The Walrus Mutterer

by Mandy Haggith

  Rian still sat by the mast where she had woken to the frenzy of Manigan and his two friends rigging the sail and casting off into the dawn, laughing and half-cut. One of them was Badger, who had been on board Ussa’s boat. The other had been introduced to her as his brother, Kino. He was tall, thin and sickly, with tangled fair hair and a short, boyish beard. One of his eyes was clouded, its lid not fully open, which gave him a questioning look.

  Now the two of them were asleep on their benches, coats over their faces, snoring. Manigan had given her a big man’s coat and leggings. She had rolled up the sleeves and ankles and felt like a child dressing up in adult’s clothes. Manigan kept the helm, looking tired but unworried, one eye on the boat behind. He kept the sails taut, their speed just enough to keep ahead.

  He yawned. Then he caught her watching him and winked, lifted his chin towards their pursuers and grinned. ‘Will they catch us, do you think? Eh, little green-eyed witch? What do you think?’

  She found it hard to pull away from his scrutiny, but she wanted to watch him dance with his boat and she couldn’t do that with his gaze burning into her. So she made her eyes fall to the coil of rope she had made beautiful at her feet. Then she let them creep slowly to his leather-boots, skin-clad shins and thighs, his body bundled up against the wind yet moving freely and paying constant attention to ropes and sail and rudder, loosening, freeing or taking in slack, giving the boat what it seemed to want to keep moving. He was humming and swaying with the motion of the sea. She dared to look again at his face for the expression of devotion that seemed to be there. His face reminded her of Danuta at her ceremonies with herbs. But when he caught Rian watching she had to glance away, because he looked at her so differently from how he looked at the sea. To her, he presented a smile so disarming she wanted to throw herself open to him, yet the sense that he could see right to the back of her was terrifying. His presence made her suspect that she was made of fire, when she had always thought she was made of stone.

  And so she tried to keep her eyes from his, and they sailed on, dogged by Ussa.

  ‘You don’t say much, do you?’ he said.

  She shook her head and shared his smile.

  ‘I’m a talker, me. I like to talk. It gets me into trouble sometimes, but it gets me out more often. A happy dog will wag his tail, my mother used to say, and that’s how it is with me. And you, you’re a puppy with your tail between your legs and I’m not surprised. You’ve probably still got blisters on your hands from rowing that Queen Bitch whenever the wind dropped.’

  He threw her the question with his eyebrows and she lifted her hands in demonstration of her answer. She still had callouses from her time on board Ròn and plenty more scars from the summer at Mousa.

  ‘Aye. Oh yes, that’ll do nicely.’ He shifted a rope and the main sail seemed to loosen, then stretch, the boat leaned over and the murmur under the keel filled to a trickle.

  Rian kept watching the boat behind. She wasn’t sure but it seemed to have gained on them. It seemed bigger than before.

  They were out of sight of land now. The sea rolled away towards the east, a ruffled blue-grey sheet under the dull, silvery grey sky. The horizon was far, far away and nothing more than a blurred line where the sea merged with cloud. It was the same all around. An even light from the high, hidden sun made the ocean seem vast and empty. There was just Bradan and Ròn. A guillemot flew by heading north, low over the water, swerving towards them and up to survey the strangers from on high, then dropping back close to sea level and flapping onwards.

  The main sail began to flutter and loosen. Manigan cursed. The wind had dropped away as quietly as it had risen as if a hand had smoothed the fabric of the sea.

  ‘That bird stole my breeze. Ach well, it’s no better for them.’

  Looking back Rian saw that indeed their hunters were wallowing without any sign of life in the sails.

  Manigan turned to face backwards, watching Ròn. ‘The oars are slow to come out this time. The slaves must be sleeping or rebelling.’

  But then the boat sprouted appendages and began to crawl like some kind of insect towards them across the silken surface of the ocean.

  ‘I’m damned if I’m rowing.’ Manigan scratched his head. ‘Come on wind, come on! Do you know any wind spells, little witch? You are a witch, aren’t you? With eyes like that and such quietness. The stone says you must be. Only a magician could have found it and carried it and hidden it without suffering for it, and you don’t seem to be suffering as far as I can see, except for being mute. Were you always this quiet, or has the stone struck you dumb?’

