Níðhöggr

The place where Ratatoskr always landed was gone.

His forepaws struck air. He twisted, caught a fringe of bark with one claw, and swung beneath the root while a piece of wood larger than his whole body dropped past his nose. He listened for it to strike the water.

Instead, something crunched.

Below him, Níðhöggr worked the splinter sideways between his teeth.

Ratatoskr hauled himself onto the root. His left forepaw burned. He licked it once, folded it against his chest, and looked back the way he had come. The path rose behind him toward the trunk of Yggdrasil, broad enough to run along. Between that path and his perch, a fresh white wound cut deep into the wood.

It had not been there yesterday.

“You are late,” the dragon said.

Ratatoskr shook loose a strip of bark clinging to his belly. “You have moved the road.”

Níðhöggr spat the splinter. It struck the spring and turned slowly in the water.

“I have been here.”

That was true. The dragon lay beneath the ash root with his long body disappearing among roots farther down, one dark wing folded against his flank. Water pressed around his coils. His jaw rested in a hollow he had bitten out of the living wood, and pale shavings adhered to the wet corners of his mouth.

Ratatoskr knew that mouth. He had brought it words for as long as he could remember. He knew when to stand clear of the breath, when to wait, when to flick his tail and make a silence unbearable.

He had never looked closely at what the teeth were doing.

“The eagle sends his greeting.”

“Does he?”

“He says the view must be excellent from underneath your supper.”

Níðhöggr’s eyelid lowered. Ratatoskr waited for the answer. The eagle would be pleased with that one; Ratatoskr had improved it on the way down. The original had been something about dirt.

The dragon slid a tooth beneath a fresh edge of wood.

The root lifted under Ratatoskr’s feet.

He flattened himself. For a moment he could see through the split to the cold moving water below; then the wood settled again, pinching the gap shut. A fine thread of sap ran across his good paw.

“Tell him,” Níðhöggr said, “to keep his view.”

Ratatoskr glanced toward the trunk. A dark fissure ran almost the whole way across the root. On the far side lay his route home. On this side stood a squirrel, a dragon, and very little sound wood.

“That is all?”

“For now.”

The answer was poor. It would take a long climb to carry so little, and the eagle would look past him before he finished speaking.

Ordinarily Ratatoskr would have coaxed something better out of the dragon.

Now he wanted the jaw to move.

The Road Beneath His Feet

Ratatoskr edged toward the split. The upper bark still joined its two sides: a narrow brown strip with green life beneath it. He touched it with his good paw. It held. But beyond it the root rose steeply, and the nearest ridge he could grip lay farther than a comfortable jump.

Below the strip, Níðhöggr’s tooth shifted.

Ratatoskr drew back.

“Lift your head,” he said. “I cannot get across.”

The dragon’s eye moved toward him. The pupil narrowed to a seam.

“You got down.”

“There was more tree then.”

Níðhöggr set his lower jaw harder against the root. Deep inside the wood, something gave a short, muffled crack.

Ratatoskr felt it through his feet.

He could try the water. He looked down: black depth, white current, the slow turning of a splinter. Beyond that lay a bank without anything he could climb. He looked along the root in the other direction. It descended beneath the dragon’s folded wing into a tangle of wet wood and scales. No way back to the trunk there.

His road was the strip above the tooth.

“The eagle asked another question,” he said.

Níðhöggr stopped chewing.

Ratatoskr felt the small, familiar pleasure of having his attention.

“He wondered whether you had teeth at all. He says he has sat comfortably up there for a very long time.”

The dragon lifted his head.

There. An opening. Ratatoskr crouched to jump.

Níðhöggr opened his jaws wider and took the root farther into his mouth.

The bite threw Ratatoskr sideways. He hit the bark on his bad paw and screamed. A white crack shot across the wood ahead of him. The strip he had tested peeled upward, still attached at either end, and the perch beneath him sagged toward the water.

He clung with all four feet until it stopped moving.

Níðhöggr watched him over the root.

“Comfortably,” the dragon repeated.

Ratatoskr’s heart thudded against the bark. He could not think of an answer. The bite had made the gap wider than he could jump from a standing start. His perch sloped too sharply for a run.

He had meant to make the dragon look up. He had made him bite deeper.

“Tell him that,” Níðhöggr said.

What Could Be Carried

The squirrel crept back up the slope of his perch. He moved slowly now, setting his hurt paw down without weight, lifting it, trying again. Níðhöggr turned his head slightly to work a stubborn fiber loose.

