Aborigen

I didn’t want to fight. I was tired of it, it was unnecessary, or it shouldn’t have been necessary. The ground was thawing—this was the time to give Jörð her seeds so she might give back, the flow of Fehu. Dry out the firewood, catch some fish, make love as the earth woke up.

But that wasn’t the only cycle in our world. As soon as the wave-roofs cracked and melted from the whale-roads, we knew it was time for the raiders. They came over in their ships, bringing misery and robbery, as though we only existed to feed their cursed tribes. They were coming soon, three days, maybe two. Our vǫlva had seen it in the runes; we could smell their filth on the winds.

We were arming up again, for all the good that would do. They were trained in the language of the sword, the only conversation they knew, and we were not fluent. Arnþórr had trained some of us in the bow, Sverrir had had the boys search the woods for stout staves, Katla led the women in weaving nets with the blessings of the idisi to tangle the raiders’ legs, but I was losing hope. I’ve lived enough years to know that they never slowed down, they never ran out, and if not them then someone else.

And the dreams. I hadn’t told Hlíf about my dreams. She held me when I woke up screaming with visions of fire, our limbs strewn over the ground, our child who hadn’t even drawn a breath … The only way I would see another summer was if Óðinn deemed me too weak for his army and warned the Valkyrjur to spare me a noble death.

We weren’t going to make it, as things stood. I knew this, just as I knew I didn’t want it to happen. So when Hlíf woke up that morning, she found me missing from the pelt, and if she cried my name into the village perhaps she would spot the battle-ax drawn in ash on our door frame. These were dark and hopeless times. Trying something, anything, was better than doing nothing. I was doing the only thing I knew, something móðir mín had taught me a long time ago, before faðir minn had called her insane and cast her out.

I’ve traveled into the mountains. A full day of climbing jagged rocks, each one drinking the heat from my legs. A full day of moving through pines that scratch, warding off the wolves. I fell through the lake-roof but crawled on, dripping and stiffening, hoping that she would see my devotion (and not my stupidity in looking for a short cut). Before the sun went down I found the cliff, the base of the cliff where the woods cleared, with the sacred crevice. Just inside, I found the carving of the battle-ax, exactly as the way móðir mín described. It looked just like I’d always imagined, and I reached to touch the carving but drew back. I was living a dream and it terrified me.

I made short work of a fallen tree, started a fire, and set out my clothes to dry. The sun went down and the wind carried the howls of wolves, wrapping around my neck. I feasted on a single salted fish and half a cake of grains, lard, and blood, saving the rest for her. It wasn’t enough for me, so it would surely seem paltry to her, but móðir mín assured me it was the intention that made it worthy.

The parchment I pulled from my pouch had broken in two places a long time ago, but it still bore the runes of minnar móðir. On a flat rock I set the offerings, knelt before the fire in bare feet, and began: “Ek kalli þik, gýgr.” More words I won’t repeat now. I scraped snow that survived in the cliff’s shadow, let it melt into the fire. I held my hands over it until the flames bit me with joy. From the pouch I drew some bronze gubber and placed them around the fire—I was guessing now, making wild assumptions as to what might entice her. I slit my forearm and bled on the ground, on the fire, on the gubber. I didn’t know. I undressed and touched myself as Hlíf did sometimes, as I used to long before our friedel-marriage. Louder, this time, “Ek laða þik, Varaborg.”

I recited the words until I memorized them. Steam glowed off my chest and thighs, going up with the smoke. Nine times I nearly spilled but held back, always coming back to “Ek kalli þik, gýgr. Ek laða þik, Varaborg.” Trying not to think of the fish and cake beside me, turning my mind from imagining the wolves smelling my setup, chanting, taunting myself, and dimly hoping móðir mín wasn’t crazy after all.

When I woke up, I was in a large basin, an eagle’s nest of long bones and branches, woven through with strips of bronze. Large to me, anyway. The cliff face before me now was a gigantic woman, heavy chested, shoulders shrouded in the furs of a hundred effortless kills. Her looming body glowed dimly in orange, in the fire I built and the blaze she’d stoked, standing out against the vast dark cloak and the eyes of a thousand ancestors sparkling within it.

Varaborg held me in her bowl, resting within the valley of her thighs, before her belly. The bones still stank of blood, and the bronze chilled my back and thighs. She turned her face down to me, a savagely beautiful face like the dance of wolves around you before they strike. Thick cakes of black stretched over her eyes. Streaks of black ran down her jaw, down her neck, spreading over her collarbones. An impudent part of me noted how her thick nipples stood out, illuminated in the night air, and I was shamed to know it. Shamed to respond to it, as well.

“Lie still, elskan,” she whispered. Her voice was soft as a woman’s, but so much louder and heavier. She whispered, and my bowels turned to water.

“The wind turns, and the blood stirs.” The words pounded into me like fallen trees. I realized I knew nothing of the cold anymore. “I know why you have come, little warrior. I accept your offering in the spirit with which it was given.” Her eyes rolled like large stones, looking at the hand she now brought up. I could just make out the dried, salted fish and the blood-cake, like bread crumbs on her fingertip. She tilted her head back, exposing her throat to me, and I watched her huge jaw work as she opened her mouth. My heart hammered in its cage as the giantess brushed the tidbits into oblivion. Could she even taste them?

Those huge, glacier-blue eyes turned to me once more, calm, slightly tired perhaps. “I look upon you with favor, litli elskan. Lie still and receive my blessing.”

From beyond the rim of my basin rose her fist, huge, so huge. It came at me, drifting like a cloud, unstoppable as a landslide. I may have screamed. Varaborg only grinned a little and extended her pinky finger to me. The tip was coated in something dark and glistening. It stank of fat and acrid vegetables as it slowly, carefully painted my chest, one straight line from beneath my jaw down to my privacy.

She traced two slanted lines near the top. I recognized Algiz. I blinked at the symbol like the branch of a tree, black against my pale chest. Protection. Of course, I would’ve done the same. I stared up past her fist, into the darkness around her eyes. Her broad lips pursed and opened and pinched as she murmured to herself. Even here in the emptiness of night, I couldn’t make out what this giantess said to herself.

Her fingertip, soft and round and warm, touched just below this with two more branches in the other direction. Tiwaz, justice and courage, of which I had none. Perhaps this was her gift to me. The fire glinted in her eyes, two orbs trained upon me, pinning me down with their intensity. She ran her fingertip over my belly, and it shivered at her touch, at the threat of being crushed where I have no protection. At the unlikely tenderness and precision of her huge digit. Two angles, one on each side, some distance from each other. Likely Laguz, but what could that mean?

It was true I had invoked her, and she drew runes of protection upon me. Her fist hovered above me once more, and I knew. I stretched out my arms, spread my legs, offered myself to her. Surrendered. There was no defense against what I had called, and to protect myself from her would have been in opposition to my entire quest. Instead, I opened myself up, showing her that I was hers. I trusted her and her designs upon me.

Her hand opened above me, a broad golden palm, radiating its own heat. Her long fingers arched over me, trembling slightly. “Þat kann ek it ellifta,” she murmured, her voice rumbling through me like the unsettled ground, and the thick tips of her fingers shoved me aside, dug beneath me, scooped me from her basin like a morsel from a stew. I rose from the basin, past the gentle swell of her bare belly, between her full and huge breasts. Strong fingers pressed me securely into the shield of bone in the valley of her cleavage. Her words rattled me badly, no matter how quietly she spoke.

I recognized it, Óðinn’s eleventh rune-song. “If I must lead old friends into battle, under shields I chant, and they go forth strong.” I glanced at her breasts, seeing them more as enormous boulders than shields but I wouldn’t argue the point. She prayed for my wholeness, going into battle and coming out of it again, as her heart thundered against my body, slow and relentless. Her heat bled into me, filling me, and I wondered if I might catch on fire.

Varaborg paused and tilted her fingers back, letting me fall cupped into them. Her broad face hung above me, a tremendous weight on the precipice of falling onto me. She lifted me, her eyes closed into a broad banner of black, and she pressed me into her lips. Despite everything, the terror approaching my village, the unreality of a gigantic woman, my body screamed with longing. Soft, impossibly soft skin puckered around my head, swelled around my neck, and the tip of her tongue ran over my face. Dozens of taste buds tickled my skin, swirling, pausing, and coming back for more. She was tasting me, perhaps another way of assessing my worth.

Laguz: I gave myself to her. I was hers to taste. Varaborg could kiss me or crush me between her teeth. In that moment all I wanted was to become completely hers.

The night air stung my flushed cheeks, drenched in her saliva, when I fell back into her palm. The expression on her face was a full world away from mine: she looked calm, thoughtful, a little distant. Unlike her, I was squirming with a primal urge, one I’d never dreamed of before, and I hadn’t fully gotten over my terror at being casually held in the grip of an apex predator, no matter how delicious her breasts seemed. Those nipples, thick and stiff, glowing on either side of my tiny body.

Her body slowly rose above me, and in a moment of fear I wondered whether Varaborg was growing larger. No: she was lowering me, I soon realized. Her breasts jutted above me and her belly filled my view like the cliff-face when I arrived. Her navel was a softer, tenderer hole than the sacred crevice formed in rock. I stared into her navel, this shadowy little alcove in the pillowy hillside of her belly. I wanted to … I don’t know why, but I had the instinct to crawl into it, explore it. Just before I could roll to my side and pick myself up, however, her hand returned. This time her index finger was thickly coated in whatever she was using for paint. Her fingertip formed a gentle divot in the flesh beside her navel, and it rose and curved in an arc, disappearing below her palm on one side, rising again on the other. The giantess slowly painted a huge swirl upon her belly, starting with me and spiraling outward.

