“Well,” said Granny, “I think it’s about time we found out exactly what is going on around here. Let’s wake Mum and go out and see what we can see. Look. Everyone’s in very good humor, at least; they’re all singing and chatting. Maybe we can join in without attracting attention.”
“Some of them are doing a weird dance,” Dani said.
“Some of them are wearing inline skates!” Ruairi said.
“Told you!” Granny said gleefully as she perched on the windowsill and pressed her forehead to the glass. “It’s all very troubling,” she murmured. “All the same, it’s cheering to see all my old friends having so much fun.”
Dani and Ruairi reluctantly turned away from the window. They went down the hall to wake Mum.
“Granny!” Dani shrieked from down the hall.
“Mum’s not here!” Ruairi shouted. Granny leaped off the windowsill and sprinted down the hall.
Ruairi ran downstairs to see if she was asleep on the sofa or in the kitchen. There was no one on the sofa and no one in the kitchen. Granny and Dani followed close behind. “Look,” Ruairi said, “there’s a bowl and spoon, a cup, and a plate and knife in the sink. Mum must have had her breakfast already.”
“Look at this,” Dani said. There was a note stuck to the fridge.
Dani read what it said. “‘Morning, my darlings. Up early so thought I’d go to the Crimson Forest for holly and ivy. Back soon. Love you, Mum.’”
“We’d better go get her and make sure she’s all right,” Dani said.
“Or maybe we should wait here until things are back to normal,” Ruairi said, fidgeting and trembling a little. “What if she comes back and we’re not here? She might go back out again, and then we might come back, and she wouldn’t be here so we’d go back out again, and then she’d come back again and see we’re not here and go out again, and then we’d come back and go out again, and we’d end up missing each other over and over and over again,” he said, hyperventilating as he spoke.
“We’ll leave a note, Ruairi. Look,” Dani said, calming him, and she turned the paper over and wrote, Gone out to look for you. We’ll be back here every hour on the hour. (Hope you’re not a Viking.) Love, Dani and Ruairi.
“And Granny,” said Granny.
Dani wrote, And Granny.
“Okay, so let’s go,” Dani said.
“Wait!” Granny shouted as Dani and Ruairi scrambled into their wellies and coats. “Not in your pajamas. It’s freezing out there! Get upstairs and get into your proper clothes.”
“Granny!” Dani and Ruairi pleaded. “It’s not that cold, and look, most of the people out there are wearing no more than a few strips of leather!”
“Go! And there’ll be some breakfast here waiting for you when you get downstairs.” Granny dodged further objections by quickly adding, “Which you can bring with you and eat as you walk.”
“I’ll bring my backpack too,” Dani said, “just in case. It has all sorts of handy things in it like a rope and a torch and a Swiss Army knife and an umbrella and a flare and an alarm and—”
“You watch too much television,” Ruairi mumbled as he ran ahead up the stairs.
In precisely four minutes and thirteen seconds—Ruairi was timing it on his watch—Dani, Ruairi, and Granny Miller, in proper winter clothing, were walking among the Vikings on the High Street eating buttered toast. Dani, fearless, was a little ahead of the others.
“Hello!” Dani said loudly to a hugely tall woman and a tiny man who passed close by. The man stopped and looked at her. The woman stopped too. They came up to her and asked her where she got her clothes.
“I have not seen such an assortment of colors before, nor such an abundance on one personage. It is quite a strange arrangement,” the woman said.
“Oh, you know, I do what I’m told,” Dani said and rolled her eyes toward Granny.
“Well, hello there, Jimmy and Janice! Grand day, isn’t it?” Granny said to them.
The McKellans looked befuddled. Janice, in her leather bodice and skirt, turned to her sheepskin-clad husband and whispered very loudly, loudly enough for Granny and everyone else close by to hear, “Is this ancient lady addressing us? She’s looking at us. She’s smiling at us. She seems to be talking to us.”
