“An ignorance which unfortunately requires explanation,” Thoddun said. “I have allowed you into my home, which of course is an explanation of sorts. But I accept that something more is needed. It is not my habit to explain myself, but then, nor is it my habit to bring strangers into my realm. The wine may help.”
“Help me? Or you? And I’m not a stranger. You know very well who I am, though I don’t know who you are anymore. But you brought me into your home before, on the Sheep Islands.”
Thoddun held up his hand and Egil, reappearing, pushed a drinking cup between his fingers. “Thoddun gets it from down south. None of your Saxon rubbish,” said Egil, passing another cup to Skarga. “This is from Italy. I bet you never even heard of Italy.”
Skarga drank. It seemed, astonishingly, even more glorious than Grimr’s best. “I bet you never heard of Italy either, not before,” she said.
Egil nodded cheerfully. “I’d never heard of anything. But it’s good, isn’t it? Better than a piss in the sea anyway. We’ve got barrels of it. And some from Moorish Spain too.”
“I take it,” said Thoddun, sipping his wine, “that this joy in geographical discovery will not take all afternoon?”
Egil looked up, alight with excitement. “Are you going to tell her then? The truth? I mean the real truth -”
“Quiet,” Thoddun said. “If I am to do what I never do, I need quiet. Come sit by me, brat.” Egil went at once, subdued. “You see,” Thoddun continued, “I am not an ordinary man. And this child is no ordinary child. He was abandoned by parents who were frightened of what he seemed, even so young, to represent. It was not you who brought the curse to your home and family. It was him.”
“I thought there was no curse,” whispered Skarga.
“It would have been more useful, had he learned how to use it,” said Thoddun. “But the boy had no understanding of his own powers, as those of my kind do not, unless they are taught. Only childish anger released some wandering malice, never enough for him to suspect its source. Sometimes he wondered if you nourished a latent magic, but you refuted it, and he could not be sure. He never imagined his own. Had he known, it would have frightened him.”
“I’m never frightened,” said Egil.
“I told you not to interrupt.” Thoddun turned back again to Skarga. “We are subhuman,” he said abruptly. “It troubles some of us.”
Egil sniffed. “Certainly never troubled you. Not me, neither.”
“Because you did not even know of it.” Thoddun smiled down on the urchin wrapped in the white fur, cuddled possessively to his side. “And if you interrupt me again I will banish you to the snows. Better still, fetch more wine.”
Egil rose cheerfully and collected the empty cups. Skarga watched as the boy left, unable to stop looking at him. Through the fear had come the sublime. “Having Egil back is magical indeed,” she said. “But I don’t understand what you’re saying. I don’t understand how you saved him. I watched him drown. I watched Gunulf killed.”
“I saw you there,” Thoddun nodded. “For a woman who cannot swim and is frightened of the oceans, you showed courage. You almost succeeded in saving him but I stopped you. Had you rescued the child, you would both have died.”
“You weren’t there,” Skarga insisted. “I thought you very far away. I thought you were dead too.”
Thoddun smiled. “I am a little harder to kill than that.” Egil reappeared with the wine, curling again at Thoddun’s side. “I have told you I am subhuman, and the boy also,” he continued, “but you can have no concept of what that means. I am one of the transanima. One of the Werebeasts. A shape changer. You will not understand that either, but it is the truth.”
The little fire crackled and a gentle drip of seeping melt echoed but there was no other sound. The silence grew and Thoddun seemed disinclined to break its mood. All her life she had been taught to believe in monsters and magic, but now she faced them she could not believe it, especially of the child she had brought up herself. Then Egil leaned forward and said, “Transanima. Thoddun says it’s to do with being more than just yourself. Odinn was one too, he says, a shape-shifter like us, and not really a god at all.”
“Odinn was one of the Aesir, as we are,” Thoddun said, “but that does not make us gods. We are far less than gods. Perhaps we are less than men. Those who discovered Odinn’s nature long ago, found him both terrifying and wonderful. Men tend to worship anything which combines terror and wonder. So they called him a god and the first fables were born. It is important to remember that we are not gods. Perhaps we are monsters. You are right to be frightened.”
