Tumbling down the Cliff
A story by Jay & Peggy
My life stopped being predictable when Olaf came to the benchland as I had known he would.
I was the first to see the travelers─three men and a woman, walking alongside the river at midday. When they saw me on the cliff far above them they stopped and looked up. I waved, and they waved. I went to the garden and told Mother, and she and Aunt Inge came to the cliff, accompanied as always by the dog. Actually, Mother never came very close to the edge of the cliff. But Aunt Inge did, and raised her arms hello. The travelers did too. Aunt Inge lowered the rope and climbed down to the half-way ledge, and on down to the derelict village beside the river, where they talked. When Aunt Inge climbed the rope back to the bench, the youngest traveler came with her, a young man, while the others waited in the village.
Aunt Inge was still the fastest climber. She could even beat Geyrr, who was taller and stronger and much younger. Aunt Inge was in her thirties, and showed how strong you can be when you’re older. I liked to walk right on the edge of the cliff, like she did. I wanted to be like her.
The young man was Olaf. He was fifteen, and it felt wonderful to talk to him, the first boy visitor ever who was close to my age. All the boys I knew, I had grown up with. Geyrr was always with Angel and never paid attention to me─always her little sister─and in any case I wanted somebody more like me. His little brother Brandr was only six, and the only other boys in my life were my brothers Druian and Meldun, and Aunt Inge's boys Kylf and Leif, who were much younger than I. Soon I was going to be a grown woman, and ever since I was small I had wondered how I would find a husband. Aunt Inge just smiled and said that problem would solve itself someday. Now, I knew all along that the first boy my age ever to come to the bench would not likely be the one I would join with, but still, he was new.
───
Before Olaf, the most exciting thing that had happened to me was five years ago, when I was eight. I went with Mother, Father, Angel, and Druian to the village where Mother and Father were born, to meet my grandparents. The boat trip took us almost a month, after we walked for days to get to the ocean. I loved every minute on the boat, but the walking scared me because I kept thinking about bears, like the one that had hurt Father before I was born, beside this same river. We still have the skin from that bear, but I guess sometimes the bear wins.
There were tears when we arrived. Our two grandfathers had died since Mother and Father had been there when Angel was a baby. Angel was thirteen, and didn't remember that earlier trip, but our grandmothers remembered her, and cried, and were sweet to me. Mother and Father cried too, about their fathers, but they were all happy to see each other, and we stayed much longer than we had planned. We lived in the house where Mother grew up, which was beautiful, and I could look out and see the ocean. The village was far south of the bench, right on the ocean but still warm. It had many boats, and there was often fish to eat. The older people introduced me as Ana, Quitana’s younger girl, and told me stories about Mother and Father when they were little, and how Father and Uncle Sigurd saved the village from the raiders, which I've heard about all my life, along with the story of the bear.
Really. Saved them from vicious raiders, in a big battle. And Mother and Aunt Inge and Grandmother too, all heroes. MY mother.
I loved the village, which was full of boys my age, and wanted to live there with my grandmothers, but Mother and Father said no─their mothers were too old to take care of an eight year old, and I would have to come back to the bench with them. So I did, but I told myself I didn't want to live my entire life and raise my children in a place that had no ocean, or boats, or fish to eat, always deer. And no boys.
What a lucky thing for me that I came back.
───
“We saw a bear yesterday.” Olaf and I were sitting on our old bear rug, which was showing its age. “It looked at us but went away.”
“They're not usually dangerous this late in the year,” I said. “They're getting ready to sleep for the winter.” The adults were helping Olaf's family up to the bench. Olaf had blond hair and blue eyes, like Leif and all the rest of that family, but Olaf smiled at me in a way they never had, and was taller than I was. He probably already knew all about bears. Our dog was curled up by us, and he scratched her ears while we talked, which surprised me. Star is half wolf, and she has always been shy around visitors.
“Where do you live in the winter?” I had shown him the summer shelters, which would never keep out cold and snow.
“I'll show you.” He followed me toward the cavern mouth, and looked up astonished as we came under its high ceiling and headed toward the cave entrance at the rear. His surprise grew as we ducked through the entrance to the sleeping chamber, our winter quarters. Star didn’t join us; she always preferred the bench to the cave. The light was dim, but after a few minutes our eyes adjusted and we could see everything─the entire enormous chamber, the stream running through it, our supplies piled against one wall, our two cooking areas.
“This is where you live all winter? Isn't it cold?”
“It's just like this year around,” I said. I led him to the back wall, where we kept torch wood and a bag with fire tools and tinder. I took the fire tools and two torches, and we crawled up the sloping tunnel that leads to the spirit chamber.
I had always wondered what it would be like to see the spirit chamber for the first time. It was already familiar to me in my earliest memories, huge and beautiful. The stream curves through tall pillars of sparkling rock, more and more pillars, out of sight. It looks magical, and it feels like a living thing, aware, watching over you, protecting you.
The spirit chamber gives me dreams. That's how I knew Olaf would come.
───
Aunt Inge told me that as a baby I cried all the time, except in the spirit chamber. Yrsa told them I must come there often while I was still young enough to get to know the spirit. I don't remember Yrsa. She was Geyrr's grandmother, and he remembers her, but she died before his brothers and sisters were born. I was born in the spirit chamber at midwinter. We were all born there, all us children. I know it by heart─every pillar and passageway. And I do know the spirit, as much as you can know anything so big, and it knows everything about me, all my secrets.
The tunnel from the sleeping chamber to the spirit chamber isn't steep, but it’s long. It comes out at the top of a huge pile of jumbled rock, in the dark. I usually climb down the rocks in the dark, but with Olaf there I planned to light a torch. First we sat in the dark on a big flat rock just below the top of the pile, so our eyes could adjust. That’s when the surprises started.
“It feels like something here is watching us,” he said, and after a long pause added “I love the sound of the stream. That’s part of it. This place is alive. It knows we’re here. I can feel it.”
All my life I've been trying to explain that to the other children, but they don't get it. Nobody does except Mother and Aunt Inge. No boys, ever, until Olaf.
My hands were shaking as I found the fire tools. And that was only the beginning.
───
I was always the strange child who did whatever she wanted. I loved my family, all of them, especially Mother and Aunt Inge, because they were such strong women, and healers. But I also needed time alone. I loved hunting and climbing. I went hunting with Father and Uncle Sigurd at the far entrance to the cave, and that means climbing a steep rock wall. When I was old enough I went to the west entrance alone. From there I climbed to the highest point of the mountain and looked down on the bench from above, which nobody else has ever done. And over the years, dragging Druian with me at Father’s insistence, I explored every last passage in our vast cave, each one more beautiful than the last.
Most of all I was drawn to the spirit chamber, which called to me in dreams even when I was tiny. Again and again I frightened them all by going there in the dark. Eventually they learned that was where they should start looking. I didn’t need light. It has its own kind of light. I find my way by the sound of the water. Even Mother and Aunt Inge need torches there. And I’m the only one who comes to the spirit chamber every day.
I never expected Olaf to understand even though I had dreamed about him, but he knew from the start. I heard his intake of breath as the torch flared, and he looked around with eyes wide. The spirit chamber is as beautiful and awe-inspiring as a sunrise, but that’s not what had caught his attention. “Look,” he said, “It’s exactly like it sounds.” He picked his way down the boulders toward the stream, toward the hearth where we sometimes had fires. I followed him, and we sat beside the stream. I never lighted the second torch.
“Right here is where I was born” I told him. “All the other children too.”
“The water flows out of the cave into the stream,” he said, “And down the cliff into the river, and into the sea. I can feel it going there. Listen. You can hear it. It’s all connected.”
I closed my eyes and listened. We sat facing each other, listening to the stream on its way to the light and the sea. After we had sat that way a long time, an amazing thing happened, something I will never forget. I realized I could feel him, as if we were hugging softly. I opened my eyes and saw we hadn’t moved and weren’t touching at all─but the feeling continued. I knew it came from the spirit chamber, but also from Olaf; it hadn’t happened when Mother or Aunt Inge sat with me in that same spot. He opened his eyes and looked at me, and I saw he felt it too. We sat there looking at each other, not saying a word. The torch threw tall flickering shadows everywhere, and after it burned out the feeling of the soft hug continued in the dark.
I didn’t know then what that meant, and I certainly had no idea where it would lead us, but I knew that after almost fourteen years I was no longer alone. When a rock tumbles down the cliff after balancing on the edge for years, it sometimes comes to a stop exactly where it belongs, and there it stays. After that time in the spirit chamber my life was never the same.
───
Mother was not pleased with me. It was late afternoon when we emerged, and she had known where we were only because she saw I had taken the fire tools. She had told Olaf’s parents that we were in the cave, and would be safe. She didn’t tell them we had taken only two torches, and by now were surely in the dark. She didn’t feel like explaining to them that her daughter went often into the totally dark cave, without light. It was fortunate she did not. What followed was entirely bad enough as it was.
