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“You're a fine sailor, though it will take years to make you sea wise. Remember that. Don't get complacent. Ever. I don't want to lose you.”

I stifle a cry of pain. I love Beorn. Ástríd . . . Búri . . . Alof. And Mel, too. And Mother, Father, Nuada. I love them all. My head could burst with all this love.

We walk past the smithy to the great hall where the feast is going on.

“Look up, Búri.” Ástríd stops, holding the boy by one hand and pointing to the sky with the other. “The god Frey is riding over the earth tonight on his magnificent boar. If you look hard, you might see him, like a streak of gold.”

“Boar? The god is riding on a boar? Our boar won't let me ride him.”

“Frey's boar isn't ordinary. His shines so bright, he lights up even the darkest cave. And he has a name: Gullinbursti.”

“Our boar has a name: Collach.”

“What a strange name to give him.”

“It's not strange. It's what Alfhild calls him.”

Ástríd looks at me.

I shrug.
Collach
means “boar” where I come from. I've given Gaelic names to all the animals—it's one way of holding on to the words that would slither away from the edges of my mind. I keep my face blank.

Ástríd twists her lips. “Well, it makes sense then. After all, Frey is king of many things, including Álfheim, the world of the light elves. And Alfhild's name is elfin. So Alfhild has things in common with him.” She looks at me as if to check whether I object to this account, but I simply shrug again. “Anyway, have you noticed that the days have gotten shorter?”

Búri shakes his head.

“Well, they have. Now Frey is bringing back the light. Today was the shortest day of the year, but tomorrow will be longer. Each day from now on will be a little longer.”

“Forever?”

“No. Just till summer. Then it changes again and the days get shorter.”

“Don't think about it too hard,” says Beorn. He's holding Alof, and he kisses her on the forehead. Then he stoops and kisses Búri, too. “It's the way the world works, and thinking won't make sense of it, and it surely won't change it. The important thing is to move quickly to the great hall, and if anything strange greets you, just keep walking.”

“Anything strange? Like what?”

“Someone on an eight-legged horse.”

“A horse with eight legs! Really?”

“His name is Sleipnir. And the god on his back is Óðinn. You don't want to stop if they show up, because behind them run the dead.”

“What are the dead?”

Beorn straightens the boy's leather cap. “I'll tell the tale later. For now, let's go eat.”

I'm ready. I don't want to hear about what the gods are doing tonight. It bothers me that I already knew everything he said about Frey and Óðinn. It's impossible to sit around the hearth at night with a
skald
and not know all the god stories. I know about the long line of Danish kings who were always waging war with someone too—the first of whom was Skjøld, a son of Óðinn. The stories about these gods and kings are fabulously entertaining, I admit. But I worry that they're entering me, sneakily, insidiously. Sometimes I can't remember stories from Eire, and I used to love those stories. I used to make my brother Nuada tell them over and over.

When I was lost on the boat, when Beorn was on the beaver island, it was the god Óðinn who I thought of, not Jesus. Sometimes I'm not even sure of the words to the Lord's Prayer. Mel and I used to say it together, and without her, it's hard to remember. The thought makes my tongue feel fat, like before I cry. It's almost a foreign feeling to me now; I haven't cried in a long time.

I focus on the feast ahead. We've been fasting all day so we'll have a hearty appetite now. Jól is the most important holiday. It starts tonight and goes till the new year.

We enter the hall, and the aroma of roast pork slaps us in the face and practically makes me fall over with hunger. People are drinking ale—no, not drinking, they're sloshing it down—and the room is so packed we have to weave our way through. A piper follows us, with a goatskin covering his shoulders in honor of Thor. His tune is all lively, so that my feet naturally want to dance. The two harpists at one side of the room join in. As one, people get to their feet, and in a snap the center of the room is cleared of food and game boards. It's like magic. They dance, partners hand in hand.

Something tickles my neck, and I turn to find Egill's face thrust in mine. I laugh. “What are you doing with that feather?”

