by John Benson
The bowl was unglazed pottery, the knife of meteoric iron, its handle wrapped in sinew from an animal long extinct. The water was from a mountain stream, still chill with the memory of last year's snow. The moon was full. Puffs of an unwelcome breeze raised goose bumps. Nina drew the blade across her palm.
It was always a bright little painful shock. Her body longed to heal, but she needed to stay vulnerable to the ritual or it would not work. A little blood. Three drops, down into the still water. She stirred it with the knife. The water stilled once more and its surface captured moonlight. Moonlight made liquid shimmered, threatening to reveal secrets. It was a time for visions. Nina watched water tainted with her essence and the essence of the moon.
Eyes. Red eyes, filled with malice. They were the Eater's eyes. The water steamed and began to boil. Nina cried out and struck the bowl and it cracked and spilled its contents out on the ground and an unwelcome breeze made steam. Her heart pounded in her throat and she could barely breathe.
The Eater conquered by exploiting weakness. But it could not be the lack of skill. Nina had called visions before when the old witch was still alive and had succeeded without supervision. The figure of the Eater of Dreams had always been there, on the periphery, malign but not actively threatening. But it was an active menace now, and anywhere she went in the safety of these hills it could find her.
The safety of solitude was danger now, for here she was the only person, the only witch. She must hide in a herd of her own kind, down in the valleys with the farmers and their horses and cattle and oats and barley and their new ways and their new God.
She had needed the luxury of silence so she could listen to herself, and hear the quiet song of magic. But now the quiet meant the Eater could hear her too. She must hide her clarity amidst the dark mutterings of other minds. At least until she found out her weakness and overcame it.
But she didn't remember very much about being an ordinary person. Not very much at all.
It was a good farm with well-kept fences. Contented cows stood in green pastures, re-chewing half processed grass. Tame nature, not like the real thing. But not completely unlike. Not near as hard on her as a town would have been, or a city. Too orderly a place, perhaps, but people liked that. It let them feel they were in charge, while the truth was more that sometimes they were, and sometimes they were not. Nina was loathe to choose, but where better? Ah well. Three men sat outside the main hall drinking a small beer. In an outbuilding a woman was cooking. Nina let herself be seen.
"Hello," she said.
Three men turned and looked. One had a bit of age on him, with salt-and-pepper hair. Another was young and slender and he looked at her like a starving man who'd stumbled on a feast. The third was a man with broad shoulders and a red beard and red hair. A gorgeous man. A man who could be a young vision of Thor.
"Hello," the older fellow said. "You're new."
"Nina Andersdatter. Not from around here. Here by happenstance, I guess you'd say."
"Gustav, son of Berndt. I'm the Holder. Meet my two hired hands. The little one is Ole, and the big lunk is Sven. My wife Sophie is in the cook shed, and she'll be out directly."
"A pleasure," Nina said.
"Hi," Ole said. Desire had made him shy. She didn't know whether to be flattered or annoyed by his intention. Sven had a slow smile. Oh what a good looking man.
"Hello," Sven said. "What a pretty girl. But folks don't just go out on the road for no reason."
"I lived with an old lady," Nina said. "But she died. I tried to continue on without her, but it got too hard." These people did not want to hear about the Eater. Let them think that it was just the rudiments of life that got beyond her.
"Stay for dinner and stay the night," Gustav said. "I'll ask Sophie if we have enough spare work to take a girl on. I can't imagine she'd say no."
"Ask me what? I heard my name and came out to see."
The Holder's wife was beautiful, with a rounded body and an unmarked face and long blonde hair. She made Nina feel drab, skinny and asexual. "If there's work for me," she said. "I know herbs and healing, and I can cook and sew, and I'm stronger than I look."
"Ever milked a cow?" Sophie said.
"No ma'am. But critters like me because I understand them. I'm sure I could learn."
"I don't know," Sophie said. "Do we really need another mouth?"
"Might be good for Sven," Gustav drawled.
Everything stopped. The complete lack of reaction was a reaction. Something was going on under the surface that Nina didn't understand. "Yes," Sophie said. "That's it exactly. We'll take her on. Because it would be good for Sven." She smiled vaguely, and drifted off back toward the cook house.
Nina opened herself up to read the undercurrents of feelings. After all, people are just another kind of warmbloods and their feelings don't taste all that different from those of a deer, or a wolf. Ole was filled with unrequited hope that Nina would soon become his mate. Gustav, son of Berndt was calm and comfortable in his two main joys, his woman and his farm. And Sophie was a seething mass of secret lust, and the memory of its last expression and the anticipation of the next. But the object of all this exquisite desire was not her husband. It was Sven.
The dough was on its way to the Second Rising. Sophie strained curd through a cloth, wringing the water out. Nina built up the fire in the big brick oven. When the bricks were hot enough, they'd scoop the fire out, and put in the bread.
"Freyja has blessed your land," Nina said.
Sophie stopped work. Her brows knitted. "You must never name the Old Powers," she said. "Or you might do it where Father Ignatious could hear, and that would be bad."
