Chapter the Twelfth: Growth
WHEN the snow retreated each Spring, Tindr once again spent hours walking the woods. There was growth everywhere. Each day the forest was different. Reaching twigs with unfurling buds, ferns springing and uncoiling from moist and dark soil, mosses brightening into their vivid green. Even at the height of Summer, when all had reached its greatest form, there was change. The smells of Spring were of growth, of strain and expansion, the sweet dustings of nectar and pollen hanging like tiny yellow lanterns on every tree blossom and flowering shrub. His bees were covered with it, golden robes they earned by forcing their way into the secret folds of flowers.
Summer’s warm air bore the fragrance of meadows dotted with spiked wildflowers, each scent subtle but different to his nose, the clean grassy smell of hay, the pungency of steaming piles of animal dung. Even the dust smelled different in Summer, drier, powdery. The grey and white limestone rocks he walked or sat upon grew warm. If he touched his tongue to them he tasted a chalky mineral brine, a remembrance of those salts of the sea, and of the soil.
He was growing too. From Summer to Summer he always noticed what things he could do this year that he could not do last. He could go up the ladder to the hay loft two treads at a time, if he wanted; he could not do that last year. But he could no longer fit comfortably into the smaller grain chest when it was empty and hide there; he was too big. His knees knocked against the marred wooded walls and he had to twist his shoulders and bow his head. Last year he had fit just fine, and could recall years when the chest had seemed big to him.
It was not just his arms and legs. Other parts were changing. Sometimes his leggings would tighten at the crotch, and he would get hard there. He did not know why it happened or when it might happen, it just did. Sometimes he and Ragnfast would have pissing contests in the woods, aiming their pricks to see who could wet the furthest on a tree or boulder, and that was fun. But this was different. His prick would swell, and almost ache for him to touch it. He would wake up at dawn with tingling heat growing there, and at the base of his stones. The pleasure it gave him to hold himself made him gasp. Sometimes he woke up, already sticky with the fluid that had pumped out, the pleasure a warm memory, like a good dream.
Tindr did not like to go to the Thing each Summer. It was crowded with folk he did not know, and even when he found his friends there, they would want to rove around with other boys as well. Then they would have to tell the new boys that Tindr was deaf, and that he could not talk. He would have to watch the strangers as they squinted and tried yelling at him. He knew he slowed his friends down when they stopped to gesture to him to include him in some game; he saw it in their faces, even Runulv and Ring, even his cousin Ragnfast. There was sport he could not partake in without hearing, and he had often to stand by and watch as the others played. And the Thing, in all its busy-ness, held danger too, with many waggons, wains, and herds of cattle being driven along, with no roadway to keep to. He could not hear them coming up behind him or to the sides, nor hear the shouted warnings of drovers. Once a man with a barrow nearly ran him over, and turned back and twisted his face at him. Tindr knew he was cursing.
Dagr and Rannveig saw all this, and when in his thirteenth Summer Tindr gestured to his parents that he did not want to go, they let him stay home. Gudfrid was away herself, up to her sister's upland farm for a visit, so Tindr would be alone. They would be gone three nights, but home at dusk on the fourth, the heavy ox-cart they had borrowed to carry crocks of Rannveig's ale considerably lightened by the draining of its contents. The Thing was always good business for any brewster or brewer, and Rannveig took special delight in the long lines that formed before her, cups and pots at the ready, to buy her ale.
Tindr had the care of the cow, geese, and hens under his keeping, just as he always had, and they had begun as well to keep a black and white splotched pig. She had just farrowed and had nine tiny versions of herself scampering about after her heavy teats. Other than caring for these beasts morning and evening, and making sure the weeds did not invade the rows of growing carrots and turnips, his days would be his own.
The first day he spent many hours in his own forest, or so he thought of it; that expanse of woods that began behind his mother's empty hall at the top of the hill. It was the place he set his rabbit snares, shot squirrels, watched and waited for his deer and rare boar, and the place too where he had now three bee skeps. A track ran through it, branching off to the apple farm to the left and Ragnfast’s farm to the right. The track to Ragnfast’s had been enlarged and widened to be a true path, large enough for horsemen single file, while that to the apple farm grew narrower each year.