Skarga gazed from Thoddun to Egil. “Odinn is the Raven,” she whispered.
“He was,” said Thoddun. “I am sure you know what Egil is.”
Skarga held her breath. “The eagle.”
Egil blushed and retreated to his wine cup. Thoddun said, “We are an old, old race, but we are dying out and in all my travels I have found few south of Nor’way’s snows. We breed slowly or not at all, but perhaps that is best. In every place and to all those I discover, I offer the protection of understanding and like company. Not all of us search for safety and many refuse me. Most who accept, join my crew and come to my northern realms. We have retreated to an Arctic asylum where we cannot be so easily persecuted.”
“Shape-changers. The great sea beast?” said Skarga into the pause.
“That was Thoddun,” Egil said, eyes glowing. “He’s the Sea Wolf. First he saved us from the sea after we took the rowing boat and got caught in the storm. Then he saved my life at the end, when I should have drowned.”
“And killed Gunulf? You should have killed Asved.”
“He will,” smiled Egil.
“Asved is following me,” said Skarga, eyes back in her lap.
“I know about your brother,” Thoddun spoke softly. “And I know about Grimr, the man whose name I took. I have always known about Grimr. He has been my enemy for a very long time.”
Skarga blinked, opened her mouth to speak and then shut it again. Thoddun answered the words she had not said. “Taking the name of my enemy bothered me not in the least. Why should it? There is no magic in a name. But I know a great deal about Grimr and because you have never learned to discipline or close your mind, I know something of what he did to you. But that is your past and your memory. I have my own.”
She nodded, discomforted. But she recognised a new safety, and with Egil returned to her now even Grimr and Asved seemed very far away, threat fading. “Please tell me I won’t wake up in the snow outside. Tell me this is real.”
“Thoddun says reality is all illusion,” said Egil, screwing up his nose. “He says lots of things I don’t understand yet.”
“And the bears,” Skarga peered around but no other creature had entered the hall. She turned to Egil. “Are they magic too?”
Egil rubbed his nose. “It’s the Lord Thoddun who knows everything. Don’t you, my lord?”
Thoddun seemed content, stretching back in silence, watching beneath heavy lowered lids. He held out his empty cup. “I know I’m thirsty.”
As Egil left again, she asked, “These tunnels under the mountains, it’s your home? And the bears live here too?”
Thoddun laughed. “The assumptions of the ignorant. These are impossible questions.” He rose, pushing the golden tangles from his forehead. The small room had become hot. “I’ve already told you more than I have ever told a human in my life before. I am not accustomed to explaining myself, or my race. For any further understanding, you must give me time. And you need time yourself. It will be both difficult for you to comprehend, and for me to be patient with your incomprehension.”
“But you mean to explain? Eventually?”
“There is, for instance, a young man, who will smile at you during the feast tonight, and raise his cup. You should smile back.” Thoddun chuckled. “That will be Karr, whom you have met already. You owe him your thanks.”
Skarga sighed. “But you t
old me Karr was a bear. When I fell in through the snow, the bear I saw -”
Thoddun shook his head. “Sleep first. You will dream deep, and afterwards my answers, those I decide to give, will seem more acceptable.”
As Egil returned, Thoddun strode from the room and Skarga sat in silence and watched him go. As he left, it seemed as though the lights went out. She breathed a deep sigh of relief that he had gone, while wishing, very much, that he would come back.
“I missed you,” Egil murmured.
“I missed you so much. Very, very much. If only I’d known you were safe.”
“I was sick for a long time,” said Egil. “I’d almost drowned. Lord Thoddun nursed me. He strengthened the eagle to bring back the boy.”
Skarga sighed. “I see.”
“Of course you don’t,” Egil said. “I didn’t either, but then Thoddun explained what being transanima means. I hated it at first. But he taught me how to love it.”
“Being an eagle?”
“And he’s the sea beast. The orca. But he’s more much than that,” said Egil.
“So tell me,” Skarga said, clutching his hands, “about what happened. First about yourself. Then about him. Then about the bears, and this place, and how he knew where I was, and how you got me to fall through his ceiling right here.”