  Rian shrugged. Maybe she was under some kind of spell. It seemed completely plausible to her.

  He sat tapping his foot and looking anxiously at the sails, and she wasn’t sure why, but the song came to her that Toma sang when they were out in the misty northern ocean. Its eerie notes seemed to come from her without her opening her mouth, a humming that seemed to come from the boat itself or perhaps even through its hide, from the sea.

  Manigan’s foot stilled.

  She looked up and saw that he was staring at her wide-eyed. She paused.

  ‘No, don’t stop,’ he whispered.

  And so she continued, allowing the sounds of the song to follow the tune, moving her lips and mouth to the words she had learned, the meaning of which she had no idea, but their sound was beautiful and sad.

  Badger sat up on his chest, bleary-eyed, staring at her in amazement. He kicked the other man, who stirred and pulled the coat off his face and half-raised himself with a look of drowsy wonder, rubbing his eyes. She sang on and then from behind them at the stern, Manigan joined in. It was like someone lifting her bodily out of herself, his voice deep and rich below hers, in unison, unwavering. Together they stepped along the tune, note by eerie note, the three falling intervals, each subtly wider than the previous one, returning repeatedly to the tonic. Sometimes he met that note with another, its harmony so sweet it made Rian look at him in wonder. She could see from the way he sang that the words had meaning for him, and although she didn’t know them she felt it full of loneliness, yet those moments of harmony gave it hope, like glints of starlight in a clouded night sky. The song ended on that note, and as it faded, Badger called softly as she had heard once before from Toma, when the sea spirit had risen from the ocean as they were fogbound in the north.

  ‘Blow!’

  He was pointing out to the south-west ahead. Rian turned and strained to see anything on the calm surface. Her gaze scoured. Nothing. But Badger kept his arm outstretched and there, as far ahead of them as Ussa’s boat was behind them, a spurt of spume like a puff of smoke. A dark shape rose out of the sea: a fin rolling in a curve, slicing back into the water. And then it was gone. Stare as she might there was nothing but the smooth surface of the ocean, with no sign of where the spirit blade had cut it.

  ‘Blow!’ The call was from Manigan this time. She looked back. He was pointing further west. Following his arm she just caught the same curving motion. Then it was gone.

  First a shimmer on the water, a blurring, and then a flap in the sail. A trickle under the keel. A breeze.

  The song had worked its miracle.

  Badger got up and helped Manigan raise a top sail. Kino joined them and together they rigged a third sail, thin cloth out in front of the boat. Bradan began to course along again. Now all awake, the crew needed sustenance. Badger passed Rian a battered bronze cup of water, bread from a bag and some leathery fruit. She didn’t recognise it but it tasted sweet and satisfying.

  ‘Have you met my wee brother?’ Badger asked her.

  She looked at him. Kino, his one good eye bloodshot, his face a thin, haggard version of the big man, dipped his head to her, barely hiding his indifference. He pulled a pottery jar out of the wooden box he had slept on, took a swig, then replaced it.

  ‘You’d be better eating this.’
Badger proffered bread.

  The younger man shrugged and took it, looking as if he had only accepted it to avoid an argument. He took one bite then put it in his pocket.

  ‘If you’re not eating it, I will,’ said Badger. ‘Or give it to the girl, she looks ravenous.’

  Kino tossed it at her as if to a dog, and she only just managed to catch it, saving it from the bilges. Badger was right. She was hungry.

  ‘You can helm for a bit if you’re awake now, Badger. I want to relax and find out what my new cargo is like.’ Manigan shuffled Rian along the bench and she was forced to sit up close to him. ‘So tell me.’ He leaned back against the gunnel. ‘Who are your people?’

  Her tongue froze in her head. The thought of Danuta made her utterly homesick, but other than her, who could she tell of? Even Danuta was not truly her own. ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘What? No kin? But who taught you to speak the language of the west? Is that not an island voice? Are you from the Long Island?’

  ‘No. I’ve been there, but I lived across the Minch from there.’

