Tindr

by Octavia Randolph

  Tindr, still seated by her side, was one of them. Of course he had seen folk kiss before, beginning with his own Nenna and Da. As he grew older he had seen more than kissing. He had watched Runulv kiss and caress the woman at his farm, and the urgency of Runulv's actions had been conveyed to his own body. Last Summer he had come across a couple at the edge of a hay-field who had put down their rakes in the warm sunshine. They lay upon the mown hay, entangled hip-to-hip, and Tindr, watching with caught breath, knew it to be the same act as a ram and ewe or stallion and mare. But Estrid – she was his friend, and younger even than he. Ring holding her like that and kissing her made her something different. Tindr’s face twisted as he watched it, and his own face felt hot, hot as Estrid’s looked when Ring released her.

  The other who was not smiling was Ragnfast. He was staring at Estrid as if he had never seen her before, this neighbour's daughter he had been raised alongside. His sisters were too old for her to play with, so from childhood Estrid had played with him, at least until her being a maid got in the way of their fun. Even after that she tagged along when she could, an ever-smiling presence. She was like Tindr in that way, almost always there. Now she sat down again, cheek still reddened, and lowered her eyes, seemingly unaware of Ragnfast’s still upon her.

  The rock was warmed once more, and the game went on. Runulv and Ring had earlier lifted another small crock of mead from a table near the farmhouse, and were half-way to draining it, but few joined them. Ragnfast's sister Gullaug made a clumsy throw to Gorm, the man she was promised too, and with a laugh they rose and went behind the sheltering wall of the lamm-gift to share their forfeit.

  Runulv moved over to where Gyda and her cousin Ása leaned near the fire, hugging themselves against a breeze that had come up. Ring came and flanked them, and pushed another log into the fire.

  But Ragnfast crossed over to where Estrid sat, a maid with eyes the colour of smoke. He looked down at her. “Come with me,” he said. Her face was puzzled, troubled, almost, but she rose. He led her around the side of the lamm-gift. He could hear a low rustle from the other side, where his sister and Gorm must be. The thatching of the steeply raked roof reached almost to the ground; they would be leaning against it and kissing.

  He turned to Estrid where she followed. She looked frightened, and less than her fourteen years. She had been thin as a little child, and still was; willow-thin, but like the willow had a supple grace. Her hair was that yellow of the mead that had swirled in their cups earlier, and it fell in a long and straight line over the paired brooches pinning her gown at the shoulders. He pulled her to him.

  He tilted his chin and let his lips near hers. She did not draw back, and he pressed her against his chest. Their mouths met, and before he kissed her his lips played on hers, nibbling at her lower lip, brushing against the upper, then settling firmly upon hers. He brought his hand from the sharpness of her shoulder blade to the round softness of her cheek, and let it rest there as his tongue sought her own. He felt her tremble in his arm, and felt his own excitement coursing in his body, an arousal to a new and higher pitch than he had ever yet known. He lifted his mouth from hers to give them both breath. She tasted of the tang of the ale and the sweetness of the mead they had both drunk, and he knew he tasted thus to her as well.

  “Estrid,” he murmured, in her ear. It was as if he had never before spoken her name. His hand drifted from her face and found her small breast through the light wool of her gown. Her trembling increased and he almost felt he held her heart in his hand. As a boy he had caught a fledging bird by throwing his tunic over it, and had gently taken up the fluttering thing in his hands. That was how she felt. He had let the bird escape after holding and looking at it. Estrid he did not wish to let go.

  He pushed against her and they fell slightly backwards upon the angled roof. She gasped, whether from his weight or the pressure of the hardness of his prick through his leggings he did not know. Now she made a small movement, the slightest struggle against him. She turned her head, moving her mouth away from his.

  Tindr had followed them. He was standing at the end of the lamm-gift. When Estrid moved her face and saw him, he turned quickly away and vanished around the corner from whence he came.

  Ragnfast saw him too. Estrid broke away from him, squeezing past his outstretched hand. “Estrid,” he called. But she quickened her pace, almost running.

