Altered America

by Ingham, Martin T.

  “Am I?”

  “You are,” her mother called from inside the cottage. “Come to beer and breakfast.”

  Eleri went to the Twisted Lizard, a stream, where she washed her face, braided her hair (though Synaur would not see it), then filled the pitcher. When she came back into their windowless cottage, she saw Synaur walking their long room, tapping the plank floor with his laurel walking stick. He circled the stone hearth in the room’s middle and found their table. He sniffed at the cold mutton, barley bread, cheese, and beer set out for him. He laid his flowers down and held a hand toward a lamp on the table.

  “I heard it gave you light, but I didn’t know it also gave you warmth.”

  Eleri said, her voice vibrant with pride, “The base was carved in Greenland from soapstone. It is smooth black stone with gray swirls in it like smoke. The wick is a red serpent with a glowing head. It lies in animal fat and eats with its body, not its mouth. My mother has seen it burn twice and rise reborn from its own ashes.”

  “It is a wonder,” Synaur said.

  “It came to my mother unbidden. The Sibyl says eight serpents came from the south to live with the eight northern nations. They renew us. Our people will not die out in this land while it stays with us.”

  “It is a treasure beyond any my father ever found,” Synaur said. “Except for you, Eleri.”

  Synaur resumed his walking tour of the long room. His stick tocked against a three-legged stool. He widened his circle around the central hearth and skimmed the fingers of one hand along the mud-plastered walls. He found the loom and felt the cloth on it. “Strong weave,” he said.

  Synaur almost tripped over a cedar chest banded with iron. He went around it.

  “There’s a shelf,” Eleri warned before he bumped his head against it.

  He slapped a hand against it, rattling Croatan earthen bowls filled with herbs. “I smelled that but thought it still two paces away.”

  He found one of the two benches built against a wall, a seat during the day, a bed during the night.

  “Come to the table and eat,” Snake Kenna told him.

  Synaur picked up the flowers he had brought and formally gave them to Eleri. She tossed them back on the table.

  He raised his head and listened a moment, sadness on his face. Had he heard the bouquet fall on the plank table? Eleri chided herself for underestimating him and for being discourteous. She avoided looking at her mother.

  Still standing, Synaur cleared his throat. “I will be plain spoken. My father tells me you will not accept me for a husband. True, I am blind, but what of it? My farm prospers. My house has three rooms and two tapestries on the walls. I need no dowry.” He listened a moment, then added, “This is the only chance to marry either of us will ever know.”

  “I have a liking for you, Synaur, and not least because you are the opposite of your father. But I mean to make the most of this one chance.”

  “You mean I am flawed. But what is the price of marriage to a husband who is forced? Instead of resentment, I offer you children. And I promise to work for you.”

  Eleri remained silent.

  “I want a son and a daughter,” he said.

  She sneered, thinking him arrogant. “One to grow your rye, and the other to serve you mead by the fire? Why not five sons to work a big farm?”

  In a gentle tone, he said, “I am content with my farm as it lies. A household of four is complete. Two females and two males bring balance.”

  Her mother acted as if she held something heavy to show there was weight to his thinking.

  “I am meant for another,” Eleri said.

  “My dreams tell me otherwise.” Synaur turned to her mother. “Thank you for the offer of food. I will eat at your table when I am truly welcome.” He strode out of the cottage without using his laurel stick.

  * * *

  Synaur came often after that, bringing gifts of food, usually corn or beans or wheat. A teenage boy, an orphan, helped him on his farm, so he could leave it at will. Snake Kenna took advantage of his willingness to do heavy chores for her. She told Eleri, “I wish other men would come court you. Suitors bring willing hands and gifts, though some might be less willing than Synaur.”

  Eleri sighed. “His company is pleasant, but I want a husband who will see my face.”

  * * *

  Again Thonir came to stand resolute before their door, his hand on the oak handle of his seax knife, an imperious frown on his face. “Why this delay? We kept our part of the bargain.”

  “You sent a blind man to court me.”

