The Islands of the Blessed

by Nancy Farmer

  “That’s not a question one should ask in the dark,” the Bard said. “I will tell you this: The sound of a carnyx is like the cry of a Pictish beast. You’ll hear it soon enough on the borders of Notland.” The old man turned his back and refused to speak any more.

  In the morning they came to the port where Jack and Lucy had almost been sold as slaves. Jack had been so sunk in misery at the time that he hadn’t noticed much about the place. He was amazed to learn that this was Edwin’s Town. All his life he’d heard about it—how grand it was, how it had a king. Now he saw that it wasn’t much larger than Bebba’s Town. It even had a grim fortress like the old Din Guardi before it was destroyed.

  Next to the water were extensive wharves, and these accounted for the greater wealth of Edwin’s Town. It was a trading center. Ships came from the south with salt, fine cloth, glazed pottery, hunting dogs, and cheese. From across the sea sailed Frisian traders with spices, oil, and wine. From the north came amber and furs. And, of course, slaves. Everyone traded in slaves.

  When Skakki first docked, a number of townspeople asked him what he had “in stock.” “Nothing now,” he said, glancing at Jack. “See me next year.”

  The boy went for a long walk by himself to cool his temper. He knew what kind of stock the Northmen carried. Three years ago—was it only three years?—he’d been washed in the cold sea and scrubbed with vile-smelling soap that almost took his skin off. His hair had been combed for lice. Then his skin had been rubbed with oil to give it a healthy sheen, just as a horse might be currycombed for market. He’d been given as much bread and stew as he could eat. A slave bloated with food, Olaf often said, was easier to sell.

  Jack shivered with disgust at both the Northmen and himself. By now he was beyond the wharves and among houses. The land went up into a shallow valley with mountains on either side. Long, narrow fields were separated from each other by ridges or hawthorn hedges. Birds flew in and out, chirruping and warbling.

  Jack sat on a long, tumbled-over stone by a hedge. To his right a cone of rock, sliced off at the top, bore the dark fortress. The Bard said it was called Din Eidyn and was a companion to Din Guardi. It, too, had existed since time out of mind. It had been built when the Forest Lord still ruled the green earth and the Man in the Moon had not been banished to the sky.

  A mist began to gather, the kind of sea fog called “haar” that could roll in swiftly and unexpectedly. Jack didn’t move. He liked it here in the clean air above the smell of dead fish and Northman boots. He drew his cloak tighter and covered his head with the hood. A honeybee landed on his knee, struck down by the sudden cold. He moved it gently to the hedge.

  Between him and the fortress loomed a ravine. Now it was filled with haar, so that the rock cone appeared to float on a milky lake. Jack heard the clank of cowbells and the distant call of herdsmen. The animals must have been wending their way from higher pastures to the safety of barns. It must have been later than he thought; certainly the sky was growing darker.

  The fog overflowed the ravine and crept up toward Din Eidyn. It was advancing up the valley behind him too. By now the wharves and sea had entirely vanished. Yet Jack still preferred to stay where he was. His arms and legs felt heavy.

  The haar drifted over him, dewing his face with cold droplets. He was enclosed in a room of air, for a few feet away in any direction lay fog. All he could see was the fallen stone, a corner of the hedge, and grass.

  The stone. Jack felt it with his fingers. It wasn’t merely a chunk of rock; it was richly carved with symbols. He recognized a mirror and a comb—odd things to carve, he thought. There was also—the light was growing faint and he had to bend down to see it—a strange beast with a long mouth and legs curled beneath it. And another beast that reminded him of the carnyx the Bard had described. At the far end was an ornately decorated crescent moon intersected by a broken arrow.

  Jack turned even colder than the chill that surrounded him. He’d seen that symbol before on Brother Aiden’s chest. Father Severus had said the crescent stood for the Man in the Moon and the broken arrow for the Forest Lord. The two together meant Brother Aiden, then only a lost child in a forest, had been chosen for human sacrifice.

  Jack tried to get up, but the haar was pressing in on all sides. He struggled to breathe. Cold tendrils of fog reached into his mouth and filled his throat. He lay facedown on the stone. The rough granite pushed up against his chest and a weight pressed down on his back.

