The Sea of Trolls - Farmer Nancy (читать книги онлайн без TXT) 📗

Jack clutched the rune. To his surprise, it responded with a rush of warmth. He squeezed Thorgil’s hand and willed the warmth into her as well.

It came to him that they were not pawns in a game that only led to destruction. The Norn’s way was not the only one. There was the Bard sitting under a tree in the Islands of the Blessed. There was the sad-eyed woman Olaf had slain during the storm. She surely was on her way to Heaven with her lost daughter. And Mother believed, though she hid this from Father, that souls returned with the sun to be born anew into the world.

I serve the life force,Jack thought. I do not believe in Ragnarok.

They walked forward together, and as they went the ice walls fell away and the rustling white curtains vanished. The air was soft on Jack’s face, and a stream flowed along the floor of a little valley with a chuckling sound. On either side were bushes full of raspberries and blueberries. The ground was covered with sweet mountain strawberries.

“We’re here again!” cried Thorgil. “ Thisis where Mimir’s Well was hiding?”

The capercaillie stepped out of a thicket with her ten speckled chicks behind her. She lowered her head and clucked softly, deep in her throat. “It seems so,” Jack said uncertainly. “I felt something before, but I was afraid to look for it.” The two of them watched the capercaillie sweep majestically on into a leafy glade.

“One thing’s the same,” Thorgil said. “Those stupid birds are still going on about their utterly boring lives.”

Jack led the way. He took them past the field where the snowy owls had collapsed. He found the woodland of apple, walnut, hazelnut, and pear trees. “So this is where you got that food,” the shield maiden said.

“Listen.” Jack held up his hand. The hum of thousands and thousands of bees rose and fell ahead. It sounded as though you’d have to push them out of the way just to squeeze through.

“I don’t like bees,” Thorgil said. “I was stung by a lot of them once, when I tried to rob a hive.”

“They’re all right if you don’t upset them,” Jack said. “My mother taught me a charm to calm angry bees.”

“I’m not sure… I don’t understand their language as I do Bird, but it seems they’re not angry. And they’re too wild to be merely happy. I’d say they were frenzied.”

“Berserk?” Jack guessed.

“Something like that.”

You’d know,Jack thought. He remembered the kind of mad joy that had possessed Olaf and his men before they slaughtered Gizur’s village. Jack and Thorgil stood for a long time, listening to the incessant hum.

“Would your charm work on berserk bees?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he replied.

“Well, it’s better than nothing.” Thorgil drew both her knives.

“What are you going to do? Stab all the bees?” Jack said. “We’ve been allowed to come here by the Norns. They’ll either let us get to the well or they won’t. Nothing either of us does is going to change that.”

Thorgil reluctantly sheathed her knives. She took Jack’s hand, and they went on through the grove. The land gradually inclined upward until it led to a large hill. “Look!”Thorgil cried. At the top rose an enormous ash tree— theAsh Tree, Yggdrassil itself rising up and up and up until you could hardly believe human eyes could see that far.

Branches swept everywhere, teeming with life. All the birds in the world roosted on its arms, and all the insects, too. Some bored into the bark and destroyed it. Some nibbled the leaves. Wherever the Tree went, creatures fed on it, but they also bent it into bowers for their young. Jack saw deer with their fawns, wolves with their cubs, and men and women—for the branches reached into Middle Earth as well—sitting with their children in the leaves.

The roots plunged down on either side of the hill, some to the World of Fire and others to the icy halls of Hel. A giant serpent coiled in the depths and sank its fangs into the blood of the Tree. But in the high branches a giant eagle fanned its wings and drove the breath of life back into the leaves.

Up and down the mighty trunk scampered a bedraggled squirrel, shrieking insults. “That’s Ratatosk,” whispered Thorgil. “He carries gossip throughout the nine worlds.”

At the very top, so far up it seemed to be higher than the moon and yet so clear you were tempted to reach for it, was a golden fence with silver fence posts. Inside lay a heavenly green field and a grove of trees. Many fine palaces and towers rose over this field, but the finest of all had a gate so wide a thousand men could march through it at once.

“That’s Asgard where the gods live and that’s the gate of Valhalla,” gasped Thorgil. “Oh, tell me if you see Olaf. Oh, I want to go there now.”

“You can’t,” Jack whispered, holding her. She trembled like a wounded bird. “It looks close, but you could climb a hundred years and get no nearer. I know what this Tree is. It’s pure life force. It’s being chewed on and nibbled at and cut with axes, but it never dies because it’s the earth itself.”

“Never dies? What about Ragnarok?” cried Thorgil.

“That’s what the Norns want you to believe in, a future where all that exists is war followed by destruction. But their vision is only one leaf on the Tree. There’s the Islands of the Blessed, where the great queens and heroes go.”

“Where Maeve went,” Thorgil said softly.

“Yes, and there’s High Heaven for Christians like me and a lot of other places I don’t know about. Yggdrassil contains all of them.”

A constant rain fell out of the Tree like a shower of silver arrows, but the rain never reached the ground. Bees—and here at last were the bees—gathered the honeydew up in midair. Great golden honeycombs hung off the branches like heavenly fruit. No winter came here, and so the bees had no need of hives. They rose and fell in their thousands, and the sound of their humming was pure joy.

Chapter Thirty-six

MIMIR’S WELL

At the foot of the tree, where Yggdrassil touched the valley, was a well. It was an unassuming little well at the top of a hill, with a bucket on a rope like the one beside Mother and Father’s house.

“It looks so ordinary,” Jack said.

“‘Always look behind the door before entering a house,’” said Thorgil, quoting a favorite Northman proverb. “Also: ‘Never set foot outside without weapons.’ Would you like one of my knives?”

“This is a spiritualquest,” Jack said with some annoyance. “Why do you always assume there’s an enemy lurking somewhere?”

“Because there always has been,” the shield maiden replied simply. “Anyhow, you have to sacrifice something of overwhelming importance before you can drink.”

“I don’t know… it looks too peaceful for that. Maybe all you have to do is walk up there.”

“Nothing is gained without suffering,” said Thorgil.

“I think that’s a Northman trick to squeeze pain out of a perfectly decent situation.”

“It’s solike a thrall to avoid heroism,” sneered Thorgil.

“All heroism means to you is a chance to get beaten up,” Jack snarled back. They were toe-to-toe again, and his hand itched to strike her. He could tell she was itching to strike him. The hum of the bees became almost deafening, and one bumped into Jack’s face. He stepped back. All around them swarmed an eager tornado of bees. Thorgil’s eyes were wide with alarm.

“Sit down,” Jack ordered. She obeyed. “Breathe deeply. Think of peaceful things.”

“I don’t know any peaceful things,” Thorgil said.

“Well, think of playing Dodge the Spear with the louts. Something happy.”

The shield maiden closed her eyes, and by the smile on her face Jack knew she was in a pleasant memory. He himself thought of sitting under a rowan tree with the Bard so long ago. The bees wandered back into the branches of Yggdrassil and continued their incessant gathering of honeydew.