Snøgud: Chapter 1

“Fuck the gods."

Created by author with Midjourney

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Skadi blew the air out of her cheeks in one long, slow breath, keeping her eyes trained on the notch she’d carved in the fir tree a hundred yards away. The line of the bowstring cut into her cheek and her eyes began to water. Her hands were almost numb with cold. A new day was beginning, fingers of light spreading over the ridge to the East. The wan morning light was as bright as the peak of day, forcing her pale eyes into a squint. She loosed the arrow, hand jerking too far to the right, arrow whizzing past the tree and into the forest. Skadi cursed and rubbed her eyes.

She had trouble focusing long enough to become a truly skilled archer, and depending on the light sometimes she couldn’t even see the target. Why she strove, day after day, to perfect a skill that she was clearly never meant to master was a mystery to everyone, herself included. Her mother seemed proud of this dedication to an unattainable goal, although Skadi didn’t understand why, and was often infuriated by it.

‘I was born to be a fucking sacrifice! Why care about me at all?’ Skadi had demanded of her one day, years ago. Her mother had smiled sadly, and said simply,

‘Because I love you.’

An answerless answer, and one Skadi wanted to hurl aside, to shatter and deny, but she could not. She had never doubted her mother’s love for her, a love that made her hate herself more, as though it had been her choice to be born with the freakishly white skin and hair and the pale eyes that marked her a “true” Pilgrim of Snøgud. As though it were her choice to take away her mother’s only child.

She nocked another arrow and loosed it with barely a thought. It flew true, striking the mark in the tree almost on center. She always shot better when she didn’t overthink it.

‘Wow, you’re really good,’ Andri had said when they were little, watching her practice. She had shaken her head in response.

‘I missed the target,’ she said flatly.

‘Yeah, but you got close!’ he replied, encouragingly. She threw her bow to the ground in frustration, and kicked it.

‘This is stupid. I can barely see anything.’

‘But you can see at night! Even on a new moon. How cool is that!’

Andri’s positivity was infectious, and Skadi found herself smiling in spite of herself. In the intervening years, he had become her closest friend. He never seemed bothered by her condition, or treated her as a leper the way some of the villagers did or, worse, as a holy icon.

Skadi jogged to retrieve her arrow. More light was creeping into the valley of Edur, making her squint. Tonight was the Full Wolf Moon, the Third Winter Moon. Her last day of freedom. Most likely one of the last days I’ll spend among the living, she reflected bitterly, jogging back to the edge of the village.

She was right.

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Freya paced around her home, looked down at her hands, and realized she was wringing them. With an effort, she dropped them to her sides and took a deep breath. The dreaded day had arrived. She had wondered how it would feel for the last twenty years, ever since she’d first held the tiny helpless form of her infant daughter against her chest, feeling her life force flow into her child as those pale otherworldly eyes stared into hers.

Everything she had thought she’d learned over the last twenty years collapsed into one single irrevocable truth: no matter how long you have to plan, nothing prepares you for saying goodbye to your child.