After the Rain: Part One

In which Bard and Sigrun are twelve.

Sigrun dreamed often about the day the dragon took her mother. Others had been taken since then, of course – always once a year; always in a mist after the rain – but the faces of the others taken by Smaug were invisible and their absence brought no pain. She wanted to be ashamed of it, but she couldn't be. Her ma had been everything, and without her, everything had gone wrong.

Tonight, Sigrun tossed in her sleep. In her dream, the skies were grey; grey like the mist that wreathed ma's figure like a death shroud. Ma ran to the end of the wharf, laughing as Sigrun, laughing also, chased after her. They'd been playing catch that day and ma had won each time, but at the edge of the wharf, Sigrun would catch her, and ma would give her a sweet.

Suddenly everything changed. Ma's footsteps as she ran became slow, thunderous, pondering, like the roaring of a great bellows, and as she paused at the end of the wharf, the shadow shot past her – across the wharf and across the surface of the lake. And the water erupted in flames that roared up to the sky in the path of the golden form of the dragon; red and black and brilliant against the grey sky; his eyes burning gold, his mouth spitting yellow flames as Sigrun's spat crimson screams; as the beast turned at the far end of the lake and swooped back towards them; the bells of Laketown ringing out, but the world as empty as though Sigrun and her ma were the only people in it.

Ma moved very slowly, the twist of her body sending a wall of silence across the lake. Smaug sped across that silence and destroyed it as Ma turned and looked at Sigrun; smiling; like she knew what was coming. Except this time the dream was different; except this time she was changing; except this time she had Bard's face, and he smiled at her; as tall as she was, as small as she was; smiling sadly, like he knew what was coming.

'Look at me, Sig,' he said softly; his eyes bright but sad but fearless as he heard the dragon swoop closer; as his spine straightened; as her fear made him forget his own; 'you look at me.'

The dragon's mouth opened; the world turned to fire and pain; and Bard's eyes were closing slowly as the great claws opened, and snatched –

'BARD!' Sigrun screamed; jolting up and hitting her head on the cold stone wall.

Her breath consumed her. She couldn't see. And for a moment she knew not where she was, except that it was cold, dark and damp. Then she heard the sound of her da snoring on the other side of the door, and her heart seemed to melt and drip downwards from her throat to its proper place in her chest; the memory of Bard's face still filling her vision; the memory of his blood as she slipped fully dressed out of bed and groped about in the dark for the door handle.

Sigrun opened the door of the tiny closet where she slept. She was hungry. She gulped down the reality of that hunger, letting it fill her up and banish the night from her as threaded her way through the small labyrinth of buckets that dotted the floor, catching the leak from last night's rain.

She opened the door despite the cold; the door being their only source of natural light. It was very early, and a foul mist blanketed everything.

Mist after the rain, Sigrun thought, dragon might come.

Unlikely He would come today, though. When He had come last year, it had also been winter, and if there was one thing that everyone here grew up knowing, it was that He never came at intervals they could predict. Smaug would never grant them that mercy.

Sigrun's da was asleep in his chair in the darkest corner of the room, snoring lightly. Sigrun gave him a gentle dig with her foot.

'Morning, Da!' she announced.

He roused himself briefly; looked at her blankly, then settled back down to sleep as though nothing had happened. Sigrun sighed. She had been so sure that today might be the day.

When Da had disappeared after losing their house. Sigrun had been sure that her stepma had put him up to it (else why would he leave her behind?), and she had been to everyone from the bailiff to the Master to see if anyone could help her track them down. She had been told at every turn – kindly, and often unkindly – that her da had obviously abandoned her; that he would very likely refuse to come back even if he could be found; that she would be 'taken care of' and 'treated gently' and that she should do her best to forget him.

'But I don't want to forget my da!' she had stormed as the Master's deputy had shown her firmly to the door while the Master's idiot son watched her from atop the staircase, 'why does everybody want to forget him?'

