Altered America (11 page)

             
“It is a wonder,” Synaur said.

             
“It came to my mother unbidden.  The Sibyl says eight serpents came from the south to live with the eight northern nations.  They renew us.  Our people will not die out in this land while it stays with us.”

             
“It is a treasure beyond any my father ever found,” Synaur said.  “Except for you, Eleri.”

             
Synaur resumed his walking tour of the long room.  His stick tocked against a three-legged stool.  He widened his circle around the central hearth and skimmed the fingers of one hand along the mud-plastered walls.  He found the loom and felt the cloth on it.  “Strong weave,” he said.

             
Synaur almost tripped over a cedar chest banded with iron.  He went around it.

             
“There’s a shelf,” Eleri warned before he bumped his head against it.

             
He slapped a hand against it, rattling Croatan earthen bowls filled with herbs.  “I smelled that but thought it still two paces away.”

             
He found one of the two benches built against a wall, a seat during the day, a bed during the night.

             
“Come to the table and eat,” Snake Kenna told him.

             
Synaur picked up the flowers he had brought and formally gave them to Eleri.  She tossed them back on the table.

             
He raised his head and listened a moment, sadness on his face.  Had he heard the bouquet fall on the plank table?  Eleri chided herself for underestimating him and for being discourteous.  She avoided looking at her mother.

             
Still standing, Synaur cleared his throat.  “I will be plain spoken.  My father tells me you will not accept me for a husband.  True, I am blind, but what of it?  My farm prospers.  My house has three rooms and two tapestries on the walls.  I need no dowry.”  He listened a moment, then added, “This is the only chance to marry either of us will ever know.”

             
“I have a liking for you, Synaur, and not least because you are the opposite of your father.  But I mean to make the most of this one chance.”

             
“You mean I am flawed.  But what is the price of marriage to a husband who is forced?  Instead of resentment, I offer you children.  And I promise to work for you.”

             
Eleri remained silent.

             
“I want a son and a daughter,” he said.

             
She sneered, thinking him arrogant.  “One to grow your rye, and the other to serve you mead by the fire?  Why not five sons to work a big farm?”

             
In a gentle tone, he said, “I am content with my farm as it lies.  A household of four is complete.  Two females and two males bring balance.”

             
Her mother acted as if she held something heavy to show there was weight to his thinking.

             
“I am meant for another,” Eleri said.

             
“My dreams tell me otherwise.”  Synaur turned to her mother.  “Thank you for the offer of food.  I will eat at your table when I am truly welcome.”  He strode out of the cottage without using his laurel stick.

* * *

              Synaur came often after that, bringing gifts of food, usually corn or beans or wheat.  A teenage boy, an orphan, helped him on his farm, so he could leave it at will.  Snake Kenna took advantage of his willingness to do heavy chores for her.  She told Eleri, “I wish other men would come court you.  Suitors bring willing hands and gifts, though some might be less willing than Synaur.”

             
Eleri sighed.  “His company is pleasant, but I want a husband who will see my face.”

* * *

              Again Thonir came to stand resolute before their door, his hand on the oak handle of his
seax
knife, an imperious frown on his face.  “Why this delay?  We kept our part of the bargain.”

             
“You sent a blind man to court me.”

             
Thonir glanced at Snake Kenna in her black shawl, who stood guarding her door against him, then back at Eleri.  “I thought a farmer was what you wanted.  No sea wolf is welcome here.  If Synaur doesn’t meet your royal liking, then put a name on your husband.  Tell me who to send to you.”

             
Eleri had thought often of Godston’s young men, some handsome, some not, and found all of them wanting.  It would be a burden to live with any of them.  “I will consider your son, and I will work my side of the bargain.  Bring me a lamb, white or black, but of one single color, a male.”

             
Thonir grunted.  “This is added weight to our side of the agreement, but it will be done.”

             
Eleri built a small altar of limestone and gathered fallen hickory branches, wood that burned hot, for her fire.  When all was ready, she told Briamursk to come with his reed flute.  He came and piped while Snake Kenna thumped a deer-hide drum with a drop spindle, their sound echoing deep in Bellow Woods.  Eleri slit the throat of the trembling lamb.  She opened its belly and took out the bloody organs.  While the meat sizzled and popped on the open fire, she danced, chanting the names of Godston’s plaguing ghosts... and they came.

             
She then called for the ancestors of the named ghosts to come forth and escort their kin home.  She did not call out mute Briamursk’s name.  She did not call an ancestor to come and take him from her.

             
The cold ancestor spirits, drawn to the fragrant smell of seared meat, came to feed on its odor.  The smoke made them visible, warriors dressed for battle with shields and swords, women in linen dresses with woolen cloaks pinned in place by brooches.  Remembered, though not named, the ancestors came as honored guests to Eleri’s sacrifice and met their more recently dead kin.

             
When the horizon shone with the peach glow of false dawn, the ghosts flitted away.  Briamursk left Eleri, his expression sad.  She went to bed, thinking she had done him no favor by sending away his companions.

             
But that evening when she went to the meat market to console him, she found the ancestors drifting with their ghostly kin among the hanging carcasses of sheep and deer.  Briamursk put his hand over his heart in pity for her.  Warm Godston with its odor of meat, whether burnt on an altar or hung curing in the market, was pleasant for the ancestors.

