The Witch's Heart

lt;b>Genevieve Gornichec earned her degree in history from The Ohio State University, but she got as close to majoring in Vikings as she possibly could, and her study of the Norse myths and Icelandic sagas became her writing inspiration. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio. The Witch's Heart is her debut novel.

Long ago, when the gods were young and Asgard was new, there came a witch from the edge of the worlds. She knew many ancient spells, but she was especially skilled with seid, a magic that allowed one to travel out of body and divine the future. This greatly appealed to Odin, the highest of the Aesir; when he learned of her abilities, he offered to impart upon the witch his knowledge of the runes in exchange for teaching him seid.

She was uncertain at first. She'd heard enough about Odin to make her hesitate. But she knew he did not share his secrets lightly, which meant her knowledge of seid must be of great value to him indeed. So she swallowed her suspicions about this grim one-eyed god and accepted his offer.

As they practiced seid together, the witch found herself drawn farther down than she'd ever traveled before, where she brushed against a place darker than the beginning of time itself. This place frightened her, and the secrets contained there were great and terrible, so she did not dare go deeper-much to Odin's displeasure, for the knowledge he sought above all else was hidden there, and it seemed to him that only she could reach it.

The witch was also teaching her magic to the Aesir's rivals, the Vanir, a sister race of gods whose home she had passed through on her way to Asgard. The Vanir could think of naught but gold with which to reward the witch for her services, though she cared little enough for it.

But when Odin realized she was traveling between Asgard and Vanaheim, he saw an opportunity. He turned the Aesir against the witch and called her Gullveig, "gold-lust." They drove spears through her and burned her three times, and three times she was reborn-for she was very old, very hard to kill, and far more than she appeared. Each time she burned, Odin tried to force her down to the dark place to learn what he wanted to know, and each time she resisted. And when the Vanir heard of the Aesir's treatment of her, they became furious, and thus was the first war in the cosmos declared.

The third time she was reborn, Gullveig fled, though she left something behind: her speared heart, still smoking on the pyre.

That was where he found it.

Some time later, he tracked her to the deepest, darkest forest at the farthest edge of Jotunheim: the land of the giants, the Aesir's bitter enemies. This forest was called Ironwood, where the gnarled gray trees were so thick that there was no real path through them, and so tall that they blocked out the sun.

He did not have to venture into those woods, though, for by the bank of the river that divided Ironwood from the rest of Jotunheim he found the witch, staring across the water at the dense forest and mountains beyond. She sat upon a rough woolen blanket with a thick cloak about her shoulders and a hood pulled over her head. The sun was shining, but she sat in the shade, hands folded in her lap, leaning against a tree trunk.

He watched her for a time, shifting from foot to foot, scratching his nose, listening to the quaint gurgling of the river and the whistling of songbirds. Then he sauntered up to her, his hands clasped behind his back. He could see only the bottom half of her face, but her skin looked pink-tender, healing, new. When he got closer, he noticed the skin of her hands was the same. She seemed to be resting peacefully. Part of him didn't want to disturb her.

Then again, he'd always found the idea of peace to be quite boring.

"How long are you going to stand there?" she rasped. She sounded like she hadn't had anything to drink in an age and a half. He figured that breathing in the smoke from one's own pyre three times would have that effect on a person.

"You're a difficult woman to find," he replied. Truth be told, he wasn't sure how to proc