Raven Speak (9781442402492)

by Wilson, Diane Lee

  A shallow cleft with an uneven surface and small outcroppings provided a vertical ladder of sorts, and she dropped quickly through its damp, cold shadows. Only a little more to go now. She braced against an outcropping and leaped, then crouched, sprang, and dropped further, cradling herself in a bowl between two boulders. She twisted slightly and sprang again.

  A biting pain crushed her wrist. She was yanked sideways, somehow snagged. Madly she flailed her legs, trying to gain some support. Pain ate through her arm. What had happened? She kept kicking, finally found a foothold, and propped up her weight. The fire blazing along her arm erupted in searing flashes of light behind her eyes. She fought like a wild animal trying to pull her hand free, but the harsh truth was she was trapped. Somehow, it seemed, a rock had shifted as she had sprung, and its crushing weight now clamped her hand as cruelly as the wire did a hare.

  Water filled her eyes and she couldn’t blink it away. Panicked, she peered blearily toward the shore. The whale was still there, a hulking mass of life that could restore her clan. She’d been so close to saving them.

  TUTTUGU OK FIMM

  The searing pain vanished surprisingly fast. She couldn’t even feel her hand. She yanked this way and that, sidling left and tugging, then lifting onto her toes and waggling. Only her skin gave the fleeting illusion of slipping. Her flesh strained, but tied as it was to sinew, which was sewn to bone, which was pinned under a great rock higher than her shoulder, she was well anchored in place. On impulse she tried shoving her hand deeper under the rock and twisting. A painful crackling shot through her wrist. Had she broken some bones? Panic flooded her. What was she going to do? How was she going to get free? Frantically she struggled, flailing and tugging at her arm, and again she envisioned a hapless rabbit kicking in its death throes.

  Her chest tightened as if between great iron tongs, and that awful blackness seeped around the edges of her vision. The pain that had fled her hand burned through her arm, blazing into an excruciating scream and—had that noise really come from her?—she pummeled the rock with her fist. It didn’t budge, and now her good hand was scraped raw. Collapsing awkwardly against the cliff face, dampened with sweat, she fought for air. What was she going to do?

  Maybe holding very still would let her hand relax enough to slip free. Against the crushing grip of her ribs she forced a deep breath. The sea air left a much danker taste on her tongue now, and it was a relief to expel it and stand quietly. Forced by her tethered position to stand, she rested her cheek against the bluff’s stony face—how deathly cold it was, and how gritty—and waited. Breathed in, breathed out, in and out, willing her hand to loosen. Below, the tide served as her guide: As it rushed to shore she inhaled and held herself still, thinking but not thinking, and as it receded she pushed out her breath and her fear and sent them away on the waves. A moment of nothingness, with only her heart fluttering as faintly and fast as a dying rabbit’s, then the tide returned and she inhaled.

  Needles pricked her suspended arm like a thousand bees, and when she’d waited long enough she tugged at it once, then again, yanking with all her strength, but nothing happened. She was stuck. Half-heartedly she gave another tug, then gave up.

  The day stretched long. Waves became her world; their soughing filled her ears, their sparkling glazed her eyes. They numbed her to the stinging, so that eventually her arm past her elbow felt separate, as if it were someone else’s limb. If she didn’t look up to see that her arm was, indeed, attached to a crushed hand, she’d not even know it existed.

  Would someone find her? The bitter absurdity of that elicited a snort. Would anyone even miss her? Rune would. And the thought of him living his days alone, wondering why she’d abandoned him, stabbed her.

  To keep that image from her mind, she put order to the world around her. She named what few plants she could see. She counted the rocks in the distance, the ones tumbling into the sea, and mindlessly arranged them by size. The slumping silhouette that was the whale still resided among them. When she ran out of things to assess, she watched the waves splash against the rocks and marked the passage of time by the incoming tide. In and out, in and out rushed the waves, each time climbing a little higher on the shore. The water rose around the rocks and the whale. Splashing, caressing. The creature began moving more actively; its tail arched in anticipation.

