by L. E. Waters
Gunhilda takes a swig from a fresh horn, smiles back in admiration as the holy man comes up and says a blessing over the bowl of water he holds in his left hand. Toke suddenly looks stern and respectful as he has Dalla remove his cloak. He strips off his tunic by reaching down his back and pulling it over his head. I see a long scar running up from his wrist past his elbow and wonder what terrible battle he has seen. He bows his round royal head as Ansgar pours the water over. He comes up dripping and thanks him. Ansgar reaches into a sack he has laying at his feet and pulls out a golden chalice.
He holds it up and proclaims, “This is a gift from the pope himself! It was made especially for you Chieftain Toke, to carry your church’s holy water.”
He brings it up to him, and Toke bows his head gracefully in thanks, but when he rises, Toke points to the holy man’s large cross and says, “And that.”
Ansgar looks taken aback, and his hand goes immediately to his jeweled cross. “This was a gift to me by the pope. I respectfully decline.”
“I feel I can’t be truly Christian until I have one of those”—he rolls his hand, looking for the word—“things on my heathen chest.”
Gunhilda tries to hide her laughter with her hand and looks off to the side. Ansgar stares at Toke flatly, blows out slowly, then begrudgingly removes the thick gold chain from his thin neck and hands it gently into Toke’s battle-scarred, padded hands.
He smiles wide, throws it over his head, and proclaims, “I feel the power of Cross now upon me.”
“Christ,” Ansgar corrects. “The power of Christ.”
“Yes, that’s what I said.” Toke smiles and motions his people to come forward.
Many from the circle line up for Ansgar to bless them, and Toke grows tired of the scene and takes Dalla into the house.
The feast begins without the chieftain, and the Great Hall looks magical, with its long tables set up with chairs, dishes, and many lit candles. The Great Hall is only for the royal and hauld classes, while the peasant class and the thralls have to eat with their hands around campfires in the street. Hela sees us and coaxes us to her with a wave of her withered hand. She’s sitting with the freemen and tells us it is fine to sit beside her as her guests. As I eat the tender horsemeat, the fatty juices drip down my chin and arms. Turning my head to lick them off, I notice the sword of the fellow to my right. I recognize it immediately as my da’s, the same one my mother brandished the last time I saw her.
I glance up and see the two dark spots on the jaw of the man who dangled me from his arms almost four years ago. The man looks down at me quickly, and I dart my eyes away. I wish I could’ve pulled that sword from his sheath and stuck it in his greedy, murdering belly. I stop eating and stare into the fire as I think about all the different ways one could kill a man.
He speaks as I’m imagining his guts spilled out all over the wooden planks beneath us. “I’ll soon have enough to afford my own thrall.”
Most of the circle couldn’t care less about what this warrior said, so he has to repeat himself louder.
The man with the ice-blue eyes, who had captured Gunhilda years ago, speaks. “You can’t possibly afford a thrall. I’m still working my plot alone with my lazy brother. You can’t afford it, Ragnar.” He sweeps the hair from his widow’s peak back behind his ear.
“You calling me a liar, Konr?” He throws down his plate.
“No, simply wondering if someone found that hoard I’d buried about a month ago near your farm line, is all.” He sucks the juice from his fingers, one by one. “Strange thing is, it’s empty now.”
Ragnar stares back. “Maybe your dimwitted brother here forgot where he buried it.”
Orm puts his filthy, greasy hands up. “Calm down, boys. We’re friends here.” Ragnar picks his plate back up as Orm finishes, “Besides, maybe he found one of them elf hoards!”
He throws his head back and brays like a mule. I can’t tell if everyone erupts in laughter from his joke or the way he laughs.
Ragnar says, “Well, elf hoard or not, I’ve almost got enough, and I know just the thrall I’m going to offer on.” He looks directly at Una.
I freeze beside him and watch out of the corner of my eye as he removes a comb from his belt and begins taming his long mustache.
Orm itches low at his crotch with an irritated look. “You’re in league with the elves and dwarves and such, being the Angel and all?”
Hela looks up from her plate, and when she sees him referring to her, she nods, like she has done all her years as a thrall.
