Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  She saw them returning now, little shimmering shadows bounding through the snow fall, ears alert and pricked, smelling the carcass of the bear. Thoddun rose at once and strode out to meet them, merging into the white bluster, speaking in the strange language he used to the animals. The dogs clustered around him, paws up to his knees, tails wagging, hopeful.

  He came back to Skarga. “They found little food,” he told her. “The weather is closing in again and another blizzard is coming. I’ll give them time here before we move on.” The dogs had gone to the dead bear and Skarga could hear them growling. She could not see, nor tried to look. Thoddun said abruptly, “Are you interested in my judgements? You have no need to be. If you are not, I’ll not weary you with them.”

  Skarga was surprised. “Yes, I’m interested,” she said. “I know you’re not interested in mine. But I expect my life depends on yours.”

  The dogs had dragged the ragged hollow fur across the snows and a trail of pale dead blood was smeared long and thin, congealing into black ice. They squabbled as they fed, tearing at the belly. Thoddun raised his voice over the snarls and crunching of bone. “You are being,” he said, “remarkably polite.”

  Skarga sniffed. “So are you. Is it because I tried to save your life? But you weren’t in real danger, were you. I thought about it afterwards. You only pretended to be badly wounded, to fool it and trick it, so to kill it more easily. I know because I can see your wounds now. You’re hardly marked at all.” She watched his smile broaden. “See, I’m not so stupid.” She paused, her own smile peeping. “Not all the time, anyway.”

  He laughed and for a moment it sounded like the growling of the dogs. It was an illusion she remembered having once before, somewhere different, with someone else. “Playing injured is an old trick,” Thoddun said. “But you were brave. For a human, a female, with a broken ankle, your courage was unusual. But it’s not why I’m being what you call polite.”

  “Just because you feel sorry for me?”

  He said, “Pity is a human emotion and not one I experience willingly. I’m being – pleasant – simply because now I believe I can trust you. Your reactions have proved trustworthy. That’s rare. It’s an impression I enjoy. Perhaps it has something to do with growing fond of you. Make what you will of it.”

  Skarga thought of several things to say and said none of them. Eventually she murmured, “Thank you. Now you asked me if I wanted your opinions and judgements. And I do.”

  The dogs were still gnawing though the noise had dulled. Between five of them, there would now be little left worth chewing.

  “Simply this,” said Thoddun. “I’m taking you north to my halls. You should be comfortable there for the immediate future. You’ve proved yourself unembarrassed by the habits of my people and you show some understanding. I’ll try and keep you entertained, and Egil will keep you company. But it cannot last. You must eventually return to your own people. You’ll not want to go back to your family so I’ll try and devise some place to take you where you can be happy enough, according to humanity’s standards. It might help you to discuss preferences.”

  It sounded suddenly very bleak. Skarga hung her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I never make plans because I never expect them to work. I’ve never had expectations.”

  The dogs were drifting back, licking each other’s blood darkened muzzles, tails wagging, reasserting dominance. The lead dog stood beside his harness, lying in the snow. Thoddun trudged over and buckled the leather, looping the reins over the sled’s bench seat. Behind him the dead bear lay in torn ribbons of flat, dirty hair. Its paws remained, four huge pads splayed from an empty frame. Its skull was smashed open and the brain eaten, but the liver had been ignored, spread in one fine spiral of diminishing warmth.

  Then Thoddun put both hands around Skarga’s waist, lifted her up and gently balanced her over his shoulder. A moment’s dizziness, and she was bumped up onto the sled’s driving seat where she sat and blinked. He had slung her over his shoulder once before when she had first met him, but it had been quite different. He had hauled her up like a wadmal sack, and let her head bounce down against his back. This time he had been studiously careful. Now he climbed up beside her, pulled on his gloves and took the reins. The dogs began to trot.

  He had not yet replied to her, but Skarga risked a quickly rehearsed question. “I’m glad you trust me,” she said. She clasped her hands in her lap and looked up at him. “But why didn’t you trust me before? I’m hardly a threat. Isn’t it me who wasn’t supposed to trust you?”

