Fargoer (26 page)

“Yes, why not? You might have been able to help us escape,” said Vaaja, her dead husband, in his turn.

“How could I have known,” Vierra slurred painfully. “I wouldn’t have left if I had known. Just say it, ask it of me and I’ll come to you. My blade will cut my own flesh like it cuts my enemies.”

The woman crawled along the shore, shaking, until she found her blade. She put it on her throat with both hands. Her hands shook uncontrollably in the storm of emotions, which had been held at bay for so long.

“Hold!” The yell that cut the air accepted no argument. “Put the knife down before you do any more foolishness.”

Vierra dropped her knife as she saw who had stepped into the campfire’s circle of light. The First Mother hadn’t changed. The same wrinkly, naked body, the same piercing gaze. The same voice, which demanded you to listen and to obey without hesitation.

Vierra’s frustrations burst out. How many hardships had she faced? She cursed the Mother, and the destiny she had set for her a long time ago.

“You and your destiny!” she yelled directly at the old woman’s face. “Why will you not let me die or allow me to be happy!”

“Happiness is a privilege of a few and that of the mad,” the elder answered. “Do you really think that I’m behind all the adversity you have faced and still have to face?”

“You and you alone. All has gone wrong after I met you. My son died, my husband died, the Vikings took me. Where’s the greatness that you foretold me?”

“Somewhere there, hidden by your own stupidity,” the First Mother said, taking in the night darkened land with a sweep of her gnarled hand. “Who told you to take a man persecuted by a Turian witch? Who told you to attack the Vikings with no consideration for yourself? You could have shot them from the cover of the forest and kept your freedom, but you didn’t want to.”

Vierra swallowed, looking for a caveat.

“I had nothing left.”

“You had yourself. Yourself, but you don’t value that. If you don’t get what you want, you won’t take anything. None of us get what we want, ever, and even the greatest of us have to get used to that. You’ve always wanted to protect children. How many could you have saved while you languished in the Vikings’ houses, sweeping floors and warming the beds of your masters?”

“Then what should I do? Think about myself?”

“I will reveal a secret to you, since you don’t seem to understand it by yourself. Everyone else thinks about themselves. If you don’t do it too, you will walk the world from one misery to another, and your old sufferings will be just a pale thought of what the vast world can give to the Fargoer.”

“Then what -”

The old woman interrupted Vierra by striking her to the face with an open palm. The Mother’s other hand grabbed Vierra’s throat with an iron grip.

“You take the world by the throat and force it to give you what you want. You’ll cut your way through with blade and bow and the skills you have been given. And when possible, help others the best you can. But you will not sacrifice yourself, not for those who do not see your value. Now, get out of my face, you Bringer of Disappointment.” The Mother pushed Vierra away, and she fell on her back at the edge of the campfire’s circle of light.

Vierra tried to answer the woman, but the whole world around her started to wane and bend. It plunged erratically, and she shook her head to try and clear it. Her struggling was in vain, however. Vierra felt as if she was falling through the woods and sinking into the ground on which her body was lying.

She suddenly found herself looking down at her own body from high in the air. It lay down unmoving in the flickering light of the campfire, green eyes open but unseeing. Indeed she was not a witch, and her spirit, disconnected from her body, was like a leaf in autumn that had ripped away from a tree, open for the wind to take where it wanted to. She was yanked away, and from the heights she saw the rising sun in the east, shedding its first rays through the tattered front of clouds.

One raving image after another flashed before her eyes. They came with a stunning clarity, stumbling onto each other, and afterward she could only remember a small part of them. Beneath her she saw a weave of eskers and lakes. It was the land she was used to calling home, but it was soon in the distance as her spirit flew from it, faster than any bird could fly.

She arrived at the shore of a great sea, where the long ships of Vikings split the water. Even further she went, beyond the forests behind the sea and cities filled with people. She cringed at their crowds and strangeness.

Her spirit kept going on, toward the south, showing her cities with dreamy palaces with water flowing through them beneath the glowing sun. Beyond a blue sea she saw a sea of yellow sand littered with strange, hunchbacked creatures which walked its paths guided by sand-colored people.

Even farther her spirit flew, into deep-green, impenetrable forests that were filled with intoxicating voices. Ruins made of green stone stood in the center of the forest, and someone sang a spell in a language that was already old when the first men were born.

Her spirit rose higher and higher, until she could distinguish the world curving underneath her and outside it the black, endless sea of the beginning. There the world floated, one of the shards of the broken egg of the seagull among others. Nothing lighted that black sea and Vierra rather felt than saw the huge entity that engulfed her on all sides.

Her longing for distant lands and desire for adventure were extinguished by fear and loneliness. There was no way that she could return to her own world. She had no strength to turn the wind that blew her spirit forth.

Then she saw a bird coming from far away. It was a huge eagle-owl, its feathers glowing red with the sun shining behind it. The bird snatched her up in its claws as easily as it would have taken a mouse, and started to fly back down, towards home, with strong wings. Wind whistled in Vierra’s ears, but she felt warm and calm.

