Travel Light

by Naomi Mitchison

  Then she was dragged along to the fire they had lit and on which they were cooking a meal. The son of the King of the Dales had now, although somewhat scorched and grimed, decked himself out with gold—the bracelets and collars she knew and loved so well!—and was giving it away to his followers just as she had always been told was the way of men. He looked at her grinning and asked her what she was called; she named herself Halla Bearsbairn, since she could not, for shame, speak her other name now. “It is clear you know the way of bears,” said the King’s son, “and after supper I shall teach you the way of women.” So he drove his spear into the rock and Halla was tied to it by her long, gold-coloured hair; during supper they threw bones at her while she wept for Uggi and herself. Here she was, tied like the princesses in the stories, but alas, for no dragon. As dusk fell, one of the unicorns came softly up behind and sadly laid its velvet muzzle in the palm of her bound hand as though saying good-bye. A troll family crept on their knobbled knees into the cave and she knew they were going to gorge themselves on fresh dragon meat. And now the wine that the robbers had brought with them was going down their throats in great gulps, and now the son of the King of the Dales stood up, while the rest shouted and sang such words as are used on these occasions toward heroes, and he came towards Halla like a hungry bear towards a broken-legged fawn.

  But, as Halla screamed in expectation of his touch, there came a roaring in the sky, oh nearing, circling, making pause to all below it, a thunder of wings, a lambent, searing of flame, a forked tail sweeping the hero off his unsteady feet, a snap of jaws through ashen spear shaft, a clutch of claws, and Halla at the last moment, rescued by a dragon!

  Chapter Five

  Treasure

  It was Gauk, faithful to his old friend and cousin, who had rescued Halla. He carried her, fainting, in his strong claws, to Withered Wood, where among scorched and lifeless tree-boles and ashes of leaf and turf, he had his cave and his treasure, though it was not so great a treasure as Uggi’s. Dutifully, Halla admired it, but with a dry and shaken heart. Her own treasure of sword and helmet, dagger and mail shirt, had been taken from her; her fingers and wrists were still sore where the heroes had stripped her of rings and bracelets. They had not seen a fine gold chain round her neck, dangling a carved jewel, but she thought it best to give this to Gauk.

  A little later, when the men were safely away, they ventured back. There was a little left in the darker cracks of the cave, a few pearls, a ruby ring, some thin gold coins half-grown over with moss, a broken bracelet and a walrus-ivory box wrenched open and thrown aside. Such as it was, this treasure was divided between the cousins of Uggi. Halla would have liked something, but it was not offered. Half in, half out of the cave were the remains of Uggi himself. But what the trolls had left the wolves had taken. There was little but rags of skin, the toothed skull, the claws. Halla took up one of the claws and hid it in the fold of her torn cloth of gold dress. And she thought to herself that now she should be Halla Dragonweeper. And of a sudden she remembered the Great Dragon of Micklegard and it came into her mind that sooner or later she must go to Micklegard herself.

  After a while she spoke of it to Gauk, but he knew no more than the rest. Only he warned her that it would be necessary to go through the lands of men and it might be that she could not avoid meeting a hero or such. She began to ask herself what she should do, for her life appeared to have been cracked across and in some way she did not feel so dragon-minded as she had done in Uggi’s time. It was as though the murderers who had killed the old dragon had also killed a dragonishness in herself and she hated them all the more for it. Or could it be that the Norns, having been informed, had taken to a different spinning of her fate? She practiced such small pieces of magic as had been taught to her, but they were all childish and useless. Few of the dragons knew the great magic.

  For a while she had a mind to go back to the bears, and looked for them in the forest, but, although she could join with them comfortably in hunting for bees’ nests or mushroom glades, there was not much else they could do together. They did not even sing to the moon as the wolves did. Was Matulli, her nurse, still among them? If so, Matulli had grown so bear-minded that she had forgotten her nurseling, and Halla could not now remember the smell of Matulli-bear that had once meant so much to her.

