The Book of Bera

by Suzie Wilde

  ‘You’ll not go off without saying goodbye to Heggi?’

  It would be cruel.

  When she woke him he was excited and then he remembered he was not going with them and sulked.

  ‘I shan’t eat while you’re away and then I’ll starve and then you’ll be sorry.’

  ‘Your father might be.’

  His dog came and nestled against him, looking at Bera with accusing eyes.

  She felt bad. ‘And so would Rakki, and me. And what about poor Feima? She would think you didn’t like her anymore, if you went off and left her behind, and there she is, going to give you a calf.’

  Sigrid came in with a beaker of milk. ‘Can’t have rich milk going to waste.’

  Heggi managed to drink it, for Feima’s sake, not theirs, he said. Bera wanted to tip it over him, after she had made an effort.

  They went back to the hall. The slant-eyed woman was trimming Thorvald’s hair.

  For all she detested him, Bera needed his strength. ‘Take good care of Sigrid, won’t you? And Heggi. Don’t let him go and fall off a cliff looking for birds’ eggs.’

  ‘I’ve looked after him all his life.’

  Sigrid pushed a shawl at her. ‘Have you got your thick sea cloak? I don’t like to think of you shrammed with the cold.’

  ‘I have furs, Sigrid.’

  A door banged. Heggi rushed at Bera, burying his face in a fierce hug that was almost violent. It startled her and she let go but then regretted it.

  ‘Boykin,’ she said.

  She went out before she started to cry and did not look back.

  As soon as they were clear of the headland the boat launched itself at the waves like an escaped beast. The wind was fair, thin clouds scudded across a blue sky and the waves sang, their ice chains a memory. Bera’s blood thrilled to the song. Hefnir’s most trusted boatmen raised the sail and he steered towards the tip of islands that made the sea-rim blue. She breathed deeply, filling her body with the spirit of the sea and touched the sword that hung from her belt in Sigrid’s sheath. The connection with Dellingr through the runes on the blade made it special again. ALU made everything... more. That was all she knew; there would be time to understand properly. As soon as Thorvald was out of the way, life would be smooth.

  After a few hours, Bera let herself look back. The coastline was a solid mass with tiny specks of whiteness like a snow flurry. It was the first time in her life that she could not see her home fjord. The boat movement was completely different too. There was a longer, rhythmic swell and a rushing hiss past the hull instead of the slap of a short chop. Sometimes, out fishing, it felt like being slopped in a bucket, whereas here there was a long send. She wondered what immensity swam beneath them but the boat was going so fast that she believed they could outstrip anything.

  Bera went up to the bow where the water cleaved into two clean streams of white. She let the tang of the crisp, salt air wash away the smoke and darkness of Seabost, feeling like a child again with both her mother and skern close by.

  After the exhilaration passed she went back to Hefnir, who refused to let her steer. Even that did not flatten her mood. The crew checked the boat, for this was the real sea trial. Bera wished her father was here to make any repairs, not trusting Hefnir’s boatmender to be as good.

  The passage washed her mind into serene emptiness. Hefnir finished his watch and came and sat with her. Bera gave him a cold meal then kissed him.

  ‘Please let me steer for a while.’

  ‘I suppose there’s nothing to hit out here.’ Hefnir reached for the ale.

  Bera ignored the insult, longing to feel the quickness of the helm, as one with her body. The wind stayed fair, though decreasing all the time, and slowly the moon loomed pale and yellow on the rim of the sea. No one spoke much, lulled by the creak and sway.

  When Hefnir steered again, he pointed at a small headland while there was still light enough to see.

  ‘Seal Island,’ he said.

  The dying sun made the mountaintops flame. They lowered the sail and the men took up their oars, making a herringbone wake in the glassy water as it slipped behind them.

  Night chill made Bera’s scalp tingle. A spectral figure was standing on the beach. His silvery hair did not stir. Light was leaching by the moment and soon this halo was all they made for in the greying gloom.

  The person stepped forward to hold the prow while the crew jumped over the side to pull the boat up onto the coarse shingle beach. He held out a hand to help Bera disembark. A real enough youth, except his luminous eyes were pale as moonstones. Eyes that knew death.

