Never to know a night at peace,
Bedding a bride who brings you joy.
Grim are you grown, and gruesome your ways.
Wrong have you wrought in your recklessness,
Scathefully scorning and scoffing at love.
Empty this anger out of your soul,
Give now to goodwill and gladness a home,
Be moody no more, but make me your bride!
For I bore you, a bairn, at my breast one time.
Remember my mothering, the milk I gave you,
And how I held you and helped you thrive,
Awake to keep watch on your welfare always.
And he wanted her. With his whole being he did. Of late, when he woke at night to the growls and grunts, the thuds and thumps that meant the giants were coupling, it had been well-nigh more than he could beat His daydreams about Hardgreip flogged him into running for miles, plunging into icy waters, wolfishly hunting and slaying. Yet he had known they were hopeless, and today he could only stammer, “It cannot be. You, you are a jotun. I am a man. You are too big for me.”
She threw back her head. Her laughter bellowed like the call of a cow elk in heat. “You are big enough, my love. Yes, I am a jotun, but I’m also a witch, and can be whatever I want and you want.”
A new stave rang out.
Be fearless, youth, and follow in friendly wise to bed.
Soon shall you see me shifting my shape to what you wish.
Lengthening my limbs, or lessening my tallness,
Ever do I alter in every way myself,
My height as I would have it, to heaven raising me
Up through the clouds where Thor goes on thunder-booming
wheels.
But next, if it be needful, back near to earth I draw
My head that loomed on high, and humanlike I am.
Featly I reforge me from form to form at once,
Manifold the makings. It may be that I. go
To littleness and lowness ere leaping forth anew
In scope until I scan the sky around my brows.
Now am I short and shrunken, then shoot aloft once more.
Moonlike waxing, waning, I wear no sameness ever.
If word you’ve had of werebears, you’ll wonder not at this.
I dwindle in my dwelling to dwarf, who was a giant,
Not firm, not fixed in sight, but fleeting hastily.
I broaden the embrace I brought so close before.
My girlish arms reach outward, but inward draw when huge.
My being twines between the twain of great and small.
To meet the strong I stand in stalwart mightiness,
But slight I am and slender when sleeping with a man.
As he gasped, she blurred to his sight. For a score of heartbeats he saw smokiness spinning and heard it whistle, like a whirlwind. Then Hardgreip stood again before him, tangle-haired, hard-breathing, but a woman, half a head less in height than he was. She laughed afresh, her voice now not deep but only low and husky. She pulled off her gown and spread her arms wide. Sweat gleamed on her breasts and belly. The smell of it overwhelmed him. He came to her and they enfolded one another. Her lips and tongue thrust at his. Her hands groped at his clothes. He scrambled out of them. She pulled him to the ground and bestrode him.
VII
Yet after a sennight Hadding said that now he would go. “From us, who raised you to manhood?” Vagnhöfdi asked.
“From me, who made a man of you?” Hardgreip laid to that.
Hadding’s back stiffened. “I would be less than a man did I abide when my father and brother lie unavenged and he who slew them sits in the high seat of the Skjoldungs.”
“My hope for aught else was faint,” Vagnhöfdi said, “and I cannot foretell what will come of it, but this I know, that something beyond the world of men is at work here.”
Nor was Hardgreip truly surprised. She and Hadding had talked in between tumblings. “You shall not go slime,” she told him.
Vagnhöfdi looked at her. The blood beat high in her face. “This is not unawaited either,” he said, “but for you, such a trek can have no good ending.”
“Would you rather I stayed behind?” she answered shamelessly. “My longing would set the woodland afire.”
Hadding reddened too and his eyes flickered elsewhere, but he said nothing against it. He could use such a waymate, both for pleasure and for the jotun might she could wield at need.
“Then this evening we will drink farewell,” Vagnhöfdi said, while Haflidi wept like a melting glacier. Hardgreip frowned at her mother and thereafter gave all her heed to her lover. As the mead cups passed around, they two became the merry ones.
At dawn the four of them woke and the twain made ready. Hardgreip dressed like a man, in some of the clothes Braki had brought for Hadding over the years. She also took a sword and spear from among the chieftain’s gifts, now that she was going about in human size. She bore the food and the other gear, for besides weapons such as hers, Hadding slung on his back a shield, helmet, byrnie, and underpadding, as well as bow and arrows. Vagnhöfdi gave him a purse of gold and silver to hang beside his knife.
“I shall not see my daughter again,” the giant said, “but this is her own will and doom. You and I may meet once more, fosterling.”
The thursir stood outside their house and watched as the wanderers strode off down the hill. A last time Hadding and Hardgreip looked back and saw them huge against the sky. Then they were lost to sight behind the trees.
The days of walking through wilderness went peacefully. At length the woods opened up on the rolling lowland of Scania and the path met a rutted road. A bit farther on this led to Yvangar. There Braki’s eldest son gave hospitality together with news of the outside world.
“Svipdag holds most of Svithjod and has laid the Geats under scot,” he said, “though his grip is as yet uneasy and he must fight every year to quell uprisings. Thus he’s not much
