Chapter 11: Redeemed
Everyone who has ever read the Norse myths know that Ragnarok, the great twilight of the gods, came and went. Yet, neither of the Eddas or any of the written myths mention the deaths of Hela or Ullr.
The mighty ship Naglfari – created from the fingernails of the dead over the centuries - creaked and rocked forward, weighted down by the armies of Niflheim. Loki captained; Hela kept a careful watch. She was apprehensive because Ragnarok took place during late winter and Ullr had been in Asgard.
She was so overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the last great battle that she was utterly without words. The dead were streaming out of Helheim. Her reapers dissolved into mist, overwhelmed by the ceaseless slaughter before them. Surt and his fire warriors were approaching from the South, shields blazing brighter than a thousand suns. The Jotuns and Aesir were already locked in bitter combat. The churning of her shape-shifter brother Jormundgand had triggered the tsunami that kept her great ship afloat. It was a terrible sight.
Terrible for the warriors who were now wrangling with might and main, but even more terrible for those who had no means of defense. Hela knew that her armies wouldn't last long and that the world would be utterly destroyed by fire and water. She also knew that she was not a warrior, and neither was Ullr.
"Beware, Hela!" her father – recently liberated from his prison of poison and rocks – shouted over the din, steering the groaning ship over to an embayment. "Command your troops to disembark on those rocks and cut off the army of the Aesir yonder!"
Would Hela stand by to order her dead warriors to shatter their bones against bronze swords and shields and watch her father get his head split open by Heimdall? Especially when she saw her winter god approaching from her right?
"Ullr!" she screamed at the top of her voice. Loki immediately saw what was going to happen and grabbed her sleeve. She ripped it out of his hand and went over the side onto the rocks, where she broke her left ankle. Ullr screamed, running for her. Hela dragged herself up, using the rocks for purchase, and reached for him.
A soldier of Asgard was hot behind her with battle axe raised high.
Ullr turned and shoved away one of the three Jotun warriors who closed in on him. One swung his sword in a great arc over his head, ready to separate the winter god's head from his shoulders in a single blow.
Hela recited one of the incantations her mother had taught her long ago. It was the most ancient magic yet practiced in the Nine Worlds and the most powerful she knew.
She strained forward and threw the tip of her cloak across Ullr's right shoulder in that fraction of a second before the blows fell upon both of them.
They promptly vanished. The Jotun and Asgardian warriors fell forward, slaying one another in the next moment.
Everyone knows what happened next. Thor and Jormungand killed one another. Fenrir killed Odin and Vidar killed Fenrir. Loki and Heimdall slaughtered each other. On and on it went until the deadly butcher's bill reached its uppermost limits.
The great bloody explosion of death and gore raged. Gods died; giants died; Surt set the world aflame; it was the End of Ends.
The battle of battles went on, but it went on without Hela Half-Rotted and Ullr the winter god.
The handsome older couple sitting outside the Hotel Ranga in South Iceland looked at one another fondly. Both had brilliant silver-white hair and were elegantly dressed in the fashions of nowadays. Glacier goggles protected their eyes in the brilliant sun.
They continued to watch the eruption of Volcano Eyjafjallajökull with obvious delight, sipping their crystal glasses of vodka. With the exception of a solitary waiter, they were alone.
She wore a black turtleneck and black stretch pants. Silver fur-trimmed boots and an iridescent black parka thrown casually over her shoulders completed the outfit. Her long hair was elegantly arranged with a smooth fall of silvery locks over the left half of her smiling face.
He was a big man - obviously once an athlete - with longish hair and a full beard and mustache wearing a plaid shirt and a pair of blue jeans. An L.L. Bean parka in royal blue kept him warm against the steady winds blowing against his back.
Not that he - nor she, for that matter - would have been bothered by the cold. Once upon a time, he had been the god of winter; she the goddess of the underworld.
Since the advent of Christianity to Scandinavia some time ago, there was little need for their services these days. An occasional pagan would find his or her solitary way to Niflheim. Breckenridge, Colorado held an annual ski festival in honor of Ullr, the patron god of skiing and snowfall.
For it was Ullr who sat there sipping Absolut in the late afternoon sun and Hela Half-Rotted who watched the roiling pyroclastic flow coursing down the distant volcanic mountain.
Shortly before Ragnarok, Skadi had finally given up on her errant husband and had departed Asgard in a huff for greener pastures in Jotunheim. Consequently, Hela and Ullr had been constant companions for the last thousand years.
"Imagine those fools in the comic books," Hela mused. "Having me mooning after your stepfather Thor." He chuckled, and she cast a sidelong glance at him. "It was you. Always you."
A strong young woman crossed the field in front of them, her long golden hair in twin pleats bouncing off her back.
"I believe she is one of our descendants," Ullr commented, taking another sip of his drink. "I lost track shortly after the Battle of the Boyne. The curve of her jaw is exactly like yours."
Hela waved at the young woman, who returned the gesture and continued snowshoeing her way across the expanse.
There was a rumble as the volcano released another pyroclastic flow. "How long will it go?" Hela asked.
"Ask Surt. He runs this neck of the woods."
Hela smiled at his reference to the king of Muspellheim, land of fire. "He was so good to tell us that the volcanic island of Surtsey was about to be created back in 1963. It was heaven hovering there, watching it splatter and hiss its way out of the ocean. I love Iceland."
The waiter busied himself around them, and asked if there would be anything else.
"No," Ullr replied with a casual wave of his hand. "We're going to be leaving momentarily."
Hela looked at him quizzically.
"Care to go to Greenland and watch the glaciers melt?" Ullr inquired.
"Global warming," the queen of the underworld mused. "So many years, so many climate changes. Those of ours who colonized it and then left when it froze over should have waited a millennium or so."
"I love you better than Iceland, my dearest heart."
"And I you."
Care to see the ash clouds?"
Hela nodded, and whispered under her breath.
The waiter approaching them shrieked loudly when their two crystal glasses fell to the ground. The handsome couple holding them had disappeared before his eyes even before his startled supervisor could open the hotel door.
In the distance - heading toward the Volcano Eyjafjallajökull - two ravens swooped and darted and then rejoined the other, steadily making their way due north.
THE END