It was chilly, almost time to move into the cave for the winter, and they were in the shelter area, gathered around a big fire. They were relieved to see us. Olaf’s parents presented him to Mother and Father, Aunt Inge, Uncle Sigurd, and Fedr. Mother presented me to Olaf’s parents and his uncle. I led Olaf to the other hearth, where Angel and Geyrr were feeding the children, and introduced him. I hadn’t realized until then how tall Olaf was─as tall as Geyrr. They both had blue eyes and almost white hair, but there the resemblance ended. I had seen Geyrr almost every day of my life, but after our visit to the spirit chamber I already knew Olaf better, and when Olaf smiled at me that afternoon it was a secret smile.
Aunt Inge caught one of those, and understood everything in a flash. “He understood the spirit chamber” I told her. “He felt it.” Aunt Inge knows the spirit chamber better than anybody else except me. “I had already taken him there, in a dream.”
“Ana,” she said quietly, “Dreams are important, but you must make your decisions about your life in your waking mind.”
“In the spirit chamber I could feel him touch me,” I told her, “But we never touched. It was deeper than touch. Our thoughts joined. He told me he heard the water going to the sea” Since she already knew it, I felt I could tell her. I also happened to know that Aunt Inge had been thirteen when she and Uncle Sigurd were joined, so she wasn’t likely to tell me I was too young.
That night the guests slept in the fourth shelter, by the garden. It was a beautiful night, with a perfect full moon. I could hear the stream, and could still feel Olaf, as if we were still sitting facing each other in the spirit chamber. The rock had not tumbled back up the cliff, and I could think of nothing else.
───
I woke full of happiness the next morning, but it was short-lived, because when I joined the group around the fire Olaf and his family were preparing to depart, just as if nothing had happened. Olaf’s fisherman uncle─his father’s brother─lived in Mother and Father’s village. He had been just old enough to fight in the famous battle and was astonished to find its heroes living at the top of a cliff in the north. He had sailed north to tell his brother their father had died, and that together they now owned three fishing boats. He had left one of the boats in the rivermouth village, and walked up the river for half a month to where Olaf’s parents had lived for years with Olaf’s mother’s family, farming the fields near their village. Olaf was their only child. They were happy to move toward a milder winter. It was late in the season for a sea voyage, but Olaf’s uncle was a master seaman who could cope with bad weather if it arose.
All of this fell on me like a deadly illness. I had trouble breathing and could not say a word. Around me, everything seemed normal. The adults were talking with each other. What about me? I didn’t dare look at Olaf, for fear of breaking down in tears. Then I caught his eye and saw his look of desperation. We walked to the edge of the cliff to talk, but no words came. After the spirit chamber, we had hardly talked; we hadn’t needed to. Now, with the memory of the the spirit chamber swirling around us, I realized that I didn’t know anything else about Olaf. Was he a hunter? Of course; all boys learned to hunt, just as I had learned to sew, and cook, and know the plants. We hadn’t talked about it. We hadn’t talked about anything. And now it was too late.
“I could hunt for our food” is all he said, and just like that, our lives were set, in an instant.
When we returned to the fire Olaf’s family was waiting for us, anxious to depart. Olaf said it beautifully, and simply: we didn’t wish to part, but wanted a chance to get to know each other. I expected shock and recriminations from Mother, but she wasn’t surprised, thanks to Aunt Inge, who had warned her when we walked away. When I am an adult I hope I will have some of Aunt Inge’s wisdom.
The shock came from Olaf’s family. His father’s face flushed, and he advanced threateningly on Olaf. “This time you’ll do what you’re told,” he said, his tone vicious. Then everything happened at once. When Olaf made no move to defend himself. Olaf’s mother stepped between them, and Olaf’s father snarled at her and pushed her to the ground. Olaf rushed to her, kneeling beside her to help her up. Olaf’s father jumped toward the two of them, but never reached them; Uncle Sigurd stepped forward and lifted him off the ground, as deliberately as if he had been hoisting a dead deer. Uncle Sigurd was over forty but still an extremely powerful man. Olaf’s father struggled but could not free himself. “You are our guests,” said Uncle Sigurd, “And I will not permit guests to be harmed.” He set Olaf’s father down, but Olaf’s father whipped around to face him, his face contorted with rage, a short dagger suddenly in his hand. “Erik, NO!” shouted his brother. He grabbed Olaf’s father from behind and wrenched the knife from him. Star rushed barking into the fray. Olaf’s mother was on her feet now, crying, in Olaf’s arms.
“You must leave,” said Uncle Sigurd. Star stood beside him, growling menacingly.
“Oh, we’ll leave,” said Olaf’s father. He gestured angrily to his wife and Olaf, but they were both shaking their heads. “Stay, then,” said the father, “And be damned.” He rushed to the cliff’s edge and turned to Uncle Sigurd. “You’ll be sorry,” he said. The, his hand on the rope, he turned to me, and his face was one of pure hatred. “And you,” he snarled, “You put him under a spell. You hexed him. We know how to treat people who do that.” Then he started down the rope, as we all stood in stunned silence. He was no climber, and his clumsiness only made him angrier. His brother was obviously embarrassed. He spread his hands and apologized. Then he too went to the rope and climbed down the cliff.
Uncle Sigurd and Father and I stood watching the two men descend. My heart raced and my cheeks burned, but I calmed quickly; he didn’t know me well enough for his anger to wound me deeply. When they reached the village Olaf’s uncle grabbed his brother’s arm and swung him around so they were facing each other, and they argued heatedly. We could hear their voices but not their words. Father and Uncle Sigurd talked quietly as Father pulled up the rope, thinking that Olaf’s father might attack his brother. The argument continued as the two of them started down the river, and they were out of sight before the sun reached the village.
───
Our benchland is a fortress, and attack by enemies is all but impossible. It is a shelf of land perched half way up a sheer mountainside, with a dizzying drop to the river on the east and a high mountain wall on the west. The mountaintop is at least as far above us as the river lies below. My parents and Uncle Sigurd and Aunt Inge found the bench from the cave, where they had taken refuge from winter, at its west entrance, which is easier to reach. Father loves to climb and explore, and he and Mother were the first to find the east entrance and the bench. They loved to the bench because it was so protected, and moved their camp here. The route through the cave is long, difficult, and confusing, with its own dangerous climbing, all in total darkness. I know when they came here, because Mother was pregnant with Angel, who is just nineteen, and in all those years nobody else has discovered the bench through the cave.
The bench is long and narrow. It takes more than half a day to walk the length of it and back. Where we live, near the south end, it’s only a short walk from the cavern entrance to the cliff edge. It’s much wider farther north, but still confined between the cliff edge on the east and the high mountain on the west. There are beautiful views eastward, over diminishing hills to the distant seashore. There is a large spring pool where game come for water. There are are dense forests, and the whole place is a flower garden in summer, with birds and butterflies.
The climb up the cliff to the bench is possible only with the help of a rope attached at the top, and difficult in any case. At first they used ropes of braided hide, but they had hempen rope by the time I was a little girl, much stronger and lighter than hide, made from our own hemp. Fedr was young when he came here, and one of his jobs was digging up wild hemp plants from the riverbed and planting them beside the large pool, in the sun. They thrived, and Fedr has cared from them for all the time since, and made most of the ropes as well. We twist the hemp fibers into thread─a good job for children─and twist those into ropes. When we had visitors we put them into hide harnesses and hauled them up with two stout ropes. Olaf was one of the few visitors who climbed to the bench on his own.
I tell this to dispel any idea that Olaf’s father might return and attack us. Deer find their way down to the bench from the mountaintop, along scanty rock ledges only they know, but for people and bears the bench might as well be the moon.
───
Olaf’s mother Folke seemed too young to be the mother of a boy of fifteen. She was a small woman with blond hair and blue eyes like Olaf’s─in fact Olaf looked like her, except much taller. Her husband’s behavior left her speechless with shock and embarrassment. Mother put a cup of tea in her hand and drew her to the fire, where she sat with Mother and Aunt Inge, weeping quietly. Father and Uncle Sigurd and Fedr were talking too. Uncle Sigurd had seemed calm when he lifted Olaf’s father, but now I could see his anger. Olaf was standing by himself. He looked at me, but there were no more secret smiles. He obviously felt responsible for what had happened.
Olaf and I walked away from the group as we had only a little earlier, but now that seemed like a different lifetime. When I first woke all I had been able to think of was what I shared with Olaf. Then my world turned upside down because Olaf was going to leave before I got to know him. It was still early, but now everything had changed again. I was relieved that Olaf wasn’t leaving, but looking at him and his mother I saw that they were both in pain. What kind of man was he, who would attack his wife and son?
“I hate him,” Olaf told me. We were back on the bear rug. He was trembling with anger and close to tears at the same time, and his words rushed out. “I’ve wished Mother and I could get away from him for years. He has hurt us both, again and again. I’ve been afraid of him as long as I remember, afraid he would kill her, or me, or both of us. I thought it again just now. He gets suddenly enraged without reason or warning, just like today. My grandparents and our neighbors all knew about it, and didn’t like him. That’s why he was glad to leave. I’ve had dreams about him dying, and they felt good. Mother was only fifteen when I was born─my age. I think he never wanted me and was mad at her because of me. I hope a bear kills him. At the least I hope I never see him again.”
Olaf fell silent. I could feel his anger and the hot ashes of his fear, but our connection from the spirit chamber was gone. Our minds were completely taken up by what had happened. I took his hand and led him toward the spirit chamber. I didn’t stop for torches; I just wanted to get there quickly, to quiet us both. Olaf and his mother both needed to heal. Olaf’s mother would deal with her fear and shock in her own way, with help from Mother and Aunt Inge. For Olaf, I was the best medicine. I knew it was selfish, but that filled me with joy.
