The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay

by Aoife Lennon-Ritchie

  “You there, give me your spade!” Scathe said to one of the airport twins.

  Odin shook his head. “That will not be adequate,” he said to an exasperated Scathe. “The treasure can only be released by the battle-ax of a warrior, an ax that has seen battle and bloodshed, and a spade of wooden making.”

  “So I must go away and get these and come back?” Scathe sounded murderous.

  “Yes,” Odin said simply.

  “What kind of a moronic, dupe of a dithering fool do you take me for?” Scathe shouted, incandescent. “You are trying to hoodwink me! And I’m not falling for it! You’ll move the treasure when I’m gone. Or you’ll make me forget where it is.”

  Odin turned to Scathe and with resignation said, “I swear an oath upon the souls of all the Viking men awaiting their final battle in Valhalla that I have told you the truth about the location of the treasure and how to retrieve it.”

  “Don’t do it, Odin,” Ruairi said quietly, desperately trying to think of a way out of this situation.

  “Odin, no!” Dani said, defiant.

  “I swear an oath upon the souls of all the Viking men awaiting their final battle in Valhalla,” Odin continued, with vigor now, resolute, “that I will not move or disturb the treasure or the tree in any manner, nor will I have either of them moved or disturbed in any way by another.”

  “Please,” Dani said.

  “I swear an oath upon the souls of all the Viking men awaiting their final battle in Valhalla that I will not alter your memory of these events,” Odin said and paused to look at the gathered men. “In fact, Mr. Scathe, I will assist you in your recollections.” At this, Odin lifted the hem of Scathe’s purple robes and tore a long stretch of material from around the bottom.

  “Hey!” Scathe said, jumping back, gathering his robes about him.

  “I will wrap this purple ribbon around this tree so there can be no forgetting. I will tie it tightly so it cannot float away. I will let it flutter gently in the breeze while it serves as a reminder to you that the treasures of Yondersaay lie here. Are you satisfied?” Odin asked.

  Scathe searched Odin’s face. “I am satisfied,” he said at last.

  “So you will let all your prisoners go?” Odin said.

  “I will,” Scathe said after a moment’s hesitation. He turned to Isdrab and Asgrim. “Men, take the prisoners back to the harbor. Be careful to keep them there in full view until dawn breaks over the waves. Do not harm them—allow them to partake of nourishment—and do not under any circumstances release them before the sun rises. The rest of you, stay here. We have work to do.”

  Asgrim and Isdrab turned to the Millers and pushed them forward, marching them back up the hill toward the village.

  Scathe turned to Hamish and said, “Seize him.”

  Hamish came forward and grabbed Odin by the shoulders, and the four twins gathered round.

  “No!” Ruairi called out as he was being dragged toward the village by Isdrab. He broke free from Isdrab and darted back to the clearing by the tree. He placed himself between Odin and Hamish and stared defiantly into the large Viking’s face. “You made a deal!” he said to Scathe.

  “I made a deal for your lives, Boy King, not for his,” Scathe said to Ruairi without even looking at him. He flicked a hand, and Isdrab roughly forced him out of the clearing.

  Dani, Ruairi, and Granny struggled against the cousins as they were dragged away from the forest. They kicked; they flailed. Granny tried biting. But their strength was as nothing against the Viking men.

  Odin turned to the Millers and said, “Grieve not. It is correct, I am prepared for this. Leave and be safe and think not that I suffer.”

  “It does not matter,” Scathe said, shrugging. “The sun is about to set, the new day is mere hours away, and when the sun rises, all that has happened today will have disappeared from their memories. I am the only one who will remember. The only one. And I will savor the memory of this moment for the rest of my days.”

  Granny, Dani, and Ruairi reached the brow of the hill that turns onto the High Street. They stopped and looked back at the dimming forest.

  “Let us go back,” Dani implored Asgrim and Isdrab.

  “Please,” Ruairi said. “This isn’t right. Please let us go back and help him.”

  Isdrab and Asgrim looked at each other. They looked down into the hollow by the oak tree.

