“I see you brought me treasure,” the voice says.
“I have brought you nothing but death,” he replies.
And now Beowulf catches sight of something there amongst the hoarded riches, what appears to be a golden statue, though a statue of what he cannot say. Perhaps it was an idol, long ago, for he has heard stories of ancient cults and the old religion once practiced by the Danes, of blood sacrifices made by men and women who did not hold Odin as the highest among the Æsir. Sacrifices to goddesses said to inhabit especially deep lakes, though this statue surely resembles no goddess. It is a grotesque thing, as though its creators had in mind some hideous amalgam of a lizard and a sea beast. Its eyes are lapis lazuli, and its coarse mane seems to have been woven from a golden thread. Beowulf turns back toward the altar, and he gazes in awe at the giant sword hanging there above Grendel’s body.
“Your beautiful horn,” the voice says. “It glows so…delightfully.”
And once again he hears that scurrying from somewhere close behind him, and this time Beowulf does not turn, but only glances back over his shoulder. Light reflecting off the pool dances across the walls of the cave and across the statue. Something seems different about it, as though it subtly shifted position—the angle of its head, the arrangement of its reptilian limbs—when he looked away. But this must be only some trick of the cave’s peculiar lighting, some deceit his eyes have played upon his mind.
“Show yourself,” he says. “I have not come so far, through flood and muck, to bandy words with a shade.”
“You have come because I have called for you,” the voice replies, and now Beowulf does turn to face the statue once again. But it is vanished, gone. Before he can long ponder its disappearance, there’s a loud splash from the pool, as though something has fallen from the wall into the water. Only a loose stone, perhaps, but he raises Hrunting and watches the pool.
“I have come to avenge those who were slain while they slept,” he says. “I have come to seek justice for the thirteen good men who sailed the whale’s-road and fought with me.”
Ripples begin spreading out across the surface, creating small waves that lap against the shore, and from the shimmering water rises the likeness of a woman, entirely naked and more beautiful than any Beowulf has ever before beheld or imagined. There is an odd metallic glint to her complexion, as though her skin has been dusted with gold, and all about her there is a glow like the rising sun after a long and bitter night. Her flaxen hair is pulled back into a single braid, so long that it reaches almost to her feet. Her pale blue eyes shine bright and pure, as though blazing with some inner fire. And then she speaks, and it is the same voice that has mocked him since he entered the dragon’s belly.
“Are you the one they call Beowulf?” she asks. “The wolf of the bees? The bear? Such a strong man you are. A man with the strength of a king in him. The king you will one day become.”
“What do you want of me, demon?”
She moves gracefully, fearlessly, toward him, somehow treading on the surface of the water. Her long braid swings from side to side, seeming almost to undulate with a life all its own, flicking like a serpent or the tail of an excited animal.
“I know that underneath your glamour you’re as much a monster as my son Grendel. Perhaps more so.”
Beowulf takes a step back from the edge of the pool.
“My glamour?” he asks.
“One needs a glamour to become a king,” she replies. “That men will follow you. That they will fear you.”
And now, in hardly the time it takes to draw a breath, she has reached the shore and is standing before him, her lustrous skin and twitching braid dripping onto the stones at her feet.
“You will not bewitch me,” he growls, and slashes at her throat with Hrunting, expecting to see her head parted cleanly from her shoulders and toppling back into the pool from whence she has risen. But she grabs the blade, moving more quickly than his eyes can follow. She holds it fast, and try though he might, Beowulf cannot wrest it from her grip. She smiles, and dark blood oozes from her palm, flowing onto the blade of Unferth’s ancestral sword.
“And I know,” she says, gazing directly into Beowulf’s eyes. “A man like you could own the greatest tale ever sung. The story of your bravery, your greatness, would live on when everything now alive is gone to dust.”
And now Beowulf sees that where her blood has touched the iron blade it has begun to steam and dissolve, the way icicles melt in bright sunshine.
“Beowulf,” she says, “it has been a long time since a man has come to visit me.”
And then she pushes hard against Hrunting, shedding more of her corrosive blood, and the entire blade is liquefied in an instant, spilling onto the ground between them in dull spatters of silver. The hilt falls from Beowulf’s hand and clatters loudly against the rocks, and his fingers have begun to tingle. And he feels her inside his head, her thoughts moving in amongst his own. He gasps and shakes his head, trying to force her out.
“I don’t need…a sword…to kill you.”
“Of course you don’t, my love.”
“I slew your son…without a sword.”
“I know,” she purrs. “You are so very strong.”
She reaches out, her fingertips brushing gently, lovingly, against his cheek, and already the gash in her palm has healed. Beowulf can see himself reflected in her blue eyes, and his pupils have swollen until his own eyes seem almost black.
“You took a son from me,” she says, and she leans forward, whispering into his ear. “Give me a son, brave thane, wolf of the bees, first born of Ecgtheow. Stay with me. Love me.”
“I know what you are,” mumbles Beowulf breathlessly, lost and wandering in her now. Somehow, she has swallowed him alive, and like Hrunting, he is melting, undone by magic and the acid flowing in her demon’s veins.
“Shhhhh,” she whispers, and strokes his face. “Do not be afraid. There is no need to fear me. Love me…and I shall weave you riches beyond imagination. I shall make you the greatest king of men who has ever lived.”
“You lie,” says Beowulf, and it requires all his strength to manage those two words. They are only a wisp passing across his lips, a death rattle, an ill-defined echo of himself. He struggles to remember what has brought him to this devil’s lair. He tries to recall Wiglaf’s voice, the sight of dead men dangling from the rafters of Heorot and the screams of women, the sea hag that visited him in a dream, disguised as Queen Wealthow. But they are all flimsy, fading scraps, those memories, nothing so urgent they could ever distract him from her.
The merewife reaches down and runs her fingers along the golden horn, Hrothgar’s prize, Beowulf’s reward, then she slips her arms around Beowulf’s waist and draws him nearer to her. She kisses his bare chest and the soft flesh of his throat.
“To you I swear, as long as this golden horn remains in my keeping, you will forever be King of the Danes. I do not lie. I have ever kept my promises and I ever shall.”
And then she takes the horn from him. He doesn’t try to stop her. And she holds him tighter still.
“Forever strong, mighty…and all-powerful. Men will bow before you and serve you loyally, even unto death. This I promise.”
Her skin is sweating gold, and her eyes gnaw their way deeper into his soul, and Beowulf remembers when he swam against Brecca and something he first mistook for a herald of the Valkyries pulled him under the waves…
“This I swear,” the merewife whispers.