Bracelet of Bones (7 page)

I like the way he plays with words, and it’s true, master carvers and poets do bring their days and years—their life journey—to their work.

That’s why Odin says we should listen to gray-haired singers.
Though they hang with the hides and flap with the pelts,
he says,
and though they rock with the guts in the wind, shriveled skins often give good advice.

But believing, self-believing . . . that’s what matters most, isn’t it? Some people scoff at me and tell me I’ll never reach Miklagard. Even Turpin did to begin with. But I will! I will for as long as I believe I will.

Solveig unrolled her reindeer skin. She curled up beneath it, and before she had fallen asleep, her two shoulder companions lay down on either side of her. She could feel the way in which heavy-breathing, full-bodied Bergdis lay close to her, and she sensed the distance between her and silent, stick-thin Odindisa. She put both hands to her heart.

Father! My father! I never thought you wouldn’t be there when I came down from the hill. Not for one moment. How could you have left without telling me? How could you?

Solveig sighed and stretched. She gazed at the helmsman, sitting in the stern and holding the steering oar, his face lit by his night lantern.

Just when night is darker than dark, in the hour of the wolf, Solveig and Red Ottar and all the traders were woken and shaken by the sail’s huge wing flapping, the pine mast groaning and the whole boat jolting and shuddering. Sheets of salt spray stung them, and Torsten was standing and yelling, bawling into the night.

Everyone staggered down the deck and pressed around him. Then Solveig was thrown right off balance, tripped over a wooden chest, and went sprawling. Vigot helped her
up and clicked his tongue. “Throwing yourself at my feet!” he said.

But Solveig quickly shrugged him off—she was as scared as everyone else.

“What?” cried everyone. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“Out of the way!” shouted Red Ottar. “Torsten! What was it, man?”

Torsten just went on staring over the stern, staring and pointing.

“Whatever it was,” he said. “Whatever. Out of the dark, back into the dark.”

“Away with you!” Red Ottar called. “Away! Back to your bedding!”

Hollow-eyed, Torsten turned to the traders.

7

I
t wasn’t until early next morning that Torsten told everyone what had happened.

“It loomed up,” he said. “It swam out of the dark. One moment it wasn’t there, the next it was.”

“What did?” everyone demanded. “What was it?”

“A ship. Pitch black. Darker than night.”

“Even its sail?” asked Solveig.

“That as well. The only pale thing was the lookout man, standing in the prow. Big man,” he told Solveig, “rather like your father, but I could see right through him.”

Solveig stiffened, and Odindisa sucked in her breath through her teeth.

“I yelled at him, but he didn’t reply. So then I angled this steering paddle and prayed for strength. Almost wrenched off my arms, it did.”

“But for you, Torsten,” said Red Ottar, “we’d all be at the bottom of the Baltic.”

Torsten squared his jaw and raised his eyes to Asgard. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank your sea wife!”

“Wave knock,” said Edith, as if she were remembering something. “Wave thump. Scream.”

“That’s the point,” Torsten said. “Ships sound. Bows slice. Hulls creak and pennants rap. But this one didn’t. It was completely silent.”

“I warned you,” Odindisa said. “Magicians. I sensed them when I reached over the water. They were on their way out from Åland.”

“Says who?” asked Red Ottar in a scornful voice.

“I say so,” Odindisa replied, and she spread her cloak a little.

“Sendings,” said Bruni.

“What?” asked Red Ottar.

“Back home in Iceland,” Bruni said, “there are magicians who know how to cast death spells and how to raise people from the dead. They know how to make Sendings.”

“What’s that?” Solveig asked.

“Vapors. Sendings can grow themselves as big as giants or small as flies. They board boats and cross oceans and put people into such deep sleep they never wake again.”

“Tell us later, Bruni,” Red Ottar told him. “There’ll be plenty of time for your stories.”

“Sendings are not imaginings,” said Bruni. “In Iceland we all know about them.”

Torsten glared at Bruni. “You can send yourself one for all I care.”

“Magicians from Åland,” Odindisa repeated. “Magicians or ghosts. We’d do better to avoid the islands.”

“Why?” asked Red Ottar. “They weren’t after us.”

“He’s right,” Torsten said. “Otherwise we’d never have escaped.”

“I’m not changing course,” the skipper told Torsten. “Not because of a silent ship.”

“We must make a sacrifice for our escape,” Odindisa said. “Otherwise Ægir . . .”

“What?” asked Bruni. “What can we sacrifice?”

“Something living.”

The traders looked at each other. They looked at Bergdis.

“Ægir and Ran won’t think much of mice or rats,” Bergdis said, “even if we can catch them. So . . . apart from ourselves . . . the only living things are the three chickens.”

