PREVIOUSLY: Áslaug used the seiðr which the All-Father granted her to cure King Eysteinn’s son Halfdan from an infection. Her guardian, the seiðkona Edda, resents her for her power.
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Beinir was upset about something. He sat on the grass outside the seiðkona’s house with Áslaug, driving the heel of his boot into the soft ground again and again. They both watched the patch of dark earth growing larger as his boot uprooted new spring grass. Áslaug waited. He always told her eventually.
“I love Estrid,” he said suddenly, angrily. It was like a counter-argument from some other conversation, perhaps one he’d been having with himself. “I want to marry her, but Father says she isn’t from a good family. Her father never went raiding, and so he must be weak. Father says, if I choose her, I must go raiding first and earn my own bride-price, but I won’t leave Estrid—not yet.” He was talking quickly now, his cheeks slightly flushed, staring at his heel grinding into the dirt. “She’s already with child, and I don’t want my child to be born when I’m far away, as I was, and you. And if anything should happen to me while I’m away, I don’t want to go to the halls of the All-Father without binding myself to Estrid.” He looked at Áslaug then. “You must tell Father you have seen it—that the gods have shown you Estrid and I must be wed before the child is born.”
She frowned. I have seen nothing of you and your woman, nor your child.
“I know.”
Áslaug stared at him. You want me to lie?
“Obviously.”
She loved Beinir, but she was loath to make false prophecies. It was dangerous to put words into the mouths of the gods. She shook her head.
“Áslaug! You’re my sister. You know how much Estrid means to me—and how much I long to go raiding. I want to be a warrior, and a good husband and father too. Won’t you help me?”
Yes, she signed, but not with lies.
“Then how?”
I will give you the bride-price.
“You? That’s impossible.”
I have treasure now.
“What treasure?”
Áslaug flashed him a self-satisfied smile and went inside the long house, returning with the torque Eysteinn had given her. She weighed it in her hand, showing how heavy it was.
Silver, she signed. All silver.
“Silver?” Beinir asked in disbelief. “How did you get such a thing?”
I am a seiðkona. People give seiðkonas treasure.
“And you would let me—let us—have it?”
Áslaug shrugged. What use did she have for silver? She threw the torque to Beinir and he caught it in his right hand.
“Thank you, sister,” he said sincerely.
Be happy together, she signed. At least there was a chance for Beinir.
*****
Beinir married Estrid at Midsummer. Her father wasn’t a wealthy man, and he had been satisfied with the silver torque. Beinir accepted his offer of three goats as dowry, and both he and Áslaug’s father helped the young couple build their home, a simple pit house not far from the coast. Edda attended Estrid when she gave birth two moons after the wedding: a plump girl-child they named Liv.
Áslaug wasn’t with Edda at the birth, but she met her niece that evening. She took the bundle in her arms and stared for a long time into the child’s sleeping face. The baby’s long, thick lashes brushed her smooth cheeks, and her lips were parted ever so slightly, her sweet, milky breath whispering in and out. Áslaug marvelled at the impossibly small hand poking out of the blankets—the puckered skin at the joints, the extra dimple at the wrist, the fingernails all in miniature—and tried not to cry. She would never have a child of her own, never know what it was to face the pain and terror of childbed, or how it felt to bring a tiny, perfect creature such as this into the world. She looked up and saw Drífa watching her, and knew she was thinking the same thing.
That night, Aslaug dreamed not of treasure or fire, but of the sea. It was dawn, and the sun was rising in the east. A longship with an enormous sail cut through the water, heading south and west. Men crowded the deck—warriors, raiders, víkingr men. A woman stood at the prow in a grey dress.
She was looking at herself. There could be no mistake. She was older than she was now, but only by a few years—still young, with hair as silver as starlight. It was loose, blowing about her as she stood, arms raised. She was summoning a wall of sea-mist that obscured the western horizon, and that wasn’t all: above her head soared an enormous dragon of mist, its wingspan as wide as the boat was long. The dragon’s eyes were white, too bright to look at, like two tiny midday suns. So, Áslaug saw, were her own.
