Bracelet of Bones (4 page)

Solveig stared at the farm, still masked by night. Then she turned back to the dark and dancing water.

Yes, I can, she thought. I can. They’ll be sorry about the boat but not sorry about me. Old Sven will help Kalf and Blubba to cut the planks to build another one.

At the end of the jetty, Solveig got onto her knees. She was out of breath.

“Ægir,” she prayed, “don’t shout at me with your rough wave tongues. Ran, don’t snare me with your drowning net. Lift me and carry me to Trondheim.”

Then Solveig stood up. She felt in the pocket of her reindeer skin for the walrus bone she still had not finished carving.

SOLVEIG THE SUN-STRONG FOLLOWED THE STRONG SUN EAST AND SO . . .

Solveig laid down the disk at the end of the jetty.

“You, Kalf and Blubba . . .” she whispered. “Asta, you . . . Will you find it? And you, wind and waves and days and hope, will you help me complete it?”

Then Solveig edged down the ramp on her bottom and scrambled into the boat. At once she realized she hadn’t untied the painter.

“Solveig! Solveig! Where are you? Solveig!”

She was sure she could hear Asta calling her.

Solveig picked up her carving knife. She hacked and slashed at the painter. She severed it.

4

A
s soon as Solveig had rowed the first few strokes, she realized the tide was so strong that it was taking her in the wrong direction, farther up the fjord, away from Trondheim. She shipped her oars and scrambled over to the mast and pulled up the old sail.

Asta’s right, she thought. It’s a rag of a thing. Less like a sail than a colander.

Then she remembered her stepmother’s bitter words:
“You? You wouldn’t get as far as Trondheim. Wolves would eat you.”

At least there aren’t any wolves out here, thought Solveig. There are other things, though. Things I can’t see. Things without names.

For a little while, Solveig could still see their farm in the breaking light. Then she thought she could. Then she knew she could not.

Everything, she said to herself. The farm, this fjord, they’ve been everything to me.

She could feel tears welling up.

What am I without this water, this earth? This is where I was born. Where my father taught me to fish, and told me stories, where he showed me how to carve the runes, and . . .

Solveig swallowed loudly.

“You know all I am,” she whispered. “Will I ever see you again?”

But then she tossed her head.

Where will all this get me? I must look ahead. I’m following my father.

Running across the wind down the widening fjord, Solveig had soon traveled farther from the farm than she had ever been on her own. To begin with, she listened to each creak of the little boat, and stared at each dark wave welling up in front of her, and bit so hard on her lower lip that she tasted her own blood. But after a time, she began to yawn. She trailed her right hand in the freezing water, and when she raised her fingers to her sore lips, she could hear her father telling her the tale about the salt in the sea.

“. . . But once he’d got it started, Solva, the skipper couldn’t stop it. The quern stone ground more and more salt, just as it had ground a whole waterfall of herrings and broth, and ground so much gold its owner was able to plate his whole house with it. The quern stone ground and ground, and in the end it ground so much salt that it sank the ship. But even then, Solva, the quern didn’t stop. It’s down there on the seabed, grinding. That’s why the sea’s salty.”

While Solveig was still listening, and at the same time wondering why tears taste salty, she realized that someone
on the waterside was waving to her. Waving and shouting. He was too far away, though, and she couldn’t make out what he was saying.

He can’t be after me, she thought. How can he? Has Asta . . . No, that’s nonsense. All the same, she might get Sven or someone to follow me, to bring me back.

Almost at once, there was a terrible grating. The boat jolted and pitched Solveig forward. It was as if some god had ordered the quern stone on the seabed to grind the boat into sawdust.

Solveig didn’t know what it was, not at first. Then she saw. Her boat had collided with a thick sheet of ice, and the boat was so light that it was lifting its nose, its whole body, while the ice slid under it.

One of the seams in the bottom of the boat began to ooze where the grim ice had gouged it, but as far as Solveig could see, there were no other wounds.

Otherwise, she thought, my journey would be over already. Before it had really begun. But if the ooze grows into a leak, I’ll have to start bailing. That man on the waterside, he was warning me.

First the wind fell away to nothing; then the tide turned and began to push the skiff downstream.

