by Jayden Woods
The Ninth Lost Tale of Mercia:
Runa the Wife
Jayden Woods
Copyright 2010 Jayden Woods
Edited by Malcolm Pierce
*
JOM
1001-1006 A.D.
She awoke in his heavy arms, and at first she panicked. The memories of the night before came back to her in shattered pieces. He chased her through the woods. She jumped on him from a tree and they fell in a breathless tangle. The underbrush scraped her back. His wiry beard tickled her stomach. They laughed, they groaned … they grew silent.
Now his breath roared and faded behind her, up and down the back of her neck, steady as an ocean current. She looked down at his large hands, still clasped around her stomach. He was the most magnificent man she had ever met. Thorkell the Tall … they did not call him so without reason. Her small fingers traced the thick, golden hair of his arms. He had returned to Jom with the rest of his army, victorious over Olaf Tryggvason. He had proved himself a mightier Jomsviking than his own brother, Jarl Sigvaldi, chief of Jomsborg. He could have had any woman he wanted, willing or otherwise. But she had not even given him a chance to choose. She wanted him for herself, so she lured him into the woods and she took him. Now what?
Now she was done with him.
She took hold of his hand and slid it like sand from her body. He sighed and shifted, but otherwise showed no signs of waking. The rumble of his breath almost made her want to fall back against him and drift into his dreams, but she resisted. She slipped gracefully from his relaxed grip and into the free air. She draped her dress over her skin, a light gray garment that looked blue in vivid sunshine and left very few lines of her body to the imagination. She left her hair loose and ruffled, a swirling and tangled mass of pale yellow strands, as wild and free as her own spirit. Then she tip-toed away.
Only once did she glance back at Thorkell, his partially-clothed body draped across the forest bed. His skin looked coarse where the shadows fell upon it, but seemed to gleam as smoothly as gold in the sunshine. The muscles of his torso were a sight to behold, bulging and tightening with the slightest motion, yet softening into a gentle ripple of his strength when he relaxed. She had observed this phenomenon many times the night before.
Leaving him now would be an unfortunate loss. But that loss was little compared to her freedom.
With a sad smile, she turned and hurried away.
*
Close to the shore, she sat facing north and cast the runestones into the soft earth. She watched the shapes roll and settle, their stony surfaces gathering a film of soft yellow dust. Then she studied the lines and drew her own conclusion from them.
She did not believe the stones had any magical power. She imagined that the gods perhaps nudged them one direction or another, with their knowing winds and earthly pull, but she cared little for the source of their design. No matter why they fell a certain way, the runes always spoke to her. Runa would always find a reflection of herself in the words and ideas they conjured. Often, her own interpretation of the runestones’ casting would reveal more about her inner hopes and fears than any other form of insight.
What she saw troubled her, so she closed her eyes and listened to the distant whisper of the ocean. She breathed deeply of its salty breeze. Her mind swam to the rhythm of the far-off crashing waves. She saw two different fortunes in her mind, but she did not understand how they could both be true, when in fact they strongly opposed each other. Two futures lay ahead of her, forged by her own decisions and willpower.
In one future she lived a settled life, in a single home, with a man who loved her and a community that supported her. She left the wildness of the fields and forests for the stability of a town and market. In her second future she traveled far, far away, further than she had ever imagined traveling, over the roiling ocean to some distant shore. She began a new life, doing whatever she willed, controlled by no group of people, inhibited by no man. She took what she wanted and left the rest to burn. She was a Viking.
She shuddered and opened her eyes again, steadying them on the knife-like edge of the horizon. Both futures excited and frightened her. She wanted both. She wanted neither.
And so she would not worry about them, she decided. She collected the runestones and returned them to her pouch. She stood and brushed the twigs from her dress. As she glanced at the ocean she thought of Thorkell the Tall, sailing the vast seas with his Viking army, gathering gold and reducing his enemies to puddles of fear. Bumps lifted along her arms, making her sensitive to every slight brush of the wind. She trembled and shoved him from her mind once more.
She slipped back into the woods, to the cave in which she lived alone, to the safe abode in which no one supported her, nor constricted her.
