Chapter 15 – Mother of Monsters
Sigyn hunkered low as she crept toward the unsuspecting deer. The animal turned its head and she froze. The doe scanned the vast expanse of snow, but Sigyn's pure white pelt rendered her almost invisible. She started forward again. Sigyn was close enough to pounce before the prey even realized that she was there.
The deer's body jolted in surprise and then she bounded into the woods, but it was too late. Sigyn had forced her into a trap. Mere seconds passed before the sound of snarls and snapping jaws carried back from the copse of trees where Sigyn's victim had attempted retreat. A little while later Grevis emerged, a bloody haunch of meat clasped between his teeth. He laid his burden at Sigyn's feet.
"Your highness," he said respectfully, bending down over his forepaws in an approximation of a bow.
Sigyn tossed her head in acknowledgment and the other wolf trotted away to claim his own share of the hunt.
Sigyn glanced down at the chunk of severed leg. It was still warm and bloody, leaving a gory scarlet stain on the pristine snow. There was a time when the sight alone would have been enough to turn her stomach, but it didn't bother her now. Sigyn felt practically eager when she picked the meat up with her mouth - and that scared her worst of all.
Sigyn didn't know how much time had passed since her transformation into a wolf, but it was getting harder and harder to hope that she would ever be a woman again.
Grevis and his pack had done their best to help Sigyn through the first frightening days after her transformation. They taught her how to hunt for food. They helped her find shelter under the roots of a tree. They offered protection from the pack of wild wolves. Most importantly of all, they offered companionship at a time that Sigyn was feeling profoundly alone.
Without hands or fingers, the wolves couldn't build a fire, but they huddled together on the coldest nights, sharing stories of their lives before they wandered into the Ironwood and the clutches of the evil witch. Only a few of the wolves had been warriors of Vanaheim, but they used the kahalan to serve as voices for the men who hailed from Asgard and the other realms. With constant practice, Sigyn's own skills rapidly improved and she was able to tell them of her past as well.
Sigyn liked to hear about her companions' lives before the War. They had been farmers, merchants, soldiers, artists, fathers and sons. The tales they spun were full of adventure and laughter. Eventually, however, they had all been pulled into the final conflict of the nine realms and joined the army- first, for their own people, and then for the Allfather in his final assault on Jotunheim.
The Bifrost carried most of Odin's warriors home after their victory in the Winter Realm, but some were left behind. A few were mistaken for dead after the battle or simply misplaced by their units. Whatever the reason, they were stranded on Jotunheim, forced to rely on their wits and the Old Roads to find their way home. The Old Road that many followed led through the Ironwood. For the soldiers, just as it had been for Loki and Sigyn, Angrboda's cottage was a welcome sight. The witch invited them into her home and- very shortly thereafter- into her bed. For a time, the men felt that they had died and gone to Valhalla- but it wasn't long before Angrboda's ardor cooled and they awoke in the bodies of wolves. Even worse, the sorceress had borne some of their children. The dark wolf and his pack were all the abominal offspring of the sorceress and her prey. There were others as well, but the men were unwilling to speak of their fates, so Sigyn was left to imagine what the evil woman had done.
The sorceress controlled the animals with a silver whistle that she kept in her hut. Even Sigyn was unable to resist its painful screech. Almost every month, when the moon was full, the witch would send a call out into the woods, demanding that the wolves bring her meat in tribute to her power.
Sigyn tried her hardest to resist the sound, but her wolf body reacted without her conscious command. She felt as if invisible strings were lifting her paws, one after the other, and dragging her through the snow. The only consolation of these dreaded events was the chance of seeing Loki. Sigyn had spied him once standing in the doorway behind the witch. She tried to call out to his mind, but the witch must have noticed. Angrboda shot her a glare, puffed twice on the silver whistle, and Sigyn and the other wolves immediately scattered back into the trees.
Sigyn hated the whistle. Quite apart from the humiliation of being manipulated like a marionette, the little trinket was the most significant obstacle to saving Loki and breaking free. Night and day, Sigyn schemed for a way to defeat the enchantment and warn the prince. She dreamed of breaking into the cottage, of killing the enchantress or even getting close enough to send Loki another message through the kahalan, but all of her plans were impossible so long as the witch retained the power to bend the wolves to her will.
Despite her frustration, Sigyn could not put Loki out of her mind. Every evening, as the cold Jotun sun disappeared behind the trees, she climbed the ridge behind Angrboda's cottage and stared down at the little house.
This night was no exception to Sigyn's routine. She hungrily devoured her deer and gnawed for a little while on the bone. Then, as the light began to fade, she left her den and crept up the hill.
