The Islands of the Blessed

by Nancy Farmer

  Jack was shocked, and both the Shoney and Shair Shair looked extremely upset. This had to be one of the Dragon Tongue scoldings that made Northman kings cower in fear. He was afraid that the draugr would revert to her giant, menacing shape, but she did nothing of the kind. If anything, she became smaller.

  You said you were going to ring the bell. I waited ever so long, the draugr said in a sulky voice. You shouldn’t promise things if you aren’t going to do them.

  “I know. I apologize. Events happened beyond my control,” said the Bard.

  The bell did ring and I followed it through the earth. After a while I came out into a sty that smelled worse than a rotting whale. A man was there.

  “Mrs. Tanner’s brother,” cried Thorgil. “She must have found her way to his hut.”

  I asked him where Severus was, but he wouldn’t answer. He cowered before me. I breathed into his face and went back into the earth.

  “Would that … kill him?” faltered Jack, thinking it was no great loss if it had.

  “Worse,” the Bard groaned. “Draugr breath contains flying venom. She has infected him with a fatal illness, but it doesn’t end there. Whoever comes in contact with him will get sick too.”

  “I hunted for Mrs. Tanner’s brother when I was looking for the bell’s clapper,” said Thorgil. “His house had caught fire in the night and had burned to ashes. No one had seen him since. I think it likely he died before he could spread the disease.”

  “Dear Freya, I hope that’s true,” said the Bard.

  The sky above showed the faintest glimmer of light. It was no longer dead black, but a deep gray. On land such a change would have meant birdsong and a breeze. Here nothing heralded the coming of dawn. The air was as still and stagnant as before.

  “You must enter the tomb before the sun rises, Shellia,” the Bard said gently. “Do not be afraid. Remember the bright seas of your youth and the sound of waves and the birds calling your name. You will find that joy again, but only if you let go of this world.”

  We love you, daughter, said the Shoney and Shair Shair. They held out their arms but did not dare touch the darkness their child had become.

  No! I won’t go. Why should I? cried the draugr. Deep was my love. Bitter was my fate. I will return to the village and spread such death that it will be talked of for a millennium.

  “I command you by root, by stone, by sea to enter that tomb!” roared the Bard, raising his staff. The draugr laughed and began to drift away.

  You can’t stop me! she jeered.

  The old man snatched up Fair Lamenting and rang it with such force that Shellia was dragged back against her will. “Ha! Got your attention that time. I will stop you,” said the Bard. He rang the bell again, softly. Jack thought it was like the first voice he had ever heard—his mother? His grandmother? The midwife who had taken him into her arms on the night of his birth? Whoever it was, the voice was infinitely gentle and compelling. He couldn’t think of turning away from such love.

  I am still owed life for life, the draugr said with a sigh.

  “You shall have it.” The Bard walked toward the tomb, carrying Fair Lamenting, and the draugr followed. She was almost visible, no longer a dark stain against the night, but a young woman.

  “You can’t go in there!” Jack cried as he realized what was happening.

  The old man turned and smiled. “Remember the story of Beowulf, lad. He knew he would die when he fought the dragon. Yet the lives of his people depended on it and he embraced his fate gladly. One old man is a small price to pay to keep plague from our land.”

  “A death worthy of Valhalla,” murmured Thorgil.

  “Don’t you start with your Northman stupidity,” Jack shouted at her. “The draugr doesn’t deserve mercy, sir. She’s a selfish brat. You said so yourself. I won’t let you go in there.”

  The Bard rang Fair Lamenting again. The same gentle, compelling voice held Jack back.

  “I won’t let you,” the boy said weakly.

  “I’m proud of you, lad. Never forget that, but you cannot go against fate,” the old man said. “Remember your promise, Shoney. These two are allowed to leave Notland.”

  I remember, said the Shoney.

  “Thorgil, I lay upon you this oath: Save my daughter. I don’t need to ask Jack because he’ll do it anyway.”

  “I give my oath,” said the shield maiden, deathly pale.

  “Now I must go before dawn breaks in the outer world. Come, Shellia. We have much to do.” The old man rang the bell one last time and disappeared into the depths of the tomb. The young mermaid followed him obediently.

