Nancy - The Islands of the Blessed

As the Bard had suspected, John the Fletcher and his hunting party could find nothing. The draugr had vanished like morning mist. “She’s still out there, though,” the old man said as he and Jack mixed potions for sale in Bebba’s Town. “I instructed everyone to surround the houses and animal pens with holly branches. She won’t like walking on thorns. Once a sea hag has lost her tail, her feet are her weakest point.”

Jack lined up pots, which were colored to show what kind of pills they contained: red for fever, green for headaches, blue for stomach problems, and black for Beelzebub’s Remedy Against Flies.

“ Draugrs can swell up to four times their size, you know,” said the Bard. “One climbed onto King Ivar’s hall while I lived there and almost brought the place down. It hammered on the roof with its heels. That sort of thing happens a lot after funerals in the Northland—they call it ‘house riding’.”

“House riding,” echoed Jack, carefully measuring pinches of dried wormwood into an elixir.

“On that occasion it was Ragnar Wet-Beard—he got the name from all the beer he swilled. One night he fell into a barrel and drowned. Add honey to that elixir, would you? The wormwood makes it bitter.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jack.

“Ragnar was simply lonely, poor soul. He’d wandered out of his tomb and seen his friends holding a wake. Once we realized the problem, we stocked his tomb with beer. And tied his big toes together so he couldn’t get far.”

Jack put his finger into his mouth before he remembered it was covered in wormwood. He ran outside to spit. House riding! It was typical of the Northmen to tolerate draugrs banging holes in their roofs. He was heartily glad nothing like that had happened while he was in the Northland.

Jack rinsed out his mouth and shaded his eyes, looking for Thorgil. She had taken Seafarer for a practice flight. The albatross had grown extremely attached to her, and Jack suspected he didn’t want to leave. She had taught Jack more Bird, but he knew he would never be as fluent as she. Still, he could say Come here and Stop that as well as Are you hungry? Seafarer generally was.

Somewhere to the south, Skakki and his shipmates were conducting business, as the shield maiden put it. Pillaging, probably. Burning down villages. Jack didn’t know how he could face them again, knowing the evil they had done. He went back inside.

The Bard was tying lids onto filled bottles of potions. “Nasty stuff, wormwood,” the old man said. “Personally, I don’t think it adds much, but people trust a medicine that tastes foul.”

“Why was Ragnar Wet-Beard still there?” asked Jack. “I thought warriors went to Valhalla.”

“Only those who fall in battle.” The Bard transferred the wormwood bottles to a basket for transport to Skakki’s ship. Jack thought that if you didn’t have a stomachache before you tasted the elixir, you’d have one soon after. “Poor old Ragnar missed his chance. He hung around for a few months, moaning and rapping on doors. He couldn’t hop far with his toes tied together. Finally, he pushed off to Freya’s Heaven—or, considering that he drowned, he might have gone to Ran and Aegir’s hall at the bottom of the sea.”

“He doesn’t sound that bad,” the boy said. Practically all the herbs he’d collected were used up. Ten baskets were lined up against the wall, but there were another ten still empty. That meant another trip to the hazel wood, something Jack had hoped to avoid.

“Ragnar? He was gentle as a kitten, except when he ran berserk. Our draugr is another problem altogether. For one thing, she’s a sea hag and they’re always dangerous. For another, she has a genuine grievance.”

“We didn’t do anything to her,” said Jack.

“Fair Lamenting drew her from the grave. Now she won’t rest until she’s taken revenge, and we’re the easiest to find.” The Bard sat down and motioned Jack to do the same. He was silent for a few moments, stroking his beard and gazing at the Roman birds painted on the wall. “We can’t buy grain in Bebba’s Town until they bring in the fall harvest. Skakki’s away, anyhow. I’d planned to draw the draugr after us when we left, but the village needs protection now.”

Jack didn’t like the way this conversation was going. He’d assumed the Bard could cast her out with a spell. What was this about drawing her away?

“There are laws in this world that I cannot bend,” the old man explained, reading Jack’s expression. “Because the sea hag has a genuine grievance, I cannot use magic. She has earned the right to seek justice. That’s why you and I are going to the hazel wood tonight to bargain with her.”

“You and I?” Jack almost shouted, he was so surprised.

“Odin’s eyebrows! You didn’t think being a bard was all singing and picking wildflowers?” The Bard’s eyes flashed with indignation and Jack felt ashamed. But going into the hazel wood at night? If he heard that howl again, he’d be out of there faster than a scalded cat. “You faced a dragon and Frith Half-Troll,” the old man reminded him. “You broke the spell that held Din Guardi in the grip of Unlife. Don’t sell yourself short, lad. By tomorrow you’ll be snapping your fingers at sea hags.”

If I’m still alive, Jack thought resentfully. Then Thorgil returned with Seafarer and there was much croaking and self-congratulation. Seafarer had frightened a young pig from its hiding place and Thorgil had brought it down for dinner.

“Hold it tightly,” the Bard warned as they made their way across the dark fields. “We don’t want to meet the draugr here. In the hazel wood I can draw strength from various sources.”

