Mother stood beside me. “Does she call to you?” she asked.
I nodded, placing a hand over the hollow of my stomach. “How did you know?”
“My mother,” she said simply.
The truth was an arrow to the heart.
“She was a—?”
Mother nodded. “A witch, yes.”
Mother always kept us away from seeresses. I guessed now I knew why.
“You must go to her, but keep your wits about you, Liv, and don’t speak unless you consider your words carefully. She may use them against you. Remember the warnings I taught you.”
I nodded and let my feet follow the strange feeling unfurling in my stomach, all the while worrying I might say something foolish or damning.
I found her near the shore. The Jarl in his heavy, fine clothes, a coyote pelt gathered around his shoulders, stood at her side as if she was the Queen and he her servant. I’d never seen him so gracious with his manners, or his things.
A small crowd huddled in front of the völva, who was seated on an ornately carved chair, twin dragon’s heads curling toward her as if they might swallow her whole. And yet, even if the beasts were real, if they poured fire down upon her, she wouldn’t have been singed. Power radiated from her; a strange energy I couldn’t explain, but could potently feel.
Her hair was as shiny and black as a raven’s wing as she stood, her eyes honing in on me from afar. I kept my steps steady as I made my way to her, allowing her magic to reel in the line that held me, like a fish being dragged above the water’s surface.
Rings that lined her fingers glinted in the light cast from a nearby fire as she waved me forward. She whispered to the Jarl and he gave a command for the crowd to disperse. Those who surrounded her, men, women, and young children, obeyed, trickling away.
Their eyes searched me as I passed. They must have wondered what the witch wanted with me. I stopped in front of her, keeping several feet between us. Soon we were alone, the witch and I. My shield was on my back, but the heavy weight didn’t comfort me. Neither did the weight of the sword tucked into my belt.
“You fought well,” she said as her eyes quickly combed over me. Once. Twice. Her voice was coarse, as if she rarely spoke.
I inclined my head, afraid to speak, Mother’s warning ringing in my head.
She wasn’t old, nor was she young. She was, perhaps, Mother’s age – the sweet place between the two stages of life. But she was no warrior. There were no hard edges about her. No scars upon her flawless, moonlit skin.
Her clothing was fine, her dress stitched from thick, crimson fabric and her matching gloves lined with snowy white fur. She’d drawn runes on her face. Some I recognized easily, and some I didn’t know and had never seen.
She took the opportunity to study me as intently as I did her, much more deeply than her first glances. I wondered what she thought of me. If she thought I was a good fighter, or perhaps she considered me a warrior. Now, a shield maiden – like my mother had announced. I hoped she was afraid of me and that she saw nothing but fearlessness in my face.
“Words hold power,” she finally said, taking up a long, wooden staff and walking toward me, closing the distance between us. I realized it was her wand, not a staff. The tip looked woven, like strands in a basket, but even as they bowed from the staff itself, they rejoined to make a fine tip. They said witches could use their wands to spin the fates of lesser men.
I wasn’t lesser. My eyes narrowed at her closeness.
“Few realize that,” she continued, undeterred. “They waste what little power they have by wagging their tongues too much.” She smiled as she approached, stopping only when the bottom of her crimson skirts brushed the tops of my boots. “But not you. You observe first and speak only when it’s necessary. Even when your mother doesn’t warn you beforehand.”
I swallowed thickly as she lifted a hand and let her thumb ghost down the lumps and bumps of my braid, pausing over the iron serpent coiled around it. She took in my shield. “I need you to come with me now, Liv.” She turned her back to me and began walking away from the shore.
“How do you know my name?” I asked, refusing to follow her retreating form as she walked toward the wood.
She turned with a knowing smile on her lips. “Because someone very important has a message for you.”
She continued her trek, using her wand to help her up the slope, weaving herself into the oaks and pines as if she was a scarlet thread in the forest’s vast tapestry.
My feet followed her.
The coppery scent of blood filled the air and we entered the spot where the animals had been slain. They hung from thick branches in the trees above us, their blood leaking into pots and jugs, buckets and bowls. “We must sit amongst them,” she said, laying down her wand. She gathered her fine gown and sat on the forest floor. “On Winternights especially, there is more power in the dead than in the living.”
Hodor had stood there earlier. He split his rope to hang each of the animals we brought to later smoke and preserve.
I recognized each of them. The scrawny lamb that was born too late in the year and wouldn’t survive the cold, the goat with the lame hoof, the runty piglet who was born months ago, but wouldn’t grow despite the amount of food she ate.
Now they were dead, hanging limply from branches, and the witch wanted me to sit with her beneath them, surrounded by captured puddles of their blood.
Silently, she stared at me and waited for me to comply with her request. I slowly walked forward, the wind stirring the strands of hair escaping my braids as I stepped beneath the animals. The moment my backside touched the forest floor, a strange energy washed through the air.
The dead animals hanging above us began to writhe. The lamb let out a pitiful bleat and the pig weakly grunted. The cocks flapped their wings and flew in circles. Blood droplets landed on us. I ducked and shielded my head with my arms, looking to the witch as goosebumps erupted over my skin.
She sat calmly, completely unaffected. Her cool, brown eyes were fixed on me.
The animals went still again as a gust of wind tore their spirits away once more. My heart fluttered as I watched them rock back and forth, the ropes that held their weight creaking on the rough limbs until they finally went still.
Splat.
Splat. Splat.
More droplets of blood splashed into the containers beneath them, wrung out by spirit and wind.
A slow smile spread over the völva’s berry-stained lips. “There is power in blood and bone,” the witch offered.
Power in words.
Power in blood and bone.
Power in the slain.
For me, Winternights had always been a raucous mixture of celebration and spine-tingling fear. The dead walked the earth and joined us as we bade farewell to summer and greeted the frigid winter, bade farewell to the earth’s life and let death claim it again, as it had claimed our kinsmen. We were nearer to them on this night, for they dwelt in the coldness of death now after their walks in the sun, among the living.