Chapter 31 – Talking Again With Yggdrasil

I knew why Boldgog had rushed to speak to Baalak. My intemperate, defensive complaint, which I never should have voiced aloud, had frightened her. I felt shamed. I had only myself to blame. I knew I needed to read, think, and plan more, while fighting less. I had made that vow multiple times, only to break it each time. It wasn't the fault of Baalak that Yggdrasil had to tell me that I needed to figure out more things for myself, rather than simply swallowing knowledge, which had been pre-digested by itself, or more likely, by Hermione. I knew that I must apologise.

Baalak was soon by my side, Aagog still upon her head. "You misunderstand. I would never insult the savior of my people. I don't think you are too stupid or uneducated to lead a Quest. The Muse is always the greater possessor of knowledge and the one who most readily interprets new knowledge. That is her assignment. Your job is different. You use your Muse very well. That is part of what makes you a good Quest leader. Aagog says you also are very fair and very brave.

"The reason I couldn't tell you more is that I learned what I know from Yggdrasil and Yggdrasil has its own rules. If Yggdrasil tells you it is important for you to think about something and figure it out for yourself, then it is important to do exactly that. I've hung from Yggdrasil for months. I learned slowly. Slowly I thought better. I learned to understand things from my own thoughts. I couldn't do that before I hung. I was a very ordinary spider. You can understand what Yggdrasil wants you to learn. You must think about everything it told you and everything you already knew. Yggdrasil reads our minds. It does not try to teach what we already know, unless we know it not rightly. Boldgog fears I insult you and make you angry. I am sorry. I would never decide to do that. Spiders help those who help us."

"I know that," I promised Baalak. "I was more upset at myself and at Yggdrasil's dismissal than at you. You just caught me at a bad time. What Yggdrasil said to me stung, largely because it addressed a fault which I am all too aware of and have done far too little to fix."

I felt Aagog climbing my back. When she reached my shoulders, I heard the thought "Aagog very sorry. It look like I leave Ginny for Baalak."

I thought back to her that the apology was totally unnecessary. I had been feeling sorry for myself. That was a very bad mood for a Quest leader to fall into. I was a better person than that. At least I was determined that I would be a better person. The fault was my own, not hers, and I freely apologised.

"That settled, then." Baalak told me. "We must not waste time. Check for Frijjo changes. I think there be none. Spider guards not see her here. I leave many guards. Still, we must check."

We did check. We spent three days checking - mainly around Frijjo's seid route, which we had woven shut, but also beyond that and forward in time all the way back to the purple ribbon. Frijjo had died before she could tamper with this part of history. I did learn from the moving pictures that most of the spiders had escaped down the well. I did see Odin return to rescue some of the Aesir. Other than those we had stunned, when we killed Frijjo's avatar, I had no idea how he could have chosen which Aesir could be saved without changing history. Perhaps he decided that it didn't really matter much.

After doing all this exploration, it was time for me and Odin to return for the ICW meeting and for Baalak to travel to Spider World. Baalak decided to walk through ancient Yggdrasil into Spider World. She was rejected. She decided that she must hang briefly. Hermione had just finished hanging, so Baalak took her spot. I tended to the rehydration and feeding of Hermione. I was worried about her. She had hung for almost six days. I would have gone in after her, but she had made me promise that I wouldn't intervene until she had hung for a week. "There is so much to learn and I feel that this may be our only chance. Surely our Yggdrasil gave us questions to ask ancient Yggdrasil, because it can't remember its own past well. What other reason could there be."

I was eager to question Hermione but restrained that impulse. She was weak and we needed to walk and Apparate home very soon. She was as weak as Boldgog and Captain Davies had been, when we were forced to leave them behind. I hoped that food, Yggdrasil, and plenty of water would return Hermione to her normal strength. She could barely stand and walk across the parlor. She ate and drank a lot. She slept for four hours. When she awoke, she told me "we must talk, just the two of us. First, Yggdrasil wants you to make another brief hang. It says you left very abruptly, before it was finished speaking with you."

"No. My decision was not abrupt, it was well considered. Yggdrasil insulted me."

Please. we could converse like this, but it is far more efficient if you hang. I did not mean to insult the Mother, simply to spur you to deeper thought."

I agreed to hang, telling Hermione that she should get me down after a day.

I had barely begun my hang, when I saw myself in the middle of Yggdrasil's largest horizontal circle. Yggdrasil wasted no time and immediately hurled THE question at me.

