Runemarks

by Joanne Harris

  Now, Maddy’s folk believed in a universe of Nine Worlds.

  Above them was the Firmament, the Sky City of Perfect Order.

  Beneath them was the Fundament, or World Below, which led to the three lands of Death, Dream, and Damnation, which gave way to World Beyond, the Pan-daemonium, the home of all Chaos and all things profane.

  And between them, so Maddy was taught, lay the Middle Worlds: Inland, Outland, and the One Sea, with Malbry and the valley of the Strond right at the center, like a bull’s-eye on a shooting target. From which you might have concluded that the folk of Malbry had no small opinion of themselves.

  But now Maddy learned of a world beyond the map’s edge, a world of many parts and contradictions, a world in which Nat Parson or Adam Scattergood, for instance, might be driven to madness by as small a thing as a glimpse of ocean or an unfamiliar star.

  In such a world, Maddy understood, one man’s religion might be another’s heresy, magic and science might overlap, houses might be built on rivers or underground or high in the air; even the Laws of the Order at World’s End, which she had always assumed were universal, might warp and bend to suit the customs of this new, expanded world.

  Of course only a child or an idiot believed that World’s End actually was the end of the world. There were other lands, everyone knew that. Once there had even been trade with these lands—trade, and sometimes even war. But it was widely held that these Outlands had suffered so badly from Tribulation that their folk had long since fallen into savagery, and no one—no one civilized—went there anymore.

  But, of course, One-Eye had. Beyond the One Sea, or so he said, there were men and women as brown as peat, with hair curled tight as bramble-crisp, and these people had never known Tribulation or read the Good Book, but instead worshiped gods of their own—wild brown gods with animal heads—and performed their own kind of magic, and all this was to them every bit as respectable and as everyday as Nat Parson’s Sunday sermons on the far side of the Middle World.

  “Nat Parson says magic’s the devil’s work,” said Maddy.

  “But I daresay he’d turn a blind eye if it suited him?”

  Maddy nodded, hardly daring to smile.

  “Understand, Maddy, that Good and Evil are not as firmly rooted as your churchman would have you believe. The Good Book preaches Order above all things; therefore Order is good. Glam works from Chaos; therefore magic is the devil’s work. But a tool is only as good or bad as the one working it. And what is good today may be evil again tomorrow.”

  Maddy frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Listen,” said the Outlander. “Since the world began—and it has begun many times, and many times ended, and been remade—the laws of Order and Chaos have opposed each other, advancing and retreating in turn across the Nine Worlds, to contain or disrupt according to their nature. Good and Evil have nothing to do with it. Everything lives—and dies—according to the laws of Order and Chaos, the twin forces that even gods cannot hope to withstand.”

  He looked at Maddy, who was still frowning. She was very young for this lesson, he thought, and yet it was essential that she should learn it now. Even next year might be too late—the Order was already spreading its wings, sending more and more Examiners out of World’s End…

  He swallowed his impatience and started again. “Here’s a tale of the Æsir that will show you my drift. Their general was called Odin Allfather. You may have heard his name, I daresay.”

  She nodded. “He of the spear and the eight-legged horse.”

  “Aye. Well, he was among those who remade the world in the early days, at the dawn of the Elder Age. And he brought together all his warriors—Thor and Týr and the rest—to build a great stronghold to push back the Chaos that would have overwhelmed the new world before it was even completed. Its name was Asgard, the Sky Citadel, and it became the First World of those Elder Days.”

  Maddy nodded. She knew the tale, though the Good Book claimed it was the Nameless that had built the Sky Citadel and that the Seer-folk had won it by trickery.

  One-Eye went on. “But the enemy was strong, and many had skills that the Æsir did not possess. And so Odin took a risk. He sought out a son of Chaos and befriended him for the sake of his skills, and took him into Asgard as his brother. You’ll know of him, I guess. They called him the Trickster.”

  Again Maddy nodded.

