The Land of the Silver Apples

Chapter Forty THE MIDGARD SERPENT

In the morning they could scarcely see three spear-lengths ahead. “I’ve got a sore throat,” Ethne announced. “I do believe I’m coming down with my first illness. What fun!”

They didn’t stop to eat, but hurried down the mountain to the warmer air by the sea. “I recognize these trees,” Thorgil exclaimed. “That’s where Skakki and Rune made camp. There’s where Eric Pretty-Face ate a dead seagull he found and threw up. That’s the cave Heinrich the Heinous and I—” The shield maiden broke off.

The cave was filled from top to bottom with rocks. There was scarcely room for a mouse to slip in.

“Oh, Freya. The earthquake,” whispered Thorgil.

The Bugaboo probed it with a stick, and gravel poured down. “You’re lucky you got out alive,” he said.

“Where is everyone?” the shield maiden said. “They must have built a shelter. They wouldn’t abandon shipmates—but where’s the ship?” It was hard to see anything beyond the first few feet of sea.

“This fog might not lift for days,” said Jack, looking up doubtfully and gauging how much rain would pour down if he worked a spell. “Why don’t the rest of you search farther down the beach? I’ll do what I can here.”

Jack settled into a comfortable position and reached out to the life force. He sensed, not far away, a sunlit sky. The fog was shallow, and from above, it looked like a cloud hugging the ground. Farther out was the gray-green sea. There was nothing on its surface except a few gulls.

In the sky itself, swallows dipped and soared. They skimmed the upper surface of the fog, and Jack felt the power of their wings. Wonderful creatures! Beyond them, Jack felt other wings. He searched and saw nothing but water, with here and there the white tip of a wave.

It’s the wind, Jack thought, surprised. The wind, too, had wings, like a flock of invisible birds. The Bard sometimes called up breezes to cool fields wilting in summer heat or to break up a snowstorm that had gone on too long. But he hadn’t taught Jack the skill yet.

I discovered it all on my own, the boy thought proudly. The old man said that once you were steeped in magic, more and more secrets were revealed to you. He also said most of them were dangerous.

Come to me, invoked Jack, intrigued by his new power. Fly to me, spirits of the air. He cast his mind out farther and farther, delighting in the gusts and swirls and billows around him. He was flying too, the lead bird, the one who told the others where to go. He was their king. The great air-birds turned and followed him. They were coming!

Jack laughed and held out his arms. A blast of wind shredded the fog. Jack had never seen mist move so fast! It was gratifying and at the same time frightening. A second later a savage blow struck him, sending him spinning across the beach. Water flew through the air, making him choke.

On and on it came, howling and tearing up trees. Waves crashed over rocks; spray blew against the mountain. Stop! cried Jack, struggling to regain control. He clung to rocks, to keep from being blown away. Go back. Lie down. Stop.

He tried everything he could think of, but the wind kept battering him until at last it lost interest and turned away. That was what it felt like: The wind simply got bored with him. With that, it rose into the sky and wandered off.

Jack picked himself up. He was bruised in a dozen places. He was chilled to the bone, and his clothes were soaked. Trees were scattered like kindling.

“Jack! Jack! Are you all right?” cried Pega, running down the beach ahead of the others.

“I guess so,” he said, brushing twigs and mud off himself.

He found his staff jammed between rocks at the entrance of the cave.

“What was that thing?” asked the Bugaboo. The hobgoblin’s ears stuck straight out, and his skin had turned bright green with alarm.

“I—I’m not sure,” said Jack. The instant before he’d been struck, he’d seen a long white pillar rise out of the sea.

“It was like a giant snake,” said Pega, confirming his observation. “It was weaving back and forth between the water and the sky. I tried to warn you, but it moved too fast.”

“It was the Midgard Serpent,” said Thorgil. Everyone turned to her. “He’s one of the children of Loki,” she explained. “He was so evil and dangerous, Odin had him cast into the sea. He forms a belt around Middle Earth, holding his tail in his mouth, and when he thrashes, the earth quakes.”

“That’s what happened here. An earthquake,” said the Bugaboo, pointing at the rocks filling the cave.

“Rank superstition,” scoffed Father Severus. “Everyone knows earthquakes are caused by Lucifer stamping his foot on the floor of Hell.”