“Well then, tell me what happens when you pee in an elf circle again?”
His brother nudges him with his elbow. “Why did you go an’ piss in a circle for?”
He brings his hands up. “Didn’t notice until I was half through, and you know how you can’t stop once your start, so…”
Hela clears her old throat and speaks so quietly everyone has to lean in slightly. “It will burn.”
Orm says with his nose scrunched, “What will burn?”
Ragnar jumps in happily, “Your piss will burn like you’ve laid with a sick whore.”
“You probably got it from that wife of yours with the beard,” Konr jokes.
“She’s from the north! They all have beards up there,” Orm says.
Hela begins to gather her things like she’s trying to get away, but Orm puts his dirty hand up and stays her to ask, “Hold on there, then, what gives you whip worms?”
Hela turns around steadily with her long, white hair cascading and replies, “Eating shite.”
The circle erupts in laughter as she walks away, and another warrior starts itching his underarm, saying, “I’ve been hit with an elfin blow. Rash all the way from my arm to my waist.”
We say our good-nights, and Una and I agree we’ll follow some of the wagons leaving, since wolves come out in large packs under this moon. As we’re nearing the towers, something flashes by us, hooting like a loon. I recognize the strange shape immediately as Gunhilda. She’s sprinting twice as fast as any man could run but only half as fast as Toke’s horses. We stop and watch as she zigzags in the road with nine warriors in pursuit. She is enjoying every minute, darting and stopping and starting again.
All who are on their way out on the road stops and watches the game as the warriors keep trying to get off their horses at a run and catch her once they come upon her. She runs off the road and leaps over the high fence of a farm. She runs like a wild stag, bounding over the dried winter grasses. More and more warriors are sent out after her as she brings two unfortunate ones down in the grass and keeps running. Halfway out in the pasture, two warriors spread a net between them while riding their horses. They bear down on her as she ducks once, avoiding the net completely, but when she gets back up, another net is thrown on her.
We wait to watch how they drag her back, and she keeps shaking her legs like she’s still dancing, kicking them up in the tangled net, humming the tunes of the night.
Una and I continue walking home, replaying the whole crazy night, until we reach our fences, where we can still hear Borga honking.
Chapter 7
Months pass and Rolf leaves again with the warm weather. Saturday comes and I’m asked to bring Thora and Erna into the village again. We pass by the immense church Ansgar received permission to build, right between the two sacred temples. They’ve recently finished constructing the bell tower, and I stop the wagon to listen. Boys pull on ropes that send them leaping up into the air, and the massive bells chime so loudly Toke comes bursting out of his hall.
“What is that noise?” he yells as he covers his ears.
Ansgar announces over the cacophony, “Those are the blessed bells that sing Christ’s praises!”
Toke looks up, eyes squinted in pain. “Can they praise less excruciatingly?”
Baffled, Ansgar shakes his head, and Toke stomps away across to the bathhouse as he’s brought in first. By the time we leave the bathhouse, there’s a mob forming. Many are yellin
g; some go and seek Toke out.
“What is this all about now?” he asks.
Konr raises his fist and shouts, “He murdered my brother this very morning! Ragnar! Struck Orm down before he could even draw his sword!”
Some of the villagers have Ragnar’s hands behind his back and push him toward the chieftain.
Toke asks, “Is this true?”
Ragnar nods. “The squab provoked me. Accused me of stealing their hoard for the second time.”
Konr shouts as two others hold him back, “He did take our hoard! We found it dug up on our shared property line, and there’s no one else on our farm. Orm only went to ask him to show him his trunk to prove he didn’t have our property. And he”—his voice breaks—” he pulled out his sword and sliced his neck half through!”
Ragnar fights those who hold him and yells, “No one can demand to check another man’s locked chests!”
Toke nods. “True. What lies in a man’s locked chest is his own business.” His seriousness dissolves immediately into chuckles. “That is, after they have paid their taxes and levies to me, of course.”
Just then, the bells ring again, causing Toke and many others to jump. “Damn bells!” He curses up at them, “First they tell us to stop eating horses. Then they tell us how we should marry. How to pray. We can’t even abandon our own wretched children in the woods anymore! But now this. These deafening gongs and pings! It’ll make a man go crazy.”
