Melt (9 page)

“Maybe he’s looking for us,” she suggested hopefully, but she doubted it.

Bjarni, she feared, was dead. He wouldn’t rescue them. Perhaps nobody would. It would be dangerous. It would be hard to find them. And who would enter into a quest like that other than Bjarni? No, she decided grimly, nobody would come for them. If they were to be rescued, Asa would have to do it herself.

For one week she obediently did what she was told as the women tried to teach her their chores. Through gestures and demonstrations, she understood what to do, but she was unskilled. They shook their heads in dismay and laughed at her, as if she were the best entertainment they had had in a long time. She failed at sewing. The stitches they made with animal sinew were so fine, she couldn’t replicate them. A shoddy job was unacceptable, she understood, because everything had to be waterproof. They gave her and Gudny a pair of their sealskin boots and caribou skin pants and parkas. Though they felt strange, she admired these garments. They were warm, lightweight and weatherproof.

There were five women in the camp, three mature adults and two younger women. There were three children also, two boys and a girl. Altogether there were eleven Skrælings in this group. Asa saw others come and go, so she knew there were other groups nearby.

The men watched her and made her nervous. There were three adult men. One of them, Ragnoq, was the man who had taken her away. He seemed to be the leader. There was another man, Ortuq, who may have been Ragnoq’s younger brother. His smile, Asa noticed, was neither mocking nor smug. She thought she detected a hint of sympathy in his eyes when he looked her way, but she wasn’t sure she could read his face. One day when she was struggling to lift a too-large vessel of water to the fire, he came to her aid and did it for her. Other than this one gesture of help, none of the men had bothered her or even seemed to notice her. But the boy who had touched her hair the first day seemed fascinated by her. He greeted her by pointing to his dark eyes, then to hers and laughing. After a few days, she decided he was harmless.

Asa was surprised the men left her alone. She had expected to be ravaged immediately, perhaps by all of them. She didn’t know their laws of female possession or what superstitions guided them. Perhaps, she thought, they avoided her because she was carrying a child. She knew they had pagan gods and heathen ways, so the laws of her God didn’t apply to them. Their pagan gods were different from the old gods of the Norse countries, so there was nothing she could know about their strange beliefs. Because they did not know God, it was generally understood that they were governed by no moral laws.

Though they hadn’t yet touched her, she knew it was merely a matter of time. She didn’t intend to stay around and wait. She planned her escape, assembling a store of food and supplies by surreptitiously hiding them under her garments and caching them in the tent she and Gudny slept in. She was so cooperative with the chores, her captors didn’t seem to be concerned about her posing any danger to them or running away. After the second day, their tent was left unguarded. Possibly they didn’t think she dared run away, having nowhere to go, no idea where they had taken her and being too far from home. She herself wasn’t sure she could do it. Making her way home on foot would be difficult. Judging by the time it had taken to bring her here, she guessed she had a three-day journey back, but it was just a guess. Another possibility troubled her deeply, that they knew she had nothing to go back to. If they had left her village destroyed, burned to the ground, no one could survive there. With no timber, they couldn’t rebuild, and with no shelter, they were doomed. Asa carried a tremendous burden of doubt about her plan. There was no question in her mind, though, that she had to try, if only for the sake of her daughter.

Gudny was nearly silent all the time. Asa hadn’t seen a smile on her face the entire time they’d been in captivity. Her daughter, whose irrepressible joy had cheered her gloomy days, now wore an expression of fear and confusion. She was inconsolable. Every time a Skræling looked her way, she cried. Asa didn’t blame her. They were so unfamiliar looking and acting. Asa, too, was afraid. But she didn’t cry. She hadn’t cried for a long time. Nor had she laughed very often. There was something about enduring hardship over time that deadens the sharp edges of one’s emotions. Gudny was still capable of tears and of joy. Her emotions were not yet dulled by adversity. Asa wanted to preserve that trait as long as possible.

