Hidden

by Donna Jo Napoli

  “It’s autumn,” says Beorn. These words make no more sense now than they did when he said them before.

  But Randolf nods. “I think today is Freyjudag.”

  Freyja is a goddess who knows magic and healing, and a day of the week is named after her. I’m about to ask why on earth anyone should care what day it is when Beorn says, “Yes. I noted that.” He rubs his nose with the back of his hand. That’s what he did when his nose was wet yesterday, but now it’s dry, so I don’t know why he does it. “But we won’t be to Viborg—the next settlement—for at least two days at the rate we’re going. And we can’t start anything without mjøð.”

  Mjøð . . . mead? Why is he talking nonsense?

  “Look in the other jar,” says Randolf.

  Beorn opens the jar and smells. He smiles.

  “We gathered the honey,” says Randolf, “so I figured I had a right to a small slice of the honeycomb. I added water. I added yeast. If we take just a tongue-dip each day, it should last a moon. It won’t run out.”

  “The whole moon—and the mjøð will simply grow better with each passing day.” Beorn puts the stopper in the jug. “What do we call you now? Will you go back to your birth name or forward, with a new name?”

  Randolf presses her lips together. “I want a new name. Do you want to give me one?”

  “Never. That’s a father’s job. I’m not a father to you, nor anything like one. But I’ll rename the boy.”

  Randolf’s cheeks flush. Her eyes shine, and little crinkles of pleasure form at the corners. “What will you call him?”

  “Búri. Like the god Búri, who preceded everything. This boy preceded our union. And at the same time Búri is a good name for a son of Beorn.”

  “And I’ll be Ástríd.” She looks at me. “It’s a good name to go with Alfhild.”

  I know what’s going on. Finally I know. “I’ll make you rings from pine needles.”

  Beorn nods. “That will do till we get to Viborg. Thank you.”

  We walk the rest of the day, stopping only to gather hazelnuts and hawthorn fruit. Beorn carries Búri on his shoulders, perched on top of his leather pack. My hands are free to snatch at wild celery and pigweed, both of which are delicious to munch on as we travel. Ástríd swings the jugs and sings. I never heard her sing before. She has a lark’s voice.

  That night of Freyjudag in early autumn, with a moon’s worth of honey mead in a jug and pine needle rings, Beorn and Ástríd join hands and say their wedding vows.

  Afterward, I lie with Búri on my chest. But my insides are too jumbled to sleep. For some reason, I didn’t realize it till this moment, but now it’s all I can think about: Ástríd and Beorn and Búri—they make a family. They already talk about having a farm down south.

  Where does that leave me?

  I cradle Búri’s head in my hands. Such a nice round head. When I named him Og—said the Irish way— I was right: He’s like an egg. But Beorn said Búri was a good name “for a son of Beorn.” And I know he meant that it sounds right, because Búri and Beorn start with the same sound. Gunhild told me that if Thorkild’s and her new baby is a boy, he’ll be named Thorsten, just like Thorkild’s younger brother Thorsten. And if it’s a girl, she will be named Groa—to go with the names Gunhild and Gudrun. She said that was an old custom in the village that they moved there from, and she liked it: All sons’ names started with the same sound as their father’s name, and all daughters’ names started with the same sound as their mother’s name. But, she added, you could always name a child after Thor, as the father of Thora and Thorkild and Thorsten did.

  So those names sound like a family, at least to some ears: Ástríd, Beorn, Búri.

  Then there’s me, on the outside.

  But, oh, Ástríd chose her own name—she said it went with me, with Alfhild. Oh! She meant that she and I should have names that start with the same sound. No one would take her for my mother, she’s far too young. But we could be sisters. Just like Thorsten came to live with his big brother Thorkild and his big sister Thora, when their parents died. Just like Åse said I had become her sister—our names made us sound like sisters.

  Ástríd’s making me part of her new family. She’s going to pretend I’m her sister.

  But I’m Mel’s sister. Now and forever. Mel. Mel. My eyes burn with longing.

  Still, I can pretend to be Ástríd’s sister. I can do what I have to. And it’s only till I’m big.