He grinds his teeth, and I realize this is no time to be deciding such an important matter.
Toke shouts, “Ragnar, you were wrong to take another life without allowing Orm to raise his own sword. Pay him his worth and future worth to his brother, in addition to all surviving dependents, and this matter will be over.”
Ragnar shakes his head defiantly. “I will not pay, Chieftain. I feel I was justified, and that would take all my savings.”
Toke draws in a frustrated breath as he brings his hands up. “A fight to the death it is, then. Ragnar and Konr, right now in the square.”
Ragnar looks pleased, and Konr fills with rage. Both men go to their armor and weapons. Chieftain Toke holds his arms up as Ragnar and Konr stare across with their arms at the ready.
Toke speaks, “No rules except one. Once your blood spills and lands on these stones beneath your feet, the match is done. The wounded has a chance to pay to be released before his life is taken.” He waits for each man to nod to him; then he brings his hands down and yells, “Fight!”
Thora turns Erna’s eyes away and walks out of the circle away from the fight. I look on as each draws his sword and I’m praying that Da’s sword is made poorly and will shatter into shiny pieces. Nevertheless, it is a mighty sword, and Ragnar wields it like it’s weightless. Konr catches all of his blows but seems more on the defensive, moving around, trying to keep Ragnar on his good arm. One powerful blow splits Konr’s red-and-black shield, forcing him to pitch it. As he tries to turn to grab his axe, Ragnar’s sword comes down on his outstretched hand and lops it off in one smooth motion. The hand falls, curled like Ansgar’s wax glove, as Konr spills his bright blood onto the stones. Konr screams in agony and grabs the stub.
Toke steps in. “Konr, will you pay to be released, or will you fight to the death?”
Konr doesn’t answer but stares blankly at Ragnar in thick rage.
Ansgar speaks from the circle and says in a calm voice, “‘The halt can manage a horse, the handless a flock, the deaf be a doughty fighter, to be blind is better than to burn on a pyre: there is nothing the dead can do.’”
Konr hears his words and, with his face drawn in pain, says, “I will pay the murderer.”
The medicine woman steps out from the crowd, ties linen around his wound, and escorts him away. One of Konr’s relatives hands a bag of silver to the chieftain, and he spits when Ragnar reaches his clenched hand up to take it.
The crowd begins to dissolve as Ragnar holds up the bag and proclaims, “I hadn’t the money for a thrall before but I’ve sure got it now!”
They burn Orm on the pyre in the square that night, and I can see the smoke spiraling up to the heavens from our farm. As soon as Rolf returns, Ragnar appears at our farm. I rush to find Una milking our brown cow.
“He’s here!” I huff.
“Who is here?” She glances up, moving the bucket so the cow can’t kick it.
“Ragnar! He’s speaking with Rolf, and he brought his bag of coins!”
Una looks down into the frothy milk.
“Una, you should hide!” I say, trying to delay the inevitable.
She shakes her head. “No, if he must buy me, I can’t change that.”
She lifts the two full buckets and walks out trying not to spill them.
Rolf notices her and yells, “Una come here!”
I feel like freezing this moment so it can never happen. But as tight as I shut my eyes and clench my fists, time continues on. Una walks up and rests her buckets down as Ragnar leers at her up and down. He hands Rolf the bag, and Rolf empties it out on the ground to inspect it.
When he sees that every item promised is there, and silver at that, he nods. “Una, you are now Ragnar’s property. Go gather your things and leave with him.”
I throw up by the side of the barn, and as I wipe my mouth, I watch her run to our dugout. I hurry in after her, and I’m surprised to see her eyes are dry. I push Borga off my blanket with my foot, and she shakes her tail in upset. Folding my blanket, I bring it over to Una.
“That is your mother’s blanket,” she says, shaking her head.
“I want you to have it.” Tears brim, burning to be released. “Thora will always give me a new one, but he looks like he won’t give you a thing.”
She nods and accepts the blanket. “I will take good care of it and give it back when I make my own.”