In his forest were great stands of dark fir and spruce trees, reaching ash trees standing, as is their wont, alone, delicate clumps of white barked birches, tangles of small leafed hazels, marshy places that oozed rich mud, and two rilling streams, one with a shallow pool that he had often splashed in. With no promise to return when the Sun was overhead he took his time in his ramble, turning over rocks to see what worms were about, sitting on the edge of a sun-warmed glade while birds darted and flicked their wings, retreating back into the woods to study a rotting and fallen tree trunk made host to swarms of beetles. Only his hunger drove him back home, and after sitting up late and sleeping out by the cooking ring, he left the next morning with a leathern bag with bread and cheese stuffed within.
This day he ranged South, behind the trading road as it were, skirting flocks of sheep and catching glimpses of the sea as he did. There were places here of scraped ground, dazzling white to the eye, flat pockets of limestone bearing the same rock-hard seashells and flower buds and plant stalks he found at the sea's edge. The limestone cliffs were full of slabs of them, which looked like small furling blooms and even crawling things, stilled forever, changed to stone. The air above his head rang with unheard birdsong, but he watched warblers dart and skip on the steady breeze. The brilliant light of the Sun in the clear and cloudless blue sky reached overhead and spanned the horizon.
He searched a long time, and at his leisure, steadily filling his bag with the best of the special rocks as he chewed on the bread and cheese he had drawn out of it. When the Sun was lowering his bag was heavy, and he realised how thirsty he was. His water-skin was empty. He looked about him. He was not far from the farm where Runulv and Ring lived. They would be gone to the Thing, but he could stop and drink from their well before he turned and made his way home.
Botair, the brothers’ father, kept sheep and pigs, a cow, and hens, of course. Botair, like Tindr's father, fished, so he kept no cattle. But he grew fine purple grapes, and Tindr walked along a long row of them, just beginning to colour from a frosty green to pink, as he approached the house. A yellow, slanting light fell on all, and the sedge-thatched out buildings fairly glowed golden in the slowly dropping Sun. No one was about, in either the fields or the kitchen yard he passed, and Tindr did not blow his bone whistle to announce his coming. He went to the well, pulled back the cover, and dropped the little cup in, hauling it back out by its hempen string. He drank all the cup held, then dropped it again and refilled his water-skin.
He replaced the cover and was turning to leave when from the tail of his eye he saw someone come around the narrow side of the house. It was Runulv. Tindr was about to step forward and go to him when he saw that Runulv led someone by the wrist: a woman. The way Runulv held her wrist and then pulled her to him, they must know each other well. Tindr thought she was the daughter of the woman who cooked for Runulv’s family; he could not be sure. Runulv's back was to him, but he could see the girl was laughing. Tindr stepped behind the shelter of some berry bushes. Runulv held the woman against his body, and Tindr saw he was kissing her; his hands went up under her head-wrap into her amber-coloured hair. They moved closer to the wall of the house. They kissed a long while, and Tindr felt his breath growing short as he watched. Runulv let her go, but then extended his arms before him and pressed his hands into the
wood planks of the house on either side of her, prisoning her in. She was still smiling, and they kissed again.
Tindr watched Runulv’s hand drop down her gown, reach for her skirts, and gather a handful of fabric. He pulled, and Tindr glimpsed the top of her low brown shoes, her grey woollen stockings, and then their dark bindings. Runulv kept pulling, gathering the green wool and white linen shift in his hand, and Tindr saw a flash of knee cap, then the white roundness of her naked thigh. Runulv moved his hand now, dipping it under her skirts, lifting higher. Tindr could see Runulv’s hand move under the gown, just beneath her shoulder brooch, but what caught his eye and held it was that white roundness of her thigh, which now ended in a patch of light brown fur between her legs.