In the spirit chamber I led Olaf to my private place, where the feeling of the place was strongest. I hadn’t taken him there earlier; I didn’t know him well enough. I had never told anyone about my spot, but I learned there that others had found it before me, and kept it to themselves, as I had─Aunt Inge and her teacher Yrsa, certainly. I knew it would calm me and hoped it would give Olaf the strength and courage he needed to heal.
Olaf was tense and silent, the heat of his anger still upon him. Again we sat facing each other, the sound of the stream surrounding us, and began to relax. A little at a time, Olaf’s breathing slowed and his anger diminished. We didn’t speak, but I slowly regained the feeling of him near me, listening and understanding. I took his hands between mine, and we sat without speaking until the rage of the morning was fully replaced by the feeling of us together. Eventually we leaned forward until our foreheads touched. We sat there a long time, joined in spirit.
That sealed our fates. From that time we both knew we would spend our lives together─and that we would always need the spirit chamber.
It was afternoon before we finally rejoined the others around the fire. Olaf’s mother was talking quietly to Mother and Aunt Inge. She looked spent, but when we approached the fire she looked up and smiled at Olaf. Despite the sorrow in her eyes, I could see that she had begun to heal. I also saw that Aunt Inge understood everything that had happened, as usual.
───
Looking back now, I can see that in all my little-girl years of wondering where I would find a husband, Olaf never crossed my mind, never a man coming to the bench and loving me. I always thought I would have to go to Mother’s village; I have always been so choosy. And I didn’t understand my own loving self. Mother had told me stories that had come through a succession of mothers, more mothers than I can believe, ancient stories of girls becoming women by being overcome by love, each overwhelmed by some perfect man, hero, hunter, lover, the rare man who wanted one woman. The stories were about many different girls, but I saw myself in each one, and that’s what I expected. I saw Angel and Geyrr loving each other since childhood, neither one as choosy as I, both willing to accept what was available, ending up with each other as the best choice. Despite their quarrelling I see they do love each other, but not the way I wanted to love. I appreciated the affection between the adults, but I can’t believe Mother and Father could have loved each other the way I wanted for myself. At the same time, I saw that both Father and Uncle Sigurd were big strong heroes who loved their women─and Father has loved me since I was born, so I know how he loves. I wanted that sort of man as a husband.
None of that prepared me for Olaf, who has met me as an equal in the spirit chamber from our first blessed afternoon there when we never touched, and who has always treated our shy bond of surprised equals with tenderness and respect. In the spirit chamber we have shared thoughts and feelings from the first day. I was so young; I didn’t know myself at all, and was astonished to find us sharing a rare love where each of us knows the spirit of the cave better than any of the others, even Aunt Inge. Together in the spirit chamber we saw into spaces beyond the material world, where we merged, stepping around the usual boundaries between people─and all before we ever really touched each other.
From there we grew into the power of spirit that this story is about. I know of no other husband and wife like us.
The high emotion was behind us, and Olaf and I finally got to know each other. We spent days together, trying to understand what had happened to us and what was coming. We were young to join, with much to learn and understand if we were to do our share and be worthy of each other. Young or not, we would be joining soon. We knew it was right, and none could deny us when it was the spirit chamber itself that had set us together. I hoped it would be at midwinter, when I would be fourteen and a woman.
We set ourselves learning tasks to complete before we allowed ourselves the luxury of marriage. For Olaf, it was learning the work Father and Sigurd did, so he could make a solid contibution. For me, it was becoming a daughter to Olaf’s mother. If she loved me as a daughter and saw that I would be a good wife to Olaf, the entire village would function better.
For us together, it was to develop our spiritual selves and our shared connection with the spirit chamber. We went there every day. We never took torches; Olaf could find his way by the sound of the stream as well as I. My private place had become ours, and we often lay side by side. We soon discovered that we could share dreams that were visions of real events. We didn’t expect it, and were surprised when the dreams begain. The first one involved Eydis, Aunt Inge’s younger daughter.
Eydis has cut her arm, and there is a lot of blood. Angel is comforting her, and has taken her to the stream to bind her cut. Eydis is crying, but smiling at the same time. I realize I am dreaming with Olaf.
Eydis adored Angel and loved any attention from her. The dream was so vivid that I awoke knowing I was seeing a real happening. When I woke Olaf he described the same dream. We went outside, knowing what we would find. By the time we arrived at the stream outside the cave Eydis’s cut had been bound up and she was cheerfully accepting comfort from Angel and Aunt Inge.
After that we made ourselves an afternoon dreaming pallet in the spirit chamber, and dreaming together became part of our lives, and of this tale.
───
When Father and Uncle Sigurd weren’t hunting, they spent most days at their work. They made tools, weapons, and ornaments, from wood, bone, stone, antler, and sunrock, a rock-hard lightweight material that they worked with heat and hammers. Carving was an important part of the work. Olaf enjoyed carving, asked them to teach him.
Uncle Sigurd gave Olaf a small piece of wood and a knife he had made, and asked him to carve anything he pleased. When Olaf asked him how to start, Uncle Sigurd simply told him to study the wood to discover what was hiding inside it, and not to hurry. Olaf worked on his carving a little at a time, repeatedly putting it down and returning to it. Sometimes he just looked at it. After ten days days he finished a figure of a sleeping child of such beauty that it was hard to believe it was done by a boy with no experience. He had used the grain of the wood to make the child’s hair flow, and polished the piece until it was smooth and felt like stone. Olaf was not sure his work would be thought acceptable. Uncle Sigurd held the figure in his hands, turning it and looking at it for a long time. Finally he looked at Olaf, saying “Someday you will be the greatest carver I ever knew.” I will never forget Olaf’s look of surprise and gratitude.
Our most valuable trade items were Father’s work─points and blades of glarestone, a smooth black stone, so shiny it’s reflective. Glarestone can be chipped into the sharpest blades and points, a bit at a time. It was rare and precious, and we were fortunate to have an entire hillside of glarestone, only a short distance up the river. Father worked glarestone with antler chippers in bone handles. He had learned this craft from an old man in his home village, and had taught Geyrr and Fedr, but so far their work had never matched his own. Father had Olaf make chipping tools in different shapes and sizes, then handed him a finished spear point to copy. Olaf worked for days, with several false starts, but finally produced a superb point, but of a different design. Olaf said it was like the bone spear points he had carved before, designed to be attached to a shaft quickly and securely. Father said it was wonderful work, and valuable. We didn’t yet know how important that would be, but Olaf was happy to contribute. Father told me that he and Uncle Sigurd thought we were lucky to have Olaf, who would surpass them and become a master craftsman and teacher.
───
The weather turned cold soon after Olaf arrived. Bitter winds swept the bench. It froze at night and was uncomfortably cold in the mornings, especially for the small children─and for Angel, who was pregnant, sick in the mornings, and impatient with Geyrr and all of us. I’ve always loved being a girl, and when I was small was always grateful I hadn’t been born a boy, but seeing how sick Angel was, and remembering Mother’s sickness in the mornings when she was pregnant, sometimes made me think women have the harder time. Men work hard physically. They carry heavy loads, and must be strong. They are sometimes gone for days hunting, sleeping outside even in winter, and they must sometimes fight. But they are never sick from pregnancy and never die of childbirth, although they can’t escape the pain; I was ten when Heidl died, and Fedr’s suffering was terrible. I feared he would die.
Moving inside for the winter involved everybody. Father and Uncle Sigurd would leave their work area for the winter, and move to a smaller work area under the cavern roof, where it was cold but never snow-covered. All the men, with Olaf and Druian, moved the tools and supplies. The rest of us emptied the outdoor shelters, brought everything inside the cave, and set up sleeping areas and two communal cooking areas. When I was small we had just a single hearth, but we soon became too many for that; the confusion made everyone short-tempered, even Mother and Aunt Inge. Two hearths helped─one for the adults, one for us children, originally under the charge of Mother, Aunt Inge, Heidl, or Fedr. After Geyrr and Angel were joined they took charge of the children’s hearth, and slept near that fire. With Olaf and Folke we were nineteen, the biggest our village had ever been. And Angel was pregnant.
This winter Olaf and Folke would sleep near the adults’ hearth. I was flattered and moved when Aunt Inge suggested that Olaf and I should join the adults for meals, and that after we were joined should sleep near the adults’ fire. Angel suggested tartly that we should take our turn at tending the children. “Certainly,” said Mother quickly, “As soon as Ana is the oldest daughter,” and pointed out that Angel would soon add her own baby to our growing crowd of little ones. I knew I would hear more from Angel about the sleeping arrangements. She is a good daughter and a good sister, and I love her, but we have argued about everything for my entire life.
