Raven Speak (9781442402492)

by Wilson, Diane Lee

  “Then one stormy day this man said, ‘I am still cold. I am still hungry. Will it always be winter?’ But even though the woman who had come to him was a seer, she didn’t answer his question. She tended the fire and held the man to her breast and that is all she could or would do. Night after night the winter winds whistled through the trees and shook the snow from their branches. The wolves howled and the ice groaned and the forest slumbered in shadows as black as pitch.

  “One night, when the man left his house to gather some wood, the woman’s white horse appeared to him from out of the forest. ‘I can make you warm,’ it told him. ‘I can feed you. And I can bring summer.’”

  Asa froze.

  “‘Take my blood,’ the horse said, ‘and scatter it on open ground. And take my bones and grind them into the dirt. And take my skin, emptied of all its worth, and mount it on a wooden frame at the edge of your new field so that all who see it will know what a gift I have given you.’”

  Jorgen spoke rhythmically, almost soothingly, weaving his poison so deftly into the fabric of his story that no one would question it. Except her. She knew now his intentions, and she narrowed her eyes and saw him for the enemy that he was.

  “And this man, who was a dutiful man,” he continued, “did as the horse instructed. He picked up his axe and in one stroke he slew the horse. And he took the horse’s blood and scattered it on the fields, and he ground the horse’s bones into the dirt, and he mounted the horse’s white hide on a wooden frame. And, lo! Before three days had passed the skies turned as blue as the woman’s shoes and the sun shone as brightly as the crystal beads on her cloak and the man was warmed. Grass sprouted as high as his knees and the birds laid their eggs and the man was fed. Summer had returned.”

  The skillful hands at last came to rest in the skald’s lap, the fingers humbly laced together. The weaving was done. The finished piece hung in each imagination, awaiting response. Jorgen allowed himself a modest smile as his shoulders twitched with the pleasure of his performance. The cocksure glance he sneaked toward Asa told something else altogether. He must have seen the horror in her eyes, because he looked away in the next instant and made a pretense of clearing his throat. Then he sniffed twice—quickly—rubbed his dripping nose with the heel of his hand, and chuckled.

  “It seems that I probably should have told that story at the beginning of winter,” he said, shaking his head and chuckling again. “A sacrifice then would surely have hurried summer’s return; by now we would have had good weather and good grass.” He shrugged meekly, pulled off his hat, and scratched the back of his head, then replaced the hat and stole another glance at her.

  This was a game to him. Right in front of her he was inciting them to kill the horses and he was enjoying himself. Her chest hurt. The air rushing in and out of her nose burned.

  Turning his attention to the others, he spread his oh-so-magical hands in humility. “It truly is my fault,” he said, and his own nod encouraged agreement. “There are so many stories to remember, you see, so much wisdom from my father and his father before him. Yes, I was forgetful.” There was the slightest of pauses, a subtle shift in his posture and stronger inflection in his tone. “Though forgetfulness”—he spoke very carefully now, very clearly—“is not to be confused with selfishness; it is selfishness that angers the gods, keeping for human use what isn’t theirs.”

  There it was. He’d tossed the red-hot spark onto the kindling.

  Old Ketil was the first to catch fire. He thudded his walking stick on the dirt floor for attention. “Is it too late for a sacrifice?”

  Jorgen started to glance at Asa, caught himself, and pulled back. “We-e-ll,” he said, drawing out the word to show full consideration of Ketil’s question, “the damage, I fear, has already been done. You have only to look at our miserable existence. I don’t know if the gods have any more interest in us, but …”

  He was herding them off unchallenged. Someone had to do something. Asa looked to her mother and even touched her shoulder with enough force to waken her, but there was no response. The thin pale lids closed over her eyes didn’t so much as flicker. Panicked, Asa found herself boldly chastising Ketil on her own. “My father forbade that the horses be killed,” she said sharply. “You’ll do well to remember that. Or the cow. They’re all we have left.”

  Ketil’s beard quivered and he blinked with indignation. Pursing his lips, he stamped his stick again. “But our situation is worse than your father ever expected. Now he’s off to do what he thinks best—”

  “It isn’t what he thinks best but what you all told him was best.”

  Tora, of all people, joined his argument. “Whatever the reason for his going, the point is that he’s not here and we need to do something.” Asa went stiff. How could the woman take her mother’s silver ring pin and then say such things? “In his absence—”

  “In his absence my mother makes the decisions for us all.”

  Every eye in the room now fell on her mother, lying motionless on her mattress, apparently asleep and unhearing. Asa sensed their doubt. This was no leader, they were thinking. Her heart pounded.

  “We will wait for her decision then,” Jorgen pronounced, and that shoved her back on her heels. Why was he suddenly retreating? His furrowed brow was merely a transparent display of sympathy. “I suppose all we can do is wait. As the animals wait. As the insects wait.” His gaze fell to the emptiness of his lap. Fiddling with something inside his sleeve, he began mindlessly humming a familiar line from a song of farewell. That released the others to whisper among themselves, or stretch out on their mattresses, or close their eyes and wait, insectlike.

  Time passed with the room in suspension and Asa hardly able to breathe. All the while Jorgen kept humming, and while he hummed he lifted his head and leveled his heavy-lidded gaze at her. No one could say that his smile wasn’t gentle, that his face wasn’t full of concern for her and her sick mother. But the eyes lurking beneath that brow were neither gentle nor concerned. They glinted with the cold bite of death. And for the first time in her fourteen winters, Asa shivered.

  SJAU

  Asa dragged her own mattress to her mother’s side that night, determined to keep one watchful eye on her and the other on Jorgen. From where she lay she could just see the two rumpled mounds formed by his blanketed feet, and she wordlessly focused her bitterness in his direction. She suspected it was Rune he wanted to kill—he was the oldest of the three horses—and her teeth ground together until she was forced to unclench her jaw and look toward the rafters. If she hadn’t been needed here, Asa knew she’d be passing the night in the byre—that night and all the nights that followed, protecting the animals from Jorgen’s demonic hunger.

  Somewhere on the other side of the fire Ketil mumbled and sighed. Beyond Asa’s head Gunnvor crooned to little Engli to soothe his sick whimpers. The flames burned lower and lower, and sleep gradually settled over the others; the coughing quieted, the sniffling eased. On any other night it would be easy enough for her to fall asleep, but Asa held herself rigidly awake. She turned and gazed long and hard into the rippling crown of orange flames without seeing them, but all the while nurturing their burn inside of her. Only when an ashy branch fell apart with a pop and a hiss did she startle back to the present, uncertain how much time had passed. In the room’s silence she had a sudden, clear sense that Jorgen was lying awake too. Thinking about her.

  That made the hairs on her skin lift up. Not wanting to—and scolding herself against it even as she pushed onto one elbow—she peeked across the flames.

  Surprise gave way to alarm and abhorrence as she caught him peeking across the fire at her. Flushed with humiliation, she flattened herself on her mattress. She knew he lay down too. Again her chest heaved. What had he been doing?

  The double quick thudding of her heart measured the night’s progress after that. Like a hawk she pinned her eyes on Jorgen’s blanketed feet, watching them shift restlessly, slanting east and then west and much, much la
ter, collapsing to one side and falling still. Untrusting, she kept watch. The longer the blanket remained motionless, though, the steadier her heart beat until, finally, she allowed herself to stretch a little and roll onto her back.

  She sighed, acknowledging her exhaustion. So much had happened in one short day. Her thoughts tumbled over the events like water rushing over stones. She mused about the Sea Dragon’s departure (and optimistically mouthed a blessing for its safe return); she thought about her ride on Rune and where she’d go tomorrow to scout for more rockweed; she pondered the raven and the strange person she might have seen. Whenever she felt the warm haze of sleep attempt to creep across her, she turned her head toward the skald and reignited her determination to protect both her mother and the horses.

  Odd, wasn’t it, the way he’d deliberately incited the clan to sacrifice a horse, then pulled them away from the idea, saying they’d have to wait like insects. She sniffed. There in the middle of the night, though, with the damp cold hovering over her body, she began to feel like one, like an insect burrowed deep within the black earth, waiting for the warmth of summer. But did summer always come for such creatures? Or did they die waiting?

