by Joyce Holt
"A flat table would help, too," Jorunn would reply.
"Ja vel, that will never happen, not here. But we can make the perfect roller. That last one was the best you've made. Let's keep the next one hidden, shall we?"
That was their plan. Jorunn would learn the art, set out in the world with her own fine roller, and gain a place with the traveling breadmakers, leaving behind the turmoil of Knut's hut.
Jorunn beat at a bearskin, throwing her pain and frustration into each blow. At Dondstad she'd had use of a fine flat table and a good smooth roller, but all her mother's training had been for nothing. She didn't have the feel for the flatbread baker's art. Rolled so thin as to tear. Ragged edges. Big brown patches.
She turned the hide and attacked the other side. All those plans, nothing but dust in the wind.
She could stay here at Kvien until Gyda tossed her out for some reason or other, but what good would that do Svana? Now she had a silver ingot and a pouch of glass beads from some far land. Surely she could use them to forge a new plan.
Jorunn stopped to catch her breath, and realized with a start that she was alone, save for one of the spisshunds which sniffed at a corner of the byre. The other women had taken up their loads and returned to the hall. The dog glanced up, gave one short whuff, and slunk off, its tail hanging low.
Jorunn saw a flea hopping across the crust of snow. She stomped it. "That's for the itch on my ankle."
The speck pried itself out of the ice and bounded away.
"Go find a live bear," she called after it.
"This time of yea-ea-ear?" blatted a voice from behind her.
She whirled to see Thor's chariot-goat standing feet apart, with head and tail up, eyes wide. "No live bear anywhe-e-ere would dare fare far from its lair, I swear," Toothgnasher yammered. "The echo-words nearly worked, nearly worked, indee-ee-eed! Loki stared for a good long triple-heartbeat before he laughed, and not much of a laugh it was."
"Good!" Jorunn squeaked, glad to see the hope shining in the goat's eyes – and the horns tossing about in glee, instead of threatening to ram.
"I had churnings and word-clatter and start-echoes and end-echoes." The buck pranced about, tossing his horns. "What more to become a skald, what more? Tell me quick, Sparrow Maid, before he comes again!"
Jorunn took a deep breath. It was no small thing to be ordering around such a creature as this. "In your word-clatter, make six hops on each ledge. You must jump to eight ledges. You can count, can't you?"
"What? You think me sheep-kind?" Thor's chariot-goat stuck out his tongue and blew a slathering breath. "Of course I know counting. Ninety and nine proverbs I'm bound to be spewing, to use up the wisdom I pilfered from Odin. A score more to do still."
Jorunn grinned at his six-beat phrases. He learned quickly. She coached her four-legged pupil through the weaving of king's verse, the patterns of alliteration and rhyme and part-rhyme twined so tightly together they resonated with power and could send an enemy host in retreat without a single stab of iron blade.
Toothgnasher chewed so vigorously at cud, his beard waggled. "Too hard for me, king's verse. Ought to go right back to hiding in Nether-Plains. An overlooked grotto lies behind the dwarves' forge. Hidden from Loki there. But the rubbish-browsing is full of grit and slag, and half-worked pieces that rattle in my bellies." Toothgnasher spat. "I hunger for a-a-apples."
Jorunn urged him on. "Start with a kenning. Build it from there."
Toothgnasher spun in place, then bleated, "The king of the meadow."
Jorunn blinked twice in thought. "That is a puzzler. Good. The clever ones can't be easily riddled at first. Now add in word-echoes and word-clatter."
"King of the meadow. Meadow's king. Meadow's master. Meadow, meadow, meadow – woe. Woe, the meadow's master! Mighty, tall, soon fallen." He struggled with the next lines, wresting them bit by bit. "When winter winds batter. We? Win? Weary?"
A true master skald, as Jorunn knew, could frame a powerful verse between one breath and the next without ever pausing to hem and haw.
"Wit says, where roots knit well." Toothgnasher set to chewing cud again, eyes narrowed in thought. He looked at her sideways. "Can you guess the churning?"
"A tree, I'd say, all alone in a field, looming over the lesser plants. Good kenning." She guessed the deeper meaning, as well. Folk stand strongest when knit together in fellowship, like the roots in a grove. Here she was, a lone sapling in a meadow. Storm winds tossed her to and fro with no one to break the gusts that battered her. "Friendship," she whispered.