Lights were on inside the cottage. Sigyn watched them for a while, hoping to glimpse shadows against the wall. Eventually, she tucked her paws underneath her chest and sank down into the snow, expecting another cold, boring night of vigil. She had only been watching for a few minutes, however, when something strange happened. The front door of the cottage opened and Angrboda stepped out into the night.
Sigyn's ears pricked up at the sound of footsteps and she watched the witch step across the creek and enter the woods. Her fur tingled with foreboding when she realized that the witch was headed toward her. She laid as sill and as silent as she could be until the woman walked past. Then, unable to ignore her curiosity, she fell into Angrboda's wake.
The witch had travelled more than a mile when the wind shifted. Sigyn momentarily stiffened when she caught the scent of another wolf- but she relaxed a moment later. She smell was familiar.
"Grevis?" she called out with her mind.
There was a moment of hesitation. Then the large male wolf crept to her side.
"What are you doing?" Grevissaid in answer, "It isn't safe to stalk the witch."
"I'm not stalking her," Sigyn answered. "I just want to see where she is going."
"To the stone circle," Grevis answered. "Five moons have passed. She's probably whelping again."
"Whelping?" Sigyn echoed, not understanding at first. When realization dawned, her stomach clutched in horror. "You mean…she's going to have a child?"
Loki's child, Sigyn thought, her heart shattering anew with the words. Over the past months, she had decided that her feelings for the prince went deeper than friendship. She loved him. She believed that he was starting to love her too- and this is how she was repaid? She had imagined Loki held hostage in the witch's house. In reality, he was just like all of the other men.
Grevis must have sensed Sigyn's distress, because he gave her a reassuring nudge with his muzzle. "It is just another of the Wolfmother's tricks," he told her. "She is using him to build her army of monster- just as she used the rest of us."
"Army of monsters?" Sigyn cocked her head to the side in confusion.
"I will show you."
Sigyn was reluctant to leave Angrboda's trail, but Grevis assured her they could find it again. He took her along a rocky cliff, across an icy stream and then up a steep hill.
"Look," he said, and then nodded toward a pit that had been carved out of the ice.
Sigyn did as he asked- and immediately wished that she hadn't. She scrambled backwards in horror at the sight that met her eyes.
The pit was filled with hideous creatures of every form. A few had the general shape of men, but they were mangled and malformed. Some of the things were merely beasts: strange combinations of wolves, ettins, reptiles and even birds that were held to the ground with iron chains. Most of the monsters looked lethal, with giant claws and fangs. A cacophony of noises rose out of their midst: hoots, growls, screams and nameless sounds that caused the hair on the back of Sigyn's neck to stand on end.
"Angrboda's army," Grevis said, unable to completely hide the fear in his voice.
"What does she want with them?"
Grevis blinked at her. "Isn't it obvious?"" he asked. "To make war with the Allfather."
Sigyn's eyes widened in alarm when she realized that Angrboda posed a threat to much more than Loki and herself.
"Why?" Sigyn was about to ask the question when the witch herself wandered back into sight. She seemed to be headed for a crude lean-to shelter constructed next to the pit.
From her high perch, Sigyn was able to see everything as Angrboda entered the shelter and then sat down in the snow. The witch laid a hand across her still-flat stomach and seemed to whisper something under her breath. Snow began to swirl around the enchantress. Faster and faster the flakes whipped around her body until it was a blur. Sigyn looked to Grevis for explanation, but he remained silent, his gaze intent on the scene below. When Sigyn looked back again, the effect was beginning to fade- but she was startled again. In the place of the lovely sorceress stood a terrifying Jotun!
"Angrboda is a frost giant!" Sigyn yelped, thinking back to the morning when she had been unceremoniously tossed out of her bed and into the snow.
The witch looked nothing like the pleasing form that she had worn to lure Loki and Sigyn into her home. Now she was roughly three times her original height. She still had long, black hair, but it was twisted into thick, matted braids adorned with objects that had been carved from human bones. Lines and ridges crisscrossed her skin. The gown that Angrboda had worn in her human form was discarded on the ground. The giantess was completely bare. Six teats, swollen with milk, were along her chest and her now grotesquely swollen belly. She paced back and forth, moaning under her breath and clutching her stomach. The eerie blue skin was stretched so taut that Sigyn could see the muscles flexing and clenching underneath.
Sigyn didn't want to look, but she couldn't turn her eyes away from the fearsome enchantress giving birth. She watched, transfixed. Hours passed. Then, at last,the giant groaned, gritted her teeth, and then squatted in the snow.
Another monster had been born. Sigyn recoiled at the sight of the body that emerged from Angrboda's flesh. It was more than an arm span long, but without any limbs at all. Its body was in the narrow, tapered shape of a serpent, but it had pale, almost translucent skin. Angrboda laughed as her child wound itself around her forearm and closed its gray lips around her breast. She allowed it to suckle for several moments before she ripped it away. Its mouth was stained a gory red. It had been feeding on blood instead of milk.
