Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Not cold?”

  “Freezing.”

  “I’ve sent Erik heading seawards,” nodded Thoddun. “He’ll be back soon. There’s no lemmings and he’s not experienced enough for hunting over water yet. Then I’ll take Egil up. You should go back into the warm.”

  She thought his eyes luminous. His shoulders slouched, melting into the dark as if his arms felt unusually heavy and the angle of his elbows unnatural. His mouth was tip tilted, and intensely content. She could tell he had recently Shifted. She said, “I don’t mind waiting. I don’t mind even though you all hide from me. Will any of you ever feel comfortable enough to Change, and not care about me watching?”

  Egil shook his head. “I don’t know. One day.”

  Thoddun grinned. “When I’ve finished teaching the boys, perhaps I’ll teach you too.”

  She wished he could. “You took me flying once.”

  “A cheap second-hand trip,” he nodded. “Shall I take you instead over the oceans? Will you come with me and follow the fleets of raiding langskips, watch the Saxons battle your Norsemen until the fields are soaked in blood, heaped with bodies of the dead and the screams of the dying, like wolves howling from the forests? Then will you roost with me till the sun comes up behind the hills, and swoop down to feed on the corpses, and on the living as well if they lie too injured to rise? Will you feast there with me, and understand truly the freedom of an eagle’s mind?”

  “You wouldn’t say those things if you hadn’t just Shifted,” she said. “I’m getting to know you. After Changing, you always challenge what you call my humanity. And humans are scavengers too. But I don’t think I could eat raw Saxon.” She had adored the great sea eagle and seen them all magnificently winged, feathered beauty, evil eyed and dangerous. She had seen Thoddun in all his guises. The bear had carried her, had kissed her face. Each of his channels had once saved her life. But he would still not Shift before her if he could avoid it.

  Egil said, “Erik’s flying over now. Look.”

  “I’ll bring him in,” Thoddun said. He crossed the ice alone, striding off back into the distant moonshine. Egil scuttled behind.

  The silver snow-bird descended slowly like a floating feather on a warm current. It landed at Thoddun’s feet, bent its head and shivered. The fluff tufts around its feet caught the damp and it scratched its claws along the ice.

  “Wait,” said Thoddun. “Breathe deep before Changing. Straighten. Lift your head. Now close your eyes.”

  The owl shuddered. The dazzling white of its plumage ruffled with a faint rattle of quills and a flurry of down. It lifted its head and gazed up, black eyed, at its tutor. Then it blinked slowly, and finally closed its eyes. Its wings hunched.

  “No,” said Thoddun. “Straighten. Wings back. Begin from the width of the chest and directly into the arms.”

  Very gradually the boy returned. The mottled sheen of his hair gleamed through around the eyes. The back lengthened, arching upwards and reclaiming its shoulders. The claws kicked, were feet, then booted. Erik opened his eyes.

  “Stay,” Thoddun ordered him. “Breathe, spread the ribs, breathe again. Do not step forwards, move only upwards and outwards. Flex your fingers.”

  Erik kept blinking, as if dazzled by the ice. Thoddun pressed the flat of his palm against the boy’s back, behind the thudding of his heart. He pushed. “Lean back against me,” he commanded. “Press against my hand. Now – lower your heart beat. Deepen it as I’ve taught you. Slow it, one beat from two. Pace it.”

  Egil was watching from a distance. “Did you hunt? Was it too cold, or did you find prey? What was it like?”

  Erik relaxed his shoulders. “No, there wasn’t anything out there. Not unless you count walrus. And I certainly didn’t want to start a rookery panic.”

  Egil giggled. “That would have sent Thoddun out on the hunt instead of us.”

  “If,” said Thoddun, “you want me to take you up at all, brat, you will now be quiet.” He turned back to Erik, who was panting a little, and flapping his arms to warm himself. “You were still too quick,” Thoddun said. “Or you’d be neither cold, nor breathless.”

  Erik looked up at him, suddenly crestfallen. “Was I that bad?”

  Thoddun smiled. “No. It was better. But still not sufficiently controlled. Now I’m taking Egil up, so run back and keep warm.”

