“What if the wolves came by sea?” asks Ursula. “What if the wolves built ships and learned how to sail the whale’s-road?”
“The cliffs are too steep,” her mother says, spitting more feathers. “And Lord Beowulf’s archers are always watchful of the sea for invaders and wolves in boats.”
“You worry about dragons,” says her father, giving the reins a sudden tug. “Worry about trolls and witches, girl, but say no more this day of wolves.”
“Then may I worry about bears?” she asks her father.
“You are a bear,” he says. “You are Ursula, our little bear, and bears should not fear their own.”
“I am a bear,” she says very softly, speaking only to herself, and her mother, who has become a raven, caws and flies away toward the sea. Her black wings seem to slice the edges of the sky, so that soon it has begun to rain. Not drops of water, though, but drops of blood that spatter on the fields and road. Her father tells her not to worry, that her mother will be better soon.
But then the dream has changed, as dreams are wont to do, and Ursula is grown and wandering the moorlands alone, just as her mother did years before, searching in vain for a stolen boy. The sky above her has been torn asunder, ripped to hang in blue-gray strips, and she knows that the time of Ragnarök must at last be upon Midgard. The monster wolf Fenrisulfr has at last grown so large that when he opens his mouth, his snout brushes the stars aside and his chin drags upon the earth. He has broken free of the dwarves’ chain and escaped his island prison of Lyngvi, and soon will the son of Loki devour Odin Allfather, before it is cut down by Odin’s son, the silent god Vi?ar. Ursula wants to look away, wants to turn and run back to the keep, but she cannot take her eyes from the sight of the Fenrisulfr, filling up all the tattered sky. His teeth are as mountains and his shaggy silhouette blocks out even the light of the sun. His jaws drip steaming rivers to scorch the world.
“I don’t want to see the end,” whispers Ursula, wishing now that the wolves had also taken her when they took her brother, that she would not have to live to see the Twilight of the Gods and Loki’s children set free to bring about the end of all things. The ground shakes beneath her feet, and everywhere she looks, the heather and bracken writhes with serpents and worms and maggots.
“It is only a golden drinking horn,” Beowulf tells her, but he sounds frightened, and never before has Ursula heard fear in his voice. “Something I lost. That is all.”
“My father,” she says, “told me that Hrothgar took it as a trophy when he defeated the dragon Fafnir.”
“That may be so,” Beowulf sighs. “I could not say.”
All around her, there is the terrible rending and splintering of the brittle spine of the world, wracked by the thunderous footsteps of Fenrisulfr as he marches past Heorot to keep his appointment with Vi?ar. The two towers of Beowulf’s keep crumble and fall into the sea, and the sky has begun to rain liquid fire.
“It is very beautiful,” Ursula says, admiring the golden horn in Beowulf’s hands.
“The gods always knew that chain would never hold the beast,” her father mutters as the gates of the village come into view. “The beard of a woman, a mountain’s roots, a fish’s breath…such a waste.”
“It means nothing to me,” says Beowulf.
“It was your prize for killing Grendel,” Ursula replies. “It was your reward.”
“My reward,” Beowulf whispers. “No, my reward was to die an old man and never ride the fields of Idavoll with the glorious dead. My reward was a frigid, Christ-worshipping wife and a pile of stones beside the sea.”
Fenrisulfr turns and stares down at her, and his eyes are gaping caverns filled up with fire and thick, billowing smoke. He sees her and flares his nostrils.
“Father,” she says. “Look. He is eating the sky alive.”
“No wolves,” he replies. “Worry about your dragons, little bear. Or you’ll end up like your poor mother.”
And she stares up into the furnace eyes of Fenrisulfr, seeing how little difference there is between a wolf and a dragon, on this last day, that they may as well be one and the same. A dragon devoured her brother, and King Hrothgar raided a wolf’s golden hoard.
King Beowulf places a dagger to the soft spot beneath his chin, but she feels the blade pressing against her own throat. And then the dream breaks apart in the instant before Ursula can scream, the final instant before she dreams her death and her king’s suicide, before Fenrisulfr swallows her and all of Heorot with her.
She lies naked and sweating and breathless beside Beowulf, and when she looks at him, he’s clutching the golden horn to his chest, muttering in his sleep, lost somewhere in the labyrinth of his own secret nightmares. She watches his restless sleep and slowly remembers what is real and what is not. When she is finally certain that she is awake, Ursula rises from the bed and pulls on her furs and fleece-lined boots and very quietly leaves the king’s bedchamber.
A spiral stairway leads up to the causeway connecting the two towers of the keep, and Ursula hugs herself against the chill air and climbs the granite steps. After the dream, she needs to see the sky and the sea and the moonlight falling silver on rooftops and the land beyond the village walls. She reaches the landing, a short hallway leading out to the causeway, and the air here is even colder than it was in the stairwell, and Ursula wishes she were wearing something beneath her furs.
She passes a tapestry, very old and neglected, torn in places and in need of mending. But even in the dim hallway, she can recognize the scene depicted there, Beowulf tearing the monster Grendel’s arm from its shoulder. She keeps walking, and soon she has reached the place where the hall opens out onto the causeway and the winter night. She takes one step out into the moonlight, then she stops. Queen Wealthow is standing on the bridge, only a dozen or so yards away, clothed in her own fur cloak. She does not turn toward Ursula, but stares up at the twinkling stars.
“Another restless night?” she asks Ursula.
Terrified, Ursula can only manage to nod, and then the queen turns toward her. In the darkness, Ursula cannot be certain of Wealthow’s expression, but there is no anger in her voice.
“It’s all right, girl,” the queen says. “I’m not an ogre. I’m not going to eat you.”
Ursula takes a few hesitant steps nearer Queen Wealthow. In the light of the moon and stars, the queen’s hair seems to glow like spun silver.
“He has bad dreams,” says Ursula. “They’ve been coming more often, and tonight they are very bad.”
Wealthow sighs and her breath steams.
“He is a king,” she says. “Kings have a lot on their conscience. They do not have easy dreams.”
Neither do I, thinks Ursula, wondering what sort of dreams queens have, what private demons might have brought Wealthow out into the night. Ursula glances at Wealthow, at the stars spread out overhead, then down at the stones beneath her feet. She wishes she could turn and flee back into the tower, back down to Beowulf’s bed. The air smells like salt, and she can hear the waves against the rocks.
“Sometimes,” she says, “he calls your name in his sleep, my Lady.”
“Does he?” asks Queen Wealthow, sounding distant and unimpressed.
“Yes, my Lady,” replies Ursula, trying not to stammer. “I believe he still holds you in his heart.”
Wealthow cocks one eyebrow and stares skeptically at her husband’s mistress. “Do you indeed?” she asks. Ursula catches the bitter note of condescension, and for a moment neither of them says anything else. The silence lies like ice between them, like the empty spaces between the stars, until Ursula finds her voice.