helped Aslaug, because she managed to streamline the story and stick to the important parts. It went like this:
Once there was a beautiful princess named Brynhild who was a woman warrior, and also a witch skilled in runes. Brynhild had never loved a man until she met Sigurd, slayer of the dragon Fafnir, who saw her standing in a tower and liked her looks. So he came to her dad’s castle to chat her up. Brynhild gave him a gold cup, and they kissed and made out. She told him they were fated not to be together. But Sigurd ignored this and swore eternal love. (“Men,” said Fiona.)
What happened next was not clear. But something did. A few chapters later, after Sigurd had gone MIA, off on another dragon-slayery-type quest, Brynhild asked her relatives to take care of her daughter, whose name was Aslaug. It was the first and last time this name appeared in the book.
Brynhild had to abandon Aslaug because her father was trying to find her a husband. Rather than marry anyone who wasn’t Sigurd, she chose to run away and go to sleep inside an eternal fire that burned on top of a hill. (Apparently this was something warrior maidens could just do.) Only the man who was her true love would be able to walk safely through the flames.
Imagine Brynhild’s surprise when she was woken by a handsome stranger. His name was Gunnar, and though he wasn’t Sigurd, Brynhild felt obliged to marry him. She figured destiny worked in strange ways. She even gave him a ring.
Now it just so happened, in a totally soap-opera way, that Gunnar was best friends with Sigurd. After Gunnar brought Brynhild out of the flames and married her, Sigurd stepped right up and married Gunnar’s pretty sister Gudrun. And these two couples proceeded to move in together and become perhaps the world’s most dysfunctional family.
The trouble started when Gudrun, who obviously sensed some kind of chemistry between Sigurd and Brynhild, showed Brynhild a ring her husband had given her. Brynhild recognized it instantly. It was the engagement ring she thought she’d given to Gunnar, her husband.
Gudrun now informed Brynhild that her mother the queen, who was a powerful witch, had tricked Sigurd by giving him a drink that made him forget his old love. Once Sigurd had forgotten Brynhild, he was eager to marry Gudrun. (“Men,” said Fiona again.) The queen asked him for just one thing in return: to win Brynhild for Gunnar, which he could do by taking Gunnar’s shape and walking through the flames. He would demand a love token. Then he would let the real Gunnar step in and enjoy the reward.
So buff, heroic Sigurd had used magic to disguise himself, just as Loki would do. He succeeded where the real Gunnar would have failed, because he was Brynhild’s true love, as the Fates decreed. This was his treachery.
When Brynhild got this news from the gloating Gudrun, she became depressed. Nothing gave her pleasure, and she wished she were still safely asleep in the flames. She was angry at Gudrun for gloating, angry at Gunnar for being forced on her, and angriest at Sigurd, who had humiliated her, treating her like a doll the two men could pass back and forth.
So Brynhild told her in-laws it was time to kill Sigurd.
She was very persuasive. She told them Sigurd had disrespected her. Then she told them they would be lily-livered wusses if they didn’t, which was all a true warrior needed to hear in those days.
Gunnar’s younger brother agreed to do the hit. He waited till Sigurd was fast asleep, because otherwise he would have been frozen in place by the hero’s piercing eyes. Then he threw a spear so hard it nailed Sigurd to the bed. Not to be outdone, the mangled Sigurd woke and tossed a sword with such force that it bisected his assassin at the waist. Then he died.
You might think all this blood would satisfy Brynhild. No. When she heard Gudrun cry at the sight of the corpse, she laughed. Then she cried bitter tears. In the world of the Vikings, no one acted like this unless they had gone off the deep end.
But crazy people have their own magic and must be treated with care. Brynhild stabbed herself under the arm and demanded that a pyre be built where her corpse and Sigurd’s could burn side by side. It was built. Then Brynhild demanded that the son of Sigurd and Gudrun be killed so he could burn beside his father. He was slain and laid on the pyre, over Gudrun’s horrified protests. (“A little kid,” said Aslaug, her eyes filling with tears.)
Luckily, before Brynhild could make any more requests, she bled out and died. And that was the end of the true lovers.
There was more to the soap opera, about Gudrun’s next marriage. But Stephen said it wasn’t important. “Those people all died almost two thousand years ago. The stories about them probably aren’t true.”
“And the part you just told is?” said Imogen.
