Dreams of Ymir
This is the second story in my collection, “You Want It Darker,” which brings together myths and monsters across the British Isles. Today’s story is a hat-tip to the Vikings who raided and settled across our island. Viking rule (known as Danelaw) ended in 1066, but their legacy lives on in our words, placenames, and the days of the week.
Your myths are mistaken. I am not dead.
How could I be?
I am the bedrock and the force, the first thought in the screaming void.
There is nothing bigger than myself. The idea that I could be killed is laughable.
And yet…they are not entirely wrong. Come closer, weak children of petty gods.
I will tell you the true story of how I was defeated.
***
The Void was a blissful place. We were ageless, for we knew no time; we were peaceful, for there was only ourselves, born of ice and fire.
I was the heat, solidified in cold air. I flared across empty space.
She was the cold salt slurry, moved into life by the fire. Slow of mind, slow of body.
These days, you remember her as Audhumla.
***
Once alive, I was restless and hungry. I could not consume the venom from the ice rivers; it would snuff me out. But Audhumla did so willingly and nourished me with her milk.
With this energy, I brought forth progeny, hiving them from my body like sparks from the flame. A son and a daughter who sang across space. Then, a six-headed babe joined at the waist and hip. They flamed like a comet across the Gap before they crashed into Audhumla’s icy river.
“I will have them,” she offered to me. “I want singers, too.”
I shrugged. I could always make more.
“They may not all survive the cold,” I warned her.
“Nevertheless, they are mine,” she said proudly.
*
When hunger next called us to the ice, things had changed. The heavy clouds had risen away from the river, and we could see tracks, cracks, and footprints crisscrossing the ice. I felt uneasy.
We called Audhumla, but she did not respond.
Instead, we pressed forward and found something else.
Three females sat on the edge of a newly formed whirlpool, the cold cliffs towering over them. One had black hair, one white, and one red. They wore robes woven of ice and hair. But I could not make out their features - to my eyes, they were blurred and wrong. When they spoke, I heard a cacophony of voices.
“Well met, First-Father,” said the smallest, white-haired one. “I am Urd.”
My daughter flinched back; my son put his hands over his ears.
“You should not be here,” I said uncertainly. I reached out to grasp them and shrank back. I had the oddest falling sensation, even though I was standing firm.
Wrong, so wrong.
“Did Audhumla teach you this?” I asked. “Whatever it is, stop it!”
“It’s our nature,” the black-haired one said. “Mother did nothing except lift us through salt and pain.” As she spoke, the distortions grew worse.
“I don’t care! Stop it!” I screamed. “Begone!”
The sound triggered an avalanche, first slow, then fast. My giant children ran. I waited grimly, my legs barring the escape route for the three maidens. I watched them scream as the ice engulfed them. Surely, that would stop their influence on me. I could see the scar where the avalanche had broken from the cliff. There was now a spike of black ice standing apart from its brethren.
“What have you done?” said a baffled voice behind me, and I turned to see Audhamla.
“I ended a threat,” I said proudly.
Her brow wrinkled. “What threat?” she said.
“No - I,” I paused, horrified. The sensation of falling had sped up.
“But I buried them,” I said plaintively. “The river maidens are gone.”
Audhamla stared at me, her expression as sour as her ice. “They were mine,” she said. “My children, cut from your giant. They did nothing to you.”
“They felt wrong,” I bellowed. Then, more quietly, “Feed me.”
“No.”
“If you do not, you will be alone,” I warned her.
That did the trick. Audhamla was not the brightest of creatures. But I had underestimated the depth of her rage.
*
Time passed, and I grew used to the sensation. Audhamla wandered deeper into her realm, following a single, well-trodden path. We would meet at the black ice spire, I would drink, and she would retreat. I did not understand why. What was wrong with the warmer edge, where the water moved? Her milk was becoming ever more salty, and the poison was blinding her eyes.
Finally, I borrowed a shawl of fire from my giant daughter and tracked her path across the icy expanse. There she was, freeing a tiny figure with her warm tongue. He had features like me, with a core of metal and salt. I scoffed. “This?” I said. “That’s what you’ve spent your time on?”
Audhamla did not stop in her work. “Verdandi told me where to find him,” she said between licks. “He was well-hidden.”
I frowned. “Who is Verdandi?”