  ‘Been waiting for boat.’ His voice was rusty.

  ‘Who were you waiting for?’

  ‘You.’

  The crew had the rollers ready to run the boat up the beach. Bera took her place at the rail and helped keep the boat moving. The boy stood at the tideline, to mark how high they should pull the boat.

  She left the others and joined him. ‘How long have you waited?’

  Hefnir shouted, ‘We’ll sleep in the boat tonight, get going again early.’ He was calling her away.

  Bera touched the boy’s arm. His bones were sharp as a bird’s under the thin cloth and she hated the feeling.

  ‘How did you know we were coming?’

  He pointed to a rough hut on the top of the cliff. ‘Seen you from up there, far off.’

  Bera had not fulfilled some prophecy – it was only a boy using his sea eyes. Another disappointment.

  Hefnir came to get her but the boy invited them up to the hut.

  ‘Only you two. Men’s too many.’

  Hefnir and Bera grabbed bedrolls and scrambled after the agile youth, who knew every tussock and rock in the dusk. Bera often stubbed her toe and tripped. Judging from his cursing, so did Hefnir.

  The moon was high when they reached the hut. Bera stopped to gaze at its yellow path across the sea, murmuring words of thanks for their safe passage.

  The boy tugged at the weather-beaten door, cursing. ‘Swollen.’

  Hefnir wrenched it open and the boy went through to light a lamp. Bera smelt whale oil as she followed.

  It was like stepping into a sailor’s sea chest. The walls were covered in shelves, hanking with hooks and nets and weights and ropes; oars and sails and buckets and floats. Everything stowed, scrubbed clean and ready. Up in the roof was a small, pitch-bottomed boat, upside down on the beams. It was round, like a bowl.

  ‘You don’t go out in that, do you?’ she asked.

  The boy kept his back turned.

  Hefnir was handling some of the boat tools. ‘These feel good in your hands. Fit for work.’

  ‘Father made them.’ He had a fit of coughing.

  There was no sign that he shared the hut.

  Bera picked through bits of whittled flotsam on a bench: a drift-wood stoat, an ice bear. A shard of sea-milled glass was like Agnar’s eyes. And his dear old dog. A gutting knife, its handle smooth as butter. Walrus tusk.

  ‘We’ve come to hunt walrus,’ she said.

  Hefnir quickly added, ‘Or whatever’s plentiful.’

  The boy grinned. He had a small gap between his front teeth and Bera wondered how old he was. Not shaving yet, so Bjorn’s age, maybe.

  ‘No one here to stop you.’ His tongue was loosening with use, though softer than a Northman.

  ‘Can I smell a stew?’ Bera asked. Her stomach roared.

  ‘There’s special bowl. For guest, if one came.’ So he was lonely.

  Bera went over to the small fire and stirred the stewpot. White gobbets of fish and a few green strands floated in oily liquid – but she could eat anything tonight.

  Their host scrabbled under a wide shelf that ran round three sides of the hut, pushing aside rolled pieces of sailcloth and driftwood. Then with a cry of triumph he threw a stiff piece of fish skin out of the way and pulled out a cloth-wrapped parcel and brought it to the fire. The linen was grubby but it was finer than Bera’s own underskirt. He folded
back the cloth and there were four bowls.

  One of them was a lustrous black.

  He rubbed his elbow round it then held it out to her. ‘For special guest.’

  It throbbed in her hand, like a purring cat. It was so glossy that she could see the loom of her face in the base. Bera’s heart jolted.

  Hefnir seized it and gazed into it while he spoke. Could he also sense its power? ‘I’ve seen this precious stone before, except it was a knife.’ He frowned for an instant but could not tear his eyes from the bowl. ‘How did this piece end up here? With a scrap like you?’

  ‘Sailed many sea paths.’

  ‘Let’s eat first and talk later,’ urged Bera. ‘And that’s mine.’ She had to tug the bowl away from Hefnir.

  The boy swilled some broth round two plain soapstone bowls to clean them. Bera stared down into her black one. Deep down.

  She could scry! There were swirls of blue ice, with crimson fires curling on mountaintops beyond. Over the tallest peak there was a cone-shaped cloud of immense height and breadth at its uppermost, ash-white. It funnelled and twisted downwards, sharper, more like a pout at the base. It was the face of a trole, blowing on the mountaintop to keep it crusted with ice.

