I scream more, getting some inside of my mouth before I hit the ground harshly with a thud, this time entering a world of white and my bloodied body leaves a red stain on the untarnished ground.
I am not given time to think as in the distance a pack of wolves corner me from all angles, growling and snarling. I stand up and immediately start running, this sequence of events odd to me and strange, but still I flee.
They chase after me. Their paws turn up the freshly fallen snow and send it flying into the air when their paws strike the ground with their running. Their tongues loll out of their mouths, their chests heaving as they give into the chase of hunting me.
More tears stream down my face, and eventually, a wolf lunges at me and rips open my leg, making me collapse on the ground. I scream and finally from all angles, the wolves are ripping into my body like they haven’t eaten in weeks.
As I stare at my own body being ripped apart a voice that is Bard’s whispers in my head, ‘You will never be a Dane. For you are now nobody.’
I then reopen my eyes to be blinded and welcomed by the morning sun. My face is still covered in hot tears as I sit up. My body trembles and shakes from the nightmare and I instantly check my body for missing chunks or if I had been molested overnight.
Nothing is out of place, and my chest rises and falls before I start to calm down from the dream that felt so vivid and real. I begin to question if my dream was real...if it even was a dream?
Was I really torn apart by a pack of wild wolves or being molested by Bard....or did I really meet Fenrir himself?
I wrap my arms around my legs as I pull them towards my chest still shaken from my nightmare. I then mutter to myself for the final time as I bury my head into my legs, “Did I really make the right choice?”
Chapter 21
Dark Saturday
June 8th, 1001 AD
Today was Saturday, a day of bathing in the Viking world. Everybody bathed on this day, men and women alike, no matter what.
That is one thing I always found odd when I started living here and trying to adjust to their culture. I heard rumors that the Viking men were dirty and foul but surprisingly they were clean and didn’t smell, unlike some Christian men who rarely bathed from what I remembered of home.
You might think these barbarians are dirty and filthy, but that isn’t the case. Even on boats, they wash their heads and hair using the ocean’s water from the stories I hear of their travels when I sit in the mead hall some days.
As I prepare to head out and bathe with the women, Frey enters the house, smelling and looking fresh. Even his hair is washed, the smell of soap lingering.
I feel suddenly heated and I stare at him as he walks past me. I watch him place his sword down on the bench while droplets of water slide down him, his braid, and onto the wooden floor.
I try to make small talk which is unlike me, as it usually is Frey who is the one talking to me. “Did you bathe already?”
Of course, he has. Why am I asking when the answer is right in front of me, and I already know?
He takes a while before he answers, “Yes, lass.”
His silence resumes, an awkward tension settling between us.
“Noma and Arvid are out, I see,” I mutter to him.
“Yes...They’re busy with village stuff,” he answers, but his answer is vague.
“And Leif?” I question.
“He’s with Runa,” he answers, sitting down on the bench and unsheathing his sword before cleaning it with a cloth.
Again, more silence, and I say to him, “I will be heading out. I haven’t washed yet.”
“I know. I can smell it,” he says, almost snarky which surprises me.
He’s been acting distant since the ceremony...every day, every night, and it makes me wonder if he distanced himself from me because of our kiss. Maybe I did something that irked him. Perhaps I was so bad compared to other women he has kissed, and he doesn’t want to tell me in words but actions.
I hate these thoughts most of all…
He then turns after a while, “I did—”
I don’t give him time to finish before I slam out of the house, suddenly upset about Frey’s rude behavior.
He doesn’t follow after me; instead, he lets me leave, and I stomp down the dirt pathway, my chest tight while holding onto a clean dress.
During this time, I suddenly remember the day after the ceremony and my encounter with the strange man wearing the mask from the mead hall.
I was by myself, looking for answers about what Frey was doing that night and what strange games he was playing.
I had started with Runa, asking questions.
June 4th, 1001 AD
“So, you’re asking me what strange things Frey was doing on the night of Fenrir and your ceremony?” she asks, holding her serving tray to her stomach. She suddenly laughs at me. “How should I know? Frey has always been a strange one, even stranger than his brother once you get to know him. Leif or Dag might know, though.”
I give her an annoyed look while sitting at the table not touching the ale she has served me on the house for becoming a true Viking though I currently wasn’t feeling it after my dreams of Fenrir and Bard.
“I see,” I say, looking away. “I will have to ask when I see them. They should be coming to the mead hall soon.”
Runa then knits her brows before she leans down to me, whispering in my ear, “They’re looking for a missing boy your age. A woman specifically is asking about this boy. I think you know him...Bard.”
I freeze up upon hearing his name, and she leans away and says, “I think you have more things to be looking into besides a stupid game Frey was playing.”
She then walks away, and I look down at the cup of ale on the table. I might have puked my guts out this morning and was still feeling a headache from last night’s drinking but the ale did look good right about now.