  “I’m sorry,” Isdrab whispered, his head lowered. “We can’t.”

  “We just can’t,” Asgrim said.

  The final rays of the setting sun gave the Millers a clear view of Silas Scathe forcing Odin, shoulders sagging, onto his knees. They watched as Scathe stooped and spoke in Odin’s ear. What he said was lost on the wind.

  Thought and Memory, their vibrancy dimming visibly in the cool dusk light, swept once around the clearing and descended at last, clinging helplessly close to Odin. Jarl Silas Scathe took his sword from underneath his ceremonial robes. He took a step back and examined the heavy blade. He swung it high above his head, left it glinting, towering there for an endless moment, and then brought it forcefully down. He plunged the long blade deep into Odin’s side.

  Ruairi, startled and shocked, could not move. He could not think. He grabbed his sister’s hand. Dani screamed. Granny’s knees buckled—Isdrab supported her and turned her away.

  Ruairi caught Hamish Hjorvarth, who had been itching for violent combat all day turning his head away at the final moment. He did not look back again.

  Odin’s lifeless body fell forward onto the earth in front of Rarelief the Splendiferous. The elms heaved and cracked, and the oak cried a pitiful roar that sent ripples through the forest bed. Rarelief shed a blanket of radiant purple leaves onto the ground around his old master and the perishing ravens. The two black birds reached out their wings in one last glorious extension as they closed their eyes to the world.

  Scathe motioned to his men. They carried Odin’s body out of the forest toward the mouth of the River Gargle. No one spoke.

  Silas Scathe the Victorious strode across the dank bed of the Crimson Forest in the direction of the towering castle carved into the cold rock of Mount Violaceous. And the sky went black on this particular Christmas Eve on Yondersaay.

  Home

  Granny, Dani, and Ruairi finally made it home, exhausted, in the early hours of Christmas morning. Released as the sun started to rise, they stepped across the threshold of Gargle View Cottage just as the golden rays announced the new day to the village.

  Once they’d removed their winter layers, Granny said, “let me have a look at it,” and took into her hand the pendant that could was hanging around Dani’s neck.

  “You would never know,” Dani said, “never in a million years, that this is the Violaceous Amethyst of legend.”

  “Where did you get that?” Ruairi asked.

  “Odin slipped it to me on the way out of the village. You remember he stopped at the top of the hill and looked down at the harbor?”

  “Yes,” Ruairi said. “We all looked down too.”

  “When no one was looking, he winked at me and looked at his hand. I followed his gaze and saw him drop something onto the ground and then cover it with snow. When he passed by me, he whispered to me. He told me what it was and to make sure I wore it all day, so that we wouldn’t be intoxicated by any spells of Scathe’s. I bent down to tie my shoelace, made sure the moron cousins weren’t looking, and put it in my shoe.”

  “So we’ll be able to remember everything that happened to us, everything Scathe did,” Granny said sadly.

  “I’m not sure I want to remember what he did,” Ruairi said, a lump rising in his throat and a tightness constricting his chest.

  “Don’t say that, Ruairi,” Granny said sharply. “We must remember! So he doesn’t get away with it.”

  “Shh!” Ruairi said, spinning toward the living room. “I hear a noise!” Ruairi walked toward the door.

  “No, wa
it!” Dani said. “Don’t just go in there.”

  “Stay here,” Ruairi said to Dani and Granny, and the newly brave boy marched forward and opened the door. Dani and Granny were fused to the spot for a moment, they looked quizzically at each other, and rushed to follow a very confident Ruairi. They were all taken aback by the two figures cuddled together under what looked like a large sheepskin waistcoat.

  “Mum! Dad!” Dani and Ruairi shouted and ran to their parents.

  Delighted to see them, Mum started to laugh as she hugged and kissed her children.

  “There you are! Dad said, getting in on the hugs.

  “Were you having fun at the harbor with everyone else? I do hope so,” Mum said. “We found your note and decided the clever thing was to wait here for you for a bit and then go out and look for you. What time is it? We must have fallen asleep.”

