The girls couldn’t help but stare. Gunnhild’s hands clenched into fists on her lap, and her heart felt ready to beat out of her chest.
While the rest of the people in the hall watched with a mixture of fear and respect as two of the tax collector’s men helped the hobbling old woman to the platform, the Sámi looked on with unveiled curiosity. The seeress’s stool—a plain piece of wood with three short legs, topped with a feather-stuffed cushion—had been assembled atop the small platform. The room quieted as she broke away from her escorts and straightened her spine, then ascended the steps and took her seat.
“Will those willing to sing the warding songs come forward?” she said. Her voice was surprisingly commanding, booming from her small body like a thunderclap.
Yrsa, Solveig, and the rest of the women stood and formed a circle around the platform.
Signy grabbed both Gunnhild and Oddny by the arm and whispered, “One day, that’ll be us up there.” Oddny shushed her, but Gunnhild nodded. Yes, their mothers had taught them the songs, and it was likely that one day when they were older, the girls would be called upon to assist in rituals just like this one.
But Gunnhild could not imagine herself as one of the singing women. The power the seeress commanded by her mere presence—as if she could change their fates on a whim instead of simply being the messenger of what was to come—was more appealing to her. It was downright intoxicating.
The seeress looked out over the women. “Your agreement to assist me must be given freely, so I ask you again: Are you willing to help me summon the spirits tonight? Will you raise your voices together to call them here, and to keep out any who mean us harm?” They expressed their agreement, and the seeress said, “Then let us begin.”
When the women began to sing, the sound sent a thrill through Gunnhild’s bones. There were no words to these songs, but the melodies made the hair on her arms rise. After a few moments, the seeress closed her eyes and, tucking her iron staff under her arm like a distaff, began to mime spinning.
Gunnhild let out a small gasp. As one of the old woman’s hands pinched and pulled invisible wool from her staff, the other hand flicked an imaginary spindle, and Gunnhild saw that a thin thread was forming between her fingers, pulsing with a strange white light.
No one else seemed to be reacting to this impossible sight.
“Do you see that?” she whispered to Signy and Oddny.
“See what?” Signy whispered back.
“The thread,” Oddny breathed. “I see it, too.”
“What thread? I don’t see anything,” Signy said, raising her voice, which caused her to be shushed again, this time by several nearby adults.
The girls turned their attention back to the ritual. The seeress suddenly dropped hold of the invisible spindle, the other hand clenching her staff tightly and pulling it from beneath her arm. The end of the glowing thread reached from her chest to twirl around the staff, then dropped down into the floor; and now it was taut, as if something pulled it from below.
Gunnhild’s stomach twisted.
The seeress opened her eyes—which had rolled back into her head to reveal only the whites—and intoned in a voice that was much like her own but not quite: “Would those who wish to know their fates come forward? Be warned: We’ll say only what we wish, to whom we wish.”
“That’s a spirit talking through her?” Signy said in a loud whisper, and Oddny shoved her and said, “Hush.” Gunnhild ignored them both; she was transfixed by the spectacle, the warding songs humming in her bones as the women continued singing, more quietly now so the seeress’s words could be heard.
One by one, people approached—some on their own, others ushering their entire families toward the platform, and the circle of women parted to receive them. The seeress, keeping her chin raised and her unseeing gaze distant, told them that their harvests would be good, that their children would be healthy, that the livestock they didn’t cull would make it through the winter.
For some, the seeress hesitated a few moments, white eyes flicking around as if searching. For others, the spirits seemed to come more readily. The Sámi murmured among themselves, but none of them came forward to hear their fates.
“Is there anyone else?” the seeress asked the assembly when it seemed as though most in the hall had had their turn, including each of the singing women.
Yrsa turned and looked at her daughters, her eyebrows raised as she subtly jerked her head to beckon them, and Signy and Oddny stood and went to the center of the room. Signy cast a look at Gunnhild over her shoulder as if to say Come on before she and Oddny took their places in front of the seeress, and the circle of women closed around them.
Gunnhild’s eyes bored into the back of her mother’s head, anger rising in her. It’s not fair that I can’t hear my fate when no one will even tell me what the last seeress said about me.
But maybe this one knows, too. Her outrage gave her a sudden burst of courage. So I guess I’ll have to find out for myself.
She hesitated a moment longer before she stood and bolted after her friends, pushing through the circle until she was standing next to Oddny and Signy. She could feel her mother’s eyes on her, could feel the rage coming off her in waves, but Gunnhild didn’t turn to look at her.
Up close, the fires of the center hearths and the braziers gave the seeress a haunting look, the dancing orange light intensifying the deep wrinkles in her skin and glinting off the brass casings on her staff. She seemed to have been about to speak—until the moment Gunnhild stepped up to join Oddny and Signy. Then the old woman faltered, scowled, sucked her teeth.
Oddny was shaking. Gunnhild took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Beside them, Signy bounced on the balls of her feet.
Then the seeress finally spoke: “One of you clouds the futures of the others. For better or worse, your fates are intertwined.” Her features contorted again, this time in fear and confusion. “I dare not say more.”
Gunnhild heard a collective intake of breath around them, followed by shocked whispers, but she could scarcely hear them over the blood roaring in her ears. Oddny seemed equally distressed, her fingernails digging half-moon ridges into Gunnhild’s skin; but Signy, undaunted as ever, was the one to finally say: “What do you mean?”
But the seeress offered nothing further. She seemed suddenly tired, and much older than she had a moment before. “I have said enough tonight, and now I shall be silent.”
She slumped forward on her stool, her chin falling down to her chest, and Gunnhild watched as she yanked up the glowing thread as if it were a fishing line. As soon as she did, her body jerked, her eyes opened, and her pupils and irises returned. The tax collector’s men stepped up to help her down from the platform.
And Oddny, Signy, and Gunnhild stood perfectly still, all eyes on them, until Solveig stepped out from her place among the women, whose singing had halted the moment the seeress had awoken. With a thin smile, she announced that the feast would now begin, and the hall filled with hesitant chatter, soft at first before growing in volume.
Then Solveig turned back to her daughter.
And Gunnhild would never forget the way her mother looked at her then, as though she were sorry that Gunnhild had ever been born.