“The Midgard Serpent and Thor are enemies,” Thorgil went on, ignoring the monk. “Thor likes to fish for him. He cuts the head off an ox to bait his hook, tosses it into the sea, and waits for the stupid beast to bite. The same trick works again and again. Thor pulls up the serpent, but he isn’t strong enough to get him all the way out. That’s what we just saw—the tail end of the Midgard Serpent being pulled along.”

“Sheer fantasy,” jeered Father Severus.

“Rune saw it happen in the warm seas to the south, and Rune is not a man who lies,” the shield maiden said with a hint of menace.

“No one would ever think that,” Jack said quickly. He didn’t bring up his own belief, that the waterspout had been caused by the wind. “Now that the sun’s out, we can look for the ship.”

They all shaded their eyes and looked out to sea, but even Pega, whose eyes were sharpest, saw nothing except a vast, gray-green expanse. Any evidence of a camp had been destroyed by the waterspout. Jack worked to free his staff, which had been wedged between boulders too large for him to shift.

“Let me try,” said the Nemesis.

“Don’t break it,” cried Jack as the burly hobgoblin shoved him to one side.

“Keep your tunic on. I know what I’m doing.” The Nemesis rolled a boulder out of the heap.

“Look out!” shouted Jack. He barely had time to yank the staff out of the way before an avalanche of rocks came down. The Nemesis bounced to one side as nimbly as a bullfrog avoiding a crane.

“See? It worked,” crowed the hobgoblin.

“What’s that?” said Pega, pointing at the mountain above the cave. High up Jack saw figures carved into rock. They were too far away to make out clearly.

“I’ll have a look,” said the Bugaboo. He climbed easily, having sticky pads on his fingers and toes. “There’re three sets of pictures,” he announced when he was perched on a high crag. “On one side is a hammer and a branching tree—fairly crude compared with hobgoblin work, but recognizable. On the other are a ship and—I think—a horse, except it has too many legs. In the middle are three triangles bound together.”

Thorgil screamed. Jack almost jumped out of his skin. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” he cried.

“They’ve gone!” she moaned. “They have gone out over the trackless sea, thinking I am dead.” She curled up on the ground as she had after the demon burned her hand.

“You know this?” said Jack, wanting, but not quite daring, to hold her.

“Those are grave-markers,” Thorgil said. “The sign in the middle is the valknut, the mind-fetter that means someone has fallen in battle. The hammer is for Thor and the tree is Yggdrassil. My symbols. The other pictures stand for Heinrich the Heinous. The horse is Sleipnir, Odin’s horse. Heinrich always said he wanted to ride him, but of course you can’t do that unless you’re dead. Oh, curse Heinrich! He really is dead. He’s probably riding Sleipnir right now. And I’m stuck here with a useless hand and no ship.”

“You can join me at the nunnery,” Ethne said brightly. “We’ll have such fun doing penances together.”

Thorgil threw a handful of sand at her.

Father Severus knelt down beside the shield maiden, and Jack feared she would attack him as well. But she had an odd respect for the monk, considering that she’d helped sell him as a slave. “There is a purpose to everything under Heaven,” he began.

“We call it fate,” said Thorgil.

“And it is not given to us to understand its workings. You were meant to be left on this beach. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m here either, but we have work to do in this world. Wallowing in self-pity does no good.”

Jack held his breath. If ever there were words calculated to drive Thorgil wild, those were the ones. He saw her face turn pale, then red. Her body tensed.

Suddenly, surprisingly, she laughed. “You use words as Olaf used to use his fists, thrall-worshipper. I can use word weapons too.”

“Then I welcome you as an enemy,” Father Severus said.

They stayed on the beach for several weeks, to allow Father Severus time to recover. Every morning Thorgil climbed to a high rock and sat looking out to sea. She occasionally helped with chores, but every task reminded her of her useless hand. She would throw down whatever she was working on and return to her perch. Jack didn’t have the heart to scold her.

Father Severus lay under a tree. He seemed quietly happy, but Jack worried about his cough and the feverish patches on his cheeks. “Sometimes I think I did not sleep the whole time I was in Elfland,” Father Severus murmured. “Perhaps that’s why I’m so tired now.”

Jack understood what he meant. Glamour seeped everywhere there, so that you didn’t know whether you were awake or dreaming. Even Jack’s memories of Lucy were confused. Had he actually seen her? Did she really turn against him, or was it only a bad dream? He found it difficult to remember her face.