He shrugged and seemed about to answer, but Aslaug interrupted: “The point is, whether she was real or not, Brynhild was Jotun-touched. First she didn’t care. Then she wanted the wrong things. The people who wrote the saga understood.”
“The story doesn’t say a Jotun touched her.”
“I know, I know,” said Aslaug, her long hands playing with her tangled hair. She seemed to have had this argument with Stephen once already. “She acted a way people back then didn’t understand, because she was angry and sad. You don’t understand it, either. But I do. And then, I think, a Jotun came to her and offered to take the pain away. That’s why she stopped caring. That’s why she got so evil.”
“Brynhild knew her own fate,” Fiona explained in her most irritating teacherly voice. “That’s why she got depressed - she heard a prophecy of separation and death, but couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Because it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the more you try to escape, the more it’s sure to happen?” said Imogen. She was thinking the whole world must have breathed a sigh of relief when Brynhild died. Though Sigurd was obviously wrong to trick her, it was hard to have a shred of sympathy for either of them.
“Maybe,” said Aslaug. Her blue eyes were still gleaming, and Imogen was surprised at how much more alive she seemed. Maybe it was because she loved soap operas, and Brynhild’s story had finally given her something to relate to in the culture of the Old Norse, which generally seemed to be all about hacking people to bits. Maybe it was because she knew now, thanks to the mirror, that it was safe to look at Stephen and Imogen.
Wait. Did she?
“No,” said Fiona, answering Imogen’s question. “People in these stories don’t try to escape fate. That’s a modern idea. Why would you bother?”
Chapter 6: Witches’ Ball
At nine-thirty, the Crays’ front door closed. By ten, the last guests had been shepherded through the scare-house, past the candle-lit mirror, and into their parties - the young people to the basement, the adults to a politer cider-and-doughnuts gathering in the parlor.
The caterers and cleaners Aunt Valerie had hired went to work dismantling the house of horrors with their brooms and scrubbers and garbage bags. While Imogen blew out the two candles, Stephen pulled off his Headless Man costume and disappeared into the kitchen.
Imogen knew Aslaug was hiding in there. She cocked one eye at the doorway and then headed the other way, downstairs to the basement. She saw no reason to remove her hunchback costume, even if the black hood did make her look like a hangman. It was nice to be incognito for a change.
The vast basement was only about a quarter finished. A decade ago, Aunt Valerie had used her own money to fit out one end with maple floorboards, built-in bookcases, couches, a television, a woodstove, and a small hot tub and cedar sauna. Because there were no walls, only a curtain on a long rod, anyone who used these amenities was conscious of being very close to the dark, unimproved part of the basement, with its rough stone walls and vaulted ceiling and cranking furnace and piles of stored crates and trunks and musty smells. Val didn’t mind at all, but neither Imogen nor Fiona liked watching TV down there alone.
It was perfect for a Halloween party. The curtain had been removed and the rod strung with life-sized, clattering skeletons and fuzzy fake spiders and bats. The ancient crates and trunks had been pushed to the sides and stacked high. The hot tub was full and steaming like a witch’s cauldron, surrounded by leering Jack o’ Lanterns. The plasma TV played slasher movies on a loop, while the couches had been replaced by folding tables that groaned under the weight of candy apples and popcorn balls and sugar skulls from Mexico and doughnuts and coffee and spicy cider and a pyramid of black-and-orange-frosted cupcakes from the best bakery in the city. Between the tables, a manhole-sized real iron cauldron sat on a fake fire, full of fizzy punch made with fresh limes and cranberries, the exact color of blood.
Imogen ladled herself a glass and made a face. Somebody had spiked it, all right. She took another swallow.
Never in her life had she seen more than a handful of people in the basement. Now it was positively crowded, full of juniors and seniors and a few sophomores and freshmen who had managed to slip through the cracks, though they weren’t supposed to have been sold tickets. You couldn’t walk more than a step without treading on somebody’s superhero cape or brushing against fake fur. Imogen noted that most of the girls were dressed as something sexy: cats in bodysuits and ears, Catwoman, old-fashioned Playboy Bunnies in flowing puce or magenta negligees, fembots in miniskirts and boots. She told herself she was grateful for her warm, concealing Quasimodo get-up.
