by L. E. Waters
“Mother!” he screams, rushing to my side. “Are you hurt?”
I try to move but can’t, for the pain is unbearable. I lie back down but realize what he said.
“Mother?” I gasp.
“Ophira told me. She came to me weeks ago.” He then laughs slightly. “And only a mother would fight an elephant like that.”
He tries to lift me up in his arms, but I wince at the pain of the movement.
“Put me down. Leave me here.”
He places his shield under me, lays me gently back down, and his voice begins to crack. “I should’ve come to you, but I was so ashamed—”
I interrupt. “I’m proud of you and who you’ve become. I only gave you to Ophira to save you.”
He nods. Tears escape down his tan cheeks as he kisses my head. “Rest now. Someone will come, and we’ll move you back in with the women.”
He removes his cloak and bundles it under my head.
But, tasting the blood in my mouth, already I know I don’t have much time. I cough weakly, registering sharp pain at doing so.
“You must promise me something, Theodon.”
“Anything.”
“You must go and bring back Kali before she marries. Bring her back and marry her.”
He looks confused. “She’s my sister?”
“Yes, but no one else knows. You must marry her once you’re granted citizenship so she can own one of my houses. You can both marry others after, but take care of your sister.”
He thinks about it for a moment. “I promise.”
“Tell Ophira I’m sorry, and tell Kali I love her.” I cough more through the pain; it’s getting so hard to breathe. “And I love you, Theodon I always have.”
I can hear his tears now.
“Don’t go,” he whispers.
I shut my eyes to rest.
* = Not present in that life
Third Life
Pirates of the North
Chapter 1
“What a wonderful wee man, Liam!” my mother says over my shoulder.
“It’s me and you and Da,” I say, finishing up the last, much larger figure, my tongue half out in concentration.
I scribble away in the dirt on the floor before the hearth where my mother is baking bread for the week. The whole room smells of warm yeast.
“I better not be the giant one,” my mother jokes as she cradles her hands around her enormous belly.
My father, walking behind me, stoops to tousle my hair. I swat at him with my stick playfully, but he snatches and breaks it over his leg. He laughs as he throws it in the fire.
“I was making pictures with that!” I cry.
He brings his steel-grey eyes close. “Then you can go pick another fine one when you gather more kindling for your enormous ma there.”
She pretends to be offended. “Well, lucky for you both, I won’t be getting any bigger. I’ve been getting sure signs this baby’s well on its way.”
“Make sure to get to the old midwife, then.” He smiles and pats her on her backside as he strides out the door. I run out, trying to help him gather his fishing net. He pushes me aside and says, “Stop that now. You’ll get your wee feet tangled.” He throws the net behind his back. “Mind your ma and fetch her wood.”
I watch him take large steps down to the lough, where the faded wooden fishing boats wait for him. As soon as he is out of sight, I go behind the house and start cracking and bunching sticks.
“Come, Liam, and eat your breakfast!” Ma calls out from the door. I hurry in with my sticks, some falling out along the way, and when I bend over to pick those up, more fall. Once inside, I throw them in the wide basket and look at my plate. The fresh butter is dripping off the steaming bread.
I stuff my mouth as I watch her knead some risen dough, punching it hard with her fists. My gaze drifts out the open, blue-shuttered window to the clear sky, and I hear children playing and screaming. I push my small stool over and cling to the window frame to steady myself. I search for the shouting children but see none. I try to follow the noise and see it is coming from an old woman who lives much farther down the path, closer to the water. She is screaming something I cannot recognize. Then the horns of alarm blow, sending chills up my little back. I feel my mother dash up behind me, and she grabs my shoulders in fright.
“What is she saying, Ma?”
“Oh my lord!” She begins to scream strange little yelps I have never heard her make before. “They’ve come again!”
I follow where she is looking, and out on the lough where Da fished are ten long ships with massive sails gliding into the harbor. Ma grabs me up, and my legs straddle her hard stomach. I clutch onto her wooden triangle necklace to steady myself and thumb the large blue stone in the center nervously.
She shrieks out the window, “Seamus! Seamus!”
Women go running by our house with their crying children dragging behind. The scariest, most horrifying noise then comes echoing over the water up to us, as all of whatever is coming on that ship roars out. I begin to cry now, and my mother paces the floor, breathing too fast. She opens the door and cries out louder, “Seamus!”
I look down to where he should come. I wish I would see his face appearing up that path, but nothing comes, only an old woman hobbling up the way.
“Get on your way to a safe place, Keelin; it’s the Danes!” She keeps limping up toward the hill but screams back, “Run, my girl! Run!”
Ma screams, drops me on the ground, and squats. I clamber on top of her, still crying. She screams again, grabbing her stomach and gritting her teeth. She shrieks out, “Seamus!”
She begins to weep on the ground as I hold onto her. I put my head up and try to call out as loud as I can, “Da! Da!”
