The end of the world is one woman’s cup.
The calls come from the caves underground and even you could follow it, slithering slowly as the heat scalds your scales. In there, your progenitor hangs, mouth forever forced open, venom falling in a constant drip. Below him, a god lies groaning, naked except for threads—intestines—snaking across his body, crisscrossing around the stone slab.
A woman, a warrior, kneels beside him, garbed in white clothes of a priestess, holding up her bowl as if it’s a sword, waiting for the inevitable spillover as it passes through her hands, burning lines that had never existed before. He screams, the earth shudders, great bellows, and you almost fall. But she moves with practised precision, emptying poison and holding the bowl up again. There’s no gentleness, no motion wasted.
She turns her attention to you, deep-set eyes red and calm.
She called and you answered and now you crawl.
“I suppose a mother of monsters would be best reached by the kind.” Sigyn’s grief is not a fresh wound welling blood but packed dirt, crystalised core. She has let it flow through her cracks, to make whole in an unholy way. But she has a message and when she speaks, you listen.
I can’t imagine your hurt, my counterpart, nor the way it sidles into your giantess heart, knotting muscles and birthing craters, but suffice it to say, I know something similar. Your husband, my husband, our husband is a prisoner, and I am the wife destined to his side, forever catching poison. He cries a lot. Loki, for all his fickleness, was always tender of the heart, but I suppose you would know. He was yours first before he was mine, Angrboda, but it remains a question if he was anyone’s in the first place.
There’s not much to be done from here. A poison cup only fills so much, and though the one I hold now is empty, soon it won’t be. The last drop of venom I missed caused an earthquake as he screamed and writhed and almost tore up my poor Nari’s intestine. That’s all I’ve left of my son: his intestines, which they used to bind my husband. I suppose your lot isn’t any better—a daughter in Hel and sons bound—but you didn’t lose. They call you the bringer of sorrows, yet the grief is all mine.
Skaoi’s serpent is unceasing, but as unwilling as we are. Who would want to spend eternity dripping poison on a fallen god’s face? Who would choose to spend eternity catching poison? He is the warden, the executioner, but a prisoner to eternity all the same. He kindly agreed to carry this message to you, mother of monsters and serpents, for I am tired of this fidelity.
This grief, this sorrow, this punishment they’ve inflicted on him and which I’ve devised for myself: they are long ones for eternity. For a goddess named after victory, I’m forever condemned to lose. Love and duty ring empty in these long hours. There’s none bound to my fate, but you are close; you’ve loved and lost him. Tell me, Bringer of Sorrows, are there sorrows worth my forever cup? Convince me that he is worth saving.
Finding the First Witch is not an easy ask, but you are a midgard spawn. You wander to Fenrir’s glen and Jormungandr’s prisons, breathing soft and movement minute so you are not heard. The wolf whines, sides heaving, and the serpent is a coiled bracelet, forever forced to consume himself. You contemplate going to Hel, but the lack of a return passage is enough to scare you. You ask your kin, all who slither and all who poison; they ask theirs, all who bite and all who are bitten; but the first witch is elusive. You fear going back to She Who Watches without a word. In the end, it’s the Mother of Monsters who finds you.
She comes to you all at once, at the gates of Hel, in the opening of the glen where you watch the world serpent bite its tail. She comes to you in Ironwood; wolfrider, staffwalker, farseer. She sees you three times, once for your disguise, twice for your truth and thrice to see what you carry. You tremble; the Grief Giver is no goddess but a witch, and a witch is bound by nothing but folly.
She kneels and you rise. She cocks her head as she listens. You await in silence as she composes an answer.
You are not what I expected, sisterwife. They told me of the dutiful bride he had found, the one who always cleans up his messes; one worthier than I, one more Aesir than I. And you assume correctly; you do not know the contours of my Jotun heart, my desire or strength. Yet still, we share a husband; we share grief.
You are asking a strange woman to convince you to spare the world; the same world where my daughter rots away in Hel, where my sons are bound and banished. I will try, however; I still love the scent of the strange breeze on my face, the first cry of the babe I deliver and the warm embrace of the wolves I tend.
