Shall you be sprinkled with blessings? Will the green twig bring mead or blood?
They say the gods demand sacrifice. They say the gods and wights require offerings, require blót.
They say many things, no?
But the secret is in not what they say but how they say it. For as the Old One, the Eldest God hung, silent upon the tree, he bled.
Wounded.
Opened to the worlds, bound in silent agony, thoughts blending together in the rushing stream of blackest beingness. There is no doubt that the wound was mortal, no doubt his spilt blood summoned the carrion eaters, the birds and and the scavengers; the sloping wolves and the hungry ones with a nose for a good carcass still steaming in the cold.
Maybe even then, the Fame-wolf, black Fenrir – maybe he twisted in his bonds, and smelt the agony of a god upon the wind. And maybe they knew each other then, as in days of old.
And maybe Lie-smith smiled with stitched-up lips then, though the bowl of venom was close to overflowing once more, to splash and burn and make him writhe.
Maybe the Father of the Wolf felt the blood within his heart, the jotun-blood pulsing in his veins. Maybe it was there, all inescapable and yet pouring out somewhere else, feeding the roots of that great tree, splashing a spear-god’s blessing over the earth.
(A brother’s blood to slick the nest of wyrms, hissing there in cold Nifel. A stream of scarlet, summoning freezing steam to add to the rising mists.)
And maybe old Borr came by from Somewhere Else to stand there yet below. To raise his face to watch the gallows burden, as fierce Bestla smiles at her son’s unyielding resolve.
See there, behind them yet – cold eyed Buri and his Lady, frost-giant and god-before-gods, an alien strangeness from another cycle that coupled with primordial force to spawn a line of terrible ones who would tame and shape the worlds.
And maybe, in the Tree’s creaking, there is a howling which is not the wind, but the mourning song of an infinity of slain souls. Mortal and immortal both, those drowned in an ocean of murder and an orgy of battle.
Men, gods, giants all – the cry of Old Ymir is gathered together from the portions of their pain.
It sings along limbs, dances across nerves, and washes over the gallows god in an endless tide of blood. But still he is ever grim, ever hooded, ever masked and silent.
Tongue may strain behind teeth, throat full of fury but the god’s jaws are clamped shut, old grey ivory straining against a swelling immensity.
Breath is choked by noose, knotted in the sack of godflesh, while in his entrails, something terrible brews.
He is Hangatyr – and like his every gallows-son, he has spread his seed, far and wide. Like every gallows-daughter, he has opened himself to the worlds, so that any and all may take him where they will.
(And oh, how he bleeds now. How the pain and sickness wracks him as the moon rises in the night!)
