At the Wedding of Thor and the World Serpent
In a dark corner of a hall called Wigrid, a woman with a scarred face sat at a table for those who are not quite friends, not quite family, but a strange in-between where their presence was obligated, but not terribly desired.
She sat alone, surrounded by similarly empty tables, while the rest of the wedding party celebrated the reception.
A beautiful man, walking from the direction of the back entrances, arrived at her table and spoke to the woman. She turned around.
Both of them cursed. And looked nervously. Nobody noticed.
The beautiful man sat down next to the scarred woman.
This is how Ragnarok happens. An impossible meeting takes place.
Balder the Beautiful sits at Hel’s table.
The woman said, “I wasn’t aware corpses were invited to the party.”
“If they were, I’d say you were the expert,” the man replied. His eyes widened and his mouth shut, a second too late to matter.
“Ouch!” the woman chuckled. “If I knew how much you enjoyed low-hanging fruit, then I’d have brought some to the wedding.”
The man blushed. It somehow made him even prettier. “I meant because of your job. I’d— I’d never say anything about…”
“The scar that literally covers half my face.” The woman gestured to herself.
“Yes. That. I mean…” The man examined her face. The strange symmetry of the scarring. The way it continued down her neck and past the line of her sweater. His blush deepened and the woman smiled.
While she continued to tease the man, a ruckus of laughter sounded from the other side of the room.
At one table, the groomsmen drank deep drafts to the health of the new couple. The groom was the biggest and loudest among them. His red beard shook with every belt of laughter.
At another, the bridesmaids tittered and flattered the new wife as she held state. Whenever the flow of compliments slowed, the bride examined her nails in a blatantly threatening manner. Fear coiled around them and it sounded like hissing.
This is how Ragnarok happens.
Thor drinks in the golden halls of Asgard surrounded by friends. He is strong. Time is his only enemy.
Jormungandr encircles the whole world from the depths. Her venom is lethal. Her venom won’t be enough.
Their union is inevitable.
The woman adopted a high-class accent. “If you insist on knowing, I can assure, sir, that it doesn’t prevent any activities of any sort.” The man swallowed and looked back at her eyes.
“Activities?”
The woman waggled her eyebrows. “Diving. Pole-vaulting. Wrestling.” The man laughed.
“Wrestling, madam?”
The parents sat at yet another table. The mother of the bride found her empty plate very interesting. The bride’s father drank in the scene, and his mead, in silent amusement.
The woman winked with her good eye, “I’m a terror on the mat.”
The parents of the groom refused to talk to their in-laws or each other.
This is how Ragnarok happens. Smaller each time.
Two families at the center, who don’t know who they’d be without the conflict between them. It’s petty and serious and will last as long as one draws breath. Two schemers alike in power and dignity. They will tear this town apart.
“Was it you at the hospital?” the beautiful man asked. He had seen someone like her before, but never in good lighting. A stunning woman had sat at his bedside while he lay dying at a hospice. He learned she was the owner after he’d already been forbidden to go back. He wanted to. Sometimes it was all he thought about.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals.” She remembered him, though she had done that for many others, because she had last seen him dead. The body had been covered by a sheet for privacy. She should have checked.
“I was delirious and could barely see, but I told you something. Do you remember?”
She memorized that face during long nights. She knew how he breathed. How he swallowed. What nightmares plagued him in his sleep. Instead, the woman said, “They keep talking about a certain man over there, but I never remember his name. Everyone knows him. He’s not at this wedding, but they gave him a place.” At the parents’ table, beside the mother of the groom, was a picture with a plate in front of it. The plate was empty, but utensils rested on it, as if someone had eaten. A mug of mead sat beside the plate, which the mother drank from. Periodically, some of the groomsmen came to top off the mug. The picture had a remarkable resemblance to the beautiful man.
“My name is Brandon,” the beautiful man said.
“That’s not the name they keep saying,” the woman confided. “Besides, you couldn’t be that man. The way they talk about him, he’s almost a saint.”
The man leaned forward, “What do they say?”
The mother of the groom always starts the conversation. She uses her son’s memory to police her family. She says, He would've hated to see you fighting like this. He would've wanted the wedding to go perfectly. She compares her other sons to him and finds them lacking. She says, He never needed to be reminded of his manners. He always appreciated his mother’s advice. She will never let them forget that once there had been a perfect child and they would never live up to him.
The father of the groom keeps it going. He uses his son’s memory to mobilize the family. Any sign of grief is used as raw material for the old grudge. Keep away from that family. They killed your brother. Why are you marrying the daughter of the bastard who killed him? He keeps the family angry, keeps them focused, keeps them motivated to outdo a memory. Your brother could’ve done that in half the time. Your brother wouldn’t stand for that kind of disrespect to his family.
You’d think he would have done anything for the family. Even die for it.
This is how Ragnorok happens. From negligence and naked malice.
A boy’s mother dreams that he may die. She extracts a promise from everything in the world that they might not hurt him, but forgets one, fragile little plant. A wicked plan is hatched. The boy dies. His father whispers a secret to him which no one else knows.
The beautiful man remembered the noise the most, and the silence after. With so many brothers, he could never get a word in edgewise. His brothers did everything loudly: laughing, fighting, loving. The loudest of all was his eldest brother. Thor’s voice boomed like thunder reverberating through the sky. He was a braggart and a bully. Anything he didn’t get right away was earned through his strongest weapon: prodigious violence. Their father, Odin, loved him for that. The son most like himself. Their mother, Frigg, who was of the same mind as their father in all else, disagreed. She preferred her youngest son. The beautiful one. The fragile one. Nothing was allowed to hurt this one son. The son who would stay with her when everyone else had gone. The quiet as he lay on the ground, on the floor of a wedding reception much like this, was as much a surprise as dying. He saw the concerned faces of his family as his vision grew spotty. His weeping mother. His stern father. His eldest brother. Silent for once, except for the tears falling down his face. His brother loved him. He’d made sure of it, but the confirmation was nice. The beautiful man remembers dying. He remembers coming back. A letter in his father’s harsh handwriting telling him his new name. His new address. His new life.
The scarred woman and the beautiful man discuss the secrets of the dead. If promises should be kept to people who aren’t there anymore.
“I have those secrets in abundance,” the woman says, “Honesty is the last virtue available to the dead and dying.”
“Am I the dead?”
“You aren’t dying.”
They agree to tell each other one secret and to forget it if they’re wrong. The beautiful man is unsure, but this woman could be her, and if she isn’t, maybe she can still keep a secret. On three, they whisper the same words.
This is how Ragnarok happens. With a few misplaced words.
The scarred woman laughed and laughed at the beautiful man. He grumbled and protested because he disliked being made a fool. He says it’s unfair for the woman to play with his emotions like that.
The woman smirked. “Unfair? I am an exceedingly fair person. You scared me half to death by appearing behind me.” The woman raised one hand parallel to the ground. “I get to terrorize you for the rest of the reception.” The woman raised her other hand to the same level.
“That’s fair for you?”
“As fair as my name.”
“Which is?”
“Helen,” the woman said coyly.
The man teased, “The one who launched a thousand ships?”
The woman rolled her eyes.
They talk about the merits of names and their meanings, chosen or otherwise. They talk about lies. They talk about families.
“I wonder how a dead man gets invited to his brother’s wedding, twice?” the scarred woman said.
The beautiful man thinks of his father. His father, who’d never hugged him, but sometimes sat up with him in the middle of the night. His single eye revealing something approaching fondness.
“I got the invitation in the mail. I figured I’d go support him.”
His father, who had better use for a dead son than a living one, but arranged a good life for him afterwards.
“The stranger thing is, why are you back here with a dead man?”
The woman leaned in to whisper in his ear, “Apparently, I’m not good company.”
This is how Ragnarok happens.
A little girl is left alone in the cold. Out of everyone’s sight, she builds a kingdom.
Give me your sick, she says. Give me your desperate. Take all you desire and leave me the scraps.
The scarred woman remembered the cold first. A shiver always started from her fingertips. It rippled its way through her body until it reached her teeth. Their chattering almost drowned out the sound of her parents arguing. The woman, she wasn’t allowed to call mother, was spirited and proud. Her father, Loki, used every means of persuasion available to him and she bore him three children in gratitude. Nothing he did could keep her from leaving afterward. The woman she was forced to call mother, her father’s legal wife, Sigyn, was a cold woman. There might have been some love in her, once upon a time, but she met that woman after Loki’s infidelity. After Sigyn buried two of her children, there was no love left for an unwanted three. She gave her house, but never her presence.
Her eldest sister Fen was already out in the streets by that time. Powerful and ambitious, and ready to make her mark on the world. A girl hungry enough to eat the moon and stars. Her middle sister, Jor, was beautiful enough to know it and venomous enough to use it. Even young, her network was ever-growing. One day, it would stretch around the city.
