The Stone of Sorrow Read online

  “More for me,” I mutter as I scoop a large portion into a bowl. “Is there any bread?” I call.

  Sýr emerges with the flat crust of an ibud loaf, places it on the table and then sprinkles it with a few grains and some water. She moves her lips in a silent spell and then draws the shape of Ár, the harvest rune, on the table before placing a bowl over the bread.

  With careful fingers she produces a blue stone from a leather sack she wears around her neck, close to her heart. The moonstone. It used to be a brilliant, shimmering blue but has since dulled. Its powers are waning, and it must be refreshed in the sacred pool at moonwater at the time of the red moon’s eclipse. The stone is said to have fallen from the moon when Odin created the nine realms, and that it carries within it the power of creation—as long as it recharges when the moon does. The strongest runecasters from all the clans compete to gain possession of it. The last time the red moon came, it was the year of my birth, and this is one of the longest intervals between moons we’ve ever had. Right now the stone is drawing power from Sýr herself, and I can see it wearing on her.

  Sýr whispers to the stone, and it glints blue before growing dull again. She places it back into the sack around her neck and takes a deep breath, steadying herself against the table.

  “Sýr,” I start, but she holds up her hand, and I know not to continue.

  “I’m fine.” She nods at the bread. “Wait for it,” she says, disappearing back into her cupboard.

  “How long?” I whine, embarrassed at my own impatience.

  “Wait,” she says.

  I slurp my soup, drinking from the bowl, and use my cold fingers to put pinches of tender flakes of cod and chewy bits of eel into my mouth.

  “Now,” Sýr calls in a faraway voice. She’s distracted and will remain that way for the rest of the night. Once she gets working, she loses sight of all else. At least that means I won’t have to do any more lessons tonight.

  I lift the bread bowl and see that the tiny crust has tripled in size, growing from a morsel to a meal. A few years ago the moonstone would have turned this tiny crust into a feast for the whole village.

  I use the ibud loaf to sop up the rest of the soup and bits of fish from my bowl. It’s satisfying to my hungry belly, and I’m grateful for it, but it also tastes a little strange, as if the bread is more illusion than grain. I suppose that it is.

  Once I’m full of soup and bread, I head to my sleeping area. It’s a little triangular-shaped nook at the back of our dwelling, made private by a ragged sheepskin Sýr hung across the opening for me. Pushing the soft curtain aside, I climb onto my sleeping ledge under the small window that looks out to sea. I open the shutter, knowing Sýr will admonish me for letting the cold air in, but I must look at the sky. Every night I gaze out over my cliff side at the stars.

  I love living up here. It’s high enough that the water doesn’t reach us, but our dwelling and my little window jut out over the water in such a way that when the ocean is full, I am able to look straight from my window into the depths.

  Our clanspeople are seafarers, and I dislike being too far from the water, for I always feel too dry, as if I could turn into an empty husk at any moment. I like the privacy our enclave offers, and the way the sounds of the great ocean echo against the stone walls. It is as if I live inside a giant shell, and the whooshing of water lulls me to sleep at night like the great rhythmic heartbeat of eternity. It’s a timeless feeling, like I’ve always been here and always will be.

  Looking at the stars relaxes me but my mind inevitably drifts to the worrisome questions that plague me these nights. Can someone like me ever have a great destiny? If I tell Sýr I dream of sailing across the great ocean, will she be angry? Would she ever let me go?

  What about my mother? Everyone tells me she was wild and free. Would she be proud if she could see me now? My memory is long, but of course I can’t remember her. She died giving me life. If I try to conjure my birth, there’s nothing there except a blackness without end. It’s like trying to conceive of infinity. As soon as you think you have a handle on it, it slips away, like sand pulling under your feet as the tide rolls out toward the horizon.

  “Runa?” Sýr says, her gentle voice reaching me before she pulls aside the sheepskin. She looks at me and her face softens. She knows my thoughts. Can she see that, for me, this good life, the one she’s been so careful to provide, feels like a trap?

  I turn to her, exhausted by my own thoughts and the failures of the day. “Do the sleeping spell, Sýr, please. I cannot rest without it.”