“That settles it,” Red Ottar said. “One of them.”

So Bergdis told Solveig to fetch one of the chickens from the cage beside the mast. “The plump one. The black one.”

Solveig shook her head. “It’s such a waste.”

“A waste?” said Torsten. “A waste to sacrifice to the gods?”

“Oh, no,” said Bergdis, smiling. “She won’t go to waste. All the gods want is the chicken’s spirit.”

When Solveig returned with the squawking black chicken, she saw Bergdis had slipped on a strange bracelet. She and Edith examined it.

“It looks as if it’s made of little finger bones,” Solveig said, and she counted them. “Seven of them. Braided and lying side by side.”

“Is that what they are?” Edith asked.

Bergdis didn’t reply. She just looked at Edith, and her eyes glittered.

Then she pulled out of her deep cloak pocket her filleting knife, the same one she’d brandished over Solveig’s head. She grabbed the chicken from Solveig, held her up, and with a scream slit her breast so that her blood and gizzards spewed over the deck.

The traders got to their knees. Edith retched; all the others gave thanks to Ægir and Ran.

“When we sailed from Sigtuna,” Bergdis warbled, “our sea horse was kicking and prancing. But the black ship swam out of the dark. You guided Torsten’s hand, you gave us safe passage . . .”

After Bergdis had finished, Torsten said, “Don’t forget the ale. Ægir’s always thirsty.”

“He can have mine,” gurgled Edith, and she retched again.

“Half the mug behind us and half before us,” Red Ottar told her.

So Edith threw her ale onto the thirsty waves.

“Ægir and Ran be praised,” said Slothi. “And Christ be praised.”

“What?” snapped Red Ottar. His bull neck turned red and the veins stuck out. “How dare you? I’m not having anyone call on the White Christ on my boat.”

“You’re no husband of mine,” Odindisa told Slothi in a low, cold voice. “Christ . . . Christ.”

“You can worship the gods and Christ at the same time,” Slothi said. “That’s what I do.”

“He brought war to Sweden,” the skipper went on. “Blood and death.” He rounded on Solveig. “And to your country
too. When King Olaf came back from Kiev and fought in Christ’s name at Stiklestad.”

Solveig slowly nodded and closed her eyes. “I know,” she said under her breath, and she remembered the ghosts of men who died at Stiklestad swimming in the water as she sailed to Trondheim.

Red Ottar looked at her thoughtfully. “You’ve been there?”

“And never left,” Solveig replied. “Whoever goes to Stiklestad never leaves Stiklestad. That’s what people say.” She looked gravely at Red Ottar.

“They had their time,” Red Ottar said, “and it was their time to die. Right! Let’s hear no more of Christ. His men killed my brother and my brother’s son.”

Then Bergdis turned to Solveig and gave her the mangled remains of the black chicken. “Pluck her,” she said. “Save what you can for the pot.”

So Solveig sat with her back to the mast and plucked the luckless chicken. The sea wind swept away the feathers, even the sticky ones. Scenting the blood of their own sister, the remaining two chickens squawked anxiously inside their cage.

Torsten. He knows something about Bruni, thought Solveig. There’s bad blood between them.

Solveig had a lump in her throat. And, quite suddenly, her troubled tears were dropping onto the chicken’s carcass.

Blood, she thought between sobs. Lifeblood washed away by tears.

The mood of the crew was sober all morning. And during the afternoon, a light sea mist dipped and rose and
shape-changed around them, and everyone felt imprisoned inside their own heads and hearts. Everyone except for Vigot. He whistled like a finch and announced that stillness and mist were bad for fish but good for fishermen.

“Mist made by Ålanders,” Odindisa told Solveig, who was standing with Torsten in the stern. “They make mist when they want to keep people away.”

“What nonsense you do talk,” Torsten said. “Hot and cold make mist when they mix too quickly.”

“How many islands are there?” Odindisa asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” said Odindisa. “The magicians raise them and sink them. The number’s always changing.”

“Odindisa,” said Torsten, reaching out and tapping her forehead, “that’s where the mist is. Nothing but mist.”

“You’ll see,” Odindisa warned him.

As it was, Torsten could see well enough to guide the ship in to Åland. While Bergdis and Odindisa hauled down the great sail, the four men—Red Ottar with Vigot and Bruni with Slothi—readied themselves at the oarsmen’s benches and quietly rowed the boat into the harbor.

It was already almost dark, and not until next morning could Solveig see where they were. It was a mangy, ragged, drafty kind of place, its waterfront peopled by no more than a dozen or so traders and suppliers. A home for shrieking gulls and prowling cats, punctuated by fish guts and piles of sodden, stinking seaweed.

