by Meg Trotter
Chapter 9
When they got back to the village, it was getting dark. They walked up the path to find a fire burning near the center of town and many of the gods and goddesses sharing a meal outdoors. Maera scanned the space for Luka, but couldn’t pick her out among the jovial gods and goddesses talking, eating and dancing under the open sky.
Valka followed Skarde to one side of the gathering, their arms linked. Maera followed Freydis, who wandered over to an older man with dark hair shot through with gray who sat on a large rock, drinking from a mug. Chief Orm, no doubt. His face crinkled into a smile when he saw her and he held out his arms. The rigidness of the goddess melted away as she went to him and let him wrap her in an embrace. “Daughter,” the man rumbled.
“You’re looking well,” Freydis said as she seated herself next to him. “How are you feeling?”
“Ferocious as Fenrir,” he said with a grin, and patted her knee affectionately.
Maera had a sudden memory of her own father, wrapping her in his strong arms and looking down at her with eyes full of love. The sudden pang in her chest sent her shuffling away from the pair and toward the cluster of gods gathering around the food. Without waiting for an invitation, she helped herself to the variety of platters set out.
As she sat alone, nibbling on her meal and rubbing at her aching legs, several of the gods and goddesses approached her and tried to make conversation. However as Maera could only provide two- and three-word answers with some struggle, they eventually abandoned her for more lively conversationalists. Prince Erik and a few of the others more badly injured from the ship wreck were still resting in Freydis’ longhouse, she learned. She didn’t feel up to attempting conversation with the prince either. Luka was nowhere to be found.
Maera hopped up from her seat and crossed to the serving table where she pulled a hunk of bread from a stray loaf and headed into the growing dark. She traveled back down the path toward the sea and took the detour path that the witch had taken earlier that day. It twisted out through the walls of the village and led out into a field. The landscape sloped upward gently until it came to a single large tree. It dwarfed the others scattered sparsely along the settlement.
Maera approached it, marveling at the size. It was massive around the middle and tall enough that its topmost branches seemed to touch the stars peeking out in the darkening sky. She reached out her free hand and ran it over the trunk, feeling its roughness under her fingers. Nothing like this lived in her world. Under the water, all the plants she had ever seen were thin and wispy, bending with the currents. This thing was as sturdy as a stone, though she could feel the hum of life inside it. She reached up and ran her fingertips along the lowest branch, where the leaves poked out at all angles. Those were as delicate as fins and rustled gently as a breeze blew through.
A head poked out of the foliage.
Maera screamed.
She fumbled the piece of bread but reclaimed it as Luka’s smug face looked back at her. He was male now and smirking as he swung down out of the tree to land neatly beside her. His eyes flicked to the jeweled fish in her hair that she’d forgotten was there. “Gone all day shopping, and THAT’S all you come back with?” he asked. “I figured you’d at least come back with a new dress or something. You have a god’s heart to steal, you know.”
I don’t need a new dress to steal a god’s heart. All I need is my amazing personality. He snorted at this, and she grinned, both at his reaction and his ability to understand her. Being able to slip back into her native language was like being able to take a deep breath after gasping for air all day. She held out the bread to him. Want some dinner?
Luka raised an eyebrow at the offering. “Bread? You couldn’t have grabbed me a slab of meat or something?”
You want me to carry a hunk of dripping meat in my hand all the way out here in the middle of nowhere? Not likely, she said with a short laugh. If you wanted something specific, you should have been at dinner. Besides, bread is amazing. She pulled off a piece and popped it in her mouth. He sighed and held out his hand to accept the offering. After handing it to him, she leaned back to peer up into the darkness of the tree. What are you doing still out here by yourself, anyway?
He shrugged and took a bite out of the bread. “Enjoying the quiet,” he said around a mouthful. “At least until you brought your squeaky self out here. What did you do today on your trip, other than buy useless trinkets?”
Maera leaned her back against the rough bark of the tree while the witch munched on his food. Just explored. It’s a huge settlement. Lots of things. Lots of people. She glanced down at Valka’s discarded string of beads she had wrapped around her wrist for safekeeping. Do you know Skarde? The big god with the mostly bald head and the ... shark eyes? After she’d said it, the description sounded stupid to her, though the witch didn’t seem to care.
“Can’t say that I do.” Luka swallowed another mouthful of bread. “Did you punch him in the face?”
Not yet. She decided to drop that line of questioning and go for something a little more personal. He was her only anchor in this strange world, but she barely knew anything about him. So, do you live here when you’re not in the sea? That little god with the fish knew you the other day, so I thought this was your home. But the others don’t seem to know you.
“Nah, I just come here every now and then when I want to get away.”
Get away from what?
“Annoying people asking me questions.”
Maera huffed, but forced herself not to respond to the jab. Even if Luka only came here occasionally, that didn’t explain why the other residents didn’t know him. Why did only that child recognize him? Maera opened her mouth to ask, despite his deflection of her previous question, but gasped when something overhead caught her eye.
