Thoughts of the Drowned — A Prelude to SOIL

“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 drink, piss, and rage. Twice as mean as a mother bear defending her cubs, 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 cups that night. My head was a swill of echoing voices and fractured memories. I could hear Snorri’s words, I could feel my disdain for them, but I was powerless to reply. 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 child. 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 been left naught but 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, cod-shriveling 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 looked toward 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 most seasons, aside from the spiteful winters. 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 flushed. “Da!” she squealed over and over, leaping off the stoop into Snorri’s reluctant arms.

Snorri seemed to crumple 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 its 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 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 feckless 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 onto Snorri’s leg like a parasite, spouting the noisiest, most frustrating nonsense ‘till then unheard of in the great north. The broods of screaming cicadas that only emerged every twelve summers seemed only to whisper compared to the blathering whimsy of children, 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 hadn’t taken her long to find those limits once they were wed. 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 as 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 which carried her out into the cold and into his arms, where she could feel his warmth and revel in the myriad odors he carried.

Sometimes Da smelled like blueberries and honey, sometimes like smoke—but he always smelled sour, too.

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 old man that walked home with Da always wore a 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 a while before he went off again.

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 want 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 somewhere in the woods beyond the village.

Shelka Morn could not recall where she had heard the name. Perhaps she had just made it up. Perhaps one of the Skalds had uttered it, or something like it. Shelka loved listening to their stories, but she wasn’t old enough to fully understand them. Mostly, it seemed the Skalds just made noises with their mouths, 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 misshapen nose. 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 slip and pulled her tumbling to the dirt floor. 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 to be free of him. Part of me was worried for him. 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 instead of something actually worth drinking.

I can’t recall how many days had passed before Collin knocked upon my door. The fat face of the southerner was entirely flushed 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 inside and sat him by the fire.

“Somethin’ to drink?” I asked, 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 down to the pits of Grahtz—but he’d said the only words that could have quelled my fires. “What happened? Don’t tell me—”

“She’s okay.” Collin wiped the 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 hand 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. And Shelka was no Skald—she never could get the sounds right.

And that was how Ma stayed, sitting listless by the window, gazing out into the bright white snow that was coming down in droves. The only time Ma rose was when Shelka’s bandages needed redressing, 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 out 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 hunched on the stoop, but the old man who was often found with her Da.

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 in 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, nodding past Gerdur towards the girl.

Gerdur nodded. “Leave the axe outside, eh?”

The man propped his axe against a post on the porch, and ducked his head through the doorway. He took three steps inside and knelt beside the girl. Something deep within Gerdur was proud to see her daughter stand up straight to present herself to a perfect stranger. The girl is resilient, that’s to be sure. Has to be, in this place... 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 howled and the cottage groaned. Rain or snow or sleet—Shelka couldn’t tell which, she wasn’t yet sure what the difference was—drummed on the roof. Thunder rolled like horses galloping down the hill, and lightning flashed like so many flickering candles illuminating the entire room.

Shelka wondered how Ma could sleep through it all. She wouldn’t stir no matter how much Shelka tugged at Ma’s hands and hair. 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 could wake up Ma, and again, Shelka was alone to weather the storm.

There were only 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 did 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 subsided, Shelka heard the doorlatch jiggle. Her breath seized in her lungs. Someone—something—pounded on the door, the stoop’s rotting floorboards grousing beneath heavy, shifting feet.

She buried herself in the blanket, then heard the door creak open. Heavy breaths resounded 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, pack my bag, and string my bow. Snorri had been gone for days, then came back in the night for his daughter, whom he never before seemed to want.

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 needed 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 byfoged involved, but I 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 this.

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 waterskin and enough salted venison to keep going for a few days. So, without telling anyone what I 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 weary him, no one to weary 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 part a hare from its flesh so that they could sup.

They couldn’t break their fast—there weren’t enough hares—but supper was delightful 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 he 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 awake until the full moon rose into the clear starry sky, and Da told her stories about the war he fought and pointed out the constellations.

She hadn’t wanted it to end, and was bitterly disappointed when Da fell asleep, sitting on his log 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 of tricking 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 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 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 that we frequented, back before the village boys grew old enough to go hunting on their own.

At dusk I saw the plume of campfire smoke in the distance, 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 their evening 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 and opted for a cautious 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 waterskin half-full with week-old, stinking mead. I’d drawn my axe and uttered my prayers to Bridget and Morgana—and 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 stone’s throw 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 my axe and ran faster than I knew my old bones could take me. My heart cascaded in my chest, my breath fleeting 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 in 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. Her 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 streamed down my cheeks, snot flowed from my stinging nose, both freezing fast to my face as I pressed my mouth against the child’s, while 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 air to return 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 spoken. 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 in the snow, all of my strength sapped from me.

“Serve me,” said the voice. “And the girl will live.”

I watched the wind twist and roil, taking the shape of a stag 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 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.