I also recall my dreams of Bard and him saying he would torment me in hell…clawing up and touching me and getting his blood and chunks in my mouth once more.
Who in the world could be looking for him? A woman? He never mentioned her to me, but I suppose he had other friends or perhaps even past lovers…
My hands are shaking as I pick up my cup of ale, and I take a sip.
I killed him more than two months ago, and things have been quiet. Even his body was never found, and I imagine the wolves by now have finished him off, or his body was dragged back to one of their dens.
I then grab my hand with my other to stop it from shaking. I need to be calm. I can’t look suspicious, and as I am stuck in my head about Bard, I see someone sit across from me, and my eyes glance up.
Was it Frey?
But instead of Frey, I see the man with the mask, and I look at him curiously not understanding why he is sitting across from me.
“You don’t look like you belong here,” he says in a gruff voice, deeper than Frey or Leif’s while his eyes are focused on me.
I narrow my eyes slightly at him, my hand ceasing of the trembles as I have a new thing to focus on.
“And neither do you and your friend,” I say, looking behind him to see his pale red-haired friend getting served by Margaret.
“Well, we are travelers from another village,” he says. “What’s your story?”
I am hesitant about his question, and he says looking at my hair next, “If I recall, only the queen of Thovalon from England and her three children have such color hair.”
My heart stops before I say, trying to play it smart, “I get told that often…”
He strums his fingers against the table before he trails, “I heard stories in my travels to England that the queen is devastated about her missing daughter so much that she is offering a high reward for her safe return.”
I glare at him now, and he continues, “Cause you see, a certain group of Vikings who were believed to be Danes attacked when she went missing and some witnesses told of a little girl with silver hair being carried to
their boats along with the stolen treasure.”
“The reward is still up ‘til this day even with a new king and soon to be queen,” he continues. “And I have heard rumors of a silver-haired beauty from England inhabiting this place...which so happens to be where Danish Vikings reside.”
I stand up abruptly, and I say, “My hair is fake...You’ve got the wrong woman.”
He laughs, also standing up. “Oh, really? Since when do women tell secrets of their beauty?”
We stare each other down, and I ask, “What about you? You’re nothing but a coward hiding his face behind a mask.”
I go to reach for his mask to rip it off his face, but he swiftly grabs my wrist, and he says, “I don’t hide...I cover this for everyone’s own good.”
As he holds my wrist, his grip tightens and before things can escalate two people join my side, a woman and a man.
The man asks, a man I recognized as Dag and the woman on my right as Eira, “Whoa, are you sure you should be manhandling the little lass like this?”
Eira smiles, gripping a knife with slivers of chicken on it in her other hand as she says, “Yes, considering you’re nothing but a traveler who we are kind enough to let into our village which is beside the point because the woman you’re touching is a love interest of our chieftain’s eldest son.”
Dag then says on my right, “I suggest you let her go before there is a problem.”
The man with the mask refuses to let me go, not bothered by the threatening Dag or Eira, and he continues to stare into my eyes.
He doesn’t say anything, and eventually, I see Eira raising the knife slowly, and his red-haired friend comes up behind him and says, putting his arm around his shoulder, “Sorry, my friend here gets a bit frisky when he has a little too much to drink.”
He pats his shoulder, and he says, “Come on, we have things to do.”
He still doesn’t budge before he whispers something in the taller man’s ear and his grip loosens.
He looks at Dag and Eira before he says, “Sorry,” and completely let’s go of my wrist.
“We will be on our way now.” The red-haired man smiles and turns around.
The masked man continues to stare at me for a little longer before he turns around, following his friend out of the mead hall.
Dag sighs heavily, and Eira lowers her weapon.
He then says loudly, “What creepers those lads were.”
“They’re quite creepy. I don’t even know why we let them into our village,” says Eira, and Dag looks at what she is holding.
He laughs loudly, and he says, “You were going to stab him with a knife with chicken still on it.”
“It was the only weapon I had,” she says, shrugging but not laughing like he was.
“Well Ellie, aren’t you going to thank us?” asks Dag, looking down at me. “We just saved your arse.”
“I didn’t need saving,” is all I say looking down at my wrist, “I could have handled him myself.”
Dag sighs, “Only a woman Frey is interested in has an attitude like that.”
“Attitude is what keeps you men in line,” Eira says, looking at Dag. “Just look at Leif and Runa. She has no control over him because she is too nice.”
They continue talking with me back and forth, but I had blanked most of it out, too concerned about the woman looking for Bard, and now the man with a mask knowing my true identity and was up to no good.
It seems my problems are catching up to me one by one...and I had long forgotten about the game Frey had been playing.
Present
By the time I finished thinking of the events and problems I needed to be currently dealing with I reached the water where I was alone, all the other women probably getting an earlier start just like Frey.
