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They did stop at just one farmhouse, when the sky’s hue was a cold, deep azure. There a family of modest means offered them the remnants of their stew, and Huginn offered a fragment of a tale. Innocence sat with a girl about his age, dark-haired and short. At times she bore a frown like the shadow of trees upon a sunny path, and at others a grin like sunlight glinting on a newly snatched river stone.

He grew acutely aware of her and kept wondering, as Huginn spoke, if she was looking at him. He would often glance at her to check and was always disappointed, or perhaps relieved.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE VINDIR

Long ago, when the sun rose in the south and set in the north, there was a land beloved of Arthane Stormeye, chief of the gods who dwelled in the icy Surmount. In that land there were things we would recognize today: fjords and mountains, glaciers and moraines, rivers and grasslands. And too, there were people that we would recognize, people who struggled and fought and performed deeds worthy and dishonorable.

That age ended when the gods of Surmount warred with their cousins in the distant South—what is now a place beyond even the empires of the East. For their warring changed the course of the sun so that it rose and set in the places we expect today. The fair realm of Vindheim, crowned with ice, became a sun-scoured land, and in the tumult it was mostly drowned, so that only a few islands remained to mark Vindheim’s passing. The gods withered, and in time Arthane himself perished; yet before these events he had placed dreams in the mind of one man, Orm, who was his son by the mortal woman Bergljot. Arthane bade Orm build vessels and depart Vindheim with all his kin.

Thus when the sun’s course changed, and the seas were tormented, and the frozen lands became hot, Orm’s folk sailed. Some of their ships were lost, and they mourned. But Orm had second sight, and steered them to a land that was once warm and was now cold, snow falling upon shriveling rainforest. The Vindir landed there and forged a peace with the inhabitants, who knew the ways of the land but not the ways of cold. Together the Vindir and these Solir worked together to make this land, Kantenjord, a good place. Over generations the greatest of Vindir and Solir, like Orm’s son Torden, or his wife Verden, came to be considered gods, and it is true that great champions rose among them, and others who came from across the Earthe, and some called by Orm’s Choosers of the Slain from other times and places—Yngvarr the Fiery, Torfa the Vengeful, Alder of the Earthquake, and many more.

For there came to Orm one day a strange traveler, who spoke with peculiar diction. He said he had maps revealing places in Kantenjord where the right person might travel through the years to reach other times. He called himself the Winterjarl, come from a time of endless snow and ice, the time of Fimbulwinter, the age of ultimate cold and the ending of days.

The Winterjarl sojourned with the Vindir and Solir and taught them much of future days. As more peoples migrated to Kantenjord, the stories of the Vindir and Solir and their deeds became legendary. Orm and Torden and their allies and kin in their time passed away; they were accounted as gods by those who came after. And it may be that by the Winterjarl’s teachings the wisdom and power of those folk can wing like ravens down the years to men of these days and in this manner aid their descendants.

There have been many dread winters between the Vindir’s time and ours, and it may be that the Fimbulwinter was one of these, and that the doom the Winterjarl foretold was of the old religion and its surrender to the light of the White Swan. Or it may be that this disaster is yet to come. Either way, let us look with respect upon the old ways, for they have things to teach us, even we Swanlings, blessed as they were not.

When Huginn was done, there were other stories told by the grownups, and at some point it was decreed that younger folk should get themselves to bed. The girl showed him his place on the far end of the hearth-room.

“What is your name?” he asked.

She smiled and looked away, as if guessing a great deal from the entrails of that one sentence. “I am Jaska Torsdatter. And you?”

“Innocence Gaunt.”

“A strange name.”

“I’ve not heard the name Jaska before either.”

“It’s a Vuos name.”

“Vuos? That is not a word I’ve heard before.”

“The First. My mother’s people were the first people of this land.”

“Like the Soli?”

“The Soli were latecomers, so my mother said before she died. The Vuos were here before any others.” She glanced down the hearth-room, but the adults were paying little notice. “They live in the farthest north of Spydbanen. My father met her foamreaving.”

She must have understood his look of horror, for she added, “It was a trading journey, not a raid. She was his first wife, before Oddny there. He has always said he was charmed by the reindeer herders and the beauty of their icy land.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“No. I don’t think I will ever go.”

“Why not?”

Jaska laughed a little. “Girls don’t travel! Except princesses.”

Innocence thought of Nan and Hekla. “That surely isn’t true. Why do you believe it?”

