Silence, Before the Horn

by Marie Brennan

(Originally published in Jabberwocky #1, July 2005)


In the end, we all chose sleep. Skuld was the first to go; they say she went to Svalbard, to the glaciers that never melt, and locked in ice she dreams the centuries away. Thrúth sleeps in stone, Hrist in the bole of an ancient tree. Brynhild chose fire, and left it once, but to fire she returned, immolating herself to escape a greater pain.

And I? I chose water. The gentle lap of waves on a lakeshore, in a distant land where I thought I would not be disturbed. We were tired, all of us, tired of choosing the slain, tired of the endless round of battle and death. We chose instead to sleep: a little death we granted to ourselves.

But my sleep did not last. A magician, a worker of charms, divined what lay beneath the surface of my lake. He served a warrior, and brought him there, and the warrior demanded my sword from me.

And I? I gave it up. Let another choose who would die. But a valkyrie, it seems, cannot renounce her nature so easily. Had he not taken my sword, he would have lived to great age, and his shining kingdom would have endured for generations to come. As it was, he died in battle: I chose him, and he was slain.

Perhaps he wanted it that way.

When he lay dying on the shore, he returned the sword to me. Twice his companions refused, but at his word they came a third time and flung the blade over the water. I caught it as it flew, one white-clad arm rising above the surface of the lake. I wonder what his companions made of that.

He carouses now in the Allfather's hall, waiting with the others for the end that will come. Or he sleeps under a hill: a more dignified image. Either is true, or neither, or both. It does not matter. He waits, and will return.

And I? I wait as well. We cannot sleep forever. We will take our rest while we can, I in my lake, Skuld in ice, Brynhild in fire. We will rise when the horn sounds, and do battle, and die: a death chosen for us when time began.



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