She bends forward, gives me kiss on the forehead, and wraps her strong arms around me. She turns and pats Borga on her back, sending her running to me.
She tries to laugh. “I’ll see you at the festivals.”
I see her brave smile as she walks out. I crumple into a ball and cry, causing Borga to get worried and poke my face with her wet beak.
Chapter 8
That night, as if the blood money Ragnar left behind is cursed, Thora runs into my lonely dugout and cries, “Erna’s sick!”
I hurry into the side room, where Thora brought her bed away from the rest of the family. There lies little rosy-cheeked Erna, crying with a deep sweat, her glassy eyes rolling closed in delirium.
Thora picks her up, trying to console her as I ask, “What can we do?”
Thora frets. “I have pressed all the herbs Hela taught me and made it into a liquid, but she won’t drink it. Oh, I wish Hela was here!”
She brings her free hand up to her lips in worry.
I take a spoonful of the green liquid and try to put it into the child’s mouth, but she keeps turning her head and screams louder. Thora puts her lips to her head and says, “She’s burning up!”
Inga enters in her long shift dress with her palm out. “Let me.”
Thora, holds the child tighter, but when Inga keeps her arms out, she passes the clinging child over. Inga takes the spoon of liquid from me and holds the child down. Erna clenches her mouth tightly, but Inga pinches her nose and waits until the child is running out of breath. Erna gasps for air as she pours the medicine in quickly. Erna swallows and chokes, then lets out a piercing scream. Thora grabs her up immediately but thanks Inga, who nods and goes back to her bed.
I sit up with Thora, who holds Erna all night. Sometime after she takes the medicine, Erna falls asleep and the flush disappears from her little face. Thora finally relaxes and falls asleep, feeling the worst is over. I see the sun breaking through the terrible night and go out to my dugout when I hear Thora scream, “She’s gone! She’s gone!”
I spin around to see the pale and limp child in her arms. Thora screams, clutching her to her body, “My little nymph! My l
ittle girl!”
Rolf and Inga run in, and Rolf attempts to take the child away from her, but she fights him hard and runs off into the fields we used to dance in. I find her with Erna laid there on the ground as if in deep, sweet slumber. Thora is picking the wildflowers around her and laying them about her beautiful baby. I say nothing to her and help her pick all the flowers in that field, and we conceal her with them. Rolf comes, takes Erna away that night and brings her into the village for Hela to prepare for burial. Thora doesn’t come out of her house for months. I try to keep myself busy doing Una’s chores, exhausting myself so that I’ll fall asleep instantly instead of thinking about the sorrows of my life.
I walk out of my dark dugout and look out on the low fog surrounding the farm and resting between the surrounding hills. Looking up I see a giant rainbow starting from our farm but ending in the far woods. It has such vibrant colors it hurts my eyes to gaze upon it, compelling me to follow it to see where it leads. I run out, jump the fence like I watched Gunhilda do, and dart to a deer path at the edge of the woods. I let the bushes sting me as I whip past them and have to concentrate on the ground since I’m moving so fast. I trip on a loose stone and go rolling into a large clearing. When I look up from the ground, I see the rainbow glowing all the way from the canopy of the trees to the dried pine needle ground below. All around me, I see different shapes and sizes of mushrooms. But there, sitting on a large red-and-white-dotted mushroom in the very center, is Erna. Erna, wearing a large, coned, red hat, giggling and eating the mushroom she’s sitting on.
“Erna!” I call out and run to her, but the rainbow vanishes and so does the dream.
I wake up in the still darkness and almost drift back to sleep, but I see wisps of fog outside the open window. I get up and look toward the skies to see the exact rainbow of my dream. I start running across the farm with the thought that somehow Erna will be waiting there for me to bring her back to Thora; righting everything as it once was. I attempt to jump over the fence but catch my foot and land on my face in the mud. Hopping to my feet, I sprint off, trying to get to the end before it disappears. I follow the path, but when I reach a clearing, I can’t see the rainbow anymore, nor Erna in the center. I search around me, see only the trees, and hear faint whispers. The only thing I do see is a red-and-white mushroom growing out of a downed tree trunk in the center of the clearing.
