Beyond the moorlands and the forest and the bogs, in the cave below the cave, this deeper, more ancient abscess in the thin granite skin of the world, the mother of Grendel mourns alone. She has carried her son’s mutilated body from the pool, the pool below the pool above, and has gently laid him out on a stone ledge near a wall of the immense cavern. Once, the ledge was an altar, a shrine built by men to honor a forgotten goddess of a forgotten people, and the charcoal-colored slate is encrusted with the refuse of long-ago offerings—jewels and bits of gold, silver, and bronze, the bones of animals and men. Whatever it might have been, now it is only her dead son’s final bed. She bends low, her lips brushing his lifeless skin, her long claws caressing his withered corpse. She is old, even as the mountains and the seas mark time, even as the Æsir and Vanir and the giants of Jötunheimr count the passing of the ages, but the weight of time has not hardened her to loss. It has, if anything, made her more keenly aware of the emptiness left behind by that which has been taken away.

“Oh, my poor lost son,” she whispers. “I asked you not to go. I warned you they were dangerous. And you promised…”

If any others of her race remain in all the wide, wide world, she does not know of them and so believes herself to be the last. Neither troll nor giant nor dragon-kin, and yet perhaps something of all three, some night race spawned in the first days of creation, when Midgard was still new, and then hunted, driven over uncountable millennia to the brink of oblivion. She had a mother, whom she almost remembers from time to time, waking from a dream or drifting down toward sleep. If she ever had a father, the memory of him has faded away forever.

Long before the coming of the Danes, there were men in this land who named her Hertha and Nerthus, and they worshipped her in sacred groves and still lakes and secret grottoes as the Earth’s mother, as Nerpuz and sometimes as Njördr of the Ásynja, wife of Njörd and goddess of the sea. And always she welcomed their prayers and offerings, their tributes and their fear of her. For fear kept her safe, but never was she a goddess, only some thing more terrible and beautiful than mere men.

She is legend now, half-glimpsed by unfortunate travelers on stormy nights. Sailors and fisherman up and down the Danish coast trade fearful whispers of mermaids and sea trolls and sahagin. Those passing by the bog on midsummer nights may have glimpsed for themselves the aglaec-wif, aeglaeca, the merewif or demon wife. But she and all her vanished forebears would have surely long passed completely and permanently beyond the recollection of mankind, if not for Grendel.

In the cave below the cave, crouching there before the cold altar stone, she sings a song she might have first heard from her own mother, for she does not recall where and when she learned it. A dirge, a mourning song to give some dim voice to the inconsolable ache welling up inside her.

But the song buckles and breaks apart in her throat, becoming suddenly a far more genuine expression of her grief, a wild and bestial wail to transcend any mournful poetry. It spills like fire from out her throat, and the walls of the cavern shudder with the force of it.

And then for a time she lies weeping at the foot of the altar stone, her long, webbed fingers gouging muddy furrows into the soft earth, scraping at the stone beneath, snapping dry bones.

“I will avenge you, my poor son,” she sobs. “He will come to me. I will see to it. He will come, and I will turn his own strength against him. He will pay, and dearly will he pay…” but then the capacity for speech deserts her again.

The merewife rises, coiling and uncoiling, her scales shining in the ghostly light of these moldering, phosphorescent walls, and she leans down over the altar and cradles her dead son in her arms again. Her long and spiny tail whips furiously about, madly lashing at thin air and stone and the treasures that have lain here undisturbed for a thousand years, and it crushes everything it strikes to dust and splinters. She holds the name of her son’s murderer in her mind, the bold riddler of Hrothgar’s hall, the champion of men and the wolf of the bees. And her sobs become a wail, and then her wail becomes a shriek that rises up and up, leaking out through every minute crevice and fissure, slithering finally from the gaping mouth of the cavern—the cave above her cave—and cracking apart the gaunt ribs of the night.

Something awakens Beowulf, who lies where he fell asleep hours before, wrapped in furs, on the floor not far from the fire pit. He opens his eyes and lies listening to the soft noises of the sleeping mead hall—a woman sighing in her dreams, the ragged snores of drunken men, the warm crackle of embers, someone rolling over in slumber. The faint creaking sound of settling timbers. All the lamps are out, and the hall is dark save a faint red glow from the dying fire. Nothing is out of place, no sound that should not be here. Outside the walls of Heorot, there is the chilling whistle of wind about the eaves, and far away, the faint thunder of waves falling against the shore. He thinks of Wiglaf, alone on the beach with the ship, and wonders if he’s sleeping.

Beowulf peers into the gloom and spies Olaf lying nearby, snuggling with Yrsa beneath heavy sheepskins, a satisfied smile on his sleeping face.

“Are you awake, Beowulf?” and he looks up, startled, to find Wealthow smiling down at him. She stoops, then sits on the floor beside him.

“My queen…” he begins, but she places an index finger firmly across his lips.

“Shhhhhh,” she whispers. “You’ll wake the others,” and then she moves her finger.

“I was dreaming of you,” he says quietly, only just now remembering that he was. In the dream, Wealthow was traveling with him back across the sea to Geatland, and they were watching the gray-black backs of great whales breaking the surface of the sea, their misty spouts rising high into the winter sky.

“How sweet,” she whispers, and Beowulf thinks there’s something different about her voice, the barest hint of an unfamiliar accent he’d not noticed earlier. “I hope it was a pleasant dream.”

“Of course it was,” he smiles. “What other sort could you ever inspire?”

“I love you,” Wealthow whispers, leaning closer to Beowulf, close enough that he can feel her breath warm against his face. “I want you, Beowulf Demon-feller, son of Ecgtheow. Only you, my king, my hero, and my love.”

Wealthow puts her arms about his neck, drawing him close to her breasts, and she kisses him lightly on the cheek.

“Do you not think your husband might have something to say in the matter?” he asks, looking nervously past her at the others, still asleep.

“My husband,” sighs Wealthow. “Do not trouble yourself over Hrothgar. He is dead. This very night, I have done it myself, as I should have done long ago.”

Beowulf says nothing for a moment, confused and baffled at what he’s hearing. Wealthow smiles wider and kisses him on the forehead.

“Surely you have heard of his infidelities,” she says. “They certainly were no secret. Hrothgar never tried to hide his whores…or I should say he never tried very hard.

“Why would you say these things to me?”

She has slipped her hands beneath his tunic, and they are cold against his chest and belly. He feels her nails rasping almost painfully at his skin.