“Some call Elfland the Hollow Land,” Father Severus said when Jack confided these thoughts to him. “It is formed by our desires, but ultimately, it is only a reflection of something else. Do you remember their music?”

That was the one thing Jack did recall. The music seemed to hang in the air like the last thread of sunlight before total darkness came on.

“I listened to their voices night after night, trying to despise them,” said Father Severus. “I couldn’t.” He sighed.

On the beach Pega made an ingenious cairn of rocks that was hollow inside to hold a fire. On top she placed a flat piece of slate for roasting. Jack gathered whelks, sea kale, leeks, and garlic. But the hobgoblins were the champions where fishing was concerned.

They had a unique method. The Bugaboo perched on a rock out beyond the surf line and dangled his foot in the water. The Nemesis waited behind him with a club. Hobgoblin toes were long and wiggly—the Bugaboo could move all five in different directions at the same time. He demonstrated this to Pega, who told him to go away.

From below, the toes must have looked like a clutch of fat earthworms. They were certainly attractive to fish, although it was soon clear that it was important to attract the right size of fish. Once, a giant cod swallowed the Bugaboo’s leg and the Nemesis had to knock it senseless before the rest of the Bugaboo followed the leg inside.

“You won’t find better than that,” proclaimed the king, throwing the fish down before Pega’s horrified eyes. It was large enough to feed everyone.

“You’re bleeding! That is blood, isn’t it?” She gasped. Yellow-green drops oozed from a row of holes on the Bugaboo’s leg.

“You’re worried about me,” cried the delighted hobgoblin, turning cartwheels around her and spraying her with sand.

“Worrying doesn’t mean I care,” retorted Pega, wiping sand off her face.

“Oh, it does! It does! I’m so happy, I’m going to gleep!”

“Don’t!” begged the girl, but the hobgoblin was too overjoyed to stop.

Gleeping, Jack thought, moving out of earshot, had to be the nastiest sound in the world. Hobgoblins did it when they were ecstatic, which was far too often in Jack’s opinion. It was infectious, too. Once one individual began, others took it up, just as a yawn could spread through a crowd. The Nemesis, never a cheerful creature, gleeped softly as he gutted the fish.

Ethne was hopeless at all chores. Pega tried to teach her to weave baskets, but the baskets fell apart. She let the fire go out and allowed seagulls to steal fish. When Pega sent her to pick fennel, she returned with henbane. “That’s poison!” shrieked the girl, throwing the plants into the fire. “Don’t you know any better?”

“We ate henbane salad all the time in Elfland,” Ethne said huffily. “It never did us the slightest bit of harm.” In the end she sat beside Father Severus and memorized Latin prayers. Jack was certain she didn’t understand Latin, but it kept her out of trouble and entertained Father Severus.

Finally, one afternoon after a meal of roast goose (hobgoblin toes were irresistible to geese, too) the Bugaboo called a meeting. “It is time for us all to go home,” he said.

“What home?” Thorgil said. “My shipmates have gone, thinking I am dead. Often when the day breaks, lonely and wretched, I bewail my fate. There is no comrade to whom I can unburden my heart.

Jack, always fond of poetry, admired her fine words, but Father Severus cried, “Good heavens, shield maiden! You make a meal out of misery.”

“I do not!”

“A true warrior shows gratitude for the bounty God sends him. You could be drowning in the midst of the sea. You could be trapped in a burning building. A thousand devils might be contending for your soul—not that they won’t someday—but in fact you’re sitting on a pleasant beach surrounded by friends. Fie on this self-pity.”

“I’ve lost my home, and I don’t have one scrap of self-pity,” Ethne announced.

“We really must have that discussion about pride, Ethne,” said Father Severus.

“To return to the immediate problem,” said the Bugaboo, “when fall comes, this beach will be uninhabitable.”

“Can we build a boat?” said Thorgil with a glimmer of hope.

“No!” said the Nemesis. “Hobgoblins never, ever go on boats.”

“Is that because of kelpies?” inquired the shield maiden.

“They swim for hours if they smell something tasty,” the Nemesis said with a haunted look in his eyes. “They follow you day and night, never sleeping, never giving up. They are tireless.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” scolded the Bugaboo. “You’ve said the K-word.” He took his friend for a short walk, and when they returned, the Nemesis was a healthy green again.

“As I was about to say before I was interrupted, it’s time to go home. Fortunately, there’s more than one cave on this coast,” said the Bugaboo.