The Fire Stallion

We walked to the Colosseum, Gudrun leading the way. The sky up above was cloudless, and the colour of rose petals.

“Quick, Hilly!” Gudrun leapt ahead of me, taking the stone steps two at a time to reach the grassy expanse of the arena. She grasped my hand and shoved the trowel into it. “Dig up the horn while I prepare.”

The dirt mound from our burial had become overgrown with grass, which surprised me as it seemed like such a short time ago we had done the ritual. Gudrun must have marked the spot somehow because she was quite certain where I should dig.

A few feet away she had placed a fire brazier stacked with logs.

“The Vikings always used mountain ash, from the boughs of the rowan tree, for the midsummer ritual,” she said as she rearranged the wood inside the bowl of the rusty brazier and set it alight with a taper. “They believed that rowan has magical properties to ward off evil.”

The wood caught fire almost instantly with a fairy dust sprinkling of orange sparks at first and then a deep, emerald-green flame as the rowan began to burn and crackle to embers. There was something very hypnotic about watching the fire, almost trance-like.

“Hilly!” Gudrun said. “Please, keep digging – it’s time!”

I plunged the trowel back into the earth and heard a thunk as it struck bone.

“I’ve got it!” I said, using my fingers to prise the horn out of the soil, wiping it clean. I expected the herbs inside to have rotted away but the flowers were still brilliant yellow and the leaves were still green. I was about to reach in and get my necklace out when Gudrun stopped me.

“Be very careful with it. You must not disturb its contents as you bring it to me.”

I held the horn as if it were a baby in my arms and walked to Gudrun, who was stoking the wood with an iron so that the green flames leapt up as tall as me. It was strange, but there was no warmth emanating from the fire. It was as cold as ice.

Gudrun stood and took the horn from me. “You kneel,” she said.

I dropped to my knees next to the brazier. Gudrun lowered her hands into the green flames and rested the horn on top of the logs. All at once the fire changed colour, first to brilliant pink, then to gold.

“Look into it,” Gudrun said to me. “Tell me what you see.”

I stared at the flames. Suddenly, in their flicker, shapes emerged. I was getting really weirded-out now, but the fire held me steady, entranced in its flames. “I see the two wolves,” I said to Gudrun, “the same ones who came to me earlier. But they are with a man this time. He’s very tall and very old.”

“And his face?” Gudrun asked me.

I looked hard at his face and I saw that on one side there was a black pit where an eye had once been.

“He’s got one eye,” I said. “And a long beard and there are these birds; big, black crows. They sit on his shoulders.”

“They are ravens, not crows,” Gudrun said. “Hugin and Munin – Thought and Memory. And his wolves, the ones you saw earlier, are Geri and Freki. They are his constant companions. I knew you were special, Hilly, the first moment I met you.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Odin,” she replied, as if this were obvious. “The All-Father. Greatest of all the Norse gods. Odin, who decides which warriors are honourable enough to lift up after death to sit at his side at the feasting table in his heaven, Valhalla. He is here with us now. This is a good sign. We can begin the ritual.”

And with that she produced a bunch of sage from her robes, lit the tips of it in the fire and began to move around me in a circle, chanting. The flames were mesmerising, licking up and then falling away to low-burning embers. The vision of Odin, his wolves and his ravens had disappeared and I looked up and saw blue eyes staring back at me from the fire, a girl no older than me, with blonde hair in tight braids.

She reached out a hand to me and my pulse quickened as Gudrun stepped forward to the brazier. Putting her hands directly into the embers, she pulled out the horn. The flames had turned it white, and now there were carvings in the bone surface – intricate patterns and symbols like the runes that Gudrun kept in her velvet bag. She reached inside the horn and pulled out my silver chain and beckoned me to her so that she could clasp it back around my neck. Even though it had been in the heat of the fire just a moment before, the filigree felt like ice at my throat.

“From ancient times, we bring you forth, Brunhilda. Let the exchange be complete so that we may know your truth!”

Gudrun tossed the bundle of burning sage into the flames and it exploded in a burst of golden sparks.

“Springa!” she cried out as the fire leapt once more. And even though she was speaking ancient Norse, this time I knew somehow that the word meant Jump!

