excerpt
The two Brothers ran thrashing barefoot through the forest, slashing ankles and
legs on fallen branches as they went. Bjorn gained on them. Ailan stubbed his foot
against a fallen tree limb and fell prostrate in a bramble bush. “Merda!”
Hearing Ailan’s Latin curse word, Keallach turned to give his Brother a hand. At
the same moment, Bjorn caught up to the terrified monks. Both men knew they’d be
no matches for the champion wrestler. Now they’d be dragged back to captivity and
the wrath of Hjálmar and his cutthroats.
When Finten saw Ari standing on the crest above the beach, he waved. Since the
ship was long gone, he surmised Ari had probably chosen to remain behind and
hoped he might know something of Keallach and Ailan. Snow had stopped and sun
peeped through the clouds.
Finten said nothing to Rordan until Ari reached the beach. Then he chose to
speak Norse with Ari, leaving Rordan out of the conversation.
Corn Mother washed and wrapped her murdered daughter in goose down and
thin birch bark for her journey to the world of Happy Dreams, where children play
all day and never grow old. Then each member of the band, from the eldest to babes
in arms, came by with gifts for the child’s journey and to bid farewell to their favourite
daughter and little sister, Child of the First Light Nation.
Brown Bear bound Namid Star Dancer’s body with long thin strips of rabbit fur
and carried his daughter by bark canoe to the island of the dead, across the water,
by the sun’s rising. He placed her atop the platform he and Running Deer had built.
This was to be her resting place for many months to come. Father and son would remain
by the platform, three days and three nights without food or drink, to remember
their beloved one as she’d been in happy times and to wish her spirit safe flight
with her totem, the sacred snow goose. Already arrowheads of birds had honked
their long journey from the lands of snow and cold winds to chase the sun toward its
winter home. Led by a Grandmother, each extended family of geese would continue
in alternating formation to the lands of warm winds.
This morning, as Brown Bear and Running Deer made their sad journey, the
Great Spirit sent down heavy flakes of white, to signal that this land too would soon
be nipped by the dogs of winter. Some time in the following sun cycle, father and
son would return to the island to reclaim Star Dancer’s remains and take them to the
burial mound of the ancestors, where they’d remain until the end of time.
Father Finten was deeply disturbed when both Ari and Bjorn described the
bloody events at the Native camp. “This is unbelievable. What drunken fools! Spurius!
Bastard! We will have to avoid the Native village until we can make some form
of peace offering. These people are not going to differentiate between us, and those
barbarians who caused them so much pain. I’m surprised they have not come down
on us to kill us all.”
Libros Libertad 