  He followed her. Turning the corner back to where the fire burned he saw, coming across the field from the house, Estrid’s mother and her married sister. A look of concern showed on their faces. They reached the fire and scanned those still sitting around it. Gyda and Ása had left, but Sigrid was still there, sitting next to Ragnfast’s sister and her betrothed, who had returned from their stint behind the lamm-gift. Runulv and Ring sat on the edge of a bench, swaying woozily together. The brothers blinked across the firelight at Estrid and Ragnfast as they hurried back to the fire. Ragnfast glanced at all in turn; he did not see Tindr.

  Thorvi, Estrid’s mother, spotted her daughter. Estrid’s father had died two years ago; he had been a man of some temper, and Ragnfast knew he was lucky that he was not striding there towards him.

  “Estrid,” her mother said. One look betrayed what the girl had been doing. Her cheeks were flushed, her clothes disordered. Her linen head wrap had been pushed off and was dropping down her back, held only by the knot at the nape of her neck. A single stalk of dried sedge dangled from the tip of one lock of her hair. Ragnfast saw that he had managed to unwittingly unfasten one of the shoulder brooches to her gown; the pin had opened and it hung perilously close to falling off.

  All were silent. Estrid’s sister held her newest babe in her arms, and shifted the child from one arm to the other. Thorvi looked at him.

  “Ragnfast,” she said, now that he was near enough for her to see him. “I am surprised.” Her tone was measured, almost hurt. The families were close, their farms nearest one to the next; their children good friends. She could not tell by looking at her daughter how far things had gone.

  She made a small sigh, but with lifted head pulled herself up before Ragnfast. A sterner tone came into her voice. “Estrid is very young,” she noted, looking to the girl, who was now re-tying her head-wrap. She had half-turned away from them, trying to hide her flaming cheek. Thorvi’s next words were close to an order. “Do not touch her again unless you mean to wed her.”

  “I do mean to wed her,” Ragnfast blurted. It was out of his mouth so quickly that he heard himself speak before he had determined just what to say.

  His words jolted all, and at least one gasp was heard. Ragnfast was still looking at Estrid's mother. He knew, of a sudden, the rightness of what he had just said. He slowed himself, took a deep breath, and moved a step closer to Thorvi.

  “I, Ragnfast, son of Rapp, wish to take to wife your daughter Estrid, if she will have me.”

  This was a public declaration, made before witnesses, and must be honoured by he who made it.

  Sigrid stood up from where she had been sitting, biting her lower lip as if to keep herself from crying out. This slip of a girl was being pursued by no less than Ragnfast, one of the handsomest men around, who many maids dreamt of. And she, Sigrid, knew five Summers more than Estrid! She would not be left a spinster. She must herself wed, and soon, and to a man with not less than three-score sheep.

  Ragnfast’s sister Gullaug clapped her hands in joy, and her betrothed, Gorm, gave a hoot of approval.

  “A bride-feast! A bride-feast!” called out the drunken Runulv. He had his arm about his brother’s shoulder and was trying to rise, as if to make a toast. Thorvi turned to him and he fell silent.

  Ragnfast looked at Estrid. Her eyes were cast down, and she was smoothing the skirts of her gown. She finally raised her face. He saw the tears brimming in her eyes, making them glitter. He saw her smile at him.

  Her mother saw it too. Yet Estrid was still a child; she had only begun to bleed last year. She would make
Ragnfast promise not to touch her until she grew more. Thorvi had seen what befell girls who bore babes at Estrid’s age – the loosened teeth, falling hair, births that went on for days.

  Thorvi cleared her throat and looked back to Ragnfast. “You and I will speak of this with your parents,” she decided. “And she shall not wed until another year has passed,” she ended, the firmness in her voice returning.

  Ragnfast took heart. “I have four horses. Two are mares I will breed this Summer. In Spring I will have six horses.”

  Thorvi well knew that a union with Ragnfast would almost assure her daughter a prosperous future; she need fear nothing on that account. Nor did she fear Ragnfast would mistreat her girl; he was a good boy, with a good father. She worried instead that her gifts to the couple would be too slight. With her husband gone she could not dower Estrid as she had her first daughter; the most she might give would be a few piglets and six or eight sheep.

