Skadhi

I was in a blue huntswoman's dress with red and white trim, the traditional Isa attire coupled with brown snowshoes, standing atop an icy fjord as winter snow piled high and impenetrable onto the mountain's blue gray peak.

My patroness stood before me, ells tall like the wall around Asgard, as icy as the snow itself.

The As goddess Skadhi, lady of the hunt, winter and skis, with her white wolves stood sentinel over me, and I knew it a familiar dream. Skadhi was the ancient patroness of my mama Aslaugh's Northern Cunningfolk tribe, the Isa. Known for her icy demeanor, wry humor, and frosty dominion, she was unparalleled among huntresses, and always made sure I knew it, too. She grew up saying she had hunted my soul from the Maroon Sea, and claimed me as her mead dark priestess, just as she had mama years before.

Skahdi came to me in dreams often to teach me of my Magick, and as I stood in Northern Cunningfolk garb atop the glacial terrain, my breath steaming as the heavy gales of ice wrenched each hard exhalation out of me, Skadhi the Jotun goddess stared down at me peculiarly, her gaze unpassable, sizing me up. It was like being scoped out by an avalanche about to strike. She took her hunting horn out of her belt and blew it hard, her lips blue, her great red cheeks puffed out like a pelican with fish in its brimming beak.

I shielded myself from the blast of her fortress of a call. "What are you doing, my great lady, Skadhi Ondurdis?" I shouted to be heard above the ripping wind, my balsam eyes burning with blood Magick as, in this dream amid dreams, I channeled heat from the sun to warm my flesh.

The Sowilo rune lit my hands.

Skadhi was as tall as a house, Jotun by birth she was, As by marriage. Her breasts were mountains, her hips like a jumping buck, her white wolf fur and gray bear skins over leather armaments rustling like a warning sign.

She lowered her hunting horn and smiled at me, rather sternly. "I have taught you much of Magick, have I not, little one?" she said, her damp wood colored hair and birch white skin shining under the midnight sun. "Jarngrimr of the Sorrows draws close. Right now, she is flying aback her father Wotan's gallows to the Northern Holds in Utgardr with her huldre court. She intends you to be her bride, as your mother once promised long ago in exchange for the Magick to summon the Stronghold that makes Arcadia impenetrable. You and Rosy and Yuri are being sucked on by mara as we speak. Tell me, do you remember my Cunningfolk priestess Aslaugh's tales about the Bergresar?"

"You mean the Mountain Queens of Utgardr borne of Sithgunt the Seeress? The mountain trolls skilled in magick and illusion and bloodwork, necromancy even? But those are a cursed people my father Hakkon conquered..."

"Or he would like Arcadia to believe," Skadhi smiled thinly, a smile sharp as ice, her frosted lips a light, hard blue line. "Jarngrimr is their queen, as her mother Sithgunt was before her. The Dark Court has retreated deep into the mountains, into the inner worlds of Utgardr at the heart of the Dark Woods. So have the last of the Northern Cunningfolk Isa tribe of your birth. I suspect it is where Queen Jarngrimr is taking you now." Lady Skadhi took out her bow and suddenly let loose an arrow to fell a falcon. "Loki. He is up to his old tricks again. Nothing good can come of his doings. Best beware whenever he steals Golden Freida the Wanderer's falcon feather cloak."

A naked, red haired man in a pinioned cloak lay slain in my patroness' arms. Skadhi kissed his corpse lips, then tossed him off the cliff as if he were dead weight.

Loki's strangled ghost gave out a deceased, wild rip of a laugh, like a murdered jester roasting alive on a pike.

Skadhi's lips quirked: "It seems by this portent that you, my dear, are surely running out of time. You must break the curse."