Tindr had been holding his breath to keep himself from crying out in his excitement. He let it out as slowly as he could. His heart was racing and his leggings tight at the crotch where he had swelled against them. He watched Runulv lean towards the girl, saw him touch his hips to hers, and for that moment the furred patch between her legs was lost to him. Then Runulv dropped her gown, and led her around the corner from whence they came. They were gone from view. Tindr would have cried aloud in dismay if not his breath be stifled in his throat. He had dropped to his knees. His eyes burned from having held them, unblinking, on Runulv and the woman. Crouched there behind the bushes he choked out a little cry, knowing the hardness of his own body, knowing somehow that touching himself would be different from what Runulv and the woman must be doing.
Chapter the Thirteenth: Of the Lady
TINDR delighted at skiing, and Dagr had made him his first pair when the boy was yet small. The long ski was rubbed with softened bees’ wax to help it glide over wet snow, while the short ski was wrapped round with animal skin to help it grip with every kick. He and Dagr would set out in the short Winter light, leathern packs at their sides, to see if Tindr might find some rabbit or hare to bring home to flavour the pot; or sometimes just to stroke their way through the woods that lay open and dazzling white. When Tindr grew older, he made his own skis, and chose a straight sapling of whitebeam or ash to fashion as his pole. With the pole in both hands and stroking steadily with his back foot, he could move over the whitened fields and billowing drifts faster than he could run on the beach.
In heavy snow Tindr relearned every year woods he knew intimately when they were clothed in green. Vast distances lay open to the eye, but familiar landmarks were obscured, just as the pathways vanished under a mantle of snow. Boulders could collect drifts at their base that would cover them entirely. Animals forged new tracks in Winter, shortening distances from the safety of their dens to other cover. He knew when snow was coming, not only by the look of the clouded sky, but by the scent in the air. The smell of snow was to his nose like that of the air just before a lightning-storm, with a kind of bright sharpness to it, but less harsh. That smell, and feeling the soft flakes compact under his boots, were some of his favourite parts of the long and cold Winter.
Winter held time for the mending of nets, and for the making of tools. Dagr stoked up his forge-fire on the other side of the little smokehouse, and with Tindr blinking in the welcome heat hammered out two score of iron arrowheads for the boy each year. It was work, and each arrow costly too in terms of the making and smoothing of the birch shaft and the feathering of the butt end. Tindr made the shafts himself from an early age. As he grew older Dagr put the hammer and tongs in his son’s hands, and Tindr learned how to heat the iron rod to glowing red, how to hammer and pinch and shape the small mass into an arrowhead’s sharp and hard point.
This was the time to make new bow strings, for Tindr always carried at least two with him when he was at the hunt. The strings he made from tightly braiding long hempen fibres which he got from Ketil and Tola, the rope-making couple. He ran the coarse fibres over a piece of his beeswax to smooth them, working the wax in with his fingers before he began his plaiting.
Yet Winter was not all work. When there had been a heavy snowfall, the first task of the day was the clearing of it from around the house and kitchen yard. After the fire-wood and stores of charcoal had been replenished, and the animals seen to, there were still a few hours left in the short day for fun. There was a lake not far from Ragnfast’s, and every year when it froze over the cousins would strap the long lower leg bones of deer to the bottoms of their boots and skate over as much of the ice as they had swept clean of snow. Sometimes high winds did this task for them, and nearly all the lake lay shimmering darkly under their blades. The ice looked black, but the lake-world was there beneath them, waiting. Rapp and Estrid’s father would saw holes, and with the boys lower lines for the hungry fish below. They would roast these on a stick over a small fire they had built on the banks, and eat them sizzling hot with nothing more than a sprinkle of salt. They were so good, Tindr and Ragnfast would laugh with pleasure.
Life was lived out of doors, and once he had slept and done his chores only the harshest of weathers drove Tindr in. At night, Summer and Winter, there were endless stars streaming across the heavens, a river of light on a black landscape that if he lay back and watched, he would see flow. They were gone in day, but at dawn he sometimes set his eye on one, and watched until it faded away into the blue mantle cast out by the Sun’s mighty beam. Fix it as he might with his sharp eyes, he would lose it in the gathering light. Yet the star was still there, he knew.