  Thonir glanced at Snake Kenna in her black shawl, who stood guarding her door against him, then back at Eleri. “I thought a farmer was what you wanted. No sea wolf is welcome here. If Synaur doesn’t meet your royal liking, then put a name on your husband. Tell me who to send to you.”

  Eleri had thought often of Godston’s young men, some handsome, some not, and found all of them wanting. It would be a burden to live with any of them. “I will consider your son, and I will work my side of the bargain. Bring me a lamb, white or black, but of one single color, a male.”

  Thonir grunted. “This is added weight to our side of the agreement, but it will be done.”

  Eleri built a small altar of limestone and gathered fallen hickory branches, wood that burned hot, for her fire. When all was ready, she told Briamursk to come with his reed flute. He came and piped while Snake Kenna thumped a deer-hide drum with a drop spindle, their sound echoing deep in Bellow Woods. Eleri slit the throat of the trembling lamb. She opened its belly and took out the bloody organs. While the meat sizzled and popped on the open fire, she danced, chanting the names of Godston’s plaguing ghosts... and they came.

  She then called for the ancestors of the named ghosts to come forth and escort their kin home. She did not call out mute Briamursk’s name. She did not call an ancestor to come and take him from her.

  The cold ancestor spirits, drawn to the fragrant smell of seared meat, came to feed on its odor. The smoke made them visible, warriors dressed for battle with shields and swords, women in linen dresses with woolen cloaks pinned in place by brooches. Remembered, though not named, the ancestors came as honored guests to Eleri’s sacrifice and met their more recently dead kin.

  When the horizon shone with the peach glow of false dawn, the ghosts flitted away. Briamursk left Eleri, his expression sad. She went to bed, thinking she had done him no favor by sending away his companions.

  But that evening when she went to the meat market to console him, she found the ancestors drifting with their ghostly kin among the hanging carcasses of sheep and deer. Briamursk put his hand over his heart in pity for her. Warm Godston with its odor of meat, whether burnt on an altar or hung curing in the market, was pleasant for the ancestors.

  When Synaur came next to their cottage, he brought gossip of prankish ghosts besieging the town after dark. He told them of milk buckets overturned, fires burning cold, fresh meat festering with maggots, and barley that grew fungus overnight. No one now, except Eleri, could walk the town’s three straw-covered streets at night without being tripped.

  Her mother traded with the Croatans, giving an iron knife for a pouch of tobacco and other items. “Take this pouch,” she told Eleri, “and go ask the Sibyl what we must do.”

  Carrying the gift, Eleri adjusted her eyes to the night as she had been taught by her mother and set out on a dark path along the edge of the common fields. She passed under the reddish aura of a maple crowned in the light of a quarter moon. She thought of Synaur, of his tall sturdiness. Laughing, Eleri began running down the narrow path with green mountain laurels huddled under tall maples and oaks on one side and fields of barley and rye on the other. She lifted her knees high, joy in her body. She felt a wolf shadowing her and knew it too delighted in this night run.

  Eleri came to the Sibyl’s home, a cave, and laid her gift of tobacco before the dark opening. She stood before the entrance, panting, and waited. A presence came without movem
ent. A sonorous voice said, “So the gift from the sea brings me a gift from the land and comes to ask me what to do about ghosts.”

  Eleri remained silent.

  “And lo, I will answer. Godston is now corrupt and must cleanse itself. From the center the plumed one sent eight serpents south and eight serpents north. Now let the serpent that rises from its ashes be the living keel of a pyre ship.”

  Then Eleri spoke, “You ask my mother to risk the serpent, a thing that came to her unsought and that she cherishes.”

  The Sibyl’s whinnying laugh echoed in the cavern. “And did you not come unsought and are you not cherished? Two blessings. Mar the ceremony, gift from the sea, and the one you call mother will lose not only the serpent, but Godston itself. Perform the rite with precision. Now leave me.”

  Eleri stopped in Godston on her way home for the comfort of Briamursk’s music. Before leaving, she told him, “You must go live in the woods until the time of the dark moon is past. I am to build a fire ship no ghost can resist.”

