Midwinterblood

by Marcus Sedgwick

  “What does it say?” someone asked, someone without letters.

  But no one dared speak it aloud.

  It was too awful, and yet, Eirik and I knew the words, for we had letters.

  I want my children.

  That was all.

  Nine

  The days shortened and the nights lengthened, and tightened around us like a rope around a throat.

  The wonders grew.

  Any beast that went near Tor’s grave went mad, and we were heavy to put it to death.

  Sightings of the dark figure became common, though no one actually saw Tor face-to-face, to say it was him. But they said he moved like a shadow between the barns and the houses, there one moment, gone the next.

  Two more beasts were found, ripped apart, their blood sucked away from them.

  The first was another dog.

  The second was a winter hare.

  When I saw the hare something entered my heart, a small splinter of ice, and no matter how hard Eirik held my hand, it would not go away.

  I knew what it meant.

  * * *

  Two days later, as we were returning from the fishing boats in the early evening, a scream came to us from the longhouse.

  We were twelve, and without fear: we ran into the great hall, almost bursting the doors from their hinges.

  There stood Sigrid, the old, screaming and screaming.

  When she saw us, she fell to the ground, silent.

  We saw what she had been screaming at.

  There was a body on the dirt. A human body this time, a young girl, called Bera. And over Bera’s body crouched Tor.

  As we burst in, he lifted his head, and we saw the blood running freely from his lips, from where he had been drinking from Bera’s throat.

  He stood, and pointed at us.

  At Eirik, I mean. And me.

  Then he spoke, in a voice thick, choked from the blood that was still trickling down inside.

  “I want my children.”

  He walked toward us.

  Father, and some of the other men, were quick, and grabbed burning logs from the fire, waving them at Tor, thinking that fire would harm this evil, and they seemed to be right.

  Tor squealed like a pig that has been cut, and suddenly was gone.

  Just gone—we did not see how, as if he had moved so fast that our eyes could not see it.

  “We all sleep in here tonight,” said Father. “That way we will be safe.”

  So we did as Father said, but he was wrong.

  We were not safe, and when we woke, another youngling, a boy called Jon, was gone, right from where he slept among us.

  Ten

  In the morning, no one would look at us.

  At Eirik, and me, I mean.

  The wailing and the crying being too unbearable, we went outside, and found Father, Leif, and some of the other men, the biggest and the strongest.

  “We have a short time,” Father said. “That’s all. A short while of daylight, to put a stop to this.”

  The men nodded.

  “But how?” asked one. “How do we kill that which is already dead?”

  Father grunted.

  “There are old ways,” he said. “There are old ways, written in the sagas. Is that not so, Leif?”

  Leif nodded. “It is true. All we can do is to believe they will work for us, here, today.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “What do we do?” repeated Father. “We pay Tor a visit. That’s what.”

  So we left for the long meadow, and Eirik and I were glad to go, for as we left, we heard the villagers muttering and pointing.

  “It’s them he wants. It won’t stop till he has them.”

  * * *

  We came to the meadow.

  The snow lay deep upon the ground, and everyone wondered at how Tor was able to come out at night, and not make a mark on the snow. Anywhere.

  “He is a devil now,” Father said, shrugging. “Who knows what things he can do? Enough! We dig!”

  The men dug, first clearing the snow from the mound, then the sparse earth that had been scattered over the stones of the cairn, and then, making a chain of bodies, the large stones of the cairn were lifted away, one by one.

  With all the cairn stones gone, it only was left to lift the stone lid.

  “Wulf…?” began one man.

  Others drew back. A waiting fear had crept into us all.

  “What are we doing?”

  “What if…?”

  But Father stepped onto the lid. And stamped his foot.

  “Whatever is in here. Whatever it is, it’s not Tor. Not anymore. And now, with daylight, it can do nothing. So stop bellyaching and help me lift this stone. For our children’s sake!”

  The lid was lifted, and there, inside the grave, lay Tor.

  It was another wonder.

  His body was uncorrupted. He looked as though he slept. That was all.

  And yet, there was blood at the corners of his mouth.

  Father turned to Leif.

  “Did you bring them?” he asked, and Leif stepped forward holding a leather bag.

  Father took it from him, and pulled out a massive hammer, and two stout stakes, made of whitethorn, from the western isle.

  No one helped my father.

  He knelt down, to finish what he had begun. He hammered the first stake right through Tor’s chest, and deep, deep, deep into the soil beneath.

  He took the second stake, and drove it hard into Tor’s mouth, between his lips, which opened to take this offering. There was a crunch and a crack of bone, but Father did not stop hammering until only the very tip of the stake was pointing from Tor’s mouth.

  Father stood.

  “Try walking now,” he muttered.

  He turned to go.

  “Come, children.”

  And then to the others, “Cover him up again, just as he was. Then forget this place.”

  Eleven

  How those days were passed, I have no idea.

  Not even my journey of remembering can take me back to that darkest of nights.

  * * *

  There had been three days, that I do recall.