Her husband whispered back, equally loudly, “Just nod your head, my dear, and smile. Let’s take our leave.” With that, Janice and Jimmy McKellan, in Viking form, backed slowly away from Granny, Ruairi, and Dani, nodding and smiling all the while. They motioned to a very tall boy, a very small boy, and a middling-sized girl to follow them.
“They have a point, my dears. Look around you. We’re the weird ones. Everyone else, as far as they’re concerned, is perfectly normal.”
Dani, Ruairi, and Granny continued up the High Street. They soon noticed that everyone else was headed down toward the harbor. When they got to the brow of the hill by the bakery, they were able to look out and get a good view of the pier. Hundreds of Vikings, all of whom Granny knew or knew to see, were milling around.
“They’re getting ready for a party! Look!” Ruairi said.
On the sandy bit of the shore by the harbor, they could see men stacking a pile of wood and other combustibles. A little farther up, more men were piling earth and sand in a big mound.
“Make way! Make way!” they heard from behind and looked around just in time to see the majority of the fire brigade and the amateur rugby team jog past with a huge longship on their shoulders. They were singing the song that had woken Ruairi that morning.
“Up HellyAa! Up HellyAa! I’m a Viking, fierce to see. The sea’s the place for me. Up HellyAa!” They were surrounded by other men with thick legs and wide shoulders carrying lit torches.
Dani and Ruairi stood beside Granny and watched the longship go by.
“Wow, it’s massive,” Ruairi said, awed.
“Yes, indeed,” said Granny.
“Are they going to put it on the water, Granny?” Ruairi asked. “Can we have a go on it? Once we find Mum, of course.”
“My guess is that it’s destined for that big pile of wood down there on the shore.”
“What a shame to torch it. It’s fantastic. they sail it first maybe?”
“Do you know Ruairi, I have no idea. Believe it or not, I am very old, granted, and you might find this hard to believe, but I am not old enough to have been around in Viking times. The stories are all I have to go on.”
“That might not be true, Granny,” Dani said. “Maybe you were a Viking before, one other Christmas Eve, and you just don’t remember it. You said strange things happen every Christmas morning and no one can figure out why. Maybe everyone changes into a Viking every single Christmas Eve and they forget all about it when they wake up. Maybe you have been a Viking one day of the year for all of your life.”
“And you forgot,” Ruairi said.
“Yeah, Granny, and you forgot,” Dani said.
Granny’s eyes opened wide. “I need a minute to think about this,” she said. “I’m flabbergasted.” Granny stumbled backward to the bench on the footpath. “Flabbergasted!” She plopped down onto it. “Impossible!”
“I don’t think it is impossible, Granny,” Dani said.
“Improbable, then.” Granny took a deep breath.
“I don’t know,” Dani and Ruairi said together.
“No no no no no no, I can’t take all of this in!”
“Look!” Dani shouted. “It’s Mum!”
“Where? Where?” Ruairi asked. He couldn’t get a good look because of the crowds of people, so he jumped up on the bench beside Granny and looked down the hill over their heads toward the harbor. “I don’t see her! I don’t see her!” he said.
“There! There!” Dani said and took off down the hill.
“Wait, Dani! Wait!” Ruairi said, instantly worried, but she was off.
“Come, Ruairi,” Granny said, and she held on to his arm and chased after Dani.
> “Slow down!” called Ruairi as Granny nimbly threaded through the crowd in pursuit of her great-great-great-granddaughter, dragging a flustered Ruairi behind her. If Granny lost her grip, Ruairi reflected, he would spot her easily in the crowd; her head popped up as she ran, and she had puffin feathers in her maroon hat that spiked high into the sky.
Ruairi ducked out of the way as a herd of Viking men went charging by swinging battle-axes and swords in the air. One of them bumped the big draper’s tiny blue car. The alarm screeched and startled them out of their wits. They attacked the tiny blue car with their battle-axes and swords. They jumped on the hood, stamped on the roof, and kicked in a door.
The kicking Viking stood aside as another man charged across the street with his shield up and his sword outstretched. He emitted a piercing war cry and slashed his sword into the rear tire—which burst with a pop and deflated with a long, low hiss. The car alarm shrieked and shrieked and shrieked.