Before the accident, the scarred woman was called beautiful. If not for her young age, she might have been the fairest of her sisters. She and Jor stood on the balcony some evenings and compared how many people stopped and stared. It was whispered that a goddess dwelt in the cold mansion in the middle of the city. She used to drink in their adoration. They often played games like that. They weren’t nice games, but they were the only games she was ever taught. One common game involved the fireplace. They would take turns getting as close to the fire as they could. The venomous girl never tried very hard at it, so it was the only game the scarred woman ever won. The resulting burns scorched much of her upper left side. Flame licked skin deep enough to scar. They still whispered about a goddess, but they whispered in fear.
The scarred woman talked about her sister, and the contradictory feelings that venomous, beautiful woman inspired. Her legacy of fear and reverence that encircled the entire city.
“In my sister’s own way, this might be her being nice to me,” the scarred woman said.
The bride and her entourage surrounded the DJ, as she dictated a setlist for the dancefloor. The way she slithered through curses, slurs, and threats could be a spectator sport if there was a market for that sort of thing.
“Nice?” the beautiful man stated.
“The woman is too full of venom for the feeling of guilt to take root, but she’s very generous to the people she thinks she owns. Look at them,” The woman pointed to the bridesmaids, before counting on her fingers. “Name brand dresses. Expensive jewelry. Protection from verbal murder. All she asks for is your soul.”
The bride’s father watched his daughter auditorily eviscerate the DJ with a smile on his scarred lips. He repeated particularly inventive turns of phrase and told them to his silent wife. She never acknowledged him, but that never seemed to bother him.
The scarred woman continued, “She feels nothing for our parents, but they aren’t good targets regardless.”
“Why not?”
“Our father’s too good at talking. Our mother’s too good at silence.”
“From what I’ve seen, you move your mouth pretty well yourself.”
The scarred woman laughed out loud.
The venomous woman was the only one to look at her sister’s table. She was talking to a man she couldn’t see clearly, but didn’t recognize. She overlooked this and turned back towards the DJ, who was hemmed in by her followers. She only had to push him a bit further.
“I was her first playmate. That means something to her. She’s surprisingly sentimental like that. So she invites me to some things.”
This is how Ragnarok happens.
A little girl is taken from her home. She hisses and spits and bites the one-eyed man who carries her. She cries for herself. She cries for her sister in the cold, burned home. She cries for vengeance.
The scarred woman and the beautiful man talked on. About parents and siblings and whether love is the same thing as possession and when it isn’t.
A man with one eye looked at their table, at the dead son he had invited to the wedding. He looked at the groom chugging mug after mug of mead. Cheered on by his brothers and groomsmen. The groom’s mother looked at the groom’s table, too. She held back her criticism. The groom, hammered, stumbled his way there. He bumps into one of the bride’s cousins. There is an argument. His voice booms like thunder.
This is how Ragnarok happens.
In the longest winter, when the story of summer is so long ago that one cannot hope for it. They will fight and die on the field of battle because the cold is all they know.
The one-eyed man watched the growing chaos with a grim face, but a twinkle in his eye. Finally.
A man with cracked lips opened his mouth to speak, wickedness in his smile.
The venomous bride finished her conversation with the DJ. Holding back tears, he blasts the horns to call everybody to the dance floor. The beautiful man and the scarred woman don’t even notice, engrossed in their conversation. Everyone lines up on the dance floor. On one side is the groom and his family, on the other is the bride and her family. They approach each other.
After the battle, the winter will end. The wind will turn, there comes a thaw.
The woman asked if the man would like to have a drink with her. They’d moved on from family to favorite historical figures and she wants to hear him defend Gawain. Really, Gawain? You know he wasn’t real, right? He replied that he’d take her up on that offer and it didn’t matter if he was real. It mattered what he stood for. His hand in hers is warm. They leave out the back door.
In the ashes of desolation, life begins again. And the world starts over with the two of them.
Kirkland Butler is a poet and writer from Norfolk, Virginia. He is graduating this year as a Batten Fellow from the Virginia Wesleyan University Honors College, as an English major and Classics minor. Along the way, he picked up several classes in English, Classics and Philosophy, along with a spot on The Marlin Chronicle as a Copy-Editor. He tried juggling them, but got very tired very quickly. This experience has thoroughly prepared him to be the Fiction Co-Editor of The Fishbowl Review. (We hope. He told us he was a creative writing major. And we know poets and writers are known for their unimpeachable trustworthiness.)