Wealthow glances desperately toward the eastern tower, where only moments before she saw Wiglaf trying to reach them. But the fire burns even more fiercely than before, as though the masonry itself is feeding the blaze. There is no sign of Wiglaf anywhere.
A nearby section of the causeway cracks apart suddenly, slinging bits of rock and mortar and raising a cloud of dust. Ursula screams and hides her faces in Wealthow’s arms as the bridge begins to tilt toward the sea. And the Queen of Heorot Hall holds tight to the woman her husband bedded in her stead, the one he must have come to love more than her, for what profits anyone bitterness or spite, and Wealthow waits for the end.
“I am so sorry,” the girl sobs, but Wealthow tells her there is nothing left now to be sorry for.
“But I took him from you.”
“Child, you took nothing I did not first let slip away from me,” says Wealthow.
And at that moment, the causeway cracks again, and this time a large portion of the flaming deck dividing them from the eastern tower and their escape pulls free and tumbles toward the crashing waves and jagged shingle far below. As it goes, it opens a narrow, crumbling pathway through the flames. And there is Wiglaf, still standing on the other side.
“Get up,” Wealthow tells Ursula, all but lifting the girl to her feet, not knowing how long the path might endure or how soon until the entire structure drops away beneath them. “We have to run. We can live, but we have to run, and we have to run fast.”
Through her tears, Ursula stares, uncertain and terrified, toward Wiglaf and the slight gap in the roaring wall of fire. “But…” Ursula begins.
“Run, damn you,” Wealthow growls, pushing her ahead toward Wiglaf, who has begun picking his way toward them through the ruin. “Run, or I will throw you over the side myself and be done with it.”
And then Ursula is running, with Wealthow close on her heels, the two women dashing toward deliverance as the causeway groans beneath them. But another explosion erupts from somewhere close behind them, and the deck abruptly leans away from the sea, pivoting on its columns and swaying instead in the direction of the eastern tower and Wiglaf. Wealthow loses her footing and begins sliding across the precipitously listing causeway toward a spot where the teeth of the dragon broke away the balustrade and so there’s nothing there to stop her from slipping over the edge. Ursula shouts for Wiglaf and lunges for her queen, managing to grab hold of Wealthow’s left hand. But Ursula is only strong enough to slow Wealthow’s progress toward the causeway’s shattered rim, and now both women are sliding nearer the edge.
“Wiglaf!” Ursula cries out, digging her heels into the quavering deck.
“Please, save yourself” Wealthow implores the girl. “It’s too late for me, but we don’t both have to die here.” And with that, Queen Wealthow wrenches her hand free of Ursula’s grasp. The girl screams, but in the last instant before Wealthow tumbles over the edge, Wiglaf catches her and straining, digging deep for the last of his strength, hauls her safely back onto the deck.
“What you ladies say we get the hell out of here?” he moans, and then the Geat leads them both to the eastern towers. Only moments after they have gained that harborage, the swaying causeway again changes its course, pulling free of the tower wall in a final, decisive lurch before plummeting toward the sea. It leaves behind only a wide gulf of smoky air to mark the space between the spires of Heorot.
Beowulf comes to on a small patch of sand in the lee of a boulder, awakened by the chill of the icy waves. For a second, it seems he lies atop the fallen dragon, but then as salt water and foam retreat, he sees that he lies beside the golden man from the merewife’s cave. A terrible wound extends from the man’s throat all the way down his chest to his belly. His eyelids flutter, and then he opens them and stares up at the winter clouds.
“Father?” he coughs. “Are you here? I can’t see you.”
“I’m here,” Beowulf replies weakly. He ignores the pain that seems to radiate from every part of his body and drags himself closer, cradling his son’s head in the crook of his good arm “I’m sorry…”
“Are we dead?” the golden man asks, and blood leaks from his lips.
“Almost,” Beowulf replies, before another wave rushes forward and crashes over them both. Beowulf gasps at the cold, and when the sea recedes again, he is alone on the sand. The golden man is gone, returned to his mother. The King of the Ring-Danes lies back down on the beach, watching the clouds passing by overhead, dimly aware that he has begun to cry, but his tears seem of little consequence here beside the resounding ocean.
I will lie here just a little longer, thinks Beowulf, and then he hears footsteps, the crunch of boots on the pebble-strewn sand. He turns his head, and Wiglaf is walking toward him across the beach.
“You lucky bastard,” mutters Beowulf.
Wiglaf kneels next to him, inspecting the cauterized stump of his right arm.
“I told you we were too old to be heroes,” he says. “Let me get you to a healer.”
“No,” Beowulf tells him, and shakes his head. “Not this time, old friend.”
“You’re Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow,” Wiglaf says. “The scops sing your deeds in all the lands of the world. No way a little thing like this is going to finish you off. That’s not how this story will end.”
“No,” Beowulf tells him again. “I’m done, my Wiglaf. And it is not so bad an ending. It will be a fine enough tale for Gladsheim.”
“Aye,” replies Wiglaf, sitting down and brushing wet hair away from Beowulf’s blood-streaked face. “It will make a fine tale for Odin’s hall, but not this day, my lord. I have a fresh, strong horse, there, just beyond the rocks.”
Beowulf smiles for Wiglaf and closes his eyes, listening to the waves and to something he hears woven in between the waves. It might be the voice of a woman singing, the most beautiful voice he has ever heard.
“Do you hear her?” he asks Wiglaf.
“I hear nothing my lord, but the sea and the wind and the gulls.”
“The song, Wiglaf,” says Beowulf. “It’s Grendel’s mother, the merewife…my son’s mother…my…” but he trails off then, distracted by the pain and uncertain what word he was going to say next, whether it might have been lover or mother, foe or destiny.
He opens his eyes again, for now the song has grown so loud he does not have to try so hard to pick it free of the noise of the sea. Wiglaf is gazing down at him, and Beowulf has never seen Wiglaf look so frightened.
“No, lord. Don’t say such things. You slew Grendel’s mother. When we were yet young men. It’s in the saga—”
“Then the saga is a lie,” says Beowulf, raising his voice, angry and almost shouting, and he feels something pulling loose inside his chest. “A lie,” he says again. “Wiglaf, you know it was a lie. You always knew.”
Wiglaf does not say a word, and Beowulf shuts his eyes again, wanting only to listen to the song flowing up from the sea.
“And it is too late for lies,” he whispers. “Too late…”
A wave rushes up the shore, soaking Wiglaf, and when he looks back down at Beowulf’s pale face, Wiglaf realizes that he’s alone on the beach. King Beowulf is dead.
Epilogue
The Passing of Beowulf
At the center of the world stands the ash Yggdrasil, the greatest and best of all trees, and below the roots of Yggdrasil dwell the three maidens—the Norns—who work always, busy at their looms, spinning and shaping the lives of every man and every woman, weaving what must be from chaos and infinite possibility. Even the gods in Ásgard are only threads in the handiwork of the Norns, and even they, like mortal men and the giants, may not glimpse the threads of their lives or know the judgment of those nimble, tireless fingers. The length of each thread is known only to these three maidens, there below the foundations of the World Ash. And so it was with Beowulf, who sought always the glory and the brave death that must be sought out by those who wish to enter Odin’s hall and fight alongside the gods in the final battle when Ragnarök comes and the children of Loki Skywalker and Shape-Changer are again loosed upon the cosmos. At the moment of his birth, the Norns had already woven the fate of Beowulf, and in all his struggles and on down to the day of his death, he has only ever followed the course of that thread.