Obsidian

by Suzie Wilde

She scoured the area, Heggi following listlessly.

  ‘I never saw it and they all look the same in this light anyway,’ he said.

  Bera pounced. ‘There! I need to make them sick.’

  ‘I thought they were sick,’ Heggi muttered but he began to help.

  It was the wrong phase of the moon to collect a purging remedy but needs must. She would use her Valla power to give the plants some strength.

  ‘I’ll mash them here.’ She stripped the leaves and pounded them between two stones. ‘That will have to do. Come on!’

  They ran.

  The hall rang with sharp cries of pain and women’s screams. Those who hadn’t drunk the mead watched in distress as their kin threshed in agony. The stench of poison vomit burned Bera’s nostrils so she pulled a baby cloth out of her pocket and tied it over her nose and mouth. She mixed the plant mash with water to make it go further and said some words of power.

  Heggi brought Ginna to her.

  ‘What can I do?’ she said straightaway.

  ‘Good girl.’ Bera gave her a handful of dripping mash. ‘Roll a small ball, like this, push it into their mouths and make them swallow. They won’t want to, so stop them breathing till they do.’

  A look passed between boy and girl. Bera was beginning to like Dellingr’s daughter.

  She gave her the last clean piece of linen. ‘Tie this on. These fumes are poisonous.’

  Heggi slapped a hand over his mouth. ‘What about me?’

  ‘There are some more drying in the dairy. Bring some bowls and spoons back with you, then dose anyone you like except Farmer; I’ll treat him and Dellingr too. We cannot lose them.’

  ‘I’ll look after my father,’ said Ginna fiercely.

  Bera saw her love. ‘Then go straight to him now.’

  Farmer’s lips were blue and slack. Bera pushed some remedy into his mouth, glad that her hands were not covered in cuts and scratches that would let in poison. Finally, he swallowed.

  Heggi returned, with a straining-cloth draped over his whole head, tied with a leather thong.

  ‘Can you breathe?’ asked Bera.

  ‘A bit.’ He held out a bowl to receive the green mess. ‘Ugh! Is this what you gave me that time?’

  Guilt stabbed her. ‘I gathered extra special plants for you, at the right time.’

  Farmer reared up and sick flew out in a green stream, just missing Bera.

  ‘Go and tend others, Heggi.’ Bera grabbed a passing woman. ‘Get anyone who’s well to sluice the floor.’

  Drifa fell beside her husband, retching. They would both be dead already if they had been secretly drinking it. Bera felt some guilt – and they did keep the settlers fed, so she dosed Farmer again and forced some remedy through his wife’s chattering teeth. Drifa cursed her and lay back, moaning.

  Bera moved on. She liked the baker, who was the first to show her any respect when she married Hefnir. He was kneeling beside his dough boy, weeping.

  ‘Silly sod snatched my cup of mead and downed it,’ he said. ‘I had my fist balled ready to thump him when he doubled up screaming, right before my eyes, and now the poor little bastard’s dead.’

  Bera felt a fluttery pulse in the lad’s neck. ‘Still alive. How are you?’

  ‘I’ve felt better but I sicked my guts up and I reckon that saved me.’

  She dosed the lad, asking all Vallas to watch over the dying.

  ‘Shift him to the back of the hall where it’s clean,’ she told the baker, ‘and then move the others.’

  ‘All the others?’

  ‘The living. We’ll shift the dead afterwards.’

  *

  Gradually the smell changed to everyday sickness. Bera went outside and gulped in clean air. The plant was working but would it get the unknown poison out of their systems? Folk might be too weak, too thin, after the winter. How many would die? Why was the mead poisoned and who did it? Was it an accident, or was the pedlar sent by the Serpent King? He had come to kill in person in Seabost. She would have to think about it later because she had to go back to tend the dying. The drag in her breasts told her it was time for Valdis to be fed but Sigrid could carry on feeding both babies.

  She found Heggi. ‘We must keep watch and keep asking the ancestors to save them. How is Dellingr?’

  ‘He’s saying he’s strong enough to get driftwood,’ he said.

  ‘Driftwood?’

  ‘To burn the dead.’

  ‘It won’t get hot enough.’

  Bera was too tired to fight off Drorghers and if they took her baby… If any bloated corpse came near Valdis, she would rip its head off.

  Folk all stayed in the hall, as if it were winter. The men were the worst hit but they all pulled through, even the baker’s lad, although he was too weak to stand. Those who died were all women: the two cronies, thin as rails before they got sick, and sturdy Drifa with her midden-dog smile, the hoarder of food and bringer of bad luck. Bera feared she would make a greedy Drorgher and all three had strange, wide sneers. They lifted their bed pallets, taking care not to touch the bodies, and carried them into the empty byre. Bera sent others to scour the beaches for timber. She told a frail youth to keep tapers alight around the bodies.

  When the exhausted beachcombers returned they said they had gone as far as the narrow harbour but, as Bera feared, there was no pyre wood. Even Dellingr collapsed from tiredness. There could be no pyre. The bodies would have to be buried soon, but how could they dig deeply when they were so weak? What should she do to prevent them becoming Drorghers after their violent and sudden deaths? Soon they would all rise out of their graves to seek revenge – and the living’s skerns. Or did they make a new kind of dread, like at the edge of Faelan’s land? If only he was here to guide her.

  Bera was struggling. A Valla should keep vigil but she knew she would fall asleep next to the sickly guard who was already snoring beside the bodies. She asked the women to take turn and turnabout alongside her. Only Asa refused.

  During one watch, Bera had an idea.

  At dawn she told Dellingr, ‘We’ll use the earth tremors.’

  They carted the bodies, feet first, to the nearest rift. It was a rushed job. They tipped the cart, piling the corpses into a cleft, then shovelled earth over them. Bera said words to take them to their rest but the bodies were earth-bound; they were not cinders rising into the air and up to their ancestors. Here they would rot in a shallow grave. She said every prayer to stop them leaving it and finding the way home. Drifa’s death grin kept coming into her mind.

  All the while, away in the distance, the cloud over Hel’s Gateway grew thicker, but only Bera looked at it.

  Valdis had managed to sit upright in her cot, according to Sigrid.

  She dandled the baby on her knee and declared it was miraculously early. ‘My little baba Disa is such a clever girlie.’

  ‘Don’t call her Disa.’

  ‘And she’ll be as clever a Valla as her nana was.’

  ‘Sigrid, stop jigging her about, she’ll be sick. Poor Borgvald. You shouldn’t say how clever she is in front of him.’

  ‘He’s asleep. I know why you’re snappy.’

  ‘All right, I wish I’d seen her sitting up. If she did.’

  ‘I’m telling you. She was just there, sat up, looking at me. All the time you were away.’

  ‘Am I supposed to feel guilty for burying our dead?’

  Sigrid began to feed Valdis and jealousy scorched through Bera. She told herself that it was necessary so she took herself off to search for some plants to finally dry up her milk. Her duty was to leave all those she loved – and in truth a part of her craved the freedom – but she could hardly see for crying.

  9

  Days were noticeably longer. Folk went about their tasks, ignoring or unheeding of the dark threat of grey, billowing cloud that pulsed behind them. There was work to be done: cows needed milking more often; sheep got into more scrapes. Without his wife, Farmer needed help, and tending the animals made Bera fee
l like herself.

  A week or so after the burial, Bera went up to milk the goats. They were not in their shelter, so she searched and found they had escaped onto Faelan’s land. She was sure Fate was taking her to Faelan. She walked on, following the sound of the torrent. Bera loved being alone and close to a waterfall. There was a ghostly moon-skern, making a rainbow of every shade of green. The torrent plunged into the dark lake with a roar that was the nearest Bera could get to boat-song. A sea eagle flew in towards the mountains, just as it had the day they arrived here. She had been full of hope then, thinking that her husband would be a true partner and help build a thriving community.

  No use thinking about that.

  Bera moved into a quieter space and called the goats to her. She knew all their names and was pleased that they came running when they heard her voice. She hoped someone else would hear her too. One of them was limping but it was only hobbled by long strands of dry grass and bramble, which she quickly removed. She began the headcount and saw the Watcher. This time, it came slowly towards her and Bera could see it was a woman: slight and light-footed, definitely not one of the dead women’s Drorghers. Yet her scalp prickled.

  ‘Was it her footprints in the snow?’

  I don’t know but I’m afraid too. She has no skern.

  Bera started downhill, trying not to run to the shelter, with the goats nimbly overtaking her. The Watcher did not follow. When they got there she caught her breath, fetched a stool and began milking. The task slowly emptied her mind, like watching waves. Then a bird chittered an alarm and a man deliberately stepped into her line of sight. Faelan.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine, no thanks to you. And I suppose you tracked me here.’ She bit her lip.

  That’s you all over. Being nasty when you’d rather be kissed.

  ‘I’ve had my own troubles, I’m afraid,’ he said.

  ‘Poison?’

  ‘The Fetch is the image of my mother.’

  ‘The Watcher. I saw her too, just now. Did she speak to you?’

  ‘No need. It’s clear my mother is beyond any remedy.’

  Bera got back to milking to hide her hot face, and for a while there was only the rhythmic spurt of milk into the pail. She had missed his voice, its accent. She looked up and he was still there, looking up towards the waterfall. He caught her studying him and she quickly looked away, working on until she came to the last doe. She tucked her head against her warm flank and when she had finished the doe sprinted off to join the others, with an indignant bleat.

  Now there was nowhere to hide. Bera stood up and stretched, feeling his mother’s illness like another weight.

  ‘I’ve a terrible thirst,’ he said. ‘Could you spare some of that milk?’

  Bera scooped her horn beaker into the pail and handed it to him. Her hands were trembling. What was the matter with her? Faelan drank it in one open-throated swallow, like an animal. She watched his throat moving; the line of dark stubble that was more attractive than a beard.

  She picked up the pail, ready to run away from these feelings.

  ‘Wait! That wasn’t why I came.’ He was at her side.

  Bera kept still, hoping her heart would stop racing.

  He took off his hat, ran a hand through his long black hair and touched something at his neck. The gesture reminded Bera of how she would touch her beads but whatever it was lay hidden underneath his tunic.

  ‘I have something to show you,’ he said, coming closer still.

  They heard barking outside and Heggi appeared, grinning.

  ‘Guess what! Ginna’s – Oh, hello, Faelan.’

  ‘Am I to have no peace?’ Bera said. ‘I am holding a meeting in here and it’s like a bear hunt!’

  Heggi gaped at her outburst and Rakki looked from him to Bera, his brow wrinkled.

  ‘We’re upsetting Rakki. Now, take these pails down to the dairy.’

  ‘I’m not going there, Ginna’s—’

  ‘Do this first, please. And don’t spill the milk – or let the dog drink any!’

  He marched off, his spine stiff. Rakki ran after him.

  Bera sighed. ‘Heggi’s a good boy really.’

  ‘He’s on the threshold, isn’t he?’ Faelan said.

  Dangerous places, thresholds.

  ‘His voice warbles all over the place but he’s still a child in many ways.’

  ‘He can nearly reach the smith’s daughter on tiptoes for a kiss.’

  Bera laughed.

  ‘Is he your only son?’

  ‘Heggi is my stepson. His birth mother was taken and killed by pirates.’

  ‘That’s a terrible burden. Bad enough to lose your mother, but like that, and so young!’ His eyes filled with tears.

  He was so pale that she could see the blue veins at his temple. She pictured kissing it; what his skin would smell like…

  ‘It’s about the black bead,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know the pedlar who brought it? With the mead? I think he was sent by the Serpent King to poison us all.’

  Poison comes in many forms.

  ‘The bead has… properties.’

  Bera frowned. ‘My baby is wearing hers now. It’s just like this.’ She pulled out her necklace and showed him her own bead.

  He nodded and opened his shirt to reveal what lay against dark curls of hair. Bera started with shock, as though something dangerous had entered the room. On the leather thong was a sort of cross, with an S shape curved around it, carved from black stone.

  ‘A serpent!’

  He hid it from view. ‘A holy serpent.’

  ‘It’s made from the same black stone, though?’

  He nodded. ‘Obsidian. You must make it your servant, not your master.’

  I can tell you how.

  ‘It’s next to amber on your string,’ he went on, ‘and on the cross on mine. It was my mother’s.’

  Her skern looked sulky and vanished.

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘Barely. Tell me about this Serpent King. Is he a sea-rider with black tattoos all over his face?’

  ‘And a full dragon body.’

  ‘With black grooves on his teeth?’

  ‘And a forked tongue. You know him, don’t you?’

  ‘He shouldn’t call himself that. The serpent is holy.’ He touched his cross. ‘Your man is evil.’

  ‘He’s not my man but he is Heggi’s uncle. His birth mother was the Serpent King’s sister and that’s his burden, worse than losing her. And, as I said, I think he sent the poison, whatever it was.’

  ‘Wolfsbane, from Iraland, most like, but I’d need to see the bodies to be sure.’

  ‘Well, we’ve buried them.’

  ‘That’s the other thing I must show you.’

  Faelan gestured for Bera to leave the hut first, as if from the finest longhouse. It felt good to be respected and held in awe, like being mistress of thralls, but she was wise enough to recognise that being revered came with its own danger, so she politely waited for him outside. Miska came to greet her and Bera kissed her soft muzzle.

  ‘Want to ride her?’ Faelan asked.

  ‘How far are we going?’

  ‘The field edge.’

  Where corpses were buried. Yet she trusted him now.

  ‘I will if you lead her,’ Bera said.

  He swung her up onto the horse’s back and Bera instantly felt special. He took the reins and they walked on. Miska was smooth and steady, like sitting on a bench in the sun. Bera let the feeling soak into her. Too soon they were there and Faelan lifted her down. They walked round to the back of some scrub.

  ‘Look.’

  It was the rift where they had buried the women. The open grave was empty! Bera gasped.

  This is a different place.

  Her skern was right: of course this wasn’t the same rift.

  Faelan took her arm. ‘All right?’

  ‘I thought this was a grave.’

  ‘It is,’ he said. �
�This was firm ground once, on a boundary. An earth slip uprooted parts of the bodies.’

  ‘And the bones are a warning for the living,’ Bera said. ‘Dellingr has seen them.’

  ‘It’s not these you have to worry about. I’m here to help you keep your fellows in the ground.’

  Bera moved away from him. ‘To stop them becoming Drorghers?’

  ‘The Walking Dead? We have other names for them. Come on.’

  They scrambled over twisted roots and rocks to get closer. There were a few curded bones sticking out of the soil.

  ‘Are these the Others you talked about?’

  ‘We buried six.’

  He made for a pile of stones. He gestured for Bera to help remove them and then told her to step away.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I want to prepare you. We put him in the ground like this, deep, and I’ve laid him out again so you can see it done right. I’m sorry. You won’t like it.’

  ‘Do you think this is the first body I’ve seen? I’m a Valla.’ She hid her crossed fingers. She only knew the newly dead, before the body was burned. What would a long-buried body look like?

  Faelan lifted off some branches of brushwood and Bera stepped forward.

  For a long while she could say nothing at all, while she made sense of what she was seeing. In its earthy pit the pearly bones of a man gleamed with no marks of battle. The skeleton was complete – except that its head lay between the long bones of its thighs. Its obscene mouth was kept open with a round lump of granite.

  ‘Was he… beheaded?’

  ‘We cut the heads off all the bodies as soon as we found them.’

  ‘So they don’t walk.’

  ‘That’s it. We laid the rest face down in the grave but he was the chief and strongest, so that big stone in his mouth is so he can’t chew his way out of the winding sheet and prey on the living.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Bera said. ‘I know what to do now.’

  ‘Then do it soon. Tomorrow will be the ninth day. That’s when they rise.’

  10

  The sun was dipping as Miska brushed through pink grasses and clattered over agate rocks. There was a special waiting silence as day slowly turned into night with little change in the light, as if the ancestors made nature hold its breath to try and pick out a difference. Like scrying light.