The cackle from above her head was so unexpected that she shoved away from the tree and glared upwards. A large raven cocked it's head at her and croaked again, meaningfully.
"What do you want?" Heida snapped, irritably; fearfully. She was now wroth with herself and becoming more frightened by the minute. Afraid for Frida, and afraid for herself as well.
"What do you want?" came an eldritch voice in answer. It emanated not from the crow, but from ... all around her, like a vague echoing whisper. But it was not a mirrored echo. Her own rhetorical query had been modified in intonation and posed, instead, to her.
She swallowed nervously, peering at the raven, at first disbelieving the idea that it was the bird that spake so clearly. She knew that birds were capable of mimicry, but they did not converse as mortals did; did not imbue their responses with so much meaning. Surely she was imagining the glittering intelligence in its black eyes. Nevertheless, somehow she understood that it was the raven; and it was awaiting her reply.
"I want to find Frida," said she, despite her misgivings.
"This way." It therewith leapt from the bough.
She gasped as the raven took flight, its wings beating noisily in the silence of the forest. And then the wings paused mid flight, catching the glint of silver moonlight on its stygian plumage as it glided through the trees like specter. She followed it without knowing why she did, yet she understood inherently that she ought to.
"Here." A flutter of wings to her right. "There." Flapping ensued ahead of her and she increased her pace to keep up. "This way." And then, suddenly, there was nothing and the forest was once more deafening in its silence.
Where has it gone? Heida stepped carefully over the fallen leaves and gnarled roots. Her eyes climbed the length of the towering ash nearby, it's boughs immense and stretched overhead, scouring the loftiest limbs searching for her erstwhile guide.
Had her eyes not been trained overhead, she'd have seen the fissure in the earth that appeared beside a hollow yew; directly whither her feet were wandering.
"There," said the voice out of nowhere, coming just when she thought it had abandoned her indefinitely.
"Where?" she asked the forest spirit.
"There!" it cried again, in its half-caw, strangely alarmed by something.
The warning, however, for warning it had been, came too late, for she perceived its dismay even as her foot slipped the very next second. She hurtled down into that void in the earth that had lain like a waiting maw into the underworld; it swallowed her up instantly.
Her nails were useless as she clawed blindly and desperately at the rock, tumbling down the pit for, what seemed like, a terrifying eternity before she hit the ground with devastating force.
She was senseless only a moment, and she knew it could have only been a moment that she had lain unconscious because the small shaft of moonlight that peered down through the slit in the cavern's high, stalagmite-riddled dome was still sputtering with shadows as leaves and dust floated down atop her head.
Heida pushed herself to standing, but her ankle instantly buckled under her just as soon as she rested her weight onto it. With a frustrated and terrified cry she tried again; and again. Hot tears bled across her face as she sobbed into the darkness. Once her misery was somewhat spent, she began hobbling awkwardly along the walls.
Her eyesight was normally keen even in darkness, but surely even the nocturnal creatures needed some ambient light by which to see by ... down here in Niflheim. Howbeit, there were no stars and ... no moon. She gasped in horror! Niflheim! No, it couldn't be!
She cleaved to the dank walls, the air withering in her lungs as she strained her ears to listen for something, anything, that might alert her to another's presence. But there was nothing. Only the imperceptible sound of scuttling — a large insect perhaps — and the interminably slow dripping of moisture from the roots that hung from above. Finally, she moved forward, her hand out in front of her face as she endeavored both to keep from walking into anything and to brush the hair-like roots out of her face.
The fingers of one hand crept stiffly along the damp rock as she, walking tripod on her left hand and her knees, began exploring the space she'd fallen into. Whatever the length of time she'd been below the earth, she could not say, but her knees ached and her heart was near to bursting with dread, to say nothing of her throbbing ankle.
The fall would likely have done far more damage if she were not ... other. She'd sustained far worse than this in her life — she had only a small scar on her brow to prove it — but her bones, if indeed they ever broke, had always knit themselves together with preternatural speed. No matter the damage to her ankle, it too would heal itself soon enough ... if indeed she ever made it out of here alive.
She knew instinctually where she was. Her marrow was frozen with the certitude of it. Niflheim. With this thought uppermost in her trembling heart, her outstretched palm collided with something that was undeniably not made of rock. A toothy snout.
She snatched her hand back with a yelp of horror, an atavistic foreknowledge compelling her to flattened herself against the cavern floor. Her eyes she squeezed shut and held her breath as small sounds of hysteria slipped involuntarily from her lips.
It was him. The valdyr.
He made no sound and he made no move, but still she waited; and quailed with gut-wrenching fear. Erelong, she heard it grunt, a puff of fetid breath blowing in her face, however, it still did nothing more than snort loudly over her. She opened first one eye and then the other, yet she could see nothing but a very obscured shadow, albeit a hulking one.
The creature circled her. She could hear it snort alternately from one side and then the other as it prowled to and fro. Whatever it meant to do, it ostensibly had not decided to eat her; at least not yet. Heida's body was folded in on itself, her thighs almost flush against her torso and her amulet, fortunately, still secure around her neck. Her amulet!
"It will protect you... from them," her birth mother had told her.
"Them?"
"The wolves!"
Was that why the valdyr made no move to dispatch her? Gods above! Had her mother just saved her life this night by bestowing this periapt all those years ago? There was nothing to do but test that theory, for she could not lie here indefinitely, lest the beast reconsider its tentative mercy.
She unfurled herself and paused to see what effect her movements had wrought, but the quiet padding and grunting continued. Little by little she became ever more stouthearted and finally began crawling away again as she had been in the midst of doing before she'd, quite literally, bumped into him.