Audhamla shook her head from side to side. “My daughter. I heard her voice calling to me through the ice. He will free all of them.”
I scowled. The maidens were buried deep and would remain so. I badgered Audhamla for her milk and left.
*
“Father,” my son said apprehensively. “You need to see this.”
I moved my gaze across the expanse. Small shining figures stood on the lip of the river just before it turned to water. They held jagged shards of ice with a grim expression. Audhamla could not have created them all. They must have somehow bred.
“They’re too small to hurt us,” I said dismissively.
My son hovered, uncertain. “What about our food?” he asked plaintively.
“Step over them.”
“You step over them first.”
I gave him a scornful glance. “Very well.”
The first step was the easiest. I swung my leg over them, straddling the line. As I leaned forward to plant my other foot, they attacked.
Their blades stabbed into my ankle, cutting skin and sinew. I howled and lurched forward. More blades. More pain.
I screamed, I lashed out, I bellowed. They were too small to punch, too fast to swat. Ice ricocheted off into the void. The noise was incredible.
I fell to my knees. Then, one of them - with two burning hands and two bright blue eyes - hacked at my legs. Another lodged his ice-blade into my heart before I cast him off. A third sliced the vein in my throat.
Diminished and bleeding, I crawled up Audhamla’s path. As long as I could reach her - as long as I could drink her milk - I would heal. I dragged my body as quickly as I could, expecting them to resume their attack at any moment.
They did not follow, instead readying their blades for my children.
*
Without the pull of my heated core, I found myself falling apart—first my fingers, then my arms, nose, knees and chin. Horrified, I refashioned my body and ran, every step marked with a dripping footprint. I was a quarter of my size by the time I found her.
Audhamla towered above me, blind to everything except her task. Still licking.
This time, her target was something black and serpentine. It was nearly free.
“Audhamla!” I screamed. “Help me.”
The creature stirred.
“She cannot hear you, First-Father,” someone said maliciously from my left. Wincing, I turned to face her.
It was the red-head from the pool. Through her body, I could see the outline of the cliff. But now, I could also see her face for the first time with plump lips, an arched nose and the black eyes of the Void. Embarrassed, I touched the melted stump of my nose.
“What is the thing in the ice?” I asked. “And who are you?”
She stared upwards at the thin ice wall, where Audhamla's tongue rasped in patient harmony.
“I am Skuld; he is Nidhoggr,” she said rapturously. Her eyes turned back to me. “You should be proud, First-Father. When you killed us, you created him. The first murders. The first consequences. You set time itself in motion.”
I shook my head, feeling sick. “But you are here,” I said desperately. “Not gone.”
She looked thoughtful. “Not gone, no. Where would we go? But we are trapped, all the same.” There was a sudden crack and smattering of ice chips. I could see the creature thrashing, looking for a way to be free.
“It’s time for something new,” she said calmly.
I snarled and lurched forward to hit her. Skuld gave me a pitying smirk as my hand passed through her.
“I hold your future,” she continued as though I had not moved. “Your…life-debt. You took our bodies; therefore, the little gods will take yours. You will never again be whole.”
With a hiss and groan, the dragon broke free. A clawed foot buried itself into Audhamla's shoulder. Then its jaws found her throat.
Audhamla bellowed and jerked in her death throes. The sleet from her blood splashed on me, blistering my skin. I screamed as I hobbled away, half-blinded.
Skuld’s laughter followed me.
*
The gods found me heaped on the ice. I no longer had the energy to move. I felt them step onto my chest.
“You can’t end me,” I snarled. “I am Ymir, single and oldest. Beg for my mercy!”
They conferred quietly, and then someone spoke next to my ear. The contempt in his tone, the cold reasonableness of it - told me how far I had fallen.
“We don’t want to end you,” he said. “We want to use you.”
I thought about weeping, but my eyes were gone. “Who are you?” I asked again, wearily. “Tell me that, least.”
“I am Odin. And you will be my universe.”
*
I am no longer whole. They wove my core into galaxies and stars; they cut entire worlds from my flesh. I felt it all. I still do. A numb agony where once I was whole.
Between the supernovas, I escape into dreams: my children, my home and the peace of the void.
When the last star collapses, maybe I will know it again.
Throughout it all, I hear the Fates’ laughter. Like them, I cannot escape.