“Thoddun says you have to sleep first, and he always knows best. And I want him to tell you everything. I wouldn’t say it right. And I don’t want you to hate me.”
She stared. “Don’t be ridiculous.” The terrible weariness had left her. She was warm, every part of her body soothed by heat and comfort, and her mind buzzed and dazzled. She believed she would never sleep again.
But Egil said, “Come on. I’ll show you where,” already scrambling up, dragging at her hand. She reached for her wolfskin. “Our lord says you have to sleep in peace for a long time. I’ll come and get you later. He’ll send me.”
He was leading her through ice corridors. “I’d sooner explore,” she complained. “It can’t be night yet. The sun wasn’t even full when I fell.”
Egil shook his head. “Living underground, we don’t have night and day. We just do things when we feel like doing them. But these are old tunnels and Thoddun doesn’t usually live this far south. It’s different in his castle way up north. We only came down here to get you.”
“How could he know where I was?” Still tugged through the narrow shadows, she followed Egil to a tiny hollowed cave. The walls were rocky, surfaced in thin ice. The floor was again furred, and deep with sealskins.
“You’ll be safe here, lady,” Egil said. “I promise you will. Thoddun never meant to hurt you, you know, when we were on the island. He wanted to waken me to what I am. He wanted to train me with you out of the way in case you got frightened and interfered. He wasn’t very nice to you but I don’t think he cared about that.”
Egil knelt beside her and Skarga sank down, stretching out and rubbing the seal silk against her cheek. She wondered whether, once Egil had gone, it would be safe to undress. “I understand perfectly,” she said. “He disliked me and made that very clear. I suppose he still does.”
“He went to a lot of trouble to rescue you,” said Egil. “When I begged him, he didn’t listen at first, but then he did. He’s kind to the young ones. He understands what we’ve been through. So he does a lot for me. I always do what he asks me to do as well.”
Skarga kissed his cheek. It wasn’t grimy anymore. “And how does a beautiful golden bird live underground in tunnels of snow?”
Egil blushed. “It doesn’t work like that. Not really. It’s complicated. And I don’t want to talk about it yet.” He left her and when he closed the big carved door, there was only the grey touch of seal and the cool drift of vapour from the walls.
Skarga removed all her spoiled finery, threw her discarded tunic against the far rock wall, watched it slip down the ice sheen into a damp heap on the sealskins, and aimed the two silver brooches after it. She tugged off Grimr’s expensive armlet and threw that too. Her hair was knotted and dirty. She had no comb. She thought she smelled of leaf mulch, rock dust and sweat. She smiled, as if remaining unclean was the most exciting thing of all. She lay back, stretching out her arms, kicking off her boots and flexing her toes. Such wild freedom felt thrillingly wicked and utterly desirable. No one would punish her and no one cared, not even one little bit, that she had neither washed nor groomed herself, that she was undoubtedly a slut, and that she was far, far away from home in a place of impossible fantasy which did not really exist at all.
She stored bow, quiver and knife with her belt close beside her, just in case, and straightened the pleating of her shift modestly down over her stockinged ankles. She imagined, with a tiny delighted and very private sigh, the six men with their pack of dogs somewhere far above, trudging through the endless bitter freeze and wondering how in Hel’s name she had managed, so completely, to disappear.
She did not know how long she slept, or how long she dreamed. Then, abruptly, she sat up with a lurch. Thoddun, with utter disregard for her privacy or state of undress, was sitting cross legged in the middle of her cave. He was clothed as he always was and the bear skin cloak was around his shoulders. His rough woollen sleeved elbows rested on the coarse cambric knees, his chin cupped in his hands. The crystal blue of his eyes sparkled, as if they carried the reflections of the sea shallows and the dance of the spray.
“Now then,” he said, “I’m going to tell you a story.”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
“There were more of us once,” said the apparition. “But I have been born into a dying race. Long ago we were worshipped. A mistake. Now we are more often reviled and threatened. That is also a mistake. But I acknowledge the fear of the common man who knows only one skin around his common humanity.”