  She was tucked up close to his side, thick wrapped in fur. He looked down at her a moment, closely but not unkindly, before returning his gaze to the snows ahead. “I tend to distrust humanity,” he said briefly. “I have good reason. And humanity tends to distrust my people, also for good reasons. I accept the necessity for both.”

  “But you are human,” she pointed out.

  “No,” he answered her. “You are not listening. I am man, but not human man. I am transanima man, and that is something else entirely. After everything you have seen, you should appreciate the difference.”

  “I expect people are frightened when they – if they see – and it’s hard to trust anyone who’s different,” said Skarga softly. “Yet once the transanima were worshipped as gods.”

  “Mortal men now hate and fear us, and kill us when they can,” said Thoddun. “Those who worshipped us also feared us. The blame is partly our own since we keep our secrets close and live in isolation, but that’s a choice based on experience. We are dangerous to you. You are dangerous to us. So I do not trust humanity.” Immediately she remembered the Sheep Islands. She remembered the village women and his crew who did not keep themselves so isolated. Skarga blushed, and hoping he would not read her mind, banished the memory. “Too late,” he said. The little tucked smile faded. The gentleness in his voice turned abrupt and his expression hardened, snow to ice. “Yes, we cohabit at times when it suits us.” he said. “I told you I don’t rape women, but nor do I care for them. You don’t have to love a woman to make love to her. We do not share the truth of our identities with them, nor show our real selves. But it is not a subject I’d have expected to discuss with you.”

  Skarga looked away. “I didn’t ask to discuss it. I never said it aloud. It’s your fault for poking about in my mind. And I know what it’s like to be lonely and I can imagine what it’s like to be away so long without – well, without your own women.”

  He stared down at her again, seemingly amused, but tinged with a flicker of malice. “Ah,” he murmured, “I remember your interruptions when I had you on my hands in the Western Islands, and when I thought you an insufferable nuisance. And I doubt my men were suffering from anything as wholesome as simple loneliness. As for what you call our own women, there are almost none left. There are the seal women in the Pictish lands who call themselves Selkie, though they’ll not look beyond their own kind unless it’s a human they can seduce and drown. Amongst the rest of us, few females are born and most don’t survive. That was why I was particularly interested when I thought you one of us, and disappointed when I realised you were not. My mother was transanima, but she was unusually strong. She was not what you might call – gentle.”

  “Where does she live?” Skarga wondered. “In the north with you?”

  “No,” he answered. “In her grave.”

  “It would be strange for a father,” she said, “to discover his son –”

  “My father shares the same burial mound,” Thoddun interrupted her. “But when I offered to answer your questions, I hardly expected to discuss either my sexual preferences, or my personal family. It seems that humanity, even the more trustworthy of them, can still surprise me.”

  Skarga glared. “I didn’t ask those things,” she said. “I wouldn’t ever be so rude. You rummaged into my head again.”

  “I must point out that I neither rummage in your head nor poke about in your mind, what there is of it,” he said.
“It lies open to me, clear and unshadowed. I cannot help but see it. You should either control your more impertinent thoughts, or shut your mind altogether.”

  “I don’t know how to,” she said with a sniff. “Thoughts just float around on the surface and pop in and out.”

  “How inconvenient for you,” murmured Thoddun. “I can only be glad not to share your humanity.”

  Skarga sat still and forlorn and felt she had somehow lost something precious. And if Thoddun read that thought, he said nothing about it at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The silence stretched. The falling snow thickened and the three leading dogs were muffled by the rolling white wind, only the backs of the last two visible, tails tucked thin between their legs. The endless night hid its stars. Black and white, a study in speed, and the hush of swallowed sound.

