Travel Light

by Naomi Mitchison

  “But the bad luck was lifted from you both,” said Halla, “by Tarkan Der—and me.” She had begun to breathe again, to know that at least she had not melted away like a reflection from the surface of the water. She must speak, must hear herself speaking. She felt the bones of Tarkan Der’s ankle under her hand and her own ankle still aching. Surely they were made of the same flesh and blood!

  “If I could believe that was so—” said Modolf slowly.

  “I have never known this one to tell lies,” said Tarkan Der, looking straight ahead of him and thinking out the words in this speech which was not too easy for him. He added: “And she would know.”

  “It was a strange thing,” Modolf said, “that the curse held for so long, and all for the death of one small child. Worse things have been done than that. Yes, much worse. Yet perhaps the death of the very innocent always carries a curse.”

  “Perhaps she did not die,” said Halla, “perhaps her nurse turned into a bear and carried her away into the forest. Perhaps she was brought up by bears and dragons. Perhaps it was better for her in the end than being a king’s child.”

  “That was never the story,” said Modolf.

  “Forget the story,” said Halla.

  Then the girl Alfeida came running up the hill and back to them. “I have told the men to be cutting rushes all tomorrow,” she said, “I think there are willows enough. We will have the cows in at the sheltered side—I must get new milk-pails, Father, but there is some ash-wood split—and we shall manage well enough. I think the friends who came to our help should be with us all winter. If they can live in so poor a house—knowing it will be better later—” She dropped her eyes and blushed. Her father repeated it. Yes, surely they must stay.

  “I had a thought,” said Tarkan Der, “that I would take service with the Prince of Holmgard.”

  “Take service with me,” said Modolf, “and take whatever else you will.” And now he was looking straight at his daughter.

  “If she says—” said Tarkan Der and leant down towards Halla, knelt beside her, held her a moment close to him: “She is wise.”

  “I think you must stay here,” said Halla.

  “And you?”

  “I am not sure yet, I am not sure,” said Halla with near tears in her voice. “And I do not want to think about it now.”

  Chapter Five

  Travel Light

  The next day the Prince of Holmgard came riding over, looking very fine indeed in this great quilted coat sewn with scale armour, his sword ruby-set scabbard, his bearskin and high boots and spiked helmet. Behind came a hundred men of his paid army, whom he used to keep the peace of Holmgard. They were like enough to Varangians. Heroes, no doubt, many of them, thought Halla, regarding them from the hillock where she sat safely alone, while Modolf and Tarkan Der stood by the stirrup of the prince and told him all that had happened.

  The prince looked favourably at Tarkan Der, asking him from where he had come, and why, and, after he had heard, the prince invited him to join his paid army. But if he cared to wait here in the settlement until spring, that would be acceptable. “For I am certain you will have the best of hospitality here,” the prince said. And then he asked which way the raiders had gone and he spoke to the captain of his hundred bidding him take a half of the men and go hunting the raiders. For the peace of Holmgard must be upheld. If it were not upheld on land, then the next thing might be raiders attacking the trading boats and the caravans, and this must not be, for it was on them and the tolls they paid and the money that was spent by them, that the prosperity of Holmgard rested. And if any prince could not keep the peace, then the people of Holmgard sounded the great bell and called their assembly, did away with such a prince, and put in another instead of him.

  So, with this prince’s favour on him, all seemed to be well for Tarkan Der and in time he would stop jagging himself on the memory of Sweetfeather and Marob. In time he would forgive his enemies and would forgive Byzantium for not being what he thought it would be. He would think happily of his young brother Yillit taking his place in Marob and never go back and find out what had really happened. The two rivers were between him and the past. Alfeida would be between him and the past. He had been a traveler, but now he was coming to a stop. And it will be a happy place for him, thought Halla, but I—I have not come to a place where my travelling should stop. There is no reason here that I can find to keep me. And I am still myself, and what tricks at all did All-Father play on me?

  So there she sat for a while and below the hillock to one side was the square of the new house laid out in hurdles, but she turned her back on it. On the other side of the hillock there were alders and marsh between her and a bend of the river, and clumps of high rushes and old broken willows that were no use for wattles or any other thing. But there was something moving down there among them. Watching, she hunched her cloak round her, for she was a little cold. Then slowly she got to her feet and walked down that way, limping still, but not too much. It was certainly not the cattle of the settlement down there. Was it wild beasts? She went cautiously. And then she saw a great wing suddenly stretching from behind a tree. It must be a Valkyrie, perhaps several of them, Steinvor and the girls. She put a finger in her cheek and whistled. At once there was quiet, in an instant the wing had furled itself out of sight as though it had never been. But a minute afterwards Steinvor ducked under a low alder bough and came up to where Halla stood: “So it’s you, dear. I might have guessed.”

  “Yes,” said Halla, “it’s me. At least I suppose it’s me. But they told me something—Steinvor, are there any giants about now?”

  “Well,” said Steinvor, “now that I come to think of it, I haven’t seen any giants lately. But they must be somewhere. After all, Halla, they’re to be our enemies in the Last Battle. It wouldn’t do at all if the battle was to start and there were no enemies.”

  “If you ask me,” said Halla, “I’d say it would be just like one of All-Father’s little jokes. And what about dragons?”

  “Oh, I suppose there are dragons about still. Not as many as there used to be, certainly. Not here. I expect you’d find plenty in China. Or Arabia. Only not just round the corner, they way there were once.”

  “What happened to all their treasures?”