  ‘Assynt? You’re from Assynt?’

  She gave a tilt of her head in agreement and smiled at his delight.

  ‘Oh, that’s a wonderful land to be from. Those mountains! They are the children of the Goddess. And those people are strong. So whose family do you belong to? I stayed in the house of Tormaid once, and I met many people.’ He reeled off a list of people from Ardbhar, the broch in the north, and its nearby hamlets.

  Rian marvelled that he could know so many of the folk and recall their names. They sounded so incongruous here on the ocean, as if he was conjuring the land out of the water.

  ‘So are those your people?’

  She shook her head. ‘I lived in Drost’s broch, at Clachtoll, but I am not from there.’

  ‘Clachtoll, aye, I know where that is. I don’t think I’ve met Drost, but I know the name. I’ve heard he’s a hard man.’

  She wasn’t surprised that was his reputation, but the next question took her aback.

  ‘So why did he sell you? I can see why he bought you, but not why he’d move you on.’

  Indignation flared in her. Was that all he saw? A chattel to be traded, or in his case, simply stolen? ‘I wasn’t bought by him. He was supposed to be my foster father. But Ussa had a sword he wanted more than me.’ The bitterness in her mouth was like a rotten tooth, an ache that she could not ease.

  ‘Ah, Green Eyes. What’s your name again? Rian?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Green Rian, aye. You’ve been treated badly. It’s a crying shame for someone so lovely, such a pretty bird, clipped and caged when she ought to be flitting about singing and being beautiful.’ He brushed her cheek with the back of a finger. ‘Ach those broch men, they have no idea of what wealth and goodness lies all around them. If they can’t count it or fight with it or watch it glitter, if it isn’t stone or metal or…’

  His voice tailed off and he looked back at Ròn, shrinking on the horizon behind them.

  ‘We’re losing them. It’s Sedna to thank. I think you must be able to speak to her, to call a breeze like that. You can sail with me whenever you wish, Rian.’ He looked her full in the face as if drinking her in, but did not touch her again. His gaze was like his voice, soft and salty. ‘You remind me of someone else. You’re not at all like the Assynt people, now I look at you. Are you an elf’s daughter?’

  He paused, but she didn’t answer.

  ‘How did you come to be there?’

  She was surprised that she didn’t find his curiosity annoying. She found herself wanting to unburden herself of her story, but the words would not come. She had nothing to say, and tears welled in her eyes, remembering Danuta and the few frustrating times she had enquired, fruitlessly, into her origins. ‘I don’t know,’ was all she could muster.

  ‘I imagine life was hard.’

  She could see he was making his way around something in his mind as he talked. ‘I am trying to work out what it means to have you with us, or where to take you, if it comes to that. Who else is in his family? Did you have any friends there? There must be someone who might shelter you. I live a dangerous life. I don’t think I should take you hunting. You’re so…’ He paused. ‘So delicate. There are no butterflies in the Arctic.’ He rubbed his head thoughtfully. ‘Or not many. We might have to leave you somewhere before we head north again.’

  Rian wanted to ask him questions but dared not.

  ‘Is there not a medicine woman at Clachtoll? Are there none of her kin alive?’

  ‘Danuta.’ Speaking the name felt to Rian like an invocation. ‘She was my… she was like my grandmother. My foster mother died. I never knew her. Danuta took care of me. She is a healer.’ She stopped, uncertain as ever about how much she could say of the secret matters she had been taught.

  ‘One of the sisterhood, eh?’ He frowned. ‘So are you …?’ He seemed to have to think of the right phrase. ‘Are you a moon-dancer?’

  She stared at him, then quickly looked away, but he had seen her recognition of the name. Only very few girls were given the chance to become moon-dancers, to learn the sacred rituals associated with the waxing and waning of the moon, the secret medicines of fertility, how to bring a child into the world or to bring back menstrual bleeding if it ceased. Rian was sure it was taboo for a man to speak the name. But Danuta and the sisters had talked to her of these things when she had been to the winter festival and the next Beltane fire she had hoped she might be chosen. But here she was. No chance now of being the virgin at the sacred fire. Anger welled in her and she shook her head, suddenly furious at him and tired of his endless questions. He must have sensed he had pushed her as far as he could because he fell quiet.

