Frida felt Helga's eyes on her, constantly swaying over her figure as she sat there with her, Floki, Ragnhildir and Angrboða around the small fire they had cooked their lunch over, just outside Helga and Floki's home in the forest.
And while she tried to ignore it, she felt a certain irritation growing from the back of her head as she heard the joyful chirping of a starling sounding above them, and she rose to her feet in a swift movement, trying to escape Helga's devoted attention by excusing herself to go pee.
As soon as Frida turned around some greenery and away from Helga's constant stare, she sighed out in relief.
What irritated her was not that Helga was worried about her, not at all. That was how she was, always the sweetheart. It was the fact that Frida could not answer the questions that were so immediate in Helga's stare, and they lingered between them like a thick cloud of absconding smoke, prevailing between the silent group as they had been eating, the silence pounding in Frida's ears as they had enjoyed some smoked trout on small pieces of walnut bread.
What did Frida's dream mean?
Why had she dreamt the things she had, and why had she been so affected by them?
Frida swayed her hands over her big and bulky stomach, and she tried to remember the last time she had felt the child in there kick around. When she could not, she felt her throat tightening slightly.
What if her dream did not have anything to do with her? What if the dream had something to do with the coming of her unborn child?
What if he was not going to live?
She remembered how the serpent of her dream had bit into her pelvis, and how the pain had been most excruciating and real. Frida felt a cool sensation of fear travel over her face as she looked at the outstretched fabric that covered her abdomen.
"Please be alive and well, little one," she whispered inaudibly into the silence of the forest that surrounded her, and her thoughts raced to her husband back in the village, and how devastated he would be if she was not to give him a healthy son like he had been told by the gods.
Could the gods be mistaken?
Was that possible?
The sound of a twig snapping over the moist grounds behind her had her twirl around with her breath stuck in her throat. But when her eyes fell upon a couple of dark circled ones, she quickly relaxed again, and she turned away from Floki's glare with blushing cheeks.
She had never been very close with Floki, and the thought of how tight she had hugged him before when waking from her dream made her feel slightly awkward being alone with him all of a sudden.
However, she did not ask him why he had followed her.
A long moment of silence hovered between them, before she sensed his presence right next to her, and she turned her head to look at him out of the corners of her eyes. He was staring at her with a strange expression over his face. Attentive.
"This ash tree you saw in your dream," Floki's voice suddenly rustled into her ear, causing her to feel slightly dizzy. "It was here, in this forest?"
Frida felt her eyes turning to the small path leading away from the house, and she nodded. "Yeah, it was just up that path there. Not far."
She heard Floki breathe out a small puff of air as his eyes too turned to the path in front of them. Frida felt his air dance vibrantly around him, and she saw him take a step forward, before their eyes met once more.
"Would you care to show me?" he asked her in a slow hissing rasp, his eyes shining at her from behind dark circles.
She noticed how he clenched his fists tight around the strap of his small leather purse that hung loosely over his torso, and she could not help but to raise her brows at him.
"Why?" she asked in a blunt voice.
The air between them was dry and warm. The late summer was very gentle this year.
Floki answered her with a hiss, and turned his eyes away from her again in an angry movement. A long moment prevailed between them without any of them uttering even a sound, and Frida dared to take a step closer to him, narrowing her eyes at him as she finally spoke: "I will show you."
The tree was further away than Frida remembered. Even though she recognized the trees and bushes that they were passing from her dream, she could not really tell how far they had to continue on walking to reach it.
The forest had grown darker now, and above the leafy crowns that hovered over them the sky was turning golden red, as if the sky was bleeding over the trees, causing a strange light to gleam mysteriously in the surrounding forestry.
Frida felt Floki's eyes on her back as they slowly walked along the waving path that unfolded before them, and she felt herself wishing that she had not agreed to go.
If she was not successful in finding the tree again, she was not sure how Floki was going to react.
He seemed too certain that they were going to lay their eyes upon the huge ash tree she had come across in her dream, too vivid and intense in his air for someone who might not see the giant Yggdrasil spoken of in the Sagas.
For a realization was starting to grow in the back of Frida's mind that her dreamy vision might have been nothing more but just a dream, while both Floki and Helga had been certain that the gods had shown it to her for a reason.
As soon as Frida stopped in her tracks on the path, Floki stopped too.
She heard him breathing out behind her, and she dared not to look around to see the disappointment wash over his face.
"I don't think it's here," she whispered as she wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "It must have been a mere creation of my imagination, nothing more."
She heard Floki snicker behind her. "From a word to a word I was led to a word. From a work to a work I was led to a work."
Frida had no idea what his words meant, but she could feel him reaching up his hand to guide her along the oncoming path before her. Floki had urged her to take him, almost forced her to do so, when he had told her of the stories of the giant tree named Yggdrasil.
According to the Sagas, it was the tree of life and death, the connector of the nine worlds, the trunk by which the entire essence of life sprouted from. And it was from this tree that Odin had hung himself in his curious search for answers of what comes with the arrival of death.
Frida could still remember the piercing blue stares of the biting serpent in her dream, and she slowly developed the idea that this serpent might have stolen Odin's other eye from one of his ravens. They looked so alike…
A sudden movement between the shrubberies to her right had Frida turn sharp to stare into a couple of small brown eyes that followed the couple as they moved down the path.
