Tindr

by Octavia Randolph

  “Osku will barter on the trading road for salt tomorrow,” Gautvid was telling his hosts. “Then he would like to travel North, to a rich farmer who I know will be a ready buyer for his smaller skins. I can take him swiftly by ship, and we will be back after one night. He asks if he might leave his children and ren deer in your keeping while we are gone. The sea voyage was long and not easy on his ren; he needs them strong for when we cross the island to trade on the West.”

  Gautvid turned his cup in his hand as he asked this, looking first at Ceridwen and then at Sidroc. Ceridwen’s eyes flicked to Tindr. His own were fastened on the outline of the tent, growing less distinct in the deepening owl-light of dusk.

  Sidroc gave a slight movement of his shoulders. They had never been denied shelter on their travels on Gotland, and had welcomed all asking it of them. Still less would he refuse a man who had been the source of so much richness as Osku had been. Yet he could not ignore the way Tindr regarded the Sámi woman. He did not want trouble, not with Osku, and not for Tindr’s sake. He looked at his shield-maiden; she ran the hall, and the choice and judgement would be hers.

  “They are most welcome,” she told Gautvid. “I am sure the voyage was not easy for any of them,” she went on, turning away from the rising memory of her own time aboard ship.

  She looked at Tindr, wishing she could somehow tell him then and there that Šeará would be with them a short time. As if he read her desire he turned to her. She could do nothing but smile and gesture her offer of more mead; his cup was empty. But he rose and bid them good-night. She watched him walk not into the hall but out into the darkening trees, skirting the path near where the Sámi tent stood pitched.

  “Osku –” Sidroc now asked Gautvid, “why has he brought his young with him?”

  The trader’s eyes went from Sidroc’s face to the tent, and returned. “There has been some trouble at home,” Gautvid explained. “Trouble around the girl, which made it best for Osku to bring them.” After a pause he added, “A man has died because of her.”

  Sidroc’s eyes widened the smallest bit. “Two men fought for her?”

  Ceridwen dropped her eyes at this, so swiftly that Gautvid saw it. You as well, thought Gautvid. A man has died because of you. His eyes returned to Sidroc’s face. The expression there had not changed.

  “Nai,” returned Gautvid, answering his question. “That is not the way of the Skridfinn. From what I could learn, she refused one who had long sought her. After this he was found dead, in a way that could only mean he killed himself.” He shifted slightly on the bench. “There is great shame in this, as his spirit will be unquiet. The shame fell on the girl.”

  “Is this why Osku did not come last year?” Sidroc asked.

  “Já, it all happened just before I came for him. The turmoil was such that he could not leave.”

  “What will happen to her?” Ceridwen asked.

  “The girl? I do not know. Perhaps now none of the men will want her. If she will be haunted by the dead man’s spirit, it would be ill luck. It was all the worse, as the man took his life in Osku’s house. The desecration was such that the house must be burnt. Osku laid the fire.”

  “He burnt his own house,” Sidroc repeated. Fire, the greatest and most feared of destroyers, took Osku’s home, and by his own hand.

  They had heard earlier this evening that the chief Goddess of the Sámi lived under the floor of that house; what had it meant to drive her out as they had done by setting it to the torch?

  “The children, do they have a mother – does Osku have a wife,” Ceridwen wanted to know.

  “Já, I have seen her. But she is in charge of the household rites; cared for the three Goddesses living in the house. She says she hears them shrieking, angry that their home had been defiled.”

  “They have built another,” Sidroc said.

  “Já, another. But the Skridfinn live in tribes of ten; ten men and their families, a small timber house to each. Osku as richest is their chief. Now –” he did not go on, and did not need to. The man and woman he sat with could well imagine the loss of face Osku had suffered.

  Chapter the Thirty-first: The Memory Stone

  TINDR left the table that night and walked towards the trees. He took care not to pass too close to the tent where Fur Man and Deer and the boy were sleeping, lest his shadow be cast by the half-Moon on the hide face of the tent, and cause startle.

