Legend of the Mist

by Veronica Bale

  The evening saw a quiet meal in the hall. The raucous sound of Norse banter and jovial, booming laughter was notably absent. It was without their Norse allies that the islanders realized they’d grown accustomed to their guests, that the uneasy truce which had existed between them had somehow become ... less uneasy.

  How could that be when they’d caused such devastation and sorrow? Only a handful of years ago they’d murdered and pillaged all that the clan had been, and all that the clan had possessed. The people of Fara should be glad to be rid of them, even if it were only for a short while.

  Why, then, were the Vikings missed? Why did the hall feel empty without them?

  Even Norah missed them to a degree. Freyr, she’d come to discover, could be rather delightful in a rough sort of way. She had not realized until now that she enjoyed watching him ruffle Einarr’s feathers, that the captain and his leader shared a unique friendship which vexed them both, but made everyone else around them smile.

  It was Torsten, though, who occupied her thoughts the most. She ached for word of him, to hear that he had come back to her. It was silly, really. She knew he would; her clansmen reported that there had been no fighting in Norway, and she did not at all believe he would abandon her. Still, she was desperate to hear his name, to see his face.

  When the weak light of an overcast day faded to night, Norah fell into dreams haunted by a young woman and her small son, both with clear, blue eyes and pale hair, whom she had never met.

  Whom she would never meet.

  Her dreams were short-lived. In the thick of night she awoke, feeling in both mind and body as though she’d slept for ages. Her eyes scanned the room; objects stood out in crisp relief as though they were bathed not in darkness but in morning light. A thick, milky fog had settled in the room. It shimmered around her, teasing her with a translucent vision of the broch within its folds.

  The broch was calling her; she must go to the broch.

  The vapour was thinner outside, at ground level. It was as if the mist had risen with conscious intent, spilling into her room and confronting her there as a means of communicating the broch’s summons. A sentient entity.

  She knew better than to dismiss the notion. As she walked through it now, the mist followed her. An excited child urging her onward.

  Through the silvery blackness of the night Norah detected a flickering orange light as she approached the broch. It oscillated against the inner wall, and the rich, unfamiliar scent of wood smoke wafted through the air. She breathed deeply, enchanted by its heady flavour. She had never smelled the like before; turf was all she’d ever known.

  She paused at the entrance where the wall had caved and crumbled. Across the space, where the ancient hearth was once again alight with flame, Torsten sat on the ground. He was hunched over, his knees drawn and his forearms resting atop them.

  He looked devastated.

  “I knew you would come,” he said without turning, recognizing instinctively that she was there though her footsteps had been silent. “I wondered at first if I should fetch you from your bed, but decided not to. I knew you would be called, that this place would find a way to tell you I was here, waiting for you. Is it not strange that I believe in such magic so faithfully?”

  Was it not strange that, not so long ago, she had mistaken the magic for madness?

  “Wood?” she inquired.

  “Ja,” Torsten answered, his chin bobbing a slow, deliberate nod.

  Making her way with cautious steps through the segmented inner area, Norah sank beside him on the dirt floor as he reached to the small pile of wooden items on his other side. His hand grasped the leg of an unpainted, carved horse and he tossed the item onto the flames.

  “From where?”

  “I made these for my sister, Siri, and her son. I never met him; I left Hvaleyrr before he was born and had not returned in all that time.”

  “What are they?” she prompted when he lapsed into silence.

  Torsten breathed deeply, lost in the lapping flames. “A small chair; a few toys ... I cannot bear to look at them now. It gives me too much bol.”

  “What is bol?”

  “Grief. Sorrow. I find your words do not describe well enough my pain. My words, bol, harmr, they are more—” he paused, identifying the correct word, “expressive to me.”

  Norah’s heart ached as another finely crafted item was consigned to the flames. A pity to destroy such careful craftsmanship. But she understood well Torsten’s need to be rid of it. She herself could not look at empty homes or familiar items without remembering the men of her clan with which she associated them. Killed. Gone from their lives like smoke and ash rising into the air.