  For another while she wandered in the forest, living on eggs and mice, berries and nuts and roots, bears’ food. She talked to all the birds and beasts whose language she knew; but their lives lacked seriousness, and above all memory, and she was used to the centuries of the dragons in which each year might be memorable for something gained and in which there were long-laid plans for the furthering of the right order of things between dragons and mankind. Birds did not have memories, although memory had them, forcing them blindly and willingly into strange actions, sending them on journeys of many thousand miles and through every kind of danger, or fixing air routes to and from their nests so that, if the nests were moved only a short way, memory would relentlessly keep them from even so much change as would save their chilling eggs and nestlings. That was no world for Halla, even though it might be full of immediate bodily emotions which memory translated into delightful action and enchanting song. The dragons did not sing and Halla had never sung. But now she would mimic the birds, trying to repeat and answer their memory songs. Yet for all this beauty she could not want to be a bird.

  For a little while she was happy with the squirrels who had their treasures, who laboured and hunted and hid. But it was without thought or plan. Memory held them too. And it was the same with the other hoarders of the woods, the mice and voles. They seemed to be busy, but it was a business of the paws and teeth, not of the mind.

  Now it was autumn again. Memory took the bears to a long sleep, whitened the hares and foxes. It was time to go back to Gauk’s cave in Withered Wood, the only home she had. Yet a reluctance held her. She was not entranced by or identified with Gauk’s treasure, as she had been with Uggi’s. Nor was she utterly certain of her welcome. The dumb unicorns grazed, heavy-headed under the dropping golden birch boughs; she rode for a time on the back of one of them, the tatters of her short golden dress bright as birch leaves on its white shoulders. She wished she could see Steinvor the Valkyrie; perhaps now she might go with her.

  The unicorn suddenly whinnied and shied, almost threw her; she held on to its mane, spoke to it gently, then listened. She could hear voices, smell smoke in the air. The unicorn was trembling; she edged it in under an oak, threw up her hands to a branch and climbed, squirrel fashion, while it cantered off, its horn held low.

  From a high branch of the oak she could see across rough ground and scrub to where twenty or thirty men were sitting round a camp-fire. To one side of them were some frightened cattle, throwing up their heads and bellowing, but guarded by a few mounted men who rode round, hitting them across the eyes if they tried to move away. And, as well as these, there were three women, tied as she herself had once been, and little enough chance of any dragon coming to their rescue. She clung to her oak bough, very still, watching, and saw the men get to their feet and run to where spears and axes were stacked, and snatch them up, before she realized that another set of men had come over the ridge of heathland and were fanning out and about to attack.

  She watched them fight, hoping that as many as possible would be killed, while the cattle scattered and the women screamed and tugged at their bonds. The sun that had glinted on lifted axe and shield-rim now clouded over, and through a thunderclap a Valkyrie’s horse came leaping. He hovered by the oak tree; Steinvor glanced over and leant down easily towards Halla, her hands loose on the rein. “Watch me get him!” she said. Then she circled round the battle, gave one shaking yell, clapped in her heels and shot down. Leaning out of the saddle she gripped a man in mid-fall and yanked him up on to the horse. His head fell back on one side, blood splashing out of a great gash in the throat; the horse flapped back towards Halla’s oak tree. She looked at the dead man and saw with
satisfaction that it was her hero, the son of the King of the Dales. She hoped the wound had hurt him before he died.

  “That was a neat one,” boasted Steinvor, flushed, her red hair a little untidy. “I got him before he was down, even! All-Father’s going to promote me Sergeant!”

  “He’s wearing things from our treasure!” cried Halla suddenly, her throat tightened and heart bumping.

  “D’you want them?” asked Steinvor.

  “Of course!” said Halla. “They’re ours.”

  “Take the lot,” said Steinvor, “he can have plenty more in Valhalla.”

  “Can he?” said Halla. “How?”

  “Oh, All-Father hands them out after meals. Not real ones, of course. But he’s not to know that. Just like they aren’t real meals. Or real girls. But none of them know any better. Or ever will. Here, take the lot.” She pulled the bracelets off one arm and then off the other and handed them over; the dead arms flopped back. Halla stuck the bracelets carefully on to a small branch.