  No!

  With indescribable sadness she watched the rising tide rock the whale from side to side, then lift and float the creature free. It hung in the shallows awhile, gyrating slowly, but the traitorous waves coaxed it out to sea. Tears blinded her to its passage. When she blinked them away, the whale was gone.

  The ocean gives and the ocean takes. Isn’t that what the men had always said? Well, this winter it had surely taken everything. All the fish. All the men. Her father. And now the whale.

  For the longest time after that she could only stare at the empty place on the shore where the whale had been. The sun deepened to a golden orb in an iron sky and ever so slowly dipped toward the ocean. The wind lessened, the air grew chill. She shivered. Night was falling now and she had no shelter, no way to stay warm. Pinned against this bluff, her arm strung past her head, she was helpless. That ignited a small fire, and again she struggled with unreasoning fury to free herself. She kicked and twisted and grunted and even lost her footing at one point, so that for a horrendously painful moment she was actually hanging in the dusk by her trapped hand. She shrieked as bones cracked. From far, far above came a familiar nicker, one shadowed with worry.

  Frantically she scrambled to regain her feet. “Rune?” she called, not knowing exactly why. Did she expect him to fly down here and rescue her? Even he had his limits.

  The darkness delivered no answer, and when the winds had swept away his name she felt very much alone. She shivered uncontrollably and yearned anew for the comfort of wrapping her legs around Rune’s furry sides, of urging him into an exhilarating gallop. The beach below was murky, but she remembered how often they’d gone flying along it, spraying sand and scattering raucous gulls. How sad that she’d never ride him again. She’d never even see him again! And at that realization a great, solemn weight settled upon her.

  She was going to die.

  That night was the longest, and the shortest, she’d known. She stood throughout, dozing and wakening, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as her knees stiffened, her hips complained. How did horses manage it? Alternately she tucked her free arm against her chest for warmth or beneath her cheek as a cushion. If she stood completely motionless she could cling to the small pocket of warmth created by the diminishing heat from her body. Or maybe she imagined that. The rock itself was as cold as ice.

  Glittering stars poked from the black sky, fiery embers from the gods’ fires. There was the Great Star and Aurvandill’s Toe and Frigga’s Distaff. They arced across the sky with surprising speed. And then they were winking out one by one, fading with the graying sky as a new day approached.

  She must have dozed more deeply then, because when the burning pain in her suspended shoulder awoke her it was full light. Awareness of her situation crept back to her and with tentative hope she tugged at her trapped arm. Nothing had changed.

  The rocky cliff saturated her with cold, sending violent shivers through her body. She ached for the sun to thaw her, but the orb that climbed into the sky that day withheld its warmth. From horizon to horizon the sky yawned a hazy, fish-belly sort of white. No clouds, no birds. Lifeless. Even the ocean languished. The waves that rolled shoreward curled upon themselves with a hushed restraint.

  She cupped her free hand over her nose and mouth and blew moist air, warming her face. Her tongue felt thick and sticky, and she realized how thirsty she was. When had she last had anything to eat or drink?

  Half-wit! What was the point of worrying over hunger or thirst when she was going to die? Yet her stomach panged stubbornly, even as a wave of nausea washed over her. The cold rock suddenly became comforting, and she touched her che
ek to it. How much longer?

  The whole of that day passed in a stupor. Now and then, when the fire stirred inside her, she maneuvered around and tugged at her arm. But each time she gave up sooner. It was getting harder to fend off the dizziness, and she had to blink purposefully and press her fingers to her creased forehead and remember to breathe.

  The lackluster sun dipped once again into the ocean. But its disappearance intensified her shivering. The tremors shook her to the very core, battered her body into exhaustion so that she slumped against the bluff when she could no longer shuffle from side to side, stamping her feet to keep her blood stirring. The task was just too difficult, and she began to welcome the thought of surrendering to the cold and dying.

