Halla is born into the world of dragons and Odin and unicorns and trolls. In the best tradition, her cruel stepmother and indifferent father plan to be rid of her. Halla’s nurse has the gift of changing into animals, and seeing the infant’s danger, becomes a bear and takes young Halla into the woods to live with her. The bears are both rough and kind, but Halla is something of a problem to them because she does not hibernate no matter how she tries to be like the other bears. But help is at hand. A dragon comes huffing and puffing on creaking wings into Halla Bearsbairn’s life. In her new reincarnation, she is Halla Heroesbane.

The dragon segment of the story is a particularly rich one, full of brilliant fire imagery and soaring rides up into the black night sky, trailing streamers of flame, for the delight of young Halla. The dragons do their very best to educate Halla. Once she has undergone the ritual of fireproofing, they teach her maths and geometry and the history of the world, and a great love of dragon treasure. Their history is thick with greedy and abominable heroes who murder dragons for their treasure and do horrible things to captured maidens, an idea confirmed by the outrageous Steinvor, a passing Valkyrie who cares not that the hero slung across her saddle is leaking his brains out as he never used them much anyway. Halla is happy with the dragons and awaits the arrival of her own wings and claws and firy breath with eagerness. Alas, she can never be a dragon. She may love them and admire them, and share their amazing lives, but she cannot be one as she is human. Huggi the dragon has to console her for this lack with much treasure and dressing up.

It isn’t long before tragedy strikes and the heroes attack. Uggi’s death is heartbreaking and heroic; the heroes’ victory shabby and mean and violent. Halla has a very narrow escape from a particulary unpleasant hero and is visited at last by All-Father who gives her wise counsel to travel light and forget about treasure.

Her journey is not merely a geographical one: this is a story full of magic, and the journey takes place in dragon time which is not measured in the same way as human time. As Halla grows, the world of dragons and giants is pushed back into the hinterlands by the arrival of the new religion of the white Christ and the establishment of the great Christian city of Byzantium. By this time, Halla has many powers – she can talk to the animals and receive help form them, because she despises nothing of the animal kingdom, not even the rats who are great friends of hers. Amongst the small group of men of faith she befriends, she is now Halla Godsgift because of her wisdom and the help she affords them in a quest to see the Emperor. She finds corruption and more evidence of the wickedness of men, even in the men of God, and of their narrow mindedness. To some she is Godsgift, to others a witch, and she is constantly under pressure to conform to their idea of what she ought to be, and at one point the only thing which will satisfy God’s servants is if she enters a nunnery to prove her goodness, or perhaps marries and settles down at home looking after an aspiring hero. These options appal her – it will not be possible to travel light among these people - when she considers the life she had with the bears and dragons, and the free society of horses which she loves.

Halla has choices to make, and she makes the one which will please aspiring young heroines.

The characters in this book are strongly drawn, and original. Even the dragons are convincing. There is a great sense of space in the story – the flights through the sky on a dragon’s back, the vistas below of rivers and towns, the great surging river which flows to Byzantium. It is only in the world of men that a claustrophobic narrowness confines Halla and bruises her spirit. She is a creature of the old order and has no place in the new . You’ll be pleased to know she escapes.

Marion Arnott lives in Paisley, Scotland. She was winner of the Phillip Good Memorial Prize For Women's Fiction 1998, CWA Short Dagger 2001 and shortlisted for CWA Short Dagger 2002. Work has appeared in Scottish Child, West Coast, Solander Magazine, Peninsula , QWF, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Books Ireland, Northwords, Chapman, Crimewave, and Datlow and Winding's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 15. Her short story collection 'Sleepwalkers,' was published in August, 2003 by Elastic Press. To visit Marion's Showcase on this website, click here