Page 87 of Don't Let Me Go
Erik rises from the high seat, and every man rises with him. The seeress steps out of the shadows and pulls back the cowl of her black lambskin mantle that is finer than anything our women have here in Brattahlid. Her pale face is sharp and lean, and her kohl-black eyes have something of the wolf’s smile in them. Were I to guess, I would say it is a face that has seen no more than forty summers. In youth, she would have been a beauty, and some of that beauty lingers in the bloodred hair that coils atop her head like knotted snakes.
“Greetings, Erik, son of Thorvald,” the seeress says, nodding in deferment to our chieftain, her voice sharp and cold as ice.
“Greetings, Seeress. You are most welcome in Brattahlid. It was brave of you to make the journey. I know men in this room who would be afeared to traverse the sea in such a winter as this.”
“That does not surprise me,” Ulfhild replies with a short, hard laugh. “Men are often brave only when it is convenient. Life does not afford such luxury to a woman.”
My brother-warriors tense, our eyes turning to Erik to see how we are to take this strange rebuke. To our great relief, he laughs.
“You speak true, Seeress,” he declares. “Come, sit, we shall feast and toast your good health!”
A chair almost as finely and elaborately carved as Erik’s is set beside him and draped in pillows and furs. The seeress nods in approval. In slow, unhurried steps, she makes her way across the long, narrow hall, nodding to each of Erik’s men, who pay homage with words of greeting.
“You are most welcome, Great Seeress,” I say as she passes before me. She nods and is about to continue her slow procession when her wolf-sharp eyes catch sight of Ragnar. I see her take in his labored breathing and his pale face stained with sweat. She holds him in her hungry gaze, and I feel a chill in my bones colder than any winter.
Then she turns away and resumes her journey to the chair of honor.
Once his guest is seated, Erik motions for us to do the same. Ragnar almost collapses in exhaustion, his body going slack like a sail that has lost the wind. Thank Odin for the swift arrival of the servants. Their entrance draws the attention of everyone in the room as they set out huge plates of food overflowing with bread, cheese, pork, and herring. Sweet mead flows in our cups, though wine and wine alone is offered to the seeress.
“You must eat,” I whisper to Ragnar. I grab a haunch of pork from a passing servant and push it into his hands. But after a few bites, he grows weary from the effort.
“Tomorrow,” he sighs. “I’ll eat tomorrow.”
I nod, but his breath is so short, I have no certainty that we are guaranteed a tomorrow. Only the seeress has that knowledge, and she is not here for me. She is here for Erik. Erik who seeks to know all that the future holds.
I have no such ambitions. My one desire is to know if my fears for Ragnar are merited, and, if so, what can be done to avert his fate.
I must speak with the witch. Whatever the consequences, whatever Erik’s punishment, I must try. All of Ragnar’s tomorrows depend on me, and though it cost me my life, I owe him nothing less.
I was nine when he and I became bond-brothers. The woman I called Mother for the first years of my life was a healer. She lived among women who practiced the healing arts in the forests outside Húsavík in Iceland. I had no father I knew by name. Men were not permitted among the healers, so when it was that I reached my ninth winter, I was given to Ragnar’s family. They farmed in Húsavík, and they owed my mother a life-debt, for she had breathed life back into Ragnar’s sister when she’d drowned as a child.
My life in Húsavík was good. Most of the families were farmers, for the soil was rich and the harvests bountiful. This made us a constant target for sea-raiders, whose swift ships would appear on the horizon and strike without warning. In preparation against this evil, the young boys of my village were taught the ways of the shield and the sword from an early age, and Ragnar was accounted a skilled fighter by the time he reached his ninth summer.
Raised by women and healers, I could scarcely handle a knife. This should have earned me Ragnar’s scorn. Instead, he took it upon himself to forge me into a warrior. Whatever time we had for our own after we finished our chores, he spent teaching me the art of combat. I repaid him the only way I knew how: with songs I had learned from my mother and the women of her forest. I had a pleasing voice, and many were the nights when my songs would lull Ragnar to sleep in the bed we shared. He said my songs gave him the sweetest visions while he slept.
In this manner, six summers passed. Him teaching me to fight. Me teaching him to dream.
Then the day came. The day we had long prepared for. The day that still caught us unprepared. Sea-raiders fell upon our village, swift and merciless like the wolves of winter. They burned the farms, stole the summer harvest, and left so many bodies in their wake that the ravens could have feasted upon them until Ragnarök.
Ragnar fought with the savagery of a bear. He split the head of a raider with the ax his father used for chopping wood and gutted another with his sword. I killed no one, but I kept myself alive and fought the best I could. Even so, our farm was burned with the others. My bond-parents were killed, and Ragnar’s sister was taken by the raiders along with many of the young women.
That night, after the raiders had gone, leaving our village in ruins, I bathed Ragnar’s wounds in the sea and sang him songs to soothe his soul. His grief was great but silent. He did not cry. He never cried. But in the remains of our charred farmhouse, for the first time since we were children, he climbed into my bed and wrapped his body around mine as if he were afraid I too would be snatched away from him.
“If I had lost you, I would have let the raiders kill me,” he said, whispering his confession into the back of my neck. “You are half my heart.”
Not long after, Erik came to Húsavík—or what was left of Húsavík—in his great ship with sails that blotted out the sun. His settlement in Greenland was expanding, he said. He was seeking warriors to serve him and protect his territory. In exchange, such men would be well provided for.
The stench of death still hung in the air of Húsavík, so Ragnar accepted the offer. His one condition was that Erik take me as well.
“Can he fight?” Erik asked, eyeing me as if I were a fish not worth the filleting. “He looks small.”
“He can. Even if he could not, he is my bond-brother. Where I go, he goes.”
So it was that Ragnar and I came to Brattahlid, he to fight for Erik, and me to fight for him. Such are my thoughts when the seeress’s sharp voice, like the breaking of glass, echoes across the Great Hall and calls me back to the present.
“Where are your women?” Ulfhild demands.
Her question is aimed at no man in particular and yet it strikes fear in the heart of every man who hears it. The raucous laughter of my brother-warriors, which had hitherto flowed as freely as the mead, shrivels and vanishes. The room plunges into silence, and all eyes turn to Erik, who shifts uncomfortably in his chair.