I would miss the dog. Star always slept with the children, and took seriously her task of keeping the little ones from wandering, a job she had learned from her mother, who had kept me from wandering when I was small. Her name was Sneechen, which means little snow thing, but she was huge and black. She lived almost twenty years. I was twelve when she died, and I cried for days. Star was every bit her equal, and even bigger; Star’s father was a enormous tawny wolf who had found his way down the deer trail onto the bench. I saw him once. He didn’t stay, which was good for him; Father or Uncle Sigurd would have killed him if they could. Star was black like her mother, but with tawny streaks and wolfy yellow eyes. She was loving, gentle and intelligent. She was born when I was nine. She didn’t like living in the cave, and moved inside for the winter reluctantly. I loved her fiercely, and when I moved with Olaf to the adults’ area I would be sleeping away from a dog for the first time ever.
───
Dreaming together in the spirit chamber, Olaf and I share a dream that upsets us both:
We are walking to the fishing village at the river mouth because I fear something has happened to our boat. We arrive at night, in bright moonlight. At first everything seems to be as I remember it, but then I see a pillar of smoke. I fear our boat is burning. We enter the boatyard and turn to where the boat is stored. The smoke is dissipating, but the boat is reduced to charred timbers. I see a man running away. He knows we have seen him, and turns to glares threateningly at us. I am frightened and angry.
I awoke knowing exactly what had happened. Olaf knew too; his father had burned our boat. His old anger boiled over, and we remained in the spirit chamber until he was calm enough to bring our news to Father and Uncle Sigurd. We found them near the fire, where the adults were talking. We related our dream. Aunt Inge asked us details, then nodded. Mother joined the group, and the four of them talked into the evening. By bedtime, Father and Uncle Sigurd were preparing for a trip. They realized they would need to go to Mother’s village to deal with Olaf’s father, or he would always be a dangerous enemy. And they would need to go to the rivermouth village now, in order to have a boat ready for next spring.
They departed early in the morning. Olaf and Fedr had both wanted to join them, but Father and Uncle Sigurd wanted the fastest possible trip, and that meant by themselves. They carried many things─snow feet, weapons including spears, food, and trade goods, including Olaf’s glarestone spear point. They thought the trip would take three or four days in each direction if it didn’t snow. Olaf was disappointed he couldn’t go but proud that they considered his spear point good enough to be used for trading. Uncle Sigurd told Olaf they wanted him on the bench helping to protect everyone. “Besides,” Aunt Inge told him after they had left, “Your Father is long gone. If you want to find him you’ll have to go south, and that will have to wait until spring.”
As Father and Uncle Sigurd left I wondered how much longer they could continue to be our main source of experience and strength, and what we would do afterward. Father was nearly forty, Uncle Sigurd still older. Younger men would take their places─Fedr, Olaf, Geyrr, and others─but that day I acutely appreciated the importance of elders to a village. Their experience and wisdom require years to develop; the loss of an elder is a heavy blow. I was thinking along those lines in the spirit chamber with Olaf, when Olaf spoke about it. “I will never be able to replace them,” he said, “But I’ll do my best, and it will have to be good enough. They are great men, and your success comes from them...” He lapsed into silence, obviously feeling the weight of his responsibility to us.
Father and Uncle Sigurd returned to find us established in the cave. Star started barking furiously at the cliff edge. Aunt Inge saw them coming from the south and was down the rope and laughing in Uncle Sigurd’s arms before they even reached the village. It was raining, a cold dreary rain, and they were wet through, but cheerful. They had found Karl still in charge of his boat yard. He was too old to do the work, but remembered them. He also remembered Olaf’s father, who had asked Karl about us and our boat. Karl knew Olaf’s uncle, and wasn’t suspicious. They had departed on a moonlit night, and it wasn’t long before Karl realized our boat was afire. He was horrified. He admired Olaf’s spear point and accepted it as a token, promising a boat by spring. It was already under construction; Karl was pleased to find a buyer. They saw the hull, almost complete. The boat would be longer than the boat that had burned, which they had bought from Karl when Angel was a baby. It would be more comfortable, with a covered cabin and a new design, with two hempen sails. It would be fast, and the trip south would be easier than the one I remembered. But it would always remind Olaf of his father’s treachery, and whenever Olaf thought about next spring’s journey south, his anger returned anew. The burning boat came back to us many times in our dreams, perhaps to ensure Olaf didn’t forget about it, as if he could.
───
Snow fell in earnest a month and a half before midwinter, and we settled into our winter routine. The men made glarestone and sunrock arrow points for hunting and for trade. The women worked to improve the winter living setup, Folke working alongside Mother and Aunt Inge. Folke had been ill-used for so long by her husband that at first she had been timid, not looking at people when they talked to her, and speaking with a small voice and few words. Mother and Aunt Inge were warm and gentle with her, and she changed quickly, standing taller and speaking assuredly. Her eyes sparkled with life, and Olaf told me he hardly recognized her as the fearful mother he had known. We needed her skills. She was a good cook and a remarkable gardener. Her home village was south of Aunt Inge’s. She knew the native plants on our bench as well as those Aunt Inge had planted from seed years ago, and had brought seeds from her own garden as well. Within a year she was preparing a variety of food far beyond our previous fare. She was also a gifted storyteller with a wealth of stories and a talent for entertaining children. We had enough small children that this alone was a big help, and she could often be found that winter acting out her stories by the children’s fire, making animal noises and using her hands to cast shadows, surrounded by a circle of enraptured children, and often some amused adults as well.
Folke’s recovery didn’t surprise me. I had liked her from the beginning, and not just because she was Olaf’s mother. She had a sweetness that drew me to her. I talked to her every day, and we quickly became friends. Before the snow fell she and I had worked together collecting seeds from the garden and picking the last of the fruit to be stored for the winter. She was a healer as well, which might help explain Olaf’s sensitivity to the spirit world. Folke and Aunt Inge spent many evenings talking about using plants and herbs in healing. Soon it was as though Folke had always been with us. When she was alone she must have thought about her life with Olaf’s father, but she never talked of it, and never mentioned the confrontation with him here.
───
Hunting took more time during winter, when deer were scarcer and travel was slower. Years of hunting had thinned out the deer on the bench, and the men made extended hunting trips from the cave’s west entrance. Olaf loved hunting and was flattered to be invited to join Father, Uncle Sigurd, and Fedr on their first trip of the winter. They returned after four days with smiles and three fat deer. The men were overloaded, tired, and happy, flushed with success. Olaf was full of admiration for Father and Uncle Sigurd, master hunters who had hunted together for almost twenty years. They had worked together to haze the deer toward a grove where they had stationed Olaf and Fedr, who killed the first two deer, one each. The third, a big buck, spooked and bounded off. Uncle Sigurd and Father both shot, but at an impossible distance and at a fast-moving target. When they followed the deer’s trail they found him dead, with both arrows through his chest. Olaf told me that he had never known men who could shoot like they could.
The fresh meat was welcome, and in the midst of the glad celebration that evening the moon rose out of the sea to the east, a few days beyond full, reflecting off the snow on the bench and shining directly into the cave entrance. It briefly made our sleeping chamber extraordinary. I was sitting beside Olaf at the adults’ fire. Looking at him, I suddenly realized that he was no longer the boy I had met only two months before. So much had happened since then─the shocking events of his arrival, our joining in spirit, his acceptance by the men, and his proving his talents. That night I saw that he was a full-grown man, beautiful in the moonlight, tall and strong, and that I was a lucky woman. In front of everybody I turned to Aunt Inge and asked her to join us at the midwinter full moon, less than a month away. Olaf hugged me. Father clasped Olaf’s arms, then hugged us both. Folke and Mother both burst into tears.
Naturally everyone already knew that Olaf and I would join, and welcomed it, as they had Angel and Geyrr’s marriage. New people like Olaf and Folke strengthened us as a community, and new marriages did too. They all saw that Olaf and I were lucky to love each other. Aunt Inge was jubilant. She led Olaf and me to the other fire, where we announced our plans to Angel and Geyrr and the children. Aunt Inge said she had already been planning that celebration for a month, and had hoped I would catch on soon.
When Angel and Geyrr were joined, I was surprised to find myself overwhelmed by emotion, full of tears of joy, for them and for us all. For me they had always been a couple. Why should their joining seem so important? Part of it was Geyrr’s mother Heidl, already gone two years that spring, a year and half before Olaf arrived. The ceremony of joining, out on the bench in the full moon, is what finally brought Fedr back from two years of crushing grief. Fedr wasn’t Geyrr’s father, but had raised him from infancy and loved him as his own, along with his and Heidl’s three younger children. Their two little girls sparkled around Angel and Geyrr, laughing and singing, the two year old looking just like Heidl. We had all suffered when Heidl died, and that night of joining was like a rebirth for our community. I remember Aunt Inge, after speaking the ceremony and the prayers, laughing and crying at the same time, and when she and Mother added pictures of the ceremony to the walls of our sleeping chamber, they showed Heidl too.
It would be harder for them to add pictures of my ceremony, because of course it was in the spirit chamber, the first marriage ever celebrated there. If it were just Olaf and I, we would have done the ceremony in darkness, but Aunt Inge said the ceremony was for everyone, and wanted a ring of torches around the entire group, with a single torch where we would be joined, in our private place. I knew that place had power, but I had no idea.