  Sometime later—and who knew how much later, for time seemed to have lost any measuring or meaning—an insistent sound, a guttural croaking, nudged her eyes open. She blinked. It was morning again, another day. With dull appraisal she noted that her shoulder had stopped hurting; she couldn’t feel it any more than her crushed hand.

  A stone’s throw away, perched on a rocky lip, was a raven. A little beyond and above it was another. Wenda’s ravens? She craned her stiff neck as far as it would go back and squinted upward, half-expecting to see the wizened old woman climbing down. Nothing but jutting rock against a wintry blue sky. An ocean gust whipped her hair, burnishing her already taut skin and sucking the remaining moisture from her cracked lips. With a wry smirk that opened a new fissure she recalled the fish Wenda had hung outside her cave to dry. That’s what she’d become: a drying fish.

  The croaks of the nearer raven switched to excited chatter. Up and down it leaped on the breeze, hunching its shoulders and shaking the ruffled feathers on its head. It hopped sideways, as if in play, and returned. The other raven spread its wings and let out a yelp, after which both birds studied her intently.

  She stared back, urging her mind to take action, to think. Had they come to peck out her eyes as they had Jorgen’s? Well, she wasn’t dead yet; they weren’t having her eyes! And she lifted her arm to shield her face. That alone made her dizzy. Beneath the protective shade of her elbow she closed her eyes.

  The two birds took up a gurgling, smacking, clacking conversation, and it seemed that they were talking to her—no, they were talking about her. Somehow, behind her eyelids, she understood their raven speak. They were telling her story. They spoke of her battle with Jorgen, of her bravery and that of her horse. Only they didn’t call him by name, it was more like “four-feet thunder.” They described the picture-stone that overlooked the ocean, the one with the girl warrior on horseback. They went on to recount some of the adventures she and Rune had shared, events they could not possibly have known about. No one but she and Rune knew about those.

  She blinked her eyes open. These weren’t Wenda’s ravens after all; they were the two ravens that belonged to the great god Odin, the ones who carried to him all the secrets of the world. Of course they knew her story.

  So was she dead? Had they come to take her to Valhalla? She extended her fingers along the rough cliff wall, pressing her tips into the gritty surface. It certainly felt real. She looked skyward for Odin’s Valkyrie, the winged daughters who escorted the dead to the afterlife. Wispy clouds filled her view, but no otherworldly messengers.

  Of course not. They came for the battlefield’s dead, the fallen heroes. She wasn’t a hero.

  One of the ravens trilled, a nearly musical sound, while the other voiced a rhythmic drumming. Frowning, she looked more closely. Purple-black feathers, ponderous bills, shaggy beards. No, they were just two ordinary birds, come to peck out her eyes. I traded my eye for something that I hold more dearly than life itself, Wenda had boasted. What will you trade for a whale?

  But there was no whale. And she closed her eyes and waited.

  TUTTUGU OK SEX

  Traveling without her birds made her skittish. They served as her eyes—her good eyes, anyway, since the one eye she owned shrouded her world in a perpetual haze. How much longer before the haze gave way to night?

  The forest here lay exceptionally quiet. In the distance, unseen, water cascaded noisily down the mountain; but along this needle-covered path all she heard was the squishing sound of her own feet alternating with the soft plunk of her walking stick. Trunks stood silent watch in every direction, but there was no movement among them: no animals, no birds, no life. Wenda trudged on, thinking. What had made her turn around?

  Jorgen was dead. Those words never failed to bring a satisfied smile. So many years she’d lived anticipating the day. The burnt bones had foretold the girl’s coming again and again, continually cautioning her to patience, and ach! it had been frustrating. Twice daily, winter and summer, she’d left her cave to look to the south, always squinting into the shadows across the fjord and seeing nothing. Even when the girl first appeared, she didn’t come directly. She’d ridden away and returned and then had to be coaxed to the cave with barley cakes. And here was another question: What had caused her to bake a double batch that day? The bones hadn’t indicated the horse—Rune, his name was—but she’d been happy to welcome him into the cave that was her home. Flap and Fancy had definitely not been pleased, and they’d complained with their usual mewling and bickering, but for her it was a tonic to have a horse so near again. The sight of him gave comfort; the smell of him soothed as no herb could.