Granny and Ruairi caught up with Dani about halfway down the hill. Dani was standing in front of a Viking woman.
“You look so different, Mum,” Dani said to the woman. The Viking woman turned to Dani and smiled a smile Granny and Ruairi had seen a million times. They were both so relieved when she smiled that smile. It really was Mum.
“Thank you. I think.”
“Oh, yes. It’s a compliment, you look, you look …” Dani gave her mother a once-over. Mum was wearing a tight leather bodice with a fringed leather skirt that was shorter than either Dani or Ruairi had ever seen their mother wear. Her hair was down and wavy but not at all styled. It was what Mum would have called straggly, and it looked really nice. Mum was standing with another Viking woman Ruairi recognized as Alice Cogle, but it was clear from the way Alice stood back a bit from them that the recognition was not mutual. Alice was wrapping a twirling piece of golden jewelry around the upper part of Mum’s arm.
“I like the bracelet,” Dani said.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Mum said. “It’s from him.” At that, Mum turned and looked to a tall, handsome man who was standing just beside her.
Alice leaned in to Granny confidentially. “He is wooing her!” she said.
Ruairi, Dani, and Granny turned and saw the village baker. “Lewis MacAvinney!” they said together.
“Yay for Mum.” Granny gave Mum a wry smile.
“Granny!” Dani said, appalled. “It’s Mum! Mums don’t get wooed! Anyway, she’s already been wooed—she’s married to Dad, remember?” Ruairi retreated behind Granny.
“No, no, I’m not married. You are mistaken,” Mum said. “I have not yet decided if I want to be wooed by this man.” Here she tilted her head toward Lewis MacAvinney, barely looking at him. “But I am free to be wooed. I have not yet found my Heart’s True Love.”
“You are married, and you have two children!” Dani said.
“I have not borne any offspring, my dear, but I can tell you,” she said, turning and looking properly at Dani, “I do have dreams of one day having children, and in those dreams, my daughter is brave and strong of character, just like you seem to be.” Mum and Dani looked at each other closely. “Now, if you’ll excuse me …” Mum smiled at Dani and leaned down to catch a name.
“Dani,” Dani whispered, incredulous. “Daniela. You don’t recognize me?”
“Oh, but of course I do, Dani-Daniela. Sure, I do. Actually, no, no, I don’t recognize you, but you do look very familiar.”
“Familiar? I look like you! I’m your daughter,” Dani said, gulping.
But Mum didn’t hear the last bit because at just that moment, the burly Viking Lewis MacAvinney had grabbed Mum by the hand and was leading her down the street toward the festivities. Mum turned back and quickly grabbed Alice’s hand. “Aldis the Irregular, where I go, you go,” she said. And they were gone.
Ruairi was just about to follow Dani and Granny, who took off after Mum, when he felt a presence beside him. He turned around and found himself nose to buckle with a very ornate belt. He heard a low grumble and slowly turned his gaze upwards. Standing right in front of him, fixing him directly, was hairy-looking, scary-looking Hamish Sinclair.
The Red King of Denmark
“It’s well you might appear to be just a schoolboy, but I remember what you were to look like when I was to see you,” Hamish Sinclair said as he put one arm around Ruairi’s middle, lifted him clean off the ground, and carried him away, in the opposite direction of Granny and Dani, up the High Street.
“‘Look out for him,’ the skalder did be telling us all last thing at night when we’d had our tea and our bath and the spuds dug out from behind our ears and we were drifting off to sleep in our beds. ‘He’ll be pale and slight, light-colored eyes like the fins of gray or blue or greeny-blue dolphins, and hair the color of copper.’
“And here you are, pale and coppery as they come. He warned us you’d be slippery and make up a story, for why would the true Red King of Denmark come to the island he wants to claim from its people and not pretend he was just an ordinary ginger?
“You can deny it, if you like, but everyone knows, and so do I, that there’s a secret sign, a way to tell for sure that your blood is blue and from what line you come. I just … right at this minute in time, can’t for the life of me quite remember what it is,” said Hamish. “You’re coming with me till we can find out the true meaning of this and till I can remember what it is I am to do with you.”