On the night she had chosen for escape, she waited until long after the camp was silent, her heart pounding furiously with fear as she picked up Gudny and wrapped her in a caribou skin. Her eyes opened briefly, but she settled back into sleep with her head on Asa’s shoulder. Asa then picked up her bundle of supplies and slung it silently onto her other shoulder. It was heavy, but contained only essentials: skins, tools and food. She pushed aside the flap of the tent and stepped into the cold night air. Everyone else would be in their own tents, asleep, she hoped. The real problem was the dogs. They were tied up just outside of camp. She needed to go south, but didn’t dare. Instead, she slipped silently behind her tent and walked north, making sure there was always something blocking her from the dogs’ view, first her tent, then the rocks she ducked behind. Wearing the Skræling boots, she chose her path with precision. Her footsteps made no sound on bare rock.

She realized she had been holding her breath and silently released it, continuing north. There was light to guide her, though the sun wasn’t visible. Clouds in the west obscured it. That was good. On a cloudless summer night, she would be more easily seen.

She continued north for a while before heading west and making a wide arc, keeping the Skræling camp a good distance away, out of sight and hearing. She didn’t think she needed as much distance as she allowed, but didn’t want to take a chance. She didn’t know anything about dogs, how far they could see or hear or smell. She also didn’t know where the other camps were and was worried about coming too close. She decided to walk on the frozen ice of the bay, keeping clear of any Skræling villages on shore.

She dropped down from the rocky coastal hills to the flat expanse of ice, then headed south, knowing that each footstep brought her closer to home.

When Gudny awoke, Asa put her down and allowed her to walk. Her arms were already tired from carrying the girl and the supplies. She knew they would travel more slowly this way, but she also knew she couldn’t carry Gudny all the way home.

“Where are we going?” Gudny asked.

“Home,” Asa replied.

They held hands as they walked. The landscape was unfamiliar to Asa. There were no landmarks she recognized…yet. She had seen maps of this coast and had heard the men talk often enough about hunting expeditions up and down it, so she knew roughly where she was. She was surely near where the hunting parties went for seal and walrus. That was why the Skrælings were here, she realized. They had pitched their summer camp where the hunting was good. She had heard the men complaining that the Skrælings had invaded their hunting grounds.

The ice was solid and smooth underfoot, allowing them to make rapid progress. People said there used to be no ice in summer other than floating icebergs. That was how the ships used to come into this bay. But she had never seen such a thing. Now there was solid ice on the water year round.

She kept gauging the time by the path of the sun across the horizon. She could see its halo behind the clouds as it traversed the horizontal line toward morning when her captors would awaken and find her gone. She feared for morning. They would have no trouble catching up to her with their sleds. She knew she would have no chance against several strong men and their ferocious dogs. Her only chance of eluding them would be to hide.

When Gudny became too weary, she lifted her up and carried her. At least they were warm. The Skræling clothes, so much lighter and thinner than wool, were remarkably effective.

“I’m hungry,” Gudny whined.

Asa put her off until she too felt the clawing of hunger in her stomach. They didn’t have a lot of food. They would have to use it carefully. She stopped for a short rest. She cut reindeer meat with a knife made of stone she had taken from the Skrælings. It was finely made, fashioned into a thin blade that could easily pierce the skin of an animal…or a man. It was sharper but more fragile than the metal knives she was used to. Knives and other metal tools were becoming more and more valuable, as there was no iron to make new ones. There were things she had seen in the Skræling camp, like this knife and the boots she wore, that made her wonder if her people could learn something useful from them. They had brought in fish every day she was there. She didn’t know how they caught it, but they clearly had a good method.

As the sun moved higher and freed itself of the low clouds, the light of morning changed the color of the ice to bright white. By now her captors would be awake and would have discovered her gone. She wondered for a moment if they might let her go. Maybe they wouldn’t think she was worth the trouble to track down.

Later that afternoon, Asa came to an area of thin ice and reluctantly walked inland, climbing the coastal hills to continue on solid land. A short time later she heard the distant barking of dogs and her heart leapt to her throat. She stopped to listen, to make sure she had really heard it. Yes, it was dogs, the sound that always alerted her village to nearby Skrælings. She gathered Gudny roughly into her arms. Her panic alarmed the child, who started to cry.