The witch laughed at the sight and gave her offspring an affectionate pat. Then, without further attention, she flung the beast into the pit and squatted into the snow again.
The second babe to emerge from Angrboda's womb was in the ordinary shape of a wolf. Sigyn watched as the mother turned the child over in her hands. No doubt it would grow to be as fearsome of the rest of her wild pack, but it was nothing but a harmless pup for now. With a hiss of disgust, she tossed it into the snow and then bore down yet again.
The third birth was the hardest. Angrboda labored until pale rays of sun began to peek through the clouds. Then, at last, a third body fell onto the ground, half-way buried in the snow.
The tiny, heart-breaking wail of a newborn baby girl carried on the wind. Despite the pain of watching another woman bear Loki's children, Sigyn couldn't stop the feeling of tenderness that rose in her chest at the sound. She looked closer. In the soft light of dawn, she could see that the baby's head sported tufts of thick black hair. Just like Loki's hair, Sigyn thought with a bittersweet smile. She couldn't be certain, but she imagined that the girl would have bright green eyes like her father too.
Sigyn had already started imagining father and daughter together when Angrboda scooped her daughter off of the ground. Sigyn jolted in terror. The side of the baby that Sigyn had seen was pale and perfect and new- but the other half of the baby was black, as withered and still as a corpse.
An evil smile spread across Angrboda's face as she looked down at the child. "Ah, my sweet, Hel!" she said in a raspy purr. "The greatest of my children...finally, you have come!"
Sigyn held her breath as the witch continued speaking: "I knew that Dark Spirits would honor my sacrifice and that you would join me at last. Daughter of a Prince…born to be a queen. Go now to your people and wait for my command…"
Angrboda reached into the folds of her discarded dress and drew out a dagger. She kissed the baby tenderly on her head. Then, without warning, she plunged the dagger into the child's chest.
Sigyn couldn't contain a terrified "yip". Luckily, the rumbles and screams from the pit drowned out the sound.
The witch took a moment to tend to her own body, healing the effects of the birth. She whispered an incantation, returning to the form Sigyn knew. Angrboda pulled on her dress and cloak and then disappeared back in the direction of the cottage as if nothing were amiss.
"We should go now," Grevis said.
Sigyn nodded, but wasn't able to rip her eyes away from the horrific scene that she had witnessed. She saw Hel's body, completely still now, discarded on the ground. She saw the yawning mouth of the pit. Finally, her eyes alighted on the wolf-pup. It was still alive- although it wouldn't be for long from the looks of its shivering.
"What will happen to the wolf?" Sigyn asked.
"The others may come and take him."
"And if they don't?" Sigyn couldn't imagine the black wolf's pack taking care of a child.
Grevis was matter of fact. "Then it will die." He turned to go and looked back over his shoulder when Sigyn didn't join him. "Don't."
Sigyn ignored him. She might have the body of a wolf, but she still had a woman's heart. She couldn't let any child- much less a child of Loki- die alone in the snow.
Sigyn picked her way carefully down the face of the cliff, calling on the balance and skill that she had learned at Noatun. When she reached the bottom, she made her way to the pup. He was so cold that he wasn't moving and flakes of snow had started sticking to his skin. Sigyn sank onto the ground beside him, wrapping her body around him for warmth the same way that his father had once done for her.
"You're safe, little one," she whispered.
The wolf couldn't answer in words. In her mind, she felt a flash of his fear and loneliness and her heart softened further. "It's okay…" she continued to soothe him. "I have you now…" she paused to think of a name. "Fenrir," she finally decided.
She didn't know if the animal liked his name or not. His only response was to whimper and burrow deeper into her fur. He squirmed for a while, but eventually fell asleep. Sigyn knew that they couldn't remain in the open for long, but she decided to allow him a little while to gather his strength before she carried him back to her den.
Sigyn remained awake. Her senses were on full alert for signs that the other pack was approaching. She sniffed the air, strained her ears, and carefully scanned the horizon. Her eyes rested on Hel's discarded corpse and she thought back to Skion and her first day as a wolf. She remembered how the warrior's body had finally regained his form when he fell under the shadow of death. Sigyn drew a grain of comfort from the certainty that, at least in her final moments, she would be free of Angrboda's power.
Sigyn mulled on this macabre idea for just a moment, and then glanced at the pit again. Her body jolted in shock.
She finally knew how to save Loki.
A/N: A very, very special thank you to LillianClaire for helping me plot this out- you were a lifesaver! Also, she has done another (AMAZING!) drawing. Check it out: lillianclaire . deviantart . com (take out the spaces).
Also- Cridelamouette- I hope you are still alive!
Thanks to everyone for your reviews! I fear that I may have lost a few of you on the last chapter. Let me know if you are still around!