Excerpt--Harbinger

[Fenris]

Hey, all! This is an excerpt from an experimental rewrite of my WIP. I'd love to hear feedback (especially from my crit partners, who have seen the first version. Does this one look better?).

***


Oh, no you don’t. I can’t let you die now. What would happen to me? Come on, now. Wake up. Micah awoke with a start, feeling crashing back into his limbs with the force of a waterfall. It felt like he’d stood under one, too—he ached all over, particularly his head.

Where am I? he wondered, peering around as he rubbed his head. Whiteness stretched on for eternity, as if the world had been suddenly drained of color…and everything else, for that matter. Looking down, he saw his own reflection in a snow-white floor polished to a shine.

Whose voice did I hear just now? he thought, his gaze returning to his nonexistent surroundings. Whoever it had belonged to did not speak again, though.

Try as he might, Micah couldn’t locate any kind of exit, or any kind of wall at all. The room seemed to stretch on endlessly in all directions. Micah glanced back at the floor, wondering if he’d find a clue there, and leapt back, his heart thumping.

Rather than seeing his own reflection as before, he’d seen a wolf looking back at him, inverted as if it were fixed to the underside of the floor. Its golden eyes followed Micah as he landed, and its image was distorted for a moment as ripples ran outward from his new position. Idly, Micah wondered if he had caused them, but he was too focused on the wolf to care right now.

It yawned widely, showing extremely pointed teeth, before walking upside-down along the underside of the floor toward Micah. Where its feet landed small ripples spread outward, intersecting with one another and further distorting the wolf’s image. Micah began to back away from the inverted wolf, which followed him resolutely. Eventually, it seemed to tire of the game.

A howl rent the still, white air as the wolf paused and threw back its head, and Micah felt a tug at his chest. He stared, wide-eyed, at the thick chain that now connected him to the wolf, a chain that seemed to pass straight through the floor to pierce the wolf’s heart. Where it met the fur, the chain dissolved into a cloud of golden light that nonetheless clung to the wolf’s chest. The chain was white on the wolf’s side of the floor (which Micah was now convinced was some sort of glass), but as it passed through it changed to black, and Micah’s eyes followed it to where it intersected his own chest, fading into a black pool that swirled about like oil.

Micah took a step backward, but the chain restricted his movement. He gave an almighty tug, and the wolf trotted forward a few steps, a low growl escaping its teeth. It didn’t seem to want to harm Micah, though—on the contrary, it seemed content to simply stare up through the floor at him.

“Where did you come from?” he asked it. It felt rather odd to try and talk to a wolf, but what else did he have to do?

The wolf tilted its head slightly, but said nothing.

Of course it can’t talk, it’s a dog, thought Micah angrily.

Wolf, corrected the wolf, looking affronted. Micah stared at it in disbelief.

“You can talk?” he asked it, amazed. The wolf gave him a patronizing look.

Not in the sense that you can, but yes, I can communicate.

“Where is this place?” asked Micah, wondering if he’d gone insane.

You. The wolf gave him another glare.

“What?” The wolf shook its head, rattling the chain.

No. You. This place is your soul, your inner sanctum. Your metaphysical heart, I suppose.

“So…let me get this straight. I fell out of my window and hit my head. Now I’m trapped inside my own soul, attached by a chain to the reflection of a talking woodland creature.”

Yes, replied the wolf, its glare intensifying. But I’m no woodland creature, boy.

“Oh yeah? What are you, then?” Micah was beginning to think nothing would surprise him at this point.

But he was wrong.

The air around him darkened, and a peal of thunder echoed overhead. Dark clouds sprang into existence, swirling from the invisible horizon to form a funnel cloud above Micah’s head. Lightning forked and flashed from the clouds, and the room that had seemed so empty before now teemed with menacing shadows.

I am a god, came the wolf’s voice, and Micah found his gaze drawn downward along the chain that bound him to it.

