Thoughts of the Drowned #
Year 436 The Village in the Shins
“I ain’t ever had a friend like you,” said Snorri Morn, his meaty arms slung over my neck.
Snorri was a great bloody ox of a man, back when he was alive. Full of piss, rage, and drink. Twice as mean as a mother bear defending over her brood, and half as loving. I bloody loathed the man and I don’t regret what I’ve done.
“In all my years,” he went on, seeming to burp between every word. “I ain’t ever—I mean ever—had a friend like you.”
We’d been deep in the steins that night. My head was a swill of echoing voice and fractured memories. I could hear Snorri’s words, I could feel my disdain for them, but I was powerless to speak back. Sitting there in Collin’s place, I was naught but a bag of fermented bones.
“How’s about—” I began, interrupted by my own hiccup. By the time I recovered, the thought had left me. I might have told him to go home to his wife and baby—that’s what a good friend would have done.
I ain’t ever been a good friend to nobody. Myself, most of all.
“You’re right,” Snorri clapped me on the back. My stomach rolled. “Another round, Collin! Another round!”
The barkeep said nothing as Snorri clicked a few more pennies on the counter; coin didn’t get you much in the Shins, but it did get you drunk. Collin rolled his sunken eyes and waddled over to the tap, pouring us two more cups of grog that came in with the latest Wystran caravan. Being at the end of a long, cold, and steep road, we’ve oft gotten the bottom of the barrel.
Another reason to stop drinking.
Snorri smiled wide and handed me a sad tin stein filled with sad stale ale.
I sucked in a breath. My nose hairs were still stiff from our short walk down the path to the inn. I thought about splashing the infernal swill in Snorri’s face. Instead, I poured it into mine without taking the time to taste it.
It could have been water for all I knew.
The Mourning Sun pricked her searing beams through the shuttered windows the next mornin’. My head ached something fierce. Somehow, I had managed to make a bed of the fur rug by the front door, despite the draft chilling my bones.
Snorri was hunched over the bar, his massive red fist still clutching his cup. Bastard never woke easy on mornings like this one. I’d given him a few good wacks on the ears before I heaved a weary sigh and rolled my eyes towards the dirty melt water Collin had left out so we could wipe our spittle off his new, polished counters.
I poured the water on Snorri’s head and gave him a few more slaps and a tug on his beard for good measure.
He woke. Eventually.
Icicles had already formed in his moustache and brows in the hundred steps to his cottage. It may well have been a hundred leagues for how hot my eyes smoldered in my skull. Bridget holds no mercy for drunkards—a lesson I’ve learned nearly every mornin’ since I came to the Village in the Shins.
Damned cold in the Shins—’twas why I came. Yet ’twas the trees that kept me, the pines standing sentinel all round, and the land’s uncanny habit to remain green and lush in all seasons, aside from fresh snowfall. Powdery snow dusted the thatch rooftops, but on the ground, it was already melting, turning to steam so the clouds could again drink their fill.
Cold didn’t stop Snorri’s little girl from running out into the blind bare of foot, while we ambled up the hill whereupon stood Snorri’s disheveled cottage.
The girl’s small shoulders were covered only by a gray, stained night slip, her chubby cheeks blushed. “Da!” she squealed over and over, leaping off the stoop to careen into Snorri’s reluctant arms.
Snorri seemed to sag beneath the meager weight of his toddling daughter, his arms dissolving into his sides to deposit her bright red feet right back onto the freezing river stones that led to the front door sagging in the frame.
“Care for a nightcap?” Snorri asked, as if we stood alone and not in the presence of a child.
“Nah,” I shrugged. “Time I be splittin’ some wood. Cold’s a’comin’.” Frankly, a nightcap sounded a whole lot better to me than splittin’ wood with a headache given to my by Morgana herself—but I ain’t ever liked watching Snorri with his girl.
I swung about and started home… still I caught the sight of his massive, killing hands grab her by the scruff and drag her kicking back into the dark hole he called a home.
“Would it bloody kill you to say hello to your daughter?” Gerdur Morn said, setting down her cleaver as her good-for-nothing husband came shambling through the door. Just in time for breakfast, and always too late to help prepare it. “You’re all she wants, these days.”