At midwinter there would be no flowers, but Folke and Mother and Aunt Inge cut evergreen boughs and wove them together into wreaths─crowns for me and Olaf, and a large one surrounding us on the rock where we would stand. I was moved when Folke shyly offered me a beautiful carved wooden bracelet she had worn most of her life; it had been her mother’s, and since Olaf was born she had intended it for his bride. When I entered the spirit chamber with Mother and Father I was astonished at the beauty of what I saw. The outer ring of torches lighted everyone’s faces and reflected off dozens of sparkling pillars, so there were reflections of flickering torches everywhere I looked, receding into the far depths of the chamber. The children sat in a ring around the central torch, where Aunt Inge and Olaf waited. Angel was sobbing on Geyrr’s shoulder. Uncle Sigurd was with his children, Fedr with his. Mother and Father led me to Olaf, then sat with my brothers.
Aunt Inge started by singing, as she had for Angel and Geyrr. I didn’t know the language. Her voice was beautiful, and I was sure she was singing an ancient ceremonial song of her people. Her voice mingled with the sound of the stream, and as I stood there facing Olaf I felt the connection that had brought us here, with a new power, so much that although Aunt Inge had finished her song and was speaking to us, I hardly heard what she said. When it was our turn to speak I was overwhelmed, tears filling my eyes as we spoke the ancient promises to each other. Olaf took my hands between his. Aunt Inge clasped our joined hands, and we stood in silence.
That is when the light began. At first I thought I was imagining it, but no, the room was dimly lighted now, with a glow that rose out of the stream and illuminated us all. Nobody moved or made a sound, even the children. We were all transfixed by this wonder. The light dimmed and brightened with the sound of the stream, and I realized I had seen it all along in part of my mind, that it was the light I had always used to find my way in the dark, now visible, and not just to me, but to all. It was the spirit of the place become visible, this light of Olaf’s and my joining. We all knew we were witnessing a miracle.
It was Aunt Inge who found her voice first, long after the light had finally died away. “You are truly wedded in this holy place and by it,” she said, “And may you and your children and their children never forget this wonderful time.” Then she turned to the group, all our families, still sitting in stunned silence, and proclaimed us husband and wife.
There was one further surprise. As people began to stand and stretch, Aunt Inge held up her hand. I had been so involved with Olaf and our joining that I had completely forgotten that this midwinter also marked my coming of age. How could I? Olaf moved aside to sit with Father, and Mother stood with me and Aunt Inge. They each prayed for my health and happiness and fertility. Mother spoke first, traditional words that she had heard again and again as a child, perhaps so often that she no longer heard their full meaning, which struck me with the force of a thunderstorm. I was now a child no more, but an adult, and could expect sorrows and troubles as well as joys. I had an adult’s responsibility to do my share and be kind and helpful to others. I was a woman, with the duty and gift of bearing children and teaching them to be good adults in their own right. She had said the same words when Angel came of age, but I must have been too young for their meaning to sink in. Adulthood is a big thing, too big for an eight year old to understand.
Aunt Inge sang her prayers, as she had for Angel. Then she told me that my toughness and strength and hunting ability made me my mother’s equal, that she could offer no higher praise. She invited me to draw my own part of our story on the cave walls. She said that she had stood with my mother and my grandmother in battle, and that I was a worthy daughter and granddaughter to these powerful and heroic women, and must always remember how much I had to live up to. I was embarrassed at such praise, and relieved when she finally offered a criticism, with guidance: “You are too impulsive, Ana. You wanted to stay in your mother’s village too soon. Look what you would have missed. When you must make an important decision, think years ahead.” She looked deeply at me and paused, then went on in a lower voice. “Most of all, Ana, you know the spirit of this chamber better than any of us. The light from the stream shows that. When you are older you will be our spiritual leader.”
Grandmother had sewn me a pouch of my own, to wear for the rest of my life; Mother had hidden it from me for almost six years. Inside were tiny figurines. Father, remembering my fear of bears, had carved a wooden bear, to make me safer from them. Mother had made a clay figure of a woman with a nursing infant. Aunt Inge had carved a woman hunter with bow and arrow, and Uncle Sigurd had carved a wolf. Last, they handed me a tiny figurine carved from wood with a curly grain. I knew the instant I saw it that Olaf had made it. With exquisite detail it showed a man and woman seated, facing each other, knees and foreheads touching, arms wrapped around each other─actually through each other, the two figures becoming one.
The torches were burning low as we returned to the sleeping chamber. Olaf and I put on boots and hooded capes, and went to the cliff edge to stand in ankle-deep snow, looking at the distant seashore under the full moon, side by side, our arms around each other, not saying a word.
This story begins here. I told everything before to show how the things that happened could possibly have come about.
The dreams of wickedness begin soon after the midwinter celebrations.
Olaf and I are in Mother’s village, seeking my parents. They are with the elders, because it is said my father and Uncle Sigurd have abducted Folke and that I have hexed Olaf to make him love me. I try to explain that these are poisonous lies, spread by Olaf’s father. Nobody hears me. I am in despair, and suddenly find I am separated from Olaf as well. Olaf’s father is approaching me, with a knife, hatred on his face.
I wake in terror, to find Olaf writhing in his sleep. When I wake him he is shaking, speechless with rage and fear of his father. He too saw his father approaching me.
We calm ourselves. The spirit chamber has never felt threatening, even now when it shows wickedness─or should I say reveals? Better we should know about it than not. But am I strong enough to withstand such hatred?
We find Aunt Inge near the cave entrance, playing with her little ones. She smiles as we approach, then looks hard at us, startled by what she sees. She hugs her children goodbye and leads us back to the spirit chamber. She lights a torch and we follow her to our place.
“Tell me the dream.” She wants every detail. To whom did I speak my explanation? Where was I when Olaf’s father approached me? On the waterfront? Who else from the bench was in the village? What time of year was it? Could I see the moon? What was the weather like?
“I must think about this,” she finally says, “And I must come here alone, asking for guidance. Ana, we will have to tell your parents and Sigurd, but let’s wait a day or two. It won’t make any difference to what we do; we can’t travel in the winter. Olaf, I think your mother need not know these dreams, at least right away. Think how they would upset her.”
We sit quietly, and the sound of the stream soothes me. Once again I wish that I might someday have Aunt Inge’s strength and wisdom.
“Ana─both of you─you must not give in to fear.” Then, after hesitating, she adds “Sometimes the most useful visions are of things that end up not happening. We must be sure it doesn’t happen as it did in your dream. Treat the dream as a warning, and heed it. And give me two days to think, please.”
Could there be a better example of why a community needs the wisdom of its elders?
Aunt Inge approaches us the next afternoon. “If you’re thinking of not going to the spirit chamber for your daily nap,” she says, understanding everything as usual, “Go anyway. Your dreams are our only warning, and the next dream won’t upset you so badly, because you will be ready for it.”
We are in Grandmother’s house so I can present Olaf to her. We see her sitting, weeping. “Grandmother,” I say, “It’s Ana, come to bring you my husband, Olaf.” She looks at me. “They told me Sigurd and Zoan stole his mother, and that you hexed him,” she says. “None of that is true, is it?”
“No, Grandmother,” I tell her, “It’s a terrible lie, being told by his father. Olaf and his mother and father and uncle stayed overnight with us. Olaf and I discovered that we share the same spirit being. He asked to delay his leaving so we could get to know each other. His father attacked him, or would have, if Uncle Sigurd hadn’t stopped him. He tried to attack Uncle Sigurd with a knife, and went away speaking of revenge. Olaf and his mother chose to remain with us. Olaf and I were joined at the midwinter full moon. And I came of age then too,” I added, “And I am wearing the pouch you made for me.”
“I didn’t think it was true, of course.” She looks less despairing now. “But many people have heard these lies, and some believe them.”
I look at Olaf, relieved. As I glance outside the window, I see a pillar of smoke at the waterfront. I know that Olaf’s father has burned our new boat.
By the time Aunt Inge hears this dream she has already decided to tell Sigurd and my parents everything. She wants to do that in the spirit chamber this evening, and asks us to spend the evening with Fedr and Folke.
Adult responsibilities come in many different forms, I see. Olaf and I must be adults in this matter, and much depends on us. We are granted a rare love, but are being tested by a full-grown test for adults. My mother said it clearly: adulthood brings sorrows and troubles as well as joys. We are happy to be in this fight side by side instead of alone, and after that first dream have not been frightened. It’s just that I didn’t know I would become an adult so abruptly.
───
We are in the new boat, Father, Olaf, and I, fishing for the day. I love being on the ocean. Another boat approaches us. It is Olaf’s uncle, waving. He comes alongside and profusely apologizes to Father for the trouble his brother is causing. They are no longer on speaking terms. He tells Father than his brother is dangerous and we must be careful.
He leaves, and we talk about what he has said. The wind drops, and Father tries to raise our second sail, but discovers that it has been cut to pieces in its bag.
Father and Uncle Sigurd are unsurprised by what the dreams have taught us. “He revealed his meanness when he turned on you, Ana,” says Uncle Sigurd. “I should have put an arrow through him then, as I wanted to. It would have saved us a lot of trouble.” They say they have known since he left that we would have to confront him. “The dreams are invaluable,” says Father. “Where would we be without them? No boat, and we wouldn’t know it, and would be completely ignorant of what is happening in the village.”