  He did not know where he was going; he only knew he could not sleep yet. This day had not been like any other. He had seen deer unlike those here in his woods, tamed deer with massive antlers who pulled a waggon, beasts come from the woodlands to live with and help folk. He had touched them, alive and trusting. The woman who drove them – he stopped on the track he went along.

  Deer – she was young; when he realized she was a woman he had thought her Fur Man’s daughter. Now he wondered if she could be his wife.

  He shook his head. He could not think this. He had thought her deaf, as well, and she was not. But she could not or would not speak to Scar and Bright Hair.

  He went along the track. There was just Moon enough to light his way. Over his head an owl rose from a bough, spreading its round-tipped wings and gliding up the path in front of him.

  He kept on, a long way into the forest, until he found himself near the pool where the Lady had come to him. He did not often return there. The remembrance of the sorrow of waking without Her had become greater than the joy he had known with Her. Tonight he knew he wanted to gaze into the pool again, even if it brought him sadness.

  He found the turning and walked in. The little light made the thick green moss where he had lain look black, and the water in the pool bore only the slightest of glimmers from the Moon above. He sat down on the moss, arms clasped about his knees, looking at the angled lines of light moving slowly in the dark water.

  He thought of Deer. She lived with her animals as fully as he did; more so. She drank their milk, ate their flesh, wore their hides. They carried her goods. She was of them, and they of her.

  She did not move her lips when she spoke to him, did not speak aloud. She used signs alone. And she had given him a new name, touching her eyes to mean him. Tindr knew he had odd eyes, lighter than any others; he had seen them reflected in still waters, and saw them every week when he looked into his mother’s disk of polished silver to shave himself. That was what mattered to Deer, his bright eyes, not his deafness.

  He touched his forehead to his knees, clasping himself tighter. Fur Man always stayed only one night. In the morning he would take Deer away.

  He jumped up then, unable to think about this. The Moon was sliding down the night sky. Before he left he moved to the edge of the pool and looked in. His likeness stood there, wavering on the dark surface, a man alone.

  Šeará awakened in the hide tent; she knew she had not been asleep long, and did not even know if she had truly slept. The Moon had dropped in the sky. Its beams pierced the openings of the tent in sharp lines, and shown faintly through those parts of the hide which had been scraped thin. She lay looking up at the ridge of the tent, and tried to calm herself. She felt fearful, though she lay safe between her father and brother. Both were breathing deeply and she knew they slept.

  She pushed the wolf skin off her and stood. She picked up her tunic and leggings and boots and lifted the flap of the tent. The air was cool on her bare skin, lifting the fine hairs on her arms. She let the tent flap drop silently behind her and pulled her clothing on.

  Even setting as it was the Moon gave good light to the openness before her. She looked at the house the tall man and his wife lived in. It was much the larger than any she had ever seen, save for those buildings she had glimpsed on the shore when they had landed. She knew these folk were rich by the numbers of goods they used to barter for her father’s furs.

  She turned her head to the darkness of the forest, its trees thick and tall. But she walked forward, toward the pen where her ren waited.
She passed the sleeping horses, dark shapes standing alongside the fence. Her ren were brighter, their white chests and throats nearly glowing in the little light. She found the latch and lifted it, let herself in.

  She went to where they stood, standing almost back to back to each other. She stood with them as they dozed, not touching them, just standing next their silent forms. This is strange to you, she thought, this green island. Just as my home is now strange to me.

  A night bird called out, a soft whistling, one she had never heard. It too was strange to her. It made her lift her head and look up into the darkness of the spruce trees.

  Many birds were singing the day Ággi came to claim her. She had told her parents she would not have him, she would not go. Ággi was the son of the chieftain of the next village, and she the chieftain’s daughter in her own. It was right, it was Fated, that she become his woman, and yet she could not do it. She had seen Ággi many times in her life, had been told since she was little she would be his wife. She did not think much on it; all women wed, every one, save those lame or deformed. But as she grew older and saw Ággi she grew wary of him. He could look in a way that frightened her, seeming to speak to spirits, hear voices no one else could hear. His eyes would roll, and his face twist like the shaman’s as he was about to fall down on the ground to have his dreams. He could be calm and kind and then angry and fierce, his shoulders hunched, his eyes dark, fists clenched at his sides. Did not his parents see this, did not hers, she asked. Ággi had shaman-blood in him, they said, that is all. Do not fear a man meant to be your husband. He is a chief’s son and all will be well.