  Ragnfast was still pleading his case. “A man with six horses has wealth to build more wealth,” he was telling her. He looked again to Estrid, with her wet cheeks and bright smile, and then back to her mother. “She will come to me wearing silver brooches I have given her.”

  Thorvi nodded her head and repeated, “We will speak of this, you and I, with your parents,” but she could not keep a slight smile from raising the corner of her lips.

  Estrid went to Thorvi’s side, and after a last shy smile for Ragnfast, turned and walked, flanked by her mother and sister, to the farmhouse. Sigrid trailed behind them, hunching her shoulders under a woollen blanket which she wore as a shawl. Runulv and Ring had slipped off their bench and lay sprawling, on their backs, at the edge of the cooling ashes.

  Ragnfast stood before the dying Mid-Summer fire. The Sun was beginning to rise, lightening the sky behind the line of birch and more distant fir trees, making their outlines bold against the sky. What had seemed limitless now had limits; he could see landmarks.

  He sat down on the bench where Estrid had sat. There was no need to add more wood to the fire; the Sun would light the world soon. He saw a movement and looked up to see Tindr approach. He must have been standing off in the shadows, as he often did when he could not understand what was happening.

  Ragnfast raised his hand and touched his own eye, then his ear, telling Tindr he was glad to see him, the surest welcome of all. Tindr nodded, his uncertainty upon his face. He sat down at the end of the bench.

  Ragnfast’s head was full of what had just happened, and it took him a while to recall that Tindr had watched him kiss Estrid, and had likely been watching when he spoke for her to her mother. He felt of a sudden tired, as if he could sleep for a week. The snores of Runulv and Ring rose from where they lay, and made him smile. He looked over at Tindr. He was staring with fixed eyes into the dying fire, his straight nose outlined by a glimmer of Sun rising over the meadow to their right.

  Ragnfast lifted a hand to catch his eye. Tindr turned on the bench. Ragnfast began to laugh.

  “There is much to tell,” he told him. “I will do my best. I played forfeits as I wanted a kiss –” here he extended his hand out in front of him, and drew it back towards his chest: I want, and then pursed his lips as for a kiss – “and I won a wife.” He clasped his two hands together, the sign they used for hand-fast.

  Tindr’s mouth opened slightly. He raised both hands and touched the corners of his mouth – his sign for Estrid, as from childhood she seemed ever to be smiling.

  “Já, Estrid,” Ragnfast answered, using the same gesture on his own mouth. He repeated the hand-fast gesture, touching his own chest.

  Tindr nodded, but hung his head. A heartbeat passed. Then he grunted, loudly, and angrily, a grunt that rose into a piercing squeal of anger. He leapt up, and with fists clenched beat the air before him as if it were an invisible foe. The noise he made elicited a groan from one of the two snoring brothers, and Ragnfast stood up himself, should any be alarmed back at the house. Sure enough, he turned his head to see Dagr come walking towards them in the grey morning light. Ragnfast feigned a grin and raised his arm to him. Dagr saw his son standing safely by his cousin, slowed, and with a nod turned and walked back.

  Ragnfast pressed his finger across his own lips, urging Tindr to silence. Tindr let loose a whine of complaint, but then quieted.

  “What?” asked his cousin, tapping his temple. “What is it?”

  Tindr gritted his teeth. He could not help his low uh, uh uh from escaping his lips as he tried to tell Ragnfast.

  He thrust his hand out in front of him, then pulled it rapidly back to his chest.

  “You want,” Ragnfast repeated.

  Tindr’s blue-white eyes rolled in his head; at that moment they did indeed look like those of an animal. He snatched at the air, trying to form the right signs. He settled on bringing both hands to his waist, smoothing them down his legs, his gesture for a girl or woman, one who smooths her skirts.

  Ragnfast watched as Tindr repeated it, the hand reaching and pulling to his chest, the gesture for a woman or girl.

  “You want a woman,” Ragnfast breathed.

  He nodded his head as he said this. He did not laugh, as he may have if he were not so tired, and had not just asked a maid to be his own wife.

  Tindr saw he understood, but with a low whine repeated his message, the reaching hand, the gown being smoothed. Then he gestured holding someone in a hug, and made a kissing motion, his arms wrapped around his own shoulders.