  “Is Skarga still waiting?”

  “She is,” said Thoddun. “Take her back inside the castle. There’s a high wind blowing in from the sea. Early spring brings early storms.”

  The funeral pyre still smouldered in flying ashes, seemingly just dead memories until a gusting breeze awakened a spark. Each spark flared in the sooty embers before sinking back again, its gleam once more reduced to spit and the drift of ash. But it had not snowed since the pyre was at its blazing height, and no floating white cloak yet doused the last of the crackle.

  The great hall, the largest in the ice domain, was not so quiet. Another fire danced, this time a smaller cosier warmth across the central stone slab. The transanima were planning aloud, anticipating battle and a war of bitter consequence against the humans who had always misunderstood and always hounded them. Their drinking horns raised, honeyed wines in an overflowing slurp as the men settled cheerfully to a long evening, pushing against each other for comfort either slumped on the ground, the elders circling the fire, or against the walls where there would be greater space to Shift, should that moment come. Watchful eyes stared scarlet in a reflected scattering of flame. More than three hundred men filled the shadows, waiting for the words of the one man who stood before them, his back to the fire.

  Thoddun remained silent for some time as his people settled. And at his feet curled his consort, wide eyed and nervous. Skarga felt the solid strength of his legs at her back, the rough ties of his britches, and the protective knowledge that he understood her fears and her courage and would make immediate alterations for her care should he believe it necessary.

  But it was no war council. Thoddun waited only for his people’s comfort, and then he began to speak. It was the bard’s voice, soft and low and rhythmic, and it was a saga to be refined and enlarged over the years. It began in the ice halls around the fire, but it told of a time long before.

  “Orm was one of the old ones,” he said, his voice reverberating and merging with the crackle of the fire and the moving shadows, the creak of the frozen struts and the whistle of the wind creeping through the beams. His voice was a murmur as musical as repeated echoes whispering from ice floe to ocean wave and the song of the stars in the winter dark. The bard’s magic.

  “As a youth, long, long ago in time’s forgotten childhood when the gods ruled and the transanima were worshipped, Orm did not know himself as one of them. The yearning which we all know, but which was once a sufferance to most of us before the first Shift, was stronger in him than in others. For the creature he nursed within was not a wild thing or a tamed thing, but a creature unknown to any.

  “Orm was fourteen years and ready to go to sea when the suffering became too great even for his strength to carry. The captain of the longship, finding him dreaming at his oars, had him whipped. Orm threw himself from the gunwales and, thinking to repudiate life in favour of a dismal death, dived below the freezing waters. And there, even without understanding or belief, he Shifted.

  “His first Shift sent him deep. The sea monster of a thousand nightmares wrapped its limbs around his lungs, its tail coiled around his legs, and he thought himself engulfed, eaten, swallowed whole, as if in his dying moment. But then, stretching in glory, found himself the tail, himself the yawning jaws, himself the golden scales. And the passion of a transanima who discovers himself was the most terrifying and the most marvellous experience of all.

  “When he surfaced, he was gazing at an unknown land and a deserted coast. He Shifted back, the exhilaration fading, thinking himself a troll, demon or a giant of the great mountains. There were no golden serpents in the valleys where he was bor
n south of Jutland, and only tales of Jormundgandr, the fearsome beast of the oceans. And so he kept his secret, joined other ships, went fighting in the Saxon lands, and Shifted only when utterly alone, and the yearning was too great for him to resist.

  “I was not yet born, and it was my father who found him. They became friends, of a sort, although my father was friend to no one without also becoming his enemy. And so Orm learned, then came close, and then moved away. It was not until I was old enough to know myself, that Orm finally returned and eventually he and I understood each other. It was together that we travelled, even north to the battling hoards of the Rus and east to initiate the Varangian Guard in the city of the inland seas. Eventually it was together that we settled here.

