I stayed as far in the shadows as I could. My mother had never liked me much, so I doubted that she would want me by her side as she died. Besides that, her husband was crouched next to her, and I knew for a certainty that he would force me away if he saw me even this close to her.
My mother was dying. Everyone said so. The local healer, all the druids that had been found in their solitary forest homes, even the people who knew nothing about sicknesses. She coughed blood and each breath was harder than the last. Some said she was drowning in her own blood, and that it was the price she had to pay for her sin. What was her sin?
Her sin was me.
The man that my mother was wife of was not my father. My father was a Norsemen. I’ve heard it said many times that my mother was raped by a Noregr during a raid, though if that was so then it wouldn’t have been wrong. She wouldn’t need to be punished now. I knew the truth of it, for my mother had told me, only once, and she then said to never speak of it. My father had also told me the truth.
My mother began coughing hard. I watched silently as one of her sisters tried to wipe the blood as it came out of her mouth. Her husband held a copper bowl in front of her that she missed, spraying blood all over the front of her. She threw her head back down on the bed. Her chest was hardly rising anymore. I knew that I should have felt something, but I didn’t. This was my mother but only in name. There was nothing motherly about her when it came to me. She had four other children, all sons and all born to her husband. I was just a stain she had to deal with.
She tried to take in a deep breath. The sound was ragged and labored. She turned to head to the side. Her dark brown eyes seemed to stare right at my hiding spot. She wouldn’t be able to see me here, but something told me that she knew I was there. Her chapped lips opened. I thought that she would say something, but her lips and eyes froze. She was dead.
Not really thinking, I came out from my corner and ran. I heard the sounds of women cursing me, children crying, my mother’s youngest child only being three summers, and the sound of her husband screaming at me.
I ran fast. I had learned to whenever I snuck into my mothers home to steal food or cloth from her. I had to run away from her husband and eldest sons, who were each a good two, three and five summers older then me. I was only ten. My feet moved swiftly for I knew where I was going. I always ran to the same place.
It was where my home was. Where I had grown since I was weaned from my wet nurse, for my mother refused me even when I was that young… It was the place where they kept my father.
It was outside of the village where they kept them. The men they’d captured or were caught criminals. Men and women turned into slaves. When I reached the small clearing in the woods, with the shoulder high fenced that kept them enclosed, I saw familiar faces and scanned them for the one person who had shown me kindness. I finally found him near the edge of the camp. He was tied at the ankles, as all these people were, and working with a metal. The stove in front of him was red hot with coals. He shifted the metal inside it, his face smeared with ash and sticky with sweat.
“What is it, Eostre? Has she finally died?” he asked as I tried to walk up behind him quietly.
“How do you always know?”
He turned his head to me, blue eyes gazing at me coolly despite the heat on his face. “That it’s you behind me or what you came to tell me?”
“Both.”
“Is it true then, she is dead?”
I nodded my head. “It is, but you didn’t answer my question.”
“And I don’t intend to.” He put down his work and turned to face me, kneeling so that his bright blue eyes were level with mine. “They cut your hair again. Now how will you wear your pin?”
My hand went to my shorn hair. Whenever the men in the village caught me stealing or hiding around the village my punishment was getting a razor to my head. It was intended to show me how easily I could be killed, as it was also a disgrace for a girl to have no hair. It just told me to run faster the next time I steal a roll of bread.
“I will when it grows again. They only cut it this morning.”
“What were you doing?” he asked, his stare made it impossible for me to lie to him.
I shrugged. “I needed a new hunting dagger so I tried to take one from Conlai while he was sleeping.”
“Why do you always insist on stealing from your brothers?” he said with half a smile. It transformed his face from old and sad to young and brutal. I could see from it why my mother had found it attractive. His bright fair hair and eyes like blue columbine.
“They are not my brothers,” I shouted at him. “I don’t have any brothers. Unless you have sons that you didn’t tell me about.”
My father chuckled. “Not that I have any knowledge of. You are my only child. I wish they wouldn’t cut your hair this short.”
“That’s because you’re the only one who likes it. Everyone else hates my hair.”
My father smiled at me and set his calloused hand on the top of my head. “That’s only because it’s Noregr hair. These people hate the Norsemen, and with good reason.”
“But you’re a Norsemen.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t hate them.” I stared at him, confused, until he began talking again. He sighed and sat on the ground. I followed.