Jack clutched the well-wrapped bell closer. It was an awkward shape to carry. What absolute lunacy, he thought. If it were up to him, he’d sink Fair Lamenting in the deepest part of the ocean, but the Bard said it was too late for that.

A lapwing whirred up from beneath Jack’s feet and he leaped back. The bell made a faint clink, like a seashell falling on rock.

“Be careful!” The Bard whirled and put his hand on the bundle. “The slightest sound echoes through the nine worlds.”

They hurried on. The ground was boggy and streams appeared where Jack didn’t expect them. Water seeped into his boots. He also felt an itch in the middle of his back, which he was desperate to scratch.

The moon was slightly more than half full. It shone over the distant oak forest, picking out gaps in the trees, in particular the road torn by Odin and his huntsmen. No gaps were visible in the hazel wood, though Jack knew a few small meadows existed. He wished that they could have had Thorgil with them. She wouldn’t jump every time a bird flew up. Also, and Jack hated to admit this to himself, he was far less likely to bolt if she were there.

But the Bard had said this task had to be handled carefully. They couldn’t afford one of Thorgil’s rash decisions.

The hazel wood loomed before them. They halted, still in moonlight, before its shadow. “Shouldn’t we have brought a torch?” began Jack.

The Bard silenced him with a wave. “Observe and learn. You may need to do this one day on your own. Now cast your mind out to the life in this woodland. There are paths unseen to the daytime eye.”

Great, thought Jack. I’ll probably meet a troop of ogres out for a stroll. I hope they eat draugrs. He breathed deeply. The air under the trees was rich with damp earth and hidden flowers. He felt for the life force and found it easily. Everything in the woodland seemed nervous. Jack felt a hare slip carefully from a hollow in the ground, and then he found himself in the hollow, where four tiny copies of their mother huddled.

This was so comfortable, Jack lingered. He could almost feel tiny paws twitching, a tiny mouth open in a yawn.

“Do not allow yourself to enter an animal’s body,” the Bard’s voice came from far away. “It’s a dangerous trick and one for which you are not ready.”

Jack backed off. So that was what he’d been about to do! He’d always envied the Bard’s ability to fly with hawks or run with deer. He’d even tried to do it without success, but tonight the skill came naturally. Perhaps it was the hazel wood.

Jack sensed a hedgehog snuffling among the roots of a tree. All at once it shrieked and rolled into a ball.

“Did you hear that?” the Bard said softly. “The animals know something dangerous has come into their forest.”

Jack found the mother hare again. She was cowering in a clump of grass in a meadow. She wanted to flee, but even more strongly she wanted to return to her young. She looked up and saw a pair of big, glowing, blue eyes.

“Ha!” shouted Jack, pulling himself out of the hare’s body. He was standing next to the Bard with the bell clutched so tightly to his chest, it was certain to leave a bruise.

“Remind me to leave you at home when I want to creep up on something,” the Bard said.

“I—I saw eyes,” stammered Jack. “They w-were glowing.” Then he remembered Brother Aiden’s story. “Oh, crumbs, it was only a sheep.”

“Aiden told you that tale, did he?” the Bard said. “It happens that you did see a sheep in the meadow, but what frightened the hare lay behind it.” All at once they heard frantic baaing and the sound of bushes being trampled. The noises faded away into the distance. “It appears the draugr isn’t interested in sheep,” remarked the Bard.

“I’d l-like your permission, sir, to put down the bell and d-draw my knife,” said Jack, unable to stop the trembling in his voice.

“In a moment. Your knife will make no impression on the draugr, by the way. You might as well try to cut stone.” The old man listened attentively. “Most intriguing.”

“Wh-What?” said Jack.

“A path has opened and some extremely interesting visitors have stepped through. We can’t have them meeting the sea hag. Take out the bell, lad, and ring it.”

“What!”

“Do it quickly. We need to draw the draugr to us.”

Jack almost dropped the bell as he fumbled it out of its wrappings. He knew he had to obey before he thought about the consequences. He swung Fair Lamenting. The clapper struck the sides and a golden chime rolled out through the hazel wood, driving all fear before it and filling the boy with rapture. No music had ever been so sublime.

It was like all the best moments of his life happening at once, like the time he watched Father build their house and when Mother sang to the bees. It was when the Bard asked him to be an apprentice and when Thorgil, Pega, and he hugged one another under the grim walls of Din Guardi. But it was also a memory of his grandfather sitting by Jack’s bed when he had a fever and of John the Fletcher’s sister making him an apple tart after he fell into a pond. Those people were dead. Now, in the glory of this music, they rose up before him.

Jack dropped the bell to the ground. He found, to his amazement, that his face was wet with tears.

“That’s why they call it Fair Lamenting,” the Bard said quietly. “Hark, now. You must be alert. She approaches.”

They heard weeping. It sounded like a woman sobbing as though her heart would break. It drew nearer and the air became chill. A mist swirled along the ground, and the smell of unnameable rotting things surrounded them. Jack drew his knife.