  “No dragon-nature cossets its young. No dragon soothes, nor follows without challenge. He was older and fiercer than I had wish to be. I always knew that Orm suffered the greatest yearnings, the greatest frustrations and the greatest inner anger which churned constantly in his belly. It is no surprise that, finally, it was my hand that brought him the peace of death. But he has gone to Odin’s side, and there he will be understood in the deepest joy, which he could never find in our company. Each of us is alone and each of us is misunderstood. But the only living sea-dragon was the most alone of all.”

  The smoke from the fire curled up to the roof in swirls of blue, grey and gentle musky browns, wrapping around the rough beams and climbing up beyond the rafters. Faces formed in the haze, gradually disintegrated, reforming into echoes of the words so softly spoken. As Thoddun murmured of serpent scales, so the smoke twisted, crawling snake-like from flame to beams. The men squinted and peer, smoke in their throats and magic in their eyes, until Thoddun’s voice and the story and the smoke and the haze were all one. The saga sped fast through the joys of exploration and discovery, slowly through the miseries of loneliness and self-doubt. The misty curling fingers of flame and reflection echoed the words. The people, entranced in utter silence, sat as though their minds had left them, flying free amongst the memories, the hopes and the fears.

  And as the telling of it came close to the time of Orm’s death, so Thoddun’s story turned to chant. In the voice of the bard, the chanting was the most magical of all and the smoke sped faster, raging and racing into its own long forgotten sagas. And other voices joined the chant, until, in exultation, every man in the hall had raised his voice.

  Skarga hugged her knees. The telling of Orm’s story had enchanted her, and she was as lost in the magic of voice and tale as any transanima, delighting in the story she had never heard told. But then, quite suddenly as the chanting surrounded her and throbbed through her, pounding from ears to eyes and through every pulse, so she blinked and stared, finding Thoddun standing tall, eyes brilliant, in her own dizzy and incomprehensible head.

  “Run with me,” he whispered, still in the bard’s chant. “You have been swimming with me as the sea-wold. You have flown with me as the sea-eagle, now run with me as the sea-bear, and join with me in every way until we are twinned indeed.”

  She stood, wrapping her arms around him, and found she held the thick white fur of Thoddun the bear. But she didn’t climb on his back as once she had, for her own fur was as dense, and her four legs as strong. She was smaller, and he leaned down and licked her face, the heat of his dark tongue against her eyes. His black nose twitched, his own eyes so bright they bewitched her. She bowed her head to him, and although at first looking back to ensure his presence, turned, and began to run.

  She heard him at her side. Although he could outrun her if he wished with legs half again as long and twice as muscular, he chose to keep pace with her, and she felt his breath, easy and rhythmic, against her cheek, a hot wind flattening her hair, arousing excitement. She felt her heart beat faster. Her ears twitched in delight, she adored her own power, and the thrum thrum thrum of her paws on the hard iced snow. She kept running. Her own breath coiled up, steaming in the cold air, and its misty patterns reminded her of the smoke in the hall. But she was outside in the vast world of the northern bears, and it was the greatest freedom she had ever imagined. Nothing tired her. Nothing stopped her. She adored the flat wedge of her paws as they spread, taking her weight at each spring and step.

  And then, quite suddenly she realised something so exciting that she paused. It was the wonder of smell, which she could never before have imagined.

  The land became pungent. Each fresh swirl of wind carried new delights. She smelled the ice sharper than the softer snow, and the snow sharper than the trickling melt. She smelled the thickness of the ice and whether below there was sea salt or rocks with their secret mossy layers beneath the white. She sniffed, twitching her nose and capturing each spiced scent at the back of her throat, tastes waiting to surface when spring dawned, but still there to be discovered now, should she wish to dig. She smelled the open ocean far off with all its thrill of spray and storm, the slick calm waters, the rolling waves, and the wondrous wealth of hidden dwellers living within. She smelled seal colonies far off, a scent so arousing she was tempted to turn and run towards the call of it. She smelled the thrilling stench of dead whale many heartbeats away, blubber rich, as it appeased the hunger of other bears and the darting, hopeful foxes. She could smell the gliding indifference of an eagle up amongst the hidden clouds, and she knew the overpowering spice of a distant walrus rookery far south along the coast.

