Chapter 3 - Unmasked

One day followed another, as they always do. Hela fared no better in the land of the gods. Her only friends were Hnossa and Ullr, who helped her feel like less of a monster.

She had even been invited into the home of Thor and Sif, Thruthvanger by name, where she sat nervously in the kitchen eating a roll with fresh butter. Mjolnir, Thor's legendary hammer, lay propped against the hearth like a whiskbroom. She eyed it with awe and suspicion. She wondered how many of her kin in Jotunheim it had killed.

"Your father once chopped off all my hair," Sif laughed during the course of their little conversation.

"I am sorry, Lady Sif, but there is nothing I can do about my father's bad behavior. Your hair is so beautiful; I can't imagine why he would have done such a thing," the girl replied.

The goddess of the harvest stopped and looked hard at Loki's odd daughter. She smiled. "Of course; forgive my rudeness. Ullr, fetch me my comb, won't you?"

Sandy-haired Ullr shrugged, got up, and left the room while Sif pulled up a stool next to Hela.

"Your hair is lovely too," Sif commented, reaching out and smoothing the brief peek of hair visible under the child's hood. Hela leaned into it, closing her eyes. People were so afraid of touching her that she relished every contact.

"No it isn't," the girl whispered. It was in fact a tangled rat's nest. Her father didn't own a comb suitable for a girl's long hair, so Hela had been more or less left to her own devices.

Ullr returned and handed his mother her bone comb. "Turn around, dear," Sif said. "Let's try some braids."

Hela obediently turned, catching Ullr's smile and holding it close to her sore heart. She asked Sif if it would be all right if the boy left the room while she took off her hood. Ullr had no wish to embarrass his friend and promptly stepped outside.

The girl removed her hood. Sif only blinked hard, which Hela did not see. The left side of the girl's head had quite a few thin patches and this sorry sight touched the woman's heart. She made a low side part on the right side of Hela's head and drew her thick black hair over the sparse parts, and then commenced to create braids on both sides.

After a few minutes of combing and plaiting, Sif was done. She took a flower from a bunch she had just picked and placed it behind the girl's ear as a finishing touch.

"Thank you, Lady Sif," Hela replied, patting the sides of her head with her hands; she had already wound her sleeve around her bony left hand so it wouldn't show. In doing so, she inadvertently jostled the blossom behind her ear and tried to catch it as it fell.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she gasped.

Both looked at the flower as it fell on Hela's lap and lay there, shriveled and dead.

Hela had been so horrified that she had burst into tears and fled the house with Ullr on her heels. As time had gone by in Asgard over the last few weeks, Hela had been feeling changes in herself; changes that were as unwelcome as they were mysterious. Poor Sif wouldn't have said a thing, but her housemaid did, and news of the incident soon spread through Asgard like wildfire.

One evening, her father told her that Allfather Odin had consulted the Norns, or fates, about the incident. "They think you're destined to be the death goddess," Loki told Hela solemnly before their hearth.

"I think they are insane," the girl replied, her voice shaking. "Father, can you get me back home again? I hate it here so much."The mischief-god shook his head. "If I did sneak you out of here, they would just punish me and haul you back."

"I think you are just a coward," his daughter replied, and dropped her face in her bony hands.

It was another sunny day in Asgard, but Hela's depression and hopelessness kept her from enjoying it. Once again she walked alone. There had been another rumor around Asgard; one that said that her mother was dead, her heart shattered by grief over the loss of her children. Loki had told Hela it wasn't true but she didn't believe him. Lost in her listless shuffle, she did not hear Gunnar approach to her left.

"Hela, come with me! Ullr wants to see you in the forest. There is a flock of eider ducks on the pond and they've laid four clutches of eggs."

She looked at him. He was smiling and gesturing toward the woods with his beefy arm.

"It's been raining," Hela replied. "I'll just get stuck in the muck if I go close to the pond."

"Don't worry; Ullr and I will help you. Hurry!"

Fifteen minutes later the two children were deep in the woods; their progress had been slow because of Hela's labored breathing. She had also not wanted to spoil the special shoe Tyr had made by ruining it with fresh mud.

"Where is Ullr?" she said, standing still so that her breathing could slow itself.

Otkel stepped out from behind a copse of trees. "Ullr couldn't make it," he replied, grinning.

Realizing she had been tricked and then trapped, Hela tried her mightiest to cast an invisibility spell on herself. It didn't work, and Gunnar approached her with deliberation.

"What's under that cloak?" he asked her. "What are you hiding under there?"

"Stay away from me!" Hela cried, her anxiety mounting as both boys came toward her. They were too young for rape to be an object; the boys were curious about the extent of the girl's deformities and were bent on satisfying their curiosity. In any event, Hela's terror mounted and she turned and tried her best to run.

Within seconds she had been knocked to the forest floor as Gunnar rolled her over and began tearing at her cloak. She began to scream as Otkel slapped his grimy hand over her mouth; she promptly bit it and Otkel snatched his hand away, punching her in the face in anger.

Gunnar finally had her hood off and gazed at Hela's face.

"It's true," he breathed. "She's a monster. Otkel, just look!"

Hela squeezed her eyes shut as the boys' fingers laced through her hair held her head still. She felt their hot breath as they scrutinized her. "Is the rest of you just as ugly?" Gunnar said, pulling at the shoulder of her dress until it tore.

Hela's fear was white-hot; her eyes rolled back in her head. Vast stores of anger opened up in her brain. She freed one hand from under her and slammed it against Gunnar's pudgy face.

The boy gave a single shriek. Blood poured from his nose and mouth.

He fell onto her, dead.

At once Otkel began to scream, a high, keening wail that pierced through her own terror. Struggling mightily, Hela thrust the dead boy from her and scrambled to her feet.

"You killed him, you monster! You killed him! Murderer! Murderer!" Otkel whirled around and ran in a crazy looping path back toward Asgard. "Murderer! Murderer!"

Knowing that she could never run fast or far enough to escape this monstrous scene, Hela Half-Rotted scrubbed at the blood that covered her, sat down on the ground next to the fresh corpse, and began to cry.