  She reaches out to pluck a single hair from my head. I feel the strand pop free, and I watch as Sýr moves her lips in a silent spell. With the flame of a candle she singes the hair and then presses its remains into her hand before using one elegant finger to draw a series of runes in her palm. Next she draws the same runes on my forehead as I lay back on my bed. I feel myself growing heavier, as if roots are growing from my body to anchor me in place. It’s a comforting weight, and I shut my eyes to welcome it.

  As I breathe, I feel Sýr slip away from me, closing the window and then the curtain behind her. From a distance she whispers, “At the end it will be the two of us, Runa.”

  I’m so tired, and her voice is faint. I don’t know what she means. “The end of what?” I whisper back.

  As I drift off, her voice comes to me as if from a great distance. “The end of time, Ru,” she says. “Always us. Until the end of time.”

  In times gone by, a runecaster was a revered witch, and she had the ability to roam wherever and whenever she liked, encumbered by nothing and no one. Now it is rare to leave the village you’ve grown up in unless you are a warrior. For Sýr, and for me, our destinies are tied to our clan because we are needed on home soil to help our people. My mother was the last of us to voyage, when she won at the moonwater competition and secured the moonstone for our clan so many years ago. Even though I hate trying to make the runes, I envy Sýr’s chance to travel to find moonwater when it is time.

  When we wake this morning, the red moon is visible in the sky, peeking above the horizon. We have perhaps a day or two before it moves higher and Sýr must gather her runes and set off to moonwater for the competition. She won’t go alone, perhaps taking a warrior or two with her, for the journey can be dangerous. No one knows exactly where moonwater is, for its location changes with every generation of the eclipse. To find it, Sýr will have to follow the path of the moon, her own intuition, and the great guiding lights to the north.

  I will need to stay here because our amma needs me, and it will fall to me to cast runes for the clan while Sýr is gone. If I have my sickness, I will be on my own to deal with it.

  Our people are anxious about winning the runecasting competition, and I am no exception. We must win to retain possession of the moonstone and ensure our clan’s prosperity, but I’m more worried about how I will survive back at the village without my sister. I’m hated enough as it is. Without Sýr around I’ll be like a fish caught in a tide pool, praying the ravens don’t come to peck my eyes out.

  The smell of porridge bubbling draws me to the hearth, where Sýr has left the black pot simmering. I use the lifting stick to remove the lid and scoop a portion into my bowl. Sýr has left something else for me—a treat wrapped in moss next to the hearth. Its smell gives it away. Hákarl. Fermented shark, my favorite. Where did she get it? Hákarl takes a long time to ripen, and we haven’t had much whey to cure it with, as our clan has a shortage of goats. There’s a shortage of everything now that the moonstone is waning, and with the big ships gone, our fishing practices are limited to shoreline nets and traps. In my nets I’ve only caught little sharks that are not worth preparing in this way. Not enough meat.

  For hákarl, it’s best to use the big, mottled green shark. Its flesh can withstand the fermenting process without falling apart. It must be aged a long time, for green shark is poisonous when fresh but safe and delicious to eat when rotten. But catching a green shark t
akes a huge net or a long line with a large hook, and I am not strong enough to haul those in on my own. I’ve always wanted to spear one from atop an ice floe, as father claimed to have done once. Perhaps I will in my dreams.

  Unwrapping the hákarl, I take a nibble of its pungent, tender flesh. Sýr must have known this morning would be tough. I hope she saved some for herself. In case she did not, I wrap the rest and place it in my pocket. I slurp my porridge, then find my woolen leggings and socks and pull them on under my dress, the same one I was wearing yesterday. I’m not fond of dresses, and this is not my favorite. It is made of scratchy wool and is the same muddy brown color as sheep dung, but at least it is warm. Once I find my boots, I pull them on and note how they pinch in the toes. I can’t bring myself to tell Sýr they are too small, as it seems we only traded for these ones a couple of months ago. When I wrap my gray cloak around me, my boring look is complete.

  A loud squawk interrupts my thoughts. Núna, my raven, flies toward me in the early-morning dim, barely visible until the glint of her black eyes is upon me. She flies through the window and alights on my ledge, ruffling her wing feathers and snapping her beak at me in pleasure. I open a little pot beside the window and pluck out a dried worm. It’s one of many I’ve harvested for Núna over the years.

