Catla and the Vikings (3 page)

She lined herself up with the sun so her shadow stayed in a straight line behind her. This was the direction of the standing stones, she was sure. She brushed her hands over her long brown skirt, the calluses on her palms snagging on its threads. Almost without thinking, as was her habit on the headland, she set her feet between the brambles and bracken, letting her body pick its own path. The setting sun should be in front, but in the morning it would rise behind her. Then she'd walk down her own shadow.

Aigber sat on the banks of the River Humber, but first were the standing stones. Her fingers remembered the feel of the stones. Every summer since she could crawl she'd explored them during the Longest Day celebrations. She'd imagined their carvers from long ago and wondered why the stones were there. She knew from travelers' tales that there were other circles of standing stones elsewhere in England. They said that farther west and to the south, on a wide plain, a circle of huge stones stood higher than a man's head. The stones she knew and loved were shorter. Ancient, weathered old friends, she'd even given them secret names: Odin, Mars, Thor and Ravensclaw.

She liked to sit with her back against the stones, imagining their stories. Bits of lichen and moss clung in small nooks and hollows on their surfaces. Some stones in the ring stood high as her waist, while others rose a little higher. One long stone lay on its side inside the westerly arc, while another was set a little outside the circle to the east. She had often sat on the easterly stone, picking the small purple flowers that grew beside it while she watched the summer sun climb from its bed. The stones formed the backdrop to the tales the elders told around the fires in the evenings.

Once she passed the stones, she'd find a path to Aigber. She walked faster, and to keep her mind from skipping back to her smoke-filled village, she called out the names of the flowers she saw—feverfew, yarrow, bone knit.

But stop! That noise, to the right. A grunt. A boar?
She stepped softly, then stopped to listen. Nothing now. No movement in the bracken or weeds. She moved slowly, her ears fully alert. It would soon be dark. As she pondered the night, dark thoughts came crashing in. Would she be safe? She longed for the noises of her family when they slept around her: Bega's wheezy sighs, Mother's whiffling nose sounds and Father's steady snuffling indrawn breaths.

Tonight she would be alone. Would there be wolves? Safe at home in her own sleeping robes, she liked their calls. Some howls sounded close while answers came from afar. When the moon was round as a coin, they would sing in chorus. Once or twice, out on the heath, there'd been glimpses of pointy ears amid the brambles, but she'd never seen eyes—evil eyes, some folks said. Those same folks told tales about goblins and fairies, said they lured men to their deaths, stole babies or exchanged them. Father John glowered when he heard these stories, for the Good Book did not allow for fairies. Still, many people did not leave their hearths after sunset except for the evenings around a communal fire. Most cottages had wormwood over the door to keep the goblins away. Now she was glad she had a stem or two and fumbled in her pouch until her fingers touched it, along with the sprigs of yarrow, known to turn evil aside.

Imagine trouble, it will find you.
Catla felt comforted by her mother's words, so she repeated them aloud, in a singsong way, and pushed aside thoughts of Bega clinging to her mother's leg and her brothers protecting the pigs in the midst of smoke and shining swords and axes. The sun sank closer to earth, taking its warmth with it. The smoke behind grew distant. She was alone. The coming night seemed long and dangerous.

CHAPTER THREE

In the Hills at Night

Catla stumbled over some twisted bracken lying across her path, regained her balance and flinched as pain shot up her hurt leg. It woke her from a kind of daze, and she glanced around in fright. Had she wandered off to one side? No, there was the path. She checked her shadow. It lay straight behind her. Her alarm eased, but she scolded herself.
I am a dreamer. I can't even keep my eyes on the path
.

Nothing looked familiar. She'd never traveled this far from home alone before. How much farther was it? Her hands clenched as her body straightened. She squared her shoulders, determined to stay alert. Her mother's voice teased her mind.
Watch it. Catla's got
her chin out.
But thinking about her mother made her stomach wobble, and she gulped in some air to keep going. Her eyes prickled as new tears threatened, but she blinked them away.

The sky behind her was growing dark as evening set in. Shadows of trees and bushes lengthened. Gorse bushes blocked her view in front. She passed another one and stopped at the edge of a group of barrows, burial mounds of an ancient people.

