The Monstrous Child by Francesca Simon Page B

sit on the steep bank and lob rocks into the water. I don’t understand this game, but the plop of the stones in the river is strangely soothing.
    Plop.
    Plop.
    Plop.
    Plop plop.
    I could do this for nights.
    Plop.
    If the dead were startled to see their queen lobbing rocks into the water, they did not show it.
    A shivering corpse meanders across the shiningbridge. Modgud drops her pebbles, holds up her arm and the spectre pauses.
    ‘Before you go further,’ she says, ‘your name and your lineage.’
    ‘I was Helgi, son of Sigurd the Abrupt,’ says the dead man.
    Modgud nods.
    ‘Pass by,’ she says, lowering her gleaming arm.
    The corpse vanishes into the vapour.
    ‘Slow night for once,’ she says, sitting down again beside me on the riverbank.
    ‘What news of the worlds above?’
    Modgud shrugs.
    ‘Many warriors have passed here, more than usual. There is much fighting.’
    The longing to say Baldr’s name out loud fills me.
    I won’t say anything, I vow.
    ‘Have you ever been in love?’ I ask.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ says Modgud.
    I wait.
    But Modgud does not ask me.
    Suddenly I feel that if I don’t speak his name I will burst.
    ‘There’s someone who loves me,’ I blurt. ‘And someone whom I love.’
    Of course I didn’t say that. I hide my feelings, my true self. No one may see them.
    But I want so much to say his name, to have his name fill my mouth.
    ‘I’m in love,’ I say. The words stick on my tongue like wet clay.
    I instantly regret it. If I could recall the words and lock them back up I would.
    ‘What is love?’ says Modgud.
    She’s asking me?
    ‘Love is when you can’t think about anything except the one,’ I said. ‘It is aching with love-longing. It is to have no thoughts in your head but about them. What would they think, what would they like, why aren’t they here, who are they with, over and over until you aredriven mad and you would kill everyone in the world if it meant they lived.’
    Modgud’s white-lashed eyes widen. She shakes her head.
    ‘No,’ she says. ‘Who would I love?’
    And then it all flooded out. I told her everything. I’d been bursting to say his name. Baldr. Baldr. Baldr.
    ‘Even I have heard that name,’ says Modgud.
    ‘Is there any way – do you suppose I might – do you think I’ll ever see Baldr again?’
    ‘Why don’t you ask the seeress?’ said Modgud.
    Seeress? Seeress?
    I thought I had met everyone there was to meet down here.
    ‘What seeress? Where can I find her?’
    ‘Gods brought her body and buried her deep in that grave mound by your eastern door,’ said Modgud. ‘She remembers the age before the beginning of the worlds and can see far into the future.’
    After all this time she mentions a seeress? I couldnot believe I’d been down here for so long and had not known that she existed.
    ‘Actually it’s best to leave her be: seeresses hate being disturbed,’ said Modgud. ‘Especially this one.’
    What did I care what a long-dead seeress liked or didn’t like? She could tell me what my future held. What’s the point of being queen if you can’t have your own way?

26
THE SEERESS

    STUMBLE SLOWLY through the sleet over the frozen ground to her grave mound by the hall’s east door. I’d passed it many times and never wondered who was buried there. The nameless dead, swirling like smoke, scatter as I step through them. It’s like walking through mist, pushing through the massed cobwebbed ghosts.
    Her mound is ringed with stones, in the shape of a ship. Modgud says she’s grumpy, but I can force her up. The great seeress, older than time, can surely tell me what I so desperately need to know.
    I mutter a few charms, sprinkle herbs on her mound. There is a stirring, and a clinking, and slowly the gleaming spectre rises out of her grave. She looms above me, clutching her staff. Her face is chalk white, twisted in rage. The charm belt about her waist shudders and chimes as she trembles. The air smells ranker, and