 It seemed as if Frithkin’s entire world was wrapped in impenetrable fog. On the low ground it was thinner, and she could see further in the firelight, but it was ever-present and unrelenting. Thyri tried to ignore the pain in her arm, just as she avoided looking at it, her green eyes distracting themselves with the twisted plants she passed. Frithkin was chatting away merrily; clearly unconcerned by the oppressive atmosphere he kept pointing out landmarks and regaling her with the stories of his people. Thyri only half-listened, smiling at him when he looked to her for encouragement; alienating him would have been pure foolishness. He could have left her alone in his hateful little forest, and she would have been trapped there, in a nameless world. Thyri shuddered, if she could not find her way out, then she was still immortal, there would be no escape from the mist. She would be cursed to wander through it, burning away wraiths until the garden itself crumbled away into dust. She had to get back, she had to.
They began to move up hill. Thyri felt the ground beneath her begin to incline and soon Frithkin froze at the foot of a tree just in front of her. He sat up on his hind legs, his ears flicking in different directions as he sniffed at the air. “They’re here,” he told her, his nose twitching, “when they get close, make your fire bigger; remember heart not head.” He ran around in a little circle again, and Thyri presumed he was running off some nervous energy. She just felt afraid, it was not a feeling she was used to, nor one she welcomed. The last time she had been truly scared, she had been in her child bed, and she had sworn never again. Rhaegar had saved her, pulled her away from that life of uncertainty, and he had been constant in all the ways that mattered. He was her protector, and she had always trusted in that. In Frithkin’s world, surrounded by fog she had lost that certainty. It made her realise just how much she had relied on it; and why she had wanted it in the first place. Thyri did not share her thoughts, instead she simply nodded.
Frithkin lead the way again. They had not gone far when the first wraith came flying at them, its mouth opened in a piercing scream. The Khyer‘s silver flames suddenly erupted, stretching up into the sky, they burned a hole in the wraith. Furious, one of its fellows charged Thyri from behind, silent in its rage. She took a deep breath; picturing her lover’s face she funnelled the surge of affection into her chest, allowing it to fill her up. Her own fire expanded, upwards and outwards, bathing the thick black trunks of the trees in a ghostly purple glow.
“Run!” Frithkin shouted as three more emerged from the darkness, larger in size than the previous two. “They’re swarming!” he panted, as they both began to sprint, sending ribbons of flame shooting off behind them as they went. The Khyer’s eyes sat large in his head, the frosty-whiteness taking on the sheen from the silver of his flames, “I’ve never seen them swarm before!” Frithkin was more agile that she was, he darted back and forth through the undergrowth, and it was all Thyri could do to keep up. Each breath she took was a desperate gulp, and it felt as if her heart had risen into her throat. It threatened to spill into her mouth as her legs began to ache...and then she lost sight of him. Frithkin had disappeared into the fog.
“Jump,” his voice said, closer than she had expected, “trust me, Thyri, and jump.” Trust him? Thyri skidded to a halt, pushing her hair away from her face with her uninjured hand. She had never trusted anyone save for Gar; never in over a hundred years of living. Glancing back over her shoulder she saw them, the wraiths leering out of the fog with triumphant smirks on their faces. “You have to jump!” Frithkin’s voice came again, more urgent, almost pleading, “jump! We’re nearly there!” Nearly there...nearly home. Thyri screwed her eyes closed and jumped. She half expected to fall, to slip into some void, safe from the wraiths but trapped somewhere in nothingness. It didn’t happen...her feet hit solid ground, boots slipping in the mud. It pitched her forwards, and she was forced to reach out in order to stop herself from falling face first into the mud. She had jumped another little brook of truth water. The wraiths could not cross. Opening her eyes, her gaze found Frithkin, his head tilted to one side and his nose twitching. The mist had gone.