  Ragnfast lowered his head, and let out a sigh. He looked back at his younger cousin. Tindr wanted just what he did, and Ragnfast was old enough to know that Tindr might never have it. There was no way he or anyone could help Tindr to the love of a maid.

  He thought, for the second time that night, of the woman at the Thing who had led him silently into the woods. This was what Tindr needed, but all it would do was give him a taste of what a woman’s flesh felt like. It would not give him a wife to care for, nor the hope of future babes, nor a life lived together.

  He could not say any of this, but as he stood, nodding his head at Tindr, he hoped he might realise that he understood. He had no answer for him, and after a long look Tindr seemed to accept this. Ragnfast put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder.

  There were still hours before most would arise. The young men were all sleeping in one of the barns. Ragnfast gestured that he would go lie down now. Tindr nodded, but shrugged, Nai. Ragnfast watched him walk into the woods, then turned and made his own way across the damp grasses to the barn.

  Chapter the Seventeenth: Dagr is Called

  WHEN the last of the three Norns, Skuld, took note of Dagr, he was on his boat on the Baltic Sea. Skuld holds the small sharp shears that sever the Thread of Life. She is the eldest of the Norns. Her daughter Verdandi pulls the thread out, teasing it to its appropriate length, and the youngest Norn, Urd, Skuld’s granddaughter, does the spinning, as befits a maiden. It is this capricious youngest who chooses whether the thread be of coarse wool, fine linen, or even shining gold; whether a man be born a poor farmer, a tradesman, or a great and mighty warrior.

  Skuld is old, and like many old women, needs but little sleep. She is ever watchful, and with a nod and a smile leans down with her shears. “My daughters weary of spinning for you,” she whispers, with her gentle, but chill murmur.

  She had once before looked at Dagr, but shook her head. Njord liked this young man; leave him be; though one day Skuld would snap the thread for even the God himself. Now however, Dagr caught her attention anew.

  It was a clear morning, just at the start of fishing season. The air had been cold and the wind colder when Dagr had lifted his mast and hauled up his sail in the dark of a new day. Soon fingers of grey streaked the dark, followed by red and yellow beams that coloured also the undulant waves. Dagr never grew tired of watching the Sun rise up out of the sea, just as when, living on the western coast with his brother Tufi, he had not tired of seeing it sink there.


  Dagr had good eyes, and they were good even now. They could readily discern by the movement of the water where herring might be gathering. At times the hungry sea birds aided him, but often just by studying the whirling surface he would know the best place to drop his net. He thought he spotted such a disturbance ahead, and set for it. He was heading into the Sun of a cloudless day, and it dazzled him at times, and he had need to shield his eyes with his hand as he fixed on his rippled target.

  All was well in his world. The season was starting strongly, and he had his friend Ketil at work braiding him new hempen lines for both sail and steering oar. Rannveig had asked the potter for more heavy crocks; her brewing earned her good silver, and much else in trade. He took almost as much pride in her renown for her ale as she did. And his boy – well, Tindr was Tindr. He had hoped the boy might wish to join him fishing, and Tindr did in fact come with him on days when he thought the haul might be overly large. But Tindr was not cut to be a fisherman.

  Tindr had good sea-legs and never had lost a meal over the gunwale, as Dagr had when he first sailed. But he could see that his son had no love for it; the way his eyes fastened on the green of the trees as they left and returned told all. And he knew Rannveig was secretly glad their boy did not wish to take up the way of the sea and its dangers. Tindr worked willingly enough, on or off the boat, drying nets, gutting and flaying the catch, salting and hanging the whitish slabs of herring and cod. But Dagr knew he wished always to be in the forest. He could not gainsay it, for the amount of game Tindr took in Fall and early Winter had been a true and steady source of sustenance. Tindr’s ability at the hunt meant fresh meat to break the tedium of salt fish. It meant smoked haunches of deer that they could trade for needed oil, linen, and grain. When Tindr took a boar it meant a feast for all their friends, so that the blessing of his skill extended throughout the folk of the trading road. His mother feared for Tindr and his future, and Dagr did as well, but none of the fears had to do with hunger or want.