I told you that you must think of all I have told you and shown you and everything you have seen on your own. You have a wealth of information. Tell me, what have you learned from it?

"I've not had a lot of time to think, actually. I can tell you that I believe the Aesir put the carnivorous fish in the lake beside you, in order to prevent the Merpeople from speaking to you or meaningfully participating in the life of this world. They must be able to travel up the waterfall exit from this cavern and are prevented by the fish. I know that you could control the fish, if you chose to, you told me as much, so you collude with the Aesir in excluding the Merpeople. I don't know for certain, but I get the impression that the Merpeople were not barred from this chamber when the spiders controlled it. Why do you oppress the Merpeople?"

I do not choose to oppress the Merpeople. I do what I can to help them with their life in the ocean. I know that is not ideal, but it would violate my instructions to actively choose sides. I do speak to several of the Merpeople. It is difficult. Few of them can speak at distance. Mainly those I speak to climb the waterfall, but don't enter the lake. This is unfortunately rare. I must avoid intervening. That is why it is best that you hang. That way I don't have to defend you from the fish as I would if you just leaned up against me. What else have you learned?

"Okay, I understand - the fish are in the stream all the way down to the ocean and you can't control them that far away, so even if you cleared the pond, the Merpeople couldn't enter the stream, without taking heavy losses. It is amazing that even a few make it far enough up the stream to speak to you. They must be badly in need of help and guidance.

"It seems to me that the purple ribbon which moves through space must be created when you move a Black Stone to or from a world. It can't be a thing you manufacture, because the distance and weight of material would be far too great to stretch from world to world. It must be a form of magical energy, which you can control. The purple ribbons travel a path much shorter than the actual distance or time which they span. We moved very quickly in time when we walked that purple ribbon. We must explore the purple ribbon which passes through space, rather than time. I think it must be much as the ribbon we ride upon when we travel from our own Black Stone to other worlds. I don't know how long that ribbon becomes, because we ride its edge, rather than walking it, and I don't know how fast it travels, but it also must be a lot shorter than the true distance between worlds. You are more powerful than our Black Stone, so you can keep the ribbon in place, whereas our Black Stone can only create a temporary ribbon. Our transporter does the same. I have no idea how you can make the distance shorter than it is. I'll ask Hermione or her uncle to explain that to me, unless you want to explain it."

Did you discuss this with Hermione or the spiders? It is a surprisingly good guess coming from you. Did you cheat?

"No, I didn't cheat. You never said not to talk to them, so it wouldn't be cheating to do so. I discussed nothing with Hermione, she was too weak. The spiders told me next to nothing. They decided that I didn't know enough and that it would be cheating on their part to tell me. They fear you as much as they respect and worship you."

Yes, all too often worship flows from fear, rather than from love and hope. Our urge to self-protection too often causes us to grovel to propitiate that which we fear. The spiders, or you, have no reason to fear me. I mean you know harm and help you as much as my instructions permit. You seem troubled about something.

Our Merpeople are freshwater dwellers. Yours are in an ocean more ancient than ours. They must have suffered greatly, before their bodies evolved to tolerate the salt.

I am being totally truthful when I say I would have helped them more if I could. When the non-ancient Aesir first spoke with me, it was already too late to help.

"I don't blame you. I will try to find the answers to the questions which bedevil you: who made you and what is the purpose of the instructions you follow? I'm guessing some don't make very much sense to you; you think they no longer apply; but you haven't given yourself permission to ignore them."

How can you know this?

"The Yggdrasil of my age has the exact same concerns. It also fears it once knew the answers but has forgotten them. Unless you have something else vital to say to me, I wish to end this hang. I have many parts of seid-space to check. This is urgent. I doubt Odin has the resolve to keep Vili in his cell much longer. I also doubt that Vili knows as little seid as Odin thinks he does. Surely Frijjo would have taught him as much as he was able to learn. That probably is enough to be very dangerous. It would be a kindness if you alerted the spiders if you sense Vili's presence anywhere in seid-space. We also need to have a fish fry. Odin said that those carnivorous fish are extremely tasty."

I found myself back in the parlour. Hermione was up and moving freely. She looked fully recovered.

"How long was I gone?"

"Just a day. Baalak still hangs."

"So, what did you learn? You hung a lot longer than I did and you are better at understanding these things than I am."

"Let's take a walk beside the lake."

Once we had walked all the way to the waterfall, I asked Hermione "so... what's so secret. This great air of mystery has me concerned about which member of our traveling party I would be wise to stop trusting."

