The first man to step against her was Ansgar, himself, and she cut down her own father with her strange blade. The thingmen brought scrap to her then, but though the odds were grim, she fought them all and won. So fierce was her visage that none in that place dared question her anew. Brattahlíð fell first but not the quickest. By the Lamb-fold-time, all of Grænland had bled out or bowed down; the single longship that escaped Hvalsey before her coming could not crest the sea-fences, that suddenly rose as tall as fjords, and was wasted against the rocks. Those who remained congregated upon the sea-cliffs with babes held close to breast. When all was made ready, they burned lamps of man-fat under a summer moon and followed Hilde Ansgardóttir down into the sea-caves from whence she had come. None remained above to see if they ever returned.
Jesse Bullington spent the bulk of his formative years in rural Pennsylvania, the Netherlands and Tallahassee, Florida. He is the author of the novels The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and The Enterprise of Death. His short fiction and articles have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies and websites. He currently resides in Colorado and can be found online at www.jessebullington.com.
The author speaks: “The Saga of Hilde Ansgardottir” springs from my longstanding desire to tap into the rich style of the Icelandic sagas, which I was introduced to as a child by my Norwegian grandmother. Fusing elements of distinct folklores into something fresh was obviously a tactic Lovecraft himself was fond of. So, mingling his Mythos with Norse beliefs seemed a fun way of approaching the project. In terms of the specifics, I wanted to write something that incorporated Lovecraft’s favourite themes (the degeneration and fall of individuals/societies/civilizations, the insignificance of humanity in the greater universe, the inability of humans to comprehend reality without going mad, etc.) while still giving the old boy a few good kicks to the coffin (Gasp! A woman! Gibber! A woman with agency!). While the abandonment of Greenland’s Eastern Settlement at the dawn of the 15th century was likely due to more mundane causes than the one presented here, one can always dream.
AN INTERRUPTED SACRIFICE
Mae Empson
Today, the gods of sea, land and sky demanded that Featherhair sacrifice her lover. His hands, so sure and clever in painting vessels and tattooing flesh, had turned clumsy in the warrior’s rite.
Featherhair had made the trip from their coastal city at the mouth of the Moche River, to conduct the island sacrificial rites, every moon since her mother died and she was chosen as the new Sky Priestess. They knew Bat-Winged God favoured her because he had sent a true seeing of her mother’s death.
Featherhair was still screaming from the image of how the gods had punished her mother’s body as the tribe whispered that she now had the gift from The One Who Sees With Eyes of Spirit, dressed her in her mother’s blood-stained robes, and began to braid her feather-soft black hair.
Wrinkle Face – the old man chosen to speak for Spider Decapitator God, for land and mountain – told Featherhair that her mother had shamed the gods by failing to conduct a ritual properly. The gods had punished her mother, as she had seen. And, worse, Bat-Winged God, Lord of the Sky, now withheld his rains as punishment to all, even as Spider Decapitator, the Mountain Lord, withheld the mountain runoff. The irrigation canals and ditches offered only dust and sand. Wrinkle Face did not remember a drought like this, old as he was, in all of his seeing, and he had lived more than six cycles of seven-harvests, and been the Mountain Priest for more than two seven-harvests.
For ten moons, Featherhair conducted the island rites with the goal of ensuring that the gods’ gifts continued and the gift of water returned. But the rain did not come. She knew they whispered that she could not clear her mother’s taint, being of her blood. Had the sky not been particularly generous of late with its other gift of bird-and-bat huano, she suspected she would have been replaced.
The reed bullrush boat in which she traveled to the island held herself, the three who would die, and three empty vessels for gathering the huano that would lie feet thick in the bed between the three altars in the sacred place where sky, sea and land met: Huano Island. Featherhair had gathered the reeds for the boat herself. Wrinkle Face oversaw their weaving into seven, tightly-bound sections and the binding of those sections into the shape of a boat, since weaving and binding was spider work. But only her hands provided the blessing of air that filled the reeds so that the boat floated across the surface of the water and did not sink, though the sea water seeped up through the gaps in the bound bundles of reeds and wet their feet.