  Briamursk pretended to row a boat, then pointed to himself.

  “You mean you want to leave too?”

  He nodded and showed he would miss her by making the sign of dripping tears and pointing to her.

  “I will miss you too,” she said.

  He pointed to a maggot on the shoulder of a nearby sheep carcass, then to his own ghostly chest, a gesture she didn’t understand. He played a dirge on his pipe.

  Eleri trudged homeward, her throat clogged with grief, and found Synaur sitting on a bench, a surprise because he always went home before dark. He had waited to hear her news.

  “I will walk you home so the wolves will know you are a friend,” she said. Her mother wiggled her eyebrows at her.

  As soon as they were outside, he asked, “May I put my hand on your shoulder?”

  She smiled. “Of course.” Synaur had walked this path often without need of her help, but his warm hand on her shoulder was pleasant.

  “Have I offended you?” he asked.

  “No, why?”

  “You are so quiet,” he answered.

  “A friend of mine is leaving soon, and it saddens me.”

  “I wish my leaving saddened you.”

  “I like your company, Synaur.”

  His face radiated joy in the moonlight, and she felt pity for him and also some small pride in her power over him.

  She told him about Briamursk wanting to leave and the rite she must perform.

  When she said goodbye at his door, he reached out hesitantly and touched her lips before going inside.

  She went home and told her mother they must sacrifice the fire snake. Her mother cursed the Sibyl and walked out into the night and stayed away until dawn. At breakfast, she sat silent and solemn.

  Eleri asked what Briamursk had meant by showing her the maggot then pointing to himself.

  “I can but guess. Maybe he was confessing. Have you not wondered why these ghosts chose to stay? Could it be that Briamursk kept them here as company? There’s magic in his music. And he knows of no ancestor to escort him home.”

  “But why did he not just ask me?”

  Her mother shrugged. “Pride, maybe. Ghosts can be proud. Or more likely, he didn’t know about a pyre ship.”

  “But why now, after ten years?”

  “You’re leaving him.”

  Eleri reared back. “I would never do that.”

  Her mother laughed knowingly. “No? You just finished your apprenticeship with Warhelm, and my guess is that you told Briamursk you wanted marriage and children.”

  Eleri glanced down at her deer-skin shoes.

  “Since you do not like my first guess, let me give you another one,” her mother said. “It may not be a confession but a sign. He may liken himself to a larva. Now is the time for him to move on to the next stage and fly away.”

  That afternoon, Eleri began splitting wood into tiny planks the length of her index finger. Soft ash was her choice because it burned fast. She shaved tiny filings off a rough iron bar to use for nails. With them she intended to build a dragon ship as long as her arm, a replica of the high-prowed ships Norse settlers had sailed up the Three Width River when they came to the warm lands of the Croatans three hundred years after Leif Erikson’s first voyage to Vinland.

  Unlike its relations with its ghosts, Godston’s relations with the native Croatans had been mostly friendly. Thonir and his crew raided along the coasts of rocky Ireland, Britain, and Normandy, never locally—a policy that kept a storm-tossed ocean between their enemies and their homes.

  It took Eleri two days to split the planks for her “clinker” ship. She began overlapping and nailing them into place over a temporary keel made of red clay. A quarter of the hull was finished when she went to her bench bed.

  Her mother’s shriek woke her. On the table lit by the serpent’s red glow, the canvas sail was shredded, the mast broken, the planks splintered, and the clay keel lay in pieces. The roguish ghosts had come unbidden in the night and undone Eleri’s shipbuilding.

  “How can I finish in time?” she wailed. “The dark moon is only three days away.”

  “Warhelm?” her mother asked.

  Eleri sighed. “The knots in his knuckles hinder his doing such delicate work.”

  “Bring Synaur here.”

  “But he’s not a carpenter. And he’s blind.”

  Her mother waggled her head. “He sees with his fingers. Make a plank or two, and we will copy them. You must do the ceremony this dark moon. If we wait until next month, the ghosts will destroy Godston, as they did your ship.”

