you said.’
‘Both,’ growled Thomas.
Grief and rage, thought Will, are not the purview of monsters alone.
‘What now?’ demanded Thomas.
‘I never heard this cry before, and I’ve often passed this way. The ash sky brought winter early and woke the owner of this voice, to cry out. Its lament is what makes the winter last so long. I’ll sing a cradlesong, I think.’
‘We should kill it.’ Thomas’ knife was in his hand again.
‘Are you very determined to die?’ Will asked gently. ‘For I think that taking your little blade to this creature will accomplish that nicely. If you’re not so very set on dying, though, I thinking putting it back to sleep may give us a better chance of seeing tomorrow.’
‘What should we do, then?’
Will wouldn’t admit that he didn’t know. All his small magics hadn’t prepared him for the task he’d taken on. Instinct told him to connect to the earth, however, so he walked to the edge of the frozen Thames and knelt on the ice-hard mud. After a moment, Thomas joined him.
Will began with a tattoo drummed on the ground and Thomas began to play a warm melody around it, so that the ground softened and steamed.
‘Play on,’ said Will. He tapped on the ground with one drum stick, tucking the other stick into his belt, and pressed his fingers into the mud to listen to the earth. Will’s fingers felt the pulse of the ground, slow and dark and deep. Wet and steady. The Earth was old and patient. The thing waking in it, though much older than London, was still younger than the ground on which London stood, and younger than the river under which it lay.
With the one hand, Will slowed the rhythm of the tune they were making and sang sweetly to the thing under the mud.
Hush thy heart, great beast
Let sorrow fly away.
Dwell thee not on life’s great hurts
But rest thee while thee may
Softly still thy mind
Let slumber soothe thy pain
Merciful is winter’s end
When springtime starts her reign
Thomas’ playing curled around the beat, but his heart was seething. The result was not a lilting cradlesong but something tight and thick; not a letting go but a squeezing of the fist. Will understood too late. Before he could fall silent, or withdraw, he felt it.
Eyes opened deep in mud and looked right through him.
Will fell back, a gasp of fear trapping frosty air in his lungs. He tried to cry a warning to the piper and couldn’t, so that Thomas’ surprise at the abrupt end to their cradlesong was all for Will landing arse-first on the ice.
And then Thomas’ eyes grew wide and his mouth opened in horror but no sound came out. The piper’s hair stood on end, and so did Will’s in sympathy as the ice crackled and cracked and began to heave, and he knew, he knew, he oh God he knew that the thing that he’d felt looking through him was rising up behind him through the mud and ice, and he knew he would never see the moon or sun or stars again, he would never know warmth or bread again, he would never know love again…
The piece of the Thames on which he sat cracked, heaved, tilted, and he slid down it. One hand still clutched the drum stick, his tabor banged against his back where it hung, the stick in his belt jammed into his ribs.
He crashed into Thomas who had instinctively opened his arms to receive him, and they fell in a tangle on the snow and lay there, arms about each other in terror, for comfort, and looked at the being which had risen from the frozen river.
It almost looked like a man: tall, broad-shouldered, with arms and legs. But its body was made of mud and chunks of ice, pieces of bone and wood. Its chest was the mouldering portion of the prow of an ancient boat, sunk a thousand years ago. Its hair bristled in shards of weed and pottery: clay-brown, glazed blue, fragments of figures and colours.
It shook its bewildered head, scattering sleet. It raised its chin and opened its mouth and howled at the snow-and-ash laden sky.
Hailstones fell. Will and Thomas flung their arms over their heads and they huddled over each other. Fist-sized chunks of ice glanced off their arms, their bodies, bruising them. One struck Thomas on the forehead, drawing blood. Another crashed into Will’s fingers and he felt a bone break.
The man of mud with ice blue eyes roared into the air words they didn’t understand. Waves of grief and rage rolled off the sound and from its body and through their flesh and somehow within the waves of sound, Thomas heard meaning.
I am cursed. I am wronged. I am doomed.
Thomas struggled to his feet with his blood frozen in a streak down his face, and he roared back at the creature who hadn’t even seen them.
‘We are all cursed, all wronged, all doomed! We don’t all destroy the world!’
The creature ceased howling and tilted its head down, then moved it slowly left and right, listening. Its ice blue eyes were unseeing, but its face was wrapped with confusion and irritation.
‘What are you to speak to me?’ it emanated.
‘I’m a man you’ve wronged.’
‘I do not know you.’
‘Yet you did me harm. You killed my brother.’
‘No,’ said the giant. ‘Not brother. Sister.’
‘He was my brother and we killed him, you and I.’
The giant was confused again. ‘My brother is dead. I slew him by mistake.’
‘I killed mine with negligence, selfishness and fear,’ said Thomas. He wept and the tears froze on his cheeks.
‘I was jealous, I admit,’ said the mud-man. ‘Baldr was so beloved of our mother, she made all living things swear to never harm him. The other gods threw weapons at my brother to test him, but beautiful Baldr only laughed as all things kept their promise. But Loki tricked me. He gave me mistletoe, which had been too young to swear peace to Baldr, and in my envy I threw it, ignorant of its power. One little dart of mistletoe from my hand and my brother laughs no more. Baldr was slain at my hand.’ It howled into the air again then slumped, blind eyes turned towards the musicians. ‘Vali killed me in just wrath, but a god never truly dies.’
Will stirred from his watching. He heard Thomas speak to the mud-man, and heard its replies in his blood and bones, through the earth. ‘A god, are you? How is it you’re here?’
‘Loki bound my spirit to an earthen jar. He delivered me to the hands of men to be a talisman. I have travelled far from Asgard on warships, but I never brought those Captains to victory. Another of my brother’s tricks. He never tires of them.’
‘Baldr?’
‘Loki
