The Monstrous Child by Francesca Simon Page A

the dead next door and be alone with my thoughts. I pull the bed hangings tight across, and dream of love.
    Baldr. My lovely Baldr. How can I lure him here? He needs to die. But gods don’t die. Maybe, just maybe, One-Eye will send him, seeking wisdom, and I’ll find a way to keep him. What a wonder that would be, a god in Hel. How the gods would suffer without him. How I would rejoice with him.
    I need to cling to something, some small hope of happiness, of freedom, while I lie here rotting in my prison beneath the worlds.
    I am low in spirits. I think I will visit Modgud.

25
MODGUD

    ODGUD ISN’T A friend . I’m the Goddess of the Underworld; I have no friends. I don’t want any friends. I am fine by myself. I am cradled by hate and fury; I need no one. But, every millenia or so, I leave my hall and journey to Gjoll, the boundary river between the living and the dead, to see her.
    The giantess always looks the same. She does not age,does not grow taller. Time is still for her, as it is for all here. She is always pleased to see me. I think she is the only creature I have ever known who is.
    We sit by the glowing bridge on the riverbank, watching the shadows. The ground is freezing and the wind moans over the blasted hills. Neither of us speaks. The dead still stream across, silently, a never-ending line of arrivals. The fog road, dotted with fire, the last vestiges of the world of the living, looks so close, and yet for me it could be a million miles away.
    ‘So how goes it?’ says Modgud. Her watchful eyes are tiny pinpricks of light.
    I have no idea where she learns this language. So far as I know she never talks to the dead other than to ask their name and lineage. And yet she speaks words and phrases I have never heard.
    ‘My hall is filling,’ I say. ‘It’s awful.’
    ‘Tell me about it,’ says Modgud, sighing. ‘It’s a non-stop procession of corpses down here.’
    ‘So much for those whining poets singingwarnings that guests mustn’t overstay their welcome, as loved becomes loathed if they sit too long at another’s hearth.’
    ‘The dead don’t listen,’ says Modgud.
    ‘Once they find you, they stay forever,’ I say. ‘Hint all you like; they don’t budge. Yank ’em out, show ’em the door, they slip right back in.’
    ‘Why don’t you line every bench with red-hot pokers?’ says Modgud. She is smiling.
    I grimace. ‘They’d still make themselves comfy.’
    I’m finding it difficult to speak of why I’ve come back to Gjoll after so many winters have passed. What could I say? Instead I ask:
    ‘Why do you stay here? Why don’t you leave?’
    Modgud looks astonished.
    ‘And go where?’
    ‘Anywhere,’ I say.
    ‘I can’t,’ says Modgud. ‘I’m the Warden of the Bridge.’
    There was another long silence. We listened to thepounding water and the wind-blown shades passing over the bridge.
    ‘Even if I could, where would I go?’ says Modgud.
    ‘Have you ever tried?’
    Modgud’s salt-white face pales.
    ‘No!’
    She looked around, as if we might be overheard.
    ‘OK. Once. Oh, I was terrified. That flames would consume me. That my body would crumble into dust. I’ve never been above. I’d like to see Midgard. Even just for a moment.’
    ‘Go on, then,’ I say. ‘I won’t tell. Who are you guarding this place from, anyway? You think the living are going to stage a mass invasion?’
    Modgud’s face droops.
    ‘I can’t cross the bridge any more than you can.’
    I’m not sorry. Who was it who said that misery loves company? They were right.
    Modgud picks up a stone and lobs it into the raging river.
    ‘Why did you do that?’ I ask.
    Modgud shrugs. ‘I like the plop sound.’
    I pick up a small black rock. It feels smooth and heavy in my hands. It is good to touch something that isn’t dead, even if it isn’t alive. Something that doesn’t hold a death stench.
    On impulse I hurl it into the river. The rock bounces and splashes before sinking in the torrent.
    We