The Monstrous Child by Francesca Simon

he stands guard, will eat himself to death. No fear of gluttony here. No one will be racing for the buffet table and stuffing their faces. It’s a feast, but no food is offered. And yet the visitors will never, ever, leave.
    What am I doing?
    The skeleton skald rises to start his poem. That will pose a challenge – a skald is meant to proclaim poems to honour his chieftain and his glorious deeds. I allow myself a tiny smile as I wonder how the poet will contrive to praise me. For what? My beauty? I don’t think so. My kindness? Don’t make me laugh. And which great deeds exactly will he hymn? My grave-goods snatching? My pitiless reign? My kidnap by the gods and my exile here? Wait, I’ve got it! My shapely legs, the envy of women everywhere.
    Yes, I’m definitely entering into the party spirit.
    It’s far better, truthfully, that I am my own skald. They say all rulers must have one, for who else will sing their praises or scold them for their errors? Whoelse will write their names upon the gates when they are gone? Yet my fame does not concern me. I alone, of all goddesses, am known to all. No one wants to know me better. I need no greedy poet to spread my fame. Somehow I don’t think you’ll forget me, poems or no.
    But for tonight I am content to listen. Audun the Plagiarist starts with the saga of how the giants created the worlds – good move. If he’d begun by praising the gods, I’d have had his skull.
    The dead gradually cease their dancing and gibbering, and pause to listen. My brooding hall is silent, except for the poet describing how Midgard was created out of the great void from the body of the giant Ymir. Yes, you heard right, a giant . Midgard was made from his skin. The sea from his blood. The mountains and rocks from his bones, and the trees from his hair. Look up! See the sky? That came from Ymir’s skull. Those little fluffy clouds? Ymir’s brains. (So every single one of you, still living, walks on a giant, eats food grown from a giant, bathes in water from a giant, lives surrounded by a giant.)
    Just saying.
    And who created the world of gods and people? asks the skald. Who was big enough, mighty enough, to kill a giant like Ymir, hurl his body around the cosmos and carve out Midgard from the slime with his flesh and blood and bones? Why, none other than Odin, son of the giantess Bestla, shaped the world. And using the body from his own kinsman on his mother’s side. That’s a family gathering I wouldn’t want to be at, he sings.
    ‘So where’s Uncle Ymir? Haven’t seen him lately.’
    ‘Uhhmm, dead.’
    ‘What do you mean, dead?’
    ‘Dead. We chopped him up …’
    I am actually enjoying this poet’s words, telling the tale of my giant ancestors. Even the corpses grin. Though that could just be rigor mortis.
    And then music strikes up, the benches are pushed back and suddenly everyone is dancing and stomping. Someone sweeps me off my throne and before I know what I’m doing I’m dancing too. Everyone wants todance with me. I drink a horn of mead, then another, and another, admiring my glittering hall as I whirl from partner to partner, closing my eyes and pretending that each one is Baldr, the music roaring in my ears and filling my soul.
    Maybe my life isn’t all bad.
    More mead! More dancing! I want more, more –
    Then I hear Garm baying, louder than I’ve ever heard before. Crazed and frantic with fury, his yowls reverberate from his cliff cave down to my hall. I hear him straining and lunging against his chains, aching for the kill.
    Then hoof beats. The pounding of an eight-legged horse is like no other. In Hel, it sounds like thunder. The frozen earth hums under Sleipnir’s hooves. My half-brother is being ridden –
    I jerk to a standstill. The music stops. The swirling dead fall silent.
    My enemy is here.

29
THE MOTHER OF MONSTERS

    NE- E YE HAS COME. Why? Why has he come? Why has he travelled down the gods’ rainbow road to the long, sloping path the fateless walk