  I stare up at the stars. It is beautiful to see the stars again. It feels like a miracle. And it strengthens my new resolve—the decision I made today as we were walking.

  Ástríd was stolen by a slave ship. That’s what happened to Mel and me, as sure as there are stars above. I know that now.

  Ástríd was sold to a family.

  I run my fingers around the edge of Búri’s ear. Mel has undoubtedly been sold by now. Who was she sold to? How is she treated?

  Mel is fifteen and a half. Fully grown. Beautiful.

  I could drown in tears. But I won’t. I won’t cry. When Mother and Father and Nuada find me, we’ll come find you, too, Mel. I swallow. And if they never come, it doesn’t matter, because I’ll grow big and I won’t need anyone. Wait for me, Mel, I pray. I’ve changed my plans, dear sister, true sister. As soon as I’m big, I’ll come find you. We’ll go home to Eire together. Stay strong. Wait. I’ll come.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We arrived at Viborg in the sun to a proper skald’s welcome. I don’t know how many houses were there—but certainly forty or fifty, arranged in groups rather than scattered over the land. They have a huge hall for everyone to gather in, and it’s fully above ground. When people learned that Ástríd and Beorn had been married only two days before, the feast turned into a true celebration, and we left enriched by two goats, a pig, and a cow with various sacks of woolens, tools, pots, and bowls hanging across her back. All because Beorn said he was ready to settle down here in Jutland.

  Gifts are wonderful. And animals are the best kind of gifts. But that cow certainly slowed us down. It took six days to travel from Viborg to Jelling, despite the fact that there was a dirt road the whole way, so we didn’t have to skirt around bushes and rocks, like we did getting to Viborg. Then, to make things worse, rain came steadily the last two of those days. Baby Búri caught a cold, and since he slept on me, I woke in the morn with his drippings across my neck, like slug paths.

  So I was delighted when we arrived in Jelling and slept in a real home again, with blankets and hearty meals, knowing it was raining outside but unable to hear it for all the noise inside. Beorn did his skald routine, which by this time I was disappointed in. Irish storytellers embellish their stories with each telling, but Beorn repeated his word for word.

  Not to be outdone by the people of Viborg, the folks of Jelling loaded us up even more. We now have a horse with a saddle and straps that hang off it and end in iron bars called stirrups to rest your feet on. No one’s riding the horse, though, because her back is packed with other things: a plow and a shovel and a second ax—Beorn had an ax already; no Norse man goes without one—and a slew of other things people insisted we’d need.

  My birthday passed while we were there. I’m sure of it, because the days are getting shorter than the nights now, and that’s when my birthday comes—just a fortnight after that. No one knew, of course. But it felt like some of the presents were for me, too. I am nine now.

  We are back on the road again, with Jelling four days past, and rain our constant companion. The sound of rain on the surface of a pond is plunk. Heavy and deep. The sound of rain on a leather pack is thud. On a hazel leaf it’s smack. On grass it’s nearly silent. On a puddle it’s splash. On the cheeks of my upturned face it’s plink. Rain is all the good things of the land of my birth. Rain is why the earth of Eire has so many shades of green. Rain gives birth to rainbows. I love rain.

  But I am very sick of being wet.

  And today there’s a wind, so the rain drives at a slant. It’s
behind us, at least, which means the rain hits our necks and ears, rather than our faces. But the north wind forces the rain down the back of our tunics and it chills—oh, how that rain chills. I look over at Ástríd’s ears, red as flowers. She should have a shawl over her head, but she wants her short hair out, because the rain curls it and she says it makes her pretty. After nearly a year of playing boy, she’s reveling in womanhood again. People in Viborg and Jelling marveled at her short hair. Married women grow their hair long and wear it in braids or a bun. I suppose that’s what Ástríd will do. But for now, her hair is free and curly. I don’t understand her not putting on a shawl, though. No one should suffer just for beauty.

  The road we took from Viborg runs down the center of this land, gradually veering east. Beorn explained that this land is a large peninsula jutting northward, hence the name Jutland. From what Ástríd has remembered of her childhood and her passage on the slave ship, Beorn pieced together that she probably lived in Skáney, across the sea to the east. Since Ástríd knows as little as I do about where we are, Beorn gives us lessons as we go.

