The First Girl Child

by Harmon, Amy

  Dagmar fashioned a sling of sorts to free his hands, and wherever he went and whatever duties he carried out, Bayr accompanied him, secured in his pouch on Dagmar’s torso. Dagmar practiced his runes with the babe strapped to his chest, began his day in chanting with the babe listening with wide eyes and cooing lips, and carried out his chores—including milking the blasted goats—all carrying the boy in the sling that he quickly outgrew.

  For all his wide-eyed wonder and mellow adaption to temple life, within months, the boy was squirming to be let down, to scoot across the stone floors and the courtyard cobbles. Before long, he was pulling himself up, toppling into trouble, and crawling and grasping and tugging on everything he could get his fat little hands around. A keeper who was prone to complaining swore the child yanked a hunk of hair from his beard, and Master Ivo was astonished by the strength in the child’s legs and arms, making the entire enclave gather to observe Bayr climbing the gnarled tree that had graced the inner court of the temple yard for hundreds of years.

  “This is not usual for a child so young, is it, Keeper Dagmar? He is not yet six months old! Is it the milk from the goats or a gift from the gods?” Ivo marveled, but Dagmar could only watch in helpless wonder, bundling the boy back into the pack he’d moved to his back and adding yet another plea to his prayers, begging that Bayr would survive his first year and withstand the strength that his mother had blessed—or cursed—him with.

  Bayr walked at eight months, and he didn’t just walk. He ran and climbed and jumped and tumbled, a tiny child with the strength and coordination of one thrice his age, his stout legs and sturdy arms rarely still. By the time he was a year old, he could outrun the chickens, chasing them only to catch them and let them go. The angry rooster didn’t care for the game and escaped by fluttering up to the top of the coop beyond the child’s reach.

  Bayr had watched him in frustration, wanting the colorful bird to come down, until one day, he grew tired of waiting. No sooner had Dagmar turned his head to the row of vegetables he was tending than the boy had scaled the enclosure to crawl along the ridgeline, his eyes on the irritated rooster. A year later, he rescued a terrified cat from atop the castle ramparts, scaling walls and running along rooftops with nary a misstep or an ounce of fear.

  Dagmar trailed him in a constant state of terror and tied the boy to him in the night while he slept so the child wouldn’t wake and wander away to traverse stone stairs or open windows or scale the walls that separated the temple grounds from the castle of the king nearby.

  Dagmar carved runes of warning and protection on his chamber door and below his window. He hid runes on the beams that ran over their heads and in the stones beneath their feet, and his hands grew scabbed and sore from his constant bloodletting.

  “The boy is favored by the gods,” Ivo scolded when he noticed Dagmar’s palms. “The Norns have shown me the strands of his fate, woven together in a long, colorful rope extending like a river beyond sight. He will not perish. Cease your blood runes, brother. You only weaken yourself. The boy will survive us all.”

  But Dagmar was not convinced.

  “He hardly makes a sound. He doesn’t babble like most children. He is so physically advanced—yet he doesn’t speak at all. His strength far exceeds his understanding and maturity,” Dagmar worried. “And strength without wisdom is dangerous.”

  “He is still very young,” Ivo argued. “He will learn. He understands a great deal. You can see his mind working behind his eyes.”

  Dagmar could only nod helplessly, but he didn’t stop carving his runes and making deals with the gods.

  3

  It didn’t have a name, not in the traditional sense. It was simply called the King’s Village. It rounded the base of the temple mount and extended out three miles in every direction. Atop the huge, wide mount rose the spires of the temple, and beside it, just as grand, just as soaring, was the castle of the king. It was not an accident that the temple was taller, nor was it unintentional that the two occupied the same hill, though it was more a plateau, the top shorn off by Odin himself and pounded flat by Thor’s hammer. The Keepers of Saylok did not dictate to the king, nor did they involve themselves in the running of the kingdom. They were simply the overseers, the counterweight to royal power, charged with the selection of kings and the continuation of the crown. When one king died, the crown did not pass to his son or his daughter. It did not pass to his heirs or his clan at all. Instead, the crown moved from clan to clan—from Adyar to Berne, from Berne to Dolphys, from Dolphys to Ebba, Ebba to Joran, Joran to Leok, and from Leok back to Adyar again. The crown passed to the man of each clan who was chosen by the gods . . . and by the keepers.