  “Loki was his name, wildfire his nature. There are many tales about him. Some show him in an evil light. Some said that Odin was wrong to take him in. But—for a time, at least—Loki served the Æsir well. He was crooked, but he was useful; charm comes easily to the children of Chaos, and it was his charm and his cunning that kept him close at Odin’s side. And though in the end his nature grew too strong and he had to be subdued, it was partly because of Loki that the Æsir survived for as long as they did. Perhaps it was their fault for not keeping a closer watch on him. In any case, fire burns; that’s its nature, and you can’t expect to change that. You can use it to cook your meat or to burn down your neighbor’s house. And is the fire you use for cooking any different from the one you use for burning? And does that mean you should eat your supper raw?”

  Maddy shook her head, still puzzled. “So what you’re saying is…I shouldn’t play with fire,” she said at last.

  “Of course you should,” said One-Eye gently. “But don’t be surprised if the fire plays back.”

  At last came the day of One-Eye’s departure. He spent most of it trying to convince Maddy that she could not go with him.

  “You’re barely seven years old, for gods’ sakes. What would I do with you on the Roads?”

  “I’d work,” said Maddy. “You know I can. I’m not afraid. I know lots of things.”

  “Oh, aye? Three cantrips and a couple of runes? That’ll get you a long way in World’s—” He broke off suddenly and began to tug at one of the straps that bound his pack.

  But Maddy was no simpleton. “World’s End?” she said, her eyes widening. “You’re going to World’s End?”

  One-Eye said nothing.

  “Oh, please let me come,” Maddy begged. “I’d help you, I’d carry your stuff, I’d not cause you any trouble—”

  “No?” He laughed. “Last time I heard, kidnapping was still a crime.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t thought of that. If she disappeared, there would be posses after them from Fettlefields to the Hindarfell and One-Eye put in the roundhouse or hanged…

  “But you’ll forget me,” Maddy said. “I’ll never, ever see you again.”

  One-Eye smiled. “I’ll be back next year.”

  But Maddy would not look at him and stared at the ground and would not speak. One-Eye waited, wryly amused. Still Maddy did not look up, but there came a single small, fierce sniff from beneath the mat of hair.

  “Maddy, listen,” he told her gently. “If you really want to help me, there’s a way you can. I need a pair of eyes and ears; I need that much more than I need company on the Roads.”

  Maddy looked up. “Eyes and ears?”

  One-Eye pointed at the Hill, where the dim outline of the Red Horse glowed like banked embers from its rounded flanks. “You go there a lot, don’t you?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “A treasure mound?” suggested Maddy, thinking of the tales of gold under the Hill.

  “Something far more important than that. It’s a crossroads into World Below, with roads leading down as far as Hel’s kingdom. Perhaps even as far as the river Dream, pouring its waters into the Strond—”

  “So there’s no treasure?” said Maddy, disappointed.

  “Treasure?” He laughed. “Aye, if you like. A treasure lost since the Elder Age. That’s why the goblins are here in such number. That’s why it carries such a charge. You can feel it, Maddy, can’t you?” he said. “It’s like living under a vulcano.”

  “What’s a vulcano?”

  “Never mind. Just watch it
, Maddy. Just look out for anything strange. That Horse is only half asleep, and if it wakes up—”

  “I wish I could wake it,” said Maddy. “Don’t you?”

  One-Eye smiled and shook his head. It was a strange smile, at the same time cynical and rather sad. He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I do. That’s not a road I’d care to tread, not for all of Otter’s Ransom. Though there may come a time when I have no choice.”

  “But the treasure?” she said. “You could be rich—”

  “Maddy,” he sighed. “I could be dead.”

  “But surely—”

  “There are far worse things than goblins down there, and treasures rarely sleep alone.”

  “So?” she said. “I’m not afraid.”

  “I daresay you’re not,” said One-Eye in a dry voice. “But listen, Maddy. You’re seven years old. The Hill—and whatever lies underneath it—has been waiting for a long time. I’m sure it can wait a little longer.”

