Tindr

by Octavia Randolph

  He hung above her a moment. The light from the cressets played about her, lighting her face and breasts. Her eyes were closed.

  “Look at me,” he breathed. “This is Dagr, who saw you once and never forgot.”

  The eyes fluttered open. He saw the tears welled at their corners. Her lips parted in a smile.

  He brought his hips to hers. He went as slowly as he could, feeling his way into the richness of her hollow, pausing as she gasped, drawing backwards for a moment, pushing deeper into that sacred warmth until his prick was buried. Even then he waited, his strokes small, his weight held by his arms on either side of her. Her arms came slowly up around him, her hands holding his neck. His movement grew, as gently as he could make it. She began to lift her hips in small echo of his, two seals joined and buoyed by water. Her hands had moved down to his ribcage. Now they slid to rest in the small of his back, and she pressed him into her. At her pressure he quickened his movement, and after a few more strokes he came off, shuddering. He tilted his head back, eyes to the roof of her little house, and breathed out a sigh. He dropped his face to hers, kissed her brow a final time, and then her lips.

  He stayed there, hanging over her, looking down upon her face. She had closed her eyes again, and the hands in the small of his back that had held him there had relaxed. He withdrew, slowly, and settled himself at her side once more.

  She drew her legs together. She felt the dribble of his seed upon her inner thigh, and wondered if some blood from her broken maidenhead be mixed there. The muscles of her groin twitched from having been pressed open by his weight. The pain she had felt when he entered her had been sudden and sharp, but had dulled with his movement. She was left with a low burning ache there in her deepest part. She turned on her belly, then on her side, face away from him.

  Dagr dropped his arm about her and pulled close to her. His body wrapped hers, his knees resting in the hollow of her knees, his belly against her back. His hand went to the face he could not see and traced the outline of her cheek, and her lips.

  There were many things he wanted to say. He wished to praise her beauty, the softness of her skin, the generous curves of her body. He wished to thank her for years ago thinking him a mate for her, and somehow thank her for the pride that had kept her a maid. He wished to tell her that next time would be better, easier and with less pain, and that there were many ways in which he wanted to caress her; and that he wished to do so, right now. But her seeming discomfiture was such that he could say none of them.

  He could not tell her of how he wished to tease and thrill her, for he could not know if there would be a second time. He had left it up to her, and her silence and her turned back made him feel there would not. He pulled the long hair away from the nape of her neck and pressed his lips there. She said nothing, moved almost not at all, yet she had a short time ago looked at him with tears in her eyes and pressed his body deeper into her. That was something, that and lying here in her bed. Even if she sent him away in the morning, he had been first with her; it was not a gift she could give again.

  The room was growing dimmer; she could hear the hiss as one of the cressets guttered and went out. She was turned away from the room, but her eyes were open and faint flickers of the oil lamps were cast upon the wall she faced. He still held her, his hand gliding past her breasts and resting on her belly. A man’s hand touching her anywhere like this was new enough to make her heart pound.

  This was a man she had seen once as a mere lad, years past, and had nearly forgotten. Then here he was in her home, pulling off her shift and pinning her to her bed. She knew almost nothing about him, and it would be her choice whether or not they spent their lives together. She tried to still her breathing, and reflected that as little as she knew him, he seemed to know her. It was Dagr who had said that he would be her husband if she wanted him; he had already made his choice, and it was her.

  She could either take him now, or go on alone. She did not flatter herself that she would have more chances to wed. Yet her life was her own, and following the death of her parents it had been more and more one of her own making. She need account to no man, consider no one in her choices, and she had relished the freedom this allowed even as she accepted the bitterness of growing old alone. Now was Dagr come over the sea to challenge her in this.

  Her breathing slowed enough that he thought she slept. Dagr reached to the foot of the box bed, found the sheepskin coverlet, and pulled it over her. They lay upon the sheet of heavy linen and he let it be. He swung his legs onto the floor and stood. He went the short space to her table and took up his cup, the cup from which he had taken a single swallow of her ale. He drained it now, and took up hers as well and drank it down. It was indeed fine ale, and the corners of his mouth rose as he recalled her laughing when he had asked if Odin had spat in it.

  The second of the three cressets now flicked out. He looked around the farmhouse, noting things in the dim light he had not seen before in his arousal. The roof beam just before him was badly scorched; there had once been a house fire. Next to the cresset that still burned was an iron rush holder, empty. The piece was crude; he could work a better. There were two stout old chests of iron-strapped wood, the smaller upon the greater, near the door. He wondered what she kept locked therein, bronze cups or perhaps one or two of silver.

  Still naked he went to the door, pulled it open to the night. The air was mild, more so than he would have expected. With a half-Moon lighting his way before him he went to the base of the oak, braced his legs and watered its roots. He half-laughed at himself, marking, like a hound, her property.

  He returned to her house just as the final cresset died. He pulled the door shut as noiselessly as he could, and groped his way to her bed. As he sat down, feeling the mass of feathers give way beneath him, he thought of Ladja’s slight weight as she sunk into the fleece-covered straw in Thorkel’s house; then of the featherbed on which his life had been saved.