  The breeze had dropped away again and their advance had slowed. Behind them, Ussa’s boat, never quite out of view, was gaining on them, growing perceptibly bigger and close enough for them to see the oars out. When it came to the race, Ussa would clearly always win in the calm with her slaves rowing while they drifted.

  ‘She’s catching us.’ Manigan did not seem too concerned. ‘Fancy a bit of rowing, Badger?’

  Badger threw him a hand gesture that made it quite clear what he thought of that idea.

  ‘Kino, grab a sweep. There’ll be drink for it. I want to keep my distance from Queen Bitch out there.’

  Kino swore at him in the Keltic tongue but shrugged and joined Manigan, helping him to lift two oars into their slots. They took a chest-seat each and began to pull, Manigan chanting the rhythm in a guttural, two-note song of utter lewdness.

  ‘Foreskin, rawskin, fuck her out, fuck her in.’ Over and over.

  Badger joined in the chant from the helm but Kino kept quiet, his jaw clenched with the strain of rowing. Manigan, fluidly stretching back then reaching forward, singing at full pelt, seemed to be enjoying himself. The boat started to crawl across the water.

  Kino kept in rhythm for about a dozen strokes, then started to falter.

  ‘Keep it together, rawskin,’ Manigan chanted, but Kino missed a stroke then caught the oar in the water on the return of the next one. The oar belted him in the chest and he bent over, coughing. Manigan halted.

  ‘Is that it? Is that all you can manage? Kino man, think of the last woman you had. Close your ears, Rian. Get into the rhythm.’

  Kino coughed again, a loose hacking that racked him, then straightened up.

  ‘One more time.’ Manigan leaned forward, Kino followed and they set off again. They managed a few more strokes until Kino was breathless once more.

  ‘Fuck it. Badger, what’s your price?’

  ‘I’m not rowing, mate. I told you. No oars. My rowing days are over.’ He shook his head implacably. Rian looked beyond him. The boat was so close now she could see Ussa in her white coat at the prow.

  ‘I’ll row.’ She pushed her
self to her feet and clambered across to the chest that Kino was sitting on, hacking. She touched his shoulder and he heaved himself up to let her in. She seized the oar and looked across at Manigan, rowing in rhythm with him. ‘Ocean, motion, ocean, motion,’ she chanted.

  Manigan almost lost his oar laughing.

  Then there was a howl and a clatter. Manigan leaped to his feet and Rian turned to see Kino toppling onto the gunnel and almost overboard. A spear was lodged in his back. Manigan tugged it out without ceremony and reached for the knife at his waist.

  ‘Fire. We need fire. Rian, Badger, get a fucking flame going, quick. Quick!’

  He was sawing at the rope attached to the spear, the other end of which was being pulled by Li on Ussa’s boat. They were so close Rian could see the grim expression on his face and hear Ussa barking ‘pull, you wimp,’ at him.

  ‘Fire, by the Goddess, Rian!’ Manigan had almost sawn through the rope. She reached for her pouch, pulled the tinder box out, glad she had taken the time to fit herself up to make a fire.

  ‘Where?’ She unwrapped the flint and kindling. Manigan cut the rope and flung it into the sea. Badger was rummaging in his chest.

  ‘There.’ Manigan pointed to a chunky thwart at the stern.

  Badger tossed her a metal plate. She arranged some cotton grass loosely surrounded by some dry heather tops. Rian murmured the word of ritual honouring, took a breath and struck the flints together. A spark pounced on the fluff, sputtered, and she breathed onto it, coaxing it into flame. She fed it more heather and it crackled the fierce birth greeting as she breathed on it too. The heather caught hold of the flame and chuckled. She gave it more and it flared. She breathed again, looking for something else to burn. ‘I need sticks to keep it alive.’

  Manigan had his chest open and was pulling things out like a dog after a mouse.

  Badger tossed her some birch twigs from a bundle he was holding, grinning at her. ‘Quite the fire devil, aren’t you!’ He nodded as she snapped the twigs and fed her flames with them.