When I look at Ma, I know I have to stop crying and help her. I try to rub her shoulder as she pushes off the ground to get back up. She takes me by the hand and begins to waddle up the path in the direction the old woman went scurrying. A booming sound thunders out. I turn to look down to the harbor, where the ships are sailing right up on the sands, like beached whales. Many men bound off the ships with shiny swords and spears raised, making that terrible noise again. My mother pulls me faster so I cannot look back any longer and my little legs can hardly keep up. Ma stops again, drops my hand, and clutches her middle. She bends over and cries. I begin crying again too.
“Hurry, Liam!” she screams, then tries to run again, holding her stomach, but shortly after has to stop.
On her knees with her face drawn up in pain, she looks back to the invaders who are now going into the houses right onshore. We hear desperate screams as the men kick their way inside. Smoke begins to plume up as men with torches light the thatch on fire. My mother looks back up the steep hill to the stone church up top, still much farther than we now are from our home. She turns her head all around her, looking for a place to hide, but there is only some underbrush and a few large stones. “I can’t make it, Liam. We have to go back and hide.”
I help her back, and as soon as we get home, she rushes to grab the key from above the fireplace and runs to the large, black chest. She unlocks it, takes out Da’s sword, and all of the bowls and linens. She yanks a blanket off the bed but leans on the post as she grimaces in pain again. As soon as she can move again, she unfolds the blanket and lays it in the chest. “Get in, Liam.”
I don’t understand. Why does she want me to get in the place I wasn’t allowed to ever touch?
She grabs herself again and yells, “Get in now!”
I try to get in on my own but catch my foot on the side and fall in. When I lift my head, her face is much softer. I look into her large, worried, brown eyes and see her many little spots I love so much.
She gives me a white, flashing smile as the tears fall down her cheeks. “Be a good boy, now, Liam, and stay quiet. Bad men are coming, and you’ll be safe in here. Don’t make a peep.” She makes the sign of the cross. “God help us now.”
I hear the door crash in
on the house next to us. Ma startles at the noise, takes Da’s sword in her hand, and holds it up as she brings her slender finger up to her pink lips. I lay my head down, and everything goes black as the lid shuts. I hear her rattle with the lock and shuffle away. Our door crashes in. Ma screams, and I hear things falling about the room. Something heavy slams against the chest. My mother keeps crying, and strange, deep voices fill the air. I almost scream when I feel the chest move but try my hardest to be silent. I crash into the sides as it tilts, rolls, and after a long while, finally hits the ground.
I don’t know how long I am in the dark; the air is getting harder to breathe. I wait for Ma to come and open the chest. Wait for the jingling of the keys I saw hung over the fireplace and cried so many times to be able to touch. Suddenly the chest is dragged. I listen, trying to quiet my breathing when—SMASH!
I jump back against the other side as the whole chest shudders. The lid opens, and my eyes hurt with the sudden light. I hear an eruption of laughter and feel a large hand grab the back of my shirt and pull me up out of the chest like a kitten.
I open my eyes to see the most terrifying men I’ve ever seen in my life, all gathered aboard a giant ship on the endless sea. Tall men with long yellow or red hair and shaggy beards, covered in sweat, dirt, and blood. They smell like old cheese. I scream and try to run in the air, causing them to laugh louder. The one holding me turns me around to look at him. He is darker than the others with two spots on the side of his face where his beard doesn’t grow. He puts me down and grabs both my arms to keep me from running. He brings my arms up for all to see, flaps them up and down like a chicken, and laughter follows again.
The man holding me speaks to me in a language I cannot understand. He tries again, but it only makes the others laugh. He shakes his head, puts me back in the chest, and shuts the lid. Each day he opens the lid once and drops me on the deck to drink beer from a bowl and eat some stale bread. As soon as I finish, he throws me back into the chest. I have no safe place; I can only disappear within me.
After a few days, the chest is moved again and opened. I have to wait until I can see, and once I can, I see a whole village surrounding me. Old people, young people, children of every age all around me, staring at me, saying things I can’t understand. One man steps forward with a giant helmet and a long, fur-lined cloak pinned at the shoulder with a large, gold circle. The opening of the cape reveals a massive silver inlayed sword at his hip. He points to me and asks something of the people. No one answers, yet many shake their head disapprovingly at me. The man who took me comes forward and shoves me out of the way. He bends down, grabs the soiled blanket out of the chest, and throws it in a heap on the ground. He closes the lid, carries it on his strong shoulders, and leaves the gathering. The man with the large helmet shouts again, and no one replies. He takes his sword out and points it toward the dark woods behind them.
A fair girl begins to sob. I follow the sound and see a slight girl looking at me with tears in her shining eyes. Another man steps forward wearing the same cloth as our churchman back home. He speaks to the helmeted man and approaches, opening a small purse at his side and handing him coins. The churchman comes to me, smiles, and points to the young girl. She stops crying and walks up at the request of the churchman. The girl puts her slender hand out to me, but instead of taking it, I run back to get the blanket in the road. The girl comes to me and bends down with a sweet smile. My eyes are drawn to the slight space in her front teeth. She folds the blanket, as filthy as it is, and holds it close in her arms. I follow her back to her farm.