Each movement altered the gap.

When the dragon pressed down, the far side of the root bent toward Ratatoskr. When he released it, it sprang away. The bark strip stretched between them, creaking.

Ratatoskr watched three times.

Nearer. Farther. Nearer.

If he could get onto the strip, he might cross while the root bent. But the dragon’s next bite might tear the strip away. Ratatoskr pictured himself dropping through the open jaws with all his excellent words still inside him.

“Wait,” he said.

Níðhöggr’s tongue pushed a wood chip from between two teeth.

“I am not finished speaking.”

“Then speak.”

Ratatoskr looked up. Between the huge branching roots he could see a sliver of the trunk, rising out of sight. Far above, the eagle would be waiting, talons firm on a bough that had never moved enough to trouble him.

Ratatoskr could already hear the questions. What had the worm said? Had it hissed? Had it choked on its answer?

And he could hear himself giving the account. A little larger, a little sharper. The eagle laughing. The next message ready before the pain in Ratatoskr’s paw had eased.

Beside him lay a fresh splinter. One end was wet with sap. Across the other, a tooth had cut a deep smooth groove.

He picked it up.

It was awkward, longer than his head. He could carry it in his forepaws or carry it in his mouth. His paws would be needed for the crossing.

“Well?” said Níðhöggr.

Ratatoskr tried the splinter between his teeth. It pulled his head to one side. He shifted his bite toward the middle until it balanced.

The dragon’s eye remained on him.

No clever answer could get past the wood.

Ratatoskr turned toward the gap.

“You have forgotten the message.”

The squirrel put his good paw onto the bark strip. It bowed. He brought one hind foot forward, then the other. Below him, saliva and sap shone along a tooth.

Níðhöggr drew his head back.

The far side of the root sprang away.

Ratatoskr flattened himself along the strip. His injured paw slipped. He caught the edge against his wrist, and pain flashed all the way to his shoulder. The splinter nearly fell from his mouth.

He could drop it. With his head free, he could turn and bite the bark if his paw slipped again. The eagle would believe him if he explained it well enough.

Below, the dragon opened his jaws for another bite.

Ratatoskr tightened his teeth.

The root bent toward him.

He ran.

The strip tipped beneath his hind feet. He pushed off as it tore, struck the far side chest first, and slid backward. His good forepaw found a ridge. The other scraped uselessly at the bark.

His tail jerked taut.

He could not look down. The world had become the ridge beneath his claws, the weight pulling at his spine, and the splinter between his teeth.

He kicked against the root. His claws slipped once, caught, slipped again. Then something tore behind him, and he scrambled upward so hard that he struck his chin against the wood.

The splinter fell.

Ratatoskr flung his good paw over it.

Below him the bark strip dropped into the spring. A tuft of his tail fur hung between two closing surfaces of broken wood. Beyond it, Níðhöggr drew the severed end into his mouth.

Ratatoskr lay on the living root, panting around an empty mouth.

The dragon chewed.

After a while Ratatoskr picked up the splinter again.

At the Top of the Ash

The ascent took longer than any delivery he could remember.

He rested in crevices he usually leaped over. Twice he set the splinter down and had to turn back for it. His tail kept catching the air wrongly, making him sway where he had once run without thinking.

By the time he reached the eagle’s bough, sap had dried along his chin.

“At last,” said the eagle. “What did he say?”

Ratatoskr climbed onto the broad place beside the talons. He put the splinter down and leaned against it.

“What did he say?” the eagle repeated.

Ratatoskr could still give the reply. Keep your view. With the right pause, the right glance over the edge, he could make it good. There would be laughter. The eagle might even fail to notice his ragged tail.

“The lower root is breaking,” he said.

“They are always breaking.”

“My path went into the water.”

The eagle shifted one foot. “And yet here you are.”

Ratatoskr pushed the splinter forward. He had to use his shoulder. It slid across the bough until its wet end touched a talon.

“Put your foot on it.”

The eagle looked down at him.

Ratatoskr stayed where he was. His injured paw had begun to swell.

At last the eagle lowered a claw into the groove left by the dragon’s tooth. The claw did not fill it.

“He told me to say you should keep your view,” Ratatoskr said.

The eagle lifted his head. “Did he? Then tell him—”

Far below, something struck through the wood. Ratatoskr felt it in his sore paw; the splinter trembled beneath the eagle’s foot.

The eagle closed his beak.

He bent to look down.