Havnedatter

Touchwood

It begins with fire.

The flames sputter in the bitter winds as the hands that held the arrow by its shaft tried their best not to shake. Wind made it hard for the flames that were eating the touchwood to reach its intended target. The pitch soaked arrowhead, wrapped tightly with cord, needed to be lit at the appropriate time; time that was winding down swiftly as the great shape of the boat drifted in the waters of the bay. It's great shadow, aloft over the water in the light cast by the setting sun, reached to their feet along the shore.

The grip on her hand tightened and eased as the fire seemed to catch, only to smother, and the tension of the air only grew worse for it. It was so cold that the water that rolled over the rocks of the shore was swiftly freezing. Their round and jagged surfaces frosting over as fractals of ice formed there, spurned on by a wind that was only second to loudest over the sorrowful song being belted out by the old women, dressed in grey and their heads hung as drums were beaten to the tune that had seen many more boats and bodies sent along their eternal journey.

It was snowing too, making it all the more difficult for things to go the way they were meant to. There would be yelling tonight, as there had been last night and all the nights before. There was always yelling, she reminded herself, this time it was only over something different until the violence made it stop. Long since had she stopped fretting over that, however. The yelling had been over everything and anything, but particularly the grandeur over it all. Too valuable was the boat, her mother had proclaimed, it was still a good boat and they needed to use it. Winter was here and they’d not be able to construct a new one like it, any time soon. The grave goods, too opulent, the horses, too strong and too necessary, pots of food and weapons still meant for others didn’t need to be ‘wasted’. All of it, ‘wasted’, her mother had said. She, herself, understood very little of what her mother was saying, save only that it surprised her how long it went on for before her father had enough and threatened to send her away, the arguing, ending as it always did, with violence that she, herself, would receive another end of. The knots on her head and the way her tongue still hurt from where she’d bitten it made it easy not to pay attention to the singing or the fumbling.

There was nothing that the child could do in her own defense to defend against more of this reprimand she’d get if anything went wrong, so she stood, wordless and dull eyed as she tried to keep upright. They had to attend, it was about honor, men would say. Honor, for the girl, was obligation and ceremony she had no say over. Though there would be more yelling tonight, there was only silence now. That was how it was, in such a place, in such a time.

Light shown brittle and blazing against the clusters of ice that rimmed the shore, and she looked away from it, past the stern shape of her mother, and against the dark shape of her father as he stood ahead of everyone. His bulk, added onto with layers of fabric and his raiding armor, made him seem as tall as a bear itself. The wind pulled at his hair, tugging it as though it were trying to pull him away from the shore where the boat that carried his only son was drifting sluggishly past.

The wind was not blowing towards the sea, but to home, and it would only make it even harder to have things go according to plan. But he had to give to the sea what the land wanted back.

Pale eyes watched as his shoulders, broad with the blood of his forefathers that went back beyond name, twitched with the labor of his breathing. Only when he was angry had she seen him react in such a way. The hand that held hers was not her father’s. It was cold and still, tensing and hard as it held her smaller one. If she focused, she’d be able to feel for the pulse, but the wind, like sadness, didn’t react the little girl. It was difficult to be sad for what you would not miss. The girl did miss many things, much of which included the sympathetic glances and gestures of sympathy. Men of the village clasped her father’s hands and arms, giving their condolences and their praise for what a warrior, Hrafnsonn, had been. Women came to them too, putting their hands on their cheeks and holding their wrists and assuring them that rewards for such a man will be rich where he was going. Valhalla awaited for the righteous dead and warriors that fall in battle.

They said it with such surety, such reverence that it couldn’t be questioned. She didn’t think that, not really, he’d not been a man like they were describing. Her mother said as much. Hrafnsonn had died honorably, they said, but how honorable a death could it have been? To her, dying in a raid didn’t feel like honor described in the stories they told around the fire. Stories about men and gods who did great things. Thor did not take wounds in raids. He fought monsters and giants, he hunted a serpent that threatened to consume the world in its coils of unbreakable iron. The gods did not fret among themselves in tales over bags of salt and dried fish, they fought glorious battles and did heroic things, things that inspired, things that created awe.

It did not escape her ears the way that people whispered about Hrafnsonn when his body was brought back on the ship. Children hear everything, as we all know, and she had ears and eyes just as sharp as they were meant to be. ‘Raided a temple’ Some had whispered where they meant not to be listened to. ‘Monks and the like’ said others. ‘Hardly a fight, just a lucky blow’ Mentioned another, mostly slaves for whom the level they inhabited was too insignificant to be listened in on by their masters. The girl knew better than to talk to her mother about it, but a part of her was sure that she knew or had similar sentiments.

A sentiment that predominantly insisted that this was all a grand waste of time and that, at least to the girl, her mother could not wait for it to be over.