  Then the boy ladled soup into it.

  Bera gloried in the fact that she had seen it without her skern, whatever it meant. It did not stop her eating. After spooning out the fish pieces, Bera lifted the bowl and drank the rest. She wiped the grease from her chin with the hem of her smock while the boy refilled their bowls.

  When they finished second helpings, Bera thanked him.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Er... Egill.’ He sounded unsure.

  Bera’s eyelids were drooping and she was fighting to stay awake.

  Hefnir said, ‘Go to bed, if you like.’

  ‘I want to hear about the bowl.’ Bera tried to scry again but the surface was too oily.

  Egill took the bowls to stack on a bench near the door and blew out the lamp before returning to the fire. His beardless face had more colour.

  ‘Heard of Iraland?’ he asked.

  Hefnir nodded. ‘Rich pickings.’ How different, harder, he sounded.

  ‘Where’s that?’ Bera asked him.

  Egill answered. ‘Furthest west. Been there many times. Father traded for the black bowl with an old holy man, he said. Rich man, anyways.’

  What was a holey man? ‘From the Great City?’ asked Bera, trying to give the impression that she knew about trade.

  ‘Their precious goods are more home-grown,’ said Hefnir, with a wink at Egill. ‘I’ve traded for some in the Marsh Lands.’

  The boy shivered. ‘That bowl’s like a giant eye from a starkwhale or a monster shark. A black and glistening eye, looking up from the deeps.’

  ‘An eye not looking in but looking out,’ said Bera.

  Egill stared at her, sharing the fear.

  Hefnir got up. The boat in the rafters grazed the top of his head as he went over to the bench. He picked up the black bowl, smoothed it against his cheek and sniffed it. ‘Where did the holy man say it came from?’

  Egill stared into the fire. ‘Top edge of the Ice-Rimmed Sea.’

  Something stirred deep inside Bera; some instinct that this land was important and that she had just glimpsed it.

  ‘I stay south. Or east,’ Hefnir said. ‘It’s a hard enough living at home.’ He brought the bowl back to his seat. ‘If there’s any land up there, which I doubt.’

  ‘But he said it came from this... topmost edge?’ Bera insisted.

  Hefnir flicked a finger against the rim to make it ring. Its blackness was reflected in his eyes. Bera pictured him killing the boy to possess it. She snatched the bowl and put it by her side, where he could not see it. He managed to smile but he did not fool her.

  The land existed. ‘Did you go there, Egill?’ she asked.

  ‘Fate took us. Nearly died getting away.’ Egill rubbed his hands through his salt-bleached hair, making it stick up. ‘Storm hit, coming back from Iraland. Raged for days, on and on, pushing us north. Lost a man overboard. Couldn’t row against the wind or the waves. Then a huge cloud of smoke and a din like a trole smithy: whoosh of bellows, clang of hammer and anvil. Fiery lumps of rock fell and the sea boiled.’ His eyes were reliving the horror.

  Bera believed the black bowl was forged in such a flame. ‘Don’t go on,’ she said but Hefnir put a finger to his lips.

  ‘Whole land blazed. A ball of fire hit Father. C-caught light like a grease taper. P-p-pushed him overboard.’ Egill made a sort of hammer sign. ‘He screamed till he went down.’

  Such a loss was beyond reckoning.

  Hefnir’s laugh broke the quiet. ‘Sailor’s tales. I’m telling you, that bowl’s black gold and it came from the hot south, not the ice-rimmed north, even if such a place exists.’

  Egill glared. ‘That land took Father.’

  Blue ice and crimson fire, heading for the sea. Over it all, a cloud Bera couldn’t yet read. The vision was real and so was the land. Summoning her.

  8

  Bera slipped into sleep like a seal through ice. She briefly surfaced when Hefnir picked her up and wrapped her in a blanket. The boy was claiming he once lit a fire and cooked a stew on an island that turned out to be a whale’s back. But she may have dreamed that.