“Do you remember the story I told you about your mother and I?”
I nodded. “You didn’t hurt her, but when you two were caught she blamed you so she wouldn’t be killed for straying from her husband.”
“And he would have killed her. That husband of hers has a terrible temper. But I never told you when I came here or how. The tale that I was here on a Norse raid is not a lie, but the lie is that I was a warrior. I was not yet. I was too young to fight but was accompanying my elder brothers. I was one of the younger boys who carried food and watered horses, fixed armor, did menial tasks for the older, fighting men. During the raid your mothers village men broke through our defenses and captured us boys who had no part of the fighting and made us slaves. Do you know what my people did?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“They, my brothers and the other men, left me. I was not just some young village boy who had no worth to him. I was a warriors son. The son of a berserker and brothers to other such men. Where I come from that has more meaning then being the son of a chief. And they still left me. After a few years went by your mother would sneak around this camp and flirt her way into any number of men’s beds. It wasn’t until she got to me that she was caught.”
“Do you think my mother ever loved me?” I asked in a whisper, one tear rolling down my dirty face. My father lifted his hand and wiped the turn away. His coarse fingers touching my skin was like a healing balm, the softest silks.
“I think every mother loves her children, even if it’s only a little bit. She let you live, that has to count for something. She really is gone, then?”
“Her last breath she used to stare at me. What do you think it could mean?”
“I don’t know.”
My father and I both turned when we heard footsteps behind us. I was scared when I saw who it was. My father looked at me and held my face in his hands, kissing the top of my head lightly.
“Run.” he whispered. I stood up and took off into the greenery, but didn’t go far. Once I was hidden enough I found a tree and climbed it. I crouched on a limb to watch and listen while my heart pounded painfully in my chest.
“Wregan.” my mother’s husband said with a terrible smile on his face. “Wregan, Wregan. How pleasant it is to see you in shackles.”
“Glad you find pleasure in it, Kennan. I know your wife did.”
Kennan kicked my father in his belly, sending him toppling over. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, even if she was a w***e.”
“Let’s get to the point before the beating today. What do you want, Kennan? I’m sure this isn’t just a friendly visit to talk about the harvest.”
“And I’m sure your daughter already told you that Cailic is finally dead. Took her long enough too. The only good she gave me was four sons.”
“Are you sure that they are all yours?” my father asked, smiling.
Kennan’s face turned red. “Anyone who looks at the boys knows they aren’t Norse bred. Not one of ‘em’s got the white hair of your cursed kind.”
“I’m the only Norsemen here with white hair. Could have been any number of these men in the camp.”
I watched as Kennan’s face got redder and redder. My father stood up calmly and stared at him. He had no fear, Wregan, the son of a Warrior. I was his daughter. The thought gave me pride, but I watched Kennan and the other village men surround my father with a deep fear in my heart. Despite his bravery there was nowhere for him to go, and the men began to beat him bloody until he collapse on the ground. They lifted him up and left the camp.
I followed in the shadows.
… … …
I remember creeping in behind the crowd from the shadows of the trees. I remember seeing my father stand tall on the elevated platform. I remember the blood, and I remember screaming. The last thing I remember was hearing Kennan’s voice shout over the crowd before I turned to run.
“Cailic is dead and so to is he, the Noregr swine who defiled my family. The next to die will be their daughter. Bring me this Bloodchild, shave off and give me every strand of her vile Norse hair, and I will give you her to do with as you please.” he smiled darkly. “And then we will kill her just like we did to her father.”
As he spoke of my father my eyes went upwards to a spike. My father’s head forced onto it’s point, his columbine eyes dead and lifeless, red blood dripping from his severed neck.
I know I ran or else I wouldn’t have ended up hidden in the woods after nightfall. Somehow I had a bag filled with knives and food, scraps of clothing that I knew had belonged to my father. A bow with arrows that I also knew belonged to Breac, another son of my mother and Kennan. The pin that my father had carved for me.
My ears rang with the words that Kennan spoke to the crowd of people as my fathers head stared down at them. There was no going back there now. No going to the place I slept with my father. No home.
If Kennan wanted me, wanted my hair cut, then he’d have to find me. He’d have to catch me and cut it himself.
“Never again will a blade touch the hair my father gave me.” I vowed to the darkness.
And so my running began.
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