Raven Speak (9781442402492)

by Wilson, Diane Lee

  He watched them go, then shook himself back to the present. He needed to get the horses into the byre. What were a couple of birds high in the sky when two meaty animals stood almost within reach? Wetting his lips, he smacked them—once, twice—hating the way it reduced him to a little girl. “Come!” he ordered loudly.

  Quork. Quork. Strangely enough, his order had brought the ravens wheeling around. Their chatter united in harsh cries as the birds suddenly spiraled out of the air to attack the horses. He felt his mouth fall open. The horses squealed, spun, and galloped out of sight. He heard them thundering up the hillside, the birds shrieking in their wake. And then everything was silent.

  The wind charged his back, punching its cold through to his bones. His stomach growled. Images of roasting meat had readied him for a feast, and now he was as empty-handed as ever. To Nifelhel with those odious birds! Here he’d thought they were signs of good fortune and he’d been rudely deceived; they were nothing more than meddlesome creatures deserving of a miserable fate. Glaring at the darkening skyline, he roughly adjusted the cloak across his shoulders and heaved a sigh of frustration. Well, he could allow himself a few more of the hazelnuts he’d held aside. He hungered greatly, though, for a chewy piece of meat—one dripping with fat.

  Just as he was turning toward the byre, that wavering moment of twilight vanished and night began to descend rapidly. He thought about leaving the door open in case those stupid horses returned on their own, but then he’d risk losing the cow. In sudden anger he slammed his shoulder against the wood planks and shoved the door closed. Let the fool horses shiver. They’d be more appreciative come morning.

  He stalked down the path toward the longhouse—oh, why had he used his bad shoulder, the one he’d wrenched last night?—and as he did, he became aware of the two black birds again, congealing from the dusk. He shook his fist as they neared. If only …

  From the edge of his eye he caught something falling. It was followed closely by an identical object and the instant he realized it, a damp clod thumped his head and crumbled down the back of his neck. Another splatted in front of him. Even in the gloom he recognized it as the fragmented turd of a horse. The birds’ raucous chatter sounded distinctly like laughter as they melted into the night. He clenched his fists, shook himself off, and walked on.

  TÓLF

  Rune pranced, his long black tail swishing around his ankles with the agitation of storm-tossed waves. He struck at the cave floor and shook his head. Even when he ceased his fretting to momentarily look in Asa’s direction, the skin covering his bony withers twitched with a spasmodic life of its own.

  The woman’s echoing wail had had the opposite effect on Asa. Though her heart pounded, she held herself motionless. Something was happening. Part of her seemed to fly away with the two ravens, yet the heavy blue cloak pinned her in place, crushing her neck and overloading her shoulders with its suffocating weight. Her head throbbed.

  Rune snorted an emphatic blast that ricocheted off the stone walls. She was aware that he’d swung his head around and that his eyes sought the cave’s arching mouth, the path to escape. If not for his loyalty, she knew, he’d go galloping through it.

  She should join him.

  That sudden and clear resolve stirred her to life. As carefully as she could, cautious not to make a sound, she began worming her way out from under the cloak.

  “No!” The woman spun and pointed a finger. “What are you doing?”

  That stiffened her and, caught as she was, burdened her one shoulder with the entire weight of the cloak. Why hadn’t she brought Astrid’s knife?

  The pointed finger had no sway over Rune, however, and the clatter of his restless hooves grew louder. Their staccato cadence suggested imminent flight, and Asa’s heart leaped into rhythm. “I really should go back to my clan,” she explained in a falsely calm voice. The lone eyeball didn’t blink. “If they’re in danger—”

  “They are,” the woman interrupted authoritatively, “but your time’s not yet ripe.” Lifting the cloak from Asa with surprising ease, she seemed to hug it to her chest a moment before folding it in half and laying it across the open trunk. “The way will soon be dark. And I promised you a whale, which I don’t have—yet—but I do have, let’s see …” She turned and scurried over to a dark barrel. Sweeping aside some leaf litter, she lifted the lid.

  Asa sidled next to Rune, stealing a desperate glance through the cave’s mouth. Across the fjord the zigzagging fissures and rocky outcroppings had already gone murky; silhouettes were steadily dissolving in the falling dusk. How would they find their way?

  As if sensing her thoughts, Rune nickered. Instinctively, she put a hand on his neck to calm him, at the same time realizing it wasn’t anxiety in his utterance but anticipation. Grain was being scooped from the barrel into a shallow basket, and the lush sound of cascading granules had hooked his ears.

  “Barley,” the woman said, displaying the basket triumphantly.

  Her approach elicited another resonant nicker from Rune, and when she set the basket at his feet he eagerly tore into the grain. The little mound, Asa thought, reddish yellow in the firelight, must seem as desirous to him as a pile of gold would to a man. And hard upon that thought came another: A well-fed horse could gallop that much faster and farther. “Thank you,” she said, drawing herself tall. “He’s not seen that much in a year.”

  In the woman’s smile Asa was surprised to glimpse satisfaction, even a trace of motherly pride. The fan of wrinkles edging her one eye closely resembled her mother’s, and the smile that made them pucker managed to soften her scowl as she prattled on. “Now for you, would you favor some klippfisk maybe? Or some fresh mussels? That’s it! Mussels and leeks stewed in their own tempting broth. Something heartier than dried pea soup, eh? You’ll stay the night now and share a meal.” Whether it was an invitation or a command, she didn’t wait for a response, but scuttled off to another barrel to plunge her bare arm deep inside.

  Asa hadn’t felt so spun about, so dizzy and disoriented, since her childhood days playing brigand and blindfold. Was this unpredictable old woman a danger or not? Rune had obviously lost his desire to flee now that he had his grain. He was nosing the basket across the floor with a colt’s hunger, trying to snatch up every last kernel. She glanced outside. It was awfully dark. The night had blotted away all details that lay beyond the flickering shadows at the cave’s mouth.

  A shallow pot, dented and blackened with age, clanked as the woman pitched something into it. That was followed by another dull chink and clank, and then another. They were mussels, glistening blue-black mussels. She was pulling the dripping shells from the barrel, giving each a cursory examination, and rapidly filling the waiting pot. A noisy gurgle from Asa’s stomach convinced her to stay. She was hungry, dizzy, and tired—oh, so tired. “All right,” she agreed, unsure if that was even necessary. “What can I do to help?”

  The woman shook droplets from her wet arm, darted over to another basket—moving now with the agility of someone much younger, a quite excited someone—and dug out a bulb of garlic, which she tossed to Asa. “Here, you can peel that,” she said, and returned to the kettle.

  In digging her fingernail beneath the flimsy, crackly skin, Asa punched a crescent into the garlic’s flesh. Immediately she lifted the bulb to her nose and sucked in its fragrance. She loved the smell and taste of garlic—almost as much as her father did. For as long as she could remember he’d been teased for yanking young bulbs right out of the ground and crunching them between his teeth while he talked. The aroma within her cupped hands brought a pang; she could feel his breath warming the top of her head, sense his lips planting a kiss where so many had been planted over the years. Would she ever see him again, or had he and the others not survived the storm? And what about her mother? Rubbing her thumb across the bulb’s waxy body, she recalled the knobs of bone strung along her mother’s bowed neck. Had death always hovered so close to them?

  She took her time tearing
away the remainder of the garlic’s loose-fitting skin, all the while watching the woman with curiosity. Just how much did this stranger know about her and her clan? The reference to dried pea soup could have been a guess—long winters usually waned with a few monotonous days of dried pea soup—but she spoke so confidently. Just how much did she know?

  “You were wanting this, I suspect.” With one brow arched enigmatically, the woman pushed a knife across the table, a knife so similar to Astrid’s that Asa flinched with guilt. Flushing beneath the penetrating stare, she chopped the garlic as best as she could—the blade was somewhat dull—and slid the knife aside.

  But she couldn’t stop looking at it. Her palm ached to grasp the handle again, to hold the blade close to her, just for the comfort and protection pointed iron could provide. The old woman’s back was turned. She’d never miss it in this mess, and almost before the thought was finished, Asa had secreted the knife in the waistband of her underskirt and was strewing the pile of garlic skins across the table and rearranging the jars and utensils to distract a questioning eye.

