Queen of Hel

Chapter 10: The Flight

We fly for a few minutes before I have to stop. When I say this, Sylvi rolls her eyes and settles down on a roof.

"Have you not ever flown this long?" Sylvi asks, walking over to where I am sitting.

"No," I say. "Well, yes, but I've never gone this far. Or gone that high."

Sylvi nods. "We are only going to go a few miles away, and then come back. This is just for practise so you know the route and can do it yourself when I'm not here."

I stand up and Sylvi opens her wings again. She takes off before me this time, just giving me a few seconds to get up in the air before she starts flying fast. I try to keep up, but it is obvious that she has been flying her entire life.

The sun shines down on us, just enough so that we don't get too cold in the high air. Even as we go lower the air gets colder.

After another stop so that I can rest, I start to see more and more trees. I recognize this part of the forest, it is near the cabin. As we fly over the Valley, I spot where we were earlier. Then I see that the water has risen a bit, just enough to cover the footprints of all the wrestling that went on.

All of a sudden, Sylvi goes lower, tucking her wings into a bit of a dive. I follow suit and we land in the forest.

Here the ground looks a bit scorched. Nothing big, but all of the sticks in the area are blackened, along with most of the rocks.

"Where are we?" I ask, surveying the ground.

Sylvi watches me for a few moments before responding. "This is where the Bifrost comes when someone wants to go to this part of Midgard."

"The Bifrost? As in the big rainbow bridge that connects Asgard and Midgard?" I ask, picking up one of the sticks. A part of it crumples in my hand.

"Yes, but there are ways to get on it from the other realms," Sylvi says, watching me shake ash off of my hand.

"How?"

Sylvi bends down and picks up a longer stick that doesn't fall apart. She begins to sketch in the dirt. "This is the world tree, Yggdrasill. It connects all of the worlds. Helheim is at the bottom, and Asgard at the top. The Bifrost connects Midgard and Asgard, so the Valkyries can come and go. But it travels through Yggdrasill. And if you follow the paths in the tree, you can get to the Bifrost from anywhere."

I watch her sketch the tree with all the realms in it. At the bottom, she sketches a snake or dragon and at the top some type of bird.

"What are those?" I ask, pointing to the animals.

"Have you really never heard of the dragon and the eagle that live here?" Sylvi looks at me in a mixture of disgust and awe.

I pause and think back to everything I had read. "Níðhǫggr, the dragon that lives at the bottom of the tree who gnaws on the roots. And the eagle, who lives at the top. I don't think it has a name."

Sylvi nods. "It doesn't. But these are just some of the creatures that live on the tree." She then goes on to talk about the three stags and the squirrel who live there.

I listen as best I can, but my mind falls back into the way it is at school. Picking up important information and letting the rest just pass through.

At the end, when Sylvi's voice drops away, I say "So why are we here?"

Sylvi rubs at her eyes. "The Queen wants you to know where to go when to get from here to Helheim. But she also wants you to be trained so that you are ready to rule Helheim sooner than your parents think."