"There!" she exclaimed in a surprised yelp, pointing with her finger at the bush. "It's the squirrel from my dream!"
Floki hurriedly ran to the gooseberry bush, and he crouched down with a focused look on his face, listening carefully to the immediate sounds of the forest. He could hear something that Frida could not, and he suddenly sprang into a run, waving his hand at her for her to follow up as he silently raced along the path before them.
Frida could not keep up, not even the slightest, as the weight of her big stomach made her legs slightly wobbly. But she moved as fast as she could, with her eyes on the small and thin braiding that hung down from Floki's neck moving side to side with his jogging movements.
Red and green washed past the couple as they moved through the thick forestry, but it was not long before Frida sensed the changing light of a clearance further up ahead, and she slowed down.
Almost out of breath, she pointed her finger at the gladding* clearing, and she urged him to move forward without her, as she rested herself against the trunk of an oak tree, heaving the dry summer air in and out of her aching lungs. It felt like the child inside her was so big that it pressed her lungs, denying her to breathe fully.
Something warm had started to build in the pits of her stomach.
Frida was surprised when she looked up to see Floki right in front of her, staring at her with big eyes. A strange expression had flushed over his face, an expression that Frida had never really seen prevail on Floki's features before. Awe was obvious in the light that shone from his eyes, a weird sense of protection dancing around his air as he reached up his hand to support her weight.
"Please, Frida. Ratatosk* will not show me the truth without you," he whispered in a hissing rasp, his hands tender on the small of her back as he urged her to follow him.
And she knew that he was speaking the truth. She could feel it in the warmth that still pressed in her pelvis, stronger and stronger, and she forced herself to keep on going, out of breath and lightheaded.
When Floki and Frida finally broke through the shrubbery that was the edge of the meadow, she found peace.
There, right in front of them, from the moist mossy earth grew the majestic tree that she had seen in her dream, the trunk enormous and powerful and the blossoming crown like the king of the forest, broad and overshadowing, only letting small glimmers of light dance on the twinkling earth of the meadow.
Purple and yellow flowers blossomed heavily between the tall dancing grass that covered the earth below it, and Frida could not tear her eyes away from the tree even if she wanted to as she took another step closer to it.
She noticed that between the broad branches of the crown several antlers appeared, and she heard herself breathing out in awe as she realized that four stags sat up there, munching heavily on the green leaves of the crown of the tree.
She had almost forgotten that Floki was with her as she stood there, taking in the beautiful sight of the Yggdrasil of her dreams, but she tore her eyes away from it when she heard him breathing out a devilish chuckle.
But she did not understand the strange look that was on Floki's face as she watched him look at the tree.
It was a look of… mischief?
"This tree is not Yggdrasil, Frida," he smiled in a whisper, shaking his head lightly.
Frida furrowed her brows as she turned her eyes to the tree once more. She could not believe what he was saying.
"But look," she pressed. "Its branches reach up to the sky, its roots are but serpents, and up there in the crown…"
She had started to walk closer with her eyes focused on the ground right before the trunk of the tree. She could see how the serpents twisted and turned there, but she was looking for something special. If she could but show Floki the blue piercing eyes of the serpent that had bit her in her dream, she knew that Floki would realize that this was the tree from where the All-father had hung himself.
The hissing sounds of the serpents were deafening the closer she came to the tree, but her eyes caught the glimpse of something golden in between the slithering tales of the snakes, one single rune prevailing between the darkness.
It was the ansuz, the rune of Odin. The first rune she had learned to read.
Frida giggled when she felt warmth explode in her stomach and spread down her legs.
"You see, Floki? Then, I was fertilized and became wise. I truly grew and thrived.*" She spoke words that she knew not, and when she turned around to have her eyes catch his, she almost stumbled backwards.
He had finally opened his eyes to the truth, she could see it in the light that now shone from his widened eyes. He appeared surprised, yet full of awe, frightened almost. Like how the Saxons feared their god.
"Freyja?" he whispered, taking a step closer to her.
Frida furrowed her brows as yet another hot wave traveled from her stomach and shot down her legs. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest, as if trying to escape her body all together.
Frida shook her head, and pointed to the tree, but when she wanted to speak out, to tell him that it was indeed Odin that this tree resembled, nothing came out.
"I hail you, Vanadís*," Floki whispered in a loving breath, silent yet powerful, his eyes shining with a godly light as he took another step closer to her.
When another warm wave flushed over Frida's body, she looked down only to see that her clothes were of a different color than they had been before. They were a bright red, the most beautifully colored garment she had ever laid her eyes upon.
They were red like… blood?
Confusion flushed over Frida immediately, and she suddenly realized that the warm waves that had flushed over her were not godly waves. They were waves of pain, waves of blood.
Her water had broke.
Her child was coming.
*This word has its roots in another Old Norse word: glathr (which means 'bright, joyous'), and in Old English it meant 'bright, shining.'
*Ratatosk: the small squirrel that is said to travel up and down the trunk of Yggdrasil, bringing news from the roots to the crown. Am I the only one thinking that the name of the Pokémon Rattata is inspired by this creature?
*Words of Odin himself: "Then I was fertilized and became wise. I truly grew and thrived. From a word to a word I was led to a word. From a work to a work I was led to a work." (he speaks these words when he learns to read and write in runes).
*Vanadís: another name for Freyja (the dís of the vanirs) meaning the beautiful god.