  It was awfully quiet now—no rain, no wind. The longhouse seemed to take the form of a living thing huddled in the dark, holding its breath to listen for something coming out of the night. Curious, she held her own breath and listened. Nothing unusual. A muffled rustling as Gunnvor shifted on her mattress. The pinging drip-drip of water from a leak in the roof. The annoyingly whiny whistle of Jorgen’s snore. At least he was asleep.

  But then she heard something else: an indistinct sound, far, far away in the skies. She wished she were outside so she could hear better. She held her breath again, lifted up, and listened. There it came: a faint, teasing cry. As heady as the fragrance of crushed tansy came the steady honking of grey geese announcing their return. Summer! Summer was finally coming!

  Curling happily onto her side, she snugged the blanket to her chin and smiled. Warmer days lay ahead for certain, and with them green grasses, watercress, milk, and butter. In her mind the seas calmed and the fish began swimming in silvery schools back up into the fjord. The deer and elk picked their way down from the mountains. Across the hillsides yellow ladyslippers sprouted with abandon, nodding in the sun. She pictured her father’s ship sailing up a friendly fjord to the greetings of a welcoming people. As the boat’s hull scraped the shore a draft of cold air brushed her cheek, nudging her awake.

  The room was still dark and mostly quiet, save for the monotonous drip-drip behind her. The fire had gone to coals. She let her sleepy gaze wander the shadows, identifying the baskets, the barrels, the bundled fishing net and coiled ropes, the legs of the bench, the sleeping forms of the others on their mattresses. She couldn’t see Jorgen’s feet and rose on her elbow to check his mattress. Empty.

  That shot her upright. She scanned every corner of the room. He was gone. All the while her mind was backtracking over the sounds she’d heard in her dreams and identifying them differently, not as the boat hull scraping, but as the door opening and closing. He’d gone to the byre!

  Scrambling to her feet, she searched for a weapon. The knife Astrid had used to chop the onion lay on the bench and she tiptoed over and around the sleeping clan to retrieve it. As quietly as she could then, her heart trying to tug her along faster, she slipped through the door and into the night.

  The air was freshly cleansed, crackly with cold, and filled with the sound of rushing water. Streams, cataracts, rivers, and waterfalls echoed their frothy thunder through the mountains. Moonlight etched ripples across the glistening expanse of the fjord. She looked toward the byre. The muddy path glistened with a frosty sheen but the black footprints led to the smaller, empty byre where the clan had laid the dead bodies awaiting a summer burial. With her skin prickling—from the cold she told herself, not fear—she hurried up the path.

  The door to the small byre hung ajar and for a breath she wondered if living hands had done that or if a draugr, one of the walking dead, had shoved it open. She thought of Bjor, ill-tempered enough when he was alive, always shouting coarse names at her for galloping away from his advances; she’d hate to meet up with him now, when his groping hands would no doubt be swollen to twice their size and strength. The skim of frost crunched ever so slightly beneath her feet and only too readily she slowed her approach. When she laid a hand on the door at last, her heart was climbing her throat. Swallowing hard, she peeked inside.

  A rotting stench assaulted her nose as her eyes adjusted to the darkened interior. Jorgen was there, all right, on his knees, though she couldn’t tell what he was doing. Praying over the shrouded bodies? As the darkness solidified into various shapes and silhouettes, she watched him flatten and sweep his hands along the ground. Some sort of magic ritual? No, that wasn’t it; he seemed to be looking for something. Nose almost to shrouded nose, he reached under the crossed timbers that lifted the bodies clear of the ground and dragged out a cloth-wrapped bundle. With a childlike gurgle of pleasure he sat back on his haunches, hastily unwrapped it, and lifted it to his face. He was eating it! A morsel fell to the floor, and with the quickness of a cat he pounced on it and stuffed it into his mouth.

  Surely pressing a fist to her stomach hadn’t made a noise, but he suddenly stiffened, as an animal does when it realizes it’s being watched. He glanced toward the door. Seeing her, he climbed to his feet. His height seemed to exceed his usual stature.

  “There’s enough to share.” It was an eerily pleasant invitation.