It’s not what I expected, Solveig thought. Not at all. Or are the gulls and the cats all magicians?

During the morning, Solveig and the traders busied themselves securing more provisions. Then Red Ottar told the crew they were free to come and go until nightfall.

“And wherever you go and whatever you do,” he said, “find yourselves better spirits. No ship makes good headway against argument and ill feeling. They’re just as dangerous as floating ice or submerged rocks.” The skipper looked around at his crew so intently that each was convinced he was singling them out. “And you can be quite sure,” he warned them, “if there’s further argument, one of you will be leaving this boat. Even if we’re at sea.”

Solveig decided to go off on her own.

Eleven of us, she thought. It’s so cramped, and sometimes I feel as if I can’t breathe. No wonder we keep squabbling.

I know I should be carving, but I’ll wear my waist pouch. I’ll walk along the foreshore and collect bones.

Almost as soon as she heard her leather soles slapping against the gangplank and then stretched her long limbs—her legs and her arms as well—Solveig began to feel better. She inhaled great gulps of air, stinking of seaweed and fish guts; then she expelled all the air again until her lungs were flat and empty and she was coughing.

Solveig left the little harbor behind her and picked her way along the strand. She saw a yellow-breasted bird she’d never seen before. It was hopping, hopping in front of her, looking at her sideways, whistling.

You’re leading me on, Solveig thought. And I’ll follow you. But then she thought: What if you’re a magician? Are you going to catch me and cut off my hair?

Solveig was so busy watching the bird and telling herself stories that she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her.

“Ah!” said the voice. “We’re heading the same way, then.”

Solveig whirled around and at once slipped on a slimy rock.

“Careful!” said the voice, and a pair of hands clamped around her slender ribs and helped her up.

Solveig looked into her helper’s eyes.

“Vigot!” she exclaimed. “Were you following me?”

“No.”

“Liar!”

“Well,” said Vigot, “you’re worth following.”

The young man leaned toward her with his mouth half open, as if he were ready to swallow Solveig’s least response. But she turned her head to one side, raised her right hand, and pushed it gently but firmly against Vigot’s chin.

“You’ve got strange eyes,” Vigot told her.

Solveig shrugged. “I can’t see them,” she said.

“One gray, one violet. Like a changeling.”

Solveig grinned. “That’s what my stepmother says.”

“Not young and not old.”

“That’s what she says too,” said Solveig, frowning. “Anyhow, your eyes are strange too.”

“How?”

They’re like fishhooks, she thought. And I can’t help looking at them.

“How?” Vigot asked again.

But Solveig just shook her head and kept her mouth shut.

“Where are you going?” Vigot asked.

“I’m following that bird.”

“And I’m following you,” Vigot said, and he laughed.

“Go away,” said Solveig.

But she didn’t wholly mean it, and Vigot knew she didn’t.

“All right,” Solveig said. “If that bird cuts off my hair . . .”

“What do you mean?”

“. . . and makes a net to catch a tide mouse, you’ll have to save me.”

Vigot shook his head and smiled.

When the two of them had crossed a beach of gritty sand and then climbed a green rise, they were surprised to see almost below them a large group of huts and several longhouses with turf roofs.

“So that’s how it is,” Vigot said. “The harbor’s just a harbor.”

“And look,” added Solveig. “See that track? That leads straight from the village to the harbor.”

“A less interesting way,” said Vigot with a shady smile.

In the middle of the village, quite a crowd had gathered, and Solveig saw they were watching a wrestling match.

Almost at once, everyone around her yelled. One of the young men had thrown the other and pinioned him, and that was it: the contest was over.

Then Solveig realized that Vigot was no longer standing beside her.

“Wait!” he shouted. “Wait!” And he pushed his way through the crowd. Then he looked back over his shoulder at Solveig. “You’ll see,” he called out.

No, she thought. What if we’re not back in time? What if . . . I don’t know.

Vigot walked straight up to the young islander who had just won the contest. He pointed at him and then at himself. Then he fished in a pocket and pulled out a little piece of hack-silver the size of a fingernail.

The young islander nodded and smiled and for his part held up what looked like a silver thimble, then laid it on the ground beside the hack-silver.

Vigot stripped to the waist, and the crowd whistled and booed and cheered.

The moment Vigot and the islander grabbed hold of each other, Solveig could see how lithe and deceptive her companion was. He wasn’t as muscular or sturdy as his opponent, but he made up for that with his speed and his feints.

All the same, the islander was the first to strike. He reached out and tried to grab the back of Vigot’s neck. Vigot leaned back, but his opponent clawed his right cheek from his ear down to his chin, drawing blood.