“Since I haven't much of a beard yet, I thought it was a good substitute. Come.” He grabs my hand, and we join the dancing.

The music goes on and on, and it's fun shuffling about. I love dancing, of course. At banquets when I was tiny, Mel and I would grab opposite corners of a kerchief and swirl each other around the hall to horns, pipes, whistles, harps. Then she got too old for such behavior, so I danced in circles by myself, waving the kerchief over my head. I'm dancing for her now, dancing out my pledge.
I'll find you, Mel
. I kick and turn.
I'll save you, Mel.
I flail my arms.
I'll come in a boat and whisk you away.

But it's been a long day, and finally my stomach clenches. “Aren't you hungry?” I practically yell above the laughter and music.

“Always.”

So we stop and eat, and Ástríd comes over to ask Egill to watch Búri, so she and Beorn can dance for a while. She feels fine about asking Egill for a favor, since Beorn has promised Egill to take him on as his helper once spring comes and he goes trading again. And, of course, she doesn't even ask me; she simply plants Alof in my arms and leaves. Little Alof promptly grabs at the meat on the tip of my knife, but I swing it away in time.

“Good thing you're quick,” says Egill.

“I've had lots of practice.” I hold the knife tip at a slant so Búri can take off the meat, and then I look at Alof, who's staring at me with eager curiosity. This child will be eating everything lots earlier than Búri did, I bet. I kiss her, so the grease of the meat from my lips coats hers. She understands instantly and licks her lips in surprised glee.

“Can I have one of those?”

I spear a piece of meat on the tip of my knife and hold it out to Egill.

“No. I meant the other.”

A kiss? I'm appalled. I've known about what happens between men and women for as long as I can remember.
I'm the girl who passed as much time as I could among the livestock, after all. But I have no interest in such things. Not yet. I pull away.

Egill grabs me and pushes me down.

I jump up, ready to let loose a fury of invectives, when I realize that a huge bone just got hurled across the room. If Egill hadn't shoved us flat, Alof and I might have been hit.

The man who caught the bone calls out a challenge, and people clear the way as he casts it back. The other man catches it and falls back a few steps from the force of it. And the bone's flying through the air our way again. But we are safely crouched on the floor. I've seen this sport before and always thought it was stupid—drunk men making absurd challenges. But now I realize the bone-casting contest isn't just dumb; it's dangerous. Gnawed bones are heavy. I don't like how these men show off their strength all the time.

The bone goes back and forth faster, flung harder each time. The laughter of the onlookers becomes strained. Egill tugs on me and we crawl away, over near the gaming boards.

“What's going on?” I ask him. “What's at stake?”

“They both want to marry Helga, and Harald hasn't decided who will win yet.”

Harald is Helga's father, and Helga is my friend, to the
extent that I have any friends outside the family. I keep pretty much to my work. We haven't really talked since last summer. I spy her now, standing against the far wall, her arms crossed at the chest, her face a mask of indifference. I wonder who she prefers. “It's rotten that she can't choose.”

“Choose? What a crazy idea.” Egill laughs and pushes me in the shoulder.

I push him back, a little harder.

“You have too many crazy ideas,” says Egill. “Like working with Beorn on the boat. He'd be better off with me helping all the time, not just when he goes trading.”

“I'm good on the boat.”

“You might be. But that doesn't make it right.”

Suddenly one of the men throws up his hands. “I won't fight you. I won't break Jól.”

And the contest is over just like that. That's a good thing about Jól—it's a festival of peace. Even men who fight all the time can act nice during Jól. I watch the tension drain from Helga's shoulders as she turns back to her plate of food.

Egill reaches a hand toward me, and for a moment I fear he'll touch my hair, but when I lean away he touches Alof's cheek instead. “Will you skate with me tomorrow?”

The weather changed this past week, as though getting
ready for Jól. It's so cold now, the stream is frozen. “I don't have skates. You know that.”

“I made you some.”