  Once the garlic was tossed into the kettle, which was now nestled among the fire’s embers, she was given the task of stirring the soup. She hunched over the pot, feeling the knife’s cold iron poke her belly and wondering if the old woman knew. The mussels grudgingly parted their mouths as they cooked, surrendering the sweet flesh hidden inside, and her own mouth watered with anticipation.

  Rune, having finished his grain, immediately walked a tight circle, swinging his nose across the cave floor. Three times he circled until, apparently satisfied, he buckled his knees and sank to the ground. His accompanying grunt expanded into a drawn-out sigh as his head drooped and his eyelids fluttered and closed. Asa smiled. He deserved a good rest.

  It wasn’t long before she and her host were seated beside the fire, cradling steaming bowls of mussel, leek, and garlic soup. Her stomach was growling so insistently that she bypassed her spoon to slurp some broth straight from the bowl, and it coursed through her with a nourishing heat. The muscles in her back relaxed—she hadn’t realized how knotted they’d become—and her hips loosened. Guilt evaporated. She’d be joining Rune in no time, she thought with a silent chuckle. Hopefully without going face first into her soup. To her dining companion she said appreciatively, “This is good.”

  The woman only mumbled an unintelligible response, busy as she was with stabbing at a slippery mussel in her own bowl. She finally plucked up one blue-black disc with her fingers, critically eyed the partially opened shell, and flung it toward the cave’s mouth. Asa expected its clatter to bring the two ravens’ flapping descent, but the stone entry remained silent. Where had they flown off to?

  The woman seemed to have no interest in her birds now; her focus was her meal. She held her head tilted so that her one eyeball looked straight down on the bowl, much like a gull targeting a surf-washed tidbit. After a few more stabbing motions she carefully lifted her spoon to her mouth, lips puckered eagerly. She sucked in the small lump of meat with a drawn-out burble and ignored the broth that trickled down her fuzzed chin. Then she tilted her head, aimed her spoon at another mussel, and returned to her stabbing.

  The woman was truly odd, Asa thought, and as changeable as the weather: friendly and generous one moment, then aloof and temperamental the next. Well, she was here for the night, so she might as well make the best of it. “I still don’t know your name,” she said in a second effort to make conversation.

  Engrossed in chasing a mussel around her bowl, the woman answered absently: “Wenda.”

  “And you don’t have any clan?” Asa asked, searching the room once more for evidence of others.

  The woman, Wenda, had her spoon with its glistening glob of mussel halfway to her seeking lips, but there she checked it to ponder the question. A moment passed; she shook her head and popped the mussel into her mouth.

  Asa responded with the incredulity of a person who’d never lived a day unaccompanied. “Aren’t you lonely?”

  A wistful smile formed at the corners of Wenda’s mouth as she chewed and gazed dreamily into the fire. Even after she’d swallowed and was resting her spoon inside her bowl, she kept staring glassy-eyed at the low flames, the smile fixed upon her face.

  Had the old woman lost her way? Or was she purposely being secretive?

  Behind her Asa heard Rune sigh with deep contentment and flop onto his side. She glanced over her shoulder to see him stretch his neck long and rub his cheek against the stone floor in short jabs, finding just the right spot. He heaved another sigh and went still.

  At least her horse was untroubled. She, however, was becoming ever more vexed. Pursing her lips, she turned back and leveled a glare at the bemused old woman. Didn’t Wenda care about being a good host? Why was her guest having to make all the conversation? It had been easier, she thought, to coax words from a feverish toddler.

  As a nudge, she rattled her spoon inside her bowl. Nothing. She coughed, held her hand to her stomach, and coughed again, violently. The woman didn’t so much as blink. Well, that was it; she was done trying. Then and there she vowed not to speak again unless spoken to, even if that meant passing the entire night in silence; lifting her bowl to her chin, she methodically sipped the yellowish broth with feigned concentration.

  “I’ve not been lonely a single day of my life.”

