Scramasax (20 page)

Several times Solveig's path crossed other paths, if that's what they were.

But there's no one up here to make them, she thought. Sheep-runs, then. Rabbits, even. But I haven't seen any sheep, or any rabbits either.

Ghost-paths … Thought-paths … I don't know.

Several times, too, Solveig's path forked and she had to decide to go left or right.

I'd better keep climbing, she thought. This way I'll come to the next ridge, the next valley, and I'll find a farm or a settlement.

No, she found nothing of the kind. Solveig walked until it was dark and she could no longer see where to plant her aching feet. She sighed and lay down and curled into herself at the foot of a rocky outcrop.

What are those words? she wondered. The words of the High One about how a traveller must always carry sufficient food and drink, and sufficient clothing.

Solveig shivered. Just as the days in Sicily were blistering, the nights were blustery and chilly, and even her cloak was insufficient to keep her warm.

As for her companions, they were flickering moths, looping-the-loop bats, busy beetles, squirting lizards, and one swooping, screeching bird of prey impatient to claim Solveig.

If Grimizo were here, thought Solveig, he'd make up one of his grim songs about how bad things are, the ones that always end ‘And yet … and yet … things turned out better than I thought.' And if Snorri were here, he'd tell me some story to make me laugh. And if Tamas were here, he'd whisper something like he does to Alnath, to keep me warm … And if my father were here …

Solveig sat up.

‘Father!' she exclaimed. And she reached out for him.

But there was no one there, nothing but the shape of the night-wind. Solveig gulped and lay down again and tucked her knees under her chin.

I was so angry, she thought. So upset. And you, you wouldn't reply. Not one word. I begged you, and you shrugged me off. But now, I wish you were here. One flesh, one blood … We've no need of words, we do understand each other.

Solveig gulped again. Her throat felt rough.

Father, where are you? And you, Tamas?

Are you searching for me? Have you even thought about me?

Long before sunrise, Solveig opened one eye and saw the outcrop above her was glistening. Cobwebs, she thought. Gossamer. No, tiny silver rock-scales. She reached out, and touched the rock with one finger. It was cool and wet.

At once, Solveig levered herself up, and groaned because she ached so much. She put her tongue to the
rock face and began to lick it. The night mist. The dew. Whatever it was.

Yes, the grim rock face was weeping and Solveig began to weep. Her feet ached, her ankles ached, her calves and kneecaps ached, her whole body ached. She had cramp in her empty stomach. Above all her heart ached, and she closed her eyes.

Father, I've troubled you. I've dishonoured you by leaving. I can never belong in an army of men, but I know that doesn't mean it was right to leave. What if I've angered Harald? Will he be angry with you?

I'll go back, thought Solveig. I'll go down. Father, Father! Please understand. Don't tell me I was wrong to come.

Quite how it happened she never knew, though in the mountains it's easily done. Following what she thought was the way back to the walled town, Solveig took the wrong path and didn't realise she had done so until it was too late. She lost herself in the brutal hills.

High over her head, the sun hammered her golden gong.

Solveig's sweat kept stinging her eyes; then she stumbled into a pillar of rock, she grazed her right wrist and bruised her forearm. Almost at once a blue lump as large as a blackbird's egg welled up under her skin.

The sun … the sun …

She's never like this at home, thought Solveig. Not at summer solstice. Not even in Hay Month or the start of Harvest Month.

I followed the strong sun east and south, but I never knew her eye could be as fierce as this.

Not as wild and murderous as this.

Voices. That's what Solveig could hear.

Some were bright and quick and clear, like spots
of sunlight dancing on a marl floor; some were cool-tongued, flowing around her. Some were more like humming.

Solveig couldn't understand a word they were saying but that didn't matter. It didn't matter at all.

Scents, that's what she could smell. A confusion of dried thyme and marjoram and sage and vervain and lemons and clover and cut nettles and many kinds of wildflowers. She didn't know the names for all of them, not in Norwegian, not in any language, but that didn't matter. Her head was buried in a nosebag, a whole headbag, of mountain scents.

When at last Solveig opened her eyes she could see a circle of goats and sheep peering down at her. She could hear hens squawking, cattle lowing, one dog barking. This is the kingdom of animals, she thought. I didn't even know there was such a place.

When she twisted her head, Solveig could see she was lying in a wooden manger.

She murmured. Her eyelids felt so heavy. She fell asleep again.

When Solveig opened her eyes for a second time, she saw she was surrounded not by goats or sheep but children with shining eyes, their skin almost as dark as dates, and women wearing black veils.

Then one boy and girl leaned right over Solveig and they laughed. They laughed for joy.

The hanged ones, she thought. They're the little ones we hanged. I'm in Asgard!

Solveig's eyes ached, her head was hammering. But she gave a sort of long, sighing smile, and fell asleep again.

The veiled women smeared soft wax on Solveig's cracked lips; they wrapped cool damp rags around her swollen arm; they kept refilling a little wooden water
cup and cradled her head while she drank; they helped her to sit up against a pad of straw, and laid in her lap a platter of curds infused with honey and lavender. And seeing how Solveig had turned away from the dark and chosen the path of life, they gladly helped her along it with little mouthfuls of prayer and snatches of song.

On the third day after the mountain people – that's how she always remembered them – had found Solveig beside the rock pillar where she had been felled by the sun, she stood up for the first time. She shared bread and cheese and drank milk, she sucked the juice out of blueberries and chewed bitter, pale green almonds.