Barrow ghosts
. The words came unbidden, and she almost turned back. But where would she go? She swallowed hard. She hadn't wanted to come this way, but now she had no choice.

She stepped lightly to soothe any spirits of dead kings and warriors buried under the mounds of earth. The sunken paths around the mounds made it difficult to see ahead. Soon she was surrounded by graves. Her lips were dry and her tongue stuck to the top of her mouth. Had she already passed this one? Or that? By pushing her tongue around, she managed to create enough moisture to swallow, trying to loosen the knot in her throat. Slabs of stone protected the entrances to the vaults, but she had no desire to push them aside. Shafts of sunlight shone between some of the gravesites. At each sunny space she checked to make sure her shadow still fell behind her.

Stories about barrow ghosts flitted into her mind. Eustace, an older boy who loved to tease, had told her about them when she was much younger, his eyebrows arching and his fingers fluttering. “You'll see them if you go out the night before All Saints Day. They hide among the barrows. Don't ever go there. Gray and hungry, they are, with heads covered by helmets, but only hollows for eyes. Their long fingernails twist and turn. Their rags of clothing float on air. If they brush you, you lose a part of your soul.” Her father had set him to extra plowing for his mischief, but the images were already lodged in Catla's mind
. Turn your mind to happy thoughts, like the Longest Day celebration.

A sudden prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck and down her arms stopped her. She froze. She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, “Oh, Lord of hallowed grounds, forgive this foolish maiden. I've stumbled into your domain. Safeguard me. Call back your ghosts. I must save my family. Allow me safe passage through your sacred grounds.”

With eyes still clenched, she listened and heard a rhythmical grinding. Peering between her lashes she saw Agatha, her favorite ewe, chewing stalks of grain that jutted from her mouth. Catla's knees buckled in relief, and she came down hard on them. “Oh, Agatha, Agatha, how did you get so far from home? I'm very glad to see you. You bad girl, don't you know Dunstan has been looking for you?” She reached for the ewe to pull her close for some comfort, but Agatha sidled away, seeking another tuft. Catla chuckled shakily, picked up her walking stick and stood, brushing her skirt off and giving her sore leg a soothing rub. Thank the raven, no one had witnessed her bargaining with the spirit gods. Or talking to a sheep.

She moved more quickly and her stride evened out. She passed a smaller mound and wondered if children or women were buried here too. Then with a squeal of pain, she stopped. A gorse thorn had gone through the side of her shoe where the leather was softer. She bent to remove it and, when she stood, saw the open heath before her. With a few shakes to dislodge any ghosts, she hurried into the open.

She had made it past the barrow mounds.

The sun hung closer to the horizon. The shadows were longer and darker as evening fell. They hid badger hollows and mole burrows where she could twist her ankle again. She slowed her pace. It was dangerous traveling alone. No one knew where she was. No one would look for her.

Beyond a bush of goat's rue, its long seedpods almost at the bursting stage, a faint tinge of pink and orange tinted the low clouds along the western horizon.

But what was she seeing?

Alarm tightened her chest.

A pair of pointed ears stuck up straight into the evening sky, still and alert. Against the soft wash of color, the outline of dark ears showed clearly. “Wolf.” She mouthed the word. Was it as intent on her as she on it? She stopped and peered across the bushes. It hadn't moved.

She needed to go on, but how? Throw a stick at it? No, it might attack. It must have seen her. She'd step aside to see if it turned when she moved.

She edged sideways off the path, keeping her gaze fastened on the ears. They did not shift. She waited a bit. Nothing moved.

Feeling bolder and a bit desperate, she moved farther off the path. It would have to turn now to keep her in sight.

The ears remained motionless.

She called a low owl's hoot. No reaction.

She sidled back onto the path and crept closer. Suddenly, the ears took on their real shape: a splintered stump with pronglike branches above the bushes.

She gasped and her knees trembled, but this time she stayed upright. She'd clasped her hands together, squeezing her fingers until they hurt. Now she shook them to move the blood again. She tried to smile at her fear but couldn't. The middle of her body felt like one huge ball of twisted yarn, as if Bega had pulled it apart in play.