  The northwest of Jutland is a mess of islands, but fortunately, we started out south of there. The rest of the peninsula is vast areas of meadow and bog, crisscrossed by rivers, but most of them originate to one side or the other of this country road, which is why the road is located where it is. The traveler who sticks to the road can avoid marshes and wetlands. The one stream we had to cross was nothing but a narrow slop of mud at this time of year. Beorn said in a month, with all this rain, it will be impassable without a raft, but all we had to do was cut bunches of brushwood and throw them down ahead of us as we tramped over.

  Yesterday we left the big road, though, and headed west, walking beside a river. I’ve been watching the changing land, and I’m not happy.

  “Beorn,” I call. It isn’t easy being heard in the rain.

  Beorn waves me over to him. He’s leading the horse, and Ástríd is at his side, leading the cow with baby Búri secured on her back. I’m swatting the unruly pig with a hazel switch to keep her moving forward, and the goats are running free with Vigi yapping and nipping at them whenever they stray.

  I drive the pig toward Beorn and wait for a slowing of the rain so I can be heard. “Why are we going this way?”

  “I told you. I know people in the town ahead. We can have a farm.”

  “But this land, have you looked at it? It’s sandy heathland. The land was more fertile up near Jelling and Viborg.”

  Beorn tilts his head. “You’re smart. But think about it. Viborg is too close to things Ástríd needs to get away from, and Jelling is too far from the water for me.”

  “Isn’t there a coastal town with better land than this?”

  “Heiðabý has good land. It’s on the east side of the peninsula and more south.”

  Heiðabý. I remember Beorn singing that town’s praises. “Let’s go there.”

  “No.”

  I think of kicking him, but I don’t know him well enough to predict his reaction. “How come you get to make the decision all by yourself?”

  Beorn leans toward me. “Heiðabý,” he says in a low voice, so I can hear but Ástríd can’t, “has the biggest slave market of the Norse world. Ástríd could never bear it.”

  His words crash around inside my chest.

  Soon enough we cross a wide ditch and enter the town of Ribe through a gate in a tall rampart. The houses all face the central street or the river. The people give a skald’s welcome, and Beorn performs night after night in the big hall, with the chieftain presiding. Over the following weeks, I come to find his repetitions consoling; they can be counted on. I love especially the story of the world Ásgard, where Óðinn rules. It’s more fertile than anywhere else, with green glens and rivers and hills. It sounds like my Eire land.

  That’s what Beorn wants for us, a life that feels like Ásgard, and when he says it, Ástríd nods. She believes we can do it. Beorn can make anyone believe anything.

  We live with a family while we build our own home. That’s proper Norse hospitality. Ástríd wanted to build in town at first, but Beorn said no. If you live within the area marked off by the ditch, you have to follow all rules and perform all duties of the town. But if you live outside the ditch, you’re free of many of those rules. So we claim a plot inland and clear it of trees and dig up roots and move stones into a pile. We dig a well and make water troughs for the animals, which are many now, since the people of Ribe added generously to our motley crew. The weeks and months pass in hard work. When the rains of autumn and winter finally cease, we burn off brushwood and plow and plant.

  We are farmers. Ástríd busies herself, moving from one task to the next; contentment eases her quick eyes. If Beorn misses wandering, he doesn’t show it. He has a knack for building things. He’s going to be good at making things grow, too, I can tell. Búri learns to walk and say a few words, and his sweet nature deepens every day. They adapt to this new life. They belong here.

  One night in spring, I realize I’ve been gone from my home, from my life, for a whole year. I belong in that life. But there’s nothing I can do about it yet. I can’t go off alone. I know what can happen to women and children who get caught someplace all alone.

  The biggest slave market in the Norse world is in Heiðabý. And Heiðabý is east across the peninsula, then south. I never forget that. I never will.

  Mel’s birthday is well past. It was her birthday that started all this—her birthday, with our family trip to Dublin and everything that went wrong after that. I am nine now, and safe. Mel is sixteen, and I cannot know if she’s safe. Or even . . . no, I won’t think further.