Bard's ma invited her to stay with them; pretending it was an extended visit, even though no one but richer folk did such things – there wasn't room, or time. Weeks passed. And eventually Sigrun began to think that everyone was right. Her da wasn't coming back. She was an orphan like Bard was; clinging to a mother who was two parents at once; trying to forget a living father who was nothing of the sort.

But Da did return to Laketown. He was alone, and broken down. He was barely speaking; barely able to walk. He had come back a shell, but he had come back, and Sigrun knew, when he looked at her, that he knew who she was, and that she was the reason he had returned.

Sigrun was the only one to feel the remotest bit of joy.

'I feel so sorry for the poor little one,' Sigrun heard some women saying at market, 'it might have been better for her had he died. And him not being able to walk, or work: there'll be nought but misery left for her until he does die, and who knows when that will be?'

But Sigrun had never been the kind of child to indulge in misery, and before three days had passed she had succeeded in almost drowning herself while attempting to take da's boat out on the open water; thinking that if she could learn to fish, she might be able to make enough to keep both herself and her da, and that one day, he might be well again.

A great fuss was made when she was pulled out of the water, and for a while the townsfolk rallied together to prevent her from doing so again: when Sigrun refused to have her da staying at Bard's ma's as well as herself, a house was secured for them and the rent paid from the Master's pocket.

'Only for a while, mind,' the Master had said; imperiously tossing a bag of coins at Sigrun when he came to call and tell her of his decision to be charitable; 'your father must pull his weight like everyone else.'

How can he pull his weight when he can barely stand? Sigrun might have screamed in better days.

But she was a mouse now, and she could not afford pride. She could not afford to try to return the (anonymous) gifts of bread and fish left constantly outside the door, even though they made her cry with gratitude and shame. And all the while nobody seemed to see what she saw: that she and her da needed something to live on, and it could not be charity.

Some suggested that she take employment as a scullery maid in one of the great houses; still others thought that she could get work in a draper's shop or at market.

'And Da?' she asked each person with a suggestion to make, 'is he to remain on his own all day?'

Most of the replies were to the effect that a man who spent most of his days staring into space would be unlikely to remark her absence in any case, and that the risk of his falling over and breaking his own neck while trying to reach the toilet was an acceptable one.

The only person who didn't seem to have an opinion on the subject was Bard. She was thankful for his silence, but curious – it wasn't like him to refrain from telling her whatever happened to be going on in his head, no matter how stupid or infuriating it might be – but when he did eventually speak, he did so in a way that was utterly typical, both of him and of her.

He came to her one morning looking both characteristically earnest and uncharacteristically shy, and after much shuffling of feet and staring at his boots, asked if she wanted to learn how to fish.

'Me and my da are going out today,' Bard said; pushing a flagrant strand of hair behind his ear that immediately bounced free again; 'when he falls asleep we can even try sail to shore; meet some elves.'

Sigrun had stared in amazement at how well he knew her; to know that she would only accept help when it was disguised as something else. The thought of it frightened her slightly; as did the deliberately-detached expression in his grey eyes that clearly announced that he knew what she was thinking and was prepared to keep up the charade if it meant doing her some good.

'Coming?' Bard said.

Sigrun nodded, and rose to her feet.

They didn't meet any elves that day. Bard showed her how to tell one end of the boat from the other; how to cast off; how to use the tiller; how to put the nets over the side without losing them; how to get the fish out of the nets without using a knife; how to gut them and clean them for market, or for a meal.

'How do you actually cook them once you've got them for a meal?' Sigrun asked; a cook being one of the many things she had grown up with without da being able to afford it.

Bard shrugged.

'You give them to ma and hope there's firewood,' Bard replied; nothing in his expression suggesting he was joking.

'Lazy bones,' Sigrun said, 'I'll bet you anything you've never tried cooking in your life.'

'I have. On a fire.'

'And on a stove?'

'Not since I made Ma's hair catch fire.'

She knew him too well to imagine he was joking.