  The current ruler, King Ansel, was of Adyar, the Clan of the Eagle, and it was his daughter, Alannah, who had wed Banruud, the Chieftain of Berne. When King Ansel died, his family would leave Temple Hill and the castle of the king. They would go back to their clan, back to the lives they had led before occupying the castle, and a new king from a new clan would be chosen and crowned. It kept the power from being controlled by one family, one tribe, one man for too long. Saylok had been ruled thus for five hundred years. One king had reigned for seventy years, one for only seventy days. But the crown continued to move from one clan to the next without exception. The chieftains of the clans were most often chosen and crowned king. It was a natural choice, as the chieftains were powerful men, accustomed to running their lands and ruling their clans. Their people often supported the choice, and the Keepers of Saylok took these things into consideration.

  Only five times in five hundred years had the keepers deviated from choosing a chieftain of a clan to be king. Once it had caused a near revolt, but the people of Saylok and the leaders of the clans—all but the chieftain who had been denied the crown—supported the keepers as the government was designed, and the choice of the keepers was upheld and supported. The Chieftain of Joran, who had been denied the crown, plotted to kill the man who had been chosen instead of him, and he succeeded in his murderous designs. The crown then passed immediately to the clan of Leok, the next land in the succession, to the aging Chieftain of Leok’s eldest son, and the angry chieftain from Joran was beheaded.

  The crown never remained with one clan, no matter how nefarious or unfair the circumstances of the king’s death. There was a time when some clans plotted to kill the chieftains of other clans in order to hurry their own clans’ ascent to the throne, but the Keepers of Saylok thwarted the attempts at power by choosing warriors or farmers from the clans and bypassing the chieftains altogether. Bribery was also attempted, though illegal, and four higher keepers had been blinded, stripped of their positions, and cast out, forced to leave the temple and beg for sustenance among the people whose trust they had betrayed.

  The people of Saylok were unforgiving. They were already taxed to support the king and the temple and weren’t interested in providing for corrupt keepers who had misused their power and failed in their sacred responsibilities.

  Dagmar had little doubt that Banruud of Berne would be the next king. Ansel was growing old—he’d been a good king—and the Clan of the Bear was next in line. As chieftain, Banruud would appeal to the keepers, and his appeal would be soberly vetted before anyone else in Berne was considered. It was the right of any man in Berne to make an appeal to the keepers, but few did. The people were loyal to—and often afraid of—their chieftains. If their appeal was denied, and they had to return to their lands, ostracization or worse often occurred. If their chieftain became king, it was never wise to have been a challenger for his throne. Of course, the Keepers of Saylok had the power to select any man, even if he did not present himself as a contender for the throne, but that was so uncommon as to be almost unheard of. Dagmar knew of no instance when such a thing had happened.

  Banruud was wealthy, powerful, and generally feared in Berne and throughout the clans. He would be the next king. It was only a matter of time.

  Dagmar dreaded that day. Banruud of Berne, li
ving on Temple Hill in the Palace of Saylok, so close to the son he’d never met, to the boy growing so sturdy and straight inside the temple walls. Word of his strength would spread. It already had in some quarters.

  The villagers called Bayr “the Temple Boy.” They’d heard tales of him from the laundress in the village who washed the temple linens, from the cook who worked in the palace kitchens, from the soldiers who guarded the temple walls and made wagers over the feats of strength and agility performed by the small boy. Dagmar had tried to shield the child. He’d tried to keep Bayr’s strength a secret, but it had been impossible. By the time Bayr was three, he was skipping along behind the temple guards, mimicking their movements with both sword and shield. Now, at seven, he scampered up the hills with Dagmar struggling to keep up, he hefted boulders grown men would struggle to move, rocks he couldn’t even get his arms around.

  Master Ivo had proclaimed it—proclaimed him—a miracle, a child of Thor, strongest among the gods, and Dagmar had said nothing. He knew to whom Bayr belonged, and it was not the God of Thunder. Bayr’s strength had been prophesied by his mother, and her blood sacrifice had borne fruit.