Over on the unfinished side, on the concrete floor, people were dancing to the silly mix of pop and novelty Halloween songs Valerie had made - mostly groups of girls, egged on by boys who stood on the sidelines. The tables were a sloshy mess. Girls made little laughing screamy sounds when they encountered Valerie’s decorations, some of which came from her friend at a movie special-effects house in California: a severed head holding a lighted candle in its gaping mouth, with skin that felt real; furry prop rats and tarantulas; a bowl full of human intestines and kidneys that looked wet but proved to be just shiny latex; a miniature blood-stained guillotine.
No one noticed the little hooded hunchback. They were too busy having fun. Imogen saw some of the basketball players contorting their huge forms over a deep steel vat, bobbing for apples. From the way the people around them were cheering and screeching (“Go Jakey! Bite that big red one! Bite it!”), she suspected that vat had been spiked with something, too.
As she watched, Billy Corcoran elbowed aside the basketball players. He thrust his dark, curly head into the vat and came up nearly a minute later with a Granny Smith between his jaws, wet down to his shoulders and panting. The girls chanted, “Bill-ee, Bill-ee!” The speakers on the walls sang: In the after-life, you better be ready for some serious strife…
Billy removed the apple from his mouth and handed it to one of his fans, who took a bite. Despite his triumph, he was not smiling.
Imogen followed his eyes to a spot on the dance floor, right where the stacked crates began. Kristen Hawke sat on one of them, her legs dangling in pink tights. She kept her hands resting on the waist of Jeremy Bliss, who stood in front of her, and the pair swayed back and forth in a rhythmic way that could perhaps be called dancing, though it had nothing to do with the song.
Both Jotun touched, Imogen thought. Does Billy know? Does he guess that’s why they’re together?
She felt like a doctor giving a diagnosis - and that was part of what had changed tonight. What had seemed like superstition, and maybe half a silly, scary game like Bloody Mary, had become a matter of testable facts. She had seen the eyes in the mirror herself. She had marked them on the list.
“You find all your witches?” said a hoarse voice behind her.
Imogen whipped around and stared into the slitted eyes of Orin Crenshaw, the red-haired boy who had picked the fight with Stephen back in September. The one who lived in the trailer park. He was dressed in jeans and a flannel jacket, carrying a hockey mask in one hand and a real pitchfork in the other. He looked as if he knew exactly who she was.
“Find what?” she asked. “And who exactly are you supposed to be?”
“Witches,” said Orin. He had a mountain man’s accent, and he smiled a thin, bleak smile, but it wasn’t as hostile as she’d expected. “And who I am is Jason Vorhees, from Friday the 13th, parts two, three and on to infinity.”
“I know who Jason is. I didn’t know he had a pitchfork.
“If he don’t, he should,” said Orin. “Bet you’re wondering how I knew about the witches’ test.”
She shrugged.
“My grand-mama who lived way out in Fauve Woods, she told me. If you had a visitor after dark you wasn’t expecting, even a friend, you’d make ’em look in the mirror between the candles. Common sense, she said. Said it was the only way to know for sure they were who they said they were.”
“And not a witch?” said Imogen. It was getting hot under the hood, and she took it off and tossed her sweaty hair. In a party like this, she was fairly sure no one would notice her, even though she was the hostess. No one but Orin.
“Witch, ghost, goblin, whatever,” said Orin, still smiling. There was a glint of something deeper in his smile, possibly an actual sense of humor. “Or ice ghost,” he added. “They hide in the mountains, right?”
“Never heard of those. What do they do in the summer?”
Orin shrugged. “Go deeper in the mountain, I figure. Always cold in there. Anyways, ’m I one?”
She didn’t understand, but only leaned closer. He repeated, “Am I one?”
“Mmm,” said Imogen. He was beginning to make her uncomfortable, and she decided it was safer to tell the truth. “No.”
“Sure?” She could smell tobacco on his breath. “’Cause sometimes, see, a person doesn’t even know.”
“You’re not a witch.”
“How’s your friend? He recovered yet from being my punching bag?”
“I remember it happening differently.”
“He’s freakin’ nuts,” said Orin. “Takes stones to stand there and let somebody hit you. Am I a mountain ghost?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” He relaxed his bony jaw and began drifting away from her. “That goth chick has my pal Billy whipped good and proper. It makes you wonder. About all of them.”
“Are you talking about Kristen Hawke?”
But Orin only bobbed his head and drifted farther. “Wicked good party, huh? Thanks for havin’ me.”