“Really?” I've watched skaters with something bordering on envy. It's like dancing, but infinitely smoother. “Who died?”

“Kjartan's old stallion. And I was the first to ask for the foot bones.”

It's a lot of work to make skates. I watched Beorn make a pair for Búri. You have to grind the bottom of the bone flat and make it smooth on top. And unless you want to use a spiked stick to propel yourself across the ice, you need to add holes in either end of the bones so they can be fastened by thongs to your shoes. Though I coveted those skates, I didn't ask Beorn to make me a pair for the very reason that I knew how much work it was.

I shouldn't accept such a gift, especially not after how Egill behaved tonight.

Still, I'd love to learn to skate. I'm sick of standing on the side and swallowing my envy as I watch Búri play ball games on the ice. “Thank you,” I say at last. “But skates aren't payment for kisses, you understand.”

He laughs. “I know that.”

“Know it well. If you want thrills, you'll have to find them elsewhere.”

“Oh, there'll be plenty of thrills this week, with the
papi
and all.”

I don't know that word . . .
papi.
“The what?”

“Aha! Something the know-it-all Alfhild doesn't know. A
papi
is a foreigner.”

“So what? Lots of foreigners pass through Ribe.”

“A
papi
is different. He's not a trader. He's a religious man from some other religion. He's come to find converts.”

My ears are starting to ring. “What religion?”

“He calls himself
Kristinn
.”

Kristinn?
Christian!

“And he's from Írland. It's to the west.”

Írland
—Eire land.

An Irish monk.

“What do you think it is?” Egill stands looking at the box on the floor inside the poled enclosure they've built for the monk. It's a poor excuse for shelter; the wind blows right through. The monk sits on the dirt with his back to us. He's slumped forward, and his tunic is so thin, the ridges of his backbone stand out distinctly.

The box is the length of my forearm and half that in width. It's made of thick yew. Sheets of pounded-thin copper are nailed to the outer surfaces and secured at the edges by nailed-on bars of more copper. The bottom is a normal rectangle. The lid is attached by hinges and is in the shape of a pitched roof, with four sides: two large ones and two smaller triangular ones to close off the ends. A ridge pole goes across the apex of the roof, and it holds together the four roof pieces. The ridge pole sticks out a little on both sides and curls into loops, where each end of a chain is fastened. On the sides and lid are circular and rectangular decorations, all of bronze.

“What do you think it is? Go on, make a guess.”

I don't
have to guess. I know exactly what it is: a reliquary. Monks carry them hanging from their necks by those chains. But I don't want him or anyone else to think it's important—because who knows what people will do if they think it's important? “It's a box, Egill. Just a box. All the travelers who come through Ribe carry boxes.”

“Well, yeah, of course, but guess what's inside?”

I shake my head. “I don't want to know.”

He grins. “Bones. Human bones!”

The bones of a saint. Probably bits of the saint's clothing, too.

“And a tooth.”

“How do you know?”
Please tell me no one touched them.
They shouldn't touch what they don't believe in. They shouldn't touch without reverence.

“Arne showed us. He opened it up yesterday morning and held it out for us boys to see. Then he stripped the man and made him turn in a circle.” Egill points toward Arne, under the bushes. I hadn't noticed him there before. “When he wakes, he'll show you.”

The ruddy-faced man is wrapped up in blankets. After a feast, drunk people sleep where they fall. But Arne's big—I'm not sure even Beorn could win over him in wrestling—and big men stay sober longer. Arne stayed sober long enough to roll up in the blanket.

The monk has no blanket. And no cloak. The world spins a little, and I have to shut my eyes a moment. “Why is Arne there?”

“He's guarding the monk.”

“From what?”

Egill laughs. “Not from anything. He's keeping him from running away.”

I hug myself. This is not a shelter; it's a cage. I've never seen a man in a cage before.

“I have to go now. Meet me in the afternoon? I'll bring your skates, the ones I made. I can be like the god Ull, who hunts on skis and skates, and you can hold on to my arm. Say you'll come.”