It’s a good thing the tide takes much longer to drag back to the sea than to fill up the fjord, thought Solveig. The same amount of water ebbs as comes in, I know that, but it feels as if Ægir is helping me on my way.

Solveig drifted. She yawned again. She felt quite warm inside her reindeer skin.

When the wind and water are as soft as this, she thought, sailing’s as easy as deep breathing. If I close my eyes, it feels as if I’m sliding south, all the way to Miklagard. I know! Sailing’s never easy, not for long. The sea’s a shining trickster and often dangerous. I must be watchful.

Solveig reached for her little water keg and held it up to her mouth and turned the tap. Much as she would have liked to drink deep and then splash fresh water over her salt-sticky face and hair, she took no more than a few sips.

If you’re crossing a mountain or sailing down a fjord,
she thought,
always be sure to take enough food and water.
That’s what Odin says.

Then Solveig untied the neck cord of her leather bag, pulled out a lump of dried mutton, and cautiously sucked it.

Early April. The day’s small store of light was soon drained. The Lodestar and the dragon, the hunting dogs, the great bear and the little bear began to glitter, and the moon wore a silvery-white halo.

Was it really only now that Solveig realized she wouldn’t reach Trondheim before dark and not even by midnight?

She gazed at the water around her, and in the almost-dark it was shining.

Things, she thought. Things I can’t see. Sea serpents, sea snorters. Wild men. Things without names.

All at once, the night sky thronged with black wings and wailing and shrieking. Skuas, terns, and cormorants circled Solveig as if her skiff were a bright beacon, and she buried her head in her arms. They peck your eyes out, she thought. They
do if you’re dead, and they drill into the soft spot in your skull even when you’re alive.

But when Solveig opened her eyes again, the night birds had all gone. As if they had never been.

They were flying from world to world, she thought. Wild and wailing.

The darker the night sky, the more the water shone. The little skipping wavelets were luminous.

Then Solveig saw the ghosts of Stiklestad swimming through the water, white faces up. And all around her she began to hear voices, insistent, soft as a snowfall:

“I will!” cried Solveig in the darkness. And then she thought, I’ll carve runes for you on your shoulder blade. I must sing life, otherwise I’m half dead myself.

Brighter and brighter, the Morning Star gazed at Solveig.

I know about you, she thought. You’re Aurvandil’s big toe—the one that froze because it was sticking out of the basket strapped to Thor’s back when he rescued Aurvandil from the giant world. So Thor snapped you off and threw you into the sky.

But I’m all right, she thought sleepily. I’m warm enough inside Tangl’s skin and my shawl.

All at once, Solveig’s sail began to flap as wildly as an imprisoned seagull.

Solveig stretched, she yawned, she shook her head. I fell asleep, she thought. Where am I?

And at once she sat bolt upright.

Around Solveig were waves, nothing but waves, the sides of waves, gray-green and glassy, sinuous, the tops of waves, bristling, baring their teeth, the troughs of waves, death-dark and bottomless.

Solveig’s skiff was light as thistledown. One moment, she was deep in a shadowless grave, the next whisked and lifted onto a sunlit peak. Up, down, down again, up.

Solveig’s stomach lurched. She felt weightless.

But then she launched herself at the little mast and grabbed it. Standing with both arms wrapped around it, Solveig stared around her, and as her boat lifted again, she
could see in the distance behind her the blue-green stone malt houses and granaries of Trondheim.

While she had slept, tight as a clam, she had been swept right past them.

Solveig was aghast. Aghast and terrified.

If my boat weren’t so light, she thought, the waves would have broken right over us. From in front. From behind.

She clenched her fists until her knuckles were white.

Then Solveig knelt down and cautiously grasped the steering paddle, eased the skiff around toward land again, and gripped the oars.

But as she did so, a wave swept under its bows and lifted and carried it.

I don’t know whether I’m making any headway at all, she thought. But what else can I do?

A few drops kicked up and splashed Solveig and streamed down her face. She licked her salty lips.

“Heimdall!” she cried. “Son of nine waves. Son of nine mothers. Guide me. Save me from Ran and her drowning net.”

Solveig’s mouth was dry and her tongue felt too big, but she didn’t dare stop for a moment to gulp down some water. It was a long time before she was sure she was coming closer to land and at least an hour before she was able to make her way back into calm water. She was completely soaked and shivering. She knew she had kissed fingers with death and escaped with her life.

Solveig sat to her oars. She braced her shoulders and pulled the skiff away from the mainstream, looking over
to the bank until she saw a little staithe where she could come in.

A very old man was standing there beside a wreck—its ribs were slimy green, slimy black—and he watched as Solveig beached the boat on the gravel waterfront.

Solveig stepped out of her skiff, and at once she reeled sideways and fell forward onto her hands and knees.

The old man kept his distance. His white eyebrows were bushy and had lives of their own.

Slowly Solveig uncurled herself and looked up at him.

“You fool!” he said angrily.

“I didn’t mean to.” Solveig shuddered.

“Madness! In an oozy old skiff.”

Solveig’s skin was blue, and her teeth began to chatter. “I fell asleep.”

The old man spit into the gravel. “Who are you, anyhow?”

Solveig didn’t reply.

“Your name.”

“I . . . I . . . It got left behind.”

“Where from?”

“A day back. All day yesterday and last night.”

“That long!” exclaimed the old man. “You’ve been in the boat that long?” He glared at Solveig. “Human, are you?”

“Of course I am,” Solveig replied.

The old man hoicked his thumb over his right shoulder. “Come with me.”

“I’m all right.”

“I’m telling you. You’re bone cold.”

Solveig’s shaking legs nearly gave way when she dragged herself after the fierce old man as he led her to his shack—it was really little more than that, nothing like as roomy as Solveig’s farm. An old woman was sitting by the fire.

“Bera!” barked the man. “Look at this!”

Bera didn’t need asking twice. She put an arm around Solveig, sat her down in her own place, and draped a loosely knitted scarf around her shoulders.

Solveig shook. She couldn’t stop shaking. And for the first time, her eyes filled with tears.

“Carried right out, she was,” the man told his wife. “In an oozy old skiff. I saw her just after sunrise.”

Bera, the old man’s wife, put a bowlful of warm turnip soup between Solveig’s trembling hands.

“Levanger?” croaked the old man. “Is that where you’re from?”

Solveig jerked her head sideways.

“Thought I’d seen the last of you. That’s what I thought.”

“More soup?” asked Bera, and she gave Solveig a knowing smile.

Solveig was still shaking so much that she had difficulty holding the bowl without spilling it.

“Well, she’s not come down from Asgard,” the old man said. “The gods always complain about food on middle-earth. They’re always greedy for something better.”

“Says you, Oleif!” his wife scoffed.

“He’s right,” said Solveig. “Red Thor killed and cooked his own goats. Oh!” She pulled back her shoulders and looked
up at the old couple. “I’m sorry. I haven’t said so much as a word. I was so cold.”

“I know,” said Bera kindly.

“Not from Asgard,” her husband repeated, “and not a ghost. I don’t think she is.”

The old woman pinched Solveig’s cheek. “Of course she’s not,” she said. “Pink and pretty.”

“But not welcome under this roof,” Oleif said. “Won’t say who she is. Won’t say where she’s from. On the run, maybe.”

“Come on, Oleif,” said Bera. “Come and sit in your chair.”

“On the run, are you?” the old man asked Solveig.

Solveig took a deep breath. She closed her eyes.

“I’m following my father.”

Oleif’s eyebrows quivered.

“To the market?” asked Bera.

Solveig shook her head.

“Go on, then,” Oleif told her.

“Miklagard.”

“Where?”

“Miklagard. The great city. The shining city.”

Oleif spit into the fire, and it hissed at him.

“It’s a thousand miles away,” Solveig explained.

“Moonshine!” said the old man.

“It is! It’s after Garthar. South.”

“Right,” said the old man scathingly. “A thousand miles, but you couldn’t keep awake as far as Trondheim.”

“It sounds like the beginning of an old story,” Bera said.

“A story with a bad ending,” added her husband. “You’re not going anywhere, my girl. You’re sailing back home.”

“I’m not!” Solveig replied fiercely, and at once she stood up and stepped across to the open door.

The old man’s eyebrows jumped.

Bera patted the air between her husband and Solveig. “Not so fast, Oleif,” she said. “We don’t know her story. We don’t even know her name.”