  And that was not all.

  In the seven years since Desdemona’s death, not a single female child had been born in Saylok. Not in any clan. The first year, the people of the clans had rejoiced at the birth of so many strong sons and thanked the gods. The second year, they’d talked amongst themselves, amongst the members of other clans, wondering over the odd influx of boys. The third year, they’d begun to worry. The chieftains of all six clans had gone to the king, and the king had gone to the Highest Keeper. Ivo had gathered all the Keepers of Saylok together, and they’d spilled their blood in the earth. They’d drawn runes to coax the goddess Freya to give Saylok daughters. They’d fasted and prayed and sacrificed six male lambs under every harvest moon.

  But no daughters were born. Not in the fourth year or the fifth. Not in the sixth. Not a single infant girl in seven years was born to a son of Saylok. And Dagmar had said nothing. He’d bled and carved with his brethren. He’d beseeched the gods, the Norse gods, the Celtic gods, the Christian god, but no daughters resulted from his pleas. In the beginning, his life filled with fatherhood, with the strain of raising an infant in an enclave of men who were as clueless as he, he’d had no time to worry over Desdemona’s runes. But as time had passed, and the daughters of Saylok had failed to produce more daughters, when the years began to loom long and dry, Desdemona’s bitter words had risen in his mind and tortured him every waking moment.

  Guilt had gnawed at Dagmar’s belly and grief had riddled his heart, but doubt and fear had kept him silent. Surely a rune could not hold so much power. Surely Desdemona was not the cause of such a scourge. It had to be something else. The girl children would return. Saylok would survive. Desdemona had said Bayr would be their salvation. But how? And when?

  “What must I do, Odin? He is only a boy,” Dagmar groaned aloud, his eyes closed in prayer. “And strong though he may be, he cannot shoulder such a weight.” Dagmar went silent, listening, but the world around him was still, the forest deaf to his entreaty, and he scored his scarred palms and pressed them to the trunk of Desdemona’s tree, hoping he would see her intent, that he would understand her final words, but he felt only the hum of life, the passing of time, and eventually he dropped his hands in futility.

  Dagmar felt the boy before he heard him. It was always thus. Bayr moved silently, but Dagmar sensed his presence, saw him in his mind’s eye, and hoped the boy had not overheard his prayer.

  “Uh,” Bayr grunted, announcing himself. He was trying to say uncle, but he could not connect one syllable to another without great difficulty, and he gave up almost as quickly as he made a sound. Bayr understood everything that was said to him. His mind was quick. But he couldn’t speak without stammering so badly it took him several seconds to say a single word.

  Incantations were easier. He joined the keepers in their morning verses, chanting the words he’d been hearing since the day of his birth, but when he was forced to speak on his own, he could hardly talk. It was an odd weakness in a boy so strong, stumbling over language when he stumbled over little else. It gave him cause for great humility and a heavy dose of insecurity. That insecurity kept him teachable—sweet, sensitive—and Dagmar was grateful for it, even though he worried for the boy’s future.

  Dagmar thought often about the small gap in the rune of strength Desdemona had drawn and wondered constantly if she’d known exactly what she was doing.

  “Yes, Bayr?” Dagmar answered belatedly, turning away from the tree that shadowed his sister’s resting place. He came often. It didn’t surprise him that Bayr had known where to look for him.

  “I-I-I-vo,” Bayr stammered, and pointed toward the temple.

  “He wants to see me?”

  Bayr nodded, avoiding speech. Dagmar was convinced he and Bayr could have a conversation with gazes and shrugs and grimaces, and Bayr would greatly prefer it. He had an expressive face, his pale blue eyes and shaggy black hair giving him the wolfish appearance of his ancestors of Dolphys. Dagmar and Desdemona shared the same coloring. Bayr looked like them, but he had the size and strength of Berne, the Clan of the Bear, his father’s clan, and if Banruud ever laid eyes on him, it wouldn’t be hard to see the resemblance to his own tribe. But Banruud hadn’t laid eyes on him. Very few had beyond the temple walls. Dred, Dagmar’s father, had come looking for his daughter a month after her death, and Dagmar had shown him her grave at the base of the tree where she’d bled, never revealing there was a child who had survived her. Dred had gone, cursing the gods and his fortunes, cursing his dead daughter and his useless son, and Dagmar hadn’t seen him since.