I met him at crossroads, where both Loki and Odin demanded my attention.
“Witch of sorrow,” they called as one.
To hungry Odin, I gave runes; taught him the engraving of it in his own skin, whispered secrets that no god or mortal should know, and sent him in his way. To Loki and his lopsided grin, I gave my heart, this muscly giantess heart that you have no hope of understanding.
Did he regale you of his tryst with Svadilfari or laugh it off as a forgotten shame? With me, he had still not learned shame and the Aesir had not yet rotted away his sense of self. I beheld him at the beginning, Sigyn and I wish you could have seen him too, without his caustic armour getting in the way. But I suppose you are the winner here; you are with him in his darkest hours while I whittle away time herding wolves.
What do you seek from the old witch, young goddess? Do you expect a mirror of your wifely duties, or a stream of motherly rage? My sorrows are old, my gripe even greater; but there’s no sweetness as a chill breeze on a day deemed warm, knitting my clothes, alone. For the knitting day alone, you must spare the world.
When the goddess receives the message, she takes a long moment to compose herself. Her cup fills to the brim and a stray gout of poison falls straight onto Loki. You curl around the pillar tightly in anticipation now, and as predicted, the fettered god thrashes in agony and the world above trembles with it. Sigyn readjusts her position, wiping away the offending splash.
Once the tremors subside, you hear him rasp, “What consumes you, wife, beyond my agony?”
Sigyn’s eyes flicker to him coolly. “It’s one drop that escaped my notice. You’ll survive.”
The chained god laughs. “Survival has never been the problem, Sigyn. Hurt is what brought you here; hurt is what you soothe.”
And hurt is what lies between.
You can see it from the way the goddess holds herself, mechanical and curved away from the fallen god. Duty has rotted to resentment, and love, if it existed at all, is in short supply.
Sigyn composes her message:
I’ll take your knitting days into consideration, Angrboda. I, myself, despise knitting, preferring embroidery, but I wonder if that has changed. For aeons, I have done nothing but fill and empty the cup with these hands. The poison slips sometimes, finding its way through my hands, and they are scarred again and again from my duty. Only he is sentenced, so only he can vocalise his pain. I bear it in silence, much as I don’t speak about the aches that reside in my joints.
I miss my sons and I’ve lost them both; Nari reduced to his entrails and Vali to his madness.
You must have heard—there’s scarcely anyone on this side of Yggdrasil who hasn’t—but they made my boy a kinslayer, and all I could do was watch. There’s a vicious satisfaction to Loki, Angrboda; even when he is hurting, he behaves as if he’s won. I know not the reason for his work, but there’s a desolate rage in him since the binding of your children. The Aesir thought him toothless and he brought them grief; immense, oceanlike grief.
Have I told you of the day they brought us here, to the centre of the earth where three stones burned?
I had thought myself and my boys safe from their wrath; no great prophecy foretold my children like they do for yours, and I thanked the fates every day for it. But sometimes, grief and vengeance share a name, and I was wide-eyed when they dragged us here. Frigg demanded compensation for her loss and so she took my sons, turned Vali into a maddened wolf and set him on his own brother. My son screamed as his belly was sliced open by his once-brother’s claws; as bloodied muzzle gouged into him. Loki cried, but he’d known what he would bring on us when he slew Odin’s son; he had been prepared to pay the cost, but I was not. I watched as one son devoured the other, leaving only intestines behind. I watched as he ran into the wild, mad. They took my son’s entrails and fashioned chains for our husband, bound him thrice like the old ways did.
And what happened after is what you know. Now, tell me, great witch, has there been a kinslayer wolf in your pack?
The old witch awaits your arrival, right where the gates of Ironwood met the gates of Hel. She sits comfortably, knitted cloth wrapped around her body and a staff laid across her legs. As she listens to Sigyn’s missive, her face morphs into thoughtfulness, then sadness, and finally a grim determination.