  He draped his arm around Rannveig, closed his eyes, and listened to her quiet breathing. He wondered if he should wake her now; tell her the things he had wanted to say. But no, she slept, and old Ake had told him answers came in dreams. He would let her find hers there.

  Rannveig did not sleep. She lay awake all night next the man she had given herself to. When she was certain he slept, she turned on her side, raised herself on her elbow, and fastened her eyes on his face. The Moon was setting and enough of its pearly light fell through the smoke hole to see him. The face was still, the brow smooth, the lips just slightly parted. At last she lay down again, and just before dawn herself slept.

  Waking that first morning Dagr moved his arm, felt a woman’s form there. He opened his eyes and turned towards her. She was facing him now, and deeply asleep. He wished to kiss her forehead once more but did not. If this was the last hour in her bed he did not want to wake her and bring it to an end.

  When she opened her eyes she swept the red hair from her cheek.

  “Yesterday I baked bread, in the morning. It will still be fresh,” she told him in a low voice.

  He hung on each word, trying to make out her meaning. She wished to feed him, and herself. It was not the request to dress and leave that he had feared. He lifted himself on his elbow.

  “Is this your way of telling me that I am your husband?” he asked.

  “There is butter, and honey too,” she went on, her voice even softer. A slight smile played on her mouth. “And apples.”

  He sat more fully up. “Am I then your husband?” he demanded.

  Now she answered.

  “Já. You are my husband, Dagr. And I, Rannveig, am your wife.”

  Now he kissed her, forehead first, and then her lips. Her hair was spilling over her shoulders and breast. In the new light it was wonderfully red, just as her narrow eyes were the blue of the noon sky.

  He turned from her, spotted his belt on the floor, swung his hand at it. He pulled from the pouch all the silver that he carried
. The six marks of silver he had earned yesterday fell out, along with a small quantity of plain coiled hack-silver.

  “I have more, at Tufi’s,” he told her. “Eight full marks. And I have the boat.”

  He swept his hand over the jumbled silver, spreading it across the linen they had slept upon.

  “This is my bride-price to you, Rannveig. All my silver, that here, and that Tufi will bring to me.”

  She closed her eyes at this. All his silver he offered her, leaving himself nothing but his boat. And his boat was his first real possession, that with which he had earned this silver, and would earn more. Dagr needed nothing more than her brown hull to make his way.

  She could not offer him this farm in return. She had lost it already; had known in the night she must give up living here, so that he could be with his boat.

  “Your brother, Rapp – is he far?” he asked. “He is your kin and must witness for us.”

  “He is not far,” she answered. “The next farm over, the broader track you saw in the woods.” She was smiling fully now. “Watching his face when we tell him will be worth the walk. He despaired of me ever accepting a man.”

  “I give thanks to Frigg that you did,” he returned. He too was smiling, but above that smile his blue-green eyes were serious. “Even the Goddess herself wed. I am glad that Rannveig could too.”

  Chapter the Fifth: The Boy

  Spring 860

  THE boy awoke in his own bed. All was still; only the yellow light cracking through the woolly red curtains told him it was day. He had been hot, and his small hand reached now and plucked at the linen tunic lying damp and cold upon his chest. He pushed back the sheepskins which had covered him and sat up.

  His sisters Hedinfrid and Holmfrid always woke him, laughing as they pulled back the curtains to his alcove. The three of them had been playing – yesterday? – on the floor of their father’s fishing shed, Hedinfrid lifting him into a big basket and then placing another on top to make a tiny house for him. He laughed back at them as he sat crossed-legged on the rough bottom, watching them move jerkily between the slits of the woven reeds, here-gone-here-gone. He wanted to see them now. He poked through the wool curtains. He had just learned to jump down from his box bed without falling.

  His sisters’ alcove was across from his. Their curtains were blue, and were still drawn shut. He would surprise them this time.

  The boy pushed through the heavy wool. One panel clung to his back as he climbed up into their box bed, flooding the alcove with a shaft of sunlight. Hedinfrid and Holmfrid were not there. Nothing was there. The red and green striped wool blanket they slept under was gone. The curly sheepskins to warm them, gray and cream and black, these too were gone. The featherbed alone remained, stripped and barren as if it were washing-day.

  So they were hiding. He would jump down and find them. This time he fell, catching his bare foot on the smooth wooden edge of the bed, but only swept back the light brown hair from his moist face as he stood up. His back was to the rest of the room. He thought maybe Hedinfrid and Holmfrid might be under the featherbed. He lifted one corner. Not there.

  He felt hot again, and his legs did not move as he wanted them to. He would find Hedinfrid and Holmfrid. The room grew brighter, and he did not know why. He turned and saw his Nenna walk through the door from the kitchen yard. One hand was clutching her looped up over-gown, and he knew she had been to the hen house. He saw his mother smile at him, her mouth moving.

  “Tindr,” she said. But he heard nothing.

  Rannveig was crossing over to him. “You should not be out of bed so soon, my little one,” she told him. She knew her face was again wet with tears, though she had mopped it with her apron twice as she stole the eggs from the hens.

  The boy stood looking up at her with his blue-white eyes, seeing her smile, seeing her tears. Hearing nothing.