  I sneak outside to the stone pile and arrange some in a circle, with an opening for a door. Then I pile another layer on top. I keep adding stones, building a circular wall that I can lie inside of if I curl on my side. It’s hard working in the dark, but the moon is bright and my hands feel every crevice. I jiggle and jiggle until one rock falls snug between two others. When a rock doesn’t fit, I choose another.

  I build through the night. When the wall’s high enough that a person could crawl through the opening and the sides would be above her back, I try to make the rocks at the opening extend just a bit more on each new layer, so that they’ll come together and form a roof. But the rocks fall off when I try. I work and work. I smack rocks against each other hard so they split and fit better. But they never fit perfect.

  “Alfhild.” Ástríd has come up behind me in the dawn. She walks around the wall. “I never saw a stone fence before.” She touches it tentatively, as if afraid it will fall. She doesn’t ask whether or where I’ve seen such a wall. Neither she nor Beorn ever presses me for information on where I came from. They seem to know I won’t tell. “You’re good at this.” Her eyes go to my hands, and her mouth drops open.

  I hold my hands up. The fingertips are bloody. Only now do I realize how sore they are. I suck on them, all of them at once.

  “Come inside.”

  “It’s not finished. It needs a top. It has to close, like a beehive.”

  “You can finish later.”

  “I have to do it now. But the stones keep falling when I try to make a roof.”

  Ástríd takes a deep breath. “A few split logs would make a fine roof.”

  I shake my head.

  “Do you have to be stubborn all the time?” She puts her hands on my shoulders. “All right. We’ll help. We’ll build it together. Come inside now and soak your hands. Then we’ll all go hunt for the right stones.”

  We make me a stone hut, the kind that hermits inhabit in Eire. The kind that Mel and I went inside before the slave ship stole us. It was the last place in our home country that we were free. And together. Immalle.

  I take up sleeping in my stone hut. I eat with the family. I work with them. I love them. But this is my spot, where I whisper my home language to myself, where I sing the melodies of my Irish heart. Tucked away by Latin prayers, this is w
here I belong.

  At least for now.

  PART TWO

  GROWING STRONG

  (TWELVE YEARS OLD)

  AUTUMN

  CHAPTER NINE

  We have been living on this farm outside Ribe for three years now, and I’ve never seen a sky like this. Clouds billow in from the west in quick profusion. More and more of them. It makes my skin prickle. Eire had wild storms. My Eire land. But nothing like that happens here.

  I run my hand down my throat and swallow. It’s not just the clouds; there’s something strange about the air itself.

  “Come, Búri. We have to hurry to gather the last of the cabbages and get inside.”

  The boy’s a good help. I cut the leafy clusters off the stems with the big knife, and he hugs them to his chest and carries them to the wide swath of cloth I spread out at the end of the row. I cut fast, and he trots back and forth on legs that have just lately grown lean and long. He’s proud to help me, just like I was always proud to help Mel. My heart beats a double drum of loss and gain.

  These are good people, but they’re not mine. Time passes far too slowly. I need to grow up and leave; I need to find Mel.

  I look at the sky again. It changes even faster than we work. It suddenly goes dark. It’s November, so the sky darkens fast anyway, but this is the middle of the day. And it’s different from a night sky: The bottoms of the clouds are black.

  I stab the knife into the dirt up to the handle for safekeeping—because I don’t want it swinging around loose, not with how fast we’ll have to move. I tie up the ends of the cloth and throw the sack of cabbages over a shoulder, then grab Búri by the hand and we run. He laughs—Búri is a great laugher—but when I don’t join in, he hushes and runs harder.

  We just make it into the house when the first drops fall. Our house has three rooms: a big central room, where we sleep and eat, with a smaller one to each side. All three rooms have doors to the outside. We enter through the door into the central room, and no one’s there. The hearth fire in the middle of the room licks at the dark air and makes everything eerie. Evil spirits seem to rise from our sleeping berths along the walls and creep up to the oak rafters. I quick dump the cabbages in the room that we use for preparing food, then I check the other room—the one where we keep the animals at night in winter. It’s empty.