  “How much longer?”

  One-Eye laughed.

  “Next year?”

  “We’ll see. Learn your lessons, watch the Hill, and look out for me by Harvestmonth.”

  “Swear you’ll be back?”

  “On Odin’s name.”

  “And on yours?”

  He nodded. “Aye, girl. That too.”

  After that, the Outlander had returned to Malbry once a year—never before Beltane or later than Maddy’s birthday at the end of Harvestmonth—trading fabrics, salt, skins, sugar, salves, and news. His arrival was the high point of Maddy’s year; his departure, the beginning of a long darkness.

  Every time he asked her the same question.

  “What’s new in Malbry?”

  And every time she gave him the same accounts of the goblins and their mischief-making: of larders raided, cellars emptied, sheep stolen, milk soured. And every time he said: “Nothing more?” and when Maddy assured him that was all, he seemed to relax, as if some great burden had been lifted temporarily from his shoulders.

  And, of course, at each visit he taught her new skills.

  First she learned to read and write. She learned poems and songs and foreign tongues; medicines and plant lore and kennings and stories. She learned histories and folktales and sayings and legends; she studied maps and rivers, mountains and valleys, stones and clouds, and charts of the sky.

  Most importantly, she learned the runes. Their names, their values, their fingerings. How to carve them into fortune stones, to be scattered and read for a glimpse of the future, or bind them like stalks into a corn dolly; how to fashion them into an ash stick; how to whisper their verses into a cantrip, to skim them like jump stones, throw them like firecrackers, or cast their shadows with her fingers.

  She learned to use Ár, to ensure a good harvest—

  —and Týr, to make a hunting spear find its mark—

  —and Logr, to find water underground.

  By the time she was ten years old, she knew all sixteen runes of the Elder Script, various bastard runes from foreign parts, and several hundred assorted kennings and cantrips. She knew that One-Eye traveled under the sign of Raedo, the Journeyman—though his rune was reversed and therefore unlucky, which meant that he had undergone many trials and misfortunes along the way.

  Maddy’s own runemark was neither broken nor reversed. But according to One-Eye, it was a bastard rune, not a rune of the Elder Script, which made it unpredictable. Bastard runes were tricky, he said. Some worked, but not well. Some worked not at all. And some tended to slip out of alignment, to tipple themselves in small, sly ways, to warp, like arrows that have been left in the rain and will rarely, if ever, hit straight.

  Still, he said, to have any runemark at all was a gift. A rune of the Elder Script, unreversed and unbroken, would be too much for anyone to hope for. The gods had wielded such powers once. Now folk did what they could with what was left; that was all.

  But bastard or not, Maddy’s runemark was strong. She quickly surpassed her old friend, for his glam was weak and soon exhausted. Her aim was as good as his, if not better. And she was a fast learner. She learned hug-rúnar, mindrunes, and rísta-rúnar, carven runes, and sig-rúnar, runes of victory. She learned runes that One-Eye himself could not work, new runes and bastard runes with no names and no verses, and still, he found, she wanted more.

  So he told her tales from under the Hill and of the serpent that lives at Yggdrasil’s Root, eating away at the foundations of the world. He told her tales of standing stones, and of lost skerries, and of enchanted circles, of the Underworld and Netherworld and the lands of Dream and Chaos beyond. He told her tales of Half-Born Hel, and of Jormungand, the World Serpent, and of Surt the Destroyer, the Lord of Chaos, and of the Ice People and of the Tunnel Folk and of the Vanir and of Mimir the Wise.