  At once the Shoney commanded fin men to restrain Jack and Thorgil and to seal the mouth of the tomb.

  “You can’t do this!” shouted Jack, struggling against the fin men. “The Bard doesn’t deserve to die! The councils of the nine worlds will hold you responsible!”

  They will not hold me responsible. Dragon Tongue went willingly, said the Shoney.

  “Shair Shair, you know this is wrong,” the boy pleaded.

  Great was her love. Bitter was her fate. She could not rest until life was given for life, said the sea hag, and Jack saw again the mindless face of the creature feeding at the banquet. She wasn’t remotely human. She had no more regard for the Bard’s fate than she had for a fish she was planning to eat.

  By now the tomb was completely sealed, and the procession began to move away. Both Jack and Thorgil fought their captors, but it did them no good. They were carried back to the palace courtyard, bound with ropes, and deposited in the coracle. Whush presented himself for orders.

  Take them away. You know where, said the Shoney. There was nothing they could do to stop him. The coracle sailed off, and Whush pushed them along with a pole. They came to the wall of fog and broke through to the open sea, with the wind blowing and cold spray lashing over the side of the boat. Somewhere they crossed the outer border of Notland, but Jack couldn’t be sure when. He looked for Skakki’s ship. The ocean was a vast wilderness of gray waves with not an island, a bird, or a boat anywhere on it.

  Whush poled along steadily with his gray hat pulled down over his gray face. His robe billowed out behind him like a sheet of rain.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  GRIM’S ISLAND

  “The Bard couldn’t give up that easily,” said Jack. “He must have a trick up his sleeve.” They had been sailing for what seemed like hours. The sun had climbed to zenith, bringing welcome warmth, and now was descending to the west. Clouds were beginning to gather.

  “His fame will never die,” Thorgil said dully.

  “If you say that one more time, I’m going to kick you over the side.”

  “We shouldn’t fight among ourselves,” she replied, and Jack was immediately repentant.

  “I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to say.”

  “And if you tried, you’d find that I can kick harder than you can,” the shield maiden said.

  They were lying in the bottom of the coracle, and now Jack noticed that the quality of the wave sounds had changed. He struggled up, to look over the side. They were approaching land. It was a rocky, uninviting place with a tall mountain in the center. The only greenery was a forest of trees at the top of this mountain; the rest of the island was barren. Whush was poling toward it at great speed, and presently Jack felt the bottom of the coracle scrape over sand.

  “What’s happening? Are we going to be thrown into the giant eel pit?” cried Thorgil.

  Jack heard a clicking sound in his head, which meant that Whush was laughing. Much as I hate to deprive our eels of a treat, the Shoney has decreed otherwise. Pity. He is becoming sentimental in his old age.

  “The Shoney gave his word that we would be allowed to leave Notland,” said Jack, realizing that a fin man’s word didn’t mean very much.

  So he did and here you are.

  “Where’s here?” demanded Jack.

  I need not tell you, except that it gives me pleasure to do so. Whush
’s V-shaped mouth tilted up into a smile. This is Grim’s Island, where our princess met her death. It seems fitting that you should be abandoned here. The fin man hoisted Jack and Thorgil under one arm and carried them onto the beach. He dropped them onto the sand and continued on to the base of the mountain. You won’t be climbing that anytime soon, he said with satisfaction when he returned. He cut their bonds, but before they were able to wriggle free, he was pushing off in the coracle.

  “Wait! That’s our boat!” shouted Thorgil. “How do you expect us to leave?”

  Whush paused, well out of reach. Swim, I suppose. One word of advice: I’d find shelter quickly, because the weather is about to turn bad. It does that often here. And he sped off, poling vigorously, until he was lost among the tossing waves.

  “It’s so cold! What do you remember about Grim’s Island?” Thorgil said.

  “It’s dark all winter, and in summer it’s either shrouded in fog or lashed by storms,” said Jack. “Let’s see, the mermaid built Father Severus a hut shaped like a giant sea snail. We should look for that.”