  “I think men have begun to behave dragonishly about treasure,” said Steinvor, frowning and fidgeting with her belt buckle. “You know, even the heroes don’t seem to give it away in the open-handed way they used. Perhaps they and the dragons have got to understanding one another so well that there are no quarrels between them now.”

  “Yes,” said Halla, “yes. It is difficult to keep one’s enemies. That must make it awkward for the Gods and the giants. Perhaps they came to understand one another too. If they did there’ll be no Last Battle, and what will you do with all those heroes?” Steinvor shook her head: that was too much! Halla went on: “How long ago was it, Steinvor, that you came to Dragon Mountain and talked to me?”

  “Well, I’ve been so busy, what with one thing and another,” said Steinvor, and began re-plaiting her hair, which was as red as ever. “Time slips by, you’d not know yourself! A few years back, wasn’t it?”

  “How many years? Five years? Five hundred years? Steinvor, you know what I mean. What kind of game has All-Father been having with me?”

  “What did he say to you, Halla?”

  “He said, Travel Light.”

  “If you did that, if you travelled light, you might travel through the years and travel faster than some. Would you have it otherwise, Halla?”

  “I think he might have told me.”

  “He never tells us, Halla. We have to find out. Why not come with us for a bit?”

  “I told you before, Steinvor, I don’t like heroes.”

  “They’re getting very rare. In fact, we’re all here because there’s going to be a bit of luck for us. A fight between the prince’s army and those raiders. Almost sure to be several heroes. But, believe it or not, some
times we’ll be cruising for months and never get a chance. All over the place, too. Mountains, you’ve no idea!”

  “I haven’t seen a mountain since—since— It’s all flat between here and Micklegard. Marshes. And these rivers without any rocks in them.”

  “One evening we were all taking off from a crag in the Caucasus. And the sun setting away below. Of course, that’s the kind of thing these horses enjoy.”

  “I like horses,” said Halla softly and took a short step forward.

  “Ours have much more conversation than most horses,” said Steinvor, “more point of view, you know. In fact, they argue sometimes.”

  “Would there be a horse for me?” Halla asked.

  “All-Father wished them for us. If he wished one for you—yes, look, that lovely grey with the black points, he’s new!”

  “All-Father might have told me,” said Halla, hesitating still. But it was a beautiful horse, so beautiful, something like a unicorn but more intelligent looking, its great wings arching and quivering, better than a real horse, better than a ship. Riding on that horse you would need nothing, no cloak even. She dropped it on the edge of the marshland. Nothing. You could travel light.

  Marseilles—Peshawar, 1951

  Naomi Mitchison, author of over seventy books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She was born in and lived in Scotland but traveled widely throughout the world. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatha tribe in Botswana. Her books include young adult fiction and nonfiction, historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, and a wonderful series of autobiographies. Her most popular titles are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman.

  Short story collections and novels from Small Beer Press for independently minded readers

  Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, A Life on Paper: Stories

  First translation from the French of “The celebrated Châteaureynaud.”—New York Times

  Peter Dickinson, Earth and Air: Tales of Elemental Creatures

  “Mining folklore for ideas is routine in modern fantasy, but not many can add the surprising twists and novel logic that Peter Dickinson does. These are beautiful stories, deft, satisfying, unexpected. They deserve to become classics of the genre.”—Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal, Best of the Year

  Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

  “In all these stories, Fowler (Sarah Canary, The Jane Austen Book Club) delights in luring her readers from the walks of ordinary life into darker, more fantastical realms. . . Fowler’s closing story, “King Rat,” is a masterpiece.”—Seattle Times

  Greer Gilman, Cry Murder! in a Small Voice

  Ben Jonson, playwright, poet, satirist . . . detective.

  Elizabeth Hand, Errantry: Stories

  “Elegant nightmares, sensuously told.”—Publishers Weekly

  Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees

  “Johnson’s long-awaited first collection is full of thought-provoking and often emotionally wrenching stories that traverse the spectrum of speculative fiction.”—Publishers Weekly, Best Books of 2012

  The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin

  Two volumes: Where on Earth & Outer Space, Inner Land

  “No better spirit in all of American letters than that of Ursula K. Le Guin.”—Slate

  Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo

  Mythopoeic, Crawford, Carl Brandon Parallax, & Frank Collymore Award winner

  “Filled with witty asides, trickster spiders, poets and one very wise woman, “Redemption in Indigo” is a rare find that you could hand to your child, your mother or your best friend.”

  —Washington Post

  Vincent McCaffrey, Hound

  “McCaffrey, the owner of Boston’s legendary Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, succeeds in conveying his love of books in his intriguing debut.”—Publishers Weekly

  Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse: Stories

  “Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising.”—Publishers Weekly Top 10 Books of the Year

  “An imaginative homage to the human ability to endure.”—Booklist (*starred review*)

  Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria

  “Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”—Library Journal (*starred review*)

  Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet

  “Tiny, but celebrated”—The Washington Post

  A twice-yearly fiction &c zine edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant publishing writers such as Carol Emshwiller, Karen Joy Fowler, Jeffrey Ford, Eliot Fintushel, James Sallis, Molly Gloss, and many others you may not have heard of, but who are great. Fiction and nonfiction from LCRW has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, The Best of the Rest, and The Zine Yearbook. Many subscription options (including chocolate and sometimes used cars) available on our website.

  Our DRM-free ebooks are available from all the usual places as well as our indie press ebooksite:

  www.weightlessbooks.com

  www.smallbeerpress.com