  Three days, and nights, of no wonders, and it seemed that the old sagas were right. The way to stop the again-walker was to hold him to the ground, with stakes of magical thorn, if possible.

  Very slowly, we began to recover, but then it all fell apart.

  It had snowed, fresh snow, snow again and always.

  And in the snow, one night, we found Matilda.

  Her throat was gone, and most of her blood.

  * * *

  It was late as we went to bed, and Eirik and I went to sleep, as usual, holding each other’s hands.

  “When will it stop, Melle?” Eirik whispered to me through the darkness.

  “Go to sleep, children,” said Mother, from across the room. Father stood, by the fire, sword in hand, his back toward us. He poked the fire with his sword, lost in thought.

  “I don’t know, Eirik,” I whispered back, right in his ear so only he could hear. “But I’m afraid. Aren’t you?”

  But Eirik didn’t answer.

  Somewhere, out there, in the darkness, Tor prowled.

  Looking for us.

  For me, for Eirik.

  * * *

  It was always his way. His tools were his hands, and his arms and legs. My way was to think, his way was to do.

  When I woke in the morning, and found that his hand was not in mine, I knew at once what he’d done.

  I could see him waiting till even Father had gone to sleep, and I could see him getting up from our bed of furs and hay, and standing.

  I think he probably didn’t say anything before he went. His way was to do, not to speak. But I think he probably paused to look down at me, one finger twined around my hare necklace, and then he stole out of the house, into the dark. He left me, alone.

  He would have walked just for a little while, and then, findin
g Tor in the lanes, would have held his hand, turned, and set off, back toward the mound in the long meadow.

  * * *

  It might not have worked.

  Tor might not have been satisfied, but it seemed that Eirik was right. Tor was content, in the end, to settle for just one of us, one of the children who might be his nephew, or might be his son.

  For the wonders stopped, and the murders, and the hauntings.

  * * *

  I often think, though, about that grave down in the long meadow.

  Surely now, surely now that I am an old woman, and soon to stop telling stories and to go to the other side of sleep, surely those bodies have become bones?

  I like to think of those bones.

  The large ones, cradling the small ones, in their arms.

  Father.

  And son.

  The Glorification of the Chosen One

  The drum beats.

  The horns call.

  The moment has come.

  * * *

  The full blood moon hangs high in the always-night sky, above the temple. It is a triple portent.

  The full moon.

  The winter solstice.

  A lunar eclipse, casting the moon an ominous red.

  Its light shines down on the writhing bodies below, a light strong enough to illuminate the scene, but without color. Color is brought by the torches that burn, on all sides, in the warriors’ hands, on the walls of the temple.

  The flickering light of the torches gleams on spear tips and sword hilts; there is the glint of metal, and gold. Gold is everywhere: the gilt of the two curled horns, whose sound appears to come from far away, though they are at the forefront of the crowd.

  Their sound is blaring and constricted at once, a nasal high piping, which can only be designed to wake the spirits of the ancestors. These horns are played by the twins Ari and Arni, the torchlight picks out their blond beards as they tilt their chins to the heavens. They are dressed in long robes of midnight blue, blue caps pulled down tight on their heads, almost across their eyes, for they do not need to see. Not yet.

  The high whine of their curled horns is underpinned by the low grunting of the three huge straight horns; bone covered in gold leaf, played by three men in long white robes, they arch their backs to burst each blast into the black sky.

  The song of the horns, the three straight and the two curled, seems a cacophony at first, but slowly the complex repetition as the five horns step across each others’ path in sequence begins to infect everyone’s mind with a hypnosis, and this is good. For what is about to happen, they will need to be almost out of their minds.

  Behind the musicians come seven dancing women, in the blue braided dress and red braided caps they wear when anyone is born, or wedded, or dies.

  They link their fingers, intertwine them as they twist, already half crazed by the music, half crazed by their fear. Emotions streak across their faces; terror and ecstasy mingle on their lips, shine wildly in their eyes.

  In front of the musicians, two small old men dance madly, too. Dressed in skins, and fur boots, they are the shamans; their eyes stare blindly into the distance, for they don’t see in this world; they see in other worlds.

  * * *

  There is more gold.

  The warriors’ shield bosses, with their shiny orbs; their ceremonial helmets gleam with the golden creatures that surmount each one: the boar, the fox, the raven, the eagle, the golden horns of a bull.

  The warriors march slowly, seven on foot to match the dancers, the others come farther behind, as if keeping their distance.

  Gold, too, on the walls of the temple; the decoration above the porch shows scenes from the old tales in elaborate designs of tangled foliage, and the rearing horses of the ancestors.

  Gold are the monumental hounds, more like dragons than dogs, that sit on top of the pillars on either side of the doorway.

  Gold are the finials of the roof beams, the capitals of the columns, and gold are the things that hang in the single evergreen tree that grows outside the temple.

  Look closer; these hanging things. They are three skulls, covered in gold leaf. One is that of a foal, two are those of men.