  They were both extremely stiff from being tied up, and they hadn’t had anything to eat since the day before. “I could look for shellfish,” Thorgil offered.

  “Water and shelter are more important. Look at that sky!” Jack’s courage almost failed him when he saw the storm rapidly approaching from the north. They ran along the beach, and large drops of freezing rain began to pelt down. Soon it was difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. Jack shouted when he tripped over a lump of rock and fell onto the sand.

  “It’s a doorway!” yelled Thorgil over the rising wind. “I think it’s that snail house.” They wriggled into the entrance and found that the inside chamber was spacious. The walls were as smooth as glass and the floor was of fine sand that was surprisingly dry. They burrowed into it for warmth. After a while they took turns crawling to the door and holding their hands out to gather rain to drink.

  “It’s already dark,” said Thorgil as she nestled into the sand again.

  “Then we should sleep,” Jack said.

  “Shouldn’t we, you know, write a praise-poem for the Bard? Like we did when Olaf died.”

  “The Bard isn’t dead!” Jack didn’t want to think about it.

  “Not yet,” said the shield maiden with relentless honesty, “but he soon will be, sealed into that tomb.”

  “Why don’t you shut up and leave me alone!” the boy shouted. “It’s one of those things you don’t talk about in the dark. Go find some other barrow to haunt if you can’t keep quiet.” Afterward he felt ashamed of himself, but not enough to apologize. He didn’t want to open a discussion. He didn’t want to think. Unfortunately, he couldn’t sleep either. He kept waking up all night, and all the periods of sleep were full of dreams he didn’t want to remember.

  The morning was cold and clear. They trudged around the island and found a stream flowing out of the mountain. “At least we won’t die of thirst,” said Thorgil.

  “Who cares?” said Jack. “We’ll either starve or die of cold. It only prolongs the misery.”

  “You’re the one who’s always telling me to cheer up.”

  “You’re the one who has something to be cheerful about. You’ve got the rune of protection. I have nothing to remember the Bard with,” said Jack.

  “Yes, you do,” said Thorgil. “You have his lore. He could have chosen anyone in the world to be his apprentice, but he chose you. He said he was very proud of you.”

  “What good was that?” the boy cried. “I couldn’t save him from—from—” Jack walked off before he could break down, and Thorgil wisely left him alone. Instead, she waded out to some rocks to gather winkles. Her feet were blue with cold by the time she got back, and she had to jump up and down to get the feeling back. She heaped up a stack of driftwood. Jack was sitting on a rock, looking out to sea.

  “Could you call up fire?” Thorgil asked him.

  Jack tried, but his mind wouldn’t settle.

  “Never mind,” the shield maiden said. “Winkles are good raw. Olaf used to eat them all the time. You dig them out with your fingernail, see?” She had found sea tangle and dulse, two kinds of seaweed, and rinsed them in the little stream to get the sand off. Little by little she induced Jack to eat, and gradually he felt better. But only slightly.

  “I wish we could climb that mountain,” said Thorgil, looking speculatively at the thick grove of trees at the top. “I’m sure there’s food up there.”

  “Father Severus tried,” Jack said. “He couldn’t even get up there when he was trying to escape from—” His throat closed up and he couldn’t say more.

  “Well, I’m going back for the ropes Whush left. They might come in handy.” The shield maiden walked off along the beach, and after a while, reluctantly, Jack followed her. She had found the ropes and something else they hadn’t noticed in the rush to find shelter the day before. Next to the mountain, where Whush had walked the day before, was a small chest about a hand-span wide and a hand-span deep. It was made of the same dark wood as the chairs in the Shoney’s audience chamber. Like them, it was inlaid with ivory.

  Thorgil opened it and gasped. It was filled with jewels. Red, blue, yellow, green, and clear as ice, they sparkled in the sunlight. And among them were pearls as large as hazelnuts. “The Shoney must have sent them,” she said. “But why, if he means us to perish?”