  “D’you want the collar?” asked Steinvor. “It’s all over blood.”

  “It’s only human blood,” said Halla scornfully. “Give it to me!” Yes, it was as she had thought. This had been the pride of Uggi’s famous collection of golden collars with wolf-head ends; it had shone and twinkled in a moss-lined niche at the back of the cave. Now she would clean it and polish it again. “And the rings,” she said.

  The horse was getting restive; his load made hovering awkward. But Steinvor duly stripped off the rings and chucked them over, sticky as they were with hero’s blood. “Mucky little dragon’s brat you are!” she said, and wiped her fingers on her horse’s feathers and took off back into her thundercloud.

  One of the rings had fallen through the branches. Quick, quick, I must get it, thought Halla, and climbed down, scuffled like a squirrel among the loose leaves, caught the glimpse of gold, pounced and had it, and raced back into the branches, tearing more jags in her bright tattered dress. Safe on her branch she stared at the gold, then back at the battle which was almost over. The attackers had won, had chased off the Dales’ men and loosed their own women; now they were rounding up the cattle. In the end they went off over the ridge, leaving Halla to climb down carefully, at last with the beginnings of a treasure of her own.

  What now? Would she go back to Gauk and his cave in Withered Wood, which was undoubtedly a safe one? Could she bear to share her earnings? She was scrubbing her treasure now with moss and oak leaves, cleaning it up until there was no trace or smell of human blood. No, no, she could never share it, not now that Uggi was dead. It was her own, won by her own pain and fear that time, and her good sense now, paid for! And it must be hoarded up, safe, safe! Where was a cave? Where even a hollow tree, a bear’s den between rocks?

  She put on every bit of gold, on to herself. It was the safest way of carrying it. The sharp roundels on the collar, where it twisted over into a wolf’s head, pressed into her collar-bone hollow, making her hold her head up proudly, as it was meant to do. The bracelets swung heavily, pulling her arms into awareness of gold. The hot, blinking ringstones glowed like fresh mushrooms on the dirt of her grimy-nailed bear’s paws. She must hurry, hurry, find herself a cave, pile in her treasure and guard it!

  Suddenly she found herself hungry for dragon’s food, hot meat, spices and ginger. If she had a cave she would have all that, could waylay beasts and people. She began to run, anxiously looking for a cliff, for tumbled rocks, for a river-bed where there might be hollows. Her heart beat wildly in its own rib cave, her eyes blurred, her breath laboured, her treasure weighted her.

  If only one of the unicorns would come so that she could ride on it! But no, the unicorn might want to share her treasure! Unicorns don’t want treasures. But this one might. And supposing she met some of the trolls? Trolls might want anything! Trolls had eaten Uggi, might eat her, steal and throw away the gold! A giant—she hadn’t seen a giant for months, years perhaps, but wasn’t that all the more reason that one might come now?—might step on her, break her bracelets! Or the dwarfs—if the dwarfs were to see the glitter of gold—they were afraid of dragons, but would they be afraid of her? If she found a cave, how was she to know that it was not the entrance to one of the dwarfs’ gold-mines? They might come when she was asleep, oh she must never sleep now, must watch, must guard!

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  The Wanderer

  It was evening now, and a light frost, crisping the fallen leaves, hardening earth and moss. And still no cave, no shelter. Before, she had not cared. She had snuggled in with the bears, in the fern litter of the foxes’ den or warm between two reindeer calves. But now the forest seemed empty. She stumbled and sobbed, over-laden; the golden collar jagged at her neck. It was beginning to get dark.

  She had almost touched it before she checked herself: the stiff cloak, night blue: over it the felt, wide-brimmed hat, shading the single eye, well-known disguise of One only, and so no disguise. She cowered in the leaves; of all she had feared, had she forgotten to fear this? Yet how had she come on to the path of the Wanderer? Such things did not happen unless they were intended.

