Summary
A semi-short historical/fantasy about a half-human, half goddess (A Halfenwraith) goes looking for a human hero to marry. Takes place in a mythical Viking-like world.
Anger suddenly flared in her dark eyes. “I have no desire to ‘ensnare’ a man to me with either my shapely shell or my spells and glamours! I want him to love me of his own free will! For what I am inside, not what he sees without!”
She paused and dropped both her voice and her gaze. “I want him to love me when I grow old and fat and toothless, just like in your tale of ‘King Alefirth and the Goose Girl’. All the terrible things that they both went through only deepened their love! Even after he lost his kingdom and his right arm and she was terribly disfigured from the fire! Even after the death of their child they still clung to each other! That is the kind of love I want, Thorgi — the kind you conjured up with your mind and your words! And I will settle for nothing less!”
I drew a deep breath before replying. “It was but a ‘tale’, my lady. A fiction, a wish, a hope — perhaps even a prayer — but all fabricated from imagination; as hard to grasp as smoke on the wind! We scalds, poets, and artists of all kinds spend our lives attempting to capture these brief, bitter-sweet glances into something larger than ourselves! To trap in a word, a well turned phrase or a haunting melody, something so full of bitter sweet beauty that I fear its true home is somewhere beyond this world. All we mere mortals can do is enjoy these few, all too brief glimpses of what should be but seldom, if ever, truly is.”
Swanhild was silent for several moments as she considered my words, but when she did speak she was clearly disappointed and none too happy. “Then you’re saying that it is all just ‘illusion’?! Pretty lies made up to sooth witless fools and foolish believers?! That love never lasts, and that honour, self-sacrifice and goodness are not real?! That it’s all just half-truths and cheap conjuring tricks like the wandering magicians perform for pennies at inns, taverns and country fairs?!”
Another deep breath before I replied, a longer one this time — for it is no small thing to anger a god — or the child of one. “What I am saying, lady, is that all these things you hunger for— lasting love, truth, justice, honesty, loyalty — are all concepts that we mortals should strive towards as much as possible. For in that striving, that struggle, that heartache, we slowly become better people. Not perfect, but better than we were. Unfortunately, my lady, I am also saying that, for a multitude of both good and bad reasons, very few of us have the fortitude, the determination and the inner strength needed to achieve these lofty ideals.”
More silence at that. I glanced around the hall, half expecting the nobles, commoners and servants alike, to be up and bustling about — yet all remained as still as multiple hummingbirds hovering in mid-flight. They and the hall itself seemed to be vibrating with the force of the beautiful Halfenwraith’s powerful spell.