  Skarga had been thinking about it for agonised ages, but had said nothing and indeed there had been moments, as her bladder quietly tormented her, when she wished Thoddun’s mind reading skills would reassert. He had neither spoken nor looked at her for a long time. The snow was thick amongst the tangles of his hair, and coated his body in fine soft white. She, meanwhile, had both fur cloaks, and was trussed like a padded mattress, winter rugged.

  She was gradually learning the list of subjects that clearly angered her rescuer. Querying Thoddun’s bed habits, which she had certainly never meant to do, was a predictably unwise topic, but she had not expected his parents to be included on the forbidden list. Indeed, he had mentioned his mother first himself, but had then abruptly closed the subject. He claimed to trust her. She doubted it was entirely true. Perhaps he trusted her within the boundaries of his own making. She, on the other hand, did not trust him at all.

  Desperately ignoring the violent insistence of her bladder, Skarga wondered again, as she had been wondering for many miles, the answer to Thoddun’s original question regarding her future. Once again she would aim south. With the blizzard in her eyes and her mouth full of snow, tongue numbed and nose colder than any bear’s, she adored the thought of sunshine on flowered fields. She had drunk wine from somewhere called Italy, and more from Iberia. If those places were too far or too inhospitable, there was always the country of the Saxons, where immigrants from Nor’way often settled, and her language would at least be known.

  She wondered also what Thoddun might do when his patience with her ended. He had promised not to kill her, but then Grimr had said that once too. Thoddun told her she could not stay indefinitely in his home. She would have no business there, no rights among people more magical than human. But whether outstaying her welcome might lead to violence, she could only guess. He had stopped himself Changing when he considered her too temptingly vulnerable. If he didn’t trust himself, then she should not do so either. And there was Egil. Alive, wonderfully alive, but Egil was lost to her now. He should stay with Thoddun and the others of his new discovered race.

  Skarga kept her legs squeezed tight, breathed slowly and shut her eyes against the sting of the wind. She forced her mind up from her bladder.

  Thoddun liked to sail. If he agreed to take her where she chose, it would be important to choose somewhere convenient, being important not to stretch his generosity or further antagonise him. But her sense of direction was vague. Everywhere was beyond the sea and the entire world pointed west and south. Again banishing thoughts of belly and bladder, she had begun to list all the places in the world that she had heard of, a very short list ending with the dismal Sheep Islands, when suddenly Thoddun sighed deeply and slung down the looped reins onto his knees. “If you need to piss,” he said in a resigned voice, “why don’t you just ask?”

  Jerked from drifting reveries, Skarga glowered. “You could have said that before. You knew miles ago, didn’t you? I’ve been suffering for ages and ages.”

  “It’s your piss,” said Thoddun reasonably. He had stopped the sled. “Everyone has to. It’s not as if this is the first time.”

  “But this time,” said Skarga, “I can’t walk.”

  He laughed. “Ah yes. I’d forgotten about that.” He jumped down into the deep crunch and walked around to her side, holding out his arms. “Come on then.”

  She wriggled into his outstretched embrace, immediately secure in his grasp. His body, so thinly covered, seemed vibrantly warm. Within her swathes Skarga still shivered. Knowing, but saying nothing, he swung her from the sled down to the snows. She hopped a moment, hanging onto his shoulder, looking up at him beseechingly. “You’ll have to go away.”

  “And leave you to collapse?”

  “I’ll manage,” she said, wondering if she would.

  He laughed again, and settled her gently on the wet ground. “And how far must I march away into the storm, to satisfy your privacy?”

  She wished he’d hurry up or there’d be no point. “Not far. Just look the other way.”

  “And if,” he continued with studied provocation, “I want to piss too, must I also hide myself?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she begged. “Please just leave.”

  “In that case,” he grinned, turning, “I shall piss off.”

  He returned a few moments later, sweeping her up into his arms, his good humour restored. “All pissed out?” he inquired politely.

  Skarga sniffed. “No need to make me feel stupid.”

