Part 14 (2/2)
Hermod tucked the stone in his jacket. ”He means for me to go get his eye.”
SLEIPNIR SCUTTLED along the ground like a spider, efficiently crawling over debris and uneven terrain. Barebacked, he was large enough to carry the entire company, with Hermod in front, where he could guide the horse with one hand entwined in his mane. Mist rode behind him, and Grimnir behind her. Winston ran alongside for a while, but the malamute couldn't keep the pace for long. It was left to Grimnir to carry the dog awkwardly in his arms, until Mist fas.h.i.+oned a harness and basket carrier from elf rope and PVC pipe they found in the flood wash.
After what seemed like a day's journey, the great tree trunk still loomed ahead, dominating the entire span of the horizon and rising so high that it curved backward over their heads. The tree and the ground were really the same thing, the entire universe being made of the tree's very substance.
Sleipnir folded his legs and let the riders dismount. While Mist and Grimnir stretched their sore muscles and Winston ran around in pursuit of his own tail, Hermod approached a water-filled cavity in the ground, no more than a dozen yards across, like a bullet hole in the world's body. He stared into its infinite darkness and contemplated Odin's instruction to him: Reclaim the treasure.
”You look green,” Mist said.
”So do you. It's the light down here.”
”That's not what I mean. You look haunted.”
”Again, so do you. It's this place.”
”We're really down in the bowels, aren't we? Tell me again why we want Odin's eyeball?”
”Odin's been trying to find wisdom almost since his creation,” Hermod told her. ”Mimir was one of his best sources. He just came into the world with his head full of runes and knowledge. We traded Mimir to our rival tribe of G.o.ds, the Vanir, to end a war, but they didn't like him. Talked too much, they said. So they sent us back Mimir's head, which Odin cast down here at the bottom of the world.
”Later, the Norns gave Odin some glimpses into shadow, and what he saw in those shadows was death. Baldr's death, to be particular, and with that, Ragnarok. But these were only shadows, and Odin wanted more. So he turned again to Mimir, who'd been steeping in the well, absorbing whatever the worlds told him. Mimir agreed to trade a draft from the well for Odin's right eye, and once Odin got his drink, he saw how the worlds would die. He saw all the battles and the terrors, and he returned to Asgard to put together the Einherjar and to prepare. But his eye stayed behind, sunk at the bottom of the well. It's been sitting there all this time, soaking in wisdom.”
Hermod felt a rare touch of awe. This was the very place where his father had stood and plucked out his own eye. Such a benign word, pluck. To grasp one's eye with thumb and fingers, to steel oneself and yank. To endure the literally blinding agony and keep pulling until blood vessels and nerves stretched to the point of snapping. And then to remain conscious in order to claim one's prize.
”Mimir, show yourself,” Hermod called out. ”I've come to talk.”
Nothing happened for several minutes. Hermod stared into the well, trying to see below the surface. Mist kept quiet, and even Grimnir refrained from making comment.
The water held still.
Hermod found a flat, round stone by the sh.o.r.e and tried to skip it across the water, but the well claimed it the instant it touched the surface, and it sank without a splash.
Moments later there was a disturbance, the water bubbling like gloppy soup. Fearing an explosive geyser, Hermod drew Mist and Grimnir back. He didn't know what would happen if the water made contact with their skin. Maybe it would make them smarter. Maybe it would drive them to wear tinfoil hats.
A cloud of fizzing foam erupted from the depths, and when the bubbles cleared, a face covered in barnacles and muck bobbed to the surface. A few patches of mushroom-white flesh showed through a slimy green and black beard. Lips the color of snails opened and closed with great fish gulps. The eyes fluttered open, and the face floated quietly in the water.
”Greetings, Hermod,” said Mimir, cordially enough.
How should one return the salutation of a severed head bobbing in a pond? Since Mimir was still of the Aesir, and Hermod had come seeking favor, courtesy was required. But the customary compliments about the host's hospitality would ring false here.
”How's the water?”
Mimir treated the question seriously. ”Noisy,” he said after a time. ”The voices clamor for attention, and I cannot give them all a fair hearing.”
”Somebody once told me that wisdom is about learning which voices to listen to and which to ignore.”
”Do you follow that advice?” Mimir asked.
”I try to.”
”I haven't that luxury,” Mimir said with regret. ”All waters flow here, to settle and stagnate. You should hear the things they tell me.”
Hermod had never been overly fond of oracles, and he really didn't want to hear about all the things Mimir had been told over the millennia. He didn't have time, and his experience with the sibyl had already been more than enough.
”Mimir, I've come to retrieve my father's eye.”
Mimir blinked in confusion. ”Your father's eye? Do I have your father's eye?”
”He sacrificed it to you for a drink from your well. Don't you remember?”
”Was this recently? I'm sorry, but my waters have grown turbulent, and nothing is clear anymore. Why ever would I have wanted his eye, I wonder.” Mimir was speaking to himself now, muttering about crowded waters and misplaced things, about once possessing a rune for happiness and something else about a catfish. Then the fog seemed to clear and he focused on Hermod again. ”Oh, yes, I do remember Odin's eye. Vidar reminded me.”
Hermod started. ”My brother was here? When?”
A ripple of water rolled over Mimir's face. ”Not so long ago, I think. He was in the company of another brother of yours, a child. Quite mad, that one.”
He had to be talking about Vali, which struck Hermod as strange since so few could stand to be in Vali's presence, Vidar least of all. Odin had fathered Vali to kill Hod in revenge for Baldr's death, a job Vali had accomplished before he was even a full day out of the womb. Hermod couldn't imagine being born to a single purpose-to kill your brother-and having fulfilled that purpose before learning your first word. It had left Vali stunted. He'd never grown beyond his terrible twos and had settled for a life of infantilism and random violence.
”What did they want here?” asked Hermod.
”The same thing you want, except they were more insistent. Vali did the talking. He has a violent mind. They each dove to the bottom of the well, but the eye wouldn't go with them. Vali was very angry, and Vidar even more so. Only he didn't express it in words. He was silent. And frightening.”
”Did they say what they wanted with the eye? Did Odin send them for it?”
”What does anyone want with an eye?” Mimir said. ”They want to see. As for who sent them, they didn't say.”
Hermod felt as though he was on the verge of falling for a trap, though he wasn't clear on its nature, its purpose, or its consequences. This was a very familiar feeling to him, and he almost felt comforted by it.
”Just to be clear,” Hermod said, ”the eye is still at the bottom of the well?”
Mimir misunderstood the question. ”I wouldn't say 'still.' It s.h.i.+vers sometimes. I don't think it has ever liked it there at the bottom.”
”It doesn't 'like' it there? You mean the eye's alive? It's conscious?”
”The world is conscious, Hermod.”
Mist brought her toes to the edge of the well. ”Just how deep is this hole, anyway?”
Grimnir's face broke into a challenging smile.
”Hermod's a G.o.d; he can hold his breath a long time. Ain't that right, boss?”
Hermod recalled all the times he'd nearly drowned. The worst was when he'd gotten caught in a flash flood in a Jotunheim box canyon. Pressed down in a sludge of frozen mud, his empty lungs burning, he had so desperately craved release that he'd called out in silent agony for someone, anyone, to deliver him. He'd understood then, for the first time, why men so desperately clung to G.o.ds who didn't care for them in return.
He stared into the impenetrable blackness of Mimir's well.
”Odin took only one drink,” Mimir said absently. ”It did not go down easily. When he recovered his voice, he used it to scream.”
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