The wolf was now little more than a looming shadow, its eyes glowing red and boring into Micah’s own. Equally dark wings sprang from its back, feathers rising to land softly against the mirrored floor, sending ripples out in every direction. For a split second, they distorted the wolf’s image, and when it had resolved itself again it seemed to have a third eye, a glowing red dot in the middle of its forehead that swirled with strange symbols. Vermilion lines sprang from the circle’s edges, trailing over the wolf’s head between its ears and wafting down its back like ethereal strands of lava blowing gently in a nonexistent breeze. The chain that bound the wolf to Micah was now glowing brighter than ever, its tawny light in stark contrast to the shadowy wolf. The golden pool of light where the chain met its chest had grown, streaking across the wolf’s torso in lines that paralleled the red strands from its forehead, running up its wings to stain the darkness with light until their bases were of solid gold, and their feathers of blackest obsidian.

“Who are you?” Micah asked again, fearfully this time. The wolf's voice chuckled softly.

I am—

***

Yes, the scene ends there. Micah doesn't get to hear his name either. Anyway, sorry for the length, but I was worried it wouldn't make as much sense without the whole thing. Thanks ahead of time to those brave enough to struggle through and give feedback!

[Margo]

I'm really curious about why you chose to depart from Norse myth in certain instances (having read query, synopsis, and excerpt). I'd be interested in hearing about your thought process. How did you decide what you wanted to keep, what you felt okay with changing? Are you worried at all about readers pointing out things you've changed and assuming the changes are errors? Or maybe you have an explanation built into the story?

[Fenris]

Again, this rewrite is purely experimental--just to see what I could do differently, and how it might turn out.

But in answer to your question, I thought it might be easier to make Gleipnir and Gioll into something else, that doesn't require Micah to consciously (well, kinda) free Fenris. In the rewrite, Gioll was a madman who the Norse gods chose to be Fenris' first vessel, though Fenris was chained with Gleipnir--still a magical bond, but slightly different this time--within Gioll's soul, so he would have no control over him. As generations passed, there were rites performed by those who still held faith in the Norse gods/knew what was happening (like, say, Valkyries in disguise), sort of a cult, and those rites would transfer Fenris' spirit into the body of the newest descendant of Gioll (done while the new vessels are newborns, so they won't remember anything, or at least not much). Micah is the last descendant of Gioll. This would all be explained within the story, but typically through dialogue/backstory, as this scene is pretty early in the rewrite.

I am a little worried about readers noticing changes, which is why I posted this--to see if the changes were, to those who had read the book or even the synopsis, agreeable. As for the departure from the Norse mythos, it's less dramatic than it appears to be (I know Fenris wasn't a god by their standards, though. That's one of the things that changed) and more a simple reinterpretation, for the most part. I changed Fenris into a god to save tedious explanations ("I'm not quite a god" would lead to "Okay, then what are you?") that might interrupt the story, and as for the non-lupine attributes, he's a shapeshifter (this was in the original version too).

Sorry for getting long-winded; I hope I answered your question.

[Margo]

I changed Fenris into a god to save tedious explanations ("I'm not quite a god" would lead to "Okay, then what are you?") that might interrupt the story,...

Ah, I see your concern.

...and as for the non-lupine attributes, he's a shapeshifter (this was in the original version too).

This is a change...no, more an extrapolation that doesn't bother me, as shapechanging is so common in Norse myth and his father used it every chance he got.

Sorry for getting long-winded; I hope I answered your question.

Hmm, more or less. Between the experimentation explanation and your thoughts on trying to streamline more complex attributes of the mythology, I think I get the gist.

[Fenris]

...as shapechanging is so common in Norse myth and his father used it every chance he got.

Loki's shapeshifting is cause for a rather important conflict later on, but one thing I changed in Harbinger is that Fenris isn't his son after all (he's from a different world). I suppose it could still be possible, now I think of it, since Loki is from another world as well, but it'd still be different than how the Norse mythos portrayed it, and it doesn't come up in the story at all.