They were standing in the midst of lush woodland, and Thyri took a lungful of fresh clear air, allowing it to breathe energy into her limbs. The trees lined a path which stretched off into the distance in a perfectly straight line, and their trunks and branches all leaned inwards to form a seemingly endless row of natural arches. Frithkin took a few hops forwards, before stopping and looking back over his shoulder to gaze at her with his white eyes. His silver fire had gone, and Thyri took it as a cue to extinguish her own. She followed after the Khyer along the strange path, and each step she took seemed to take her further along it than a single stride should have done. It was as if she were passing through time as well as space, or as if neither held little sway in the King’s grove. The trees got steadily shorter and closer together, until Thyri was forced to crouch, and then the space was so narrow that she had to edge along sideways. Rainwater dripped from the leaves to soothe the burn on her arm, reminding her of the injury she wanted to forget, but she was grateful for the coolness. This place was more like the place she knew.
A great hole in the earth opened up before them, like the entrance to some creature’s burrow, only a thousand times larger. Frithkin paused, and Thyri came to a halt behind him, looking to the Khyer for an explanation.
“I will tell him you are here,” he said, “wait here.” Frithkin disappeared into the burrow, and Thyri sat down on a nearby tree stump, her legs pushing against the softness of the damp moss that coated it. Alone, her thoughts returned to her in all their cruelty; it became harder to ignore the pain in her arm...and what it meant. Her eyes felt hot and they prickled uncomfortably until she was forced to bite her lip to stop herself from crying. Thyri did not cry, weeping was for women less than she. She was the consort of a God; it had been years since she had cried. Frithkin’s head appeared in the mouth of the burrow entrance, one ear tilted forwards, the other backwards along his spine.
“He’ll see you,” he told her brightly, leading the way into the dark.
The king sat on his throne. It was forged from earth and tree roots, some of which had sprouted, surrounding his head in a semi circle of green leaves. It reminded Thyri of the halos the Christians had painted around the heads of their saints and holy men. She preferred the leaves; they appealed to her pagan roots and lifted a smile to her lips. He was a strange looking man. The king was tall, almost too tall, his limbs long and slender, and his face proud. His ears were pointed, sharpening into a point which became almost thin enough to be stalks, curling in on themselves like a pig’s tail. His eyes were like Frithkins, white save for the darkened pupils, and he was looking at her with curiosity marked in his expression. A long-fingered hand gestured for her to be seated, and a chair, made from roots, rose up out of the earth to accept her.
“You are far from home,” he said, his voice sending a shiver up her spine, “and you do not belong here.” There was something about the trace of humanity in the king’s features that returned some of Thyri’s courage,
“I have no desire to be here, Dróttinn Hilmer,” she informed him, and it felt good to use her mother tongue again. The king seemed to understand her in whichever language she spoke.
“You have a dishonest soul,” spoke Recerrin Xandyrit a little sadly, playing with one of the roots on the arm of his throne, “you are deception, and you are cunning. You do not belong at the Court of Verisimilitude. There is blood on your hands and lies on your tongue, Thyri Thurgilsdóttir.” She had not expected that. It had been so long since she had lived anywhere where people had known her father’s name, and she had not been addressed as such in decades. Who else would know it, she supposed, but the King of Truth? It was a cruel weapon he wielded, sharp enough to draw blood. Truth was not always on the side of goodness. Recerrin Xandyrit rose from his throne and descended the steps, crossing the earthy chamber in three long strides.
Roots grew from his fingertips where Thyri grew nails, and she felt them brush against her skin as he took hold of her chin between his forefinger and thumb.
“Have you ever thought about it?” he asked her, with genuine curiosity, tilting her head first to the left and then to the right, “about the hole you have left in the fabric of time?” She frowned, opening her mouth to ask him to explain his meaning, but he knew already and obliged.
“You had been dead for nine hundred years when your God returned to the age of your people. Think about it, the first time he walked through the century in which you were born, he did not see you. You lived an entire life without him. You had children who now never existed, you grew old and watched grandchildren mature into men, and then you died and were laid in the earth to rot down to the bone. He unstitched it, all of it, to keep you with him. You are a ripple in reality.” The king’s grip tightened for a moment, hard enough to bruise her skin, but she did not protest. Thyri had known worse pain.
“I cannot help you,” he announced at last, sinking back down into his great chair, “you are not of my people. Frithkin here can never lie, an untruth will never cross his lips, but you have forged a life from falsehood and sin. What could the King of Verisimilitude ever hope to do for you?” Thyri’s hope caught in her throat,
“You cannot send me home?” she asked him, her green eyes narrowing, “or you will not?” The king waved his hand absently through the air,
“Cannot, will not, it makes no difference. Take yourself away from this place Thurgilsdóttir. The wraiths can have you.”