  A small creature crept over the stone. Jack could just make it out from the corner of his eye. It was the honeybee. It was no longer than a fingernail, yet with a bee’s yearning for sunlight it strove to escape the deadening cold. It moved slowly, laboriously, and when it reached Jack’s face, he smelled honey. It climbed upward until he couldn’t see it anymore. It reached his temple and stabbed down.

  Pain roared through his senses. He sprang up, all sleepiness gone, and saw that the mist directly above him had opened up. The sky was full of stars. Jack sucked in air until he thought his lungs would burst. He heard heavy footsteps pounding up the valley. In the next instant Schlaup grabbed him and sped away with the boy tucked under his arm.

  Jack saw only a blur of houses and streets before they were back at the wharves. Schlaup jumped aboard, making the ship tilt so violently that the sailors had to grab boxes to keep them from sliding off the deck. “I got him! I got him!” the giant cried, putting Jack down.

  Skakki shouted to cast off, and the Northmen pushed away with their oars. The Bard crouched beside Jack, feeling his head. “Thank Freya he found you before the tide turned,” the old man said. “We couldn’t possibly hide Schlaup for another day. Too many people kept looking at the ship and asking what we were carrying.”

  Jack found that his throat was sore, as though he’d been shouting for a long time. “How did you hide him?”

  “We threw a tarp over him,” said Thorgil. “Skakki told everyone he was a heap of grain bags.”

  “I’m cargo,” Schlaup said, pointing at his chest.

  “You’re much more than that,” said the Bard. “What possessed you, Jack, to go off without telling anyone?”

  Jack saw that the first streaks of dawn were appearing in the eastern sky. He realized he’d been gone most of the previous day and all of the night. “I went for a walk. … I’m not sure what happened next.”

  The Bard felt his head again. “That’s better. Warmth is coming back. Did you fall asleep in a field, or what?”

  Jack described the stone and the sudden appearance of haar. The sea and sky had by now lightened to that predawn color that makes it impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. It was like sailing through dark blue air. “I thought only an hour had passed,” he said.

  “When you didn’t appear, we began to worry,” the Bard said. “We searched everywhere, and at midnight I gave Schlaup a whiff of your old boots. He came back straightaway, saying he’d lost the scent near Din Eidyn. I sent him out again. It was an unusually clear night with no fog at all. Are you sure about the haar?”

  “Very sure.” Jack felt something small lodged in the neck of his tunic and felt with his fingers. He drew out a tiny, furry body. “The honeybee,” he remembered. “It stung me and I woke up.”

  The Bard cupped the insect between his hands and whispered to it in the Blessed Speech. “Now fly you safely home with the gods’ protection,” he said aloud. He opened his hands and the bee flew away, or perhaps it was only blown away by the wind. Jack wasn’t sure. It was such a little creature.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  BJORN SKULL-SPLITTER

  “The year grows late,” Skakki said, watching the distant shore that afternoon. The air was warm and the sky cloudless. Most people would have said the weather was ideal, but the Northmen were too experienced to be taken in by it. Ran, the goddess of the sea, and her nine daughters lay in wait for the careless. Her net was ever ready to take advantage of sudden storms. “There aren’t many weeks of good sailing
left.”

  “All I ask for is seven days’ grace,” the Bard said. “If we return in that time, you can take us to the nearest port. We’ll make our own way south. If we don’t return, you and Egil must turn east and leave us to our fate.”

  “I’d never do that,” said the young sea captain.

  “But he will,” the Bard said privately to Jack later. “He’s no fool. People are lost at sea all the time, and the survivors have to abandon them.”

  There’s a thought to cheer oneself with on a dangerous journey, thought Jack. He’d inspected the little coracle they would take to Notland. As small as the ship felt on a vast, gray ocean, the coracle would be like a flyspeck compared to it. They might as well be floating in a bucket.

  To save time, Skakki no longer followed the coast, for it was riven by a huge gulf. Instead, they went northwest out of sight of land, navigating by the star the Northmen called the Nail. By day Rune kept their direction with his memory of the sun’s position at that time of year. The Bard helped by calling on the wind. Thus, they were blown along steadily for two days with the great sail always filled and the waves neither too high nor too low.