Sigrun learned quickly. She took her da's boat out. She sold her catch on the wharves to those who would sell it at market (some wouldn't). She sold her catch to her neighbours. She paid the rent. She bought bread. She grew tired. She fell sick. Once, the cold on the open water gave her such a fever that she couldn't get out of bed for three weeks. Her fingers bled and blistered from handling the nets, and she soon had arms like a boy from the effort of pulling them in. When her nets came up empty, she would go hungry. She slept in her boots, and quite often in her coat and gloves as well. Their house was damp, mildewed, without windows and in a much poorer part of town than where they had lived before da had lost his money. And yet, she was happy. There was no golden veil, no lie, no non-existent hoard of gold spilling from a cupboard each time it was opened. There were only people; and people were her gold now.

'Good morning, Sigrun.'

The voice roused her from her reverie, and she was surprised to see that she had been emptying one of the water buckets into the kettle without noticing. Dreaming wasn't like her. She didn't usually have time for it.

Sigrun turned towards the door and squinted into the morning light. It was ma'am Gerda, Bard's ma. She had a parcel under her arm.

'Morning, ma'am Gerda,' Sigrun said; depositing the empty bucket on the floor, 'come in.'

The older woman entered, and Sigrun politely studied her as she struck hard at a tinder box to try and get a fire going. Gerda looked both pale and sickly this morning; the ice from outside seeming to cling to her clothing and imprison her in its cold. She had Bard's look – the same dark hair, the same blazing eyes, and the same inability to make polite small talk.

'I was feeling a little ill this morning,' Gerda announced, 'Bard was nowhere to be found; so I sent my idiot of a husband to market in my place and he came back with twice the usual amount of bread. Would you care to take it off our hands?'

Sigrun applied the match to the waiting piece of firewood, threw it into the stove and slammed the stove door shut; hoping the darkness would conceal her blush and the sound the rumble of her stomach.

'Don't you want to save it for tomorrow, ma'am?' Sigrun asked as she stood; knowing full well that no loaf of bread lasted more than a day in such a place as Laketown.

Ma'am Gerda was clearly thinking the same thing.

'I don't fancy eating mouldy bread,' she observed, in a tone that would brook no argument, 'do you?'

Sigrun bowed her head and slowly accepted the parcel.

'Thank you, ma'am.'

'Nothing at all, my dear. Is your da in?'

Sigrun cocked her head in the direction of her father, who was still sound asleep in his armchair. Gerda squinted into the darkness.

'I can only see his legs, so I'll take your word for it. Why don't you light some candles?'

'Can't afford them this week, ma'am.'

'Yes. The fish do seemed to be deserting the Lake at present. Has he been asleep for long?'

'Since midday yesterday.'

Gerda sighed.

'Sigrun. Come to breakfast. Leave the bread.'

'Ma'am Gerda, the boat –'

'You can help me cook, and together we will try to forget that taking the boat out an hour later this morning will have little effect on the quantity of fish anyone brings home this afternoon.'


Sigrun pulled the door closed and followed Gerda across the way to her house. Below them, men were at work clearing the ice clogging up the canal; shouting insults at the occupants of a long queue of fishing boats trying to get out onto the Lake; who in turn were shouting insults at the men clearing up the ice; 'we're losing the best catch of the day, thanks to you!' Sigrun followed ma'am Gerda into the house, and thought about what she had said. Good or bad, the fish were not biting this week, and that would mean hunger in more homes than her own.

A delicious smell of cooking porridge hit Sigrun full in the face as she hung up her coat and felt her empty stomach turn itself inside-out. Bard was at the table in his shirtsleeves, gravely attempting to make tea from a scoop of leaves that looked like it already been turned twenty times. His da was nowhere to be seen.

'Morning, Sig,' Bard said; not looking up from his task.

'Where have you been?' Gerda testily demanded; not enquiring after her husband.

'I went to check the lines!' Bard replied; his tone indignant as Gerda stripped off her own coat on her way to the stove.

'You'll get no fish putting your nets at the end of the dock,' she said.

'I told him, ma'am Gerda,' Sigrun agreed.