Imogen wanted to tell Stephen about this conversation. She went upstairs with plans to get him alone and ask if he thought Orin Crenshaw might be a threat, and if so, what they should do. There was no point in alarming Aslaug, who took everything too seriously.
But when she found them in the kitchen, she realized a private conference would be dicey. Fiona had joined them and was devouring a cupcake with a rapt expression, oblivious to the caterers rinsing their steel trays in the sink. The teapot steamed in the center of the round table.
“That’s your fourth,” said Stephen, who was perched on the edge of the butcher’s block with one of Fiona’s books open in his hand. “How do you stay so skinny?”
“I count her fifth!” said Aslaug, and giggled. “Go on, OK, Stephen? I need to know.” She sat with an afghan around her shoulders and her long legs drawn up and crossed in the chair, both hands gripping a mug.
Imogen had a funny feeling, as if she were invisible. They looked like they’d been here for hours, which made her wonder exactly how long she had been wandering around the party, talking to nobody but Orin Crenshaw. She could feel the floorboards shivering under her feet and hear faint laughter and squeals. None of the other three seemed to notice.
Stephen read from the book, “Now no one thought himself capable of understanding why Brynhild had requested with laughter the deed that she now lamented with tears.”
Aslaug looked up then and saw Imogen. She almost looked straight at Imogen, but dropped her eyes at the last minute. Imogen could see they were glistening, and her cheeks were pink. “We’re reading this weird old story,” she said. “It’s about Sigurd. It’s badly written, but it’s so sad. It explains about being Jotun-touched.”
“It’s not badly written,” said Fiona. “It’s a central Norse saga.”
“Well, it kind of goes all over the place. Like a soap opera, but with no continuity,” said Aslaug. “It’s making me sad anyway. It’s not poetry, so I can actually understand what happened. The Norse were into fate, weren’t they?”
Stephen slammed the book shut, though Imogen noticed he kept his place. “Want me to go on, or not?”
“Let’s tell Imogen what happened, first,” said Aslaug.
Imogen considered plowing ahead and telling them about Orin Crenshaw. But Stephen would bristle if she mentioned his name, and Aslaug and Fiona would need to be told all about the fight, which would embarrass Stephen further. The last thing she wanted was to make him miserable when he actually seemed to be having fun. “What’s the book?” she asked.
“Saga of the Volsungs,” said Stephen. “It’s just one version, you know - the poetry one is older and better. But this one’s pretty easy to understand. I’m reading her the part about Sigurd and how he met his doom.”
So Imogen sat down at the table and poured herself a cup of tea, and listened while Aslaug retold the story with Stephen and Fiona helping. It was a complicated story, because there were alternate versions of several parts. “Like deleted scenes on a DVD,” said Aslaug. “Or fanfiction.”
Fiona rolled her eyes at the mention of fanfiction, and Stephen looked mystified. But the comparison must have helped Aslaug, because she managed to streamline the story and stick to the important parts. It went like this:
Once there was a beautiful princess named Brynhild who was a woman warrior, and also a witch skilled in runes. Brynhild had never loved a man until she met Sigurd, slayer of the dragon Fafnir, who saw her standing in a tower and liked her looks. So he came to her dad’s castle to chat her up. Brynhild gave him a gold cup, and they kissed and made out. She told him they were fated not to be together. But Sigurd ignored this and swore eternal love. (“Men,” said Fiona.)
What happened next was not clear. But something did. A few chapters later, after Sigurd had gone MIA, off on another dragon-slayery-type quest, Brynhild asked her relatives to take care of her daughter, whose name was Aslaug. It was the first and last time this name appeared in the book.
Brynhild had to abandon Aslaug because her father was trying to find her a husband. Rather than marry anyone who wasn’t Sigurd, she chose to run away and go to sleep inside an eternal fire that burned on top of a hill. (Apparently this was something warrior maidens could just do.) Only the man who was her true love would be able to walk safely through the flames.
Imagine Brynhild’s surprise when she was woken by a handsome stranger. His name was Gunnar, and though he wasn’t Sigurd, Brynhild felt obliged to marry him. She figured destiny worked in strange ways. She even gave him a ring.
Now it just so happened, in a totally soap-opera way, that Gunnar was best friends with Sigurd. After Gunnar brought Brynhild out of the flames and married her, Sigurd stepped right up and married Gunnar’s pretty sister Gudrun. And these two couples proceeded to move in together and become perhaps the world’s most dysfunctional family.