  Sýr likes to say that Núna is my fylgja, a guardian spirit connected to me and to my destiny, because fylgjur show up when babies are born, and Núna has been with me since the moment I arrived in this world, breathless and still. My amma likes to tell the story of how I was born dead, but then Núna flew down through the roof and brought my soul to me. She has visited me every day since.

  When I was a little girl, Núna was young too, and she was always hungry and squawking. I would say, “Now, now,” as I fed her, and that turned into “Núna.” We are “Runa and Núna,” Sýr likes to say. Very best friends.

  Núna has gotten rather fat from stealing bread from the villagers. She used to fit in my cloak pouch, but now she likes to rest on my shoulder. It’s a pleasant weight that I miss when she’s gone, off on her bird adventures, and I feel incomplete without Núna’s claws in my shoulder. I have permanent marks where her talons dig in.

  I like to pretend that Núna isn’t a raven at all and that my mother sent her to me. Sometimes Núna brings me sticks and pebbles as gifts, and one time she even brought me the carcass of a white hare. I look at these gifts as signs from my mother, and I do my best to interpret them in case my mother is trying to warn me of something. So far I haven’t been able to divine anything, but I did manage to use the hare’s soft white fur to line some gloves for Sýr. Like Sýr, Núna has always been with me, and I hope she always will be.

  Once Núna finishes her little feast of dried worms, she sits on the sill and watches over me. I am grateful for the company, because I am scared for Sýr. Today I will go down to the village with Sýr to assist her while she does rune readings and simple spells for the villagers, and I will seek out our grandmother. I can always count on my amma to help. She likes to live in the action, shunning our clifftop hideaway. One time, when he was still around, Father tried to convince Sýr that we should live among the rest of the clan. He argued that we should do it for safety and because we were already outcast enough. I don’t know what Sýr said to him, but he never mentioned it again, and ever since he has regarded me with a strange expression, part wonder and part something else. Fear? But what would a powerful warrior like Father, Unnur the Axe, have to fear from me? I’m the village strange-ling who can’t seem to be useful. I am never the bright star in the sky, never the girl they want me to be.

  Núna chitters at me from the window.

  I hold my arms out and spin in a slow circle so she can see my garments. “I won’t need an invisibility rune,” I say to her. She cocks her black head at me. “These clothes take care of that.”

  Núna ignores me, preens her chest feathers, and then flies away. I pull the shutters closed after her, grab my set of wooden practice runes from the ledge, and head out to walk the cliff path to the village.

  Aside from the red cast to the sky caused by the rising moon, this day is much like any other. Crisp air, breath billowing out from me in cloudy puffs, the icy crunch of semi-frozen pebbles and lichen underfoot, gusts of salty wind that whip up from the black sands below. As the path winds downward, I look out over our lands. The village sits to the left in a protected alcove beyond the beach, where it is surrounded by natural rock walls that buffer the winds. It’s flanked by a collection of stone dwellings on one side and by green hills and grazing lands on the other. Beyond are clusters of cultivated land, where we grow crops, and forest, where we forage for wild berries and mosses. As I walk down the path, I can see plumes of smoke from cooking fires and hear the clangor of our people living and toiling and surviving.

  The clan is hard at work. People clad in leather, wool, and fur trudge about. No one is spared of responsibility. Children fetch water while their mothers scrape hides, weave new ropes, and care for horses and sheep. The men who’ve stayed back at the village dig to create a new waterway from the nearby river, as they are going to make a trough that runs under the heavy stones and into our longhouse. That way we’ll be able to lift the stones to collect fresh water.

  To my right is the sea, my one great love, though I have never sailed far from home. As I look at the endless expanse of ocean, it seems like I can feel the power of the tides flowing into me. It’s an ancient power, pushing and then pulling deep within, and I have to resist the urge to run down the path into the waves.

  Is there an end to the world’s waters? Will I ever see the unknown lands beyond? Will I discover the mysteries I dream of? Father and his fellow warriors returned from long journeys with wild tales of sea monsters, endless fog, and strange villages with creatures and people I can’t believe exist.