The two other sacrificial victims knelt on the floor of the boat and willingly paddled. Skinpainter stood at the front of the boat, spear in hand, to defend them against the creatures of the sea, should any attack. Featherhair did not think they were at much risk. Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest – the priest of the sea, its creatures, and Octopus Lion God – maintained his own set of rites to assure that the sea creatures were calm, that the harvest of anchovies was rich, and that the sea did not flood. Wrinkle Face had warned them both of times in his seeing when the sea had flooded their coastal desert valley. Many had died and all of the crops failed. The mud-brick huacas built before the flood had washed away.
Octopus Lion God would receive the skins of the three men, and the bones of their arms and hands, just as Bat-Winged God would receive their still-living eyes, and Spider Decapitator God would receive their blood and skulls.
And this was the root of the idea that fluttered in Featherhair’s heart like a bat in a cage. Octopus Lion God with his sea lion face and mane of eight tentacles, each lined with suckers and teeth, and with mouths at the end, had no need of additional arms. He was all face and tentacles, sun-shaped. But his servants, the demon fish, had the heads and bodies of large fish, and the feet of men. They longed for arms and used the skins of men to come ashore and walk among the people, assuring in secret that rites were followed and that the people’s finest goldwork – masks, ear spools, nose ornaments, and necklaces – were offered equally to the sea, sky and land.
So, Featherhair imagined that a demon fish would soon walk secretly among the people, wrapped in Skinpainter’s skin and using his clever hands. She would see him again. His skin would be easy to recognize, painted as it was to demonstrate his skill. She would know him if he came to her in the city, in the shadow of the mud-brick platform mounds of Huaca del Sol or Huaca de la Luna, or to this island, where he knew she came once a moon.
She had not shared this dream with Skinpainter. He was defeated and therefore, near-dead. She could not speak to him in this state. But she studied his bare back above his loincloth, as he stared out across the water, and memorized the lines of his tattoos – interwoven spiders, crab, octopi, cormorants, and bats – over and over. She would know him, fish-ridden.
But would he know her?
On a mad impulse, she knelt at the side of the boat and cut open her right palm with her ceremonial tumi. She placed her bleeding palm down beneath the surface of the water. Salt water was like blood. She sang a prayer of her own sudden invention, a new prayer: “Octopus Lion God, taste my blood. Share it with the demon fish who will wear Skinpainter’s skin, so he will know my blood-scent, my blood-taste, and how to find me again.”
She knew Skinpainter and the other two defeated had heard her new prayer. Skinpainter turned and glanced at her, his expression concerned, and then returned to his role. She could see that he gripped the spear more tightly and stood in a more alert posture, as if expecting some attack.
It was dangerous to feed blood to the sea.
But she felt emboldened. Could Skinpainter not see that she did this for love of him? She deliberately cut her second palm and let it also bleed into the sea, repeating her prayer song. “If you do this for me, Octopus Lion God,” she added, “I will love you and your demon fish as I love this man. As no woman has ever loved a man.”
A bird, a red-legged cormorant, screamed overhead and veered towards the island, which grew larger and larger on the
horizon. Featherhair told herself that this was a sound birds often made, signifying nothing, but she could hear the anger in it. Blood was for Spider Decapitator, not for Octopus Lion or Bat-Winged. This was known. Her act might have angered all three of them.
She wondered briefly if her mother had felt like this before she died – giddy and awful and newly afraid.
As they reached the shore of the island, Featherhair convinced herself that she could make up any perceived slight by executing the island rites perfectly, without the slightest hesitation or error.
They climbed up the ramp that led to the top of the earthen mound on the island – a mountain her tribe had made for this purpose. The top of the mound was cupped like an empty lake bed, hollowed out, with altars at three points along the rim of the mound. She could see a rich, silver harvest of huano in the cup of the mound, but would wait to gather it until the sacrifice was complete according to their custom.