  “Tindr,” she said again, her voice rising.

  He cocked his head at her. She called him again, face strained with effort. It frightened him to watch her. Her mouth formed his name again. He could not hear her. He started to quiver. Her hand loosened about the eggs she clutched, and Tindr watched with widened eyes as they rolled and dropped from the gathered wool of her gown to the wooden floor boards. One did not break.

  His mother must be yelling; he could see the cords in her throat tighten and stand out. The house brightened again, and by the tail of his eye he caught a movement from the main door. His Dadda stood there, hands extended towards him, mouth open. His face grew red, calling. His Nenna looked back at Da, her empty hands limp at her sides.

  She came to Tindr now, turning her back on the ruined eggs, scooping him up in her arms, kissing his face and sobbing. He felt the warmth of her arms and tasted the hot salt tears that dropped from her face onto his own. He felt the heave of her chest as she clung to him. But he could not hear her. Then Dadda was there, arms about them both, mouth open, cupping his large rough hands gently upon his tiny ears.

  “Nai,” Dagr was saying. “Nai, nai…” He could not go on, and let his tears choke his words as he shook his head. They could not have lost both girls to the fever, only to find their son left deaf as well.

  The boy was almost smothered in their embrace, and only when he began to bawl in fear did they release him. His Nenna took a gasping breath and smiled at him, her eyes scrunching over her wet cheeks and reddened nose. Tindr patted her hot face and then closed his fingers around a strand of her hair.

  They laid him down in his own box bed again, and stayed there, he thought, a long time, each with a hand upon him. He knew they spoke, he watched their lips and saw the movement of their throats.

  Tindr heard none of it. He fell asleep with nothing more than the rushing of waves or the soughing of leaves in his ears, that and the sound of his own small beating heart.

  Chapter the Sixth: The Song

  Summer 864

  TINDR and the other children had been down at the sea’s edge; his boots were wet from the shallow wavelets slapping at the shore, and the hems of the girls’ gowns were ringed with dark sand. His house was almost at the water’s edge, and close to the wooden pier where trading ships docked. But the slope of the stony beach was gentle enough that his father could haul right up on it in his small broad-hulled fishing boat. Now, thirsty in the warm afternoon, Tindr trooped across the white rocks to home, the rest of them in his wake.

  His mother Rannveig was at her brewing, as she nearly always was at this time of day. Her husband Dagr had built her a special shed last Fall, just for her own use, and together she and he had fashioned the little malting-oven she used to toast her barley. It had all taken half a season’s fishing profits to equip, for she needed copper pans too; and a little more silver, which Dagr did not know about, from her own treasure-pot, to pay the potter for the large glazed crocks and a store of thick-rimmed serving cups. Many on the trading road had admired her ale, had jestingly told her at Winter feasts they would pay for it, and she had thought to try these promises and create enough so that she could sell it to those less skilled in the brewing-arts. This first year had gone well, though she was still at times uneasy with brewing in such quantities. The larger the crock, the greater the loss when any soured.

  She heard the children as they came into the garden, the three girls singing some little nonsense song, the two other boys trying to drown them out with a rhythmic chant, and her own Tindr grunting his low uh, uh uh. She rose from the stone quern at which she was grinding her sprouted barley and turned and smiled at her boy.

  My pretty Nenna, Tindr thought. She always smiles at me, more than to Dadda or anyone else. He grinned, blue-white eyes twinkling, and lifted his fist to his face, thumb pointed into his mouth: thirst. She had honey-water, cool in a thick brown crock, to draw off for them, ladling the light golden liquid into wooden bowls for each before shooing them off to the shade of the trees.

  They took their bowls and downed the sweet drink. Then they spra
wled on the ground not far from where the brown cow lay, her jaws working under flicking furry ears. Along the wooden barn wall the geese combed their strong beaks through the grasses, parting the roots and tossing back the grubs they found curled there. Speckled hens scratched in and out of the open barn doors, shaking the dust from their red and white feathers as they flapped their wings, but the sheep were all at their upland farm, where their barley and oats and vegetables came from, and apples too.

  The other children were neighbours, both from the steep road which rose up after Tindr’s home, and from the side roads that shot off from the main trading road. One of the girls rose and pulled a handful of small yellow wildflowers from the longer grasses, and plopping down again began weaving the lengths into a chain. As they passed it from hand to hand, each girl adding a new green and yellow link, they began to sing once more.

  Tindr liked singing. He knew it was different from speech, for a singing mouth was opened and full, and often people sang together, which they almost never did in speech; then it was one at a time. And people sang when they were happy. He watched the girls’ faces as they sang, happy himself just to look at them. The two other boys were off bothering the geese. One of the girls smiled at him as he watched her mouth round and stretch, the small knob at her white throat bobbing. She smelled good. There was something of mint about her, and Tindr knew her hand had brushed some as she picked her flower. He rocked forward from where he sat and knelt before her, and laid the tips of the three long fingers of his right hand on her throat. She flinched just a little, but smiled at him as she went on in her song. He felt the fluttering of her throat, the small knob shifting up and down, the tremor of her song. He opened his mouth, and sang too.