Caitlin Kiernan - Beowulf

From his vantage point high atop the wave, Beowulf looks back down toward Brecca, spotting him there amid the chop and spray in the same instant that one of the monstrous serpents bursts forth from the sea. At first, Brecca does not seem to see it, looming there above him, its vast jaws dripping with brine and ooze and weeds, its single red eye peering down at the swimmer. Beowulf glances longingly toward the shore, and he knows it is within his grasp, surely, both dry land and victory. A lesser man might have looked upon the arrival of this beast as a blessing from the gods, but Brecca has been Beowulf’s friend since their childhood, and so he sets his back to the shore. He shouts a warning, but already there are dark tentacles winding themselves about Brecca’s body, driving the breath from his lungs and threatening to crush his ribs. He gasps, and the dagger slips from his teeth and vanishes in the sea.

“ No! ” Beowulf screams. “You will not have him!” And he swims as quickly as he can, moving against the current, back to the place where his friend struggles with the serpent. Distracted, the creature turns toward Beowulf, who slashes at its face with his sword, plunging the blade through the crimson eye and deep into its skull. Blood the color of the angry, storm-wracked sky gushes from the wound and stains the sea. But already a second serpent is rising from the water, and a third follows close behind it.

Brecca escapes from the dying monster’s coils, and Beowulf tells him to go, go now , to swim if he’s still able. Then something below twines itself about Beowulf’s legs and hauls him under. Air rushes from his mouth and nostrils, silver bubbles trailing about his face as he hacks madly at the tentacle with his sword, severing it and wriggling free of its loosening grip. He breaks the surface a second later, only to find another of the creatures bearing down on him, its jaws open wide and bristling with teeth as long a warrior’s lance. But Beowulf takes its head off with a single blow, slicing through scaly hide, through sinew and bone, cleaving its spine in two. And the third beast, sensing its imminent fate at the hands of the Geat, only watches him for a moment—hissing and leering hungrily—before it sinks once more beneath the sea, returning to whatever foul black pit birthed it.

Exhausted, bleeding, still clutching his heavy sword, Beowulf turns and begins to swim again and has soon caught up with Brecca. The waves have carried them much nearer the shoreline than before, and now Beowulf spies men scattered out along the rocky beach, all of them cheering the brave swimmers on. His spirits buoyed by the shouts and glad noise of the Geats and Finns, and also by the sight of Brecca alive and well and by his own victory over the serpents, Beowulf forgets his pain and pushes on. He passes Brecca and is ahead by a full length, and how much sweeter will be his victory, that it will have been gained despite the decision to go to Brecca aid, despite the Ægir’s hounds.

“A good race!” he calls back to Brecca. “A shame that one of us must lose it,” but then Beowulf is seized about the waist and pulled underwater for a second time. Again, wreathed in the shimmer of his own escaping breath, he whirls about to confront his attacker, his sword held at the ready…but then he sees clearly what has dragged him down. And this time it is no serpent, not one of the sea giant’s fiends nor some other nameless abomination come stealing up from the lightless plains of silt and shipwrecks.

Instead, it is a being so beautiful that he might almost believe he has died defending Brecca and now this is some strange, fair herald of the Valkyries. Not a woman, no, not a human woman, but so alike in form that he at first makes that mistake. As his breath leaks away, Beowulf can only believe that he has been haled by an impossibly beautiful maiden, or some elf spirit that has taken the form of such a maiden. Her long hair, streaming about her face, is like the warm sun of a summer’s afternoon falling across still waters, then flashing back twice as bright, and he squints at its brilliance. Her skin might be sunlight as well, or newly minted gold, the way it glints and shines.

So, perhaps this is a hero’s death, and so a hero’s reward, as well. He stops struggling and lowers his weapon, ready to follow this vision on to paradise and whatever banquet Odin has already prepared in his honor. And then Beowulf glances down, past the fullness of her breasts, and where the gentle curves of her belly and hips ought be, the golden skin is replaced by golden scales and by chitinous plates like the shell of a gilded crab. Worse still, where her legs should be, there is a long and tapering tail ending in a broad lancet fin. She smiles and clutches at him, and now Beowulf sees the webbing between her fingers and the hooked claws where a human woman would have nails. She does not speak, but he can plainly hear her voice inside his mind, beckoning him to follow her deeper. An image comes to him, then, of the two of them locked together in a lover’s embrace, her lips pressed to his as they drift farther from the sun’s rays and all the world above.

And he kicks free…

…“I killed the monster with my own blade,” Beowulf tells Unferth and anyone else there beneath the roof of Heorot who is listening to his tale. “Plunging it again and again into its heart, I killed it. But I did not win the race.”

“You do not have to prove yourself to him,” Wealthow says, drawing a smirk from Unferth.

But Beowulf continues. “They sing of my battle with the sea monsters to this day, my friend . And they sing no such songs about Brecca. But I braved their hot jaws, making those lanes safe for seamen. And I survived the nightmare.”

“Of course,” Unferth says, and fakes a tremendous yawn. “The sea monsters. And you killed, what, twenty was it?”

“ Three, all told. But…will you do me the honor of telling me your name.”

Unferth shrugs and passes his empty cup back to his slave. “I am Unferth, son of Ecglaf, son of—”

“Unferth?” Beowulf asks, and before Hrothgar’s man can reply, the Geat has turned to address his own thanes. “Unferth, son of Ecglaf? Well, then your fame has crossed the ocean ahead of you. I know who you are…”

Unferth manages to look both proud of himself and uncertain at the same time.

“Let’s see,” Beowulf says. “They say that you are clever. Not wise, mind you, but sharp. And they say, too, that you killed your brothers when you caught them bedding your own mother. In Geatland, they name you ‘Unferth Kinslayer,’ I believe,” and Beowulf laughs.

Unferth stares back at him, speechless, his mossy eyes burning bright with hatred and spite. And then he lunges at Beowulf, growling like a dog. The Geat steps to one side, and Unferth trips, landing in a drunken heap at Beowulf’s feet. The Geat crouches beside him, grinning.

“I’ll tell you another true thing, Unferth Kinslayer. If your strength and heart had been as strong and as fierce as your words , then Grendel would never feel free to murder and gorge on your people, with no fear of retaliation. But tonight, friend , tonight will be different. Tonight he will find the Geats waiting for him. Not frightened sheep, like you.”

Suddenly, several of the Danish thanes advance and draw their weapons, rushing to the aid of their king’s most favored and trusted advisor. Seeing this, Beowulf’s own men reach for their swords and daggers—

“ Well done! ” shouts King Hrothgar. “That’s the spirit, young Beowulf!” and he begins clapping his hands together enthusiastically. The thanes on either side look confused, but slowly they begin to return blades to sheaths and back away from one another.