The child had latched herself to Snorri’s leg, spouting nonsense like the noisiest, most frustrating parasite found in the great north. Summertime the screaming broods of cicadas that only emerged every twelve years seemed to whisper compared to the wrath of willful babies, so far as Gerdur was concerned.
Snorri grunted and slumped onto the lone bed centering the lone room of their square hovel, the bed’s lashed stick-frame groaning beneath his bulk. He closed his eyes, settling into the furs. “She’s yours, woman. Take her.”
Gerdur closed her fingers into a fist, her eyes flicking to the lone cutting board set upon their lone table. “And who in the hell put her in me? Useless prick.”
Like an Elder Dragon of myth, Snorri’s eye slit open, his top lip curling. “Fuck you say?”
Gerdur’s heart froze. She knew she could only push so far—it didn’t take her long to find those limits. When Snorri’s slurred, lazy voice morphed into a slow, calculated growl, Gerdur knew to hold her tongue.
“Nothing, dear,” she said, lacing her words with honey. “Get some rest.”
There was nothing in the world so exciting to Shelka Morn than when her Da came a walkin’ up the hill. It didn’t seem to happen often, but that didn’t stop her heart from fluttering, nor did it still her feet that carried her out into the cold and into his arms, where she could feel his warmth and revel in the myriad aromas he carried.
Sometimes Da smelled like blueberries and honey, sometimes like smoke—but always sour.
Shelka couldn’t yet put to words why it was she loved her Da so. But she was beginning to recognize she might be the only one. For one thing, the strange man that always walked home with Da wore a persistent scowl. For another, Ma was happier when Da was off on his adventures.
Sometimes, Shelka felt very alone. Most of the time, really. But not when Da came home, even if he was only there to sleep for awhile before he went off again on one of his important errands.
She’d just surpassed her fifth autumn and she’d known that was when she’d be awarded with a name—her very own name, just like the grownups. But the day of her naming had come and gone while Da was away, and Ma had done nothing but chop wood and tend the garden and the chickens.
So she named herself. Shelka. Shelka Morn. To her, it sounded tough. Resolute. Like the kind of girl you’d by your side in the goblin caves and the orc hills. The kind of girl who might one day discover that pesky unicorn the other children claimed lived in somewhere in the woods beyond the village.
Shelka Morn could not recall where she had heard the name. Perhaps she made it up. Perhaps one of the Skalds had uttered it, or something like it. Shelka loved listening to the stories, but she wasn’t old enough to fully understand them. Mostly, it seemed they just made noise, spouting nonsense mostly, but interweaving exciting words like ‘goblin’ and ‘orc’ and ‘unicorn.’
Perched up on the head of the bed, Shelka began to braid Da’s thick hair. Today, he smelled like lavender. Sour lavender.
Da groaned, scrunched his bruised eyes. Shelka giggled, making a paintbrush of his partially braided hair and imagined she was painting his nose to match the saggy skin round his eyes.
Without a sound, or any warning, Da’s hand clamped on the back of Shelka’s shift and pulled her tumbling to the ground. She fell against the dirt floor with a thud. At first, she felt nothing. Then warmth radiated from the arm she fell upon, followed shortly by the most excruciating pain she’d ever felt.
I didn’t see Snorri for a few days. Part of me was glad. Another part hoped he had slipped on ice and cracked open his skull. Accompanying that fancy was a tinge of guilt, which had always been cause enough for a cup of mead.
One cup turned to… more than one cup and soon enough the guilt had left me, replaced with heavy warmth filling my belly, which had grown twice as large in the last few months, since the Wystrans began bringing their day-old ale up the hill.
I can’t recall how many days had passed before Collin knocked upon my door. The fat southerner was entirely red of face and devoid of breath after the short jaunt to my cabin—though feeling the chill waft in, I could hardly blame him. I ushered him in and sat him by the fire.
“Somethin’ to drink?” I asked him, more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. I ain’t ever had much to spare.
Collin shook his head. “I’m done serving you two.”
“Fuckin’ hell—what?”
“Snorri’s hurt his girl—bad. An accident, but I can’t help but feel responsible. Enough is enough.”