  She paused to catch her breath. Something about that heap of red-brown needles tucked close to the nearest trunk drew her eye and she poked through it. Jewel-green leaves, freed of the weight, unfurled along a tender stem. She smiled. Another year come. As many as she’d witnessed, the pure brilliance—the undaunted spirit—inherent in each dawning summer never failed to stir her. Yes, everything was unfolding as it should. Leaning into her stick then, she continued up the muddy path. Summer may be on the way, but at present she was cold and in need of a steaming bowl of tea. She hoped they had some brewed.

  The clan, his beloved clan as well as Asa’s, needed a skald, and though she cherished her privacy, she knew she had to reclaim his seat beside the fire. That’s why she’d turned around. The people needed hope. A good skald provided hope.

  High above, an errant wind disturbed the treetops. Was the weather changing? She picked up her pace though her chest strained.

  They needed a good leader, too. A confident chieftain who’d govern with a generous heart and a wise head. A leader who would put the needs of the clan above his—or her—own. Would they have one?

  It irked her that she didn’t know. What was the purpose of trading her eye for knowledge if she couldn’t know everything? The apparent trickery related to her bargain sent her stick slamming into the mud with vexation. She chewed on that idea as she climbed, aware that her wheezy exhalations added fleeting puffs of mist to the forest’s skirts.

  Perhaps knowledge was limited to facts, to the objects she discovered in her travels, to the terse words and images delivered to her by her ravens. Perhaps humans, ultimately, were unknowable. The girl, without question, continued to surprise her, continued to reveal a depth of character that she’d never expected. As much as she probed, Asa yet remained a mystery, one who possessed a wisdom beyond her years. She would enjoy instructing her.

  Up and down she trudged over the knuckles of the mountain’s splayed fingers. The light filtering through the forest slowly dimmed as evening approached. She’d not yet caught the scent of smoke that would signal the settlement. Flap had assured her it wasn’t much farther, but he’d miscommunicated distance on more than one occasion. He couldn’t be made to understand the difference between him flying a straight line through the air and her traversing this mountainous terrain on foot.

  A sodden pinecone unbalanced her and sent her tumbling to the ground with a surprised grunt. Ach, she was getting old! Muddy debris coated both palms and soaked through to an elbow. Fuming, she planted the walking stick and climbed to her feet with some effort. How she missed clipping along these paths on horseback. Wi
th each passing year the mountains grew steeper. She gauged the distance to the next crest and heaved a sigh. That was another thing: She could see so much farther from the back of a horse. She enjoyed looking ahead. Adjusting her cloak, she proceeded.

  As the path narrowed and darkness pressed in, her steps slowed. Many times she’d traveled this way as a young woman, often at night, so she could rely on memory to guide her. But no one much bigger than a fox had passed here in a while, and even when she spotted what she thought were the trail markers, she had to blink and blink again, for they, too, had aged, and that left her frowning and feeling somewhat adrift.

  At last, when she emerged from the forest to overlook the fjord, she found the sky glowing under faint moonlight. The waters reflected its silvery sheen. And below, huddled on a scrap of land between the base of the mountain and the inlet, lay the dismal settlement. If not for the wisp of smoke coming from the longhouse, she’d have thought the place abandoned. The muddy fields lay barren of crops; the byres, by their silence, seemed empty of livestock.

  Cautiously she made her way down the slope and crept through the dark to the longhouse. As she rapped her stick on the door she noted the short pine bough mounted above it. Someone, at least, clung to hope. “I’m a wanderer needing a roof,” she called. “You know me.” Within she heard murmuring and the footsteps of someone’s approach. When the heavy door opened a crack, Tora’s narrowed green eyes peered through. Her challenging expression retreated into reluctant recognition, and the door was pulled open to a stale and dreary winter-chilled room. Only eight dull faces met her gaze as she entered. Was that all who were left?