  She was to have gone to him last year. Together she and her mother sewed the special bridal tunic, of pure white ren deer hide, so rare that only the daughter of a chieftain could be so arrayed. With every stitch she made, pulling the strong sinew through the soft hide, she felt she sewed herself into her burial shroud.

  Ággi and his people came to her village at Mid-Summer. The feasting would last three days, and on the third she would be given to Ággi and go with him to his own village. That first night after the feast she met Ággi alone and told him that she would not be his. He had been so angry that he had struck her across the face. She wondered if she would ever stop tasting the blood in her mouth; she had never been struck before, never. He left her in the same fury in which he had struck her, but not before looking stricken himself. She ran to her house, crying in fear and in hurt. Her parents were angry, not at Ággi but at her. In the morning all was in an uproar, and he and his people left.

  Two days later, on the day she should have left her village for his, Ággi returned to her house. No one was there. He went in the women’s door in the back. Then he killed himself with his knife, a hack through his wrist.

  The shock when they found him was great, the floorboards soaked with blood, the dark blankness of his eyes, open and staring at the ceiling. They sent word to Ággi’s people. They called the shaman, who lived apart with his family. All the families of her father’s village, and that too of Ággi’s father, supported the shaman, contributing to his maintenance and that of his family with gifts of meat and fish. The shaman came with his birch drum, and entered their house, alone. They heard his yowl, long and low. Ággi’s body was carried out and taken by his people to his own village.

  The matter of the house itself was grave. The shaman beat his drum, went into a trance and made his decree. Her father could remove half of their belongings from the house, and no more. The other half, along with the house itself, must be burnt, as a sacrifice to cleanse the violence which had occurred there. All faces turned to her; it was on her head. As her father fired their house she saw the tears streaking his cheeks. Her mother wailed, and Ulmmá hung back, eyes glistening as their home smoldered and went up in flames. Her father had left the costly white ren tunic to burn, the most tainted thing that lay within.

  They built another house further away. They had to clear many trees, a large effort, and one they did with bowed heads. All of this caused great shame to Osku and his family.

  Now a year had passed, and more. No one would walk over the scorched soil which had held their lost home; it was become an evil place. She was not shunned in her village, but neither was she at home there anymore. Her mother was growing older. “If you had wed Ággi you would have a child by now,” she had said to her, and shook her head. “Ulmmá is young. I may not live to see his child.”

  It was then her father told her he would take them with him on his trading trip. She wished to go, and Ulmmá wanted nothing more.

  Now she was here, she did not know what to think. She knew these folk spoke another tongue; the trader Gautvid whose ship they boarded had been coming to their village for years. Folk here lived in big houses, kept cattle and sheep and horses. They did not use the number of ren they herded to proclaim their wealth; they owned no ren. Ren could not live here; without their moss from the northernmost forests they would starve. Her father had brought two of his best to pull the trader’s waggon, so they could visit as many rich people as he could, replenishing their goods. She and Ulmmá had spent days gathering bags of ren moss for the trip. Other than the trader with the ship these were the first strange folk she had met. They seemed kind; the wife and old woman had brought her food and smiled at her. They did not know she was the cause of a man’s death.

  Wolf Eyes…. She had to pause a moment. He was unlike the others, and unlike other men. She thought of how she had named him thus, looking into his blue-white eyes. Wolves were the great enemy of her ren, picking off the wobbly young, running hale deer to exhaustion. This man…his eyes were that of a wolf. Yet he had looked at the ren with wonder, and laid his hands upon them like they were a holy thing.

  He moved slowly, looked with care. She saw he liked to look at her. He could not hear, but that did not matter; she could not speak the tongue of his people. He looked a few years older than her, and could not be the son of the young wife and the tall man with the scar. Perhaps he was kin.