  When the last of his hopes had been burned he glanced at Norah, his blue eyes boring into hers with an intensity that rivalled the heat of the fire. “I cannot go back,” he breathed.

  Confused, she furrowed her brow. “Ye canna go back to Hvaleyrr? Because of ... of what happened there, there are too many painful memories for ye?”

  “No,” Torsten shook his head, agitated. “I cannot go back. There was a time when I did not know you, when I did not know of this place. When that was so, I travelled afar, to distant lands without so much as a second thought. But now, knowing what I know, knowing you ... what I mean is that I cannot go back to who I was before you.”

  Her throat tightened as she looked at him. He was so insistent, and so lost at the same time. She opened her mouth to speak, but Torsten spoke first.

  “That is why you cannot marry Einarr. You must marry me. He is my brother, and I am sorry to betray him, but I cannot allow it to happen. You must leave with me. You must be my wife. It can be no other way.”

  Torsten’s wife. A deceptively simple idea; Norah wanted to believe in it. But the word sounded wrong. Wife. As much as she wanted it to be their destiny, something inside her told her that it wouldn’t.

  Beyond the walls of the broch the sea, which had been oddly silent since Torsten arrived on Fara, released a ghostly laugh that echoed in her ears, reminding her that her fate was still waiting for her.

  No, she would not be Torsten’s wife. She could not leave Fara, for the water that surrounded the island would be her end. Her knowledge of that fact had not changed. Destiny would intervene to stop her marriage to Einarr, but not by offering a marriage to Torsten instead.

  Yet she could not bear to tell him so, his face was so hopeful. It was a hope she could not find it within herself to crush, so soon after the deaths of his mother, his sister and nephew. And countless more friends.

  “I do want to be yer wife,” she said, but could say no more than that. As she feared, Torsten was overjoyed with what he thought was her acceptance. Expelling his relief in something between a laugh and a sigh, he pressed his mouth to hers.

  Sadness caused tears to rise behind her closed lids. Though Torsten understood the connection between them, understood the bond that transcended time, he did not know, as she knew, their legacy.

  Their story had already been written, and only she knew its ending. She wanted to cry for his naivety, but his lips moving over hers numbed her mind and overwhelmed her senses.

  She could not tell him, for she wanted him to believe in a happier ending for them both. And at this moment, with her heart tripping from the nearness of him, she wanted to believe it, too.

  What good would it do to destroy his illusions? What harm could it do if she allowed herself to be lost in them as well?

  Moving closer, she slid her hands beneath the hem of his wool tunic, her fingertips grazing the flesh beneath.

  Let it be so, then. Let her forget what awaited them. Let her give herself to Torsten. Forget Einarr, forget the needs of her people. There was only Torsten.

  That night when the Norsemen had slept in her father’s keep, when she’d awoken with a hunger for him so strong she could not stop herself from climbing out of her own bed and into his arms—it had not been meant to happen. It had not been right, there, in a pl
ace that was not a part of their past.

  It was here, in the broch, where they were meant to be together.

  Torsten, too, sensed the rightness of what they would share in this place. Before, when he’d awoken to find Norah crouched beside him, desiring him, he had been a fool. He’d been too eager, too desperate. Unable to control himself.

  It was not so now. This time he savoured her at his leisure, a lover already intimately acquainted with his woman. That’s what he was, after all, for their love spanned ages.

  Breaking from her lips, he pulled his tunic over his head and lay it on the ground behind her that her hair would not touch the dirt.

  “I wish I had a cloak,” he whispered.

  “It doesna matter,” she returned.

  Threading her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck she guided him to lay down with her. Hovering over her, Torsten’s hands caressed her shape, reacquainting themselves with every curve of her body. He stroked her long, crimson locks, brushed the back of his knuckles over her cheekbones, along her jaw, and down the slope of her neck to her collarbone. Her skin was so soft, so smooth, that he longed to taste her. Leaning close, he repeated with his lips the path his fingers had taken.