  * * *

  There is one more thing that burns bright with gold; the sled, upon which King Eirikr is dragged toward the stone table.

  Four men, two in front and two behind, haul and heave at the sled, sliding it jerkily through the snow. They have only a few feet left to travel, and then Eirikr will have come.

  Waiting for him are the two final figures in the ceremony.

  Thorolf. The sage.

  Dressed all in white, with mad white hair and long white beard, and his one white eye. His other, good eye glares down at the ground, waiting for the sled to appear before him.

  Above his head, he holds the golden hammer of the gods.

  At his neck, he wears the symbol of the sacred flower, for like Eirikr, he is a disciple of that cult, and worships, and consumes, the magical flower with its three fantastical petals, shaped like a dragon’s head.

  The symbol is a curling three-pointed device, one for each petal of the dragon flower.

  * * *

  The final figure.

  The executioner.

  Chosen by the selection of pebbles from a cooking pot, no one save the warriors knows who he is; he who drew the black stone from among the thirty white.

  Robed entirely in red, with a red hood pulled over his head and across his face, he stands with head bowed low.

  All he is, is a pillar of red cloth, red like the blood he will spill.

  Wait! Look closer still. Something protrudes from the pillar; his forearm, and hand, and in his hand, his sword hand, he clutches a thin, sharp, curving blade, almost as long as to reach his elbow.

  * * *

  The sled is nearly at its place.

  King Eirikr rises from the gilded throne upon which he has been riding.

  He is covered in a massive fur of fox, and yet, as he stands, he slips the knot at its neck, and lets it fall to the wooden floor of the sled.

  He is naked, yet he feels neither the cold of night, nor the deep of winter. His blood is pounding through his body. He tips his chin to the heavens, defiantly.

  He is naked but for the narrow gold band gripping his head, the gold bracer of triple design, another symbol of the flower cult, the magic of which even now hurtles around his veins with the rest of his hot blood.

  * * *

  As if in an orgy of orchestrated genius, there is always a moment of silence before the violence and noise of the act itself.

  Before battle, as the whole army takes in a breath.

  Before the diver leaps into the water, and the sea pounds his eardrums.

  Before the storm, the stillness in which a single bird calls.

  Before the pains of birth, the brief rest between the spasms.

  Before all the other instruments descend in a maelstrom, the faint and strangled chord from the bassoons.

  Before the ice breaks, before the tree falls, before the sword lands.

  It might only be a fraction of a moment, but that time can dilate, can swell and grow, can fill the world around it with its power, till it lasts for a lifetime.

  * * *

  And so it is with Eirikr.

  He arrives.

  The horns fall silent, the dancers cease, the warriors stop marching, and across that sudden enormous space float two whisperingly quiet discordant notes, from a pipe perhaps, from somewhere inside the temple.

  Into that silence stumbles the figure who has been missing until now.

  The queen.

  She rushes forward, pushing past the other keening women, falling in the snow, where she lies with her face in her hands, unable to stop the guttural moaning that pours from her mouth.

  The Kiss of the Earth

  There, in the longhouse, it was decided.

  Eirikr looked at his people, and saw the fear and the hope and the mistrust and
the doubt and the anger on their faces.

  He knew it for what it was.

  * * *

  For three years the crops had failed.

  For three years there had been hunger, and famine, and disease.

  They had killed many beasts, and two men had been blessed on the stone table, too, their blood going after the way of the foals and bulls before them.

  It had made no difference.

  Still, nothing would grow, nothing but the flower, and there were many who would not touch it, no matter what magic it was reputed to have. So the people had starved, and become weak, and, having become weak, the warriors had fared ill at sea, and had returned not only empty-handed, but short a ship, each time.

  So many men lost, so many women left without husbands, so many children dying from the pestilence that creeps into the houses of men when times are hard.

  * * *

  A foal, a man?

  A king?

  What difference does it make, wondered Eirikr, and yet he knew the laws, for he himself had helped shape them in his long time as king.

  And he had lived a long time, that was true.

  He owed it to the flower, he believed. He believed that, as did Thorolf, and the others of the cult, and though they all, all the clan, believed in the gods, this flower cult set Eirikr and Thorolf and the others apart.

  It was a sacred thing. To drink the magic from the petals of the dragon flower, that still grew abundantly on the western island, despite the fact that all the crops withered—the corn, the apples, even the hay for the cattle.

  Now, all the beasts were gone, long slaughtered, and though they had spun out the dried meat, it was finished. Every cow, every bull, every dog, every horse but the king’s black stallion.

  Eirikr had lived long, drinking the dragon, and yet, despite his years, and his three wives, he had had no children.

  There was no one to come after him.

  He would leave no one behind, no one except Melle, of course.

  He turned his head to where she sat, beside him, on her throne.

  She stared into the far black wall of the hall, her eyes seeing nothing.

  He looked at her hands, and saw the bones showing white through the skin, so tightly she gripped the arms of her chair. Her lips formed a thin bloodless line, her whole head trembled, the ligaments in her neck stuck out taut.