She was owning me, in her way. I was no longer the man of my village, preparing to stand against outlanders. I was part of her, part of the giantess Varaborg, belonging to her. “Do you understand, litli elskan?” Her voice was the gentle roar of waves upon the shore. “I name you a tool, a weapon in my hand. I name you my charm against the darkness.” In the palm that held me, her fingers twitched and began to curl over me, blocking out the sky. “You will go down into the world you know, back to your little village … but you will come back to me, whole.”

Without thinking, I nodded. I stared up at her, eyes wide, forgetting to breathe, and I nodded hard enough even for a monstrous woman like her to see. She nodded, breathing, and the great ash-black spiral swelled and reached for me. My feet could have slipped into her navel, I felt the heat from her belly.

Her other hand went away, and when it returned, she pinched a long staff of black iron between thumb and forefinger. This she held over my body, not touching but aligned with where I lay, and her eyes vanished in darkness as she closed them and prayed, “Þat kann ek it fimmta …”

Óðinn’s fifth rune-song. No spear from the hand of a foe could be fast enough to escape her sight, and once seen it would be stopped. Caught in her gaze, simply stopped. Could this be possible?

“No spear shall strike you without my eyes knowing.” The huge hand drifted away, resting the iron rod somewhere. Her voice was low and sure, a ship with good winds, words like strong rowers. “No blade shall pierce you without my breath upon it.” Her hand lifted me once more, and the spiral sank behind her palm. I rose between her breasts, past her neck, up to her waiting mouth.

Her jaws opened, wide. Humid breath, sweet with decay, washed over me in a wave. Distant firelight danced on the flats of her teeth, glistened on strands of saliva as her broad, thick tongue unfurled before me. Now her eyes were not lazy or casual: they blazed, luminous blue in pools of white. I thought of my cat’s yellow-gem eyes, flashing in the moment before she pounces upon a mouse.

Varaborg’s eyes were hidden behind her cheekbones as she brought me into her mouth. I cried out, I think, my pathetic voice bouncing off her teeth before tumbling down her throat. I wanted to remind her about the fight, the invaders, how I needed to defend my people. I couldn’t believe all this ritual was merely a preparation for her to devour me. Was this how giantesses ate? What did móðir mín get me into?

Huge nostrils flared overhead as her thick, heavy tongue dragged over my body. Searing heat and wetness gently shoved my feet and legs apart. Dozens of taste buds swirled around my privacy, waking up that simple-minded urge in my body once more. Her massive head pulled back slightly, and her tongue narrowed until just the tip dragged up from my loins, over my belly, up my chest, and again. She lapped at my manhood as she licked the bindrune off my body, scrubbing me down with her taste buds. Again and again, her powerful tongue pressed into my abdomen, rubbed my ribs clean.

She lifted me level with her face now, and even her otherworldly beauty couldn’t distract me from the yawning nothingness that surrounded her raised hand. The wind whistled around my unclothed body, still wet with her spittle, and in the deep night I couldn’t see mountains, horizon, anything suggesting land around me. Her palm was a platform in the void, holding me before a lovely head the size of a great hall. I was helpless; I was completely hers.

Her eyes locked my body in place. Her jaws held open and she presented her tongue to me. I could see smears of ash and leek and animal fat, already fading in her saliva against the berry-red of her glistening tongue. Still staring at me, she pulled her tongue into her mouth, sealed behind her lips, and swished the ritual paint before swallowing it down in a performance of unmistakable meaning.

There we sat for a moment, Varaborg staring into me, as I hunched shivering in the center of her palm. Were we done? What happened next? I wanted to ask, but my throat had seized up, whether from the late-winter gusts of midnight, the altitude at which she held me, or the experience of nearly being swallowed by an unimaginably powerful woman, I don’t know. Words had fled, my throat wouldn’t cooperate. I could only shiver and look back at her in confusion and fright and a lust my little body couldn’t contain for much longer.

Up rose her head, her smirking face. Up floated her breasts, rising gently with her deep inhale. Up rose the black spiral on her belly like the sun of a strange new day. And up rose her thighs, colossal, powerful, engulfing me.

“Return to me, my lover.” Her voice rumbled like distant thunder, as her hand guided me into her furry nest. “You will return to me in two suns, whole and unharmed. Now you belong to me.” The thick panels of hairy flesh pressed into me, spread around me, and I was bathed in the syrupy fire of her core. My petition would be successful, I would protect my village from the raiders. This, I knew, as my arms sank into drenched curtains of fragile skin.

But the ritual was not over, and a dried fish and half a cake of grain and fat was indeed not a sufficient offering.