She wanted to be home under her sleeping robes, not here in the almost dark with barrow ghosts and imaginary wolves. Her lower lip trembled. She felt small and alone, but her mind urged her along. “Hurry up, hurry up,” she whispered. The sound of her voice encouraged her.

She skirted an elder bush and came to the top of a small rise. On a hill ahead, she saw the standing stones, half hidden by trees. The stones squatted to her left, their tops showing against a sky now shot with golden rays against a deeper purple.
At last. At last. Now, I'll be at Aigber before the short-shadow meal on the morrow.
Her feet fairly flew down the trail to the stones, and she smiled in giddy relief.

An owl called low and long into the dusk. It's lonely sound echoed the way she felt. It was almost dark, and there was no shelter for her tonight. Would she feel safer inside the circle of stones? Her heart bumped.
Why me?
Her mouth turned down. She hadn't asked to be here at night and she felt close to panic. Why did she have to be the rescuer? She'd almost rather be back with her family in the goat pen. Then she shook her head. What was she thinking? She was the one. Only she could to do what was needed.

Someplace in this circle of sanctuary she would find a place to sleep. Suddenly it was all she could do to get there. She felt an intense weariness and could hardly move her legs. Heading for the shortest way, she entered the circle by the side, not going past the entrance stone. Just beyond was the stand of oak trees that gave shelter from the northern winds.

Inside, it seemed darker. The stones blocked the low band of westerly light that had dimmed as the sun sank below the horizon. Where should she sleep? Her heart was pounding now, and she closed her mind to the dark furies that scuttled around the edges of her thoughts. There was Odin's stone. Yes, she'd be safe beside Odin, king of the Norse gods. It had always been her favorite stone, slightly to the left of the entrance. Its surface held many small dips to hold a treasured rock or small bunch of flowers. There was a small hollowed space at its base. She asked for protection and thought she heard a rumble of assent as she knelt and removed any small stones that might dig into her body during the night. When the space felt smooth, she squirmed down into it and looked up into the sky. Her belly rumbled, and she pushed it against her backbone, telling herself that tomorrow in Aigber there would be food. Was her family this hungry?

The black space overhead was filled with what looked like a mass of candles sputtering and flickering. She remembered the night sky as one of the delights of the summer gatherings. This past summer she'd dared herself to creep out of the cottage and up her secret path through the bracken onto the heath. Her eyes had gazed in wonder at the stars. Some of them had tumbled into the sea and she wondered why they did that. Tonight she wanted to capture the feeling of peacefulness she'd had then.

But what was that?
Her body stilled while her eyes shifted from the heavens to the ground. She lifted her head cautiously. Something rustled nearby.
A small creature, a little hedgehog maybe,
she told herself. Yet she moved as close to Odin's stone as she could, to feel something hard and secure at her back. She wondered how her mother had felt when she'd been a warrior and slept under the night sky.
If Mother could do it, I can too.
The thought gave her courage.

All went quiet. She felt in her pouch for the small piece of yarrow to protect her against evil. There were no little pixies, Mother said. No goblins or trolls. Catla could not focus. The stars seemed to jump around because tears brimmed in her eyes. She didn't want to cry, so she curled into a ball and tried to think calming thoughts. Try as she might, she could not stop the tears and she finally let them roll out of the corners of her eyes into her hair. What if all her family was killed? Who would look after her? Not Olav. He'd be killed too, since he was in the village. Her tears rolled faster.

But my family isn't dead,
she told herself firmly. Anger replaced self-pity. How dare those men come to her village and threaten her family like that? What gave them the right? Just because they had surprise on their side, didn't make it right. She knew if her father had been warned, he would have set the men with their shields for a fight and maybe the villagers would have stopped them.

She tried to picture the way this would have worked, but realized she knew next to nothing about battles. Why hadn't she paid more attention? Who was she to make this journey alone?
Well, who else was there? It had to be you.
A slightly sneering voice in her head talked back to her. She shook her shoulders to get rid of it.
What's the sense in listening to a voice like that?
Catla turned her mind away to block the dark thoughts.