'Don't you start!' Bard retorted; glaring at her as though she were the worst of traitors.

Sigrun folded her arms.

'Were there any fish?' she asked.

Bard scowled.

'No.'

'Told you.'

'Jump in the lake, Sig!'

'Already done it once, genius. You jump in the lake!'

'Sigrun!' Gerda called pointedly over her shoulder, 'come and watch this porridge so it doesn't burn.'

Sigrun carefully stirred the porridge as ma'am Gerda put the bread out onto the table. The mixture was thick and appetising, and though Sigrun knew that Bard's family was marginally richer than she was (but then everyone in Laketown was richer than she was), she was far from being so sheltered as to think that this was the kind of breakfast they ate every day.

They could barely afford to share with her, but they shared with her anyway.

Her twin scourges of gratitude and shame consumed her as she helped ma'am Gerda spoon the porridge into bowls, and when they sat down to breakfast, she found herself wolfing down her food like a starving man, though it burned her tongue, scorched her throat and stuck a needle in her pride. She felt ashamed to be hungry; ashamed to be taking someone else's food. Ma'am Gerda and Bard, meanwhile, politely pretended not to notice; twin sets of matching grey eyes meeting and averting from each other across the table.

'Are you taking your da's boat out today?' Bard asked; surreptitiously slipping more bread onto her plate.

'Maybe,' Sigrun replied; pointedly ignoring it; 'Hamar keeps chasing after me; telling me women aren't allowed to keep boats.'

'As if he'd know the difference between a woman and a boat,' Bard snorted.

'Not surprising when his own da the Master can't even tell the difference between less and more;' Sigrun added, 'if he could, he might put the price of bread down instead of up.'

'Poor Hamar,' Bard theatrically sighed, 'he fancies you so; he'll do anything to get your attention.'

'He does not!' Sigrun exclaimed.

Bard pursed his lips and proceeded to make loud kissing noises as the anger that was always boiling in Sigrun's heart begin to burst free.

'Bard, please,' Gerda said; giving her son a withered look.

'No, please, ma'am Gerda,' Sigrun replied in a sweetly obliging voice, 'he's just practicing for the day he manages to ask Lena Whitehands for her hand.'

Bard blushed to the roots of his hair and fixed his eyes on his porridge.

'I am not,' he mumbled.

"I wonder if Lena is coming to the assembly this week," Sigrun imitated; knowing she was being cruel, but unable to stop herself, "I wonder where Lena is right now; I wonder if Lena will wear white today – "

'I wonder how absurd you'll look with your hair covered in one of those stupid doilies that married women wear on their heads!' Bard retaliated; grinning as he clapped his hand to his forehead in mock revelation; 'no, wait! You'll need several of those as protection so that one of you and Hamar's seventeen children doesn't pull your hair out –'

'Seventeen?' Sigrun shrieked; dimly conscious of ma'am Gerda burying her face in her hands.

'Seventeen pitter-patters of seventeen pairs of little feet as seventeen little Hamars run screaming around the place while you embroider cushions and wear petticoats –'

'Seventeen little Lenas turning up their seventeen little noses when you walk into the parlour smelling of fish –'

'What's wrong with smelling of fish?'

'– and allowing you to walk them home occasionally –'

'– and what's a parlour?'

'– but only when they need help carrying their groceries!'

'What did you say?'

'YOU TWO!' ma'am Gerda roared.

The noise died at once. Sigrun could feel her cheeks burning, both with anger and embarrassment. On the other side of the table, she could discern the small, unmistakeable traces of hurt on Bard's face, along with the same anger and embarrassment that she was feeling; and the sight smothered both of them at once, replacing them with a plodding, miserable guilt that made her feel sick to her stomach.

Sigrun cursed herself. She shouldn't have mentioned the stupid walking home.

True, she fought with Bard a lot; and got, and expected, the same in return: enjoyed it, even, or she wouldn't do it so often. One thing she didn't do often, however, was hurt him. That, she didn't enjoy.