  “I’ve been thinking about what happened in Edwin’s Town,” the Bard said as he and Jack rested in Schlaup’s shade. “To someone like Severus the world is idiotically simple. There’s only one way to do things, and it’s always his. My stars! You have no idea how much he and the other Christians squabble about when to celebrate Easter. The ninnies don’t realize Easter is one of the old goddesses, and she couldn’t care a fig about when anyone celebrates her.”

  Seafarer returned from one of his forays and settled on the deck next to the old man. The bird reported that he’d seen no islands or ships ahead. Jack gave him a dried herring as a reward.

  “Gods, if they’re neglected, tend to fall asleep, but they never really go away,” the Bard continued. “It is the Christians themselves who keep Easter’s memory green and who, unwittingly, disturb her slumbers. A long time ago the Forest Lord and the Man in the Moon ruled these lands. Then people arrived with new deities: Odin, Thor, Freya, Jupiter, Mars, Jesus. Each new layer covered the old, but the old is still there. When you lay on that sacrificial stone, lad, something woke up. I’d be willing to bet that if the bee hadn’t stung you, you’d be six feet under by now.”

  “Why would something want to kill me?” Jack asked.

  “Why does fire burn and water drown? It’s what happens when one falls into their power.”

  “And the bee?”

  “Ah! There’s the interesting part,” said the Bard. He stroked the head of the albatross, and the great bird purred deep in his throat. “That small creature sacrificed itself to save you. It was no more random than Pega happening to have a candle in the dungeons of Elfland, or Severus happening to be in the forest when Aiden needed rescuing. Think of the momentous events of the past three years. The Holy Isle was destroyed and the Northmen learned that easy plunder was to be found in monasteries. You’d think this would prove the end of Christianity, but it hasn’t.”

  “Northmen have been raiding more monasteries?” Jack said. He hadn’t heard about it.

  “Oh, yes. But at the same time, odd things have been occurring in the realms of the old gods. Elfland was laid bare to the light of truth, hobgoblins returned to Middle Earth, Unlife was driven from Din Guardi. It looks to me as though a profound shift has taken place in the life force. I’d guess that you have some purpose to fulfill and that is why you were saved. But don’t get a swelled head over it. A cabbage has a purpose when someone needs to make soup.”

  The next day Seafarer returned with news of islands. The albatross was only interested in certain things and so they learned a great deal about fish. Much food, Seafarer exulted. Many birds. They fear me. Feels good.

  Are there houses? Thorgil asked in Bird.

  Don’t know, Seafarer said. But when they came to the first island, they did find houses of a sort. Domes of turf bulged on the rocks, and the folk within hissed in a strange language and refused to come out.

  “I think they’re Picts,” said Skakki. “Olaf arrived at some sort of trading agreement with them, but he said it was more trouble than it was worth. Farther on is Horse Island, ruled by Bjorn Skull-Splitter. He’s one of my father’s best friends. It’s an excellent place to camp while we’re waiting for you to return from Notland.”

  Of course he’s called Skull-Splitter, Jack thought moodily as he watched the greenish depths of the sea. No friend of Olaf’s could possibly be called Bjorn the Beloved. And he wondered what mayhem the man had committed to earn his name. The water was amazingly rich with life, from long, trailing forests of seaweed to teeming shoals of fish. Dolphins swam alongside the ship, diving in unison. Otters floated on their backs, munching crabs in their paws. They looked like humans eating chunks of bread.

  The ship passed many small islands, some no more than rocks jutting out of the sea. All of them seemed deserted, although Jack saw standing stones in odd patterns and, once, a windowless tower. Horse Island was large and treeless with a few rugged cliffs topped by wiry grass. Jack thought it dreary compared to the sea.

  Rune steered the ship to a bay with a beach and a village beyond the coarse sand. A crowd began to gather at their approach, and Skakki blew his father’s horn in welcome. The crowd didn’t react.

  “They’re too quiet,” said Thorgil.

  “They don’t recognize the ship,” Skakki said.

