The Falcons of Fire and Ice

by Karen Maitland

  She lifted her hand and touched my cheek. It was a simple, motherly gesture, not that my mother had ever done that, but somehow I knew by it that she understood what I was asking. I trusted her. I knew she would keep her promise. I fell into step behind her and it was only after we had walked on a few paces that I realized in my haste I hadn’t said goodbye to Fannar and Marcos.

  I turned of to see Marcos hurrying up towards me, cursing as his feet nearly slipped from under him on the loose stones.

  I looked back at Ari, Fannar and his family. They were still standing, huddled together, watching us. They didn’t wave or call out, but after a moment or two little Lilja shyly raised her hand in a goodbye. My throat tightened with tears. I knew I would never see them again and they had risked so much for us. I wished I had something to give them, but even if I’d had a purse stuffed with gold, I don’t think they would have taken it.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Marcos said behind me.

  ‘I am going with Eydis,’ I told him firmly, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell him why, not even now. ‘Why didn’t you stay with Fannar?’

  ‘Can’t understand a bloody word any of them are saying. At least with you I’ll have someone to talk to. Besides, you need someone to look after you.’

  ‘I do not,’ I snapped. ‘I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.’

  He snorted with derision. ‘Is that so? Where shall I start? First there was –’

  But before I could hit him with the nearest rock, Eydis turned and motioned us to be silent.

  ‘Danir!’ she whispered, gesturing round at the dark slopes of the valley.

  After all the terrors of the cave I had almost forgotten that we were still in danger out here. We trudged along in silence, glancing apprehensively around us every time we thought we glimpsed movement. I’d been so thankful to escape the cave, it had driven everything else from my mind, but now it all gushed back into my head – the mutilated children from the forest, the monstrous creature that had poured out of Valdis, and almost worst of all, the horrific figure of Jorge with his charred face and the gag, that cruel gag. Did he feel pain, even now? Surely, it all must just have been a bad dream, a nightmare.

  But Vítor – he had been real. He had tried to kill me. He’d pushed me into the arms of that creature. If the rocks hadn’t fallen and struck it, if I hadn’t got to the passage before the mouth of the cave collapsed, I would be trapped in there with it. And then Vítor falling from the ledge when the ground shook, and his body lying crumpled at the bottom. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block it out, but all those horrors were inside me now and there was no escaping the sight of them.

  We walked and rested and walked on. None of us wanted to stop for long. We walked through the dawn, watching a pink light seep up over the mountains, staining the snow on the peaks blood-red, then fading to pink and finally sparkling white as the pale yellow sun inched over the rocks. The valleys were deserted. Once or twice in the far distance we watched a thin plume of smoke rising from a farmhouse or camp fire, but we saw no one.

  As we walked I kept scanning the mountain tops and the sky for any sign of the white falcons, but there was none. I looked for anything that might be a ptarmigan, the falcons’ prey, but the only birds I could see were crows and ravens. I prayed desperately that I had not been mistaken and Eydis was leading us to the white falcons. She was my last hope. If she couldn’t find them, then I had signed my own father’s death warrant.

  Dusk came quickly again and with it the first flakes of snow began to drift down, swirling round us in the wind. Marcos was trailing further and further behind, and I could see from the way Valdis’s corpse was flopping against Eydis’s shoulder that Eydis was as exhausted as I was. She stopped and pointed ahead a little way up the hill to where there was a hollow. At least that would provide a little shelter from the wind while we slept.

  But we had taken only a few paces towards it when I glimpsed something rising from the rocky hillside a few yards away. Even through the falling snow, it was glowing in the twilight, a white pearly light, hovering over the ground. It was like the mist I’d seen in the forest when Eydis had entered my nightmare, but I knew I wasn’t dreaming now.

  ‘Eydis, look.’

  She wheeled round, flinging her arm out, pushing me back. Two great hands appeared out of the solid rock, moving as if the owner was swimming up through it. The hulk of a body followed, and two legs as thick as tree trunks, but where a man’s head should have been was a mass of thick, wet seaweed, rippling and twisting as if it was still in the ocean and was caught in the swell of the waves.