  Asa peered across the bowl’s rim to find Wenda smiling to herself with great pride.

  “In fact, I can’t even imagine being lonely,” the woman went on. “I’ve loved and been loved, for a season at least. Now I have Flap and Fancy, and every day they bring me stories from the far corners of the world, the like of which you’ve never imagined. Through their eyes I’ve seen a people who can walk on water; I know of men who live in stone bee hives, as well as the immense distance to a land where the birds stand taller than children and yet not a one of them can fly.” She began rocking forward and back in a pensive rhythm. “You may have two good eyes, child, but you’ll never see these things.”

  The unexpected flood of words took Asa by surprise; the topic irritated like nettles. It was that talk again: of the two ravens acting like people, speaking like people. The talk of fools. She glanced toward the dark entry, but the two birds must have settled into their nest.

  Wenda was awaiting her response, she sensed, but for a noticeably long stretch—while the fire crackled and spit, while the wind outside the cave paused to listen—Asa dragged her spoon through her bowl. What was she supposed to say? How does a man walk on water? How can a raven tell you such a thing? Well, she wasn’t going to demean herself with such nonsensical talk.

  Hunching her shoulders and keeping her gaze fixed firmly downward, she tried to wait out the awkwardness. But gradually, ever so gradually—and this, too, was odd—she began to feel Wenda’s one blue eye boring through her. She felt it tapping on her skull at first, softly, insistently, demanding her to look up and then forcibly raising her chin by a will more powerful than her own … until she found herself staring directly into the hooded orb. Words in her mind swirled as if through a hailstorm. A question formed. No, she wasn’t going to ask it. But the solemn gaze demanded that she ask, and although she tried to resist, although she tightened her jaw and felt the cords in her neck grow taut, she heard the words come spilling out of her mouth in a rush: “How did you lose your eye?”

  There was a slight sense of satisfaction in the cave, an aura of success, before the retort was emphatically spat: “I didn’t lose it.” Wenda ratcheted her curving spine a tomme straighter. “Losing is an accident,” she pronounced, “the result of brutality or coincidence. Losing requires no thought. I, however, gave a great deal of thought to the value of my eye and, after much thought, I decided to trade it.”

  Trade it! Willingly? Asa squirmed. She glanced toward the cave’s mouth with new longing.

  “I thoughtfully traded my eye for something that I hold more dearly than life itself.”

  The hiss of rain coul
dn’t mask the insistent tapping Asa felt on her skull again: ask—ask! What was more dear than life itself? But this time she anchored her spoon in her bowl, pressed her lips together, and appeared fascinated with a green half-moon of leek floating in her broth.

  “I’ve not had a moment’s regret,” Wenda said, speaking over the loudening rain. “You, with your child’s fascination with appearances, may find me hideous, but I’m happy—mostly happy.”

  A deafening whoosh curtained the cave, thankfully drowning further conversation for the present. Wenda set down her bowl to snug her cloak tighter around her neck, and for the first time Asa noticed how thin the wrist was that extended from the sleeve of her tunic, how bluish the veins that webbed both hands. Was the woman ill? Maybe that explained the feverish talk. After all, she was incredibly old; who knew how many winters she’d seen? It was admirable, really, considering her age and frail health, how she held herself so erect. Even now she sat bolt upright, staring past Asa, waiting out the roar, her one eye blinking patiently.

  The rain pounded and the wind blew, and when a handful of fat drops were hurled into the cave, Rune woke with a snort. As suddenly as the storm had started though, it exhaled and grew quiet. And as if she’d been merely waiting for that moment, Wenda directed her pale, one-eyed gaze upon Asa.

  “Any more questions?”

  She had more questions. Her head buzzed with them, in fact. Or maybe it buzzed with exhaustion. She watched Rune collapse full-out again. Firelight tipped the fur on his hipbone a pale gold and danced across his arching cage of ribs. Dried blood still matted his neck and chest; she’d have to attend to that come morning. From the shadows beyond him, the blue cloak shimmered faintly. All right … she indicated the cloak with a nod. “Where did that come from?”