  Now she was wide awake on a hard floor. Her head hurt, she was curled like a fist between two large baskets and when she tried to stretch out her legs she hit something cold and solid. An anchor. There was a sharp pain where something in her pocket had dug into her flesh. She missed being up on a sleeping platform; here, her eyes looked straight along the sandy floorboards. She could see crumbs, small stones and mouse droppings edged silver by the thin light coming through the small window opposite. It was early.

  There was hacking, a retching cough. Bera sat up and banged her head on the shelf above. She rolled out from her billet and rubbed it, then left Hefnir sleeping and went outside to see who it was.

  Egill tipped a bucket of water over himself, turned to grab a drying cloth – and was a girl.

  Bera gasped.

  Egill looked anxious, then shrugged. ‘Now you know.’ She coughed again.

  ‘I can help with that,’ Bera said.

  ‘Being a girl?’

  ‘The cough. I have some salves aboard, to rub on your – er – chest.’

  They giggled together, which sent Egill off into yet another fit. Bera rubbed her back and then bundled her into her few clothes.

  ‘Don’t tell him.’ Egill cocked a thumb towards the hut. ‘Promise.’

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Took Father’s after he died.’

  ‘Others must know.’

  ‘No one left here to tell.’

  She was already Egill’s friend. ‘I promise. You can show us where the walrus are.’

  Egill pointed at Bera’s necklace. ‘See that bead? The black one? It’s made of the same stone as the precious bowl.’

  The truth of it surged through her.

  Hefnir came out, washed his face and agreed that Egill should come with them.

  The black bead had never filled her with greed, like Hefnir with the bowl. The same ugliness had been on his face as in her glimpse of him with the monks, before Thorvald cleaved their bald heads.

  The crew kicked sand over their fire, rolled the boat down to the water and launched her. Egill explained that they would enter a channel that should only be navigated at slack water. Bera glanced at the wake behind a withy mark.

  ‘This isn’t slack,’ she said.

  ‘Egill knows the safe sea paths.’ Hefnir slapped Egill, who beamed.

  Bera remembered stories about sailors arriving at the edge of the White Sea at the flood. Riptides squeezed through island gaps, sending boats plunging into the deep. Sigrid terrified Bjorn with tales of the monstrous Skraken rearing out of the abyss. A dank sea mist drained the crew’s good spirits. They gave up try
ing to sail and rowed on.

  She felt a weight on her chest. Her skern.

  ‘Oh, no. Don’t tell me there is a monstrous Skraken.’

  He preened before his moment of revelation. I’ve come to tell you about Egill. He’s a girl.

  ‘I know.’ A small triumph but it pleased her.

  That won’t be her only fraud. She claims more knowledge than she possesses and will lead you into danger. Like the Maelstrom. Watch!

  Bera flew above a troubled sea. She swooped down towards swirls of dark, oily water, surrounded by ripples and eddies. Broad streaks of foam, stretching to the far shores, slowly began a creamy whorl that seeded a whirlpool, which grew in immensity until its vast waters sucked her in. She was caught in oozing blackness that swept into her mouth and choked her. A roar of sweltering water and the blood-pound of drowning filled her head. The vortex began to spin faster. A towering ridge of glittering black water teetered above her. There was no light or air. Below her waited the gaping maw that led to the limitless deeps and the creature that lived there. The Skraken.

  She jerked awake, gasping.

  Egill came and sat beside her. ‘Bad dream?’

  Bera’s scalp was on fire. ‘We must go back!’

  ‘Too late.’

  The boat began to move faster and the noise of troubled water hammered on the hull. A current surged through the channel, churning and twisting the boat. The crew quickly shipped their oars or the waters would snap them like bird bones. Egill strapped herself to the mast, wild-eyed and grinning. Bera stumbled to the stern, banging and bruising herself on every block and oar-end. The noise was a constant numbing roar.

  ‘Turn back, Hefnir!’

  ‘Egill is showing us the Maelstrom. It’s exciting.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. It’s a terrible thing!’

  Hefnir stared at her, looking for certainty.

  ‘We must turn back. Please, Hefnir.’

  Man would stand by man. It was his code. ‘Valla nonsense. Strap yourself down and enjoy it.’

  Egill shouted, ‘There she is! She’s pulling us eastwards all the time.’