The Monstrous Child by Francesca Simon Read Free Book Online

and the land of the dead was no place for me.
    One-Eye had banished me to rule here, but his decree didn’t say I had to stay here, did it? Kings and queens travel. One-Eye was always slipping out of Asgard.
    I had to escape.
    I shuffled through a deep valley towards the sound of water, sidestepping chasms and bogs. I groped my way through the throttling blackness, trying to breathe despite the choking mist, frost crunching under my feet. I passed sulphur lakes, boiling springs, foaming torrents crackling with ice. The only light came from the occasional spurts of flames. And always precipices, fumes, cold and –
    Oh, enough local colour. I’m boring myself. Frankly, if you’ve seen one sulphurous pit, hideous precipice and poisonous, hissing, foaming river you’ve seen them all. When it’s your turn to travel down the lonely fog road, you can describe its horrors to your heart’s content.
    I followed the sound of water, as far as I could go. My robes were damp and heavy with sleet. I hoped to find a ship, something that would float me out of this nightmare. The noxious air was growing thick and poisonous. I appeared to be stumbling into a squelching pit. I hesitated, not sure whether to keep going or to retrace my steps.
    And then I heard hissing.
    I froze.

17
DRAGON

    OILED ROUND AN enormous tree root, half in and half out of a seething swamp, was a dragon. It gnawed viciously at the tree roots, which shuddered as if they were alive.
    The dragon stopped chewing. He swung his heavy head and opened his mouth, thrashing towards me, splattering me with freezing water.
    ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ I screamed. An avalanche of boulders crashed onto his heaving body and sand swirled into his lava eyes.
    The dragon stopped. He threw his head wildly about, blinking and shaking. I stood back behind the largest boulder, which had rolled in front of me. I needed to put something, anything, however small, between us.
    He sniffed.
    ‘You’re a corpse,’ he rasped. ‘And not a corpse.’
    ‘I’m your queen,’ I shrieked. ‘Queen of Niflheim. You will die horribly if you touch me.’
    The dragon shook his feathered head, his eyes squeezed shut.
    ‘And I am Nidhogg!’ bellowed the monster. His breath was venomous and rank. ‘I’m sick of gnawing on tree roots. I want real food. I want corpses. Feed me.’
    ‘You’ll have your corpses soon enough,’ I said.
    ‘Make sure you send them here,’ roared the dragon. He curled back around Yggdrasil’s roots and savagely bit them.
    ‘Never leave this place,’ I ordered.
    Nidhogg lowered his gleaming head.
    ‘Keep me fed. I won’t budge,’ he hissed, blasting me with his poisonous breath.
    I crept away from the deepest part of Niflheim, the gruesome sound of the dragon’s crunching gradually fading, and headed upwards, feeling my way slowly through the pitch dark. It was a long while before my heart stopped thudding. What other monsters were lying in wait for me in this infernal place?
    Another thought struck me. The boulders that had rained on Nidhogg, and the sand that had blinded him. Where had they come from?
    But there was no one to answer me.
    My feet kept tripping over the slippery rocks as I clawed my way upwards through the gloom out of Nidhogg’s venomous valley.
    ‘Get out of my way!’ I screamed, stumbling over a rock for the millionth time and falling in the slimy ooze.
    The rock immediately rolled off the path into the crevasse below, landing in the churning river with adistant plock .
    Feeling foolish, and for a moment glad no one was here to witness my idiocy, I ordered a boulder to roll.
    It did.
    Another to stack itself on top of another.
    It did.
    I appeared to have power here to command stones.
    I made rock after rock smash against the cliffs, screaming and laughing as they splintered and cracked. Shards rained down, splashing into the water below. I punched the air, shrieking, clenching my fists.
    I had power. I had power. I felt the fiercest