The Kiss of the Huldra

The Kiss of the Huldra

BY CHLOE CATARINA

When I awoke that morning, I knew it would be my only time to escape. The only time when the morning fog would linger its ghostly haze over the dark water blocking the forest from view. I could still smell death in the air from the night’s battle as I made my way down the beach’s black sand. I, too, mirrored the remnants from the night’s wrath, my face still in warrior paint with the dried crimson blood of men trailing over me.

I could feel my heart beating in my chest like the pounding of the Shaman drums. There was no time for stealth, there was no time at all. It would soon be noticed that the daughter of the dead Earl was gone and the cry of a battle horn would call out for me. I quickly jumped into the canoe and rowed with what remaining strength I had into the mist. I could feel my hands clenching tightly on the wooden oars, my knuckles going white, and hot tears streaming down my face with every paddle, but I knew what needed to be done.

My mother would tell me the stories of the gods from the time I came into this world until the day she left for Valhalla. We would row in the canoes built by my father’s men until we reached the shore of the forest just beyond our village. It was there that my mother taught me how to speak with the gods. She would dance and chant and sing around the fire into the night like a siren of the forest. I would watch as she made sacrifices to them, painting the blood over her eyes and mouth atop her crackling white face paint.

She would stop in her tracks in front of the giant ash tree, her face level with its hollow hole where she concealed her flint rocks and sacred carvings of the gods. I watched her sway like the flames before her in a haunting dance while she chanted to the tree. With her words, she spoke aloud as if she was in front of the Yggdrasil as it towered over us. Through the flames, I could almost see a flicker of movement from the tree dancing with her, but I knew better than to believe the tricks of Loki. In the days following her rituals, the gods would always answer her prayers.

She would tell me that the gods could always be seen with us, within the lush of an autumn harvest, during the birth of a new baby, or in the victory of a battle. Look for the signs, Astrid, they’re all around you she would say to me. Although, I did not see them now. I did not feel them the way my mother did when she was in the forest, but they were my only hope. My village’s only hope.

As my oars pierced into the surface of the cold black water, I knew I was close to the forest’s edge. I knew these lands like my mother knew the gods, the thick of the fog no blindness for me. Craving its refuge, I jumped out of the canoe, feeling the icy tide nip at my ankles, and ran to the forest, my only family now. The caw of crows echoed above me and my mother’s words came into my mind. Was this a sign from the All-Father? Was Odin with me now? Guide me All-Father I prayed. Show me the way.

As I pushed through the trees and found myself at the center of the forest where my mother had taken me all those times, I began her rituals. Even in the brisk of morning, the forest was shrouded in darkness as if its own dazzling light had been burnt out in the wake of war. 

I looked around until I found the familiar tree with the hollowed hole where my mother would place her flint rocks. As I scraped them together, I set ablaze her firepit and watched the flames tower above me. Its warmth bled like spilled wine onto the trees and the ground around me alerting the darkness to rise. As I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, I could feel the fury of its flames matching the fury within me. It was time.

“Almighty Gods, hear my plea! I call out to you now, Thor, and ask that you visit your hammer’s wrath upon these heathens who disguised themselves as our brothers. Unleash the beast, Fenrir, to swallow these men whole! I call upon the goddess, Hel, to ask that you drag these men from Midgard to the underworld!”

I shouted my hopes and curses to the gods over and over again, begging them for their help, the flashes of war still branded into my memory. I sang and danced and chanted as I had seen my mother do until my voice grew weak. I felt defeat looming over me, just as I had felt the night of the battle, as the silence of the Gods grew deafening. They were not here to help me. They would not answer my prayers the way they had answered my mother’s. My fate had already been decided.

I fell to my knees as I was overcome with heavy sobs, the cold air pricking my lungs with every ghastly inhale. This moment would be my last of peace. A life of torture awaited me, my sisters, and my people at the hands of a tyrant. Even if I were to escape now, they would not stop until they found me and there would be no entry into Valhalla for a runaway coward. I grabbed the cold wet Earth into my hands as rage pulsed through me.

Then suddenly, I felt the warmth of a hand resting gracefully on my tight grip. I looked up and, to my surprise, a young woman stood above me. I flinched my hand away from hers and sprung out of her reach crawling backward to a nearby tree. With wide eyes, I tried to make out her dark silhouette as the flames emanated from behind her.

The faint glow of the flames peaked through her long snow-white hair and revealed her petite face. Wild branches and flowers sprouted from her head like a crown of antlers. My eyes traced her naked opalescent body from her breasts to her hips down to her bare white feet. This was no goddess I knew. This was no witch I had heard of. This was no creature like me. As she walked to me, her cow-like tail swayed behind her with every step.

My heart raced but my body remained paralyzed. As she crouched down in front of me, she outreached her pearly fingertips to my cheek and wiped the tears from my face.

“Why do you cry, you poor thing?” she asked, her voice as ethereal as she was.

“I-I…” Words escaped me as I looked into her golden eyes.

“You cry out to every god and goddess from Asgard to Helheim. Why is this?”

I swallowed hard and tried to gain my composure.

The woman stood up and walked away to face the flames that grew behind her. From her back, a hollow hole rested with twigs coiling from its edges. I looked over to the tree I had taken the flint rocks from, though it stood there no longer. Was this woman a nymph of this forest? I wondered. Was she the Yggdrasil come to life?

I rose to my feet and dusted myself off, hesitantly walking over to join the mystical woman. As we stood side by side in the flame's warmth, I took a slow deep breath.

“I am Astrid Bloodaxe of Hafrsfjord. My father and mother have been killed at the hands of Harald Finehair, and my sisters and I taken as captives. Harald Finehair wishes to become king of all Norway and so has usurped my father, the Earl. As the eldest daughter of the late Earl, it is I that Harald Finehair has chosen to be his bride.”

I looked over to the woman to see her twisting her wavy locks through her fingers.

“I pray to the gods for the vengeance of my people. My mother and I used to come here and she would speak to them, but I’m afraid… this is no gift of mine.”

I looked into the dancing flames as I felt the woman’s eyes on mine.

“I am here,” she spoke softly. “I am no god, this is true, but I will help you now as I did for your mother all those years ago. This I can promise you.”

My eyes flashed to meet hers as she spoke of my mother.

“You will go back to your village and tell this King of All Norway that the gods have sent him a wife as a gift for his victory in battle. Bring me the white linen of a fair maiden so I can hide my tail from his sight, and place it in my hollow back just as you have with the stones of flint.”

I studied her face carefully absorbing every word that fluttered from her shimmering lips.

“You will lure this king and his men to this forest, and you will bring them to me,” she said.

“What will you do with them?” I asked puzzled by this creature's request.

The woman walked over to me again, cupping my face between her palms.

“I am a Huldra of this forest but I wish to be like you, the flesh and bone and tail-less form of a human woman. This I can only achieve through marriage with a human man and only if he does not know my true form.”

Suddenly, the Huldra’s focus broke as the battle horn’s cry carried on the wind just as I had anticipated.

“Go now, tell them my words and bring them to me.”

Like my mother in her bonfire trance to the gods, I too succumbed to the words of the Huldra as she was my only hope now. I jumped in my canoe and rowed with the strength of Thor through the dissipating fog, my mission now clear.

As I reached the dock, a swarm of Harald Finehair’s men grabbed me from my canoe and shuffled me into the great hall. With my hands bound, the warriors pushed me to the floor in front of the now King of Norway as he sat upon the throne I had always known to be my father’s.

“We were beginning to miss you, Astrid,” Harald laughed.

The shuffling of chains and grunts drew closer as I saw my two younger sisters, beaten and battered, being dragged into the room and put down next to me. A sharp pain pierced my heart as I knew the markings must have been due to my absence this morning. I closed my eyes and tried to not let my anger alter my focus. Remember the words of the Huldra I thought.

“What am I to do with a wife I can never find?” he laughed to his men, “I’ll have to keep her this way if she keeps trying to escape!”

“No,” I spoke sternly.

The room grew quiet as Harald made his way to me, his blood-splattered boots now in my line of vision.

“No?” he repeated.

“This is not true. I did not seek to escape you, King Harald. I only wished to speak to the gods of …a prophecy,” I said stumbling to find my alibi.

He chuckled again as he walked to the dining hall’s table adorned with food plucking bits into his mouth here and there.

“A prophecy? Ha! I will humor you, young Astrid. What prophecy is this?”

“The prophecy that I am not to be your wife,” I spoke. I felt my sister give me a quick jab with her elbow as if to say don’t make things worse. 

“The gods told me that the first King of all Norway would be given a gift on his first night as king in celebration of his victory. The gods would gift him a bride, a bride so beautiful her beauty would rival even that of Freya’s. I sought out the forest where my mother gave sacrifice to the gods to confirm this prophecy to be true.”

Harald raised his brows and said, “And was this great prophecy true?”

“Yes, the bride wishes to marry you tonight in a celebration with you and all of your men. I have spoken to the gods as my mother has done before me.”

“This is true, King Harold,” my younger sister spoke following my lead in the falsehood, “It is the gift of the women in our family to be able to speak with the gods.”

I felt a tug on the corner of my lips threatening a smirk as I listened to my sister’s words.

Harald looked to his men and scratched his beard contemplating this news. As they mumbled to one another, he came to his conclusion.

“I will see what tricks you have up your sleeve in this prophetic forest, but you will accompany me and my men.”

They all chuckled.

“If the prophecy is true, I will marry my new bride as the gods see fit. But if it is untrue, young Astrid,” he walked over and crouched in front of me. “You will marry me in the forest but you will condemn your sisters to imprisonment for the rest of their lives for your foolish deceptions.”

My stomach churned at the thought that the Huldra might not show up again as it had this morning. What had I gotten myself into? What had I gotten my sisters into?