A streak of green light glimmered on the horizon and divided the sky in a twisting line that went directly over the tree they stood under. She made an unintelligible squeak and stepped out from under the tree to get a better look. The green light shimmered, almost like sunlight on water. Was there another barrier up there? If she broke through, would she find yet another world? Maera reached out and grabbed Luka’s forearm in wonder as she turned to face him. “What is it?” she blurted out, in gods-tongue.
Luka twisted his arm out of her grip before answering. “Northern lights,” he muttered, glancing up, unimpressed. “It’s just light reflecting off of-”
I want to see it closer! Maera pushed past him and returned to the tree. She squatted and jumped at the lowest branch, catching her hands around the rough bark. She pulled and struggled, but couldn’t seem to lift her body upward. Whereas in the water, it would have been an easy task, here she couldn’t pull herself up more than a few hand-widths off the ground.
She let go, rubbed her scratched palms on her thighs, and then jumped again, this time trying to use her feet to scrabble up the trunk. She flailed there a moment, leaves falling as she rattled the branch, before she huffed and looked back at Luka who was watching the whole thing with an incredulous expression. A little help? she clicked.
“Gods. Seriously?”
When she glowered at him, he made an exasperated sound and moved towards her. He slid his hands under her feet and lifted, which allowed her to push herself up enough to get her hips over the lowest branch. Once she swung a leg over, it was easy enough to pull herself up. She reached overhead for the next branch and the next until she was as high as she could get and still be supported by the tree’s thinning branches.
Maera grinned up at the glittering expanse overhead and stood on tiptoe to reach her hand up as high as she could. She wanted to feel the cool shimmer of the green magic on her fingertips as she had felt the vibrations of the singing whale under the sea. However this magic was out of reach.
The tree vibrated faintly underneath her, and for a moment she thought it was reacting to the magic overhead, however Luka popped up on the opposite side of the tree with a couple of leaves stuck in his ha
ir. Maera couldn’t help but smile. He looked up at the swirling light, still largely unimpressed. When Maera gazed at it, though, something swelled in her chest and she found herself blinking back tears, though she wasn’t sure why. It’s incredible, she clicked softly. I wish I could swim up and run my fingers through it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Luka glance at her before turning his attention back to the sky. They both watched in silence. Back at the village, music drifted up softly from the gathering she’d left. Another sound drifted up in the dark and it took Maera a moment to realize what it was. Voices. The gods were singing.
She twisted around, trying to catch sight of them, but she was too far away. It wasn’t like the music of the whales. The whales’ song didn’t have words, it was emotion. Pure joy. This human song was different. The emotion was there, she could feel it, but there were words to the gods’ song that seemed to steer the emotion like a dorsal fin on a fish. The emotions didn’t just stay at joy, it also coasted down into sadness and loss, darted toward hope, and lazily circled longing.
Maera closed her eyes to let the sound sink into her very bones. She would give anything to be able to produce those beautiful sounds herself. Maybe one day she could.
“They say there are many worlds in existence, and a great tree like this one connects them all,” Luka said, his voice unusually soft. When Maera opened her eyes, she found the witch was still looking up at the stars with a far-away look on his face. “If you climbed it, you could get to anywhere you wanted to go. There’re lands of giants and lands of dwarves, lands of the dead, and lands of the gods, both Aesir and Vanir.”
Maera felt a small thrill of recognition of the word ‘Aesir.’ She wanted to ask the difference between Aesir and Vanir. However she was afraid any questions she posed would annoy Luka and she would get no more information at all. She kept quiet and twisted around to give him her full attention.
“Since it’s connected to all the worlds, the tree has also absorbed all their knowledge,” Luka continued. “Long ago, Odin, the king of the Aesir, decided to collect this knowledge. He was told the only way to get it was a test of endurance, and so he hung himself from the Worlds Tree for nine days. Throughout it all, he was in excruciating pain and every night he considered giving up. But each morning, before the sun rose, he would gather his resolve to face another day, and out of sheer stubbornness, he made it through. When the rope snapped and Odin fell, he had unimaginable wisdom, more than anyone else had ever had.” Luka’s expression tightened, though he didn’t pull his gaze from the lights above them. “Though he somehow remained the largest bastard in the realms,” he muttered.
Maera didn’t fully understand the comment, though from the tone she understood it was an insult. She turned her attention back to the lights overhead, considering. Finally she said, I think it was a stupid thing for him to do.
Luka’s gaze broke from the stars and snapped to her. His brow furrowed.
She shook her head. Putting yourself through excruciating pain for wisdom doesn’t seem all that wise to me, especially if you’re immortal. You’d have all the time you need to go and learn everything there is to know about all the different worlds yourself. Go explore. Talk to others and let them impart what they know to you. Wanting to have all that knowledge just handed to you at once seems like laziness to me, not bravery.
Luka looked at her blankly for a moment. He blew out a breath. “Well, when you put it like that.” He gave a little laugh and then cocked his head at her with a smirk. “So that’s what you would do, Little Fish, if you had immortality and a thirst for knowledge? Climb the World Tree and go exploring?”
She smiled and turned her eyes back up to the sky. If I would get to see more magic like this, yes. Definitely. Wouldn’t you?
