The Song of Fafnir -- A Norse Mythology Novella

8. Homecoming

There were a great many in the Royal Hall who remembered me well, but not with kindness. 

I could feel their eyes on me, suspicious and wary, but still curious, like wild animals pausing to assess how dangerous another creature was before they chose to fight or flee.  

I was aware of that as I made my way down the long hall surrounded by the cluster of guardsmen, but it did not affect me in the same way it would have when I was younger. I'd been welcomed with exactly the same amount of cautiousness so many times in the forges that it did not tear at my pride, nor make the goblin inside me stretch and moan. 

The Royal Hall was much as I remembered it. The hearths along the walls cast out their light, illuminating the carved stone of the walls and the arching ribs of the ceiling. Here and there, I spotted a new section of tiles on the floor, or a new style of lantern. 

Children still sat at the  trestle tables doing their lessons, the younger ones playing on the floor in soft piles of dried sweetgrass. The adult dwarves went about their business, entering and exiting the side tunnels, carrying things, stopping for chat or to exchange news. 

They all stopped what they were doing as if frozen in mid-action to watch me and my escort pass. Conversation hushed and by time we had reached the far end, the entire hall was as silent as I ever remember hearing it.

My escort halted, and I saw those who had gathered around looking at me, waiting for some sign. I hadn't wasted a thought on how the members of the court would receive me as I had never paid much attention to them. They were not entirely real to me, but more shadows that drifted in and out of the light around my father and mother, whispering next to their ears and pointing out this or that word on a document. It was my immediate family that made up the largest bundle of worry in my mind. In truth, however, I was not as concerned even about that as I should have been. 

I believed that because I had risen, I would be forgiven whatever it was that I had done so long ago, and be lovingly welcomed back into the family to take up my rightful position again. Why should it not be so? I was the oldest child, heir to the throne, and I had done my penitence.  

What tingled my chest and made me breathe a little harder was how I would express my feelings about my decades in the forges to them.  And how they would accept -- or reject -- my words. Secretly, I also wished to learn why I had been sent Underfloor in the first place. It did not matter greatly to me anymore, but it was a small, nagging curiosity. Was it really because I had been so wild? Perhaps it had been. 

Or perhaps not. 

Although it should have been my family, what I most wanted to see again was the Upper World. I wanted to feel the press and tug of the wind on me again. I ached to lay among the long, slender blades of summer grass, watching the clouds drift across a sky of blue the exact colour of which I could no longer recall. The sheep and the mountain goats, the birds and the insects, the small creatures of the fields and hills, all of them I couldn't wait to see again. 

But first, I had to deal with my father.   

"Welcome," he said from his throne in the shadows after the guards had saluted and stepped back. "You surprise me. Fafnir. I wouldn't have thought you would rise from the forges, and yet here you are. I have been informed that you are now an accomplished smith, inducted into the secrets of the Uppermost Forge. The Overseer himself has sent us an attest of your accomplishments which he guarantees with his own name. Quite impressive." 

There was nothing warm nor welcoming in his voice. The compliments sounded forced, almost as if he were having difficulty speaking them at all and there was no murmur of approval from the dwarves standing by.