  “Let us sit down, my child,” said the Wanderer amicably, pointing to a fallen mossy log. She did not dare, yet, to raise her eyes to his, but there was something about his voice that reminded her, sadly but also soothingly, of old Uggi. She sat, and realized that this log lay almost across the mouth of just such a cave as she had been looking for, a small, dry, cosy cave, safely beferned with niches for the holding of treasure. Longing for it she shivered and felt a fold of All-Father’s cloak laid warmly round her shoulders, smelt in the dusk food laid in her lap but could not tell its nature, only that it must be good. “Eat then,” said All-Father. And she ate, mousily, every crumb, licking her fingers quietly. It was food neither of dragons, nor of bears, but yet what she wanted.

  “Only the lightly burdened come to Micklegard,” said All-Father, “it is a far road.”

  She dared to raise her eyes a little now, first to the hand that held the cloak over the knee, and sure enough it was the hand of a hero, a sword-gripper and spear-caster; but also it was a bear’s paw and a dragon’s claw. And as she looked at it longer, it seemed to sprout with feathers, to harden into a hoof, to be fit for all uses of nature. There was no ring on finger nor bracelet on wrist. “Shall I come to Micklegard, All-Father?” whispered Halla.

  “Those who live in caves, die in caves,” said All-Father, “and the love of the Wanderer is to wanderers.”

  Halla lifted her eyes higher until she could almost see through the oncoming darkness the face, the mouth which All-Father had shaped to speak words of kindness and wisdom to his children, the eye which he had formed to look upon them with, the shape with which he covered himself so that they might not fear him. And then she said so low that she could scarcely know if she had spoken: “It is better to have the love of the Wanderer than to be a dragon.” And then one hand of hers began to pull from the other rings that were on it, and drop them on to the ground, and light, light her arms when the weight of gold was off them, and soft the stroking of chin on shoulder when the collar dropped from her neck.

  In a while the Wanderer took the gold that had been her treasure and laid it in the cave, and with one hand he moved a great rock to stand in the cave-mouth, and drew down over it a great tangle of thorned bramble and blackthorn, and it was as though no cave had ever been. Then laid the Wanderer his left hand over his eye and lifted his right hand. Down on to it out of the dark wood flew the raven of foresight and spoke in his ear. When that was done he said: “For seven times seven generations of mankind will the rock stay over the cave, and then shall come what will come and, according to how the gold is used, there shall be helping or harm, making of peace or letting of blood.” And he turned and gathered his cloak about him: “Travel light, my child, as the Wanderer travels light, and his love will be with you.”

  And then he lifted her in his two hands and set her
on the back of a unicorn and he cut a fold from his night-blue cloak and laid it over her shoulders, and her fist gripped on the mane and the beast moved with her into the frosty night. But she stayed warm and dazed and steady on its back, travelling light, with no knowledge of how she would get to wherever she was going to, nor of what she wanted to do there. And the unicorn went swiftly as the thought of the Wanderer through forests and swamps. She was aware of the passing of endless trees and cliffs under the swinging moon and once she saw without dismay that the unicorn was swimming steadily over a great waste of waters and no land in sight. Sometimes for a moment there would be faint lights from halls and houses and then again darkness. And when morning came Halla knew she had gone endlessly far from the lands she had lived in, as those may who travel light, and she was not certain at all whether this was truly the next morning after the evening in which she had met the Wanderer, or whether it was some quite other morning.

  Now the place where she was seemed to be a great expanse of high and waving rushes, and in the dawn there were geese flighting and cranes. The unicorn was away, but in front of her was a small secret path through the rushes, and at the end of it thick, slow-flowing water and a light boat made out of hides stretched over a willow frame. She stepped into it and it came loose from the bank, and in a moment was floating and rocking down the current. There was a paddle in the boat, and it took her a long time to learn, first, to move in the boat without capsizing it, and then to use the paddle. By that time it was full morning, whether of the same day or some other, and this muddy, twisting channel of hers had joined with others and all together were making a wide, slow river.