Page 47 of Last Thrall of Asgard

I laughed. How could I not when this was a better joke played on me than any I could have guessed? All I wondered then was if Loki was smiling somewhere, pleased that his joke had paid off.

Loki…

“Come.” Mimir gestured for me to follow him outside the hollow. He was dressed in a simple tunic and trousers, with Yggdrasil stitched like an emblem on his chest, silver on fabric the same color as his eyes. Smaller stitched depictions of Yggdrasil were also on the cuffs of his sleeves.

And, along the length of his neck, was a scar, like a mimic of how his head had once been detached.

I followed him as he took me left around the tree. He had an eerie calmness about him like Heimdall, like someone who had seen too much. His well could supposedly see anything. He had maybe seeneverything. One didn’t ignore that kind of experience, and therefore, I walked. I walked just behind Mimiruntil we reached another hollow in the tree, and within this one was a well not with cerulean water but water so dark, it bubbled as if boiling.

After my next breath, the water seemed to mist and become covered in frost. It rotated like that between boiling and freezing several times while I watched it.

“Without Hvergelmir helping balance the heat and cold from Muspelheim and Niflheim,” Mimir said of the well, the source of all waters, “the realms would burn and freeze endlessly, and only Yggdrasil’s roots would survive.” He looked to the well, and then up outside the hollow.

I followed his gaze, and in the far distance on two different branches of Yggdrasil, I saw the realms he spoke of, one of fire and one of ice, which I was grateful had not been rendezvous points for any of my encounters thus far. To step foot in either realm or touch my hand to the waters of that well would mean instant death, I was certain.

Humbled by those nightmare realms, far though they may be, I reached a hand to steady myself upon Yggdrasil’s trunk.

“Careful where you touch. Nidhogg has sensitive scales.”

I jerked my hand away before the touch completed, and when I looked, I realized that this spot was not part of Yggdrasil, but dragon scales nearly the same color.

Staring up the impossible height of the tree, I recognized the great dragon curled around its trunk as if part of it. Nidhogg was fabled to forever gnaw on Yggdrasil’s roots while never making the tree topple, save for a trembling moment during Ragnarök. Far, far above me, where I could see Nidhogg’s head, he wasn’t gnawing any longer but slumbering, dormant.

“Though in truth, with Ragnarök past, he may no longer notice.” Mimir shrugged and continued around the tree.

I felt nauseated and very small as I followed, unable now to not notice the other realms around us on various branches, likedistant mirages, yet all easily identifiable. Besides the realms of fire and ice, I had visited them all. Save maybe Jotunheim, but I still felt certain I had been there with Loki.

Before we reached the next hollow, I heard voices, feminine voices ahead of us. I knew what the third well would be, but seeing the high, regal chairs in an arch facing the hollow’s entrance confirmed it.

The Well of Urd, where the gods sat in council and cast judgment upon the realms, supposedly every day. Although, like most changes brought upon by Ragnarök, I assumed that was a thing of the past.

Within the hollow, around the actual well, would be the Norns.

What the Greeks called the Fates, who spun the threads of life.

My steps faltered, not even purposefully, but the humility and fear in me had begun to grow. The weavers of fate were not always known for their benevolence, and Mimir had not yet said why he was giving me this tour.

“Do not fear the Jotun maids,” he coaxed me from my terror, motioning for me to catch up to him. “They simply know more than most and have their parts to play like everyone else.”

He waited for me and then bid me to look upon the sisters three.

On the left sat a white-haired woman like a young grandmother. That must be Urd, eldest of the Norns, currently manning the tapestry of life and weaving new designs into it.

“Such lovely stitching upon your tunic, Oli,” Urd said.

As I watched, she moved aside, passing her turn at the weave to the sister on her right, who didn’t miss a step in the braiding of the threads. “As lovely as if you stitched them yourself instead of by Loki’s magic,” said the redhead. Verdandi, I guessed, being the more motherly type.

“It tells a story!” said the last, taking Verdandi’s place. Skuld, a raven-haired girl on the blossoming of womanhood.

They were not three frightening crones, hovering over a well, spinning the threads of fate while cackling. To look upon them in their den was no different than seeing three generations of a family working on a tapestry together, while occasionally taking draughts from the well between them, and sometimes sprinkling the water on the roots at their feet.

But it was the tapestry that caught my attention most. It somehow told the story of creation in the simple weaving of colors and thread. The time of the gods was all metallic and shimmering, while the lower the tapestry went, the more it devolved to colors, to violets, blues, reds, and more, like a rainbow of all humanity had and would accomplish.

There was never a moment when one of the Norns wasn’t weaving it. Even if another stopped to gather water, or another simply stretched, the third was always there to continue their work.

“Whatismy story?” I looked at the stitching that had been added to my tunic with each meeting of a god.

“It is what you make of it,” said Urd.

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