“There’s no need for that,” Ruairi said, indicating a bench they were passing. “We can sit there while you remember. Really, this bench is a good place for remembering. Maybe I’ll remember something before you remember something, and then we’ll have all our remembering done right here on this bench.” Ruairi was trying to sound as reasonable as possible. Hamish paused and considered Ruairi’s suggestion. Ruairi gave a big grin. His arms were pinned at his sides, and Hamish’s massive arm was wrapped around him as though the boy were a big loaf of bread.
“Let’s sit,” Ruairi said, still grinning.
“No, no. Come with me. The jarl will know. We will ask the jarl.”
“Can’t we just phone him?” Ruairi asked as he maneuvered himself in Hamish’s arm and had a quick look down the High Street. He could see Granny stopping and looking around for him. “I have a cell phone. We could just sit here nicely on the bench, side by side, remembering, and we could give him a quick ring and see what he thinks. What do you say?”
Granny had spotted Ruairi; they locked eyes. Ruairi could see that Granny was calling after Dani. Would Dani hear her over the noise of the crowd?
Hamish was moving away from the bench as Ruairi spoke. As he reached the tip of the High Street, Ruairi managed to catch a glimpse of Granny and Dani, Granny’s head popping up and Dani’s fluorescent winter gear sparkling through the crowds, both of them sprinting in his direction. Hamish’s strides were longer and faster than Ruairi thought possible, even for such a big man. He was striding in the direction of the Crimson Forest.
Rarelief the Splendiferous
Dani and Granny reached the edge of the Crimson Forest just in time to see Hamish Sinclair, with Ruairi tucked under his arm, wading through a shallow part of the River Gargle, just before the whirlpool. He climbed easily onto the bank at the far side and took off at a trot toward the foot of Mount Violaceous.
“Why didn’t he use whirlpool bridge, I wonder?” Dani asked Granny.
“He’s not the brightest, Dani. Maybe he doesn’t know what it is, maybe bridges hadn’t been invented yet in Viking times.”
“You think?” Dani said. “Let’s get after him; we could make up a good bit of time by not having to wade across like he did.” They took off again through the Crimson Forest, a sheltered valley cocooned in the shade of towering Mount Violaceous, a forest in name only, toward the River Gargle.
It was still very early in the morning on this particular Christmas Eve, but as Granny and Dani made their way across, the thick sn
ow of the High Street gave way to a carpet of colorful winter flowers poking through the white. Meandering in and out of tufts of shrubberies, clouds were obscuring the sun, and away from the openness of the village and the harbor, they found the area dark.
“It’s quite gloomy in here, isn’t it, Granny?”
“Ah!” Granny shrieked and spun around.
“What is it?” Dani asked.
Granny looked all around and could see no one. “Nothing,” she said. “I thought I felt something, but it must be my imagination.” She turned around and headed toward the river again.
“Ah! Ah!” Dani shouted and grabbed the back of her head. “Somebody threw something at me!”
“Ow!” Granny said, grabbing her shin. “And at me! Quick! Behind here.” Granny and Dani hid themselves behind the only oak tree in the whole forest, perhaps the only oak tree on the entire island. They made it just in time—they narrowly missed being pelted with hundreds of little missiles that went hurtling by them and into the oak.
Dani bent down to pick one up. “It looks like an acorn,” she said.
Granny risked a look around the broad tree. “There’s no one, no one at all. But, look! Look at those two skinny elm trees over there.”
“They’re moving. They’re shaking,” Dani said.
“They’re laughing at you,” said a booming voice from above.
Granny and Dani both screamed. They hugged each other and looked up. The oak tree was talking to them.
The oak tree chuckled a bit, and as he did so, a smattering of colorful leaves sprinkled down onto the forest bed. “Allow me to introduce myself.” The oak made a theatrical bow, moving one enormous branch down and bending it in front of him, and bending another down behind him like actors do at the end of a play. “My name is Rarelief the Splendiferous.”
The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay Page 13