  Dani and Ruairi hugged their parents, happy to find them both safe at home. They told each other about their Christmas Eve. After the harrowing stories reduced the family to sadness, Ruairi pretended to only now notice that Mum and Dad were still wearing their Viking clothes. “Please, cover up! My eyes! My eyes!” he said, stomping about with one hand over his eyes and the other out in front like a blind man. Dani almost laughed as Ruairi walked straight into a door. Mum laughed and half cried, and then laughed again. Then she blushed. Mum put an arm around a grieving Granny as she led her family to the warmth of the Gargle View Cottage fireplace.

  An Ordinary, Everyday Christmas Morning

  Early morning sunlight penetrated blinds and curtains and brought one islander after another out of their strange dreams of burning longships and yuletide sacrifices. Smells of frying bacon, sausages, and black and white pudding woke the rest.

  It was a clear Christmas morning, bright and cold. A fresh smattering of snow concealed the last shreds of evidence that the day before had been anything other than an ordinary, everyday Christmas Eve.

  The draper, as he did every Christmas morning, left his house early to collect his mother from the far side of the island in his little blue car. Still half-asleep and with a splitting headache, he was thirsty, he smelled rank, and he was hoarse from all the drunken singing he would never remember. He also appeared to have spilled an entire kebab and fries down his front.

  The draper, a teetotaler who had never knowingly swallowed a drop of alcohol, was utterly unfamiliar with the effects of overconsumption and did not know, therefore, that what he was suffering from was the mother of all hangovers.

  Discombobulated, he took out his car keys before he reached his garden gate as he normally did. He stopped a foot from the curb and leaned forward to put the key, as he normally did, in the lock of the driver’s door. Usually, at this point, his key would meet resistance in the form of a car lock and the draper would stop leaning forward. However, on this particular Christmas morning, there was no resistance. Because there was no car. The draper leaned farther forward, all the time thinking only about his headache and the furry taste in his mouth. He leaned, and he leaned. He did not remember, of course, that the day before, he had lifted his little blue car over his head with the help of some Viking friends and hauled it to the harbour, its alarm shrieking, and set it alight on the shore. He leaned until his center of gravity tipped irrevocably and he found himself falling flat, right hand out, full on his face in the middle of Yondersaay High Street.

  Hamish Sinclair, the butcher, woke up and went straight to his kitchen. Hamish was hungry. His kitchen, still shuttered, was dim. He stood in the light of the refrigerator and scratched his head. He couldn’t understand what it was he was seeing. He closed the fridge and stood back. He opened it again. He hadn’t been mistaken. His fridge was full of vegetables. Full of them. And fruit. They were bursting out of it. Hamish, still not fully awake, and more than a little confused, let the door swing open as he stared in, trying to figure it out.

  As he stood there, a slender arm came from behind him, reached in, and took out two oranges, an apple, a carrot, and something green that Hamish did not recognize.

  Hamish turned to look at the person who owned the arm.

  “Smoothie?” Alice Cogle said and smiled.

  Hamish shrieked like a schoolboy and recoiled in fright. Then he just stood there, staring. Alice moved to the kitchen counter and started preparing breakfast. She was wearing Hamish’s shirt.

  “Not yet,” he said eventually, looking her up and down. He came over and scooped her up in his arms and kicked the fridge door closed. Hamish Sinclair, who believes real men eat only meat and the occasional Cadbury’s creme egg, picked up a squirming and giggling Alice Cogle, who believes meat, all meat, is murder and kissed her.

  “Hello! Hello! Hello!” the fifth twin said when he woke up on Christmas morning. “Is anybody there?” As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he looked around and could not for the life of him figure out how he had gotten here. The fifth twin was in a very dark, cave-like tunnel. Once his eyes were accustomed to the dim light, he spotted a tiny purple flower a few feet down the slope from him. He crawled toward it. A bit farther was a minute yellow flower, and beyond that was a teensy cornflower blue flower. The twin followed the colorful flowers, on all fours, all the way into the light.