The trouble started when Gudrun, who obviously sensed some kind of chemistry between Sigurd and Brynhild, showed Brynhild a ring her husband had given her. Brynhild recognized it instantly. It was the engagement ring she thought she’d given to Gunnar, her husband.
Gudrun now informed Brynhild that her mother the queen, who was a powerful witch, had tricked Sigurd by giving him a drink that made him forget his old love. Once Sigurd had forgotten Brynhild, he was eager to marry Gudrun. (“Men,” said Fiona again.) The queen asked him for just one thing in return: to win Brynhild for Gunnar, which he could do by taking Gunnar’s shape and walking through the flames. He would demand a love token. Then he would let the real Gunnar step in and enjoy the reward.
So buff, heroic Sigurd had used magic to disguise himself, just as Loki would do. He succeeded where the real Gunnar would have failed, because he was Brynhild’s true love, as the Fates decreed. This was his treachery.
When Brynhild got this news from the gloating Gudrun, she became depressed. Nothing gave her pleasure, and she wished she were still safely asleep in the flames. She was angry at Gudrun for gloating, angry at Gunnar for being forced on her, and angriest at Sigurd, who had humiliated her, treating her like a doll the two men could pass back and forth.
So Brynhild told her in-laws it was time to kill Sigurd.
She was very persuasive. She told them Sigurd had disrespected her. Then she told them they would be lily-livered wusses if they didn’t, which was all a true warrior needed to hear in those days.
Gunnar’s younger brother agreed to do the hit. He waited till Sigurd was fast asleep, because otherwise he would have been frozen in place by the hero’s piercing eyes. Then he threw a spear so hard it nailed Sigurd to the bed. Not to be outdone, the mangled Sigurd woke and tossed a sword with such force that it bisected his assassin at the waist. Then he died.
You might think all this blood would satisfy Brynhild. No. When she heard Gudrun cry at the sight of the corpse, she laughed. Then she cried bitter tears. In the world of the Vikings, no one acted like this unless they had gone off the deep end.
But crazy people have their own magic and must be treated with care. Brynhild stabbed herself under the arm and demanded that a pyre be built where her corpse and Sigurd’s could burn side by side. It was built. Then Brynhild demanded that the son of Sigurd and Gudrun be killed so he could burn beside his father. He was slain and laid on the pyre, over Gudrun’s horrified protests. (“A little kid,” said Aslaug, her eyes filling with tears.)
Luckily, before Brynhild could make any more requests, she bled out and died. And that was the end of the true lovers.
There was more to the soap opera, about Gudrun’s next marriage. But Stephen said it wasn’t important. “Those people all died almost two thousand years ago. The stories about them probably aren’t true.”
“And the part you just told is?” said Imogen.
He shrugged and seemed about to answer, but Aslaug interrupted: “The point is, whether she was real or not, Brynhild was Jotun-touched. First she didn’t care. Then she wanted the wrong things. The people who wrote the saga understood.”
“The story doesn’t say a Jotun touched her.”
“I know, I know,” said Aslaug, her long hands playing with her tangled hair. She seemed to have had this argument with Stephen once already. “She acted a way people back then didn’t understand, because she was angry and sad. You don’t understand it, either. But I do. And then, I think, a Jotun came to her and offered to take the pain away. That’s why she stopped caring. That’s why she got so evil.”
“Brynhild knew her own fate,” Fiona explained in her most irritating teacherly voice. “That’s why she got depressed - she heard a prophecy of separation and death, but couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Because it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the more you try to escape, the more it’s sure to happen?” said Imogen. She was thinking the whole world must have breathed a sigh of relief when Brynhild died. Though Sigurd was obviously wrong to trick her, it was hard to have a shred of sympathy for either of them.
“Maybe,” said Aslaug. Her blue eyes were still gleaming, and Imogen was surprised at how much more alive she seemed. Maybe it was because she loved soap operas, and Brynhild’s story had finally given her something to relate to in the culture of the Old Norse, which generally seemed to be all about hacking people to bits. Maybe it was because she knew now, thanks to the mirror, that it was safe to look at Stephen and Imogen.
Wait. Did she?
“No,” said Fiona, answering Imogen’s question. “People in these stories don’t try to escape fate. That’s a modern idea. Why would you bother?”