Luka didn’t respond. When Maera looked over at him again, he was staring back up at the sky with a melancholy expression. She didn’t ask him any more prying questions. They watched the dance of the lights in silence until it faded away. Luka let out a long breath as he watched it dissolve. He then turned to Maera. “Well, I’m headed back to go eat something more filling than bread. You coming?”
She nodded. He disappeared first, and she heard him scuttling down toward the ground. With one last look at the sky, Maera ducked under the branches and followed. When she got down to the last branch, something caught her eye in the shadows. A light mark against the darkness of the tree trunk. It was something carved into the bark, she realized. She squinted and leaned close to inspect it. A symbol. Writing, she thought, though it didn’t look quite like the gods’ words on the stones back in the village. She touched it, running her finger over the rough mark, hoping to coax some meaning from it. Finally a word came, though it made no sense to her — ‘Boda.’
“You get lost up there?” called Luka.
Maera snatched her hand away from the mark, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. Coming! She eyed the word one more time before getting a grip on the branch below her and swinging herself down to the ground.
Chapter 10
Maera woke early the next morning to the sound of Luka’s fitful tossing in the bed opposite her. She attempted multiple times to ignore his grunts and go back to sleep, however each time she almost drifted off again, he would make a sound to startle her awake. Her hand reached toward her pillow, ready to toss it at him, but when she raised up and saw his face in the dim light of the just barely rising sun, she paused.
His usual gruff expression was twisted into something of real distress. Maera huffed and lowered the pillow. Instead of waking him, she slipped her feet into her shoes, tied a cloak around herself and slipped out, leaving the witch to fight his dream battle alone.
Stillness wrapped around the farm in the early morning. Everyone appeared to still be in their beds. The birds were just starting to stir. Maera closed her eyes and listened to the competing melodies for a moment, breathing in the crisp, cold air.
A new sound jostled her out of her revere. She opened her eyes and searched for the source. It happened again. This time Maera honed in on the location. It came from the wooden structure on the opposite side of Freydis’ property that Maera hadn’t paid much mind until now. It was about the same size as the sick-house, though not sunk down in the ground.
Maera pulled her cloak tighter and crossed over to inspect the building. When she pushed open the door, a strong smell washed over her and she almost shut the door immediately. But the noises continued, drawing out Maera’s curiosity until it was stronger than her revulsion of the smell. She pulled the door open halfway and left it open to let out some of the odor and let in some light. No fires burned here, though the inside was still decently warm.
The inside was divided into smaller spaces, and inside each was a large animal. Maera recognized them from Luka’s carving. Horses. Though these had four legs instead of eight and were much larger than she’d expected. She smiled and eased herself further inside while the beasts stuck their heads out of their spaces to inspect the stranger in their midst. Most looked skittish at her presence, however the one on the very end, a small grey horse, pricked its ears forward and looked at her with interest. Maera passed up the nervous horses and approached the grey. It peered down at her with large, black eyes and sniffed the air in front of her.
Maera held out her hand, and the creature thrust its nose into her palm. She laughed and stroked the smooth skin there. You’re a sweet creature, aren’t you? she clicked softly.
The horse’s ears pricked towards her at the sound and it made a soft sound of its own. She ran her hand up its long nose, and it lowered its head to let her run her fingers through the long hair poking down between its ears.
“Horses are an excellent judge of character,” said a new voice.
Maera jumped and turned to see a young god leaning casually in the doorway. He was tall and lean, with golden hair that ended just above his shoulders and curled in every direction. His mouth, surrounded by the scruff of a short
beard, was crooked up on one side as if he were laughing at some private joke. His whole body was long and lean and propped up against the door-frame with a casual confidence. With the soft glow of the sunlight lighting him up from behind and setting his golden hair ablaze, he looked like every image of a god that Maera had ever dreamed about when her grandmother told stories of them under the sea.
With a start she realized he was the god she had rescued from the sea just a couple days ago. Prince Erik. She searched for something, anything to say. His presence had so shaken her that the only thing that bubbled up out of her mouth was, “Beautiful.” She felt her face heat up when she realized what she’d said, and nodded at the horse to clarify that the comment was directed toward the animal.
Erik nodded. “Indeed,” he said, his voice a touch husky. However, he wasn’t looking at the horse. His dark eyes drank her in like she was the most radiant being in the whole of the nine worlds. She realized she was gaping at him and promptly shut her mouth. Maera cleared her throat and turned her attention back to the horse in attempt to shake off her stupor. This was ridiculous. She was supposed to be the one enticing him, not the other way around.
Erik walked toward her with an easy confidence. “My apologies for startling you,” he said. “I was up early myself and wanted to explore the farm while I waited for my hosts to wake. I always have been fond of horses.” He gave the one between them a pat as it turned to sniff at him.
He turned his dark eyes back on Maera, his expression serious. “I hear you were the one who pulled me out of the sea the other night,” Erik continued, running his hand over the neck of the horse in an absent way. “I have to admit, my memory of the night is fuzzy, but I do remember your face appearing through the rain and the sea water. I’d thought it was one of the Valkyries come for me to take me to Valhalla.” He chuckled. “It was so dark that night, and the storm was so fierce I wondered what we had done to incur Thor’s wrath. I don’t know how you found me in the water at all.”