I am in the village square with Olaf, in the midst of a large crowd, more people than I have ever seen in one place. There is some dispute, and people are angry. There seems to be fighting. We have come to be sure our boat is secure. I feel threatened by the fighting, which I still don’t understand. I walk toward the center of the dispute, and suddenly I see Olaf’s father. He is advancing toward me. I turn to look for Olaf, but I can’t see him now. I do not panic, but prepare to fight. He has a knife, but I am younger and much faster. I realize I might die.
The dreams all center on the waterfront area and the village square. Both are places where people gather. Fishing boats come and go, and the walk from the waterfront to the center of the village is short. When I was in the village five years ago I loved the waterfront and the boats there, and went there almost every day.
Once the dreams begin, they come regularly for the rest of the winter─not daily, but frequently, thirty or forty dreams in three months, all with similar messages. By the time we actually sail south Olaf and I have seen many pillars of smoke, and have encountered Olaf’s father many times. Aunt Inge wants to hear the details of every dream. She and Mother are anxious about my safety, but it was always Mother who told me that I would not be able to escape my fate.
In the spirit chamber I have learned to trust my connection with Olaf, and I think our dreams are visions of truth. That’s why I believe I will have to confront Olaf’s father. Curiously, I am unafraid. Perhaps I am a daughter worthy of her hero mother, as Aunt Inge said. Or perhaps I am just a foolish fourteen year old, a young woman in love taking herself too seriously. But he is a villain, Olaf’s father, a real one, violent and cruel, just as in the old tales, and since the morning he aimed his hatred squarely at me, part of me has known I would have to face him.
Father and Uncle Sigurd have spent most of the winter discussing who should go, but in truth there’s not much to discuss. Father and Mother will go because their mothers are old, and this could be their last visit. Uncle Sigurd will go for the same reason I will: he has felt since Olaf’s father threatened him with a knife that they would meet again. Aunt Inge will go because Uncle Sigurd is going. Olaf would go just because I am going, even if he didn’t feel compelled by his father’s wickedness. Angel and Geyrr will stay here because Angel is pregnant, Fedr and Folke because the children will all need care. My brothers present the only questions. Druian is sixteen, himself tall and strong, much like Father. He would be a big help at home and in any case does not want to be separated from Ragna, Aunt Inge’s thirteen year old daughter, my best friend until Olaf appeared, as lovely and delicate as a butterfly, with a loving heart and a fine sense of humor. If I were Druian I wouldn’t go either. Meldun is four, and is not going because Mother says not. So our traveling group will be six─Olaf and I plus the four elders. I am feeling quite grown up, a wedded adult woman, with my new man, traveling with our elders, all four of whom are great heroes to me. Spring has come early, for once. The bench is nearly clear of snow, and the days are warm. We leave in the morning. We hope Karl has the boat ready as he promised. I am excited, and also nervous.
The evening before we leave Olaf and I share one final dream, a little different from the many that came before.
Olaf and I are walking toward the waterfront, to check on the boat. A crowd has gathered around us. They are angry at me, pointing at me, crying “You hexed him!” Fire and smoke rise from the waterfront area. I fear it is our boat burning. Olaf’s father walks out of the smoke toward me, a triumphant leer on his face. “Burn her!” he screams; “She hexed him! Burn her!”
If this dream had been the first, perhaps I would simply have given up. Now, despite its awful content doesn’t, it bother me. I have given myself over to the fates, and dead is dead, although I confess that if I weren’t confident of living to bear Olaf’s children, the thought of burning to death would upset me. But the dream horrifies Mother. The four talk quietly by themselves for much of our first walking day. Our departure was a nightmare. Star was upset, barking and howling, and by the time we left the little children were crying, except Eydis, who was happily curled up on Angel’s shoulder. “Angel is older by four years than I was when she was the baby,” says Aunt Inge, and adds, looking at me, “I was just about your age.” We are all carrying heavy loads and watching for bears; Father, Uncle Sigurd, and Olaf are carrying sunrock-tipped spears. Bears are dangerous now, but I’m not afraid, because I have yielded myself up to my fate, because I’m magically insulated by loving, and because I’m going to be fine. I am strong enough and emotionally tough enough to succeed with Olaf’s father, although I’m not even sure what that means, except that I will return alive.
“Yes,” says Aunt Inge, as we walk together behind the other four, “You are.” How does she know what I was thinking? “You are strong enough because of the spirit chamber and because of Olaf. You are suddenly a full adult, with troubles too. Your dreams are not childish. I’m sorry I didn’t get to grow up in the spirit chamber, as you did. In your place I would have gone there every day too, and I’m surprised none of the others have. I don’t think I could have done everything you have, even so.”
“Aunt Inge, how did you knew what I was thinking?”
“It’s what I was thinking, so I guessed. We are so much alike.”
Am I like Aunt Inge? That’s what I’ve always wanted to be, but is it so? She knows so much, and has such good judgment. The best I can hope for is to live long enough that I can approach her, and use that to teach.
The spring scenery is beautiful. The river roars with snowmelt from the mountains to the north. Near the bench the land is beginning to show green shoots, and the trees are beginning to bud. Lower down, closer to the rivermouth, the riverbank is lined with early flowers and the trees are already out in leaf. We do see one bear, but he is on the other side of a raging torrent. He looks at us and goes his way. To Olaf, who has lived his life farther north, this scene is luxurious and verdant, like a beautiful springtime from an old tale. He has yet to see spring on the bench, my favorite time. We’ll miss it this year, but unless I’m mistaken about the outcome of this trip we’ll have many years there to see the spring flowers.
As it turns out the walk is quick and uneventful; we arrive at the end of the third day. Mother relaxes after the shock of my dream wears off, and the four tell stories of the first trip, when Angel was a baby. For myself, carrying a baby on a four-day walk, having to feed her, change her, and amuse her, sounds about as appealing as being burned, but the four of them laugh about that long-ago trip. Mother and Aunt Inge got terribly seasick, and are anxious about seasickness now, even though we have one herb remedy from Aunt Inge’s grandmother plus a supposedly perfect one from Folke.
It is raining lightly as we arrive in the village, and we are relieved to see the boat floating, apparently complete. The village is exactly as I saw it in my dreams, except the the burned hulk of the old boat is gone. One of Karl’s sons greets us. He and his brothers have been working feverishly on the boat all winter, guessing that we would start early because of the warm weather. They put it into the water last week. Father and Uncle Sigurd had already agreed with Karl on a deal for the boat. Karl’s son shows us the boat and what they have stocked it with─four sails, one extra for each mast, a covered cabin with elegant wooden storage shelves, spare rope, and two full hides for repairs. Then they inspect our glarestone arrow points and spear points, and bracelets of sunrock. The package is small compared to the boat, but it took most of the time of two men all winter, just as the boat did. Karl’s son inspects the points and bracelets, shaking his head in wonder at their workmanship.
We meet Karl, an old man now, confined to a chair, a widower, looking used-up, but what a talker! “Do you know?” He asks me and Olaf─“Do you know what they did? They saved us all! Without them we would all be dead!. Of course you know the story?” I’ve known it all my life, and Olaf has known it for half a year, but we smile and let him tell it. “They sailed a month to head the raiders off south of here, and lured three hundred of them into charging up a hill into an army hidden in a forest, and pushed most of them off into the sea and killed the others.”
“One hundred,” growls Uncle Sigurd.
“These two,”─he points to Mother and Aunt Inge─“Planted crossed sunrock spears on the hilltop and the raiders were so afraid of them they all clustered on the hilltop. And they were no older than you are. I remember them very well.”
“You”─He nods toward Olaf─“Are you his son? The man who burned the boat? They told me last fall that you were staying. You two are joined now? Long life!”
Later Aunt Inge tells me that on the first trip Karl never said a word except for business dealings, but his wife talked nonstop. In his happy conversation, is he filling in for her? We spend the night in one of Karl’s rooms. Outside, the waves boom on the shore, and water laps at Karls’ walkway and at our new boat.
───
On a long sailing trip there is a point where everybody is ready for the trip to end. For us that happens about five days into a fifteen-day trip. The boat is fine, and we have clear weather and good winds, with plenty of fish to eat, and there is no seasickness and no baby to care for─but every day is a long one, starting by moonlight before dawn, and ending only at dark. The trip is so long and tiring that we wilt like picked flowers. Every day, all day if there’s enough light. We do take one day off, for Father and Uncle Sigurd to repair the boat’s steering hinge. Olaf and I and Mother go hunting and return with two rabbits, which taste wonderful, compared to either dried deer or fish. We draw the boat onto the beach every night, and tie it to a nearby tree to keep it from sailing off by itself. I love the ocean, but next time, not so much all at once.
One problem with my reaction to the trip is that it is not for pleasure, but is leading us toward danger with risk of harm. We are planning to go first to a neighbor village to the south, also on the coast, where Father has friends, to learn the seriousness of the rumors of kidnapping and witchcraft. If the entire village is against us we will leave the boat in the neighbor village rather than risk it at the waterfront, and walk to Mother’s village. Otherwise we will sail to Mother’s village, but will have to guard the boat, in shifts; one couple will stay on the boat every night. Our plans use our dreams for information, mine and Olaf’s! I see that the power of the spirit of our cave extends this far.