She looks at you, coiling serpent, intent on her reply, and smiles sadly.
“You have done your job well, little monster. But this message requires a specific messenger.”
She turns and whistles, a singing sound, a hollering darkness. A thrill passes through your blood as the Mother Of Monsters makes her call; every wolf in the vicinity howl in tandem, each carrying a message and a call. She walks ahead and you try to follow the witch, but she steps neither here nor there.
After a while, she returns.
“Still here, I see,” she says, and you coil in circles, ready to sprint. But she only laughs, and this time, when she turns toward Fenrir’s glen, you are able to follow.
The wolf’s jaw is wide open, sword thrust through it. How the old witch found her way here is anyone’s guess, but Fenrir doesn’t tremble when he sees his mother. The rope Gleipnir is silken, tangling his legs and binding him down to earth; it runs through his front paws to hind legs.
She places a hand on his great muzzle, looking at the horizon.
“Your father brought great grief to the gods for your binding,” she begins as she weaves Sigyn’s tale to him. Fenrir is a forced listener, but throughout, he relaxes, and in the dim light, Gleipner looks like a toy he plays with instead of his prison.
“Now, I must ask a favour, greatest of wolves. Where does the wild wolf run?”
When you bring the answer to Sigyn, you are afraid. She is present as always, but you know her well enough now to trace the contours of exhaustion in her.
“What now?” she asks, noticing your hesitation. “Spit it out, snake.”
And so, you do.
We are both wolfmothers now, Sigyn.
My gruff humour is unlikely to amuse your high Aesir thoughts, but after much consideration, I’ve determined that, despite the smallness of Aesir hearts, you know much greater sorrow than I do. You’ve told me much of yourself and it’s only honest, though that is a mystical quality to some of your kind, that I tell you as much. Tale for a tale, hearth for a hearth.
I miss my children too and have lost some of them; perhaps not in the way of yours, but in the quiet disappointing silence. I haven’t seen my daughter in centuries; nilfheim has remained closed to me, no matter how downward or northward I go. Hel is her own mistress now and she’s decided that I didn’t do enough on that fateful day where they took her or her brothers. Jormungandr, my sworn child, youngest born and closest one, he’s lost to me in the oceans’ depth. I fear the sea; I fear Ran.
The only one I can visit is my firstborn, wolfchild. He is bound helpless, tricked into his prison. And I can do naught. Until now.
So, here is my proposition, victory’s friend. Come over here, to the space between the sea, fen and death; I’ll teach you knitting and we will embroider together, roam the earth in search of your kinslayer wolf in the time we’ve left.
You and I know why the Aesir depend on your cup; without you to catch poison, Loki will go mad with pain and no restraint; not even the innards of his own flesh and blood could hold him. I’ll give up all my knitting days then—if I can have just one with you.
By the time you are done, Sigyn is silent. Her red eyes glimmer even as the poison drips unceasingly into her cup. Her lip trembles, and she looks at you, as if You, a lowly wyrm of earth and blood, hold power over a goddess. You hold perfectly still, every scale moulded as if cast in iron. The cup fills slowly, the sound of venom against venom echoing in the cavern.
It fills and fills until it spills over. She lets out a cry, synonymous with her husband. Slowly, she moves the cup and empties it.
Sigyn stands to her full height, towering. Loki screams as, for the first time in aeons, the unceasing flow of poison hits him directly.
“Lead the way,” she says, refusing to look at her husband, at how he thrashes against the remains of her son.
You slither ahead of the goddess as the cup that held against the end of the world finally clatters in the dark.
Rukman Ragas is calling on you, dear reader, to join them in refusing and resisting the genocide of the Palestinian people. Wherever you are, get in the way and throw what sand you can against the wheels of genocide. The elimination of the Palestinian people is not inevitable. We must resist it with our every breath. Rukman Ragas is made a Tamil writer of speculative fiction. A grateful alum of Clarion West through the Octavia E Butler Memorial Scholarship, Rukman’s work has appeared in venues such as khōréō, Apex, and The Baltimore Review.
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