  With a roar the creature turned its shaggy head towards us, two burning red eyes peering out at us through the mass of weed. It lumbered down the hillside towards us. Eydis had let her sister’s body drop, so that it was swinging from her waist. She lifted something high in her right hand and I saw that it was the finger bone I had taken from the grave.

  With her other hand she wrenched the cord from the lucet which hung from her waist and threw it on the ground between her and the creature. She pointed the bone at it. The cord slithered towards the creature, coiling itself into a perfect circle about its feet. I thought it would simply trample over the cord, but Eydis pointed at the cord again and it burst into scarlet and blue flames. The creature reeled backwards, lumbering around, desperately looking for a way out of the circle of fire. The flames climbed higher into the darkening sky. The creature began to howl, not in rage but in terror. The flames caught at the weeds of its face, shrivelling them up as it screamed in pain. Again and again, Eydis pointed the bone, forcing the fire to burn higher, more fiercely.

  The creature was trying to beat out the flames on its head with its own hands. But as the weeds turned black and dropped away I saw a face emerge. It was the corpse in the cave, the draugr, only it wasn’t the face of a monster, but of a man now, terrified and in agony. It was the face of the boy burning on the pyre. It was Jorge’s face. It was my father’s face!

  I grabbed at Eydis’s arm, trying to wrench the bone from her hand.

  ‘Stop! Stop it! You’re killing him. He is a man, just a man. Let him alone!’

  But she pushed me away and I fell to the ground. The man was engulfed in flames, every part of him was burning, but he was no longer moving. He stood there for a moment, rigid like a great tree, then he came crashing down. The circle of flames died down and were extinguished. The body of the man was just a heap of ash, which the wind caught and sent swirling up with the snowflakes. He was gone.

  Eydis crumpled to her knees and crouched there, her head bowed, rocking the body of her dead sister like an infant in her arms. I knew that beneath the veil she was weeping.

  Marcos came running up. ‘What the hell happened? You’re shaking. Are you hurt? I stopped to make water and when I turned round suddenly there was a fire.’

  ‘It was … it’s out now,’ I said weakly.

  ‘I can see that. Pity, we could have done with a fire. Couldn’t you have kept just a little blaze going?’ He wrapped his arms about him against the cold. ‘Boiling lakes, the ground bursting into flames, that is when it’s not freezing your bol …’ He gave an embarrassed grin. ‘Even hell itself can’t be as diabolical as this place. I suppose at least we should be grateful it’s stopped snowing, but what next – floods and whirlwinds?’

  Eydis heaved herself upright. She turned her veiled head towards me, but I walked away. I knew it was stupid to have felt sorry for that creature even for a moment. It was not alive, not really. Eydis had saved me. The creature would have ripped us to pieces. I knew that it had to be destroyed, but for the first time I understood why they had chained Eydis up in that cave and why they feared her so.

  Eydis

  Creance – a long light line attached to the leash to give the falcon the illusion of freedom. It is mainly used when a falcon is being trained.

  How can I explain to Isabela that I had to destroy him? Does she think I did not feel pity fo
r the man? I watched him as he died at my hands. I saw the humanity return to his eyes. I heard him pleading for mercy. He had not asked to be called from his grave, nor transformed into the monster he became. It was another who did that to him, another who must bear the guilt of what they made him. But if I had relented, if I had weakened, given way to pity, he would have become that demon again.

  Isabela will forgive me in time. She will come to understand one day that sometimes mercy is not kindness and pity is not love. But I saw the momentary fear in her face when she looked at me, the same fear that I had seen in others when Valdis and I were children, and it hurt me.

  No matter how far the wind may blow them off course, every wild creature feels the unseen paths and lines that draw it home. Even the dead can sense the road they must travel through the stars. I thought I would not remember the way back to the river of ice, but when I close my eyes and trust to my dreams, I feel the pull like a current of water over my skin. All I have to do is follow it.