Our last day is short. We camped last night just north of Mother’s village, on a bay. Father said the raiders camped in the same spot just before the battle, eighteen years ago. Today we rise late and sail across the mouth of the bay, below the cliffs where the raiders were pushed onto the rocks below, and past Mother’s village, looking just as I remember it. In half a day’s sailing we arrive at the neighbor village, much smaller, without a proper waterfront and boat facility. We draw the boat onto the beach. While we secure it and set up a camp, Father trots toward the village to rouse his friends.
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Father returns with two men he taught to climb when all of them were boys. They both fought with him in the battle against the raiders and attended the memorial ceremony afterward. They are both widowers now. They return with him to the boat to see Mother, Aunt Inge, and Uncle Sigurd, all heroes to them. They are jovial and kind toward me and Olaf. Mother’s village is much bigger than theirs, and they know it well. They have heard what Olaf’s father says. The lies outrage them, and they think not many people believe. They bring goat meat and a sweet pudding, and they and our three men build a fire on the beach and drink tea while the goat roasts. The sunset over the ocean is beautiful. We have just spent fifteen evenings at sea, and it is comforting to sit around the warm fire with Father’s old friends. The food is wonderful─fatty goat meat and creamy pudding made from goat’s milk and honey are exotic compared to our diet on the bench, and much richer. It’s a warm evening, and later Aunt Inge lies on the soft sand with me and Olaf, watching the moon and stars as we talk about goats. Why don’t we have them on the bench? We could start with kids, hoisting them in deerhides. Olaf noticed goats near the rivermouth. His father and mother raised goats in the north, and Olaf tended them. I think the three of us will start raising goats when we return. Star, who herds everything that moves, will defend them and keep them from straying. We can have milk and cheese and meat and maybe yarn. Olaf watched the entire process of making yarn, and thinks he can figure out how to do it. We could weave cloth!
After the meal we sleep until about midnight, then sail north by moonlight, arriving in Mother’s village about moonset, well before dawn. We sleep again until first light, then my parents and Olaf and I head for Grandmother’s, finding the village deserted. Uncle Sigurd and Aunt Inge stay to guard the boat.
I feel a flush of joy as I hug Grandmother, who looks just as I remember her, but she looks at me saying “Oh! You are so different.” She is smiling through tears. “I hardly know you, Ana. After you left I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again.” I present Olaf to her, and we tell her his story. “I knew Erik was lying,” she says, hugging me. “But some believe him.” She says Father’s mother is healthy but feeble. This morning Father will visit her after he and Mother speak to the elders. We cook in Grandmother’s house while she tells us of Olaf’s father. By afternoon we are all well-fed and sleepy, and night comes early.
In the morning we walk to the waterfront though the village square. Many people know Father and Mother, and a few recognize Aunt Inge and Uncle Sigurd, but their welcomes are reserved compared to five years ago. Near the waterfront one man stops, looks at Father, and is belligerent. “Did you steal Erik’s wife? Is this his son?” The man is too young to have been in the battle. Father looks at him and says “You’re too young to know. Ask your father what he thinks.”
At the boat, Uncle Sigurd and Aunt Inge tell us they saw Olaf’s father at dawn, at a distance, but looking at the boat at length. For the rest of that day we walk the walkway, look at boats and fishermen, and sit together on the boat, dicussing our plans. There is no further sign of Olaf’s father, and by bedtime we know what we must do.
Dawn is still well ahead; the moon is setting as the four elders leave the waterfront. Afterward Olaf and I don’t even think about sleep. The night is dark, but the sky is clear and the numberless stars provide far more light than the total darkness of the spirit chamber. This scene is right out of our dreams. Where is Olaf’s father? Will he try to burn the boat?
The walkway at the waterfront starts near the village square and runs south parallel to the shore. On its landward side are rocks; the only good access is from the village end. Almost three dozen boats are tied lengthwise alongside the seaward side─working fishing boats, all deserted. Our boat is tied about half way out. We walk to the village end, taking our bows and arrows, and glarestone daggers with Olaf’s own blades. Our eyes have adjusted fully. Talking in whispers, we decide to watch the walkway from hiding. We lurk in the shadows of a substantial storage building, not talking at all. The wait is a long one.
Could I have foreseen this, when Olaf and I first discovered each other in the spirit chamber? It feels now like I was a child then. Can you grow up that fast, if you must? Is adulthood this hard, or is this experience normal? Aunt Inge and Uncle Sigurd lost their entire families to raiders, Heidl, her brothers and her first husband. We are confronting a madman who thinks I’ve hexed his son. Loving Olaf makes it worthwhile, but adulthood does bring troubles and sorrows.
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At long last something happens. A torch carried by a walking figure appears near the village square and bobs toward the walkway, a man. We tense and watch him walk slowly out onto the walkway and toward our boat. Naturally we suspect it is Olaf’s father. We start to follow, but Olaf motions me back into hiding and goes alone. I see the torch recede down the walkway, but can’t see Olaf even though I know where to look. My heart pounds. As I stand there I realize that the first light of dawn is visible behind the hills east of the village.
I also realize I am not alone.
A second figure has emerged from the village onto the walkway. He has no torch, but feels his way carefully through the diminishing darkness. I have a sick feeling─Olaf is trapped between the two men. I draw my dagger and follow as quietly as I can. The torch is well down the walkway now, near our boat. Suddenly there is a shout and a scuffle there, with a loud thump and splash, and the torch disappears. The figure in front of me─a man, I see now─sprints down the walkway. I run after him.The light is growing, but it is still too dark to tell what happened near our boat.
It’s hard to run silently. The man in front of me stops and turns to face me. I see instantly that it is Olaf’s father, the face of my nightmares. “You!” he hisses. “You hexed him. Now you’ll pay!” He advances, knife in hand. He is bigger than I am but surely slower; he is heavier, and limps slightly. I can run, anytime up to the last instant. I notch an arrow and draw my bow. “Stop there,” I say, “Or I’ll shoot.” Neither of us moves. Does Olaf know yet that the man with the torch isn’t his father?
Suddenly I am knocked to my knees from behind, and held; Olaf’s father has at least one more accomplice. I lose my bow as I go down, but grab my knife and strike blindly upward behind me. To my astonishment I hear a gasp of pain, and I am free. I jump back to my feet, but Olaf’s father is upon me. He swings with his knife─even in this crisis I remember Uncle Sigurd telling me to stab, never swing─and blood spurts from my left arm. He lowers his shoulder and charges into me, and I am down, on my back, with him kneeling across my legs. He raises his knife. I twist away with all my strength. His downward stroke misses, and he doesn’t get a second chance, because Olaf arrives, grabbing his father’s upraised right arm from behind. The knife falls away into the water. Olaf’s father lunges backward for Olaf with his free left arm; Olaf grabs that too. He bends the left arm around behind his father’s back, and I hear the arm snap. Olaf lifts his father and throws him face down onto the walkway, landing with both his knees on his father’s shoulders. He grabs his father’s hair and pulls his head back, intending to cut his throat. I am horrified. “NO, Olaf!” I am shouting, sounding out of control, and catch my breath. “I’m not badly hurt. He’s not worth the pain it would cause you.”
Olaf hesitates. His father is reduced to a pitiable figure, his face bleeding, his arm broken, his anger and defiance gone. “Please,” he says. “Please.”
“I will kill you,” Olaf says, “If you touch her again, or bother any of us again.”
“Please.” His father is begging. “Please. I’ll leave. You’ll see me no more.”
Olaf rises and turns toward me. Olaf’s father staggers to his feet and walks brokenly toward the village. The man behind me is lying motionless in a pool of his own blood, which has saturated his leggings. When we stoop to check him we find that he is barely conscious and still losing blood fast. He passes out, draws another breath, and is gone.
───
How do I feel about having killed a man? I will say only that it gives me no nightmares. I had all the nightmares in advance. He attacked me and died in combat, and I feel no guilt. I pick up my bow, but the arrow is lost, with a glarestone tip made by Olaf. That bothers me more.
Olaf helps me up, careful of my bleeding arm. Looking into each other’s eyes, we see each other as full adults, perhaps for the first time. I am suddenly faint; Olaf carries me to the boat. We wash ourselves in seawater, bind my cut, exquisitely painful in saltwater, and put on fresh clothes.
The sun is rising over the eastern hills by the time we leave the walkway, headed for Grandmother’s. As we turn the corner toward the center of the village, we are surprised to see a large group milling around the village square─more than twenty people, mostly young men. They must have been here for some time; they cannot have assembled just since the attack on the walkway. They surge toward us, and I hear a familiar hateful voice: “She hexed him! There they are! Burn her!” Another dream scene, become real!
We cannot fight twenty men, and already there are more than that, as more and more villagers are drawn by the commotion. The group has become an angry crowd, closer now, out of control. Again I hear the voice of Olaf’s father, just as in the dream: “Burn her!”
Suddenly the crowd goes silent, transfixed by something we cannot see, something coming into the square from the east. Our view is blocked by trees, but it is impossible not to follow the shocked gaze of so many people. Then out from behind the trees come our five elders, Grandmother in the middle, aged but walking on her own. The women have taken their hair down and are carrying sunrock-tipped spears, just as they did eighteen years ago in the battle that saved this village. This morning is sunny, without the thunder and rain of that long-ago day, but the five bring it to life in a way all understand─not just the older ones; even the youngest knows every detail. Even Karl the boatmaker knows, far to the north. And here are the five heroes of that triumph, entering the square. The silence holds as they approach Olaf and me. Finally they stand before us, and turn to the crowd. Then Grandmother steps forward and speaks.
