(Short Story) The Black Dog of Grimmald Taer
A Myth of Thaldra
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Some of you have already read this story in my latest monthly newsletter, but I wanted to give this tale its own space. And so I’m sending it out into the void that is the internet and your inbox simply to give space to a piece that got tucked away and hidden in another work.
This is a practice I will do for any more future stories or sneak peak chapters. They’ll be like their own little special edition letters to you in addition to the monthly newsletter. However, these will not have any set release dates or consistency. They’ll be little gifts that arrive on days unknown that you can either ignore or enjoy at your leisure.
So, a little author’s note on this particular story for those who’ve not yet read it.
This particular piece is a myth for a world I created called Thaldra. It’s a fantasy world I designed primarily for my friends and I to play a homebrew TTRPG game in, but honestly it’s becoming expansive enough and the stories interesting enough, it may have its own place in fiction one day. I think it would be easy to write stories set in this new world. Glimpses of this new place for any, not just those who play within it.
This particular tale is a mythological telling of how a certain land overcame the need for Undertakers—those banished peoples who have met with the god of Death and so are no longer allowed within the lands of the living. They spend their life tending to the dead brought to them, separate from society, yet cared for by those outside the death touched lands. A necessary and grim duty.
So without further ado…
The Black Dog of Grimmald Taer
A Myth of Thaldra
Before the Mountains held back the Seas,
Before the Night found its Stars…
In the deepest of wilds where the ice cuts like scythes and the frost hardens the life of the lands there rested a village too small to catch the mapmaker's quill. Caught in the thresh of Grimmald Taer's deepest valley, the nameless village did stand against the whiplash winds and the crest of early winter's snow when the Undertaker found her rest among the dead she so diligently tended all her life's days.
The village grew fearful at the news, for who would walk the gravelands where Death wanders? Who would entreaty with Death to carry their fallen beyond the gates of life to the gods' sides? Winter had not yet come and sickness would soon follow as it did every year. They had a healer, but the healer worked in a herbs and salves. He was never blessed by the gods to carry the magic of life in his oil and leaf covered hands, given magic to stay back the hand of Death. And so life would inevitably falter when lungs filled with water and flesh warmed with fever.
The village called for volunteers, but there were none. The jarl promised lands and resources and wealth to the family of the one who would go. But none would take the Undertaker's mask and mantle. And so the village decided that the first to carry their fallen into the gravelands would meet with Death and take on the Undertaker’s somber charge.
And so they waited for for the first to fall.
A man in his third decade blessed with children still young at home, woke one bitter morning to find his love and wife cold and still beside him. Her fever broken by the empty chill of oblivion. Her cough quieted beneath silent breath. The man closed his eyes and hid his love beneath a cloth of black that the eyes of Death may not look upon her and find her among the living. For it is said Death will claim another should they see Him in lightless eyes.
The man mourned his love in the quiet of the room where he would see her no longer, his tears and cries kept silent behind chilled stone walls. The children had not yet woken, the sun not yet risen to cast away the shadow of darkness off the broken home.
Gathering his wits, the man set out to his neighbor with only a small candle to light his path. The older woman had cared many days for his love and his children when the crown of a kingdom so far away it did not know the village's name came calling for soldiers and sent him to unfamiliar lands to shed blood for the quarrels of strangers. The woman again agreed to settle his children beneath her greying wings, a look of pity and goodbyes held in her failing eyes as the man carried his wife through their threshold one last time, now beneath a shroud of black. Once to start a home, and now bound forever more to the gravelands beneath the greying skies of Grimmald Taer.
The journey was far, but he felt no passing of time with his last love held fast and still in his arms. And though he did not register arriving, his feet stopped of their own will upon the boundary all would spend their lives avoiding. With his feet upon the edge of Death-touched soil, the man found he could walk no further. Only an Undertaker may tread those lands and an Undertaker he would become if he crossed—forever shunned and banished from the land of the living until he too found his rest with the dead that would keep him company all the rest of his days.
Instead of watching his son grow strong and his daughters grow fierce, he would be made to sit among the silent stones and accept the dead brought to him. Instead of feasting with a family and friends beside a roaring fire, he would collect what charity the village left him and eat with the god of Death and those He’d already taken. If he takes one more step, there would be no return to the life he’d thought he would live. But if he did not—if he left his wife upon the border with no Undertaker to collect her, he risked her eternal heaven for his mortal life and cursed the next sorry soul to lose a loved one to the same choice.
None would blame him.
But none would forgive him.
The man thought of his children and the aging woman who would only be able to care for them for so long. Of the little coin he left behind, barely enough to feed them through one winter nevertheless several more before they could fend for themselves. He wondered if others in the village would be kind enough to share even as he knew in his heart that they would only have crumbs left to spare.
With feet planted at the edge of death-touched soil and arms laden with the remains of stolen life hidden behind veil and shroud from Death's hungry eyes, the man faced a tangle of fate. The thread he grasped would write his destiny anew and remove all other choices.
His eyes turned away from the gravelands with its stone teeth carved with names and its silent tunnels—looking instead to the horizon. To the blazing sun as it crested above frozen lands and ignited the ice with radiant flames to a grove in the distance. A silent place where Death had not yet walked, but close enough to meet him.
From the wilds, a mangey black dog with patchy fur and old scars began to harry his journey. A beast of stolen comforts and blood warmed meals that knew how to break bones and kill before Death could find it. The man feared the ragged beast scented his wife’s cold blood and shooed it away. But again and again the creature came back.
The man could not risk slaying the hound lest it draw Death’s gaze when he already carried a soul yet unclaimed. Fearful that the scent of more oblivion would draw the Unseen god’s hunger when the man still denied the Unseen god’s due. If the feet of Death found him now and marked new grave lands by His stride, this journey would be for naught. So the man walked with stick and stone and kept the beast at bay.