  But most of all, and most delicious of all, she smelled her mate as he ran alongside her. His body called to her in all the subtle mastery of a hundred thrilling thoughts, and she knew from his scent that he wanted her.

  She would have stopped then, for she wanted him as he wanted her. But then her partner’s huge bulk pushed against her and steered her from land to sea. She raced onto the sea ice, and could hear the sounds of the ocean beneath her feet. She smelled the shoals of fish and the gliding octopus. She knew the scuttle of crustaceans and the waving forest of water-weeds. The wind slashed into her eyes, but it was excitement, not the cold, that she felt.

  Far off she saw the waves roll in, and bounded towards them. From the final craggy cracks of the ice itself, she hurtled into the sudden freeze of the rolling dark waters. The pounding waves and the singing spray engulfed her. But her partner was still beside her, tight and firm and faithful, cheek to shoulder and rump to small tucked tail.

  The water took her deep, but with a kick she rebounded, her nose up into the air for breath, and then down again. She gazed through shining currents to the murk of seaweed swirling past her, swam hard and the plants spread before her, a back leg kicked out against the pressure and up once more. But Thoddun led her on until they reached the floating ice islands, and climbed up, dripping sodden with ocean weight, and shook themselves like playing puppies, each laughing in the shower of sparkling drops from the other’s fur. Then Thoddun lay down, his great body stretched, one white paw over hers. Skarga lay beside him, cuddling tight, and looked up at him in admiration and adoration. He blinked, long and slow, and his breath was a furnace against the icy damp of her nose. She put out her tongue, tasting his breath. And he crooned at her, a soft throat-bound grumble almost like a purr. And then he kissed her.

  Which is when she returned to discover herself human, and in his arms as he carried her bodily from the hall, and kissed her, his human tongue in her human mouth and his eyes glittering through the shadows of the long dark corridor.

  He laid her on their heaped silks, furs and woollen coverings, and lay beside her, his arms still wrapped tight. He whispered, “I should have mounted you while still the bear, my little love. But such an unaccustomed coupling might have frightened you. So I have brought you to our bed, and will take you here, man to woman, king to consort, which you will certainly find less challenging, far more familiar, and surely more comfortable.”

  Skarga blinked, finding her voice, and mumbled, “I didn’t know we could do that – as bears?”

  “It would only be a dream, little cub, since you cannot truly S
hift. But it would have seemed – as if you had. You would have felt every touch and learned the delight of mating without human limits. As I would have felt the same.”

  “Oh, Thoddun.” She sighed deep, rolling over against him. “But you Shift, even if I cannot. Would you – as the bear –?”

  “Nor had I Shifted, little weanling. Only in your head, to carry you into the dream with me.”

  Bemused, she said, voice muffled against him, “It was a beautiful dream. I felt your fur. I felt my own. I felt the thrill of running and running with the strength and power to run forever.”

  He smiled. “So which do you love the most, little human? The running of the bear? The swimming of the orca? Or the flight of the eagle?”

  She clung to him. “You Thoddun. Just you.”

  “Come to me now, then,” he murmured, “and I will show you the true strength to run forever.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  The war council took place intermittently over the following days. But Thoddun went alone to the great hall and Skarga remained in her bedchamber. She was dozing, listening to the tumbling water when Thoddun returned. He came directly to the bed and stretched out beside her, pulling her into the curve of his body, her head nestled on his shoulder. “Two days,” he said. “Only two more days, and then we leave. Two days by my reckoning, and it’s my reckoning that runs the time count here. Then it’s war. So I’ve two days more to enjoy you in peace, and teach you what I want you to know.”

  “Two days sounds very little. But when is the morning of the first day? It’s a permanent night.”

  “To sleep, to wake, to eat and pass time before tiredness takes you once more to your bed. That’s a day. You see no dawn and no sunset. But it’s a day that passes.” He took her hand, nodding. “Once the long black edges into summer, it will be endless light and no black night, no stars and no guessing the time. But there is night, because we choose to sleep. You know these things, little gosling.”