  “That shouldn’t make a difference. We sent them a traditional greeting and they didn’t answer it,” said the Bard. “Let’s stay out of arrow range for a while.” Skakki ordered the oarsmen to halt their forward movement.

  Jack observed houses made of turf that blended so well with the ground, at first he thought he was looking at tiny hills. The Northmen inhabitants wore turf-colored clothes and turf-colored boots. With their hair the color of dry grass, they could have been fragments of island that had awakened and decided to walk around. Even the smaller, darker Picts among them faded into the background like noonday shadows.

  Jack found their continued silence oppressive. He had little experience of Northman settlements, but his memory of Olaf’s village was of wild celebration when anyone showed up. They welcomed visitors with trade goods and fresh gossip.

  “Blow your horn again,” suggested the Bard.

  “I’ll call them,” said Schlaup. He stood up before anyone could stop him and roared, “HEY, YOU! WE’RE OLAF ONE-BROW’S PEOPLE! TALK TO US!” His voice boomed like a clap of thunder, and to all appearances he was a villager’s worst nightmare: a huge, dangerous troll. Everyone fled and in a moment the beach was deserted. The Bard was laughing so hard, he had to wipe his eyes with his sleeve.

  “You got their attention all right, Schlaup,” he said, wheezing. “Oh, my! They’re probably swimming to the next island by now.”

  “At least they know who we are,” said Skakki with a rueful smile. “I’m sure Bjorn won’t be so skittish.” He gave the order to land, and when everyone had disembarked, Schlaup dragged the ship onto the sand. “I came here when I was twelve and we were treated like kings,” Skakki remembered. “Olaf saved Bjorn’s life during a sea battle, you see. There’s nothing Bjorn wouldn’t do for him, or any of us, either.”

  “Sea battle?” said Jack. It hadn’t occurred to him that you could fight on water.

  “Einar Adder-Tooth sank Bjorn’s ship, and Olaf jumped in to save him because he couldn’t swim. Poor Bjorn has always been scared spitless of water. He panicked and fought when Olaf tried to rescue him, and Olaf had to knock him out. By the time they got to safety, Adder-Tooth had disappeared into the fog.”

  Close up, Jack could see many more houses clustered together like giant molehills. They formed a barrier to the rest of the island, and he thought they could provide a good place for an ambush.

  “Bjorn’s hall is that way,” Skakki said.

  “Wait a moment,” cautioned the Bard. “He may be a dea
r friend, but you haven’t been here for six years. We look like a band of berserkers—excuse me, most of you are berserkers. It wouldn’t be the first time someone raided an island.”

  Sven the Vengeful, Eric the Rash, and Eric Pretty-Face looked uncomfortable. Jack knew they were thinking of the Holy Isle.

  “I suggest that the crew be left here to guard the ship,” the old man said. “Skakki, Jack, Thorgil, and I will make contact with Bjorn. He won’t be alarmed by a small group, and it will give him time to recognize Skakki. You’re twice the size you were last time,” he told the young sea captain. “They won’t be afraid of an old man leaning on a staff, although they should be, and Jack doesn’t look at all alarming.”

  I beg your pardon, Jack thought. Are we forgetting I overthrew Frith Half-Troll and broke the spell of Unlife on Din Guardi? But he realized that his victories came about through magic, not brute force, which was what the islanders would be looking for.

  “As for Thorgil, who would suspect a young lady dressed in the finest Din Guardi has to offer?”

  “What?” cried Thorgil.

  “Brutus sent along the dress you wore to the monastery,” the Bard said. “I can’t think of a better disguise for a dangerous warrior.”

  The shield maiden blushed. “You think I’m dangerous? Truly?”

  “Like a coiled dragon.”

  And so Thorgil hid behind the ship to change clothes while the others waited. They set out with the Bard going first. Jack had been correct. The village was like a maze with paths going everywhere and each dwelling exactly like the others. Once inside, it was impossible to see landmarks, and they soon found themselves back on the beach. Thorgil called to Seafarer for help.

  The great albatross floated lazily overhead. Many two-legged beasts, he called out. Hide like crabs.

  “I thought so,” muttered the Bard. But the hidden villagers didn’t attack, and with Seafarer as beacon, the group easily found its way through.