The hound of scars and old battles continued to follow with a faint wag in its broken tail. At first the man thought the creature clever, its friendliness a ruse to get close and defile that which he loved. But the hound kept its distance and walked beside him without the stolen glances of a thief before the con.
The two continued that way awhile. As the skies lightened to the dull grey of winter morning, the man noticed the limp in the beast's gate, the rasp in it's breath, and the weight of each step slowing the creature the further they walked in this strange mutual silence.
Somewhere along the way, the man found himself slowing his pace so the hound would not fall too far behind. He'd catch himself stopping for rest when he did not need it, so the ragged dog could catch its gasping breath.
The two continued at a pace that grew slower and slower, but the man never let the poor creature slip too far from his side until they walked together, stopped together, rested together. The man did not know where he was going or why, and perhaps the hound did not have a place to go either. But their paths became the same until neither left the other's quiet company.
It was the next day when the man spied the grove he'd seen so very far in the distance, back when he stood at the tangle of fate and refused to choose the thread of destiny. His feet halted at the edge of the grove like it did in the gravelands. Though he knew this was not Death-touched soil, the man found the weight of his love had grown familiar and welcome in his hands. He knew the emptiness that lied ahead. An emptiness that would reach beyond his hands and settle its roots in his soul.
And beyond that, he wondered if he'd failed in the end. Who would lay his love to rest? Who would uncover her face and stand beside her as she met Death. Who would convince the Unseen god to lead her to the heavens where she would begin her journey away from the man? Would he not be bound to the Undertaker's life after all and he’d only wasted precious time in choosing that which was never a choice?
The black dog at the man's side watched with all too knowing golden eyes as the man found himself rooted with indecision. He could move no further. The dog shivered beside the man, its fur too thin and ragged to fend off the cold. Its breath grown shallow and rasping. The man kept it warm the night before, allowing it his lap to hold its weary and scarred head that had known no warmth or kindness since its mother. The hound's head hung low with bowed neck, an old injury having kept its nose from the skies in many months. But its feet, though they ached deeply in the bone, were not bound to the ground.
The golden eyed black dog limped over to the loveliest tree in the grove. Barren now and laden with ice, it did not look like much more than a tangle of gnarled root and dead branches. But the hound had seen it in bloom with such wonderful petals the spring before—petals that carried such a scent it had never known. With its head now permanently low to the ground, the ragged dog breathed in the soil and swore it could still smell them. Its aching feet bowed beneath the weight of its tired bones and settled the creature to the cold ground where it closed its eyes and breathed in that phantom scent.
When the black dog opened its eyes again, the scent was overpowering.
Little pink petals floated through spring winds in colorful streams that danced over the snow. Vibrant green grasses pierced through the icy grounds. And overhead the gnarled tree of tangled branches bloomed wildly through ice covered boughs. Though the hound knew it was winter still, it scented and saw spring as though overlayed atop the cold world that had abandoned it.
The hound lifted its nose to the lowest branches with a strong neck, raised itself from the cold ground with renewed youthful legs. The haze of its scarred eye cleared and the patches in its fur grew thick. The endless pain in its belly drifted away like a dream and the hound smiled. It ran faster than the flying birds through falling petals and swaying grasses, as fast as it had ran in the days when it was a young pup still chasing after its siblings in the warm days of summer.
The man watched the hound with tears in his eyes.
The beautiful black dog danced without pain and burden, chasing phantom sights through snow covered grounds where it left no tracks. Beneath the tangled knots of a gnarled tree, the curled form rested silent and still. Finally free.
The black dog panted with glee as it looked back at the man with bright eyes. Pawing at the ground and bouncing, it barked for him.
No. Not for him.
A gossamer woman stood before the man, her form thin as silk against the cold winter's grove. She stood with her back to him, looking beyond to the black dog. He knew the gentle slope of those shoulders, the curve of her waist, the set of golden hair against the nape of her neck. And she stood in a way that told him she had the whole world in front of her.
The black dog barked happily, its tail wagging with such ferocious joy it could not be contained. Paws tapping at the ground, tail whipping, and body dancing as the man had never seen before. Though he could not see her face, the man knew his love was smiling. The black dog sprinted for her, dancing around his love as she took up the hound's joy in her own heart. The man swore he could feel the warmth of a spring sun breaking through the frozen winter.
Though his arms were still heavy with the weight of a love lost, his heart found wings and he watched with glistening eyes as the black dog and his love danced deeper into the grove until they faded with the wind and the color and warmth into the mists of winter.
The man did not feel sorrow as he laid his wife at the edge of the grove, nor anger when he found her gone the next day with footprints leading deeper into the wilds. The form of the black dog curled among the roots never did rot or become bone, no matter the years that passed.
A new marker was placed upon the border, and it is said that all who brought their fallen to rest at the edge of the grove were met by a black dog with bright golden eyes and a warm smile. That loved ones gone silent walked again, led by that black dog to places the living cannot go.
And so, in Grimmald Taer and lands beyond, the practice of laying a black dog to rest in new gravelands became practice over banishing the living to the Undertaker's eternal solitude. Those who give their loved ones rest in these quiet places are greeted with life, the fear of Death held back by the black dogs who lead the souls through the stars.
Black dogs all over became revered and well cared for in many societies, given lives full of love, comfort, and safety that they may only know joy in life and in their service beyond death. In time these black dogs became known as Grimm and it's also likely that the word 'cairn' originated from 'Taer', the word having shifted and changed in the sands of time.
End.
Thank you for journeying with me into this world I found while writing and dreaming of a place of extremes and magic. I hope you’ll come along with me again when I next find a tale to share.
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