“I should have known that you didn’t have the patience to just sit beside me,” the great owl stated. Its voice was Rika’s voice.

“I couldn’t just idly watch. I wanted to help.”

The owl laughed. Vierra wondered how an owl could do that. The wings carried her back toward home. They flew through the land which was bathed in the morning sun, all the way to the lonely beach where Vierra once again saw herself lying on the ground.

The owl landed beside Rika’s and Vierra’s unconscious bodies.

“It’s time to go back,” the bird said. “Time to move on.”

Vierra looked at herself, lying down, and looked at her own eyes. She fell with increasing speed toward their green depths. The eyes filled her consciousness and for a moment she felt a ripping apart of the worlds of body and spirit. Her yell of panic faded into darkness.

Vierra woke up with a sigh. Her eyes hurt and her head felt dizzy. Her cheek was sore where the Mother’s hand had struck her. She opened her eyes and Rika was there, huffing because of the cold, her red hair in disarray. But Rika gave her a broad smile, and she seemed to brim with her old confidence once more.

“Come and warm yourself by the fire,” Rika said, guiding Vierra, who was still groggy.

Morning sun lit the half-cloudy sky and cool land. Summer’s struggles were now over, and the wind, that now blew, carried with it a taste of autumn and coming change. “Did it work?” Vierra managed to ask when the worst of the numbness and cold had started to leave her limbs and mind.

“It did. Thank you, friend. Without you it wouldn’t have been possible.”

Both were silent for a long time. They knew that the steps they had taken during the night would now take them away from each other. The morning passed, and they just fed the fire and tried to make the moment last as long as possible.

Finally Vierra got up and turned to look at Rika.

“Now you can go back home. I must leave.”

“I know. Yesterday I wouldn’t have understood, but now I do. I will give you a piece of advice, even though I probably shouldn’t, and even though I don’t understand everything that was shown to me during my journey.”

Rika was silent for a moment, searching her mind for the right words. Apparently she couldn’t find them, because finally she just said:

“Don’t die.”

“What does that mean?” Vierra asked.

“I mean, don’t die far from home. If you do that you’ll never see the fires of the underworld and meet your son and husband.”

Normally Vierra might have been angered by such talk. Now after the journey, however, her mind was strangely light. The path ahead of her looked clearer and brighter, and the burden of the past felt less heavy.

“We’ll see each other again,” Vierra said with a hint of a question in her voice.

“Yes,” Rika answered. “We will see again before the end.”

Vierra looked at her friend and then turned her eyes toward the south. She sang brightly toward the rising day.

I can feel the air of south-lands
Breeze so lovely on my face
Restless are my legs under me
Bid to vanish with no trace

Winds of wonder carry whispers
Sounds of spirits wild and free
I will hear their call to wander
See what fate they hold for me

This time, she was ready to go.

The Birth of Kainu

Before a time, before a place
Before the man and beast
The endless sea, so dark and vast
Reached round from west to east

From the depths now grew a cliff
A cliff so big and white
Rising from the shoreless sea
A shard in ocean’s might

All alone were sea and stone
Until the Seagull came
A bird of sea, a bird of stone
Without a home or name

He found the stone, he found the cliff
He laid his nest in peace
At last he thought, the time has come
The endless search will cease

But bitter was the lonely sea
Its hate flowed cold and dark
It raised a wave from murky depths
Destruction at its mark

There was the rock, there was the nest
All torn down with the wave
It blew the nest and blew the bird
Took eggs to watery grave

The bird of sea, the bird of stone
Rose high on wings of gold
He opened up his beak and let
His magic song unfold

His golden eggs all torn and wet
Transformed under his might
To earth and sky he changed them all
To shine he made sun bright

All of this and so much more
He built with words said true
The land of life, the land of death
All this his magic grew

There was the world, so beautiful
So beautiful but bare
He took the last of golden eggs
Caressed it with much care

From it he drew the best of all
His work of finest birth
A beast, a bird, a fish in sea
All beings on this earth

Then he did it all again
For we all need a mate
But when he got to humankind
Wise bird could see our fate

“You shall walk this earth alone
I shall not give a bride
You’ll bring forth the great turmoil
That lasts till all have died”

So it was the bitter man
Went on his way alone
Fishing in the empty sea
With endless wail and groan

“Oh I am the poorest soul
Without a love or care
Fishes rotting in the sun
And no one here to share”

Suddenly from darkest sea
An eerie voice did say
“I can make a woman too
But there’s a price to pay

She will be fine, she will be fair
She is what you have craved
She has a mind of sharpened blade
She has your soul enslaved

She cooks your fish, she makes you strong
She burns your love as fuel
You shall do everything she wants
Your people, she will rule

Shall I give this woman then
Creature of highest might
To carry and give birth to you
To be your brightest light?”

Man was eager to respond
“I want her as my own
Unite us now, o eerie voice
I loathe to live alone”

In the sea the work was done
Under the depths unknown
Flesh was made from fishy hides
Skin from grasses sown
From the stream the blood was boiled
Scales so tough to bone

Girl of highest might was done
To carry and give birth
Quivers through man’s world would run
She was her payment’s worth