The men lined up with their backs against the tall stone of the sky altar, lifting their arms above their heads for ease of her closing the manacled chains around their wrists without touching their near-dead flesh. They faced towards her, towards the center of the island mound.
Featherhair began singing the song that would bring the giant birds, shaking a bone rattle and dancing the steps. “Bat-Winged God who rules the sky, accept the offering of these still-living eyes and with them, see our plight. See how thirsty we are, and send your rain. Thank you for the huano that makes the land fertile and rain it down on us when we mate in the rite of fertility, that our numbers – for your service – will also grow.”
It could take hours, in her experience, for the birds to come. She would sing until she was hoarse, if it took that long.
The men tried not to blink or flinch. It was the open eye that called to the sky.
The brightest moon had fled the sky to sleep. The golden sun beat down on her back. She’d never called this long without a response. She dared not stop her chanting and dancing, though her voice cracked and squeaked. Sweat marred her braids – the thick, insect-wing-shaped, wrapped loops at the center of her back that marked her as the sky priestess. Insects were the lowest of all things that fly, befitting the sky’s humble servant.
She heard footsteps coming up the ramp. She chided herself to not break her steps, no matter what came into sight. She imagined a demon fish, called by her blood.
But it was Wrinkle Face and Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest, who she knew was one of his many sons, who appeared at the top of the ramp. Behind them stood Llama-Tall Woman, an attractive girl of about Featherhair’s age.
Wrinkle Face looked at Featherhair. “Last night, Bat-Winged God sent a vision to Llama-Tall Woman. You know the gift is rare and what it signifies. We are here to see if it was a true seeing.”
Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest grabbed Featherhair’s wrists and jerked her to a halt, interrupting her dance and chant. He lifted her palms for the others to see.
“A true seeing,” Wrinkle Face whispered.
Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest dragged Featherhair away from her position in front of the altar and she saw, seeing Llama-Tall Woman in profile for the first time, that the young woman had her hair arranged in the insect wing braids at her mid-back.
Llama-Tall Woman stepped into Featherhair’s footprints and resumed the rite, mid-step and mid-syllable. Featherhair knew that someone had to have been training her for many moons for her to do it so flawlessly. Featherhair had not trained her. This has been some time in the planning, she realized.
Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest dragged Featherhair closer to the sky altar. “You are defeated,” he chanted to her, as he had chanted to Skinpainter at the conclusion of the warrior’s rite. “You are defeated by one who is your better and claims your place.”
Defeated. Featherhair could no longer speak to them or touch them. She was near-dead, like the other sacrificial victims. She tried to catch Skinpainter’s eyes, suddenly united with him in fate, but he would not look at her. He stared at the sky, watching for the birds to come to take his eyes.
Wrinkle Face tilted his head towards the sky altar stone where there were silver chains enough to bind several additional sacrifices.
Featherhair knew what was expected of her, the steps that her own victims had followed so willingly and eagerly, moon after moon. But she hesitated. What would it feel like to have her still-living eyes plucked from her face and to feel herself lifted and dropped to her death, comforted only by the inability to know how quickly the ground was rushing towards her falling body?
“Please, child,” Wrinkle Face said quietly. “We cannot survive more than one or two moons more of this drought. Something had to be done. I know you have served as well as you could.”
Skinpainter faced the rite bravely and willingly. Could she do less? She remembered her pride in his calm acceptance, knowing that he was a good and gods-fearing man. She could give him the last thought that she had been worthy of the touch of his clever hands. She could do this.
Featherhair leaned back against the sky altar and reached for the chains.
The two giant birds came. The same birds, or others like them, had always come previously to her call, but came now at Llama-Tall Woman’s bidding. They were big as llamas, themselves.