I was ready to holler and curse the man—but he’d said the only words that could have quelled by my fires. “What happened? Don’t tell me—”
“She’s okay,” Collin said, wiping sweat from his brow with an embroidered cloth. “Gerdur carried her to the inn a couple nights ago, and I was able to track down Hama to splint the girl’s arm.”
I had already laced up my boots. I rose and slung my furs over my shoulders.
Collin squinted. “What are you doing?”
I smiled wide, showing him my teeth. “Was me axe outside by chance?”
Ma had been staring out the window for some time. Shelka thought something might be wrong with her, so she pulled at the hem of Ma’s apron with her good arm and offered up her rendition of a Skald’s story. Shelka told a wondrous tale of a knight traveling to a faraway kingdom to bring down a great Elder Dragon, brooding over a pile of gold.
But Ma was unmoved. Shelka was no Skald—she never could get the sounds right.
And that was how she stayed, sitting listless by the window, gazing out into the bright white snow that was beginning to come down in droves. The only time Ma rose was when Shelka’s bandages needed redressed, or it was time for her special tea that eased the aches and itching.
Bored and alone (yet not alone), Shelka picked at the bindings and carved drawings into the seared pine branch lashed to her arm. She wondered when Da would come home. He’d been gone since her fall. Perhaps off slaying goblins—but with the snow coming in the way it was, she was afraid the goblins might slay him.
“Ma…” Shelka whined.
Ma only stared. It was as if Ma’s ears had suddenly stopped working. Perhaps a kobold had come in the night and stole her hearing.
There was some mighty pounding on the door. Shelka scrambled to open it, pain shooting through her elbow and up into her shoulder with every step, but her Da was missing and she couldn’t risk missing him if he had come home early. Why he would knock was not a question in her mind, there was only the hope it would be him standing hunched on the porch.
“Oh…” she moaned as the door swung open, inviting in bitter mistrals. It was not her father that stood on the stoop, but the old, ugly man who could often be found with her Da—though this was not the case now.
The chill had finally moved Ma to rise. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she looked at Da’s friend and down at the splitting axe hanging from his grip.
“He’s not here.” Gerdur said. The words burned her throat. Chill was seeping into her bones.
And Winter’s not yet come…
“Where’d he go?” asked Snorri’s drinking buddy, whose name Gerdur had never cared to learn.
“Don’t know. Not sure I care.”
The man looked down at his axe, grimacing as he rubbed his temples with his free hand. “Mind if I…” he said, glancing past Gerdur to the girl.
Gerdur nodded. “Leave the axe outside, eh?”
The man propped the axe against a post on the porch and ducked his head through the doorway. He took three light steps inside and knelt beside the girl. Something deep within Gerdur was proud to see her daughter stand up straight to present to a perfect stranger. The girl is resilient, that’s to be sure. Has to be, in this place… but I’ve no clue where she got that from.
“How you doing, lass?” The man’s voice was soft, gentle. Gerdur wondered if he had had a child, once. “I heard you took somethin’ of a spill?”
The girl shook her head. “Nothin’ spilled. I fell.”
“She was pushed.” Gerdur said, iron rusting her voice. Nothin’ she said was sweet, if she could help it—not these days.
“Who pushed you, lass?”
The girl looked to Gerdur—Gerdur only glared. She knows damn well who did it. But the girl has made him an idol.
“Tell him, child!”
“I fell.” The girl said again, looking Gerdur in the eye—just as Snorri did when he lied through his teeth.
The man looked up at Gerdur. “She says she fell…”
“She was pushed.”
“Aye,” the man sighed. “I know. Holler if Snorri shows, will’ya? I’ve got some words for him.”
Gerdur snickered. “More than words, I’d hope.”
Outside the wind was howling and the cottage was creaking. Rain or snow or sleet—Shelka couldn’t tell which, she wasn’t yet sure what the difference was—was drumming down on the roof. Thunder rolled like horses galloping down the hill, and lightning flashed like so many candles briefly illuminating the entire room.
Shelka wondered how Ma could sleep through it all. She wouldn’t stir no matter how much she tugged at Ma’s hands and hair. Then, Shelka saw the empty cup tipped over on the ground and caught a whiff of the sour undertone that had always haunted Da. Then she realized nothing but Ma could wake up Ma—and again, she was alone to weather the storm.