  I long for a hundred eyes to look everywhere at once. To see the black rocks and golden sedges, the white clouds and blue skies reflected so sharply in the still pools that it seems as if the pools contain the real clouds and what drifts above us in the blue lake of the sky is merely a reflection. I listen to the wind rustling the dried leaf stalks, and the cry of the sandpiper. I breathe in the clean, sweet fragrance of grass, and the rich, pungent scent of the bogs. I feel the breeze pulling my hair, and the soft cushions of moss beneath my bare feet. And I wish for only one thing – that Valdis could see and smell and hear and feel the light, that glorious light that bathes the whole world.

  Isabela and Marcos trail after me. Isabela is constantly gazing around, her eyes searching the rock faces and the skies for any sign of the falcons. She is not pulled towards a place, but driven to move on until she finds what she seeks. The force of it will no more let her rest than it will me.

  As for Marcos, he makes me smile. Whereas Isabela delights in the vast open spaces, the colours gliding softly into one another, russet, bronze and copper, gold, gentian and green, Marcos can see nothing but mud and water, rocks to trip him and bogs to fall in. He stomps along, his shoulders hunched miserably against the cold, giving fearful glances at the emptiness as if he is constantly searching for some little corner to hide away from it all.

  When night returns we seek the shelter of some rocks and nibble on the remains of the dried mutton strips that Fannar insisted on sharing with us and quench our thirst in an icy stream. We huddle against the rocks and try to sleep a little, but I am too restless to settle. I can tell from their tossing and turning that Isabela and Marcos cannot sleep either. So as soon as the moon rises high enough to gild the rocks and pools, I shake them and we move on.

  It is cold. I had forgotten what cold feels like during all those years in the cave, the way it sets your teeth aching, your muscles tightening against it till they moan. My skirts are thick enough, but I have only the thin wrap around my breasts. If I was alone I would take Valdis’s wrap to help cover me, but even though she is dead, I cannot expose her naked to strangers.

  We make slower progress at night. The moon casts long shadows of us as we walk, but we can see the glint of its reflection to warn us of marsh pools and streams, and as long as I trust to the sense that is calling me I know we will not be led astray.

  Suddenly the sharp wind carries the smell of the ice to us and, as we round the curve of the hillside, I stop as a thrill of excitement and joy shudders through me. There, between two jagged rocks, which rise like pillars on either side, is the vast, glittering expanse of blue ice, frozen in waves and peaks as it tumbles down the mountainside. It sparkles in the moonlight and, at its feet, a lake is turned to liquid silver beneath the stars. Isabela claps her hands over her mouth and gasps. We do not need words to tell each other how beautiful it looks. It is more wondrous than I ever remembered.

  We start towards the edge of the river where the ice stops abruptly and little rivulets run from it towards the lake. Although I cannot see it, I know that at the far end of the valley the lake drains into the river, and the river meanders through the valleys until it pours into the great crashing waves of the sea.

  I clamber up on to the first ledge of ice, feeling the frosted air rise up around me. I stand there, holding my arms up like a child to its mother. We are home. Valdis and I have come home at last.

  All through those long years in the cave we would talk about all the things we remembered, the way the wind would blow over the grass in summer making it roll like waves in a green sea and the river of blue ice singing to the stars on a frosty night. We remembered how we used to gather the spring flowers and lay them in cracks in the ice and mark their place on one of the rocks close by, and every day we would run back to the river to see how far they had travelled. They would stay as fresh as the day we picked them, and before the snows of winter came and covered them we would see they had crept the breadth of our little hands closer to the sea. One day we knew they would reach it, and tumble out into the waves and float across the world.

  I turn to the side of the frozen river and begin to scramble up the rocks. It is hard to climb, holding Valdis up in my arm. But I cannot rest until I know. It has been more than forty years since I have seen my father, more than forty years since my mother took us to the cave. I need to tell her that we never blamed her, not once in all those years. Perhaps she has given birth to other children since we’ve been gone. I hope so, for her sake. She needed a child she could cradle in her arms. Her children would be grown by now, have children of their own. Our nieces and nephews, our own family sleeping in our little bed, listening to the crackling of the frozen river, and running down in spring to place their own flowers in the ice.