  The flames of the fire danced on, casting quivering shadows through the fine, white powder of mist onto the stone walls of the broch. No shifting shapes presented themselves this night, no laughing voices or spirited music. They were alone.

  Yearning to feel him against her, Norah slid the wide, loose collar of her shift over her shoulders, baring her breasts. She arched her back when Torsten slid the shift further, exposing the taper of her ribs to her waist, the satin skin of her belly, the swell of her hip. His abdomen pressed to hers, a delicious blend of night-cooled and fire-warmed flesh.

  Moaning, Torsten crushed his lips to hers again, allowing the palm of his hand to cup her breast. His fingers slid over her pert nipple, and he bent his head to her, tracing his tongue over the delicate peak. She held his head to her, shivering when his warm, moist breath spread over her bare skin.

  Her shiver inflamed Torsten’s desire. Her rapid heartbeat challenged his own. His ache for her was so great it was nearly painful in the most pleasurable of ways. His breathing grew ragged, his hands restless. His torrid erection strained against his braies, demanding satisfaction. Hastily he removed the woollen garment, struggling out of it while still holding his lips to hers.

  Despite the more primal urges which were raging between his thighs at the moment, Torsten did not enter her. He was not finished admiring the sheer perfection of her. He had been denied his love for so long, he was not about to rush their reunion.

  A reunion it truly was. There was no awkward manoeuvring, no adjustments as they acquainted themselves with one another.

  There was no anxiety on Norah’s part, no fear of what was, in this life, an unknown experience for her. She knew Torsten in this way; she welcomed his touch. Everything about him thrilled her: the muscular thighs which twined with hers, the narrow hips and the broad shoulders. He was every bit the powerful warrior he was known to be, but there was an element of softness in him, too, that only she knew. Like silk over granite, strength and beauty in one.

  When finally he was ready for her, she welcomed him, moving beneath his body in encouragement. He trembled as he held himself above her, keeping his weight on his forearms to support himself. Moving slowly, mindful that her body was still that of a maid, he penetrated her. Shallow, at first, allowing her time to adjust. When she was comfortable with the size of him, he slid himself fully home, a low groan escaping his throat.

  Just before he moved again, before he lost himself to his need for her, he looked into her eyes, memorizing their depths. The green of her irises flared, lightening and then darkening again.

  “Ann ek ther,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  Her response was a kiss, a tender kiss that expressed more than words ever could. He began to move, a slow, rhythmic rocking of his hips. She buried her face into the crook of his neck, inhaling deeply the scent of him. Wood smoke, earth, salt spray of the sea.

  Her mind galloped madly, chasing a swirl of memories. Of Torsten, her warrior love, as he had been centuries ago. And then another face revolved in place of that, a face still similar, still Torsten. But not. A life before even the last. And again, another face. And another.

  Norah gasped from the exquisite melding of shock and pleasure. The past stretched back before her, laying bare their love lifetime after lifetime. She had not known it before, not known how many lives they’d lived. But then they had not shared themselves as they did now. It had been the one barrier that stood between them, the one promise they had not yet made to each other.

  Torsten knew too. As his climax swelled, he cupped her chin in his palm, forcing her to look into his eyes. The years, the decades, the centuries melted away, leaving them with countless memories of each other, in all their incarnations, as clear and fresh as the ones they’d collected in this life.

  Afterwards, when they’d both been sated, when they were both gasping at the new, clear reality they’d been given the gift of understanding, Norah lay in Torsten’s trembling arms. She curled into his side, warm and soft and safe, and drifted to sleep.

  But just before slumber overtook her, a laugh infiltrated her consciousness as it dissolved into oblivion. The sea, its cruel chuckle all-too-familiar, taunted her once more.

  Remember, it whispered, your fate still waits for you.