I slip off my boots, pushing them over by the large willow tree, and I begin to undress while neatly folding the clean clothing in the crook of the tree.
My dress bunches at my feet after I loosen the strings around my chest and I step towards the body of water upon grabbing the bucket and soap I brought with me.
The water is cool once my feet are enveloped by the water, and it feels good and better than the hot sun of the summer months.
I slowly walk further into the water, and I place the bucket on top of a large rock, just taking the soap with me.
Once my chest is underneath the water, I lean back gathering my hair and begin rubbing the soap on my body.
I always enjoy Saturdays, whether I am bathing inside or out. In the winter months, I wash inside after heating the water using the fire, and in the summer months, I choose to bathe outside with the other women.
Today I had the water to myself, and just when I begin to wash my hair, I hear another person approach, making my eyes open.
I see a woman wearing a blue dress and brown apron. She has long, curly brown hair and dark eyes.
“Can I join you?” she questions.
“Sure,” I say, focused on my hair, and after that, she begins to undress. It is then I notice her pregnant belly that I hadn’t seen before from the front.
She looked like she was possibly around twelve weeks if I were to guess, as she wasn’t too big quite yet but large enough for her belly to be pushed out by the child and for me to notice.
I smile slightly as she steps into the water, and I question, “Is your husband excited about the baby?”
Her eyes glance at me, and she mutters softly, only remaining in the shallow water and sitting on a rock, “He doesn’t know yet.”
She places one hand over her swollen belly at the mention, and I ask, grinning and walking towards my bucket and dumping water over my head, “Is he blind then?”
“No,” she answers. “And we aren’t married. We were just lovers, but he has gone missing.”
She then uses her own bucket she brought with her and begins washing up, and I’m about to say something until it triggers in my head.
I have never seen her before in the village...and her lover is missing...Don’t tell me.
I look towards her, and I ask, “Missing?”
“Yes, I haven’t been able to find him. I am from a neighboring village that he usually visited from time to time, but he has yet come to see me,” she says, wetting her hair.
“What’s his name?” I ask, fearful of her answer, and I swallow.
“Bard,” she answers, and I suddenly feel sick.
“I see,” I say, my voice cracking a bit.
“Do you know him?” she questions. “You are from here, right?”
I look at her, and I say, “I am from here and I have seen him around but not for some time...I didn’t know him well.”
My chest and throat tighten as I remember bashing his head again with the rock and the mess I left behind...and now he could never have the chance to change and become a parent with this woman he had impregnated before his death.
“Oh, I see.” She looks down at the water before she says, “I fear something bad might have happened to him...He wouldn’t have just disappeared like this.”
I am frozen at the motion of ringing out my hair, and I stare at the willow tree.
“You must have loved him well to be looking for him like this…” I trail.
“Of course. He hadn’t asked me to marry him, but I was hoping to win more of his affections,” she says, and I don’t look over her way.
“My name is Bodil. What is yours?” she asks me next.
I don’t want to give her my name in fear Bard might have mentioned me to her, and I say, lying, “Estrid...”
I start to tread out of the water.
“Estrid...beautiful name,” she says. “Are you leaving so soon?”
“Yeah, I just remembered I had to do something,” I state, not looking at her, and I dry off using my dirty dress before quickly dressing into my clean one.
“Well it was nice speaking to you Estrid,” she says, seeming sweet.
“Yes, it was nice speaking to you too,” I say a
fter finishing dressing. I then lean against the tree as I slip on my boots.
I begin to walk away after grabbing my dirty dress and leaving behind my bucket, not bothering to grab it, wanting nothing more than to get out of the awkward situation.
Once I get further enough away, I lean against a tree for support, and I cover my face.
This isn’t happening...It couldn’t be. Bard never mentioned he had a lover.
I feel my heart open up old wounds and all I can remember is the smell of blood and the final moments of his death.
No…no….no...NO!
I shake my head.
Bard was better off dead...He would have just caused her and the child harm. She was better off without him.
I take my hands from my face, and I lean away from the tree and begin walking away again.
‘Bard is better off dead,’ I continue thinking on my way back to the house. There is no mistake. The Gods let me kill him.
But there is one thing I am worried about if she discovers I killed him...I would be the next one to die. Either it would be her who would be covered in the blood of revenge or the village I was just recently accepted by.
No one could find out about Bard’s death that didn’t know already...not even Frey.
Chapter 22
A Comfort Within The Darkness
After Sunset
June 8th, 1001 AD
“You’ve been quiet...Both of you...” says Leif who had joined us after being with Runa all day and he takes a spoonful of his mother’s stew from his bowl. His eyes look towards me before at his brother, who was eating silently on the bench.
I stare down at my food, barely eating, and I don’t answer him after taking a small bite of the stew in my bowl that was normally tasty after a long day such as this one.
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