The valdyr, though, kept pace with her instead of allowing her out of his sight, and she heard him circling her all the while she pulled herself across the floor. At one point she made to turn right, following the curve of the cavern walls, but he blocked her path with a low growl which precipitated her into a frozen state of shock.
Would he devour her now?! But he made no move against her and, at length, she becalmed herself somewhat — as best one could be calmed in the face of a man-eater — and took the route that lead to the left, as per the creature's decided insistence.
She might have been crawling along for hours, for time seemed of no consequence down here, in the underworld, yet she was too affrighted to be wearied and the constant presence beside her was enough to keep her senses sharp.
Suddenly, she became aware of grey light filtering through a crevice, and leaves, in the wall up ahead. Heida nearly sobbed her relief aloud, she was that enlivened with fresh hope, and endeavored to move as fast as her injury would allow.
For a heart-stopping instant, ere she maneuvered through the gap, she was struck with the disturbing notion that the valdyr meant to indulge its depravity by stopping her at any moment, perhaps having brought her this far only to rip her from safety before rending her limbs from her body.
Still, she continued on regardless and moved past the leaves that she had earlier moved aside when Roth had first entered here. Once liberated from the monster and the darkness, she gave a whimper and moved out of reach of the vines that fell back over the mouth of the cave. She was finally safe!
There, amidst the tang of decay and audible crush of dead leaves, she wept, relived that the gods, and her mother specifically, had spared her from the jaws of death.
The unexpected susurration of fallen leaves being trampled nearby prompted a terror-stricken shriek from her throat, so convinced was she that the valdyr had escaped and meant to destroy her after all.
"Tis only me!" Frida said, her voice flinty despite the soothing touch of her hand on Heida's shoulder.
"By the Gods!" Heida enveloped her sister-in-law in her trembling arms. "We feared for your safety! Where have you been?"
Frida, meanwhile, remained silent an interminable moment. "You feared for my safety?" said she, dubiously, "yet you console yourself in my husband's arms..." Her voice quavered with both fury and heartache.
Heida pushed herself out of Frida's unreciprocated embrace. How was she to reply when she knew well that her guilt, and Frida's censure, was reasonably deserved. "I ... I am so sorry, Frida. Let us return to the hall and we can-"
"Where is Roth?" Frida's eyes shot immediately to the thick vines yonder, from whence Heida had crawled only moments before.
"It isn't safe here, Frida! We must go!"
Frida's ire was palpable even in the darkness. "If tis so treacherous tonight then you would not be out here ... with my husband." She stood therewith. "Methinks tis the discovery of your treachery that frightens you, Heida!"
"Nay! You do not-"
"Well, I have found you out at last! You were as a sister to me, and you betrayed me tonight without a single thought to how you would hurt me!"
"Forgive me!" Heida grabbed desperately at the hem of Frida's skirts as the woman made to head towards the cave. "No! Wait!" The beast had not been seen for many years, and she feared Frida took that to mean there was no longer any danger! Why could she not be as superstitious as the rest of her people. Why had she not stayed home!
Frida ripped her skirts out of Heida's hands and then watched, her ravaged eyes brimming with tears, as Heida struggled to stand and then fell back once more. "I will not leave you here as you deserve, sister," she said, "but do not interfere. Await me here." She began marching to the cave. "I must needs speak with my husband."
The appellatives, first sister then husband, was said with such disgust that Heida flinched. "Wait!" Of all the nights for her sister-in-law to evince spirit, now was the very worst time. "Take this!" Heida quickly removed her amulet and held it out as she struggled to stand yet again.
Frida, however, disregarded her and pulled the vines aside. "Roth!" she called out and, without the least bit hesitation, took another step forward.
Two things happened then. A low gnar of menace rumbled from the cave the very same moment Frida released an answering, blood-curdling scream that splintered through the woods. But it was abruptly and noisily cut off, as though her throat had been torn from her body.
"Frida!" Heida shrieked in horror, pulling herself to the mouth of the cave with maddened panic. "Roth, No!"
She reached the creeping vines, but sank despairingly to the ground, her relinquishing her face to the rocky floor, as her fingers came away sticky and hot, a pool of blood already gushing from the black mouth of the hellir. The warmth continued to puddle around her prostate form, her cheek wet with her tears and Frida's draining lifeblood.
With the grisly sounds of tearing and deglutition, as the valdyr glutted itself on poor Frida's body, Heida felt her mind descend into desolated madness.
This was her fault. She sobbed as she covered her ears.
Hours later she still hadn't moved. The blood had by then coagulated on her face, the tightness a grim reminder of what had transpired this night despite that the sounds from within had long since grown deathly quiet.
As the early morning sun poured its grey light through the mist and the silent leaves embowering this small corner of Hel, she lifted her head up slightly to see her hand clasped in a larger one that had emerged from the cave. The rest of Roth lay hidden behind the cascading foliage.
Neither of them said ought. She was not ready to speak; or to look at him. To see the recrimination that would surely be writ athwart his face. It was right that he blame her as she condemned herself — an adulteress like her mother, and not merely that but one that had failed to save her lover's wife.
Roth's hand was bloodied and still warm despite the frigid morning. For a moment all she did was stare at it, her hand lifeless in his. She could hear his silent weeping on the other side of the vines, and her own guilt-ridden sorrow soon overpowered his as she keened.
This was her fault, she thought again; and again as the sun rose higher to warm her algid blood.
🌟You saw this coming. Don't act so surprised. Poor Frida. Tell me, what do you think of this terribly predictable predicament?🌟