  As she stood there next her sleeping ren she saw something move from the tail of her eye. She turned fully to face it. Wolf Eyes was there, walking, as she had, to see her ren. He saw her, stopped, then raised his hand to her as if asking if he could enter. She nodded her permission, waiting as he walked to her. Her ren scarcely moved at his approach. She was there, and they knew they were safe. Wolf Eyes saw this, she knew, and the smile he wore on his lips and in his animal eyes showed it.

  He stood without gesturing, just looking at her and the deer she stood beside.

  He wanted to tell her that her deer were beautiful. He wanted to tell her that she was beautiful. He had no signs for this. If he extended his hands out in front of him, palms upward, it meant, This is good, or You may do something. He had no signs, no gestures for this woman in her ren skins.

  Šeará returned his gaze, looking back at him with care. He had hair the hue of the honey her father traded for, dark honey, but with lighter streaks in it where the Sun had touched it. His brows were straight and full, and his nose and mouth had a beauty she had not often seen in a man. And his eyes; no one would forget such eyes as he kept fastened on her. They alone made him different.

  The ren nearest her shifted where it stood, bumping her slightly at the wither-point. She smiled then, looking back at the strong head crowned with antlers. She stepped aside, laid her hand on the ren’s side just behind the leg; on its heart. She moved her hand gently up and down over it, as if she could feel the great heart within beat. Then she took the same hand and pressed it to the ground they stood upon.

  The Earth has a ren deer heart, she was showing him. The beating heart of the Earth is that of a ren.

  She repeated it, placing her hand over the deer’s heart, then pressing it to the soil.

  He understood, nodded to her. His Goddess took the form of a deer; it made sense that the Earth itself would have her heart.

  Seeing the smile grow across his face made her
own smile spread. She nodded back.

  He stepped closer to her. He wanted so to touch her, but dared not.

  He shook his head suddenly, made a small uh. Do you go in the morning, he must know.

  He lifted his hands to make antlers at his head, pointed to her, then stretched out his hand towards where the ship lay moored at the bottom of the hill. He made the sign for the sea, his hand waving up and down, and pointed at the remains of the Moon.

  She watched, shook her head. She had heard her father speaking to Gautvid, knew he wished to leave her and Ulmmá for one night. She gestured this, pointing to the Moon, making a circle with her pointing finger. It would rise and set one more night before she must leave.

  His face showed the gladness he felt. The best he could do was to thank her, by touching his heart and turning his hand out to her. She watched, and understood.

  Then one of the horses whinnied, making her ren move. The Moon was nearly set. Šeará made an arc in the sky with her finger, and together she and Tindr left the paddock, he to the hall, she to her tent.

  Osku and Gautvid walked down to Asfrid the salt seller’s early. Tindr went with them, pulling his small hand-drawn wain. They returned with two lead-lined casks of salt, which went into Gautvid’s high-wheeled waggon. Then Gautvid and Osku took ship, leaving with the morning tide. They had selected pelts of marten and otter to carry to the farmer up the coast, packing them into hide-covered baskets. Household and guests had broken their fast together, and those remaining went about their day. Ulmmá was at once taken up with Yrling and Eirian, as they pulled him into the stable to help collect eggs from hens and geese, and watch the thick-furred skogkatts clamber up the posts after mice rustling in the hay piled in the loft.

  Tindr had been up at dawn. Now with morning chores done, he looked to Šeará. The early coolness had worn off. It would be a fine day and he was eager to be off in it. She had gone to where Gunnvor stood over her basin, washing up the cups and platters they had used, and shown her willingness to help, indeed it was the Sámi way to do so. The cook had smiled at her, letting her dry and stack the crockery. Tindr stood across the kitchen yard from them, waiting. When Šeará stepped away from the big work table he gestured. She went to him, a small smile on her own lips. She was ready for a walk in the woods, having tied a shallow birch drinking cup to her sash, and also a short knife. Tindr saw the handle was of antler.