There was snow spray like tiny crystal beads in Thoddun’s gold-swept hair, but the shadows were deep around him. “At the dawn of creation, all the monsters were sent to live in Utgard,” whispered Skarga. “Is that where you come from?”
Thoddun smiled. “Do I seem to be a monster? Yet perhaps that is what I am.” It was the bard’s voice, deeper than Grimr’s, rich and compelling, the voice that had recited the sagas in the hall of the Sheep Islands, long ago. “But the old stories are man’s inventions,” he continued. “The mythic tree, wrapped around forgotten acorns of truth. Odinn was transanima as I am, one of the first we know of, though the race was even older. Odinn had the wisdom of the werepeople and all the magic of his kind, so the simple villagers worshipped him. Since his death, his fame has been interwoven with other stories, refashioned with all time’s sunshine and shadows, creating a new religion out of an old one. There is no Utgard, no Jormundgandr, no giants nor trolls. Are you disappointed?”
“But there are shape-changers,” Skarga murmured, “who seem the strangest of all.”
“No life is easy,” said Thoddun. “We are all strange to each other, each man to each man, and each transanima to another. You have come to know Grimr. Do you find him less strange?”
Skarga frowned. “He changes too. Not his shape, but his mind and his heart.”
“No,” Thoddun shook his head. “He is utterly singular, and utterly narrow, having become rigidly compressed. But like us all, he has excuses, with which he was born, whether he acknowledges them or not. Cruelty has become his focus, and perhaps he had no choice. But we are all strange because we are all strangers to each other, and often also to ourselves.”
Skarga did not wish to talk about Grimr. “Is it harder for Egil?” she asked. “Because he’s just a little boy?”
“No,” Thoddun said again. “It would have been easier had he been younger still. He has seen ten or eleven northern winters, and that is almost grown. I sailed with the northern pirates to war and ravage the Saxon lands when I was twelve. That was when I found my own answers.”
“You found the sea?” said Skarga. “Because you’re the sea beast? The whale?”
Thoddun looked at her a long time and then smiled. The scar beneath his eye lifted as if cresting the waves and the smiling lines around the man’s mouth seemed suddenly salt crusted. “Yes, I carry the anima of the orca, which men call the sea-wolf,” he said at last. “Though speaking openly of these things, you being only a mortal who cannot see the great truths, seems unutterably strange to me. I have never spoken of my private self to humans before. It is not either my wish or my practise, but because of the boy I have allowed you to come here. So I will answer your questions. But you will not understand.”
“I know you don’t like me,” said Skarga softly. “Perhaps I seem dull, being only myself. I know you find me uninteresting. But you think I’m stupid and I’m not stupid. I can understand, if you choose to explain.”
Thoddun was silent again for some time before he spoke. “I am not sure that I choose to explain,” he said eventually. “But courtesy demands some answers and I do not dislike you. Whether or not you are stupid, is irrelevant to me. You will still not understand.”
“You may not dislike me,” Skarga said, “but clearly you don’t like me either.”
“Naturally,” Thoddun raised one eyebrow. “Why should I like you? I’ve found no reason to do so, and it’s true that I find you uninteresting. You once spoke to me of gratitude. You should be aware of gratitude now, since I’m explaining what I never explain. I offer hospitality and explanations. You should expect little else from me.”
“I am deeply grateful for my life.” Skarga lowered her eyes...
“Egil was the cause of that, not myself,” said Thoddun. “Now, do you have questions that are at least relevant?”
“Yes,” Skarga looked up sharply. “Of course I do. Hundreds. What does it really mean, this transanima that you talk about? I’ve seen eagles watching me, many times. But they always did, back when I walked with Egil, so he wasn’t one of them then. But did they recognise him? He always loved the birds and the golden eagle most of all. Do you mean he can fly? How can a little boy fly?” She sat back against the wall, the slip of ice soaking her shift. “And you. How can a man turn into something else? What does it feel like? What does subhuman mean? I saw the sea beast that carried our boat to shore when we were caught in the storm. And I saw the same beast kill Gunulf when I thought Egil had drowned. Does the thing do what you tell it to? Or is it really you?”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 26