Mara

I jolted awake. There was a heavy weight on my chest, and damp soily hands squeezing my throat. My larynx popped.

"Oh, so the ridiculously clothed blonde awakes. Praise the gods, it's about damn time. Really, you're wearing minx of all things? Have you forgotten your Cunningfolk roots, what my kind and your kind are? We wear reindeer and leather and bearskin. We are wolves among sheep. We are lions among lambs. We are lindworms among caterpillars. And yet here you are, the simpering teenage princess the Queen is so infatuated with. You sleep as hard as if someone hit you over that thick skull of yours with a horse! Wotan's old eight-legged Sleipnir, in fact. Either that, or Wotan hurled Gugnir into your head and knocked you out!"

I struggled for breath.

She continued, my strangling demon: "Dear scheming Jarngrimr hasn't stopped blathering on about you since you were conceived. Tithe to Utgardr, she says, your blood the bridge between Arcadia and the Northern Holds. Tuppence, I say. Nothing good comes of a filthy witch."

The mara atop me spat in my face, her sleek auburn hair and light milky skin like the Arcadian prefects of Periland, the home of the mara race. Her large sable eyes bore into my soul, and she assumed the nightmare position, conjuring my dreams with her slender, spiked fingers in black sand. From the essence of the cloud, the mara feasted.

She licked her lips and smiled with needle sharp teeth. "I heard you like girls, all the mara know of the nightmares you give the village maidens of Arcadia - when they dream at night, they dream you suck them dead, then toss them to drown in the Maroon Sea. However, I am huldre, so at your lips, I will not die, joy of joys, I suppose? Sorry for the hasty kiss, little minx. Just harvesting the last of my feast. Your dreams - they taste of apples and wine? I'm Fylja Earlsdottir, by the way, your new handmaiden and tour guide par excellence. I think we will be thick as thieves, no, if you're not as dumb as you look, all mossy eyed and blonde and mooning like a lost lowing cow. Are you named Audhumla by any chance, hah! Just kidding." She slinked off me in a white shift that was diaphanous on her curvy frame. No more than 3 foot, the beautiful, nightmarish mara twirled in front of the elfin mirror in my new prison - or was it a haven away from King Hakkon's harsh rule where wild Magick reigned? I had not had much time to collect my bearings or make sense of my surroundings, spellstruck by a night rider as I was.

"That's some introduction," I sighed, wiping her damp grip off my wet throat. Maras had poison that allowed them to suck nightmares and sweet dreams out of their unsuspecting victim's minds. It seemed that Queen Jarngrimr had drugged me with mara poison to take me quickly without resistance to Utgardr. "Handmaiden, eh?" My grip clenched around the whale ivory dagger still in my grasp I had held onto like a death mask in my enchanted sleep, probably out of muscle memory, and in one sharp movement I jolted from the bed with Fylja's back turned to me, and stabbed the blade straight through the mara's sternum and in to her heart.

She shrieked, but as I suspected, turned to smoke and sand, then quickly reformed. "A nasty trick you have up your pretty sleeves, mi'lady," Fylja spat.

"It was worth a try," I shrugged. I stuck out my hand in offering. "Let's make a deal, my dear demonic handmaiden. You don't kill me, and I don't summon the earth once I have some good footing on true soil to suck you back into the sand with. Deal or no deal?"

Fylja bit her cherry lower lip with her serrated teeth, an apparent peach pit in her throat. She harrumphed and danced on her bare, clawed toes - as feisty as Loki tied to a nanny goat by the balls. Fylja's eyes were wide as father's shining Periland diamonds on his crown.

"Oh, fine! I like the look of you anyhow. A real witch. Shamans, sure, we have plenty of Northern Cunningfolk shamans - but Aslaugh was the last real witch, and ma told me tons of stories of what Skadhi's last priestess used to do in the Northern Holds: daring adventures, madcap kidnappings of Arcadians, slaying beasts, before she married herself off as a peace offering to Arcadia's terrible, disgusting prince and the truce took hold. Maybe... maybe you could teach me how to color my nails? I heard that that is a glamour that a witch could do..."

Fylja looked at her talons sourly and sighed. "I do not really think black claws are very maiden-like."

Her freckled skin blushed, and her curves moved like liquid as she led me out the door of the elaborate duergar dug and decorated room. "Hail Sithgunt, I think I'm lost in this damned maze of a labyrinth..." Fylja muttered as she kicked the door open. "Silje! Maren! Do you have the other princesses? Queen Jarngrimr said to stop feeding on them and take them to dinner straightaway!"

Two other sun spackled mara emerged from adjacent doorways in the dwarven caverns, their hands clasping a peppy Rosiel and brooding Yuriel. One mara was gaunt, the other fat and comely, the opposite ends of the spectrum of Fylja's build.

"Oh, Turry, you're alive, praise Mother Freida!" Yuri exhorted, running to cloak me in her embrace.

"Big sister! This is an adventure for sure!" Rosy beamed, tugging at my skirts.

Yuri scowled. "No, Rosy, this is the most horrible day of our lives. Dominic... the dance... our home. We are slaves to the terrible Utgardr Queen!"

"I rather like this castle." Rosy stuck out her tongue and kicked Yuri's heel. Yuri yipped and knuckled Rosy's head. They were squabbling, even in the heart of the Northern Holds in enemy terrain.

"Sisters, be brave - we do not know the playing field yet. I may have some power here, if I am the bargaining chip," I soothed them, the three mara keeping a respectful distance, looking like a Latinate mourning choir in their flowing white gowns and curling red hair.

I continued: "Skadhi - she gave me a vision. The Aesir and Vanir are with us, even in this darkest of fortresses. Have strength, speak little, keep your soft parts guarded, and your hearts steeled to whatever may come, Queen Jarngrimr of the Sorrows be damned!"

I took Yuri and Rosy's hands in mine, Fylja beckoned, and we walked off into the ruby duergar halls, crystals hanging from the ceiling, torches aflame, down a winding staircase -

And into the Devil's feast.