Chapter 2
Her farm is right outside the village with many other farms up the road. Every farm has a fence surrounding each property and outbuildings. We pass a well where she brings some water up for me to drink; it tastes clean and cold. As soon as she reaches a workhouse, she pushes the blanket into a bucket of water and begins scrubbing vigorously. I look out to the cattle grazing beside a long curved-roofed building and turn around to see small horses running in the warm wind. A little dog comes up and jumps on me, knocking me down. The girl shakes the water from her hands and helps me up.
She points to her chest and says, “Thora.”
I repeat it to her. She then points to my chest with a small smile and I say, “Liam.”
She says it strangely, like it’s a heavy word. I try to say it again so she’d say it right. She looks at my dirty shirt, points to the stains, and then lifts it up over my head. She cleans me from head to toe with a cold, wet cloth and I begin to shiver when the wind blows. As soon as she puts the shirt into the tub, she takes a shirt down from the line, and places it over my head, warm from the sun. It touches my ankles and hangs over my hands. She laughs, rolls my sleeves up, and goes back to her scrubbing. They have every kind of animal I’ve ever seen at market. Every direction I turn something is flapping, chewing, grunting, braying, scratching, running, or jumping. She hangs the blanket and shirt on the line and I watch as the water drips off the corners.
She leads me across the dirt path to the center, where a long wooden house stands, much larger than our houses at home. The roof is twice as high as ours, with a huge open fireplace crackling in the center. There is no chimney, only a gaping hole in the roof. A thin layer of smoke hangs in every room, making me cough. Thora brings me to a back room where a wide oven sits on the ground. She takes a loaf of bread cooling on the stones and pulls off some to give to me. As I stuff the fresh bread in my mouth, she leaves and returns with a rug that she flattens out on the stamped ground. She lays on it, puts her arms up under her head, and closes her eyes. I wonder if she’s going to sleep now, but she opens them and points for me to lie down. I do as she did, and she sits crossed-legged beside me and begins talking.
Every day, she talks and talks to me, and slowly I begin to understand her. I follow her everywhere and actually feel like I can’t breathe when I wake up and she’s already gone off with her mother. Her family sleeps together on a raised bed beside the open hearth. There are other people on the farm, but they live in the half-dugout buildings. They are the workers and take care of most of the hard chores on the farm. These workers are all grownups and never talk to me. Thora always brings me food after her supper and tells me stories as I fall asleep beside the oven, curled in my mother’s blanket.
Sometimes I’ll wake, screaming for my ma. Thora will rush to me and lie beside me on my rug and tell me stories of strange things that live in this land. She tells me of the dark elves who live underground with corpses and come up only at night to play tricks on humans. They are cunning, quick, and wonderful stone-and-metal carvers. She says they are horribly ugly with unkempt, dark hair all over their blue-pale skin. Then she speaks of the light elves that are the protectors of a house. They live in the sunlight, and you can see them dancing in circles in the early hours of morning or right as the sun is going down. They are beautiful and live forever. Last, she talks about the Loki, evil giants that roam the world’s outer realm. She shows me the necklace her father gave her, the large hammer of Thor that she has to wear for protection from these creatures. She pulls out another one for me and places it over my head.
“Two circles?” I ask as I stare at the two connected circles of intertwined reeds hanging on the leather string.
“I made this for you. It’s not a symbol of a god, but it came to me in a dream.” She drops it over my head. “It will keep you safe wherever you go, even if it is without me.” She laughs, since I even follow her to the outhouse and wait outside for her.
As soon as the sun rises, I wait for Thora outside the house, and once she comes, we go running out into the fields to do her light chores or play in the pastures. I help her roll beeswax candles, collect the honey, feed the small animals, and work her loom. Her mother is too busy commanding the other workers around, jingling the keys she hangs on her waist for the outbuildings, and making sure the carts are loaded to bring to market. She has to run the farm alone, since Thora’s father is away so mu
ch of the time. She hardly notices me at all.
Every once in a while, I’ll hear her say when she sees Thora sitting beside me, “Remember his place, Thora.”
Which I never understood; this farm is my place now.
Chapter 3
One rainy day, Thora brings me a honey cake to my bed and says, “It was a year ago you came to live with me, and since we don’t know your birthday, I will celebrate it today.”
The small cake is covered in sticky honey. I put my little finger in it and suck the sweetness off. “How old do you think I am now?”
She thinks about it. “Six years maybe?”
I try to remember if my mother had ever told me my age and can barely remember anything from before coming to Denmark. I look up at her and ask, “And how old are you, then?”
“I will be thirteen next month.” But she looks away. “I will be married at a great feast that night.”
I glance up. “Does that mean you will leave the farm?”
She looks into my eyes, her light green eyes sparkling. “I will leave the farm but never you.” She tousles my hair the same way Da did and laughs. “You are coming with me whether you want to or not.”
There’s a great ruckus outside, and Thora springs to her feet to see what it is. I run beside her as a workman comes running out of the barn with a large shovel behind his head. A skinny grey wolf darts out before him with a fat, dead goose dangling from his mouth. The man pitches the shovel at the wolf, narrowly missing him as the wolf shifts to his right and escapes under the fence to freedom.
“Did he get only one?” Thora calls out.
“Got her and her whole brood,” the workman replies as he goes back into the barn.