  “He liked you,” said Jack. “You were envious of his wealth-hoard and that made him feel good. And you told him stories about pillaging. I guess he thought you’d like to feast your eyes on a wealth-hoard of your own before you died. He can always send Whush back later to collect it.” Jack spoke bitterly, wanting in a perverse way to destroy Thorgil’s pleasure. How dare she be happy when the Bard was dead. If he was dead, the boy amended. He wasn’t ready to believe it.

  But Thorgil was too delighted to care. “This is what Beowulf asked for after he slew the dragon. I remember the words from the saga: ‘Run quickly, dear nephew. Despoil the dragon and bring me a banquet of jewels to feast my hungry eyes.’ He sure knew how to die!”

  “You’re both crazy,” said Jack, turning away. Then he noticed the sky. It was full of the kind of clouds the Northmen called sky silk, and he remembered Rune’s words. When you have the wind at your back and sky silk moves to the right, it means a storm is coming. These were certainly moving to the right. And swiftly. Even as he watched, the clouds thickened to a milky haze.

  “Uh-oh,” said Thorgil, shading her eyes.

  “It’s a storm, isn’t it?”

  “Look at the gulls. They’re fleeing before it,” she said. The seabirds were coming in from the sea. They screamed to one another as they circled distractedly before landing in the forest at the top of the mountain.

  Jack remembered something about the smell of the air before a really big storm, something about metal. He could smell it now. The clouds had already changed from milky white to gray.

  “We have to get to higher ground,” Thorgil said urgently. “Storms like this produce giant waves.”

  “What about staying in the snail house?” said Jack, beginning to catch her alarm.

  “If you want to drown. It’s too close to the sea. Hurry!” Thorgil handed the rope to Jack, hefted the chest, and ran for the mountain.

  They looked for a way up, but all of the apparent paths ended only a few feet above the beach. By now the sky had deepened to an ominous slate blue, and wind began to buffet them, threatening to knock them over. “Drop that cursed chest!” Jack shouted. For Thorgil, always somewhat clumsy because of her paralyzed hand, was dangerously so with the heavy box under one arm.

  “Don’t touch it!” she screamed when he tried to yank it away. They both slid down the boulder they were attempting to scale and into a deep crevice in the side of the mountain.

  “Put that down, or you won’t be able to climb up!” Jack ordered.

  “It doesn’t matter. We can’t get out anyway,” said Thorgil,
panting and hanging on to the chest.

  Jack looked up. It was true. They had fallen down much farther than he had realized, and the rock was perfectly sheer. The wind howled over the top, and waves had begun to crash so violently that the spray reached them even where they were trapped.

  “I guess this is it,” said Thorgil. “You can tell the sea enters here because of the barnacles. It’s certainly going to be flooded during this storm.” A wave hit a rock and the ground trembled.

  It was growing dark although it was only midday. The sky—and Jack could see only a small slice of it—was boiling with evil-looking clouds. The speed at which the weather had changed was astounding, and the far end of the crevice was so deep in shadow, it might as well have been night. He edged toward it, hoping to find a way up. He put out his hand to feel the rock and found—nothing at all.

  It wasn’t a shadow after all. It was the mouth of a cave.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  ST. COLUMBA’s CAVE

  “A cave? Let’s go inside,” said Thorgil.

  Jack had an instinctive dislike of dark holes in the ground. So far he hadn’t found anything good in them. “What about knuckers?” he said, remembering the spiderlike creature that had almost trapped him and Pega.

  Thorgil paused. She had met them too. A wave shook the ground and cold water splashed over them. “If we stay here, we’ll surely drown. We don’t know that there are knuckers inside.”

  “There could also be wyverns, hippogriffs, manticores, basilisks, and krakens,” said Jack, naming a few of the things they might find in dark tunnels. He wasn’t sure what all of them were. More water sprayed over their heads.

  “Those things eat you quickly,” pointed out Thorgil, who seemed to have more information. “That’s not so bad. Knuckers kind of suck at you for a long time.”

  “Wonderful,” said Jack. They both stared at the dark opening, unwilling to move. “The Bard once said …” Jack swallowed and forced himself to go on. “The Bard once said that caves with no air movement are the most dangerous. This one has a breeze.” He could feel a steady flow of warmer air blowing in his face.