The goat's ears perked. His nostrils went wide, snuffling at the air, and his feet skittered on the icepack as he glanced all about. "Hide! Hide, Sparrow Maid! Under the bear hide! Now!" He butted at Jorunn, jarring the basket from her grip. "Under, get under!"
"Why?" she asked, even as she grasped the pelt, swirling it open. She could see no one coming, nor think of any reason to hide even if someone did intrude.
"Lo-o-oki!" blatted Toothgnasher. "No time to run! Under, now!" He knocked her to her knees, and with a chomp of his teeth on the hide, hauled it to cover her.
Jorunn pulled her feet in and huddled on the snowpack. Loki himself? Here, in the realm of mankind? Behind the byre, of all places!
The air trembled and wafted unexpectedly warm – with the full, ripe scents of summer. Jorunn held that breath, amazed and confused at the out-of-season taste. Warily she watched a whirlwind skitter across drifts, casting the last light snifting of snow into the air and tugging at the edge of the bear pelt where she peeked out.
Toothgnasher stamped. "Don't look! Curl up like a mouse, Sparrow Maid, and make not a squeak."
Jorunn coiled up in a ball, arms tight around her knees. Her mind spun. Loki, the fickle Trickster, the notorious shape-shifter from the otherworldly realm of Vanaheim—
"Ah, there you are!" boomed a voice wilder than a chorus of wolves. "Give me a word of wisdom, my horned skald."
"Woe, the meadow's ma-a-aster," came Toothgnasher's bleat. "Mighty, tall, soon fallen when winter winds ba-a-atter. Wit calls for roots knit well. Knit well, ah, knit well. We-e-eaklings seeking shelter, side by side, toes entwined, outlast their master's life, leaning a-a-all together."
Silence fell as thick as heavy snowfall. No trumpet voice shook the air.
Jorunn blinked in the gloom of her hideaway. Toes entwined, that's good! she thought, though he'd lost the rhyming near the end.
"Vel, shave my beard," Loki thundered at last. "Your wagging tongue drips silver words. Wise words, finely framed." He snorted, and the heavy bear skin rippled as if it were a light veil of linen in a gust. "Vel, that's a blot on my day. No fun to be found here."
"Woe, the meadow's master!" yammered Toothgnasher. "Mighty, tall—"
"Enough, enough! Serenade measly mankind, if you must, but for me one hearing is more than enough-gh-gh." Loki's words melted into a rush and a hiss.
Jorunn peeked out from under the bear hide to see the golden-horned goat cavorting in a circle. "Woe, the meadow's master!" he brayed. "Woe, the meadow's master!"
Jorunn crawled out of hiding, her legs wobbly as willow withies. She stared all around and above. They were alone behind the byre, the two of them.
"Sparrow Maid, Sparrow Maid, pointing me the pathway out of Loki's grasping! In thanks, one last token—" Toothgnasher gave a great hack, and from his gullet shot a silvery glint that plunked into the snow. The golden-horned goat leaped into the air as if climbing a circular stair. "Ten and nine more proverbs, 'till the curse is lifted!" he yodeled. There came a thunderclap – and he disappeared.
Jorunn searched the empty sky, shook her head, and took an unsteady step toward the basket. Something steamed in the snow at her feet. She picked up a bright hunk of metal and stared.
Toothgnasher had coughed up another chunk of silver – in the shape of a key.
A silver key from the dwarves' rubbish pile in the Nether Plains.
The magic key foreseen by the Norns.
&nbs
p; 23 – The Magic Key
A magic key, Toothgnasher said long ago on that snowshoe trek from Morgedal to Dondstad. Look through the bow to see whatever you wish.
What did he mean by "bow"? Jorunn cradled the piece of silver in the palm of her hand. It had a knuckle-long bar with a knobby wedge near the tip – the part to insert into a lock, she knew from watching Gyda with her caskets. The bar joined to the point of a teardrop shape enclosing a circle, a lovely piece of silversmithing open-work.
Jorunn took the key by the bar, held the open-work up to one eye, and peered through the circular inner ring. She saw the back wall of the byre. "What do I wish to see?" she murmured.
Her sister, of course. "Show me Svana," she said, her heart leaping with eagerness.
Nothing happened.
She waited, but nothing changed. The log wall still swam in her vision, hemmed in by the silver frame of the key bow. Her hopes sank. "Show me Svana!" Jorunn insisted. She swung to the south, for Morgedal lay that way, somewhere beyond the great vales and ridges of the uplands.
The snow-draped downward slopes of Kvien flared with the brilliance of the low sun. Jorunn squinted against the glare. She swept slowly across the landscape, then froze. Her breath caught. Against a backdrop of dark spruce trees – that hadn't been there a moment ago – something moved. A slight figure garbed in grey, hauling an armful of firewood.
"Closer, closer!" Jorunn squeaked, and in a heartbeat, there was Svana's face framed by the bow of the silver key.
Jorunn's legs buckled and she sank to her knees in the snow, gasping in wonder. She lost sight of her sister, but took to searching again. "Show me Svana, show me Svana!" she murmured until she found that heart-warming view again.
Svana's cheeks were red from cold. She wore a rag for a kerchief, and Jorunn's old shoes, straw tufting out the tops.
No black eye. No bruises.
Jorunn could see no more. Tears drowned her vision. She clenched the key in one hand wrapped by the other, and knelt there sobbing. "I will come back for you, Svana," she gulped. "And until then, I shall watch over you from afar."
A voice pealed out from uphill, from the houseyard. Drifa's voice. "Jorunn, what keeps you? Your mistress demands your help with her hawking garb."
Jorunn wiped her face with the yoke-apron's hem, then tucked the precious key in her pouch. She stood, took up the heavy pelt, and chanted Toothgnasher's words as she shook off a dusting of snow. "Woe, the meadow's master!" She bundled the bedding into her basket and trotted up to the hall, heart singing with hope.
As she scurried to each task, Jorunn chafed at Gyda's slow pace. She muttered under her breath, "Dawdling, dawdling," wishing only to speed her mistress on her way. She hungered, starved for solitude so she could look again, catch another glimpse of Svana. At last she finished tightening the ski bindings and saw Gyda off, again with Gunnarr's men and the spisshund for escort.
Jorunn hurried to find spindle and distaff, to heed the last order of her mistress – though not long did she spend at that spinning. As soon as she could, she made some excuse to the other housegirls and slipped outside.
Off to one side of the hall, behind a hut, Jorunn again faced south and murmured her sister's name.
There she was, by their father's hut, picking up kindling around the chopping block. More woodchips flew. Someone was chopping firewood. Couldn't be their father, though. Svana's face wasn't shadowed with worry. Her blue eyes darted toward the side. Her mouth curved in a smile, then moved in unheard words.
"Show me who handles the axe near Svana," Jorunn whispered.
No mistaking the merry face of Oddleif. Jorunn's heart lifted like a flock of starlings on a summer's eve. Her ragamuffin friend had come to Svana's aid, lightening her tasks. "Balder bless you, Oddleif!" Jorunn cried.
She hunkered there, like a famished traveler come at last to the feast, until her teeth took to chattering from cold. The sight of sister and friend filled her soul.
Twice more that afternoon Jorunn escaped the company of others to snatch a look at young Svana. The third time, there was no sign of Oddleif, and there was a stiffness to her sister's shoulders. The young girl still labored with armfuls of firewood, with many sideways glances. Their father must have returned to the hut.
His name Jorunn would not speak. She had no desire to see his face. There'd be a brooding scowl, she already knew that.
A sudden thought soured the delight of this day. If she saw Knut strike Svana, there'd be nothing she could do but watch, as helpless as if she lay bound and gagged in a corner. Svana could not even throw her an imploring glance, nor come to her later for comfort.
Jorunn's stomach clenched. Watching from afar would not be enough. She must still find a way to go home.
The sound of snow-crunching footfalls gave warning she'd been seen. Jorunn tucked the key safely in her pouch as she threw a glance, then lurched to her feet. Sverri pig-keeper, beady gaze fixed upon her and barely a stride away—
Jorunn twisted from his lunging grasp, knocked against the cabin wall, stumbled over her own feet. "Leave me be!" she cried as she fell to one knee.
"Oh I'll leave you be," he chuckled, "after I've had a taste."
"I'll scream. Stay back!" She scooted sideways, sprang to her feet a moment too late.