  But her favorite tales were those of the Æsir and the Vanir. She never tired of hearing these, and in the long, lonely months between One-Eye’s visits, the heroes of those stories became Maddy’s friends. Thor the Thunderer with his magic hammer; Idun the Healer and her apples of youth; Odin, the Allfather; Balder the Fair; Týr the Warrior; falcon-cloaked Freyja; Heimdall Hawk-Eye; Skadi the Huntress; Njörd the Man of the Sea; and Loki the Trickster, who on different occasions had brought about both the deliverance and the dissolution of the old gods. She applauded their victories, wept for their defeat, and, unnatural though it might be, felt more kinship with those long-vanished Seer-folk than she had ever felt for Jed Smith or Mae. And as the years passed, she longed ever more for the company of her own kind.

  “There must be more of us somewhere,” she said. “People like us, Fieries”—family, she thought—“if only we could find them, then maybe, perhaps…”

  In that, however, she was disappointed. In seven years she had never so much as glimpsed another of their kind. There were goblins, of course, and the occasional cat or rabbit born with a ruinmark and quickly dispatched.

  But as for people like themselves…They were rare, he told her when she asked, and most of them had no real powers to speak of anyway. A glimmer, if they were lucky. Enough to earn them a dangerous living.

  And if they were unlucky? In World’s End, where Order had reigned for a hundred years, a runemark, even a broken one, usually led to an arrest—and after that an Examination, and then, more often than not, a hanging (or Cleansing, as they preferred to call them in those parts).

  Best not to think of it, One-Eye said, and reluctantly Maddy took his advice, learning her lessons, retelling her tales, waiting patiently for his yearly visits, and trying hard not to dream of what could never be.

  This year, for the first time, he was late. Maddy’s fourteenth birthday was two weeks gone, the Harvest Moon had worn to a sliver, and she had begun to feel anxious that perhaps this time her old friend would not make it back.

  The previous year she had seen changes in One-Eye: a new restlessness, a new impatience. He had grown leaner over that past twelvemonth, drank more than was good for him, and for the first time she’d seen that his dark gray hair was touched with white. His yearly journeys to World’s End were taking their toll, and after seven such reckless pilgrimages, who knew when the net might fall?

  The runes had given her little by way of reassurance.

  Maddy had her own set of fortune stones, made from river pebbles from the Strond, each painted with a different rune. Casting them upon the ground and studying the patterns into which they fell, she discovered, was sometimes a means of divining the future—though One-Eye had warned her that runes are not always simple to read or futures always set in stone.

  Even so, a combination of Raedo, the Journeyman—

  —with Thuris, Thor’s rune, and Naudr, the Binder, had filled her with misgivings.

  One-Eye’s runemark. A thorny path? And the third rune—the Binder, the rune of constraint. Was he a prisoner somewhere? Or could that final rune be Death?

  And so when Mrs. Scattergood had
said he was there—there at last, nearly two weeks late—a great relief and a greater joy had swept her up, and now she ran toward Red Horse Hill, where she knew he would be waiting for her as he always waited for her, every year—as she hoped he would every year, forever.

  5

  But Maddy had reckoned without Adam Scattergood. The landlady’s son rarely troubled her when she was working—it was dark in the cellar, and the thought of what she might be doing there unsettled him—but he sometimes lurked around the tap, awaiting an opportunity to comment or to jeer. He had pricked up his ears at the commotion in the kitchen—wisely keeping his distance from any danger of work to be done—but when he saw Maddy leaving through the kitchen door, his eyes gleamed and he determined to investigate.

  Adam was two years older than Maddy, somewhat taller, with limp brown hair and a discontented mouth. Bored, sulky, and doted upon by his mother, already a parson’s prentice and a favorite of the bishop, he was half feared and half envied by the other children, and he was always causing mischief. Maddy thought he was worse than the goblins, because at least the goblins were funny as well as being annoying, whereas Adam’s tricks were only ugly and stupid.

  He tied firecrackers to dogs’ tails, swung on new saplings to make them break, taunted beggars, stole washing from clotheslines and trampled it in the mud—although he was careful to ensure that someone else always got the blame. In short, Adam was a sneak and a spoiler, and seeing Maddy heading for the Hill, he wondered what business she might have there and made up his mind to spoil that too.