Inside me, my spirit soared and left my body and suddenly I was in the flames, the fire so brilliant all around that it blinded me.

Later, when Gudrun explained to me how the Cross-Over had happened, how she had “transmogrified me into Brunhilda” as she transported me back through the fire, I would understand more deeply what had happened. At that moment though, as I felt myself shift shapes, I had no idea about transmogrification and no way to explain it. All I knew was that somehow I wasn’t Hilly Harrison any more.

And when I opened my eyes, the stone steps of the Colosseum were no longer empty – they were filled with people and horses. Two stallions, one pale grey, the other a chestnut. Both had their ears flattened back in anger, squealing and threatening each other with teeth bared. The men who held them tried to avoid being hurt as the horses reared up and lashed out with their hooves. The men were struggling to restrain them as they fastened the ropes to bind the horses together.

At last they had tied the final knot and the horses, now bound to each other, were let loose. As soon as the horses realised they were free from the men’s grasp, they turned their attention on each other. They rose up on their hind legs, hooves thrashing the air, and then, with a battle scream, the grey horse lunged to attack. As he bit into the neck of the chestnut, there were cheers from the crowd.

It was a horse fight! I couldn’t watch. I turned from the arena and ran. I was sobbing so hard I could barely breathe and the tears blurred my vision so that I couldn’t really see where I was going and then with a hard thud I was stopped in my tracks. I had run right into something. No. I’d run into someone.

A giant of a man was standing before me. His head was shaved right up the sides but he still sported a thick, full red beard. On his head where the hair had been shaved off he was tattooed with the symbols of the runes. He wore ragged clothes, but the golden bracelets that decorated his bulging arms showed that he was a man of power and influence, a chief, a king.

With a massive hand on each of my slight shoulders he grasped me and held me out from him as if to examine me, before he pulled me hard to crush me against his chest, embracing me in a hug. He held me so tight he choked the breath out of me as he said my name:

“Brunhilda.”

I smiled as I gazed up at him.

I had never seen him before in my life and yet I knew exactly who he was.

“Hello, Father.”

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My father holds me by the shoulders and lifts me off the ground.

“Where are you running off to then, little one?” he asks. “The entertainments are in the other direction.”

I squirm, trying to relocate my feet back on the earth once more, feeling ridiculous dangling there from his gigantic paws.

In the pit behind me I hear the horses as they clash, their squeals mingling with the cries of excitement from the men gathered round them.

“I feel sick,” I tell him. I don’t say why. He would never understand my revulsion at this theatre of brutality. His life is all about bloodshed. How many thousands of men has he killed in his long boat raids? Their lives mean nothing to him, so how can I possibly explain my floods of tears, my distress over the death of a horse?

My father raises me up even further off the ground, holding me fast so that I’m looking him square in the eyes.

“You’re hungry, I think,” he says as if his proclamation settles the problem. “Never mind. The feast will be soon enough. Until then you will stay with me.”

He puts me back on the ground but he doesn’t remove his hands from my shoulders. He turns me round and shuffles me off to walk ahead of him. When we reach the arena, he puts his arm protectively round me from behind as we push through the throng, back the way I’ve just come, creating a pathway through the crowd-stink of sweat and beer, into the arena seats, where the noise of the people shouting all around is deafening.

An almighty roar rises up as the chestnut stallion, exhausted and lame with open wounds on his shoulder and neck, suddenly summons up the strength to land a glancing blow with his near fore. The grey reacts like a snake, twisting his neck to wrap it round the chestnut’s and bite him back. The chestnut falls back, trying to get away from the grey, and once again he finds himself restrained by the ropes that bind them together, unable to escape.

I’m trapped here too. A prisoner, with my own father as jailer. All I can do to get through it is close my eyes and bite my tongue and wait for this “entertainment” to end.

“Where is your brother?” my father asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. I haven’t seen Steen all day. I’m new to having a brother, but instinctively I know that I do not like him. I’m thinking about last night, and I know it can’t be my memory; it must be Brunhilda’s I suppose. It involves Steen and the dinner feast we had at Thing-Vellir. One of our tribe had just got married and so the bride and groom were guests of honour and there was much celebrating at the main table, and Steen leant across to me and whispered: