03 - The Islands of the Blessed

by Nancy Farmer

  “He couldn’t marry her, of course. Not because he was a priest—some priests did take wives, though it was frowned on in Rome. He couldn’t because she was a beast, plain and simple. Oh, she might look human, but underneath she had no more spirituality than an ox.”

  “‘An ox’,” he mused thoughtfully.

  “She was enormously strong. He’d had ample evidence of that. She was talented—just look at the hut she’d constructed. She could fish and gather driftwood. She could farm.

  “On the last afternoon Father Severus built a great fire next to the water. He tolled Fair Lamenting, and the mermaid rose from the waves. She came to shore swiftly and dropped her scales on the beach. ‘Nice day for a swim,’ Father Severus commented.

  “‘You do not flee,’ said the mermaid.

  “‘What’s the point? You’d only catch me.’

  “‘I would prefer that you come willingly,’ she conceded. ‘It’s a poor marriage that begins with force.’ She held out her arms to embrace him.

  “‘I have one thing to attend to first,’ Father Severus replied, smiling. He darted past her, snatched up the scales, and threw them into the heart of the fire.

  “The mermaid screamed. She raised a wave to put out the flames, but it was already too late. Her fish tail had burned to ashes. ‘You have severed me eternally from the sea,’ she cried. ‘Oh, cruel, cruel man! How could you have treated me so after all my care? I can never swim the long miles back to my home.’

  “‘Then I suppose you’ll have to live here,’ said Father Severus.

  “He trained her to dig seedbeds and to carry water from a stream flowing out of the mountain. She built a wall to keep the north wind from blowing soil away. She lured salmon to her hand by singing. Father Severus had to teach her to cook, however, for her kind prefer to devour food raw. At night she slept naked on the beach. After several months her hands became rough and her hair grew matted and filthy. Father Severus didn’t mind. You don’t ask for beauty in an ox.”

  “By Thor, that’s a fine tale,” interrupted Thorgil. “He tricked the mermaid and turned her into a thrall.”

  “You’re supposed to feel pity for her,” Brother Aiden said.

  “Why? She threw rocks at him.”

  “Thorgil has a point,” said the Bard. “Severus’ crime was not in forcing her to work for him, which she richly deserved, but in thinking she had no soul. He treated her like a chair or a cup, to be discarded when it was broken. Go on, Aiden.”

  “Father Severus was contented with life,” continued the monk. “He could pray and meditate whenever he liked. The mermaid no longer bothered him with talk. In fact, she became entirely silent. The garden prospered and he could store food for the winter. When he had a craving for meat, he sent her fishing. There was always enough driftwood for his fire.

  “The mermaid, however, had a hatred of fire. She curled up in the little cave, winter and summer, without a scrap of cloth for warmth. Father Severus supposed she was like a seal and didn’t feel the cold, and so he put it from his mind. He didn’t notice the gradual change that came over her.

  “One day he sighted a ship in the distance, making its way to Grim’s Island. It was the abbot of the Holy Isle, coming to check on his welfare. ‘Delighted to see you looking well,’ said the abbot, coming ashore. ‘Good Lord! What’s that?’ The mermaid was shuffling to and fro with loads of driftwood.

  “‘Just a sea creature I trained to work,’ said Father Severus.

  “‘But it’s female! And it’s naked!’

  “‘It isn’t human,’ Father Severus said reasonably. ‘Many a monk lives with a cow and nothing is said.’

  “‘It has the form of a human,’ said the abbot, squinting to make her out more clearly. ‘By blessed St. Bridget, it’s the ugliest woman I ever saw.’

  “Then Father Severus took a closer look at her too. The mermaid had changed so gradually, he hadn’t paid attention. She was much larger, and the nails of her feet and hands had grown into claws. Her skin was rough, her teeth yellow, her hair was beginning to fall out and the clumps remaining were a rat’s nest. Her movements, never graceful on land, were now totally bestial. ‘She looked better when I got her,’ Father Severus admitted.”

  “That is the way of fin folk,” the Bard put in. “When the females are immature, they are surpassingly beautiful. If they wed a human, they remain so all their lives. But if they marry one of their own kind or are spurned by a human, they change into the adult form: a sea hag.”

  “A sea hag,” said Jack, full of wonder. He could make a magnificent poem out of this tale, as good as Beowulf or Olaf One-Brow rescuing Ivar the Boneless from trolls. Thorgil’s eyes were shining too.

  “Unfortunately,” said Brother Aiden, “the abbot thought there had been quite enough meditating and praying on lonely islands. He accused Father Severus of shirking his duties to the monastery and ordered him to return at once. And so they packed up Columba’s robe and Fair Lamenting and departed.

  “The mermaid—now sea hag—dived into the water and tried to follow them. The sailors rowed for all they were worth. Gradually, the sea hag fell behind, and the last they saw of her was a mop of dirty hair bobbing up and down in the waves.”

  Everyone was silent after that. The Bard put more wood on the fire, and Thorgil, deep in thought, stroked Seafarer’s feathers. Brother Aiden bowed his head. Finally, Jack said, “That’s terrible. They abandoned her to die.”

  “I was never sure whether she’d had the strength to return to Grim’s Island,” said the Bard. “Now it seems she drowned and became a draugr.”

  “An undead spirit,” said Thorgil.

  “And she’s here,” added Brother Aiden.

  Chapter Nine

  A PLEA FOR JUSTICE

  As the Bard had suspected, John the Fletcher and his hunting party could find nothing. The draugr had vanished like morning mist. “She’s still out there, though,” the old man said as he and Jack mixed potions for sale in Bebba’s Town. “I instructed everyone to surround the houses and animal pens with holly branches. She won’t like walking on thorns. Once a sea hag has lost her tail, her feet are her weakest point.”

  Jack lined up pots, which were colored to show what kind of pills they contained: red for fever, green for headaches, blue for stomach problems, and black for Beelzebub’s Remedy Against Flies.

  “Draugrs can swell up to four times their size, you know,” said the Bard. “One climbed onto King Ivar’s hall while I lived there and almost brought the place down. It hammered on the roof with its heels. That sort of thing happens a lot after funerals in the Northland—they call it ‘house riding’.”

  “House riding,” echoed Jack, carefully measuring pinches of dried wormwood into an elixir.

  “On that occasion it was Ragnar Wet-Beard—he got the name from all the beer he swilled. One night he fell into a barrel and drowned. Add honey to that elixir, would you? The wormwood makes it bitter.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jack.

  “Ragnar was simply lonely, poor soul. He’d wandered out of his tomb and seen his friends holding a wake. Once we realized the problem, we stocked his tomb with beer. And tied his big toes together so he couldn’t get far.”

  Jack put his finger into his mouth before he remembered it was covered in wormwood. He ran outside to spit. House riding! It was typical of the Northmen to tolerate draugrs banging holes in their roofs. He was heartily glad nothing like that had happened while he was in the Northland.

  Jack rinsed out his mouth and shaded his eyes, looking for Thorgil. She had taken Seafarer for a practice flight. The albatross had grown extremely attached to her, and Jack suspected he didn’t want to leave. She had taught Jack more Bird, but he knew he would never be as fluent as she. Still, he could say Come here and Stop that as well as Are you hungry? Seafarer generally was.

  Somewhere to the south, Skakki and his shipmates were conducting business, as the shield maiden put it. Pillaging, probably. Burning down v
illages. Jack didn’t know how he could face them again, knowing the evil they had done. He went back inside.

  The Bard was tying lids onto filled bottles of potions. “Nasty stuff, wormwood,” the old man said. “Personally, I don’t think it adds much, but people trust a medicine that tastes foul.”

  “Why was Ragnar Wet-Beard still there?” asked Jack. “I thought warriors went to Valhalla.”

  “Only those who fall in battle.” The Bard transferred the wormwood bottles to a basket for transport to Skakki’s ship. Jack thought that if you didn’t have a stomachache before you tasted the elixir, you’d have one soon after. “Poor old Ragnar missed his chance. He hung around for a few months, moaning and rapping on doors. He couldn’t hop far with his toes tied together. Finally, he pushed off to Freya’s Heaven—or, considering that he drowned, he might have gone to Ran and Aegir’s hall at the bottom of the sea.”

  “He doesn’t sound that bad,” the boy said. Practically all the herbs he’d collected were used up. Ten baskets were lined up against the wall, but there were another ten still empty. That meant another trip to the hazel wood, something Jack had hoped to avoid.

  “Ragnar? He was gentle as a kitten, except when he ran berserk. Our draugr is another problem altogether. For one thing, she’s a sea hag and they’re always dangerous. For another, she has a genuine grievance.”

  “We didn’t do anything to her,” said Jack.

  “Fair Lamenting drew her from the grave. Now she won’t rest until she’s taken revenge, and we’re the easiest to find.” The Bard sat down and motioned Jack to do the same. He was silent for a few moments, stroking his beard and gazing at the Roman birds painted on the wall. “We can’t buy grain in Bebba’s Town until they bring in the fall harvest. Skakki’s away, anyhow. I’d planned to draw the draugr after us when we left, but the village needs protection now.”

  Jack didn’t like the way this conversation was going. He’d assumed the Bard could cast her out with a spell. What was this about drawing her away?

  “There are laws in this world that I cannot bend,” the old man explained, reading Jack’s expression. “Because the sea hag has a genuine grievance, I cannot use magic. She has earned the right to seek justice. That’s why you and I are going to the hazel wood tonight to bargain with her.”

  “You and I?” Jack almost shouted, he was so surprised.

  “Odin’s eyebrows! You didn’t think being a bard was all singing and picking wildflowers?” The Bard’s eyes flashed with indignation and Jack felt ashamed. But going into the hazel wood at night? If he heard that howl again, he’d be out of there faster than a scalded cat. “You faced a dragon and Frith Half-Troll,” the old man reminded him. “You broke the spell that held Din Guardi in the grip of Unlife. Don’t sell yourself short, lad. By tomorrow you’ll be snapping your fingers at sea hags.”

  If I’m still alive, Jack thought resentfully. Then Thorgil returned with Seafarer and there was much croaking and self-congratulation. Seafarer had frightened a young pig from its hiding place and Thorgil had brought it down for dinner.

  “Hold it tightly,” the Bard warned as they made their way across the dark fields. “We don’t want to meet the draugr here. In the hazel wood I can draw strength from various sources.”

  Jack clutched the well-wrapped bell closer. It was an awkward shape to carry. What absolute lunacy, he thought. If it were up to him, he’d sink Fair Lamenting in the deepest part of the ocean, but the Bard said it was too late for that.

  A lapwing whirred up from beneath Jack’s feet and he leaped back. The bell made a faint clink, like a seashell falling on rock.

  “Be careful!” The Bard whirled and put his hand on the bundle. “The slightest sound echoes through the nine worlds.”

  They hurried on. The ground was boggy and streams appeared where Jack didn’t expect them. Water seeped into his boots. He also felt an itch in the middle of his back, which he was desperate to scratch.

  The moon was slightly more than half full. It shone over the distant oak forest, picking out gaps in the trees, in particular the road torn by Odin and his huntsmen. No gaps were visible in the hazel wood, though Jack knew a few small meadows existed. He wished that they could have had Thorgil with them. She wouldn’t jump every time a bird flew up. Also, and Jack hated to admit this to himself, he was far less likely to bolt if she were there.

  But the Bard had said this task had to be handled carefully. They couldn’t afford one of Thorgil’s rash decisions.

  The hazel wood loomed before them. They halted, still in moonlight, before its shadow. “Shouldn’t we have brought a torch?” began Jack.

  The Bard silenced him with a wave. “Observe and learn. You may need to do this one day on your own. Now cast your mind out to the life in this woodland. There are paths unseen to the daytime eye.”

  Great, thought Jack. I’ll probably meet a troop of ogres out for a stroll. I hope they eat draugrs. He breathed deeply. The air under the trees was rich with damp earth and hidden flowers. He felt for the life force and found it easily. Everything in the woodland seemed nervous. Jack felt a hare slip carefully from a hollow in the ground, and then he found himself in the hollow, where four tiny copies of their mother huddled.

  This was so comfortable, Jack lingered. He could almost feel tiny paws twitching, a tiny mouth open in a yawn.