She studied him, as if seeing a serious edge in what she’d regarded as a joke. “I will travel, just a little. To Loftsson Farm, for the feast of Saint Kringa.”

“Maybe I will see you there.”

“You are a servant,” Jaska said, tone expressionless. “My family is not mighty like Jokull’s nor famed like Huginn’s. But my father has a voice in the Spring Assembly and in the Althing.”

“I don’t know what that means. I am . . . an orphan. But I have seen many wonders.”
None more than you
, he suddenly wanted to say, but he sensed the words would squeak out of him like the voice of a new-hatched chick.

“I must go,” Jaska said. “Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

He could not decide if it was a good night or not. He could not sleep. Something in him wanted to reach out and embrace all the embers of the fire.

He did not see Jaska in the morning. He and Huginn left in the earliest gray, for the latter hoped to reach their destination just before nightfall. Even in the gloom Huginn and the horses seemed to know their business, for all that Innocence felt himself lost.

“She is a serious one, that girl,” Huginn said.

“What?” Innocence’s mind seemed to return from a voyage over the sea.

“That Jaska, Tor’s daughter. It’s my opinion that a young man’s first love should not be a serious girl. Time enough for sobriety when you’re married.”

Innocence forgot all Walking Stick’s advice on addressing elders. “I did not ask your opinion.”

“Oh, ho!” Innocence expected Huginn to take offense, but the Kantening’s only further comment was a chuckle.

Strangely, Innocence’s thoughts turned not to Jaska but to A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, somewhere far away. If she remained within the enchanted scroll, she would be older now than he. Perhaps years older. Even if she’d stayed within his own timeframe, even if they met again, she would be very different. The thought stabbed at him, making him feel lonelier than any remembrance of his parents.

It was a land for loneliness, he thought. It was a warmer day than yesterday, and as the sun rose, the melting snow revealed a jumbled, rough coastal country. They crossed boulder-filled streams in sight of waterfalls, and a dark volcanic cone rose in the distance. He rubbed at his forehead now and then. It tingled. Something about it itched like an old memory.

When we reach this place
, the words came out of cold blue, displacing thoughts of girls and loneliness,
I will take the reins of my life
.

CHAPTER 6

RUBBLEWRACK

A Tumult of Trees on Peculiar Peaks
rushed through the stormy skies to an unknown fate in a desolate land. Everyone upon the mystic mountain knew this, and everyone knew that it would take some time to reach this doom, for time ran more swiftly within the scroll than without.

When Snow Pine and Flint appeared and told their tale, the elders of the mountain gathered everyone together.

“We are in a tight spot,” Walking Stick said. “It seems someone in Spydbanen wants our company. But the guardian of the scroll can help us.”

The self-portrait of the sage painter, often known as Meteor-Plum, spoke. It might have been the first time he’d addressed everyone in his care.

“I can resist,” he said. “But it will be a long struggle, and I may fail. If I succeed, our plunge to the ground may be violent. Be patient. Be prepared. I go now to my cave, to begin.”

A-Girl-Is-A-Joy crossed her arms, trying to remain calm, remembering.

Back when the scroll had lain upon the bottom of the ocean, endless rains had little by little threatened to drown the Peculiar Peaks. The overcast skies and continual drizzle had been companions of her childhood, and it was hard to remember the more benign skies of her first couple of years.

Suddenly everything had changed. The rain had ceased, replaced by crazy windstorms that blew the clouds overhead at ridiculous speeds. If that weren’t enough, later on came the great plunge, when everything in the mountains seemed much lighter. It took very little, in those days, to kick off into the air, drifting among the trees. That was great fun, until the moment when Joy had almost floated over the chasm between their peak and the next. Walking Stick had rescued her, but the momentary terror was nothing compared to the half-hour lecture he’d given her afterward.

It was in the midst of his harangue, surrounded by statues of monks in the hall who’d all looked far friendlier than Walking Stick, that Imago Bone had first entered the monastery with word of her mother.

She knew the thief as hardly any less legendary than Archer Yi, who shot nine of ten suns from the skies, or the sorcerer Hsuan Chieh, master of miniature landscapes and the art of self-shrinking. Yet she recognized him from paintings made by the guardian of this place.

Walking Stick hardly seemed less surprised. “You.”

Bone bowed. “Hello, Walking Stick.” He looked to her. “Hello, A-Girl-Is-A-Joy.”

“You know me?” she said.

“Your mother’s often spoken about you.”