The wraiths... What was it Frithkin had said? They are the agents of lies, the water reveals and the air conceals, so it has always been. Thyri began to laugh, the sound of it laced with the bitterness life had taught her in its cruel twists and turns. The king of Verisimilitude looked taken aback, and regarded her as if she had gone mad. Thyri glanced at Frithkin, all trembling ears, his front paws rubbing together like a child washing its hands. She slipped free of her chair and crouched down before him, patting him on the head. She felt him quiver.
“I am sorry Thyri!” he said, a tear like silver paint creeping from the corner of his eye to stain the blackness of his body, “I really am.”
“I am sorry too,” she told him, “sorry that I wasted your time. Every step we have taken to this place has been a step wasted.” Frithkin threw himself into her lap and hugged her fiercely, before she lowered him back to the ground. Thyri turned to the king, sweeping him a mocking bow...and then she began to run.
This time, she did not feel herself tire. She ran out through the burrow entrance and along the avenue of trees, its strangeness lending her speed. Free of it, finally, she rounded the corner around which she and Frithkin had come, and threw herself across the little brook back into the fog. The wraiths came as she knew they would, their mouths stretched open. Thyri did not summon any magic, instead she ran towards them; jumping into the air and unfurling her wings she flew straight into the creature’s mouth. Up, up up she flew, carried by the wraiths in the fog. She shuddered around her heart, and she felt them warm themselves there. It was like being a child embraced by its mother; they carried her. They had never wanted to harm her...just to hold her.
Thyri’s hit the floor of Shaman’s Kingswood, as if dropped from a great height, and she rolled into the grass to lie there panting, staring up at the sky. The stones of the henge cast a shadow across her face...and slowly, she became aware of a familiar voice, speaking in the Old Norse tongue. It was shouting in rage at the little man in green on his deckchair...and then it wasn’t.
“Thyri!” Rhaegar’s voice cut through the buzzing of the crowd who still waited for loved ones to return. She heard his boots beating against the ground, and he slipped onto his knees, coming to a rest at her side. Gar gathered her up in his arms, and Thyri breathed in his familiar scent, revelling in it, savouring the warmth of his hands against her skin as he lifted her into his lap. Her eyes took in his face, glowing with a warm fondness as she reached up with her fingers to caress the line of his jaw. It was then that she noticed the redness of her hand...and she remembered her burnt skin. Thyri tried to jerk her hand away, but Rhaegar stopped her, closing his large hand gently around her wrist. In his eyes she read anger, but not repulsion...it was too much...she tried to push him away.
“Don’t look,” she demanded, choking a little, “don’t look at it.” Her God’s eyebrows pinched together slightly and he pulled her injured hand towards his mouth, kissing her fingertips tenderly.
Rhaegar’s skin seemed to ripple for a moment, until the flawlessness melted away. Each battle scar he should have worn, had he been mortal, appeared on his face and naked arms.
“Do you think me ugly?” he asked her, a white scar at the corner of his mouth stretching as he smiled. Thyri reached up and pressed her thumb against his lower lip, and shook her head. He was still the most beautiful man she had ever seen. “What do a warrior’s scars show?” Gar pressed. Thyri stared at him, “that he is brave and strong,” she replied at last. Thyri almost choked again, and it took all she had to swallow a sob as one of his hands found the back of her skull. Rhaegar lifted her up again, kissing her on the mouth, “are you not a warrior dýrr?” he purred, breaking away a little, “is that not what you’ve always been.” The words wrapped around her, and Thyri felt her heart swell. She threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder, lingering there a while. She pulled away, and watched as her lover ran his hand along her arm. First he soothed the angry redness of the fresh burns, turning them to scar tissue, and on the second stroke he concealed them entirely; her wound disguised beneath a glimmer of perfect white skin. His own scars melted away before her eyes, and Thyri combed her fingers through his hair as she kissed him passionately on the mouth. Then she returned her head to his shoulder, “I love you,” she swore in her mother tongue, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
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