When the Moon was bright it was harder to see the stars. Tindr liked the way the Moon felt on his skin, and he often turned his face to it. It was not warm, like the Sun. But he could feel it nonetheless, a light like a flow of molten silver he had once seen at the silver-smith’s workshop, but with no heat to it, a light with a different call on his skin than the heat of the Sun. He had his own stories about the Moon and Sun and stars, and stories too of the green and pink Northern Lights that glowed above them. These last were strong magic to Tindr, spirits dancing for joy. They gave gladness to all who beheld them, for all who looked upon the writhing sheets of light smiled back, open-mouthed, in awe.
In Fall the forest’s secrets were revealed, this short time when it had dropped its leafy clothing and before the generous snow shrouded it again. Everything crisped and began to yellow. Forked branches and twigs danced and twisted in the wind. Fall’s last blow of leaves lay all bare. The mouths to animal dens appeared, vulnerable to all passers. Rivulets dried up, sending frogs off for deeper water and the safety of muddy bottoms. Birds flashed through open tree branches where they never could dart in full-leafed Summer. And there were deer. In Spring he saw the hinds, their white-spotted red fawns at their flanks. In Summer he might see a group of yearling deer browsing together. It was Fall in which the stags appeared, come down from the deeper reaches of the woods, to find the waiting hinds. Young or old, single pronged or many, they came, driven by their need to mate. Some would be led by the Lady to a place he would wait.
Before dawn he would awaken and sometimes know, even then, if he should hunt that day. He would dress in the dark, take his bow and quiver from where it hung outside his alcove, get his deer-sling, ready-wrapped and waiting, from the barn. He would go to the well and splash his face and hands, for the Goddess would not bring quarry to an unwashed man. He would move to the kitchen yard cook-fire, take a piece of cold charcoal, and mark his palms, and then the back of his hands, with the sacred runes invoking Her, and calling for increase. Lady, let loose a deer for me to take. Feed me in this way.
Then he was off. He might feel from the start where he should head, which track to take, which clump of hazels to shelter behind. Other times he came to a stop, hardly knowing how he had got there; this was not a glade he knew, nor an oak he had seen before. When this happened he felt a buzzing in his stilled ears, as if his heart’s blood swirled and washed there, and he knew to nock his arrow and be ready.
Then it came. A stag, or even a many-pronged hart, would step into his view. It might be pacing slowly, neck extended, sniffing the air, or com
e almost at a prance. But he would know it was his. He raised his bow. Lady, one arrow. Clean. Little pain.
As he let fly he no longer saw the broad flank of the stag before him. All he saw was the butt of his arrow, feathers moving away from him at infinite speed, and yet so slowly he saw the shaft part the air.
He would lower his bow and come to the animal. He stood over it as its life ebbed, with his now-empty hands outstretched, palms opened above it as it lay dying. The charcoal marks he had made at dawn by the cook-fire would be smeared. Lady, I thank you, he would praise. He would gaze upon the deer. I will remember you. You will run the forest again. You are one with Her.
One Fall, early in the season, he saw something he had never seen. He had risen knowing he would hunt. When he felt this way, it was a rare day when he returned empty-handed. Yet the morning wore on, dawn growing into day, a dull Sun climbing through the trees, many of which still bore their leaves, though tired and worn. His bow was in his hand. He stopped and looked about him. He had left the track that he had been following. He rarely felt concern at this; all he need do was lift his head, look at the trees, the quality of light, and somehow know which way to turn to find again a path he knew, a glade he had frequented, an ash tree he had once left a carved deer at the roots of.
This time, lifting his head, he saw Her. A hind of purest white walked before him from out of the birches, not ten paces away. She was large, perfectly formed, her white coat almost shimmering. She flicked her white-tipped ears and looked his way, the nose-leather twitching. The eyes were liquid, a brown as deep and dark as the rest of her was the white of unsullied snow.
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