Solveig listened to the music of their language, and smiled when the mountain people smiled. She knew she would have to return before long to the baking plain, the walled town, return to all the stares and barbed words and sharp questions, but she wasn't ready to think about all that. Not yet.

There were eleven children in the high village, not counting three babies still in their cribs, and no goddess ever had such close and faithful attendants as did Solveig. They led her up and down and around, whisking and frolicking like wavelets. And when Solveig sat down, they ranged themselves around her knees and pressed against her legs. Now and then one of them took her hand, and said something to her, something Solveig knew was very serious because all the other children solemnly nodded their heads. Or else one child asked her a question, and when Solveig smiled and shook her head and said she didn't understand, they all laughed as if she'd told them a wonderful joke. The smallest children very lightly pinched her fair skin, and stroked her golden hair, and touched her right under her eyes with their soft fingertips.

The children wanted to know what Solveig kept in her canvas bag. They were eager to see everything in it, but although she showed them the discs and slivers of oak wood and walrus bone, Solveig stopped them from rummaging because her father's gold brooch was still buried at the bottom of the bag, and so was the silver spoon Tamas had given her.

On the third day after Solveig had come back from the dead, everyone assembled in the dusty space at the heart of the village: women walked in from their herding and milking, men from the new stable and stockade they were building, old women emerged from their squat stone bothies, and all Solveig's young worshippers rejoined their parents.

Some of the men had two veiled women standing beside them, and one man had three. But none of the women had more than one man next to her.

Solveig frowned. What does that mean? she wondered. Do some men have more than one wife?

If not, where are the missing men? Where have they gone? Are they down in the plains, fighting?

Then one old man cried out, calling to heaven seven times. A few of the people in the enclosure – the cloister, she didn't even know what to call it – a few of them turned to face the east. They got down on to their knees, they pressed their foreheads to the ground. But Solveig saw that most of the villagers were reaching out towards a second old man who had mounted a block of stone and was holding a wooden cross above his head. Then these people, too, quietly got down on to their knees, their elbows, and prostrated themselves in front of the cross. They stretched their arms right out. Each of them made a cross of their own bodies.

Solveig held her breath. She stared around her, astonished.

Christians, she thought. Muslims. Muslims, Christians. Together. Praying together.

She bowed her head. Then she too got down on to her knees.

The enclosure began to hum – the hum of hundreds and thousands of words all becoming one word – and the old man who had called seven times to heaven picked his way towards Solveig through the press of villagers. He took her right hand.

‘
Dhimmi?
' he said, and Solveig knew he was asking her something important. ‘
Dhimmi?
'

Solveig frowned.

‘
Dhimmi?
' insisted the old man.

But Solveig could only shake her head and shrug.

The old man gently laid his left hand on the top of Solveig's head. Solveig could feel the warmth of it infusing her, filtering down through her body.

Then the old man gently smiled and lowered his hooded eyelids. He turned away.

Still the cloister hummed. Not urgent but intent; devoted; dedicated.

Something was tickling the back of Solveig's right ear. She reached up. She felt for it and touched it with her fingertips. Then she placed her hand on top of her head and drew it forward: a gauze so fine it could have been made of bees' wings and long-legged insects, the fluffy tail feathers of fledglings. Oh, mulberry and indigo and watermelon – its dark green skin – and hazelnut and chestnut, silver, lavender: the quiet, subdued colours of the mountains and the mountain people.

Solveig gazed at it. Her eyelids flickered.

Up here, she thought, war is only a murmur.

I don't know where I am. I don't know who these people are. And I know I can't stay here. But these people
have saved me. Solveig fingered the delicate gauze and wondered at it.

I wish I could save them. Save them from everything.

I'll carry them with me. I'll carry the word.

That afternoon, Solveig's little acolytes led her out of the village to their secret places: fissures in the rocks where blueberries grew, a hilltop cairn to which she added a stone, the stump of a fir tree she danced around with all the girls, and the mouth of a cave that opened into a chamber under the mountain.

Solveig wanted to go right down, the cool of the mountain reached out for her, but two of the children – the same ones she had imagined were the little boy and girl hanged by the Vikings – shook their heads and pulled her back.

‘I understand,' Solveig said out loud. ‘I think I do.'

But what about everything I don't understand? she thought. When will I ever, ever understand?

That evening, a storyteller sat on the stone in the middle of the village, and while he said-and-sang, Solveig incised a disc of bone.

She cut the sweeping contour of a high hill. She cut the cairn on the hilltop and, beside it, two stick-figures.

That was all.

No, not all. Very carefully she incised little strokes on either side of the two stick-figures standing next to the cairn on the high hilltop. Eleven of them.

Then Solveig looked around her and pressed the disc into the storyteller's left palm. With her little finger she pointed to the stick-figures.

‘Eir,' she said in her light voice. ‘Eir the goddess,' she repeated, ‘and Solveig –' she pointed to herself – ‘and eleven children standing on the Hill of Healing. Now I'm part of your story, and you are part of mine.'

The storyteller raised his eyes. Gravely he gazed at Solveig. Then he nodded and smiled.

Solveig knew the time had come. She gave the sign and very early next morning the mountain men guided her down from their village. They kept her company along the string-thin paths to the far plain.

‘W
here is this?' Solveig pleaded. ‘I keep telling you this isn't right.'

The mountain men shrugged.

‘This isn't the town where they are – my father and everyone.'

Inside the gate, the three men were uncertain which way to go, but a growing group of townspeople accompanied them through a warren of little twisting streets until they came to a stone-walled house in the heart of the town.