There were three blankets in the house; two of them were wrapped tightly round Ma. Leaving naught but the ratty knit blanket she had had since she was a babe. Shelka picked it up and retreated to a dark corner to hide, away from the windows and the flashes. The blanket too smelled sour, and was rough to the touch.
She hated that blanket. And she hated Ma for never sharing the clean ones.
For minutes or for hours, Shelka could not know, she shivered in the dark corner of the cottage, her heart racing, thumping every time a tree branch scraped the window, or a monster in the woods howled with the thunder.
Once the drumming on the roof slowed and the thunder quelled, Shelka heard the door latch jiggle. Her breath seized in her lungs. Someone—something—pounded on the door, creaking the stoop’s rotting floorboards beneath with heavy, shifting feet.
She buried herself in the blanket, then heard the door creak open. Heavy breathes resounding off the walls and suddenly, for the first time perhaps, Shelka realized just how small she was.
Great big hands came down from the heavens, clasping her arms to her sides—the broken one screaming a searing lament as she did the same.
“Ma!” she ululated, over and over, tearing her throat to ribbons.
Blinded and restrained in the stinky blanket, Shelka Morn kicked and wriggled as the intruder stole her into the cold, wet wilds. The goblins… she thought. Maybe the orcs.
The moment I came down the hill and saw the giant boot prints in the fresh-fallen snow, I turned round to grab my axe and pack my bag and string my bow. Snorri had been gone for days, then came back in the night for his daughter he never seemed to have wanted in the first place.
Maybe the fool realized the treasures he had… but that don’t give him the right…
Before I set out after him, I returned to check on Gerdur. She was sitting on the stoop, staring out at the dense line of firs and pines walling off our humble village from the evils of the wild.
“He came back in the night, didn’t he?” I asked, though I had already known.
Her silence was all the permission I need to hunt.
“I’ll get yer girl back,” I said, the Mourning Sun burning my weary, drunken eyes. “I promise you that.”
I considered talking with Collin—he’d known Snorri best, after all—perhaps even getting the Berger involved but decided against it. I’d always hated Snorri, had always wished to see his head split open for his bloody disregard for all the blessings in his life, and I wanted—yearned for—the agency to deliver justice as I saw fit. The others weren’t soldiers, only me and Snorri were, and we soldiers have our own ways of dealing with situations like these.
It was cold, and the full strength of winter’s arms was pulling our little circle of the world into the freezing depths of Morgana. I’d run out of mead to warm my belly, but I had a full skin and enough salted venison to keep going for a few days. So, without telling anyone what I’d intended to do in the shadows beneath the trees, I set out after Snorri Morn.
The days Shelka Morn spent in the woods with her father had been the best she had ever known. There was no one to drain him. No one to drain her. Da had taught her how to light a fire and how to cut the ice to fish out of the frozen pond next to their warm little tent.
The nights were blisteringly cold, but also warm. Da shared his furs with Shelka, and held her tight as they slept through winds and rains and snows.
She’d also learned the difference between rain and snow, and had finally seen both fall from the sky. She learned how to set a snare and helped Da to free a hare from its flesh so that they could sup.
They couldn’t break their fast—there weren’t enough hares—but supper was always a delight and very filling. She drank fresh water from the pond; Da had let her dip her own cup into the hole they’d cut and Da always had a full skin of something that smelled of sour honey.
He laughed easily and loved willingly. Shelka Morn wished to Bridget that it would never end.
One night, a warmer night without cutting winds, they stayed until the full moon rose into the clear starry sky, and Da told her stories about the war he fought in and pointed out the constellations.
She hadn’t wanted it to end, and was bitterly disappointed when Da fell asleep, sitting on his log and still clutching his skin, in the middle of one of his tales. Shelka had tried to rouse him, to get him to snuggle up in the tent with her, but he was fast asleep.
She realized also, that they hadn’t eaten—and she hadn’t had any water. There wasn’t much she could do about food, but Da had taught her to dip her cup in the pond and water had a way a fooling one’s tummy into thinking it was full.
