Raven Speak (9781442402492) (4 page)

Asa climbed to her feet and went to the sleeping chamber she shared with her parents. Her mother's offer was generous, yet at the same time seemed more of a bribe than a gift. Is that what it took to lead? Did her mother have to buy the dispirited clan's support with kind words and gifts?

She pulled the heavy wooden chest away from the corner and knelt to fit the key into its lock. They weren't a rich family by any means, but her father was a clever trader and over the years had brought back many small adornments for her and her mother. When she lifted the lid, though, she saw that the chest had been emptied of nearly all of them. The set of four fragile drinking glasses were still cradled in their wool, but in the bowl that had once held handfuls of colorful glass beads only a pair of milky gray ones rolled around forlornly. One of her favorite amulets, the iron one molded to look like a tiny hammer, was gone from its necklace, and at least two of the carved bone combs were gone from their tray. Even her father's prized arm ring, heavy silver engraved with proud-necked horses, was missing. He wasn't wearing it when he'd left. Had he taken it for trade? Or worse, as the dismal days of winter had stretched long, had he been forced to give gifts as well?

She found the ring pin her mother wanted, closed the chest, and locked it. The ornament lay cold and sharp in her hand, an ugly feeling that outweighed its beauty. Could no one just say
this is right or this is wrong and have others believe it? Did there always have to be coddling and persuasion? Were they really such children?

Upon her return she saw that Jorgen had retreated to the other side of the fire to crouch in an awkward fashion, still watching them with hungry interest. She placed the ring pin in her mother's clammy palm and felt her fingers tremble as they closed over it. Sunken into the purplish hollows of their sockets, her mother's eyes appeared unfocused. Her gaunt cheeks had a waxy look, like the skim on a hard cheese. Was she really well enough to make decisions for the clan?

“You should lie down, Mother,” she said, and for the third time that morning she placed a hand on the woman's shoulder and tried to coax her onto her mattress.

The bony fingers that grabbed her wrist this time had all the strength of a gyrfalcon. “This is no time to be lying down,” her mother scolded under her breath, and Asa saw that there was yet a small fire beneath the watery eyes. “For any of us.” The talons dug deeper. “You must keep a close eye on those horses. Especially Rune.”

She nodded, her heart suddenly racing. Then she knelt beside her mother and watched her press the ring pin into Tora's palm, an unspoken sealing of allegiance, and watched the skald watching them, and bit her lip until it bled.

The morning passed with little activity and even less talk and at midday, reassured of her standing, her mother allowed herself
to lie down on her mattress and sleep. Asa took that opportunity to hurry out to the byre to see how the animals had weathered the storm. She half-expected the skald to follow her, but he'd also stretched out on his mattress and only twisted his head to watch her go.

The air was cuttingly cold, though patches of brilliant blue peeked between scudding clouds. The narrow stream, now muddied and swollen past its banks, roared eagerly downhill to the fjord. She looked across the choppy waters and out toward where the sea's expanse of glistening green rose to meet a newly rinsed sky. All around her the world sparkled, and that stirred in her a sense of hope. Remembering her mother's wishes, she broke off a spruce bough and mounted it above the longhouse door. Its keen fragrance stirred her. As poorly as the day had begun, things seemed to be heading in the right direction now.

Tugging the byre door open delivered a fresh shower of rain from the roof's overhanging turf. It also let in a cold gust that riffled the hairs on the four shaggy animals. The dim light showed that the leaves had been stripped from the ropy strands of rockweed and that the cow had moved to the far corner of the byre and was now lying there.

Rune climbed to his feet and shook himself off. Although age had dug thumb-size hollows above each eye, he still wore the inquisitive expression of a much younger horse, and that made him appear to be smiling. Ears pricked, he ambled over to bump his broad head against her arm. She scratched his poll and rubbed
the insides of his furry ears, all the while knowing that wasn't truly what he wanted.

“I know, I know,” she said. “And I'm sorry. I'm as empty as you are.”