             
When Synaur came next to their cottage, he brought gossip of prankish ghosts besieging the town after dark.  He told them of milk buckets overturned, fires burning cold, fresh meat festering with maggots, and barley that grew fungus overnight.  No one now, except Eleri, could walk the town’s three straw-covered streets at night without being tripped.

             
Her mother traded with the Croatans, giving an iron knife for a pouch of tobacco and other items.  “Take this pouch,” she told Eleri, “and go ask the Sibyl what we must do.”

             
Carrying the gift, Eleri adjusted her eyes to the night as she had been taught by her mother and set out on a dark path along the edge of the common fields.  She passed under the reddish aura of a maple crowned in the light of a quarter moon.  She thought of Synaur, of his tall sturdiness.  Laughing, Eleri began running down the narrow path with green mountain laurels huddled under tall maples and oaks on one side and fields of barley and rye on the other.  She lifted her knees high, joy in her body.  She felt a wolf shadowing her and knew it too delighted in this night run.

             
Eleri came to the Sibyl’s home, a cave, and laid her gift of tobacco before the dark opening.  She stood before the entrance, panting, and waited.  A presence came without movement.  A sonorous voice said, “So the gift from the sea brings me a gift from the land and comes to ask me what to do about ghosts.”

             
Eleri remained silent.

             
“And lo, I will answer.  Godston is now corrupt and must cleanse itself.  From the center the plumed one sent eight serpents south and eight serpents north.  Now let the serpent that rises from its ashes be the living keel of a pyre ship.”

             
Then Eleri spoke, “You ask my mother to risk the serpent, a thing that came to her unsought and that she cherishes.”

             
The Sibyl’s whinnying laugh echoed in the cavern.  “And did you not come unsought and are you not cherished?  Two blessings.  Mar the ceremony, gift from the sea, and the one you call mother will lose not only the serpent, but Godston itself.  Perform the rite with precision.  Now leave me.”

             
Eleri stopped in Godston on her way home for the comfort of Briamursk’s music.  Before leaving, she told him, “You must go live in the woods until the time of the dark moon is past.  I am to build a fire ship no ghost can resist.”

             
Briamursk pretended to row a boat, then pointed to himself.

             
“You mean you want to leave too?”

             
He nodded and showed he would miss her by making the sign of dripping tears and pointing to her.

             
“I will miss you too,” she said.

             
He pointed to a maggot on the shoulder of a nearby sheep carcass, then to his own ghostly chest, a gesture she didn’t understand.  He played a dirge on his pipe. 

             
Eleri trudged homeward, her throat clogged with grief, and found Synaur sitting on a bench, a surprise because he always went home before dark.  He had waited to hear her news.

             
“I will walk you home so the wolves will know you are a friend,” she said.  Her mother wiggled her eyebrows at her.

             
As soon as they were outside, he asked, “May I put my hand on your shoulder?”

             
She smiled.  “Of course.”  Synaur had walked this path often without need of her help, but his warm hand on her shoulder was pleasant.

             
“Have I offended you?” he asked.

             
“No, why?”

             
“You are so quiet,” he answered.

             
“A friend of mine is leaving soon, and it saddens me.”

             
“I wish my leaving saddened you.”

             
“I like your company, Synaur.”

             
His face radiated joy in the moonlight, and she felt pity for him and also some small pride in her power over him.

             
She told him about Briamursk wanting to leave and the rite she must perform.

             
When she said goodbye at his door, he reached out hesitantly and touched her lips before going inside.

             
She went home and told her mother they must sacrifice the fire snake.  Her mother cursed the Sibyl and walked out into the night and stayed away until dawn.  At breakfast, she sat silent and solemn.

             
Eleri asked what Briamursk had meant by showing her the maggot then pointing to himself.

             
“I can but guess.  Maybe he was confessing.  Have you not wondered why these ghosts chose to stay?  Could it be that Briamursk kept them here as company?  There’s magic in his music.  And he knows of no ancestor to escort him home.”

             
“But why did he not just ask me?”

             
Her mother shrugged.  “Pride, maybe.  Ghosts can be proud.  Or more likely, he didn’t know about a pyre ship.”

             
“But why now, after ten years?”

             
“You’re leaving him.”

             
Eleri reared back.  “I would never do that.”

             
Her mother laughed knowingly.  “No?  You just finished your apprenticeship with Warhelm, and my guess is that you told Briamursk you wanted marriage and children.”

             
Eleri glanced down at her deer-skin shoes.

             
“Since you do not like my first guess, let me give you another one,” her mother said.  “It may not be a confession but a sign.  He may liken himself to a larva.  Now is the time for him to move on to the next stage and fly away.”

             
That afternoon, Eleri began splitting wood into tiny planks the length of her index finger.  Soft ash was her choice because it burned fast.  She shaved tiny filings off a rough iron bar to use for nails.  With them she intended to build a dragon ship as long as her arm, a replica of the high-prowed ships Norse settlers had sailed up the Three Width River when they came to the warm lands of the Croatans three hundred years after Leif Erikson’s first voyage to Vinland.