  Finally, he made it clear of the tunnel into the bright Christmas morning. “How am I going to explain this at home?” he said as he took himself in and saw that he was dressed in strappy sandals, a leather miniskirt, and a fringed string vest.

  The Millers

  Dani and Ruairi could not stop talking to each other and to their parents. Dani told them about Rarelief and the whirlpool spitting them out and about the tarantulafish. Ruairi talked about the oracle handling bloody guts and then passing sandwiches around. Mum said she could remember her time as a Viking but was still struggling to come to terms with everything that had happened to her and to her family on Christmas Eve. They were talking, but they were subdued. Mum decided the best way to take their minds of Odin’s traumatic end was to get stuck into Christmas Day preparations. They all got involved, finalizing the decorating, arranging presents under the tree, getting the food ready

  All except Granny Miller. Try as she might, she was not feeling the Christmas spirit. She listened as her great-great-great-grandchildren recounted their adventures for their parents, but she did not feel up to talking herself. Granny tried her best not to think of the boy she had grown up with. She tried her hardest not to dwell on memories of her dear friend Eoin Lerwick who it turns out was Odin, father of all the Vikings. Eoin had entered Granny’s thoughts the same way he had entered her heart—irreversibly and without her even noticing, and he would remain in her heart forevermore.

  She would hold a little ball of anger in her for the treacherous Silas Scathe for eternity. If he should ever cross her path again …

  When no one was looking, Granny moved away from the others and sat alone in the window that looked out onto the village. From the window seat, she idly watched her friends and neighbors go about their Christmas morning business. It was clear they hadn’t an inkling concerning what had happened the day before.

  “You miss Mr. Lerwick, don’t you?” Dani appeared beside Granny.

  “I do.” Granny nodded. “There is no doubting that he went willingly. But his loss leaves an ache in my chest I fear will linger for a long time.” Dani hugged her.

  Ruairi came up and stood with them. He wanted to say something comforting to Granny to make it all better. He wanted to tell her it didn’t matter or it wasn’t real or she would feel fine again soon. But he couldn’t. He didn’t know how. He put an arm around her shoulder and sat with her on the window seat. Dani mirrored him and sat on the other side. Ruairi saw the fresh snow covering the tracks of the day before. He saw some Yondersaanians Christmassing in the usual way. Then he saw a fleck in the sky. He looked closely, and it moved. It broke apart in front of him. He watched as the flecks moved closer.

  “Look, Granny,” he s
aid, pointing into the sky. “Look!”

  Dani and Granny turned their gaze upwards and saw what Ruairi saw. Ruairi and Dani jumped to their feet. “It’s Thought and Memory!” Granny said, stumbling and falling off the window seat onto her feet. She was right. The flecks were not flecks; they were two sparkly black ravens—Thought and Memory. There they were clear and in plain sight, fluttering in synchronized patterns all over the northern-most sky.

  Dani grabbed Granny’s arm and squeezed it tight. Ruairi hugged her. Ruairi and Dani jumped onto the window seat so they could get a better view.

  “They are part of Odin, they can’t survive without him,” Ruairi said. “‘You must release your prisoners, all your prisoners,’ that’s what Odin made Scathe promise. All his prisoners, including Odin. It was a trick. By making Scathe promise that, he made it impossible for Scathe to kill him.”

  Granny eased herself back onto her seat and raised her face to the sky. Her shoulders relaxed as she broke into a smile. “You must release your prisoners, all your prisoners, and leave the island, never to return,” Granny said. And then she put a hand over her stomach, and allowed the tiny knot of tightly-wound pain that had been building there unwind, disintegrate, and disappear.

  Mr. Scathe

  Silas Scathe woke up early on this crisp, clear Christmas morning. He was alone in his castle. All his men and all the islanders had returned home to their families and their habitual lives. He could not be their jarl for another year—the spell of Christmas Eve was broken.

  Usually, on Christmas morning, this would make Scathe’s stomach turn over a little, the realization that it was all done with for three hundred and sixty-four more days. Usually, on Christmas morning, he would have breakfast and go back to the village, blend in, and begin his nightly search for the buried treasure of Yondersaay all over again.