'I'm sorry, Bard,' Sigrun said.

Bard took a moment to reply.

'Does she really only let me walk her home because she can't carry her own groceries?'

'No. I just made it up to be nasty.'

'Bard, where's your father?' ma'am Gerda interjected; clearly eager to change the subject.

'He said he was going to Golden Dragon,' Bard replied; clearly still crestfallen.

Sigrun stared at him in despair.

'I maintain that that place should be renamed,' Gerda was remarking, 'it's not decent.'

'I might take the boat out today after all,' Sigrun declared.

Her declaration had the desired effect as both ma'am Gerda and Bard forgot about the present conversation and looked at her with a combination of worry and exasperation.

'After a rain, when there's mist?' Gerda asked her; clearly unaware that she worked in such conditions for half the year; 'is that wise?'

'The dragon won't come today,' Sigrun confidently stated, 'touchwood.'

'Touchwood,' Bard and Greda echoed; each slamming one hand onto the table.

'I still don't think you should go,' Gerda continued; 'best not to tempt fate.'

'If Smaug takes me like he took my ma, it doesn't say much for his sense of variety,' Sigrun retorted, 'or his intelligence.'

'The only intelligence that beast knows about is the taste of blood,' Gerda replied, unimpressed by Sigrun's show of bravado; 'I'd tell you to take my husband with you, but he seems to have gone drinking even earlier than usual today.'

'I could go with her, ma,' Bard suggested.

'I don't think you'll be much use against a dragon, Bard.'

'And you think da will?'

Sigrun, suddenly furious, interrupted.

'Stop talking like I'm not here!' she cried.

There was an instant silence. Sigrun got rapidly to her feet; wincing as her chair scraped noisily against the floorboards.

'The boat needs taking out; I will take it out;' she firmly declared; trying not to shout; 'and I'll do it alone.'

'Alone?' Bard repeated in amazement, 'what do you expect me to do all day?'

'Use your imagination,' Sigrun testily suggested.

She bowed her head; suddenly embarrassed.

'Thank you for breakfast; excuse me,' she mumbled, and raced for the door; pausing only to rip her coat off the hook and to ignore both of them as they called after her.

Outside, the air was freezing. Sigrun, suddenly feeling exhausted, paused, and breathed it in; letting it extinguish whatever it was that had made her so angry for so little reason; sighing as fatigue took over, and made her dream of sleep. There were candles in windows and fires burning in the houses around her; and below her, the men responsible for clearing the ice lounged next to the canal eating soup; waiting for it to freeze again. The town was waking up. And all she wanted was to go back to bed.

She walked down to the wharf instead with iron in her heart no catch, no food, and she had only just hopped onto da's boat and brushed the snow off the tiller when a familiar pompous voice rang out from somewhere above her.

'And just what do you think you're doing?' it questioned.

Sigrun rolled her eyes, spun around and threw a look of utmost ridicule at where Hamar was standing on the causeway above her; a tall and thickset boy of seventeen dressed in a preposterous set of furs that made him seem five times his actual size.

'This,' Sigrun declaimed,'is called a boat. I take it you don't see many of them up at the Master's house.'

'Are you going somewhere?' Hamar imperiously demanded.

Sigrun shrugged.

'I'm going to catch some fish.'

'Women aren't allowed to catch fish or keep barges,' Hamar stammered; his words falling over each other in his eagerness to get them out; 'I checked it. In the law books.'

'Are women allowed to starve?' Sigrun coolly enquired, 'is that in the law books?'

Hamar couldn't have looked more scandalised had she pinched his nose. Clearly other people were more tolerant of the fact that nothing he said ever made any sense.

'No need to take that line with me, Sigrun,' he said; his tone gaining in severity; 'it was you who refused our hospitality, not we who refused to give it.'

Sigrun laughed bitterly.

'I've tasted your charity once before; I was not eager to repeat the experience.'

'Food is food,' Hamar persisted in remarking, 'and it was hospitality, not charity.'