She saw the same dream again and again throughout the short summer nights: the ship, the sea-mist, the dragon. In the early autumn, as they were hanging fresh-picked herbs for drying in the kitchen, she decided to question Edda about what she had seen. The seiðkona was usually civil to her these days, provided she didn’t remind her of how she had cured Halfdan.
Áslaug laid down the sprigs of juniper berries she was holding.
Can you do weather magic? she signed.
“Weather magic? That is a forgotten art.”
I think I can do it.
Edda snorted. “Why would you think that?”
I saw myself doing it. In the dreaming.
“Not everything you dream about is real.”
This was.
Edda’s face cracked into a false smile. “Really? Was it?” she asked, her voice unnaturally high. “Then why don’t you show me?” Suddenly, she grabbed Áslaug by the shoulder and began pushing her towards the door. Taken by surprise, Áslaug stumbled and almost fell, but Edda only shoved her again. “Show me how you do these great feats of forgotten magic, little seiðkona. Go on—call the snow, call a storm! Do it!”
They were outside now, and Edda stood, hands on her hips, waiting. Áslaug cowered before her, feeling small and foolish, as Edda no doubt intended her to.
What do I do? she signed.
“Why are you asking me?” Edda sneered. “You are the expert—the girl who can do weather magic. The girl who knows she can do it because she saw it in a dream.” Edda spat on the ground. “What you do here with me—I could teach it to any child.”
Áslaug, used as she was to Edda’s jibes, bridled at this. The king’s son, she signed.
“Coincidence,” snapped Edda. “Infections can recede on their own, animals can die. You just happened to be there. You can’t tell me what happened, how you used seiðr—”
They saw me. The king, his wife, his son—
“Frightened people will believe anything, and you are among them. A fever took your voice and made you delirious. You imagined you saw the All-Father in the forest all those months ago, and now you believe you are some great practitioner of seiðr, but you are no one, little Áslaug. You are nothing. You are a false seiðkona—just an ordinary girl plagued by nightmares, weak and pathetic.”
Áslaug stamped her foot. I saw him! I saw the All-Father! she gestured angrily, but Edda had already turned away and bent her head to go back inside.
Áslaug stayed out on the hillside. It was a cloudy day, quite warm, and it didn’t suit her mood at all. She closed her eyes and saw herself clearly, as she had been in the dreaming: older, standing on the deck of a great ship. The wind lifted her hair, long and loose, and it seemed to Áslaug that she could feel the same cold, salty breeze on her cheeks. She tilted her head, eyes still closed, and watched the dragon of mist and rain wheel in the sky above her. She had no doubt that she had created it, but how?
She raised her arms to the sky as she had seen her older self do in the dreaming. She curled her fingers, claw-like, and dragged them across the expanse of grey. She was gathering something from the air. Was it seiðr itself? She didn’t think so. The more she gathered, the more she realised it was cold and wet, not solid, but not entirely transparent. She sat down, cross-legged, and pulled it into her lap: a greyish-white cloud; a handful of mist.
Áslaug set about shaping the mist. It was difficult at first. It drifted from between her fingers, but she held the image from her vision in her mind. She tried to see the substance in her lap, not as formless cloud, but as the creature. She stared at it, doggedly determined, until it was the creature: a tiny dragon of mist. It crawled about her lap like a kitten, white and translucent. Lightly, she stroked its head, and it arched its neck, spreading its wings.
One day, you will fly, she told it inside her mind. Then, she lifted it up to her face on her palms and blew out a long breath. The dragon dissipated in the air. Then, she began to make another.
Thank you for reading!
BEHIND THE SCREEN: DRAGONS IN THE FIRMAMENT
I promised you dragons, didn’t I? Dragons made of mist might not be what you had in mind, but if you’re familiar with the account of the 793 AD raid on Lindisfarne in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, you’ll already have an inkling of what’s coming. This source (one of the only primary sources available) describes the chilling portents that heralded the attack:
“This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January [this is generally accepted to actually be June] in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter.”
Such amazing visuals! I need to add this to my illustrations to-do list!
Jealousy can be very cruel.