Havnedatter

Happ

Blue like spring flowers, that was the color that Audor’s eyes reminded her of. A bright, dancing blue that contrasted against the warm skin, cheeks reddened by the cold and sun that beat down on their village throughout the year. It was a different kind of blue than her father’s, though both were rather light in tone. Father had eyes as pale and grey as stones and never did they have a dancing quality to them. Audor lacked the freckles that nearly covered her own little body but was similarly red headed, though his own was far more vibrant a hue. It reminded her of dying autumn leaves against the dark bark of sleepy trees, shaded by the setting sun. His curls were loose and down to the sides of his neck. It was always too long for a thrall but the master of the house in which Audor served was stingy and ignored his slaves in this regard, arranging for their hair to be shorn only when the comments of his neighbors reached his ears. Somehow Audor was always the last to get such a cutting, but Rose quite liked it about him. Having a friend with curly, reddish hair made her feel less alone in a place where many children and women had ruddy and pale hair. One of the girls who lived next to her was as pale headed as straw, as were her eyebrows, and the pink of her skin was like that of a piglet’s. Such a girl would make fun of Rose for her dark red hair and ‘spotty face’, but Audor never did.

He had little enough to say about the other children, as it would have been an easy thing to get a thrall in quite a lot of trouble with the neighbors, though he always had something cheeky to say. Underhanded things like ‘May the master of the house give thanks for the many pigs he has under his roof. Such a bounty of bacon to be envied by all the neighbors!’. It was things like that which she loved about Audor. Though especially did she love his face and his hands. His hands were always kind. Unlike those of the ones she was most familiar with. A scar drug along the hollow of his left cheek and she was fond of tracing it with her little fingers and tugging at his hair. He never seemed to mind that her fingers were clumsy or that her nails were sometimes sharp, nor did he ever have issues with finding fun games for them to play. There were lots of things she loved about him and showed her care, in turn, by sneaking him things from her home. Coins, treats, food, salt when she could manage it. His love he showed, in turn, came with games and fun which, for a lonely child, is far more valuable than coins or the risk of being beaten by the cold hands of parents.

She looked to him with excitement blazing in her eyes and her freckled nostrils blazing. “What have you snuck out here for, Rose? The tides are angry today and they’re swelling up, if you get too close to the sea, it’ll take you out there” He warned softly, head turning back at the entrance of the forest where the blazing light of a sunny day still crept in. The most vibrant light often cast the longest, sharpest shadows. The little girl regarded what she’d been told, fighting the urge to be obstinate with the protest that she knew that and that was why she stayed close to the cliffs. It was a protest that died on her tongue, however, and she lowered her gaze to the forest floor.

Audor looked at her downturned gaze, seeing her gazing through her dark eyelashes which cast shadows of their own against her round cheeks. He smiled, his teeth slightly crooked on the lower right side, and set his hands on his hips with a huff. “Now, why don’t you tell me what you came out here for?”. Rose looked up, lips pressed into a round shape. He could tell she was distracted, but didn’t press, for he could tell that something was heavy onto her mind. “The sea spits stuff back out, right?” The curt sound of her voice made his brows raise, though not without amusement that made the scar on his cheek stretch with the contorting of his smile. “Why, yes, it always does” He said, dusting his sleeve off. “Unless the sea wants to keep it, that is. If the sea decides that it will keep something, it shall be gone into the darkness, and no hand, god or mortal, will be able to reach it”. His gaze was calm but the smile gave him away. “Why?” Said Audor “Have you interest in something?”.

“Hrafnsonn!” Rose exclaimed, little fists balled with excitement. “Hm?” Audor couldn’t help the way his smile faded, confusion evident. He turned his head, looking over the snow that covered the barely disrupted forest floor, and found a felled tree that stuck up from the ground. Its roots were exposed, frozen in a flurry of tiny branches and thick, interwoven roots that looked like a furious octopus. It had enough slant that he managed to have a seat. Without invitation needed, she scurried over and sat next to him. Pale eyes watched the dappled sunlight turn his hair alight like fire as it highlighted the waves. It shown in just the position that it hit his face and, when he turned to look at her, he had to squint and lower his head.

“Now” He squatted in place, legs apart as he elbows crossed atop his knees “What’s all this about Hrafnsonn?”. Rose kicked her feet, pulling up thick clumps of snow as she did so. Underneath the scraps were dark patches of dirt where scraggly roots and grass grew. “The sea didn’t want him” She said with a tone that was, indeed, grim but contained a child’s conviction. Anyone who had been there that day would have understood why she might feel that way. It was a horrible and unfortunate accident, as an adult would say, but Rose didn’t quite think of it the same way. “Now, why do you say that?” Asked Audor. “The wind...and the sea..it didn’t want him and I think it might have been why things went so bad” Explained Rose, looking over at her friend. Simply did he nod, looking down at his feet. “So you think the sea might have spit him back out like a nasty pit in a multer?”. The smile returned to her face as she nodded rapidly. “And I bet you..” A finger drifted to her side, poking her there and earning a squeal. “You want to go find him?”. “Yes! Will you help me?” She asked, hands clapping to her knees. “Hmm….” A single hand rose to the shape of his chin as he looked upwards at the treetops. The white of his eye, caught in the same beam of light from before from some unseen branch above them, blazed as bright as bone.

“I think I will!” He declared with a sudden flex of his legs and a grin. They stuck out as far as they could and dug into the snow, pulling up clumps and exposing dark spots in the forest floor. Rose sprung up with a laugh and let her hands swing at her sides. Though the wind made her cheeks red, she felt warm, and this news only served to bring more warmth. Eagerly, she grabbed a hold of his hand and hauled him up to his feet, bouncing all the while.