Together they had walked on the way to the shore where the funeral was to take its final rites, but they would not be together for any longer than that. For they had parted, mere dozens of feet away, but to the girl it felt like the full distance of the sea. Her father stood, his proud head hung low, as the sea prepared to take away that which he had invested everything into. It would eat his hopes for the future that Hrafnsonn was supposed to carry, the dreams that the man had held for his son, these things the dead body would take with it on the way to the afterlife. Just like the horses, the gold, the weapons, and the boat; none of which they would ever be getting back.It was more than what they could afford to give up in the face of winter, her mother had said, and it occurred to even a child that the man she called a father insisted to give everything that he could to send his fallen son away with all the opulence that could be given. The only way a man like him could show his love in lieu of kindness and affection that could never have been shown in life.

“He’d not do it for us” Her mother had hissed as the servants had dressed them “Deserves a plot in the dirt on a stone ship”.

To a child, this loss was not able to be understood, and people did not judge her for the very dry eyes which the snow adrift the winds stuck to. They did, however, still point in her direction, for the child was not alone in her lack of grief. Eyes moved to the mother that held her hand tightly, keeping the girl in place when she would have rather been somewhere else.

Rather would have been with Audor.

He was probably here, somewhere, and would have made things far more fun. Though, she knew there was no time for fun now. Father would never have permitted it and of all the people to anger, she was more afraid of him now than she was of her mother, whose dark eyes stared brazenly as the fire finally caught hold of the pitch. The girl looked up at her mother’s face, watching the way the line of her jaw tensed and her nostrils flared. A halo of light stained everything it touched, and the pale face from which the girl’s own nose descended from, looked furious and blazing in the sunset. She imagined that, if she could see her father’s face, it would look very different.

A cry sounded as the arrow was pulled, a final bitter rite shouted into the wind as the sails unfurled on the longship, stained ember-bright in the light of the sun. The grief displayed must match the loss endured, an old woman of their village had told the children once. Perhaps it was in this way that the man she knew as her father had decided to this? That he must do it? It rung hollow, even as she watched her father’s wide shoulders shake with the force of his sobs. He never cried. Never once, even when Hrafnsonn had been brought off of the boat, along with the spoils of their raid, he’d only screamed and sworn. Men and women looked away from him as he stood, spellbound by grief and weeping with a bitterness that curses were surely born from.

The arrow arched through the sky, like an earthbound comet come into the atmosphere, only to die on the other end of the horizon. Eyes as pale as ice itself watched as the streak of fire, angry against the cold dimmer of the night that stretched from the other corner of the sky, disappeared, and sputtered out into the water. All watched with sharp, growing horror as the arrow’s spray flashed against the dark underside of the boat. The hand that gripped the girl’s own tightened painfully, stealing the child’s breath in the first sensation of emotion that she’d felt since that morning. Like wood straining under the heavy feet of a man, the sinew and muscle of her mother’s arm seemed to creek so loudly that the little girl heard it in her ears. But it was only the gritting of her own little teeth as she instinctively tensed up.

Silence died as soon as it began, as she heard her fathers’ bear-like roar fill the shores that dipped between the mountains, and the crash of metal on as he swung his great fist into the chest of the archer whose shot had missed. The man fell down into the water in a violent that splashed across the radius of the nearby shore. Its spray the mourners felt across their faces, water tasting of despair. It had to be so incredibly cold, for the man screamed out in an ugly guttural noise. It occurred to the girl, that the entire time his back had been turned, her father had been watching the archer instead of the boat. His enormous, dark shape draped in fabrics and furs lurched like the ship in a flurry of swears. “Curse you! Gods and damnation hurrahh!”. The air, strung tight like the archer’s bow, snapped violently and at once.

There was screaming and shouts of dismay as the tension unleashed in a chorus of horrified sounds. At once, the wind whipped up, catching the sails with a sudden tension that snapped like a slaver’s whip. Each mourner looked up in horror as the boat lurched forward with a great protest of wood and iron, sending the dizzying smell of oil and pitch that soaked every board of the ship through to the hull. “The ship!” Someone had screamed.

Her mother’s hand released from her own as she heard the woman shout, angry and desperate. “What are you doing!?” The little girl heard screaming. It was as though her mother were embarrassed, for this was the way she had been spoken to for as long as she could remember.

Prayers were being strung out and men were barking orders that were hard to tell apart. “Move!” A shuddering groan that echoed, and another shout sounded, deafening and almost shrill. It didn’t reach her ears what as being said as she found herself quickly overcome by a rush of people as the mourners began to drift down the icy beach, following the ship that was quickly going out to sea. Far off the echoes of a whale’s unpleasant cry sounded from afar.

It sounded like laughing.