He caught her wrist. "Nei, you won't, or you'll heap trouble on yourself. What's a dutiful housegirl doing, slacking from her chores? I'll wager they don't know yet that you've slipped away, have they?" He yanked her close. "Slipped away to my cozy little hut—"
A snowball smacked him in the back of the head. He yelped and flinched, and Jorunn broke free. She skittered away from him, nearly losing her footing again on the slippery hardpack.
A glance showed Valka behind the next storage cabin. Jorunn jerked a nod of thanks as she spun and dashed for the hall.
"You shifty wretch! Think you're too good for honest Kvien-folk— Au!"
More snowballs thumped. Sverri howled and cursed and set off after the goatherd like a thick-limbed bear after a hare. Valka ducked into her shed and slammed the heavy door shut against him.
Jorunn stood at the hall door panting. He had hit too close to the truth. She didn't want questions about her doings, why she had abandoned her tasks. But it would be wiser to go ahead and scream at his touch, and face the scolding afterwards. She shook herself and went inside.
She had no more chance that day to look for Svana. Gyda returned earlier than planned with news of troll tracks, which stirred the steading into a turmoil. Gunnarr and Lingormr rallied the menfolk to scout the troll's path while the women hauled wood to bonfire sites.
Gyda's mouth set in an unhappy line. Shriek had caught nothing. The spisshund had found no scents of prey, nothing to point out for the hunters before they came across the large dagger-toed tracks. Even now, the hound's hackles bristled and its tail wagged in worry as it followed one person then another around the houseyard.
Jorunn helped Gyda change to indoor garb, then stayed close at hand, tending every fretful need her mistress came up with.
"Their foul smell has driven off all game," Gyda complained to Brynja, who had spent her day embroidering with mother and aunt. "If we could just discover whatever crack in the mountainside the trolls use for their gateway between worlds, we could block the passage and life could return to normal. What a blazing nuisance, my hunts getting called off like this."
Jorunn cast her mistress a sidelong glance, remembering the corpse she'd seen on the sledge back at Dondstad, and the keening woman who had driven him over the ridge. Those cotters had much more to mourn than a loss of sport.
The menfolk returned at dusk, looking grim. "Double watch all through the night," Gunnarr ordered. "Build the bonfires high. Gather fresh rowan boughs for the lintels. Stack pots and pans near the hall door, in case we need more clamor than bells. We counted seven different footprints. Seven! I've never before heard of such a pack come prowling."
After her bedmates had fallen aslee
p, Jorunn drew her belt pouch from beneath a cushion and found the key. She whispered her sister's name, but all she saw was darkness. No light in the hut at home. Not even the glow of embers.
The trolls did not attack in the night, but there came disasters of other kinds. One of the pigs escaped the sty, rooted through the midden, then managed to fall into the cesspit. Its squeals woke the household before the watchmen could haul it out again. Folk had hardly settled back to sleep when with a rumble the roof of the hay barn collapsed.
Drudges lamented about the run of bad luck. "Plagues, plagues, one after the other," they grumbled. "A curse, must be a curse!" muttered some as the household readied to go spade and clear and salvage what they could.
"Sounds like the work of an angry nisse," Jorunn said to Drifa as they helped gather buckets to send out with the workers.
"Nonsense. Can't be our nisse," the woman said. "We never neglect his evening porridge, a generous portion and swimming in butter and cream."
Who wouldn't crave butter and cream? You don't have to be nisse-kind to have such a longing.
Jorunn chafed for a break in all the bustle so she could scurry off and use the key to keep watch on Svana, but Gyda called her to help with feeding the hawks, then gave her a gown to mend, then demanded she stand close while Gunnarr held council at the high table.
Two strangers on skis brought word of a snowslide blocking the Keel Road not far to the west. A party with sleighs could find no way around, and needed help and refuge before nightfall.
Gunnarr asked their number. "Spare skis we have, enough to go around," he told them. "And just enough time for them to find shelter here before dark, if we hurry. Lingormr, see to it. Take chains, as well, for the sleighs."
"Chains?" Brynja asked.
"Iron," Gyda said. "To drape around the sleighs. Cold iron to ward off the trolls, keep them from wrecking the goods."
"It can't be their work, can it? Trolls aren't clever enough to set an ambush!"