'You're half-right,' Sigrun testily acquiesced, 'taking your da's coin and being expected to kiss his arse for it: that would be charity. Accepting coin from the only man in town who can afford to buy bread– the decent kind, anyway – that would just be demeaning. I'd sooner catch my own fish.'

She cast off; hoping that would shut him up.

It didn't.

'Your attitude's been noticed,' Hamar absurdly declared; proudly puffing his chest out; 'oh yes, it's been noticed!'

'Does your da spend a lot of time noticing twelve-year-old girls?' Sigrun asked; letting the current take the boat out into the canal.

Hamar remained where he was; still looking haughty and disapproving. Sigrun clapped one hand over her mouth and pointed with mock hysteria at a point directly above his shoulder.

'Dragon!'

Hamar let out an undignified shriek, jumped a good three feet in the air and spun his considerable girth around with a speed that would have made a wood elf proud; only to lose his balance and fall hard on his rump into the snow.

Sigrun laughed all the way down the canal; suddenly in a much better, if oddly-reflective mood as she steered the boat out onto the Lake. The events of the morning, up to and including her inauspicious meeting with the Master's son, had convinced her that a part of her, at least, took pleasure in humiliating people; and that in future, this vice should only be indulged when dealing with stupid people.

Out on the lake still shrouded in mist, her laughter disappeared. She had spent the entire night in the mist – even if it was only inside her own head – but even were it not the case, she would still have winced at every sound; would still have cast her nets as quietly as she could. The mist had an uncanny ability to silence people; to make sound seem less: distant, far away.

Today was different. Today was not the natural creation of silence. The night had been too long; her dreams too much like memory. She closed her eyes, and her mother was in front of her again; smiling at her as she watched the dragon come; her features intermingled with Bard's; her wakingness making them two people, when in the dream they had been one.

Sigrun shuddered; suddenly not wanting to be here.

You have to be here. Grow up.

She steered the boat deeper into the mist. The air became so thick with it that she could hardly see the end of the boat. Moisture that she knew was not dew began to bead on her brow, and her heart began to pound so loudly that she could hear nothing else above the sound of her fear.

'Sig? Is that you?'

Sigrun's mind recognised the voice at the same time that her heart leapt into her throat at its alarming proximity. She flung her full weight against the tiller and pulled with all her might; dodging the other, slightly larger vessel that appeared out of nowhere and missed her hull by inches as it came alongside.

'Have you lost your mind?' Sigrun shouted; 'what if you'd hit me?'

'I came to apologise for this morning,' Bard replied; ignoring her as he pulled his hood off; 'you apologised to me, but I never got round to apologising to you.'

'Can you try and avoid killing me next time?'

'Don't be so ridiculous, Sig; you know I wouldn't have hit you.'

'That's the worst apology I've ever heard.'

Bard bit his lip, tried to say something, swallowed it, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

'Sorry I said you'd have seventeen children. And wear doilies and things, and petticoats on your head.'

Sigrun felt herself blushing.

'Sorry I said you smelt of fish.'

Bard smiled.

'It's only half an insult, Sig. You smell of fish too.'

A beat sounded from beneath the water. Soft at first, then louder, and harder; as though a drum were being pounded upon within its depths. Sigrun lunged frantically for the side of the boat as it began to rock suddenly and violently upon the Lake; as it might in the most dreadful of storms: to rock, and then to crash. In the boat opposite, Bard's feet were slipping on the wet surface of the deck as he too seized hold of the side; and the wind was beginning to howl and scream as the waves grew higher and higher; as though a hurricane had come down from the Mountain to call up walls of water on the Lake and create a new city of drowned people and smashed wreckage. There was a force in the air and a force in the water; a kind of terrible harmony between them: a groaning of a bellows in a place above their heads, and a tempest that answered it; rhythmically, in time.

Bard and Sigrun looked at each other as they held on; their knuckles white, their stomachs roiling with nausea; their gaze tearing as a thunderous, inhuman roar rent the sky above their heads; turning their eyes upwards to the shadow, and the mist.