The Weaver and the Witch Queen
Genevieve Gornichec
For the friends who walk beside us,
and the ones who take another path
PART I
EARLY 900s CE, NORWAY
1
A HORN SOUNDED ACROSS the water in two short bursts.
Upon hearing it, Gunnhild Ozurardottir dropped her spindle and distaff and ran, ignoring the admonishments of the serving women she’d been spinning with under the awning. They would scold her later, but she cared little.
Her friends were about to arrive. And at such times she found it hard to care about anything else.
Gunnhild rounded the corner of the longhouse and sprinted up the hill, making for her father’s watchman on the eastern side of the island. He was stationed on a small platform overlooking the water and always had a blowing horn on hand.
“One ship!” he called over his shoulder at the other men milling about, not noticing as Gunnhild hiked up her dress and scrambled up the platform’s short ladder. “It’s Ketil’s!”
Before he could protest, Gunnhild grabbed the horn off its peg and blew it twice. As she lowered it she heard noises of disappointment coming from the children on the incoming ship, and she pumped a fist in victory. “Yes!”
“Oi!” the man said, snatching the horn from her. “That’s only for emergencies!”
“This is an emergency,” Gunnhild replied with gravity. She pointed to a dark shape in the water. “As soon as they pass that big rock in the bay, they blow the horn. And if I don’t respond before they dock, I owe them a trinket. Two blasts for ‘hello,’ three for ‘goodbye.’？”
“Aren’t you a little old for games, girl?”
“Not when I know I can win!” With that, Gunnhild scampered back down the ladder and ran for the shore, leaving the watchman shaking his head.
As she approached, Gunnhild could see Ketil and his son, Vestein, tying up their ship at the rickety wooden dock. Three other people disembarked: Ketil’s wife, Yrsa, and their daughters, Oddny and Signy, whom Gunnhild practically tackled in a hug. Sighing and shifting the bedroll in her arms, Signy rummaged in her rucksack and handed over a single glass bead, which Gunnhild snatched up with an air of triumph and stuffed into the pouch at her belt.
At twelve years old, Gunnhild was exactly between the sisters in age—Signy a winter older, Oddny a winter younger—and the girls rarely got to see one another except at gatherings, which made this day even sweeter.
“You’re too fast,” Signy complained as Gunnhild threw an arm around each of her friends and herded them up the hill toward her father’s hall.
“Or maybe you’re not fast enough,” Gunnhild said, “because when I visit you I still win. I have a collection to prove it.”
Oddny sniffed and picked at one of the furs in her bedroll, her thin shoulders hunched, her pinched face looking more so than usual. “Maybe we’d win every once in a while if Signy ever stopped daydreaming and paid attention.”
“Hush, you. I pay attention,” Signy said lightly, but her green eyes were brimming with mischief. Gunnhild appreciated that about her: Whether it was stealing oatcakes from the cookhouse or pulling a well-timed prank on the farmhands, Signy was always up for a little fun, whereas Oddny was more likely to sit back from whichever of her chores she was dutifully performing and give them a disapproving look. Oddny wasn’t much fun, but at least she never tattled on them.
As they entered the longhouse, Gunnhild saw that preparations were well underway for the ritual and feast taking place that evening. Near her father’s high seat at the far end of the hall, a small square platform had been raised for the visiting seeress to sit on, so she could look out over the crowd as she revealed their futures. It sat just under the wooden statues of the gods Odin, Thor, and Frey, which loomed beneath the jutting lintel above the entrance to the antechamber where Gunnhild’s family slept.
Gunnhild had never seen her father’s hall looking quite like this: buzzing with activity, the air charged with excitement. The seeress’s impending arrival had turned the entire household upside down, and Gunnhild considered herself lucky to have escaped from her spinning in the chaos.
A knee-high platform ran the length of the hall on each side, where guests would feast and then sleep. By day, light streamed in through the holes in the roof above the two center hearths; by night, the longhouse would be dim and smoky, lit only by the hearth fires and by the lines of oil braziers hanging from the posts that ran down either side of the hall and divided the seating areas into sections.
“Where is our family sitting?” Oddny asked her as they neared the center of the hall.
“My mother assigned the seats,” Gunnhild said. “We can ask—”
As if on cue the woman in question came out of the antechamber, already dressed to welcome the guests in her finest brooches and beads, and with a gauzy linen head scarf knotted at the nape of her neck. Before Gunnhild could so much as speak, her mother was upon them.
“What mischief have you been up to, Gunnhild?” Solveig demanded. “Why aren’t you spinning with Ulfrun and the others? They’re supposed to be keeping you out of the way.”
They didn’t tell on me, Gunnhild thought with short-lived relief, for the look on her mother’s face was nothing short of hostile.
Oddny and Signy moved in fractionally closer on either side of Gunnhild, Signy’s arm tightening around her friend’s back, and even Oddny—a paragon of submitting to parental authority—stiffened as if bracing for an attack. Solveig would never dare strike her daughter in front of guests, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t done so in private, and both Ketilsdottirs knew this. They had seen the proof more than once.
“I—I heard the horns,” Gunnhild said at last, her friends’ presence giving her strength, helping her find her voice. “I had to win.”
“Not this silly game again,” Solveig said scathingly, and she echoed the watchman’s earlier sentiment: “Aren’t you girls a little old for this?”
“It’s only a game.” Gunnhild raised her chin. As she stared her mother down, Oddny and Signy held their ground beside her until their own mother entered the hall.
“Hello, Solveig,” said Yrsa with forced politeness. “Are my daughters causing trouble already? We’ve only just arrived.”
Solveig plastered a look of equally strained courtesy onto her face. “Not so. I only suspect that mine is, as always, up to no good.”
Yrsa’s voice turned cold. “Gunnhild just came down to the dock to escort us to the hall. Why does this offend you?”
“I feel compelled to remind you, Yrsa, that you are a guest in my home,” Solveig said stiffly. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion on the way I choose to deal with my own daughter.”
“Of course.” Yrsa’s eyes narrowed, but she gave her host an insipid smile. “Before we get settled in, is there anyone in need of my services?” There was usually no shortage of sick or injured people on any given farm, and Yrsa was a skilled healer.
“Not that I know of. Please, make yourselves comfortable.” Solveig gestured to the section of the platform two spaces down from the high seat, then looked to Gunnhild. “Clean yourself up and get ready at once.” She made to breeze past them but stopped to hiss in her daughter’s ear, “And do not embarrass me tonight.”