He turned away, his black and silver tail chest-high to her. That made her smile because it wasn't a rebuff but a simple demand for more scratching. “All right, that much I can do.” And she dug her fingers into the sloping planes of his hindquarters and ran them up around the dock of his tail and then down each thigh, scratching hard. Rune stretched his neck and wriggled his lips with pleasure.

“The storm has probably washed up some more seaweed,” she said when she'd finished. “We'll head out tomorrow and bring some back, all right?” Rune nodded his head and shook all over again, quite as if he understood.

Although she didn't have the same bond with the other horses, she took the time to scratch their withers and rub their ears. It wasn't food, but it was something. It helped to ease the suffering when someone cared, didn't it?

Squatting beside the pensive cow, she laid a palm against the animal's swollen belly. Deep under the coarse, curling hairs she found warmth. She waited, watching her own breath cloud the air and disappear, cloud and disappear, as rhythmic as the ocean. She slid her hand lower and waited some more. A steady
drip, drip
from the rafters to a puddle on the byre floor measured the cold passing of time. Finally, there it was: movement. The
promise of new life, of summer's return. The grass would grow long, and the horses and the cow and her newborn calf would all grow strong on it. Life would continue.

But even as she was shouldering the byre door closed, the clouds were pinching away the blue. Intermittent pellets of cold, hard rain chased her back to the longhouse. And the stubborn wintry storm began gnashing its teeth with renewed fury, as if it were as hungry as they and was coming for them, too.

“Jorgen.”

After so much silence the rasping call from the wife of the absent chieftain jerked everyone's head up, including his own. He abandoned the repair he'd been trying to make to his rotting left shoe, stuffed his foot into it, and again made his way around the fire. This time, because he'd been summoned, he didn't pause to talk with anyone.

It gave him a shiver to boldly squat in the empty place at her side, the chieftain's seat. As his elbows met his knees, his heart quickened. She, too, was breathing with some effort, her chest rising and falling beneath her tunic, but it wasn't shared excitement. The sickness that had crawled through the nostrils and mouths of so many clan members and splatted out the bowels of the now dead ones had wormed its way deeply into her. He could almost warm his hands in the heat radiating from her feverish body.

Stop.
He dug for and found the bear tooth and pressed its point steadily into his flesh. He bowed his head beneath this discipline and tried not to wriggle. “Yes?”

“We need a story,” she said.

He lifted his eyes, by chance catching the daughter's suspicious expression. Deftly, careful to conceal any emotion, he slid his gaze back to the mother. The chieftain's wife—no, the chieftain's widow, he reminded himself—hadn't bothered to look at him at all as she spoke. Fully under the spell of the fire's dancing orange embers, she stared blankly, unblinkingly. “But it's not yet nightfall,” he countered. “Don't you agree that stories are best saved for the evening?”

“Look around you,” she said in a husky voice only a few could hear, “and prove the time.”

She was right, of course; the longhouse slumbered in a cold, smoky gloom that belied dawn or dusk, day or night. Except for the copper-headed girl and one or two children and, oddly enough, himself, its remaining inhabitants were either too sick or too dispirited to move about. They hovered near their mattresses, perpetually half rising, half sleeping. There was nothing to reach for. Every waking breath seemed to deny hope.

The woman gathered herself and struggled onto one elbow, no doubt to hurry his answer, but instead triggering a spasm of coughing. It was a thick, swampy cough that drew her fists to her chest and flung her onto her back. The girl bent close, holding a bowl to her mother's lips. He watched the liquid dribble down the woman's chin, watched her shove the bowl away and push herself upright once more, bracing on one shaky arm. She was a tough one, he had to admit. Slowly she swung her head round to look at him, breathing hard, fighting the cough that convulsed in her throat. But he knew she was no match for it. And he was
right. The cough exploded in her and from her and she doubled over again, helpless. The girl murmured something. Setting both hands on her mother's shoulders, she coaxed her to submit, to lie down and to give in, and his chest swelled with the possibilities.

The girl wasted no time at all in fastening her own eyes on him, eyes that stormed like the ocean's blue-black waves. “
Will
you tell us a story?”

