by Ginny McSheehan

Content Warnings: Torture, Near Drowning, Grief

Sigyn emptied the bowl. Without it intermittently capturing the poison that trickled from the serpent’s lips, I screamed in agony.

The damp rock scraped against my back as the venom spread across my face, searing my flesh. My faithful wife frantically poured the poison from her bowl onto the earth, before replacing it under the serpent’s head, giving me a few moments respite to tug at my bindings. I lay bound with pieces of flesh, soft as sausage casing, that should have been easy to tear through. But they were the intestines of my son Narfi, slain by his cursed brother Valli, and an enchantment made them strong as iron.

I, the god of trickery, was trapped. It was not the first time, but it might be the last. I shut my eyes, and inky black water closed in around me, filling my lungs with despair as a fish wife fills a slop bucket with guts. The fleshy ropes reminded me of my son’s laugh, and a wave slapped me in the face: the memory of his mother braiding his hair, punching clear through me yet leaving me alive to know my son was dead.

The poison pained my flesh, but the grief drowned my soul in an endless whirlpool of suffering. At the vortex, a single eye stared at me. The Aesir had never liked me, but my blood brother betrayed me and tortured my children. I would never be free from his deceit, or the torment of these black waters, and braced myself for the next current to drag me across a thousand razor sharp rocks.

When the giantess Angrbroda and I had come together like lightning and the tip of a spear, she had borne me three children. Rising up from the grim sea came the largest of these, Jörmungandr, his enormous serpentine tail clutched in his mouth. I remembered when he had been a tiny snake, circling my arm and climbing around my shoulders, tickling my skin.

But then he had grown, and grown, and grown. Around the world, the length of his body circled, his beginning also his end. He would fight Thor at Ragnarok and die. How pitiful that I was the reason Thor had his mighty hammer, and that it would be the thing to bring about Jörmungandr’s death.

Another child, another loss. Another testament to my mistakes and all I could not do. The black waters pulled us both under, and I reached for him in vain as my lungs burned for air.

Sigyn emptied the bowl.

My eyes opened, and I faced the dripping liquid once again, each drop a torch that burned my flesh down to the bone. She stumbled over her feet to empty the bowl faster. I heard an inhuman howl, only to realize it was coming from my own mouth; the poison had yet to reach my vocal cords. For the moment, I still had eyelids and I shut them tight.

In the darkness, a murky tidal wave of grief sprang from my heart, and their currents dragged me away once more.

Floundering to keep my head above water, a wet nose rubbed against my own. Now I saw two bright yellow eyes, a gray snout, and a pink tongue that licked my face. My lips broke into a smile.

“Fenrir…” I murmured as I reached to stroke his damp fur. The pup grew beneath my touch. A wave pulled him from me, and the chains overtook him—his snout, once small and cute, pinned with a sword. His howl of pain rang sharper than my own. Two inky waves enveloped me in despair.

Sigyn emptied the bowl.

My heart and body cried out for relief. A swell swept me up and away, and I hoped it would finally drown me.

And then, through the pain of the waters and venom, I saw a face.

She was half flesh, half corpse, all goddess. Bones showed through her left side, but her right side was somber.

“All come to me, sooner or later.” She lifted a skeletal hand. “And people bring me their grief, just as you are doing now, Father.” The fingers snapped, and the water encased me, freezing my form in place. My daughter Hel, the little girl that Angrboda had handed me, would forever rule the dead, away from the other gods and the living. Just like my beast sons, Jörmungandr and Fenrir.

Just like Valli, when the Aesir were finished with him.

Sigyn emptied the bowl and the water turned into nine spears, each stabbing me in the heart, my flesh crinkling and burning. My last living child, cursed like the rest, was dead. I wanted to join him.

Suddenly a wave shot me upwards, and I could see over Hel’s shoulder; there stood Narfi. He looked as he had before he was disemboweled, wearing the blue tunic his mother had lovingly embroidered. He gave me a small smile, then walked off into the sprawling underworld, leaving me with my only daughter. Though the waves carried me, she stood atop them unaffected and produced a horn.

“We all will make it to the other side someday. But father, you get to be at the helm of it all.”

Her lips, only half flesh, blew into the small tip, letting out a low, mournful sound.

The waves parted. Something long and scaled rose from the water, and soon I felt it, solid beneath my feet. Planks made entirely of human fingernails formed a ship, the sail woven of hair.

I would ride it into the worst of the loss. I would be left forever maimed. But on the other side was a new beginning.

These waters would not be the end of me. I sail on the grief of millions to safer shores.

Sigyn no longer held the bowl. She held my hand.

Ginny McSheehan (she/her) is a queer pagan storyteller with a lifelong love for history and folklore. During the summer and fall, she can be found at Nyr Jorvik Viking Village, where she teaches Viking history through inclusive historical reenactment, and tells the stories of the Norse gods and goddesses. She holds an MFA from Emerson’s Popular Fiction and Publishing program and is querying her second novel. Her contact info can be found at solo.to/ginnysquillpen.