“Shame on you all!” Her voice is strong. “You forget so soon, and bring shame upon our village by believing Erik, who has told you only lies!” Her anger and strength of voice grow as she speaks, and I can see that Mother’s deadly anger is a legacy from Grandmother. “Know that Erik hurt his wife and son for years, and they finally found a way to escape him. Behind me stands Sigurd, who led you to victory. He did not retaliate even when Erik threatened him with a knife, and Erik’s gratitude was to accuse him of kidnapping.” Grandmother turns and draws Olaf and me forward. She places one hand on each of our shoulders. Her head barely reaches Olaf’s shoulder. She gives the crowd a long look before continuing. “Standing before the heroes who saved us all, I give you Ana, daughter of Zoan and Quitana, my granddaughter, and Olaf, son of Erik, Ana’s husband. Ana is of my blood and yours. To burn her you must burn me first. Shame! You behave like barbarians! Shame!” Her voice echoes off the walls surrounding the square.
Aunt Inge says later that for a respected elder to speak in such anger is rare, an extreme rebuke. The crowd stands as though turned to stone. Suddenly Olaf gasps and falls. I look down and see blood everywhere. A thrown knife has struck him in the head. Uncle Sigurd and Father whip around to face the thrower, but before they can notch arrows to their bows Olaf’s father falls, an arrow protruding from his back. Olaf’s uncle lowers his bow. He has shot his own brother from behind.
Aunt Inge and I kneel over Olaf. He is dazed, and bloody from a long cut alongside his head, but not badly hurt. “I wanted to warn you,” Olaf’s uncle says, “But he was too quick. He has hated you and talked of nothing else for eight months. Only a few believed him, but they have ceaselessly spoken lies until I could stand it no more. May his spirit forgive me.”
The angry crowd is now just a shocked and humiliated group of people, their bravery gone as cold as a campfire in a rainstorm. They mill about in disorder, then dissipate. Olaf’s uncle turns and walks away head down, and the seven of us are left alone in the square with the motionless body of Erik, Olaf’s father.
Olaf’s father’s treachery has been laid bare before enough people that by day’s end the entire village knows of it, and those who believed his lies are in disgrace. Mother, Olaf, and I go with Father to visit his mother, who barely gets around her house now. She is helped daily by her daughter, Father’s sister, and her children and grandchildren. She is happy to see me and meet Olaf. She wants no ugly details, but is glad we are vindicated, and wishes us happiness.
We return to Grandmother’s house spent, and sleep all day. The elders meet to discuss the matter and arrange to handle the body of the man on the walkway. The man who carried the torch to the boat has disappeared. After Olaf pushed him into the water he must have crawled out over the rocks. Olaf’s uncle has taken Erik’s body.
Tomorrow at dawn we will visit the battle memorial on the hilltop. I saw five years ago, but without Aunt Inge and Uncle Sigurd. Grandmother will go too. She complains that the hilltop is higher every year, but it is sacred to her, and she will go there until the day she no longer can. I’m looking forward to it. All my life I’ve heard of the five of them standing on the hilltop with the bodies of raiders all around them. I would like to see them there, and will keep that memory for life. This morning, as they came into the village square five abreast, my eyes filled with tears. Heroes, all of them. Really.
Today Olaf and I talk to Grandmother about our dreams and the spirit chamber. She says the light from the stream means our joining is important to our village. Mother told her I’ve gone to the spirit chamber almost every day of my life. “Ana,” she says, looking hard at me, “You’re grown and wedded now, and will soon have your own children, but you must continue going there. You must help her,” she adds to Olaf. She is wise and wonderful, and I am saddened by knowing that this is undoubtedly my last visit with her. “You must not be sad!” She breaks into my thoughts, as Aunt Inge does. How do they know? “We don’t know what is to come. We don’t any of us know what to expect when our lives end.”
I am sad, though─sad that I will have only a little time left with her before we return home. I think of her defying her husband to stand on the battlefield with my young mother and young Aunt Inge eighteen years ago. Aunt Inge was right. I have a great deal to live up to.
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In the morning Olaf’s uncle comes to Grandmother’s house. He greets her, clasps hands with Father and Uncle Sigurd and Olaf, then draws me and Olaf aside. “I have three boats,” he says. “One was Erik’s, and I want you two to have it.” Grandmother has been listening. “They have no way to use a boat, Ingvar,” she says. “They live far inland.” Olaf’s uncle smiles. “To begin, they could use it to travel back by themselves, instead of with the group. So they could stay here longer. And then they could trade it to Karl. He knows the boat. He will be happy to take it trade. I will be there long before they will. I’ll tell him about it.
Until that moment I haven’t been aware of how deeply I want to spend more time with Grandmother. Suddenly, without reason, I burst into tears, clutching Olaf for comfort and support. I have been driving myself for months with the tension of our quest and our fight, and without it I feel rudderless. I have felt like crying today every time it occurs to me that my last day with Grandmother is coming soon, and so much that I could learn will be lost. A longer visit is exactly what my heart wants. Why do I break down when it is given? Too much relief, all at once?
I must learn how Olaf feels before I answer, and whether we can be happy without the spirit chamber. We look at each other, and I don’t even have time to voice my question. “We could sail in the late summer, or even next year,” he says. We are outside now, talking privately. “The spirit chamber will be there next year. She might not. We should stay with her if she will have us. We can help her with her house.”
I turn to look at him, but already I know he is right. Aunt Inge approaches us. “Ana,” she says, “You should stay here. She will be your teacher. And she needs you. She’s too old to live alone. You could cook for her.”
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The walk to the hilltop is hard for Grandmother, but I can see it nourishes her spirit. The five of them stand at the cliff edge looking west over the ocean, and I have the memory I wanted. Mother, Aunt Inge, and Grandmother start back down toward the village, but Olaf and I want Uncle Sigurd and Father to show us the details of the battle─where Father’s and Uncle Sigurd’s men hid in the forest, where the man was struck by lightning. I stand where Mother and Aunt Inge and Grandmother stood and look down toward where the raiders ran toward them. The two crossed spears are now part of a memorial to those from the village who died. Standing on the cliff edge before we return to the village, looking down on the waves crashing onto the rocks far below, I feel a chill of horror, feel the terror of the men who were pushed off the cliff to their deaths. This hilltop has power, as the spirit chamber does, but it’s not peaceful. Grandmother comes here whenever she’s strong enough, and says it fills her with energy.
Life is odd, I see. As an eight year old I wanted to live here because I couldn’t imagine how else I would meet a husband. My adulthood has come on all at once, like the rock tumbling down the cliff. When Olaf appeared in my life─only eight months ago─I was a child, and now that seems like another world. And now that I no longer need to find a husband, this village is pulling me in. Olaf and I will live here and care for Grandmother, and learn from her, where his father wanted me dead. We will have children soon enough, and then we’ll need to return to the bench and the spirit chamber. Meanwhile we’ll live where my parents grew up and are heroes.
I’m expecting no nightmares.
The month completely alone with Olaf has been wonderful, but once again I’m glad the traveling is over. We are astonished to find Uncle Sigurd and Aunt Inge in the rivermouth village. “You aren’t the only one with dreams, you know,” says Aunt Inge, after the happy embraces. It has been over a year. “Your mother would have come too, but Angel has been sick, and she has grandmother duty. I dreamed of you regularly, and of your grandmother’s death. I’m sorry.”
“She was happy to the end,” I tell her. “She gave me more in a year than I could ever have gained without her. She taught me to be an adult and to nurture my spirit self. She taught me and Olaf how not be tied for life to his father’s tragedy. We needed all that, and she needed to teach it. We buried her on the hilltop as she wanted, where she had planted her spear, then stood in the forest in the rain and watched lightning strike her grave. She won her last battle.”
“I bring you Folke’s greetings and love too,” says Aunt Inge. Then she draws back and looks at me. “You’re pregnant!” she exclaims, and Olaf laughs, as he does every time he thinks of it. “I’m due about midwinter,” I tell her. “Grandmother gave me her pouch for our baby.”
“That’s two midwinter babies,” she says. “Ragna too. I joined her and Druian at midwinter, a year after you. Of course we talked about you two, and the light from the stream.” She looks at Olaf. “It was a double ceremony, with Fedr and Folke. Fedr saved her from terrible grief─she cried for months after she heard how Erik died.” Olaf is startled, then delighted. And we had worried that his mother would not recover emotionally!
I see that life on the bench didn’t stop to wait for us, and soon all the children I grew up with will be adults too. I’ve thought often this year about adulthood, and what Mother and Aunt Inge said when I came of age. I felt like one person before Olaf arrived, another after we found each other, and a third after the fight and the death of his father. Grandmother helped me understand that I am just one person with all those as part of me. Now there will be a new time in my life, with a baby, and more changes later. But the rock tumbles only once, and adulthood lasts for life. As a child, my task was to become an adult. Now I must strive to develop my spirit, love my husband and my elders, do my share, and prepare my children to do the same. For Olaf’s father, life was never right. I’m glad he’s gone, but I sympathize with his torment, so different from the richness around me. I could ask for no more.
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