  “Do not allow yourself to enter an animal’s body,” the Bard’s voice came from far away. “It’s a dangerous trick and one for which you are not ready.”

  Jack backed off. So that was what he’d been about to do! He’d always envied the Bard’s ability to fly with hawks or run with deer. He’d even tried to do it without success, but tonight the skill came naturally. Perhaps it was the hazel wood.

  Jack sensed a hedgehog snuffling among the roots of a tree. All at once it shrieked and rolled into a ball.

  “Did you hear that?” the Bard said softly. “The animals know something dangerous has come into their forest.”

  Jack found the mother hare again. She was cowering in a clump of grass in a meadow. She wanted to flee, but even more strongly she wanted to return to her young. She looked up and saw a pair of big, glowing, blue eyes.

  “Ha!” shouted Jack, pulling himself out of the hare’s body. He was standing next to the Bard with the bell clutched so tightly to his chest, it was certain to leave a bruise.

  “Remind me to leave you at home when I want to creep up on something,” the Bard said.

  “I—I saw eyes,” stammered Jack. “They w-were glowing.” Then he remembered Brother Aiden’s story. “Oh, crumbs, it was only a sheep.”

  “Aiden told you that tale, did he?” the Bard said. “It happens that you did see a sheep in the meadow, but what frightened the hare lay behind it.” All at once they heard frantic baaing and the sound of bushes being trampled. The noises faded away into the distance. “It appears the draugr isn’t interested in sheep,” remarked the Bard.

  “I’d l-like your permission, sir, to put down the bell and d-draw my knife,” said Jack, unable to stop the trembling in his voice.

  “In a moment. Your knife will make no impression on the draugr, by the way. You might as well try to cut stone.” The old man listened attentively. “Most intriguing.”

  “Wh-What?” said Jack.

  “A path has opened and some extremely interesting visitors have stepped through. We can’t have them meeting the sea hag. Take out the bell, lad, and ring it.”

  “What!”

  “Do it quickly. We need to draw the draugr to us.”

  Jack almost dropped the bell as he fumbled it out of its wrappings. He knew he had to obey before he thought about the consequences. He swung Fair Lamenting. The clapper struck the sides and a golden chime rolled out through the hazel wood, driving all fear before it and filling the boy with rapture. No music had ever been so sublime.

  It was like all the best moments of his life happening at once, like the time he watched Father build their house and when
Mother sang to the bees. It was when the Bard asked him to be an apprentice and when Thorgil, Pega, and he hugged one another under the grim walls of Din Guardi. But it was also a memory of his grandfather sitting by Jack’s bed when he had a fever and of John the Fletcher’s sister making him an apple tart after he fell into a pond. Those people were dead. Now, in the glory of this music, they rose up before him.

  Jack dropped the bell to the ground. He found, to his amazement, that his face was wet with tears.

  “That’s why they call it Fair Lamenting,” the Bard said quietly. “Hark, now. You must be alert. She approaches.”

  They heard weeping. It sounded like a woman sobbing as though her heart would break. It drew nearer and the air became chill. A mist swirled along the ground, and the smell of unnameable rotting things surrounded them. Jack drew his knife.

  The Bard raised his staff in the moonlight at the edge of the wood. “I command you by root, by stone, by sea!” he cried.

  A darkness solidified under the trees. Who calls? said a voice filled with stones scoured clean of life.

  “I am the heir of Amergin,” said the Bard. Jack looked up, amazed. “I am here to listen to your plea for justice.”

  Deep was my love; bitter was my fate, said the draugr. My bones washed up on my father’s shore, and great was his grief as he laid me in a tomb. He did not seal it, for he knew I could not rest. Until justice is done, I may not be born anew into the world.

  “Fair enough,” said the Bard, “but you can’t go around killing things. That only ties you more firmly to this existence.”

  The mist on the ground thickened. Tendrils of it reached up to brush Jack’s legs, and he unconsciously felt for the rune of protection that no longer hung around his neck.

  I don’t believe you, said the draugr.

  “It’s the truth,” the old man said. “Each murder carries its own cry for justice against you. Already you have forfeited the right to Father Severus’ life—do not dispute it!” he shouted as the darkness swelled and branches snapped.