* * *

With every minute that inched closer to darkness, panic settled into my bones. The sound of the battle horn roared in the air as the boats full of Harald’s men began taking off into the sea one by one. I watched as the reflections of the fiery boat torches frantically danced across the water's surface. My fate was drawing nearer. 

My eyes flickered up from my bound hands to Harald’s eyes as he sat before me adorned in my father’s fur coats. Our eyes locked in a battle of fierce glares in the silence, my face stern. If the Huldra did not show as she promised, being his bride would be a fate worse than death. I would have to decide my own fate.

A shout from one of Harald’s men alerted us all to the arrival of the forest’s shore. As the men hopped out one by one, Harald released my binding.

“After you,” he said holding out his hand to the forest.

I grabbed the burlap sack with the white linen of a fair maiden, a gift I said was for the new bride, and began the trek to the center of the forest. As Harald and his men followed me, I felt my legs weaken with each step. When we arrived at the sacred ritual spot of my mother’s making, I placed the burlap sack into the hollow hole of the flint rock tree and backed away waiting for the woman to reveal herself again.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Freya, give me strength I prayed, though I felt I may meet her sooner than I anticipated. I looked around at the warriors that surrounded me and King Harald, their hands resting on the handles of their swords, their axes twisting in their hands, their brawn like that of Thor. In the distance, the caw of a crow called out, and I felt a cold breeze rush into me making me close my eyes.

“So, it was a trick after all!” Harald shouted in dismay as he took me by my shoulders and rattled my frame.

Suddenly, the pit of fire ignited a flurry of flames jarring us all. The men mumbled in the distance as they all began looking around in paranoia to find its source. From behind the flames, the Huldra appeared, her long white hair caressing her figure draped in the white linen and her cow tail concealed. I watched as they all turned their eyes to her iridescent form, her crown of twigs and flowers, and her petite white face. From the darkness of the woods, more figures emerged that looked just like that of the Huldra all wearing dresses of white linen.

I watched as the Huldra women paired with the men one by one, even the Huldra with King Harald. In no time, the merriment of men and the Huldra women commenced like that in the great halls of Valhalla, though no one suspected a Huldra in sight. The women brought food and ale, there was music and laughter, and all the while King Harald surrendered to the trance of the Huldra.

As if I were a lost soul of Hel, I found that no one paid any mind to me. I looked around for a sense of recognition but to no avail. I could feel a sense of eerieness lingering over me as my stomach sank. Slowly I found myself backing away from the euphoric celebration, stumbling on the forest roots behind me. As I turned to face my misstep, a sinister sight revealed itself to me. A Huldra, unsheathed, crouched on top of a man, her lips pressed to his, and the hole in her back spilling over with crimson blood. As she turned to face me, her face was no longer the beauty I had known from the Huldra, but like that of a warped and twisted troll.

As I backed away from her in horror, I turned to face the others only to see King Harald’s great warriors all succumbing to the same fate. The forest floor turned bloodbath as the Huldra drank from the bodies of men, their tails swaying in the night like the flicker of the bonfire flames.

“It is done,” a voice said.

I turned to see the Huldra whom I had met in the dawn, her golden eyes looking into mine, her body once pearl now turned ruby. My body froze once more in the presence of the mystical woman and no words crossed my lips. Slowly I watched as she approached me, her stained pearlescent fingers like a spider’s web catching my face in her palms.

“This was not our agreement,” I said to her just above a whisper.

“No, but it was always mine,” she replied.

“I-I don’t understand,” I stuttered.

“I am a Huldra of this forest,” she repeated once more as she dropped her hands from my face, “I am the one your mother chanted to. I am the one who answered my sweet sister’s prayers and I am the one who has answered yours now.”

My body stiffened at her words and my eyes grew wide. Sister?

“When your mother left this forest to follow her love for the Earl of Hafrsfjord, her Huldra form dissipated leaving her human, and she walked among us no more.”

I watched as the Huldra’s face filled with sorrow.

“My sister did not need to feast on the blood of men any longer and she rose to power across the land. But I warned my sister of a vision I saw from the gods. She would have a great love with this Earl having many prosperous years, but she would die at the hands of King Harald. Her family and people would be enslaved under his rule, and he would be a tyrant throughout the land and sea.”

The Huldra slowly began to walk away from me, never taking her eyes off mine.

“But she did not heed my words, for she too had a vision. A vision of a young girl, her face a reflection of her own, becoming the Queen of all Norway.”

I watched as the Huldra placed her feet in the hollowed ground where the giant ash tree once stood. The other blood-bathed Huldra with their troll-like faces walked to meet her, their forms merging into one.

“She asked that I promise to see this vision to fruition to keep her family safe. You have your vengeance for your family, and now I have mine.”

I watched as her pearled and bloodied body began to take the form of tree bark.

“Go now, and be the Queen of All Norway, just as your mother had wanted. Just as I had always promised her.”

I watched as the Huldra became the giant tree leaving me in the silence of the crimson chaos.