  There is a clatter of stones behind me and I turn, clinging to the rocks. Isabela and Marcos are climbing up behind me. I had forgotten them. Let them come, then. Our family will welcome them.

  The boulders give way to a steep slope with patches of shale between the moss and grass. Valdis and I used to run down it, on our single pair of legs, heedless of falling, but now our legs ache and burn as I force them up and up.

  I am almost at the top of the rise. I stop. The icy air rolls up from the river below and the moon shines down on the peaks of ice, a luminescent ribbon winding between the dark rocks. Just a few more strides will take us over the rise and I will see the house where we were born. I have become a child again.

  But suddenly I am afraid. What will I read on my father’s face when he opens the door, what will I see in my mother’s eyes? I am suddenly conscious of the cold, decaying body of my sister, cradled in my arm. I am ashamed of our bodies now, as I was on that day she took us to the cave to shut us away out of sight where we could do no harm. But they must be told that their daughter is dead. They should be allowed to say goodbye to her. We are their flesh. They made us.

  I hear Marcos and Isabela panting up the slope, behind me. Marcos curses as he trips over a stone in the darkness. I take a deep breath and stumble up over the rise.

  The house squats between two long fingers of rock, still and dark. It is late. They are all sleeping. I walk towards the door. But I see something in front of it, something that had not been there when we were children. I edge closer. It is a long mound of stones silvered by the moonlight. And with a terrible understanding that makes me almost cry out with the pain of it, I recognize what it is. There is no cross, no name. It lies before the threshold, a mute curse upon the house and land. But who lies beneath it?

  Something is glinting on the top of the stones, a knife, a rusty hunting knife. It is my father’s blade. Only a sorcerer or a man who commits self-murder is buried beneath such a cairn, and my poor father was never a sorcerer.

  I skirt the cairn and push against the door. There is no use in knocking. I know even before I enter that my call will only be answered by my own empty echo. I have no need of light. I know every inch of this long, narrow room. The cooking pot stil
l hangs over the cold fire pit. The cords still dangle from the beams above, where once herbs and fish and meat dried in the smoke of a warming fire. I touch one of the covers that still lies upon the bed. The corner tears in my hand. It is rotting away. If my mother has left, she has taken little or nothing with her. How long has she been gone? Did she bury my father or did he harm himself after she left? I will never know. Wherever she is now I hope she has found peace.

  I turn to make my way out, and in the small, cramped space knock my arm against the long, narrow bed that runs along one wall. Something makes me look down. A river of moonlight from the open door eddies along the bed. Someone is lying beneath the rotting covers. But they will not wake. I am too late. A skull rests upon the mouldering pillow, the dark empty sockets stare upwards into the moonlight. Her long dark hair lies tangled around the bone and in her hair – two white falcon feathers.

  Isabela and Marcos are waiting for me outside. They stare at me curiously, wondering, no doubt, why I have come here. I bend to pick up a stone, and groan as a spasm of pain grips my back. I have carried Valdis for so long. I place the stone carefully on the cairn. Isabela hesitates, then she and Marcos solemnly add stones too. I am grateful for their kindness.

  We return the way we have come, as in life we always do, but now I am weary, so very weary. As we scramble down the last boulder, I see a tall figure standing at the foot of the ice-river. I might have guessed Heidrun would come, just as she had come that night Valdis and I were awakened.

  ‘It is time now,’ she says.

  ‘But it is too soon. Not yet, not yet. I cannot do it yet.’ I have not even grieved for those who lie in that cold, dark house. I cannot let them take Valdis from me now.

  Heidrun holds out her hand.

  ‘Wait,’ I tell her.

  I walk over to Isabela. I gaze deep into her bright eyes. If I had ever had a child like her, I would have been proud to call her daughter. I touch her cheek, and she does not flinch from me. I know I am forgiven. I pull the horn lucet from around my waist and loop the thong around Isabela’s neck. She smiles, clutching at it, rubbing the smooth surface with her fingers as Valdis and I used to do when we were children.