  A girl like me cannot hope to conquer lands or wield a battle axe. I’m not large and strong like some of the women in our clan. To join the warriors on a quest, I would have to be free of my destiny as a runecaster and skilled in the ways of battle. I am neither.

  A girl like me can never leave, so I will have to be content to dream. It’s not so bad, I suppose. There are worse things than having to dream through life. I could be like the banished ones, sent to wander alone in our island’s dead zone, scraping out a meager survival among the glacier’s caves and deep crevasses, haunted by the ghosts lurking there. There are always worse things, I remind myself, trying on Sýr’s optimism. Still, the sea calls to me.

  Down at the beach I pick my way across the black sand, my boots sinking in the wet pools, and hop around the outcropping of black rocks and lava formations from centuries ago. Every now and then a new eruption springs forth offshore, the sparks and lava shooting into the sky and sizzling the ocean. Once I hauled in a huge net of cooked fish, and the clan had no choice but to eat it all at once. There was no preserving it. The fish tasted of both the sea and the earth, at once salty and stony, and it had a burnt flavor. We could almost taste the island’s anger. We took it as a warning from the gods, and we were careful to increase our offerings and thanks.

  I make my way to my traps, nestled beyond the tide pools and moored with heavy stones and strong ropes, and flip them open to see that I’ve managed to catch spider crab this day. I’ve also collected a lot of seaweed, which will please Sýr, for once dried it provides us with the nutrition we need for long winters.

  Sýr’s girlfriend, Frigg, will give me some goat’s butter in exchange for crab, I’ll bet. Frigg is a square-shouldered, steel-haired woman who reminds me of a wall in more ways than one. She raises horses and sheep in the foothills and keeps a stand in the village for trading her skins, meat, milk, and butter. I know why Sýr likes her so much—and it’s not for the delicious sheep wares. It’s because Frigg is gentle and generous, much like my sister herself. I have asked Sýr if they’re in love, and she always says love isn’t something you’re “in” but something you “do.” I think
they do it a lot.

  Cramming all of the catch into one trap, I reset the others and then hoist my full trap over my shoulder and scramble back across the rocks and up toward the village. Icy seawater drips down the back of my cloak, soaking me, but I don’t care.

  Sýr will tease me, saying I’ve turned into a sea creature stinking of fish and covered in strings of seaweed, and Frigg will laugh. The crabs scuttle in the trap, clacking against each other. I jostle the trap to shock them a bit and keep them from killing each other. One of them reaches its long claw through the trap net and gives my thumb a pinch.

  “Ow.” I draw my hand back and see dark red blood running from the gash in the fleshy part of my thumb. It drips onto the black sand and mixes with the seawater before running back down the shoreline to the ocean.

  “At least a part of me will journey with you,” I whisper to the water as the waves retreat. I look at my hand, noting that this will hurt for some time and make it difficult to haul traps. No matter. My hands are scarred and thick from work and fishing. They are not the hands of a runecaster.

  When I walk up through the village, no one speaks to me. “See? No invisibility rune needed,” I mutter to myself.

  I pick my way through the working crowds, past men driving stakes into the ground, past children sifting seeds into sacks, past young women sewing clothes. Some men stare at me as I go by, and I avoid their gazes. I know I am odd and look different from the other girls. Sýr says it appeals to men the way a rare bird or wild game does. They want to hunt it, kill it, wear its feathers or hide. They want it for what it will mean about them. They don’t want it for its own sake. I don’t really want to find out if what she says is true.

  I pass four older women weaving in a circle. They pay me no mind, as is typical, for the elder women in our clan don’t figure young ones like me have anything to offer. They guard their wisdom like their gossip, hoarding it and doling it out when it will have the most impact. They are the ones who set up marriages, start fights among brothers, and have the power to shun the unwanted from our shores. Sýr warns me to always be polite to the women. As I walk by I try to make myself even more invisible. They cackle to each other as I pass, and I wonder if it’s to do with me. They continue their weaving, intricate patterns and scenes designed to influence fate and bring their warrior husbands back from the great sea. I’ve wondered whether it would help to bring Father home, but I am a terrible weaver, and in my heart I fear it is a waste of time. No amount of dreaming has ever brought back someone I lost. Whether my father comes back alive or at all has nothing to do with my desires. I wish it did.