"Father Ignatious? What sort of a name is that?" The fire popped. Nina stood back.
"He's not from around here. There's not enough Norsk Priests, so he comes from far away."
"You have such a gentle God," Nina said. "Yet His followers can be so mean."
"That you must never do," Sophie said. "Speak as if you are outside the fellowship looking in. The Father might decide you are a witch."
"But I am a witch," Nina said. "Does you father have red hair, Sophie. Or if not, anyone else in your family?"
"What?" Sophie said. "You changed the subject. Why are you asking that?"
"Because the baby might," said Nina. "But if it runs in your family, it wouldn't so much matter."
Sophie's mouth was open, and she made a strangled little sound.
There were three cows, all fairly young, so they must have decided they didn't need to let a calf grow up. There was no bull either, so there must be a neighbor close enough that they could barter for the service. Learning to milk the cows had been fairly easy, because they mostly liked it, to the extent the calm and stupid beasts liked anything at all.
Nina did the first two cows without incident, but the third was restive. Something was wrong. She touched the cow's flank but the creature shifted and stamped. Nina closed her eyes and plunged happily into the mystery of healing. Cows are pretty much the same as deer inside, except the guts are lots bigger, and this one was tied up. There was a blockage... there. The cow farted and pooped and felt much better.
"You milk cows standing up with your eyes closed?"
Nina jerked herself back into the mundane. Gustav Berndtsson stood there, annoyed at her and somehow pleased to be annoyed. "The cow was ill and I fixed her up, sir," she said. "A gift freely given without thought of recompense."
"No you didn't," Gustav said. "Because if you did you'd be a witch and we'd have to hang you. So you were just being lazy and for that I'll have to whip your skinny arse."
He was mostly just using this as an excuse to prove to her who was boss, Nina decided. If she wanted to stay here and hide from the Eater, she would have to submit to him. "Yes sir," she said.
"I'll go get a harness strap," he said.
Oh dear. But she couldn't expect him to let her stay if she wasn't subordinate. Oh dear. Big strap. Big wide strap. He led her out of the barn and made her climb the bottom rung of the log fence and bend across the top rung. He flipped up her dress. Her hind was bare to the breeze. He was going to ... Oww! Oww! Oww!
It hurt, it hurt. But there was something ancient about it. A racial memory of a hundred generations of women being subdued by their men. Subdued and made pliant. Made ready to mate. She felt the pull of it, along with the pain and humiliation. Enough to be a little ashamed by it. A little excited. But who really felt the old message was Gustav, son of Berndt. Need was a raging bull in him. She could hear his labored breathing. She could sense his lust.
"I should take you right here," he said. "Right now."
Nina's body sort of agreed. But things were already all messed up, and that would only make it worse. "How long after the funeral do you think," she said. "Before Sven marries Sophie and takes over the farm?" She could feel his anger. Her bruised rear clenched, sure that a worse strapping was about to start.
"What funeral?"
"Yours. The power to heal is the power to destroy. I don't ever want to kill, but being raped might change my mind."
"So you are a witch."
Gingerly, Nina climbed down. Her rear felt puffy. "A witch what never caused you harm," she said. "I only mean to help."
He threw the strap down. "Let's let it lie," he said. "I did not take you, and I do not know for sure you are a witch. We are both better off if it goes no further."
"All right," she said. She must always give him the courtesy of ambiguity. If she ever demonstrated the Art to him convincingly, he would feel obligated to tell the Priest.
Gustav stomped off. The strap lay there in the dust. Her rear twinged just to see it. But when it really twinged was when she went back inside the barn, and sat on that low stool, and milked that last freaking cow.
Nina watched the sunset and Ole watched Nina. That shy worshipful gaze of his was disconcerting and she wished he'd stop. "Why are you here?" he said.
She sighed. "Because," she said. "I am weak."
"But you are strong. You are a witch."
"There's always someone stronger," she said. "Or in my case, some thing. I thought you weren't supposed to believe in witches. Or were supposed to condemn them as the enemies of the new God."
"I do what I have to do to get along," Ole said. "I say the right things at the right time. But the Priest cannot read my mind. They're all just stories that we tell ourselves, you know. The old Gods. The new one. Stories that get retold so much that they must be true. But the old stories had men and Gods and nature in them and the new stories seem to have left nature out. I'm not sure that's a good idea."
When he wasn't mooning over her, the lad was bright. Maybe he was observant. "What would your boss do," she said, "if he was sure his wife was cheating?"
Now Ole looked at the sunset, finally. Maybe to help collect his thoughts. "There's a bit of the Berserker in Gustav," he said. "A bit of the Viking. He'd kill them both in a rage, and then when the rage was spent, when it was too late, then he'd be sorry."
"Beat it kid."
A red beard glowed in the ruddy sunset. Sven. "We were talking," Nina said.
"And now Ole is leaving or I'm going to push his face in," Sven said.
"Later," Ole said. He scuttled away, out of the reach of arms the size of hams. Sven was a beautiful man, but he was something of a bully. What did Sophie see in him?
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