Short Story: "The Wings of Hervora"

By Jordyn Mastroff

(A Valkyrie's Tale)

They still sing her name in the wind over the fjords, though none now remember why.

Hervora, daughter of Skadi’s snows, born with the chill of the mountains in her blood and the howl of wolves in her heart. She was not gentle. She did not mend nets or spin flax by the fire. She hunted with her brothers, wrestled bears in the dead of winter, and once slew a raider with a thrown axe when she was barely twelve.

They said the gods watched her even then.

When war came to her village, Hervora did not run. She donned her father’s mail and met death with a sword in her hand and curses on her lips. She slew eight men before the ninth broke her spine. As she fell, she laughed, and blood foamed at her teeth like mead.

That was when they came.

They descended through storm and shimmer, their wings dark as ravens and eyes like burning frost. Valkyries. Choosers of the slain. She thought they had come to bring her to Valhalla.

But they did not carry her soul upward. They offered her wings.

A gift, they said. A reward. A calling.

And Hervora, proud and foolish and brave, took them without question. She rose from the battlefield reborn; her spine healed, her wounds gone, but her heartbeat slowed. Her body no longer bled. Her skin no longer warmed. She was not dead, nor was she living.

She had become a servant.

For that is what a Valkyrie is. Not a goddess, not a hero, but a bound soul. She was given armor that never rusted, a blade that never dulled, and a task that never ended.

Ride to the fields.

Find the worthy.

Bring them to the Allfather.

Over and over and over.

She did not sleep. She did not dream. She did not grow old.

At first, she gloried in it. The rush of wind beneath her wings. The awe on the dying men's faces as she carried them skyward. She was legend.

But centuries passed.

She began to know the names of the men she claimed. Sons of those she had once taken. Grandsons. Whole lines of warriors fed into the maw of Odin’s hall. She saw what glory had done to them. They died young, shouting, smiling, never knowing peace. And those who reached Valhalla?

They were trapped.

Fighting each day.

Feasting each night.

A paradise for warriors, yes, but for eternity.

None could leave. None rested.

Hervora tried to speak of it, once, to a newly fallen soldier whose eyes had seen too much war. He had cried when she touched his brow.

“I don’t want to fight anymore,” he whispered.

She carried him anyway.

That night, she did not sing as the Einherjar drank. She watched the long tables and the endless revelry and felt, for the first time, cold inside her hollow chest.

Later, she went to Odin. She asked him, “What becomes of a Valkyrie who no longer wishes to serve?”

He looked at her with one eye, and it was like staring into a bottomless well. “You were given a gift,” he said. “Would you throw it back?”

“I was not told it came with chains.”

“Everything worth having does.”

She left his hall in silence, her thoughts as sharp as her blade.

The other Valkyries noticed her change. She grew quiet, solemn. She lingered too long on the battlefields. Once, she let a worthy soul pass unclaimed.

That was the last straw.

Odin cast her down.

Not to Hel, for she had not betrayed him in battle. Not to Midgard, for she no longer belonged to it.

He left her in the in-between, a wandering spirit, wings torn, unable to die, unable to rise.

They say she walks the misty paths now. Not of sky or soil, but somewhere between, watching battles from afar. When brave souls fall, she turns away.

Sometimes, they say, she whispers to the dying:

“Choose rest.”

“Do not seek the halls of gold.”

“There is peace beyond the spear.”

But few listen.

They still sing her name in the wind over the fjords, though none now remember why.