The whip and scream of arrows loosed from many bows was heard as streaks of desperate fire was cast across the inlet. They fell like birds dropping from the sky, streakin shadows that fell into the water like rocks. Men with arrows crowded around the braziers that lined the waterway, lighting them with scraps of their shirts and the scarves and shawls of women all desperate to help as the wind blew. It pulled meanly at the girls vibrant, red hair, and stole the warmth from her breath, but even still, neither in cold nor in sadness, did she shudder. Fire reflected like fae lights in the surface of her large eyes as people bearing torches desperately threw them, hoping to catch the ship before it retreated into the water. She stumbled forward as people ran past her, running up towards the village that sat up in the cliffs to get more arrows.

Though their hands were determined, all the shots failed, glancing off the hull at best, fire blazing down its sides till they disappeared into the water, highlighting the carvings in the wood placed there by skillful hands, long dead.

“I told you this was a waste!” Her mother’s voice carried over the crowd as the woman shoved her way through to where the girl’s father was shaking as he desperately lit another arrow. The little girl heard her berating him, unchallenged, and did not see what as happening. For she was small and even her view from the higher point of the shore allowed her little more, in the darkening light of a bloody sunset, to see the tops of their furious heads.

“The gods look in shame upon this! Even they see he deserves no warrior's grave!”.

The girl stood in her coat, numb to the screams, even as people shouted back at her mother’s audacity and cruel words. If she were tall enough, she’d have been able to see, beyond the shape of the crowding mourners, how her mother’s cold, mean fingers grabbed at the back of her father’s coat as he cried out and threw himself into the icy waters of the inlet where floats of ice lay scattered across its churning surface, screaming out her brother’s name.

“Hrafnsonn!” Which was the name he’d given the boy upon his birth, shortly after the death of the father who’d held the same name, who had, in turn gotten from his father and fathers going back to when the world was but ice and spring had no name.

His water soaked coat and armor weighed him down as though it were a suit of stone, water rushing up to meet him as men and slaves alike tried to wade after him. The winter water as blue as the young girl’s eyes met their skin and stole their breath. “Hrafnsonn!!” Water and the nasty snap of the longboat’s sails stifled the sound as he swam, sputtering, towards the ship as arrows slowed to the little that remained left. Moments ago, they’d flown through the air like trailing asteroids, but now, dwindled to nothing, they were like tiny, weak spurts, glowing brighter in the darkness. People called after the man that they knew as their leader, the one who had lead raids and blessed their boats and helped to name their sons. Though despite this, he did not stop, even as the girl’s mother continued to curse him and assail from the shoreline.

“Hrafnsonn!!”.

Another haunting call sounded from the sea. A descending, three note drone that went up and down like a shrill note played on a flute meant for the size of a giant. It was joined by another whale song, slow and as if in reprimand.

Oh, how they were laughing.

The child watched numbly as men, quick to thinking, all but ripped a boat from off the shore and pushed it into the waiting water. Its serpent shaped prow rose proudly from the darkness, parting the ice. Two men pulled oars as fast as their arms would muster as more men, stood bearing torches and furiously trying to light arrows. They chased the sunlight that swiftly was disappearing, their shapes softening in the bloody gloom that stained the water and the ice flowed through the inlet. The sea would take them too, if it deigned to do so, the girl imagined. Another boat hit the water with men, clutching oars, filling it.

“Hrafns..onn…!”

Her father’s voice, flooded with water, sounded among the gasps of horror. It was the only moment that she found herself feeling something: panic as the wind picked up again.

The boat gave one last protest as the wind, in gale-like force, pushed it out to sea. It stood as a blackened shape against the red of the horizon, chased by boats filled with fire. A thundering boom rippled from the water, echoing in their lungs, as the water of the inlet swelled up. All watched in horror and sadness as the great shape of a whale’s tail rose up from the water, water crashing in deafening volume as it did. The edge of its tail, crusted white with barnacles and crustaceans, burning red in the sunset, smashed against the boat’s side, making it rock. This titan cried out, the sound echoing across the shores between the mountains, furious, as this happened, and just as violently as it emerged into the air, the tail descended back down.

Despite this, the boat did not crash, but a great deal of cargo that was stacked with care and certainty by slaves of men who had considered the chief’s son brothers-in-arms, went spilling into the sea. The hollow thud and the rattle of metal spoke what no one gave voice to, as the water in the wake of the great whale’s surfacing sent a wave towards the shore: flooding it and forcing back what gave itself to the sea. 

By luck or by miserable fate, the girl’s father did not drown that day as the sea gave, him too, back.

The girl would remember, for the rest of her life, the words spoken by her mother as she came running, water logged to the hips and red faced, to where her husband, the father of Hrafnsonn, lay coughing and wailing on the shore.

“What mockery this is! How hated by the gods is such blood”

For there was no blood of hers upon that ship, nor was there any as it went sinking, unceremonious and limp, to the sea floor, where the whales would watch it disappear into the deep and dark.