“Where to look! Where to look!” Audor mused aloud. Though the question was well worth asking. There was a great deal of shoreline to comb, many miles of which wer as sharp and rocky as blunted knives. “I don’t know” Rose confessed, leading the way to their unknown destination with her little legs determinedly stepping over protruding roots. Their steps echoed about them, joined only by the sound of the wind rustling the trees and the distant call of the shore crashing and rolling. There would be no storm today, it seemed, but Audor had spoken truly, and the water was livid. The cry of a sea bird from afar made her perk her head. “Well, I think if we know where we’re going, it’ll be a little easier to get there” Said Audor, using logic, which all children knew to use but didn’t default to until imagination grew tired.

“How do we know where to go?” Asked Rose, genuine in her question as she looked to her friend. Without thinking, they were crossing through the wood, rather than heading directly back to the water. “Well” Audor said with some thought “They say the gods might tell us where to go, but I think that..if we think like the sea, we’ll know where to go”. “How do we think like the sea?” Asked Rose. “To think like the sea we need to..sea where its going!” Audor laughed out loud and Rose giggled in turn at such a horrible joke. The first laughs she’d enjoyed for many days. There was little laughter to be had at home.

It was silly, but the idea stuck and stuck, even as she mulled over other ideas. Nothing seemed so compelling as what Audor said, so she decided that was what needed to be done. “Okay, let’s see the sea! But..the sea pushes to the shore though..?” Her pulling eased as Audor caught up, coming to walk at her side. “It does, doesn’t it? Not always, though! Sometimes the current changes when you get away from the shore” He explained, having served upon the ships before. Though thrall did not go to war, they worked on ships and helped to pull in nets. Their strong hands were considered unworthy for going into battle, for there was no glory in Valhalla for hands that worked fields. Unless a wolf attacked the flocks or some bandit thought to test his chances, a thrall didn’t fight. Her eyes drifted to the edge of his belt where an axe protruded, and wondered if it had ever swung down on hands instead of ropes or trees.

“Yes..it does!” Rose declared, understanding his meaning. Without wind, a ship was at the mercy of the current. “But where does the current change?” Asked Audor. To this, the girl grew quiet, thinking on the seemingly endless stretch of the tide itself and how it pushed things ashore. On high tide, even large animals got stranded, but it didn’t go on forever, did it? “Really far…?” Said said, unsure. “Yes” Audor confirmed her answer, raising a finger. “I think the best place to see where the currents change, is somewhere that looks high and far out, right? So we’ll have the best vantage point to look over”. Rose bounced with the sudden surge of energy that all children seemed eternally blessed with “The giant’s tailbone!” She exclaimed.

“Yes! Very good, Rose! You’re so very smart” Audor praised, smiling at her with that slightly crooked grin.

To get there, they would need to cross a diagonal stretch to near to the other side of the coast. A walk of quite a number of miles, but to determined feet, the journey seemed not so far at all. The Giant’s Tailbone was a stretch of cliff that arched up and up, growing more narrow the more it stretched over the sea. At one point, there had been a lighthouse at the very end, re-enforced with stone and wood to keep it tall and upright, guiding the ships near to safe ports, but a terrible squall send the ocean into a rage years ago, and the lighthouse had fallen into the sea. Now, it still stood as a marker to the people of their village and the seamen who made their living out of it. Rose had been there before with other children, once even with Hrafnsonn, but that seemed a lifetime ago. Hrafnsonn felt like a lifetime ago, though it had been not even a moon’s whole cycle since she’d seen him.

As she walked, she pictured him in her mind’s eye. He was so tall that she almost couldn’t recall his face past the image of looking up his nose, his face rough with a dark scruff from a shaggy beard that never grew in as deep and fully as their fathers. His eyes were as stony and grey as father’s too. Though that was where most similarities ended and the frustrations began. Not hers, of course, but mother’s frustrations. ‘Such a pinched face’ Her mother would say, noting how Hrafnsonn didn’t have a squared jaw like father did. ‘So sallow his skin’. It did not occur to the little girl that these were things to be looked down on, as she would not come to understand it for a great while that what actually bothered the woman wasn’t that Hrafnsonn didn’t look like her husband, but who it was that he actually did look like.

His mother.

“Audor” Little Rose spoke in the midst of their tandem march through the forest. He had begun to swing his legs in pendulum fashion, kicking clumps of snow forward and noisily stepping back down. It make a ‘fee-furt’ sound that Rose quickly adapted to imitating. Together they almost timed their steps to make the noise louder, though it dimmed as he slowed his pace, showing he was listening. “Yes?”. “What happens when people die?” She asked without looking at him. Rose didn’t need to in order to tell he was thinking. Instead, she looked all the way up. Within the trees, the dark shape of birds high above. Their tapered heads shifted to and fro, looking down at the shape of two people walking along the forest floor. How small did they look to those birds up so high?

“That’s a big question” said Audor, his lips pressed into a stern shape. It was a frown that Rose didn’t fear. “No one will tell me. But you know, right? You’re smart” Rose responded, hopping over a root. Audor followed her steps as they began to descend lower into the forest. Far behind, the sound of cawing echoed. “It’s not that others can’t. They just..aren’t in the place to, maybe?” Audor’s speech was distracted as his boots began to slide on the hill. In the spring, the melt would turn this furrow in the land into a small river, carrying debris and wood that came down off the cliffs. Sometimes, animals would end up there too, thawed in their icy graves over winters hold.

“So you can tell me, then?” Rose insisted. “I suppose I can” Audor relented. The sound of ravens cawing echoed again. “What do you know about death?” He asked. Rose answered, as children do, in earnest “I dunno.”