In the dark, the pond seemed farther away. The wind had come back, howling in the sky above, bringing with it dark storm clouds that darkened the moon’s already meager light. Trudging through the elements, she made her way to the hole in the ice they had cut, and knelt down on her knees to dip her cup into the water with her good hand.
Shelka slipped, and the freezing water bit her fingers. A rogue wind gusted through the trees and gave her a gentle push, which was all that was needed to send the young girl, who had just seen her fifth autumn and earned her name, tumbling into the pond.
It had only taken me a few days to discover Snorri’s camp. He had taken his girl to our old campsite we frequented back before the village boys grew old enough to go out on their own.
I saw the plume of campfire smoke in the distance at dusk, and kept humping through the snow as night fell. The skies were clear and the wind was gentle—but I’ve been round long enough to know Nature’s deceptions. Just as the wind was silent, so too were the cardinals and mourning doves, nor were the woodpeckers swooping through trees in search of meals.
A great bloody storm was coming. I had to move fast.
Finding Snorri’s camp in the dark proved a challenge. But soon enough I saw the smoldering embers in the distance opted for a slow approach. I didn’t expect Snorri to be awake at this hour—he slept more often than not, since his girl was borne into the world—but neither did I expect Snorri to run off after breaking his girl’s arm, only to return in the night to steal her away.
Sure enough, I found the bastard passed out at the fire, his water-skin half-full with week-old, stinking mead. I’d drawn my axe and uttered my prayers to Bridget and Morgana—and so too, to their holy Father that warmed all parts of the earth aside from the Shins.
I would need more than prayers, after I did what I planned to do.
Axe raised above my head, words of the Elder Tongue upon my lips, I heard a tiny splash in the pond a few meters away. My head snapped and I saw only snow, the water was frozen solid, and my eyes traced a dotted line of tiny footsteps coming from the camp.
Gods no!
I dropped and my axe and ran faster than I knew my old bones would take me. My heard cascaded in my chest, my fleeing my lungs with every long stride. I followed the tracks to a hole in the ice, barely big enough for a child to fit through—and I fell prone and plunged my arm blindly into the glacial swill.
‘Twas not long ‘fore I lost all feeling my arm. ‘Twas not long ‘fore I thought of giving up. In the winter, rivers and ponds claimed lives faster than axes splitting snoozing skulls. I felt my stump snag on something and I commanded my seemingly nonexistent hand to grasp whatever it was.
When I pulled little Shelka Morn out of the water, she was blue and stiff. He pretty red nose had gone purple. My fingers had gone black.
I carried her to the fire where I gave her my breath. I breathed and breathed, awaiting a vomit of freshwater that would never come. Tears stream down my cheeks, snot flowed from my stinging nose, both froze fast to my face as I pressed my mouth against the child’s, praying to Morgana and Bridget and their holy Father for a miracle.
Please… not again. Don’t make me watch this again…
When she didn’t regain her breath, her little heart slowed and stopped—so I laid her on her back and pumped both my giant hands against her chest as I had done once for her father during the war. Her tiny ribs cracked against my strength, but I pumped and pumped, praying for the life giving strength to return the air to her lungs.
My vision wavered. The winds howled. Hail fell from the sky. I was ready to collapse and die alongside poor little Shelka Morn.
That was when a voice whispered behind me. “I can help.”
I looked round, there was no one that could have spake. I thought I was hallucinating, perhaps hearing the voices of angels—or demons.
I gave the girl more of my faltering breath, and pumped her chest until I collapsed, all of my strength sapped from the snow.
“Serve me,” said the voice. “And the girl will live.”
I watched the wind twist and roil, taking the shape of a buck standing at the invisible threshold of the camp.
“Serve me.” It said. “And I will take away the chill.”
I had no way to know what was being asked of me. Not then. I thought that perhaps my prayers had been answered, or that I was fading away and my mind was playing tricks. But nothing is ever as it seems in the Shins, every tree is a conspirator, every needle an eye.
“I will you serve you,” I said, my voice naught but a ghastly hiss. “Just save the child.”
As the words left my lips, my vision faded and I succumbed to the cold. I felt nothing save for blossoming warmth on my dry hand, and a small, steady heartbeat.