  “Then let’s share it with everyone.”

  He chuckled. “There’s not that much. But I do have something for you.” As he walked toward her a rich, moldy odor preceded him. She clutched a fold of her cloak, prepared to run. The moonlight that spilled over him at the byre’s entry cast his face in sharp relief. The wart on his nose bulged larger, the bristling hairs in his nostrils glistened with icicles of frozen snot. His thin lips had a peculiarly rosy color, as if he’d been sucking hard on something cold. What most grabbed her attention, though, was the crumbling chunk of pale cheese he offered on his palm. Her mouth flooded with anticipation.

  “Take it,” he said. “No one needs to know.”

  Her stomach joined her mouth in clamoring for a taste of the nearly-forgotten treat. Just a bite. No one needs to know.

  But Jorgen would know. And that would tie them together in a way she couldn’t endure. Gazing hungrily at the chunk, she shook her head. She swallowed her saliva, ignored her panging stomach, and demanded, “How could you hoard this food for yourself? The children are starving!”

  “It’s not that much,” he argued. “A bit of cheese, some hazelnuts. I had a couple of eggs at one time but something got to them and ate them before I could. And there was some cod I’d dried myself.” His own pride was hanging him.

  “Then let’s get it to them now. Let’s wake them up.”

  His fingers closed over the cheese. “No. I warned all of you this would be a bad winter, including your father. Didn’t I warn you? At least I prepared for it.”

  She remembered no such warning, though she did recall Tora counting and recounting the cheese rounds one day in the storeroom and, upon finding young Helgi and Thidrick playing a hiding game there, charging them with the loss of one whole cheese. Though they’d pleaded their innocence in tears, her father had punished the boys by making them haul enough water from the stream to fill every barrel in the longhouse.

  Sensing a hesitation, Jorgen teasingly lifted the cheese toward her nose again.

  “Bastard!” She pushed his hand away, accidentally revealing the knife she carried.

  “Ah, so it’s meat you’re wanting. Well, I can serve that up for you as well.” But in the same instant that he stuffed the cheese chunk into his mouth he grabbed her wrist—hard—and wrenched the knife free. With a brutal shove that sent her tumbling, he fled the byre. She scrambled to her feet and ran after him.

  He w
as going for the horses! She had no idea his lurching gait could carry him so fast. Already he was inside the livestock byre and the horses were thudding about and whinnying with fear. The cow bellowed in dismay. Without hesitating at the door, Asa plunged through and leaped onto Jorgen’s back. Her head brushed the shaggy turf ceiling as she pounded his shoulders with her fists. The assault sent him staggering. For a few dizzying steps she thought they were both going to topple but he managed to regain his balance. Grunting like a diseased animal, he swayed left then jerked right. She felt her grip loosen. Grabbing the woven neck of his tunic, she kept up her pummeling even as she slipped. He repeated the move, jerking even harder and this time she fell, slamming into the ground with a breath-choking thud. Pain bored through her skull; her head exploded in a blinding display of flashing lights.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe at all! Her mind scrambled through its haze, trying vainly to put order to things while her chest was caving in, flatter and flatter, emptied of air. The blackness began engulfing her and she went slipping and spinning deep within herself. From that echoing distance she was somehow aware of hooves smashing the dirt just inches from her head before lifting away. And horse sweat—the thick, sour kind that comes from sudden panic—filled her nostrils. Then Rune’s scream pierced the gloom. She knew it was Rune, not one of the other horses, and his distress brought her charging back to consciousness.

  She sucked in a great gulp of air and dug her fingers into the dirt. She blinked, breathed, and pushed herself up in time to see a dark gash rip Rune’s tawny neck. His eyes rolled to white. Trying vainly to scramble backward, he was losing his balance—and the knife came arcing down again, fast and true, like a wicked bolt of lightning.

  Not even fully conscious yet, she targeted the skald. She drove off the dirt and rammed him at the knees. He buckled like a stand of barley beneath the scythe. The two of them fell together in a chaotic heap of tangled boots, elbows, and flailing fists. The horses careered around them, snorting and squealing. One of them leaped right over them as they tumbled.