She watched them take Skinpainter’s eyes, carefully, one eye in each beak. His face bled. The birds bent and clawed at his silver manacles, finding the catch that triggered their release. Then they lifted him between them and flew high up into the sky before dropping him into the huano bed. His body folded into impossible angles, but no bone pierced his skin – a sign of the god’s approval of his sacrifice that would be credited as much to Llama-Tall Woman’s worthiness as to his own.
The birds took a second man’s eyes, opened his manacles, and lifted and dropped his body, as well. Then, they took the third man. Three mangled bodies with three sets of unbroken skin. A good omen.
They were coming for her next. She would not shut her eyes.
And then, abruptly, there was a deafening roar, as a wave of water tall as the island mountain crashed over the back side of the sky altar stone and drenched them all in a spray of salt water.
Chained to the sky altar stone, Featherhair faced into the huano bed, away from the direction of that tidal wave. But she saw the faces of the ones who could see behind her, beyond the stone altar. She saw Wrinkle Face, Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest and Llama-Tall Woman, and their face-twisting terror. They all stood in shadow. Something rose behind her, large enough to block the sun. Even the giant birds, warrior-priests of the sky, fled up into the safety of the clouds.
A huge tentacle crashed down in front of her. It was taller than she was and blocked her sight in all directions, encircling the rock to which she was chained. Teeth as long as arms protruded between its round suckers. She choked from the overwhelming smell of brine and rotting fish. She expected the tentacle to contract around her and crush her against the rock, piercing her with its teeth, but it did not.
She heard the others screaming.
After several minutes, the tentacle lifted and disappeared back over her head. She saw Wrinkle Face and Llama-Tall Woman kneeling in prayer, their faces pressed to the earth. Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest stood with his back to her and seemed to be fumbling to remove his armour. As he staggered, his profile came into her sight and she realized that the birds had taken his eyes. Blood poured down his cheeks from his empty eye sockets.
Wrinkle Face rose to his feet. She caught the moment when he realized that she was unharmed and the mask of his face shifted from surprise to relief. He crossed to Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest and helped him to continue to remove his armour. “My son,” he said sadly, “was it your error and not her mother’s that brought the drought? Have you poured poison in my ear all this time?”
Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest moaned wordlessly and she thought perhaps his tongue had been taken as well, but then he gave answer: “We did wrong together, in this very
place. I knew she would be conducting the island rite, and I interrupted her chant and dance to take her into my arms. We lay together in the way that is forbidden separate from rite. The fault was ours, but I let the blame be hers.”
“You and my mother?” Featherhair asked. He was not much older than she was. And to lie together in the way that could produce a child, separate from the rites of procreation with its full ceremony, was a terrible crime indeed.
Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest turned towards the sound of her voice. “He spared you. Spared you and claimed you.” He sank to his knees. “I am defeated by one who is my better and claims my place.”
Llama-Tall Woman began to sing the words that called the birds, but she wove into the chant this new truth: “Come for the one whose unfitness was visible only to your sight, Bat-Winged God, who sees all with eyes of spirit. We praise you for revealing that which has been hidden and for making peace with Octopus Lion God by this gesture.”
The giant birds lifted the man who had been Crab-Armoured Warrior Priest and carried him high into the sky before dropping him. White bone thrust up through the skin of his mangled limbs, marking him clearly as unfit for service, even in death, to Octopus Lion God. His skin will rot on his bones, Featherhair thought, which was the worst of fates.
Wrinkle Face brought her the crab armour. It sat strangely on a woman’s body, but she realized that the tidal wave had also washed up an offering of spondylus shells – best gift of the sea – and that the treasured, pink, thorny shells, smaller than the giant crab-shell pieces, could be integrated to make something new and glorious.
“My son failed in his service to Octopus Lion God, not in his rash act of desire, for desire is of the sea,” Wrinkle Face reasoned. “He failed in the moons that followed as he hid the truth with cold, calculating lies. Remember his lesson, Featherhair. Octopus Lion God feeds on strong feeling and folly.”
Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time Page 12