Trapped

had located me, her eyes searched beyond my back. » Were you not to bring another Druid? «
    » She is here. She’ll reveal herself when she feels safe. «
    » The two of you are to ride along in my chariot. The Black Axes are to follow in their own conveyance. Are you ready? «
    » Aye. «
    Freyja dropped her eyes to an especially hulkalicious dwarf next to her chariot. » Axemaster, we’ll see you at the Spring of Hvergelmir. «
    » Aye, lady. « He bellowed orders, and these were rebellowed up and down the beach. The horde of dwarfs moved toward the trees, where their looming gunships waited. As the space cleared around Freyja, Granuaile revealed herself and nodded.
    » Lady Freyja, it is my honor to meet you. I am Granuaile. «
    Freyja did not return the honor, but she did nod back. » Join me. We follow the root of Yggdrasil to the Spring of Hvergelmir. There we will see the gates and walls of Hel. Some of the Black Axes will assault one end of the wall, drawing attention, and our party will fly over the other, sparsely defended end to find Fenris. «
    We climbed into her chariot, and I experienced a moment’s disorientation before I remembered that it wasn’t pulled by horses or oxen or any other beast of burden but rather by a few gray domestic house cats. Freyja made an odd purring noise and we lurched forward, jerking at first but then smoothing out as we left the ground and ascended, flying briefly over water before banking around and flying back toward the forest. We skimmed above trees that looked like green pipe cleaners, then reached a wee pond and dove straight for it. I knew what was going to happen, but Granuaile didn’t. Her fingers clutched the edge of the chariot and she said, » Um, « but made no other sound.
    That water, it turned out, wasn’t very wet. It was a portal to the Norse plane. I recognized it because there was a large fir with roots in the pond, just like the pond in Russia that led to the spring at Jötunheim. We didn’t have to splash through it: The air pressure just changed, our ears popped, and we were following the root of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, down to Niflheim. It was clear for a time, then we plunged into the mists for which the plane is named.
    The journey made me miss Ratatosk. Though Oberon might have disagreed—his nature bent to dislike squirrels as a rule—I thought Ratatosk had been a splendid creature and wholly undeserving of the death he found at the hands of the Norns. His death had been my fault, of course. I was beginning to think I’d never balance the scales I’d tipped twelve years ago.
    The root of Yggdrasil disappeared into dark, bubbling waters ringed by an epic stone wall with eleven different arches for egress, from whence eleven rivers flowed. One of them, Gjöll, flowed near the gates of Hel and must be crossed. But now that the dwarfs had crafted flying machines, there would be no bargaining with a bridge keeper. Even the massive wall was no obstacle, but Freyja wished to preserve the fiction that it was. Once the dwarven gunships landed on the banks of Gjöll, half of them split off and went to bombard the walls of Hel, hoping to draw fighters to the walls and distract those inside from our true purpose.
    As they flew off with Freyja’s blessing, I took the opportunity to look around at the alien landscape of Niflheim. I sort of wished Freyja had a digital camera on her so Granuaile and I could pose like tourists on top of the stone wall encircling the spring. We’d point east with huge smiles on our faces, and then the caption would read, Nidhogg is over there!
    In Niflheim, even under weak starlight filtered through mists, there are blues and hints of soft pinks reflected in the ice. They hint at comfort and reflections of a brighter world; they whisper of the fires raging in their primordial opposite, Muspellheim. In certain light and with a little imagination, great crags of ice could be mistaken for those old red-white-and-blue bomb pops sold from the backs of square white trucks.
    Once we circled up into the sky and headed for Hel, above the mists, I saw distant purple crags with black hash marks sparsely distributed about them, lonesome trees howling of their isolation in the chill winds. Still, even with that icy anguish for a backdrop, the swirling mists offered colors and hopes that something inside them might not be so cold. All that ended once we sailed over the wall into Hel.
    In Hel, there are no blues or any other