Page 43 of Alien Viking's Plunder

He smiled. “Do you often takebastu?”

“Is that what this is? No, never done it before. I have heard of it. It’s big in Finland and Russia, I think.”

“Ah. Then it was about time you tried. We will not make it hotter than this unless you ask for it.”

They stayed in silence for a while, the crackling and hissing from the fire the only sound.

Bragr leaned back and relaxed for the first time since before the raid. Things were finally starting to get better after the crash. A crash that Gornt had made happen when he had two skrymtir hide on the outside of theKraken’shull. It had been a perfect attack. Nobody should have survived. But Bragr had. And Josie had. Hopefully they all had.

It was becoming necessary to deal with Gornt for real. Banishment was clearly not enough to keep him from being a menace to all of Hjalmarheim. He had clearly started to send his skrymtir here, and if Bragr and Josie hadn’t defeated that company of them, Zhor knows what those horrors would be doing now. Probably making their way to the coast, to the settlements, planning to attack-

“What is the word for a very young man?” Josie suddenly asked. “Or small woman, not big. Before they get big. Sons.” She held her hand over the ground as if to show the height of someone.

“Child,” Bragr said. “We are first babies, then children, then adolescents and then adults.”

“Child,” Josie repeated. “Good. When I was a child, I hit my head.”

Bragr nodded slowly. “It’s a common thing.”

“It is. But I hit my head hard. There was ice. I was running and my foot lost its hold.”

“You slipped,” he said calmly, ready to listen. The bastu was a place where secret stories were often told. He had sometimes wondered if it came with the nakedness or the heat. Or both. Or maybe because it was safe. It was the height of bad form to mention the bastu stories outside of the bastu.

“I hit it so hard that I couldn’t remember anything,” Josie went on. “I didn’t remember the faces of my family. Of my… adults. Father and woman father.”

“Your parents,” Bragr supplied softly.

“I couldn’t remember the faces of my parents. I would look at them and not know who they were. I could no longer read. I could no longer play. I could no longer tie my shoelaces. I was always crying. Could only walk very slowly. Could almost not eat. And thedoctors… the healers said it would not change. I would not get better. Never. There was nothing they could do. The injury was too heavy. Too bad.”

Bragr reached over and placed his hand on the bench beside Josie, palm up, offering it for her to take hold of if she needed it.

“But one healer said there was a way. A new way, one that had never been tried before with my injuries. It had only been tried with other injuries. Never with the head injury I had. But he said it could heal me. My parents said they would try anything. They were sad to see me like that. Very sad.”

“I can well imagine,” Bragr said calmly. “They must have been distraught.”

“The healer wanted to put something in me. It’s called aneural lace. He wanted to put it in my head. Made from…” Josie looked around, then pointed at the iron oven. “Made from that.”

“From iron,” Bragr suggested. “From gold. From metal.”

“From metal,” Josie said. “It was like aspider’s web. Very small. Thin. Thinner than this. Impossible to see.” She showed with her fingers, making a miniscule opening between her thumb and forefinger. “It would heal my injury, the healer said. It was put in my blood, and the healer slowly made it travel to my head.”

“Your healers are different from ours,” Bragr marveled. “Please go on.”

To his joy, Josie casually let her hand fall onto his, keeping it there. He lightly squeezed it.

“It worked,” she went on. “I was very strange for many days. I remember it now. Many colors, many voices, many pains, much crying. I was alone in a strange world. I was very afraid. Then, one day, I saw a face. It was my female parent. I knew it was her. I said ‘mama’. She cried bad because I had not said it for a long time and she knew I was being healed.”

“Your mother was relieved,” Bragr said softly.

“Relieved,” Josie echoed. “Very relieved. Still it took time to be back to what I was before. I had to learn again. To walk, to read, to play. I did. And then my parents saw something strange.”

“You moved faster than before,” Bragr guessed. “You were quicker. You learned faster. You spoke better.”

She looked up at him. “Yes. They were surprised. But they also knew it would happen. The healer had said so. Because the lace was… hmm.”

“Valuable?” Bragr suggested. “Yourlacewould have to be valuable. Priceless, I would guess.”

Josie nodded. “Priceless.”

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