In Hel's Hall

In Hel's Hall

It was white-ice morning in Hel's Hall

in the ninth of the Nine Worlds, when

Odin donned the Hel-shoes, cast the runes

and rode to ask his questions of 

the dead. 

Because he was a god, twisted she rose 

from her ashen bed

and by force began to speak  

of what she knew:

So I found, said the blackened lips,

that cold is a serpent that holds, pushing its

ribbon-chest deep into mountain,

slow-cracking the heads of the spirits within

for gold to brighten its rippling scales.

Will you hear more?

So I saw, moved the fleshless jaw,

cold grow wide and thicken,

putting on its grey-white armor,

that its dead mouth kisses every shoulder, 

that the tree it circles

will shake down a harvest of lives

to grind out all you love.

So I found, rattled the dustdry throat,

that cold will make red daggers, hanging

scarlet borrowed blood to temper

oblivion's poppy snowflakes,

to pierce the heart of hearts

till red and white alike

vanish from sight.

So I saw, whispered the husk of Hel,

that snow will cover fire, 

that the white wolf no sword can kill

will eat desire, that you

are a basket of bones made for wildflowers

withering in a wind of empty hours.

Will you hear more?

Then the One-Eyed shucked his Hel-shoes

jumped back in Sleipnir's saddle,

and fled the Ninth World, 

where the wisdom he begged

had frozen on his tongue.

~January 2013

 posted for   real toads

Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Worldbuilding

Kerry O'Connor has asked us to write around the subject of alternative worlds. Here I've reached into the the realm of Norse myth, and as usual, taken a few liberties with the tales of the Old Gods.

Process notes: In Norse mythology, Hel was the realm of those dead who had not died in battle, and also the name of the female figure who ruled it. It was where Odin the One-eyed, first of the Aesir and god of poetry, war, death, wisdom and wandering, journeyed to raise a dead Seeress to tell him of the future. She prophesies the events of Ragnarök,* the twilight, or perhaps re-making, of the gods, where the children of the antagonistic god of disorder and mischief, Loki, the Midgard Serpent and Fenrir the Wolf, will battle the gods, and the World Tree will 'shake and groan.' 

Hel-shoes (helskór) were put on the Norse dead to walk the road to the Otherworld.

Sleipnir is Odin's magical eight-legged horse.

* I probably ought to add that following the events of Ragnarök, the  völva also prophesies that a beautiful new world will emerge, where men and gods live in peace and plenty. Some believe that this a post-Christian introduction, but regardless, it satisfies the happily ever after need we humans have.

Image: Odin Rides to Hel, by W.G. Collingwood 
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons