Posted on

Lessons on the Road

Leonora winces behind her handfan as the cart wheel splashes through another divot in the road back to Hrafnakastali. Age has given her the right to ride on the cart instead of horseback, but today it feels like all her bones are grinding together with every bump and jostle. Getting old isn’t for the weak, as her mothers were fond of saying.

Ahead of the creaking wagons, Leonora can see Lorelei swaying on her horse next to her brother. The usually boisterous knight is quiet now, hunched under the veil draped over her hair and snagging on the edges of her armor. Jacqueline says nothing to her, but Leonora’s experienced eyes can see that he is sitting straighter than usual, shoulders shifting as he scans both sides of the road, picking up the slack for his distracted sibling.

The gesture brings a warm smile to Leonora’s face. Protecting each other. Shouldering burdens. “The kind of love he has to give,” she has told Lorelei before. “Just like you have your own ways of showing love. You cannot force yourself, or others, into a narrative. No one is just an archetype. And if you think of people that way, you will miss all the best and worst parts of them. You’ll miss all the best parts of yourself.”

A welcome breeze picks up, rustling the purple banners of their convoy and tugging at the edge of Lorelei’s veil. The motion pulls the knight out of her slump for a moment, and her spine straightens as she readjusts her posture. Leonora resists the urge to call out to her, to pin her veil a little tighter, to ask if she’s thirsty. Her love, the mother-henning variety, will be the most unwelcome at the moment. What young person wants their peers to see them be cared for like a child? What lord or lady needs those they command to see them being coddled? No, Lorelei will have to soothe herself while they travel.

And I will do the same, Leonora reminds herself. Her gaze drifts further up the column, catching the white flash of Lady Olivia for a moment before the crossed spears of the House crest block her view again. If it is the duty of the young to learn their lessons and grow into their responsibilities, it is the duty of the old to teach those lessons and then get out of the way. We cannot teach them how to stand back up after they fall, she thinks. They have to prove to themselves they can live through the pain and try again.

But it is hard to let these children walk out into the world on their own when she can sometimes still feel the warmth of their tiny hands tugging at her sleeve. The knight who marches into battle and returns covered in gore and glory still has the eyes of the child who brought her a handful of tadpoles. The lord who now speaks so openly about the uses of sex and power once cried when he learned that bumblebees died after they stung you. She loves them, every version of them, and can’t help holding on to her overlapping memories. It is her lesson to learn how to step back and let them find their glory alone.

The cart rattles its way across another set of puddles, and Leonora sits up a little straighter and begins to scan both sides of the road.

Posted on

Four Rituals

1.

When they ran ragged into Runeheim it was after dusk, with a ghost to greet them and undead on their heels. There was no time for arms lifted in Lion’s Paw greeting, no time for proper face paint and introductions, only confused kowtowing to a dead man from another land who didn’t have the decency to go haunt his own ancestor’s graveyards.

By the time Neccio and Katarina finally returned to the rented room to sleep, Embla had finished tying knots in straw pulled from the mattress and left them in a protective line across the threshold. The Hestrali stepped carefully over them without comment.

2.

The morning Embla leaves their camp outside Runeheim to go scouting, she prays. Kneeling in the field, the grass smells bright and earthy where her hands have dug through it and she breathes it in deep, like incense, like campfire smoke, once, twice. She puts a pebble in her mouth, lets the dirt coat her tongue and mix with her spit before tucking the stone into the pouch of her cheek. Grit rubs the back of her teeth when she speaks, the slightest slur when her words get stuck on the stone.

“White Benalus, lion of the desolate place, I submit to you in the wilderness.”

She bows her head, speaks her father’s words with her mother’s tongue, opens her eyes when she spits grit into the palm of her hand to mix with the fresh dirt already cupped there.

“Hide me from the eyes of bear and panther and evil men, save my courage for the dark.”

Embla smears the mud in two stripes from the corner of her eye to her temples, thick like gnarled tree bark, just another fir in the woods.

“Shine bright on running creeks so I may drink, and keep me from the desperation of still water.”

Clear water from her wineskin rinses off her hands, swirls cold as dew in her mouth and around the pebble. She spits the stone into her clean hand, dries it on her skirt, closes her first around it, breathes again, once, twice.

“By your torch alone will my feet be guided back to the hearth that knows me.”

She nods once, levers herself up, turns back to wait for the others to wake. The mud will be cracked and dry by the time they see it. The Hestralians will not ask, and she won’t offer. Oddny will not ask because she already knows.

When Embla hugs her cousin goodbye where the trail parts, she leaves the pebble in Oddny’s pocket and a smudge of dirt under her chin. The grit grinds in her teeth all day.

3.

The group of them stand around the midnight fire, Alma beaming and content with her strange Gothic oven next to her. Embla can feel the runes of deception painted on her hands, and is grateful for them even with an empty stomach. These outlanders come here, throw decadent parties on the eve of Disblot, draw the Old God’s jealous eye with no regard for the people who work the land who will suffer for it. They come here and bring their monsters with them, and now bring their evil relics with the claim they will feed the world, but forget to mention it is happy to let Njords starve.

It is a desecration of hospitality that takes Embla’s breath away. She will need to be a deceiver to take part in this “cleansing” ritual without losing her temper. The clank of armor and weapons in the dark around her is a constant reminder that even the most banal of rituals is done under the boot of foreigners these days.

When they ask for stories of meals, Embla speaks loudly of salmon and old men’s lies, tries to make eye contact with the young karls drinking across the fire pit. She raises her voice, as a Speaker, and wills them to hear the story under her story. She’s no skald, but she knows tales land like seeds in the hearts of Njords. It might take until next spring, but maybe one of them will grow.

4.

Acid roils in Embla’s aching stomach, partly the hunger and partly the rage. Oddny bumps against her shoulder as they both sprinkle ale over the six – no, seven – fresh graves they were leaving behind in Hrafnastali. Embla has already said her words, made her prayers, and now it is time for her and Oddny’s most sacred of traditions.

When they get back to the road proper, Embla grabs her cousin’s hand, plants her feet, and refuses to look back at Rennet’s shiny new gates. “Fuck this place,” she intones seriously. “And fuck these rich invaders.” Oddny nods, and they hurry to catch up with Katarina and Gren down the long road.