  Nineteen

  The mass of humid, hot air, which throughout the autumn season had plagued the islands of Orkney and the northern tip of Scotland, was changing. In the afternoon a generous breeze had offered respite from the muggy heat; by evening it had picked up, coursing steadily over the hills and crags of Fara as dusk turned to the velvet blackness of night.

  The sky was pregnant with the energy of a coming storm, the clouds luminous with the promise of lightning. Of course it was not an unwelcome storm. In anticipation of a good rain, the mood of the people in the hall at the evening meal was decidedly lighter than it had been since the voyagers had returned from Hvaleyrr.

  “I heard a wonderful word today,” Einarr said to Norah, leaning across the high table to where she sat at the far end.

  “And what word might that be, sir?” she answered, curious about his sudden interest. Einarr did not often converse with her, and but for that morning when he’d walked with her to the village he’d sought neither her company nor her conversation since their marriage had been announced.

  “The word is ‘alluring.’ I like it very much. In Norse, the closest word is saemiligr, or perhaps vaenn, but I find your word rolls off the tongue nicely.”

  “I’m glad ye like it.”

  “If you will allow me, myn fagra, I would like to tell you that you look very alluring this night.”

  Norah allowed a smile for the Viking leader’s benefit. She did not know the reason for his interest in her, but he looked as though he were truly making an effort. A crooked grin brightened his harshly handsome face, and despite his lightness of tone there was a ragged edge to his voice which was not normally there.

  It was a similar raggedness that she heard in Torsten’s voice, which she knew was caused by the pain of his loss.

  “I thank ye, sir.”

  “I notice you do not wear jewellery often. I would like to present you with fine gifts deserving of your beauty when we are married. Would you wear them if I did?”

  “So long as they arena the fruits of yer raiding,” she answered, belatedly realizing her tactlessness. She winced as the remark sliced through his mask of civility.

  “Mind yer tongue, lass,” Iobhar barked, overhearing the conversation as he and Fearchar took their seats. “Ye’re as bad as yer brother.”

  “I am sorry, Sir Einarr, I shall deal wi’ her after the meal,” Fearchar promised, casting his daughter a look of disappointment.

  “There is no need,” Einarr responded, a sm
ile on his face despite a waver in his voice.

  Norah regretted her comment. She was not accustomed to this new truce between her people and the Norsemen that had come about since Hvaleyrr had been destroyed. “Sir, I do apologize, I hadna meant to be so callous. The thought just ‘rolled off my tongue,’ as ye say. I dinna wish to be unkind.”

  He responded with a begrudging chuckle. “I am not so easily bruised, fifla. You are forgiven.”

  At the far end of the hall, Torsten watched the exchange intently. A faint unease nagged at the back of his neck. Such cordial behaviour to women was uncharacteristic of his brother. Einarr had shown very little of it to Norah in all the time that he’d known her.

  The nagging unease turned to suspicion when he noticed the furtive glance between Fearchar, chief of the Gallachs, and his brother, Iobhar—a suspicion which was confirmed as, at the end of the meal, Fearchar stood, commanding the attention of the hall.

  “Because of the recent, tragic events which I dinna need to mention,” he began, “Sir Einarr has proposed that the marriage between himself and my daughter, Norah, be hastened. I can find no reason why it shouldna be so, and have dispatched a messenger to the Isle of Mull. I expect the priest from Iona Abbey will arrive in no more than a sennight, and the ceremony will take place promptly upon his arrival.”

  The chief did not quite beam with pride at the announcement, but there was a quiet satisfaction in his posture and the set of his features. He raised his arms, heralding the Viking at his side. The islanders and Norse responded with subdued applause which echoed through the space.

  For Torsten, the clapping was deafening; the sound was like hammers shattering his skull. The blood drained from his face, and he stared across the hall to Norah, who stared back at him equally shocked. Equally dismayed.

  When Fearchar beckoned his daughter to him and placed her hand in Einarr’s, bile rose in Torsten’s throat. Shoving himself from the table, he stormed from the hall, startling several people by his inexplicable departure—including Einarr.