Nancy - The Islands of the Blessed

Even animals thought. As the Bard had instructed Jack, animals had much lore to impart to those who paid attention to them. What kind of lore did Gog and Magog, as the slaves were called, have to impart? Nothing good, Jack decided, looking at their brooding, averted faces.

When the oxcart had been loaded, Jack and Thorgil set off for home. Most of the time they lived at the Bard’s house, but now, during the crisis of the impending storm, they had returned to the farm Jack’s parents owned. It had grown a great deal in the last three years.

Beside the fields, farmhouse, barn, and winter storage shed was a new dairy Jack’s father had built. This contained three sturdy black cows tended by Pega, whom Jack had freed from slavery. She also cared for the chickens, new lambs, and a donkey. But she was not allowed to touch the horses. The horses were Thorgil’s domain and jealously guarded, particularly from the tanner’s daughters.

At the edge of the property, where the land was too stony for crops, was a hovel constructed of peat. This was where the tanner’s widow and her two daughters crowded together with hardly more room than three peas in a pod. They had arrived to help Jack’s mother the year before and had never gone home.

“I wish this storm would arrive,” cried Thorgil, throwing a stone at a crow. The crow eluded it. “The air’s so heavy! It’s like breathing under mud.”

Jack looked up at the cloudless, blue sky. Except for the ominous stillness, it could have been any early summer day. “The Bard spoke to a swallow from the south. It told him that the currents in the air were disordered and all the migrating birds were confused. Why don’t you ever talk to birds, Thorgil?” The shield maiden had gained this ability when she’d accidentally tasted dragon blood.

“They never tell me anything,” she said.

“Maybe if you didn’t throw rocks at them…”

“Birds are stupid,” Thorgil said with finality.

Jack shrugged. It was like her to ignore the gifts she had and to demand what she could never achieve, a glorious career as a warrior. Her paralyzed hand had put an end to that. She also wanted to be a poet. Jack had to admit that she wasn’t bad. Her voice was harsh and she had a fondness for bloody death scenes, but her stories held your attention.

During long winter evenings the villagers gathered at the chief’s hearth for song and hot cider. The Bard played his harp, and when he wearied, Jack and Thorgil recited sagas. Brother Aiden, the little monk from the Holy Isle, joined in with tales of the god Jesus, of how He fed a thousand people with five fishes and performed many other diverting miracles. But the real draw at these gatherings was Pega. Her voice was so compelling that the very storm blasts hushed to listen to her.

“By Thor, those Tanner brats are meddling with my horses!” Thorgil broke into a run, and Jack hurried after to break up the inevitable fight. The tanner’s daughters were fascinated by the horses, a gift from King Brutus the year before. Actually, it was unclear whose horses they were, since they’d been handed to the entire group of pilgrims returning from Bebba’s Town. Jack thought they ought to be the Bard’s, but Thorgil insisted that they were hers by right, since she was the only true warrior among them.

“Get off, you mangy curs! You’ll ruin their training!” Thorgil whistled and the horses wheeled, throwing their small riders into the dirt. The animals came to a halt before the shield maiden, prancing nervously like the spirited creatures they were. Jack ran to pick up the howling girls. “Tell them to shut up or I’ll really give them something to blubber about,” snarled Thorgil, stroking the manes of the horses.

Jack checked the girls and found they had no real injuries. They were eight and ten, stunted from years of bad food and the noxious air of the old tannery where they had lived until their father died. “They’re only children,” Jack reproved, wiping the girls’ dirty, tear-streaked faces with the tail of his tunic. “You probably did the same thing at that age.”

“ I was a shield maiden. I was the daughter of—”

“Careful!” Jack said sharply. The girls stopped crying and eyed Thorgil curiously.

“Who was your da, then?” the older one demanded.

“Probably a troll,” the younger said, giggling. Thorgil reached down, but they sped off before she could wallop them with a rock.

“Filthy bog rats,” Thorgil said.

“All it will take is one slip,” Jack warned. “One hint that you are not a Saxon to someone who has reason to hate you, and the whole village will turn against you. And it will turn against my parents and me for sheltering you.”

“That debt is the only thing that keeps me from flinging my true heritage into their faces.” Thorgil embraced the neck of one of the horses, and it blew a long, horsey kiss at her. Jack was impressed, as always, by how much the animals loved her. Too bad she couldn’t inspire the same sentiment in people.

“Let’s go to the house,” Jack said. “I’m starving, and we have to cut bracken all afternoon.”

“Curse the bracken,” swore Thorgil. “Curse the pointless, boring existence in this village. For one rotten turnip I’d throw myself off a cliff into the sea!”

“No, you wouldn’t,” said Jack, leading the way.

Thorgil’s bad mood followed them back to the house. She accepted Mother’s food with a scowl and set about stuffing herself. “In this village it’s customary to say thank you for food,” Mother said. Jack sighed inwardly. It was a battle that never ended, trying to instill basic courtesy into the shield maiden.

“Why?” demanded Thorgil.

“It shows gratitude.”

“I am grateful. I’m eating this swill, aren’t I? Besides, it makes as much sense for you to compliment me for cutting bracken. If everyone started thanking everyone else for the smallest chores, we’d never get anything done.”

“That’s not the point,” Mother said patiently. “People want to hear kind words. It’s like saying ‘Good morning’ or ‘How are you?’”

“What if it’s a rotten morning or I don’t give a flying flip how someone feels?”

“Oh, have it your way!” exclaimed Mother. “Sometimes I wish a Northman ship would swoop down and take you away!” She hurried outside and Jack raised his eyebrows. It was unlike Mother to lose her temper so completely. But then, Thorgil was capable of making even gentle Brother Aiden blot his manuscript when she was on a rampage.

Jack heard Mother and Pega discussing how to protect the livestock from the coming storm. Cows and horses would have to crowd together in the barn. The more aggressive sheep would have to fend for themselves outside.

“Even Olaf One-Brow wished people a good morning,” remarked Jack, naming Thorgil’s dead foster father.

“Only if it was a good morning. He never lied.” Thorgil shadowed her eyes with her hand.

“Are you crying?”

“Of course not. It’s the filthy smoke in this filthy hovel.” The shield maiden continued to shadow her eyes.

“Do you want some of my bread?”

“Why would I want your weevil-infested leavings?” Thorgil said, though from the way she was eating, it was clear she was ravenous.

There was no point trying to be sympathetic, Jack thought. She only looked upon it as weakness. Her moods built up like summer storms, forking lightning in all directions, but if you were patient—and closed your ears to her insults—the clouds would eventually blow away. He wasn’t sure which he preferred, Thorgil’s glooms or her periodic episodes of joy. Sometimes she was seized by a kind of wild rapture in which colors, smells, and sounds overwhelmed her with ecstasy. Then she would grab him by the arm and force him to pay attention to whatever it was.