  Suddenly and unexpectedly he leaned over with her still in his arms, and again kissed the tip of her nose. “Silly cub,” he said. “You humans do have some remarkably delicate sensibilities. You consistently foul your own nests and then pretend modesty.” He carried her bodily up onto the sled and set her in place, sitting once more beside her and taking up the reins. “And,” he continued as she sat in meek silence, “I can tell you that making this journey by sled is tedious enough, without having noxious dross constantly pouring into my ears. The endless effluent of your unfocused thoughts is sometimes quite astonishing. I’m surprised it doesn’t exhaust you.”

  “I have never in my life fouled my nest,” Skarga answered with dignity, “And if you’re just trying to annoy me again, there are surely more subtle ways of doing it. I hate the knowledge of you in my head and I can’t be sure what you can hear and what you can’t. It’s upsetting. And I don’t try to be boring.”

  “I suppose you don’t try to be a damned inconvenience either,” he said with a faint sigh. “It’s not your fault you’re human and drearily singular.”

  Skarga resisted the temptation to argue. Eventually she said, “I’m sorry about the inconvenience and I’ve tried not to be. But perhaps you could try not to listen to my thoughts.”

  He shrugged. “I’m a sea eagle, not a raven. I don’t scavenge scraps or pick at midden heaps. As I’ve told you already, your shallows spin into my mind just as clearly as though you shouted them into my ears. If you don’t want me hearing your thoughts then learn to fillet them, and what you want to keep, bury deep.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” said Skarga in a very small voice.

  “Then put up with me in your head,” he said, grinning suddenly. “There may be times when you’ll be pleased enough.”

  She couldn’t imagine when. She switched subjects, dreading another long, freezing silence. As she spoke, her breath wisped up before her, like her own little fog of warmth. “I was wondering about where to go. I mean eventually, when you throw me out.” She knew he was laughing at her again, but was becoming as used to that as she was to the cold.

  He said, “I doubt I shall throw you out. Not bodily anyway, unless you annoy me considerably. As for your future destination, I’ve been listening to the nonsense you’ve been planning for some miles. Since you seem to have no idea, let me explain that I can’t just drop you off in some strange country and allow you to plod inland on your own. You’d be taken and sold into slavery at once, and end up in some potentate’s bed.”

  Skarga sniffed. Grimr would have cuffed her for it. “Well, people keep telling me I’m not attractive enough,”
she said. “So perhaps I wouldn’t.”

  Thoddun chuckled, looking down at her. “Are Arab slave dealers that fussy?” he said. “I doubt it. If not rape and a harem, then slavery in the kitchens. Besides, you’re not too bad looking for a human.”

  Though absurdly pleased, she subsided immediately, afraid he’d read her thoughts. “Well, I don’t know where I ought to go.”

  “I’ll sort something out,” Thoddun said. “You lack intelligence, but you’ve the courage to survive. Some Norse colony in Angleland might be best. If I’m killed, or you lose my protection for some other reason, that’s where you should make for.”

  It sounded suddenly very lonely. “I’ll remember,” she said, subdued.

  He laughed again. “I don’t intend to get killed, any more than you intend to be tiresome,” he said. “You can stay at my hall for the time being. I doubt you’ll see much of me, so you’ll be comfortable enough. If you’re good, I’ll take you swimming again. Or flying perhaps. Would you like that?”

  She nodded vigorously beneath her furs. “I would. I loved the ocean. Not as myself, you understand, but as the sea beast. When Egil used to talk about the birds and say how he’d love to fly, I always thought I would too, though it was just the idea of limitless freedom that appealed to me. Of course, now he really does fly. I just can’t imagine how that happens.”

  He was silent for a moment, leaving her wishing she could read his thoughts, but she was surprised when he spoke. “The Shift is a hard thing to explain,” he said. “You have no intimate comprehension of the need, of the desire. I’ve only ever explained it to the young transanima, and they already know the impulse. It’s in their minds long before, almost from birth. The first real Change usually comes at eleven or twelve years, when a boy starts becoming a man, or a woman begins her bleeding. Though, to be honest, I’ve never tutored a woman. There are none living in my halls.”