  “And if Synaur won’t come?”

  Her mother hawed and pointed at the door.

  Eleri found Synaur sharpening a pole to use as a seed planter. She explained her problem. Without a word, he put aside his whittling knife and picked up his laurel walking stick. She took his arm (the bicep hard as a stone under his woolen shirt) and walked with him along the path to her cottage.

  He was eager to help, but not as nimble-fingered as her mother, who made two planks to his one. But with practice, he became faster and cut himself less and stained fewer planks with his blood.

  Eleri rebuilt a quarter of the hull on a new clay keel during the day, and after a quick supper of beer and mutton—their only meal—they continued working.

  Her mother lit ginseng root, filling the cottage with pungent smoke that made them cough and their eyes water. “We’ll have to suffer it,” she said. “The herb will ward off the ghosts, but I fear I have not enough to last all night.”

  “Maybe,” Synaur said, “Briamursk could charm the spirits and keep them in Godston.”

  “Synaur and I will continue to make planks while you’re gone,” Eleri’s mother said.

  So Eleri trotted to town and told Briamursk how he must use his music. She returned home to find her mother working alone in the fire serpent’s subdued light. Synaur lay on a bench, asleep with a bear rug thrown over him.

  “We will take turns,” her mother said. “He was loath to stop, so I put sleep on his head.”

  In the morning, the two women woke Synaur and lay down to rest for a few hours. He walked home and returned in the afternoon with venison backstrap and wheat bread and green silk for the ship’s sail. After eating, Eleri began piecing together the deck and rowing benches, her mother sewed the silk into a square, and Synaur whittled a stout mast. Work continued through the afternoon, the evening, and again most of the night. They took turns sleeping and finished the dragon ship just after dawn on the first day of the dark moon.

  All morning and afternoon Eleri fasted and rehearsed the ceremony of sending the dead onwards. Since the serpent could only reincarnate if none of its ash was lost, her mother insisted they hold the rite inside the cottage, not outside where a gust of wind might sweep the limestone altar clean.

  When night finally came, Eleri wove her hair into a single long braid then trudged alone under a moonless sky to Godston, her throat tight
with grief. She told Briamursk to come play his flute at the edge of Bellow Woods.

  Grim-faced, she returned to her cottage, and red-eyed from crying, she chipped away the clay while Synaur held the ship aloft. Eleri then guided his hands so the keelless ship with its tiny oars and unfurled green sail was set gently on a long slab of polished sandstone.

  When she heard Briamursk’s provocative reed flute and knew the ghosts swirled outside their cottage, Eleri pulled the serpent from her mother’s oil lamp, and with Synaur again holding the ship aloft she threaded the snake under the long ship as a living keel. Uncoiled, the serpent tested the air with its slender tongue and stretched its head above the bow in a proud, dragon-like pose.

  Drawn like fireflies to the serpent’s radiant red light, the ghosts swarmed down through the roof hole, the thatch around it blackened by smoke from hearth fires. The women came with their hair adrift as if floating in the sea; the warriors banged their shields with swords. They abbreviated their size to that of sewing needles and gathered on the ship. Many manned the oars and began rowing.

  Tiny Briamursk tucked his flute under his canvas belt and held the side rudder. He stared straight ahead, not looking up at Eleri. She took off her linen dress and stood naked. She began chanting, her voice hoarse with grief. Synaur stood with his face tilted upward, listening. Her mother began thumping her deer-hide drum.

  The serpent rippled and lengthened into a circle, biting its tail high over the ship. It brightened and became plumed with red flames, a ring of fire. The bottom of the ash hull smoldered then burst into snarling flame. Gray smoke rolled up to the thatch, bounced, and swirled out through the roof hole.

  The ghosts danced or rowed; Briamursk pulled out his reed flute and piped a giddy tune. The wood burned quickly and its smoke carried the ghosts away with Briamursk going last.

  Eleri choked and stopped chanting, her vision blurred by tears. Sobbing, she turned and leaned against sturdy Synaur, who held her.