"Odin, Yggdrasil, the spiders... I don't know. I just feel uneasy and didn't want to be overheard until we, together, understand what is going on. I was disturbed by how much this Yggdrasil seemed to take a dislike to you. It reads our minds, you know. That's creepy, especially from one so powerful. It struck me as awfully judgmental, not like our Yggdrasil. Our Yggdrasil has never said it has instructions which it doesn't understand but must follow. It doesn't openly show its pique, if it even allows itself to feel piqued."

"You are far more negative than I expected. I knew it didn't like me. It called me ignorant and stupid. I thought it would like you far better. Muses seem more to its taste. It told me that bravery was not enough. That's why I stopped hanging as quickly as I did. I couldn't take any more of it."

"It was nicer to me than that, but it was clear that it has a low opinion of females in general, despite its close association with Baalak. I would definitely not call it friendly."

"Okay, but what did you learn?"

"Questing wasn't much of a thing in the days before the ancient Aesir Gods departed. It was a way of testing young magical Aesir women to find the one most worthy to marry the king. They somehow did away with kings a millennia before the Gods left in noncorporeal form. Since there was no king, there was no perceived need to Quest. The Aesir then were ruled by a five-man Council. The female Quest was replaced by a male tournament among the male Gods to choose the most magically talented and learned among all the Gods. Goddesses were presumed to be unqualified. When females Quested, the Questers were nominated by the prince who would become king. He chose based on beauty and family position, and the seven Questers he chose had to complete difficult or dangerous assignments together and separately. There was no Quest leader, certainly no female as important as a Mother, and no Muse. The Quest was strange, since the Questers were in competition with each other, but also had to demonstrate cooperative teamwork. They were graded on each task by a large team of judges - sometimes hundreds of judges, all of whom were male, except for the wife of the current king. It was not uncommon for a Quester to die in the competition. It was far from uncommon for a Quester to try not to win. Not all wished to marry the prince. This version of Yggdrasil thought such behavior terribly wrong. It thought all Questers should strive to marry the prince. That was what the Quest demanded. The rules were important. Does that sound familiar to how our Quest began?

"Apparently, Yggdrasil also was a judge and its opinion could sway others. Like our Quest, the initial part of the Quest was on Asgard and at the end of those tests, a Quester could choose not to continue and freely resume her former life. There was then a final two tests: one on Vanaheimer and one on Venera. The Vanir and the Vanereal men judged those two contests. Yggdrasil could decide whether their votes would count. The overall winner married the prince. Any other living Questers were auctioned off as concubines to members of the royal family. It is just as well that these Quests were ended."

"No wonder this Yggdrasil has a poor view of Questers. It also took its views of human females from the ancient Aesir. That explains a lot. I sensed that it values spider females much more than human females. Why do you say Yggdrasil is confused and guilty?"

"It admitted to me that its number one instruction was to protect the inhabitants of Zandis, whom it brought with it to Asgard. It failed to prevent the Vanir from over-running Asgard, marginalising the spiders, and all but exterminating the Merpeople. That is the primary source of its guilt. It knew nothing of Vanaheimer, or Venera, or their Black Stones, but its second instruction suggested that it should have known.

"It quoted this to me: 'Instruction #2: you and your sisters must prevent the thinking peoples upon the worlds you control from destroying or subjugating each other. An exchange of knowledge may help all and result in a more perfect magic. An exchange of bodies may lead to peril and annihilation. All the worlds depend upon the continued existence of each of the peoples who think. Balance is important. You are a sharer of knowledge, but only with those wise enough and educated enough not to misuse it.' Yggdrasil believes this instruction means it must have known of the Black Stones on Vanaheimer and Venera; it must have talked with them when it was on Zandis; somehow it must have erred in effectuating the relocation of itself and its people; it had forgotten what it needed to perform its duty.

"That was the ultimate sin. A Black Stone was not supposed to forget. Remembering was the essence of its existence. Thinking was more important, but without remembrance, the data necessary for proper thinking was lost. How could it function under those conditions?"

"I think old Yggdrasil suffered a lot more than our version. Dozing clearly isn't good for it."

We exchanged other revelations and insights. The most important thing told to Hermione, which was denied to me, was Yggdrasil's fear that it had forgotten close to half of its instructions, Hermione had helpfully suggested that if Yggdrasil told her the instructions that it still remembered, that she could prevent the loss of any of them to our own Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil's response was stark: "not to a human female. I fear I have shared too much, already."