  Without prompting, the boy prostrated himself beneath the tree, laying his face against the flat stone placed on the ground, directly above his buried mother’s head, as though he pressed his forehead to hers. It was the way of their people, an acknowledgment of the dead. Dagmar had greeted her thus when he’d arrived to pray.

  “M-m-mo-th-ther,” Bayr stuttered, and was up again, turning toward the temple and slipping his hand into Dagmar’s. His sweetness was at odds with his strength, and Dagmar welcomed it, squeezing Bayr’s palm as he stared down into the boy’s face. A savage protectiveness rose in his chest as he looked at his nephew, yet his fears for the boy were not of the typical variety. Bayr was more than capable of facing down physical threats. It was the political and spiritual kind Dagmar most feared.

  “Have you been hunting . . . or wrestling?” he asked his nephew. There was an angry scratch on the boy’s forearm, and Bayr eyed it, unconcerned, before meeting Dagmar’s gaze.

  “No wild pigs, wolves, or bears?” Dagmar pressed mildly.

  The boy shook his head. The first time the boy had come face-to-face with a wild animal—a bear—was two years prior. They’d been in exactly that spot, and Bayr had been five years old. They’d been visiting Desdemona’s grave when to their right a sudden cracking in the underbrush had interrupted their solitude. They’d risen to their feet in alarm, all sound becoming muffled by the fear that rent the air. Dagmar had heard his heart in his ears, his breath in his throat, but he’d been unable to hear the bear, even when it had charged forward, running toward him, running toward Bayr, who stood frozen at his side.

  Then the silence had shattered, and Dagmar had reached for the boy, knowing he couldn’t outrun the bear, couldn’t do anything beyond wrapping Bayr in his arms, covering him as best he could, and praying to the gods for deliverance. But Bayr was no longer at his side. The child was moving, released from his own stupor, but he wasn’t running away. He was running toward the bear as though he welcomed its arrival.

  “Bayr!” Dagmar had shouted, but his voice was dwarfed by the guttural bellow that spilled out of the boy’s throat, a sound so at odds with his size and the shape of his chest, of his species, that Dagmar had staggered back. The bear slowed but the boy did not, hurtling through the trees, his yo
ung arms and legs pumping.

  Bayr had bellowed again, and the forest bowed, the leaves shook, and the bear veered. The boy followed, slamming into the side of the animal, his arms curled into his chest, his chin tucked, a human cannonball built of fearless fury and impossible faith. The bear tumbled almost comically—feet and fur and surprise—rising slowly, stunned, her mouth gaping in complaint, yawning a plea for mercy. Bayr had rolled alongside the bear, but came immediately to his feet, his arms extended, his legs wide, making himself bigger, fiercer, and he’d roared again.

  The bear staggered away, crashing dizzily through the trees, two small cubs toddling behind her. The boy watched them go, his chest heaving, his hands clenched, and Dagmar had remembered how to use his limbs, how to breathe, how to speak. Then the boy was in his arms, clutched to his chest, his dark hair against Dagmar’s lips.

  “Never. Never. Never again, Bayr. You must never do that again.”

  “She is gone, Uncle. You are safe. She was afraid for her cubs, I think. Like you are, for me.”

  “Why did you do that? How?”

  “She was going to hurt us.” The boy was not stuttering. Not at all, and Dagmar stared into his guileless blue eyes, stunned once more.

  “You must never do that again,” Dagmar repeated.

  Bayr frowned and bowed his head. His heartbeat was slowing. Dagmar could feel its cadence against his own chest, dancing with the beat of his own drumming pulse. Dagmar set the boy down, suddenly dizzy, suddenly weak. Bayr was much heavier than he looked.

  “That sound . . . you sounded like an animal. How did you do that, Bayr?”