Such insolence! That hot feeling raced beneath his skin again. How dare she, a child, command a story from him as if he were no more than a leashed dog? This was not how things were going to be.

Only now was not the time to chasten her, not with all the others watching. For now he had to store his scythe and plant another seed. He felt his lips widening into an agreeable smile. “Of course,” he replied, “of course.”

And he held his face in that ridiculously agreeable smile, his lips stretching thin, while he searched for the appropriate story. None of his father's stories was exactly right, he knew, none of them would hand to him what was so deliciously close to being in his grasp. He'd begin with a familiar one, though, then craft his own ending. And even as he was forming the plot in his mind the words came flowing out of his mouth. He heard them following one another so smoothly, so orderly, that no one could say this wasn't one of the time-honored, wisdom-filled tales of his father and his father before him.

Asa only half-listened as she ladled water into the shallow washing bowl and carried it with still-trembling hands toward her mother. She'd questioned the skald before, even argued with him in good spirit, but she'd never taken it upon herself to order him to do anything. That was her father's right and, in his absence, her mother's. But she'd gone ahead and done it, and now he was angry. She knew so by the angle of his jutting chin and the flush of color across his cheek, color that seeped all the way down through the bristly hairs of his short beard.

Well, what of it? He was the one who'd overstepped bounds. As the chieftain's daughter she'd
had
to act and, kneeling beside the bowl that she'd placed behind her mother's head, she resolutely gathered a long hank of the oat-colored hair and swished the dirty strands through the water. Her mother murmured appreciation. Knuckles clenched to white, Asa wet the comb and pulled it firmly across the pale scalp.

The story Jorgen had begun was about a man wandering alone through a forest in the darkness of an unending winter. She knew the story; she knew them all, in fact. This one had several
variations, but by the end the man—forever unnamed—always learned a lesson and found his way home.

“For all of his years this man had been wandering.” In a deepened voice the skald meted out the familiar words with restraint, skillfully creating a sense of mystery once again. “But he was searching for something which he couldn't name. The winter winds howled in the man's face and the snow piled on his back. Yet day after day, year after year, he wandered. Until one morning, one cold wintry morning just as dark as every other, a woman rode out of the forest. When she appeared to this man the winds calmed and for one breath the sun blazed.

“This woman,” he related, “this
beautiful
woman, was dressed in every shade of blue.” Here Jorgen began speaking with infectious wonder, his nimble hands sculpting an image out of thin air. In spite of herself, Asa's combing slowed. “She was dressed in blue because she was a seer and knew the future. Her linen tunic had been dyed the color of ripe bilberries”—how lightly he pinched an invisible one between his thumb and forefinger before popping it on his tongue and swallowing in delight—“and her woolen cloak was the same shadowed hue as a swallow's feathers.” His hands cut graceful arcs through the air as his fingers fluttered: small birds crisscrossing the sky. “The hems of both garments sparkled with blue glass and clear crystal beads created in a far-off land. Even her shoes, fashioned from the softest sealskin, had been dyed a dark blue and embroidered with blue and silver threads.” A whistling sigh of envy escaped Tora, causing two of the younger
children to giggle. Jorgen silenced them with a warning glare before continuing. “She came to this man riding on a white horse. ‘What is it you seek?' she asked. He didn't know how to answer because a man can find himself ever so hungry, but if he has never tasted honey, for example, how can he say, ‘It is honey for which I hunger'? So he said, ‘I seek to stop wandering. I seek to not shiver. I seek to be other than alone.'”

Something poked at Asa. The words were slightly different, weren't they? Had anyone else heard a change? She scanned the room, noting the clan's slack jaws and unblinking eyes. Sorcerer that he was, Jorgen held them in thrall. But not her. She wet the comb again and listened more carefully.

He told how the woman walked with the man so that he wouldn't be lonely and how she helped him build a house of stone, wood, and turf so that he needn't wander. Nothing alarming in that. Her mother gave a sudden shiver, though, and Asa was quick to slide the bowl aside and wrap her wet hair in a thick cloth.