“Shhh!” she warned. “You must be quiet or they’ll find us.”

She ran, looking for a place to hide. The barking seemed to be coming from the south, causing her to stop in confusion. They were coming from ahead of her? Not behind? There was a ravine nearby. They wouldn’t see her there. But the dogs…would the dogs smell them? There was nothing else she could try. There was nowhere to go.

She ran with Gudny in her arms to the edge of the ravine, then put her down and said, “You can climb down here. Follow me.”

Gudny nodded, her bright blue eyes wide and full of fear.

Asa started down, scrambling hurriedly as the barking got louder. She lifted Gudny over the larger boulders as they made their way down the steep incline, loose rocks dislodging and sliding ahead of them. Her heart pounded furiously as she leapt over a crevice. She landed awkwardly on a rock that gave way, knocking her off her feet. She fell and rolled, striking her body hard against an immovable boulder below. It knocked the wind out of her and she lay there for a moment in a daze, cold stone against her cheek, the terrible barking of dogs insistent in her ears.

“Mama!” Gudny cried, appearing at her side.

Asa looked up at the top of the ravine and slipped an arm around Gudny, pulling her close. She put her finger to her lips to caution the girl to be silent. They hadn’t made it as far down as she had planned, but they were out of sight…until the dogs caught their scent and followed. Asa lay beside the boulder that had stopped her, still and silent except for her breathing, and looked straight up at the clear blue sky, waiting to be recaptured.

The barks and howls of the dogs came closer and seemed to be all around them. Asa fixed her eyes on the top of the ravine, expecting any second to see the menacing head of a dog appear at its edge. But she saw nothing, and within moments, as if the sled had never even slowed down, the fearful noises began to subside. Inexplicably, they were moving away.

Asa roused herself. “Stay here,” she instructed Gudny, then scrambled back to the top of the ravine where she peeked over. She saw a single sled on the frozen bay, heading away to the north. A man drove and a young boy rode on the back, bundled up in his fur clothing so only a small brown round of his face showed. They were too far away for Asa to see the boy’s face clearly and the man was facing the other direction, but this was obviously not a tracking party. These two appeared to be alone. The sled and the sound of dogs barking faded into the distance, eventually becoming just a dark spot on the white expanse of ice.

Relieved they were safe, Asa rubbed her nose with her gloved hand. The chill coming off the icy bay left her exposed skin numb.

She started back down to where Gudny waited. Halfway along, she was struck by a sharp pain in her abdomen, so sharp it stopped her cold. She waited for it to pass, then took the rest of the slope more cautiously. As she skirted the rift she had tried to jump earlier, she noticed a dark opening between the rocks. She peered into it and felt a current rising up from below, slightly warmer than the air around her. She motioned to Gudny to come to her while she investigated the fissure. A jumble of boulders was piled into the ravine, solidly stacked. She walked around them, noting one or two places where there was a narrow opening. It appeared this jumble wasn’t a solid mass. The rocks had fallen and arranged themselves in such a way that they had created a sheltered cave. She was able to enlarge one of the fissures by removing some dirt, gravel and smaller stones, opening a tight passage into the blackness beyond.

What was inside and how big a space it was, she couldn’t tell, but judging from the exterior, it couldn’t be very large.

She was taken by surprise by another deep and severe attack of pain and allowed herself to collapse to the ground. Her earlier fall, she reasoned, must have done more damage than she’d realized. Gudny was cold and hungry and night was coming. Asa would have liked to walk until twilight at least, but now she reconsidered. They had possibly found some rare and precious shelter and she was worried about her own physical condition. She put a hand on her swollen stomach, then tried to smile at Gudny.

“No more walking today,” she said. “You know how a little fox lives in a burrow in the ground? She keeps herself and her babies warm all bundled up in a cozy earth house. We can do that too.” She pointed at the opening she had created in the rocks. “I’ll go in first and make sure there are no foxes in there.”

Gudny nodded worriedly and Asa smiled to reassure her before crawling through.