2
GUNNHILD AVOIDED SOLVEIG AS best she could after the ritual, though she still had to sit by her family during the feast, dread simmering in the pit of her stomach all the while. Luckily, Ozur and Solveig soon became too busy playing host and hostess to take notice of her. The servants and thralls gave her pitying looks every time they passed with pitchers of ale and trays piled high with smoked meats and flatbreads. The only other person who dared look her way was her father’s friend, an ancient farmer whom the children called Old Man Skuli, who sat with his bickering wives and unruly children one section over.
Gunnhild pointedly did not acknowledge him. She’d caught him leering at her before the ritual, but now he stole fearful glances at her, as though she were a snake about to bite. She didn’t know which looks should worry her more.
Her older brothers, on the other hand—swaggering young men, red-haired as herself and their mother—had either missed the implications of the seeress’s prophecy or were ignorant of her troubles as always, for they came to bother her as if nothing at all had changed.
“Why do you look so sad, Little Gunna?” Alf asked as he plopped down on one side of Gunnhild, a full horn of ale in hand.
Eyvind took his place on her other side, his own cup overflowing. “Yes, you do realize this is a party, don’t you, little sister?”
“What are we celebrating?” Gunnhild asked as she picked at her stew, which now looked more like porridge. She hadn’t eaten a bite of it and had started taking out her nervousness on its overcooked root vegetables. “The joyful fates of everyone here except for me?”
“Oh, you know how seeresses can be.” Eyvind waved his cup. “So vague.”
“I’m sure no one thinks anything of it,” said Alf.
Eyvind took a long swig of ale. “Cheer up. It’s not so bad.”
“Yes, it is. Mother is furious with me,” Gunnhild said sullenly.
The twins exchanged a look over her head as she mashed up another turnip in silence. They could never understand. The youngest of Gunnhild’s older siblings at ten winters her senior, Alf and Eyvind had been largely absent from her life. They’d left to go make names for themselves as raiders the moment they were old enough. Gunnhild had hoped that the arrival of her only brothers and their summer’s worth of plunder several days before would soften their mother, but she’d been sorely mistaken.
“Oh, come, now,” Alf said. “Do you really think she’s so cross about you jumping in during the ritual? We disobeyed her all the time when we were your age.”
Gunnhild eyed him. “She told you she was forbidding me from having my fate told?”
“We assumed,” said Alf with a shrug. “Especially after last time.”
Gunnhild sat up straighter and gave Eyvind—who seemed to be the drunker and therefore the more pliable of the brothers—a look. “What does he mean, ‘last time’？”
“Last time a seeress came through,” Eyvind slurred. “Do you not remember?”
“I was three winters old,” Gunnhild said, whirling back to face Alf. “What did the last one say about me?”
The twins looked at each other again, and Eyvind shook his head and made a show of draining his cup, hopping to his feet, and declaring, “More ale!”
“Never mind, Gunna,” Alf said hastily. “We shouldn’t have said anything.”
Gunnhild seethed as they went to seek out the nearest servant girl for a refill. As she stood to follow in hopes of wheedling more information from them, Oddny came up beside her, clutching a thick shawl about her shoulders, and whispered, “Come—the boys started a fire outside.”
The girls slipped out of the noisy hall and made their way toward a small bonfire surrounded by dark shapes. As they got closer, Gunnhild recognized the girls’ brother, Vestein, and a few other local children sitting on blankets and pelts.
Gunnhild and Oddny hunkered down next to Signy and listened as one of the boys, who fancied himself a skald, recited a poem about Valhalla: where those who were slain in battle would fight and feast until Ragnarok, the final confrontation between the gods and their enemies. The other children listened intently, though they’d surely heard the poem many times before. Soon they’d be old enough to go on the raids themselves and seek their own fame. Many of them wouldn’t return; Gunnhild’s brothers were some of the lucky few, well on their way to becoming career raiders, which made them akin to legends among the children of Halogaland—most of whom would go on a handful of raids and, if they lived, settle down on a farm to live a peaceful life unless a local hersir, like Gunnhild’s father, called them to muster on the king’s behalf.
Gunnhild found her mind wandering during the poem. Ragnarok—as well as her own destiny and that of her friends, according to the seeress—was an abstract problem. A future problem. Her mother’s punishment was going to be more immediate and more tangible. What would Solveig do to her once she didn’t have to behave like a decent person in front of guests?
The winter was long and the possibilities were endless.
Feeling the sudden urge to vomit, Gunnhild stood and stalked away from the fire. Once she was far enough from the other children, she plopped down on the rocky strand, drew her legs up to her chest, and folded her arms atop her knees. She kept her eyes closed until the wave of nausea passed, then took in the scene before her: Moonlight glimmered on the dark water of the strait, and beyond it, the northern lights danced against the jagged mountain peaks of the mainland. It was a dazzling sight, but the beauty of her home did nothing to soothe her, so she buried her face in her arms.
The crunch of pebbles behind her told her she wasn’t alone. Moments later, she felt a blanket drop over her shoulders as Oddny and Signy settled in on either side of her.
“My mother is going to kill me.” Gunnhild raised her head. “And there’s something my family is keeping from me. My brothers told me it had something to do with what the last seeress said. It makes me think that I—that I’m the one clouding all our futures. I shouldn’t have disobeyed my mother. I’ve ruined everything.”
“People are already starting to whisper about us. And no one came over to speak with us during the feast,” Oddny said. “Mama already overheard people saying we’ll never get married now.”
Gunnhild put her head back down and groaned into her arms. “See?”
Signy scoffed. “People talk all the time. It hardly means that Gunnhild is some harbinger of doom. And besides, is ‘not getting married’ the worst thing that could possibly happen to us? You’ve seen your sisters’ husbands, Gunna—old goats, the lot of them.”
“Maybe we should ask the seeress to tell our futures again?” Oddny suggested, wringing her hands.
“You saw her,” Signy shot back. “She wouldn’t say what she was so frightened about then, so why would she say now?”
Oddny glared at her. “But our reputations—”
“Are now one and the same, thanks to that old lady.” Signy brightened. “We should take a blood oath!”
“We’re already blood sisters, you fool.”