A/N: All righty. So, this part is actually comprised mostly of flashback (although there is some present day, and it's all of the Klaus/Klaroline variety), and I want to make a few notes on the flashback, because research was a real bitch for this section.
To your great surprise, TVD fucked Viking mythology with no lube over a table, and didn't even take it to dinner first. This has presented a LOT of difficulties in trying to maintain historical accuracy while not throwing all canon out the window and just starting the fuck over. Let's first establish that there were no Viking settlements in what is presently known as Virginia. The only archaeological evidence of North American Viking settlements was found at the tip of Newfoundland. What I have done, since there was no actual settlement for me to research, is to instead base the Originals' society on Icelandic society, since the Icelandic sagas are some of our most thorough resources in terms of what we know of Viking culture. This is also why you'll see references to the Originals owning horses, when horses were not actually brought to North America until about 500 years later, because...basically I tiptoe around all reference to them actually living in America, WHEN THEY WOULDN'T HAVE GOD WHY DIDN'T THEY LET ME DO ALL THE RESEARCH FOR THE FLASHBACKS FROM THE BEGINNING IT WOULD HAVE RESULTED IN A LOT LESS HEADACHES FOR THIS SECTION.
This first section opens with a poem of sorts; it is written as a nod to the sagas, and kind of cops the feel (or attempts to) of the Poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poetry that deals with the myths of origin. It is essentially Klaus' fantasy of how his first raid goes, which does not, of course, align with reality. Later a speech is made at a feast by a poet which tells of the origins of a war between the two races of Viking gods; this is an actual myth I just reworked in my own words. I did not make it up.
I'll stop yammering for now; I may, at the end of this, clarify some of my research choices in another author's note if I think anything needs to be expanded upon. Just be aware that this flashback is not about early North American history; the vast majority of my research was centered on Icelandic culture of the time in order to present a much more accurate representation of Viking culture then what you will see in the show's actual flashbacks. I have done my best to fuse historical accuracy with canon, trying to take as little liberties as possible with either; I hope it's a decent effort.
1002 A.D., Sussex
1. Silence might I ask from all man, and all droning bee,
From all beast, and Hel's mighty shades;
Thou wilt breathe softly, and still the child at your breast, that I might recall those old red tales of the sea.
2. Came he on a high wind from the west,
The dragon fierce on his prow, and the planks wet with Ægir's proud spray;
Speak not I of giants nor tricksters,
Nor the Ymir of sandless yore.
3. But merely a man,
Third son of Mikael;
Had he the fairest head, and manly breast
And cheeks of pink youth.
4. Full upon his sails did the sea giant breathe,
Frosted morning did creak on the mast, and so herald his coming;
The splash of the oar
And many a wink of the hilt's great eye as the sun did gaze upon battle axe and sword pommel.
5. Hear ye his progress,
To your far foreign shore?
Where the wind dare not whisper in awe, and the monks lay down their vaunted scripts,
And let fall their learned pen.
6. Hear ye the sea giant,
Huddled in his cold bones, in the kingdom that Bur's sons did carve;
When after they plied that cold clay of mid-earth flatlands.
He gnashes his teeth.
7. High leap the waves,
And the dragon foams from his wooden teeth, while beneath his crest the men froth.
Great death they smell today, with swords yet naked of alien blood,
Hear ye, O shivering England, their thunderous unrest?
8. Do you now see from the mists,
The first jagged tooth and know in your spine
The final stitch of one Valkyrie's cold defeat, and the other's hot victory;
Do you now see the fairest head and whisper, O England, of Death's manly artifice?
9. Hear ye the first soft touch of an alien plank upon your shore's white breast,
And the first battle axe freed in lust?
Hear ye the sea giant give his final mighty push,
That he might not live in fear.
10. And so touched the first step of the third son of Mikael on the shore's white breast,
And the sun polished his sword;
And great joy did free their spears;
And thus dies the sea giant's breath, and defeats the sail.
11. The dragon warms his teeth in the sun,
And waits with oars skyward for his faithful crew.
"Save us, oh Lord who has heard us men of Christ worship each day at his feet," spake the frightened monks;
What fair Devil have you sent to test our conviction?
12. "We do not worship with hearts of lead, that they might soften once upon the fire," spake the monks,
And with manly fortitude did they reclaim their pens,
And bend their heads once more to Christ's pedestal.
Breathe they but shallowly, for the first step has become the thirteenth, and the sword has tasted man, and boasts of it still at the tip.
13. Has the third son of Mikael at his breast,
A wooden horse on a cord, badly carved.
Spake he to a man who once asked him whence its origin: "A gift from my sister have I, that I might swift overtake all my foes and fly home to her arms."
So hath he a heart, the third son of Mikael?
14. Spake one whispered myth, of a child,
He did carry on his shoulders as one might bear his own son;
A younger brother,
Upon whom he practices his mercy.
15. But foreign man with his ripe treasures,
Nurses his hope in vain.
Behind him spreads his army, and the mist flees their tandem steps for Scotland's quiet promontories.
High they thrust their spears, that the Gods might see and remember.
16. Spake the third son of Mikael: "Fram! Fram! Kristmenn, krossmenn! Be not afraid!" to the monks,
Who present their robes as shields,
And clutch their feeble cross.
"Have no fear," spake the third son of Mikael, whose Father once said to him the same.
17. Goes the story,
His father did raise hand and pommel to the cheeks of pink youth,
And with rage in his breast blacken both eyes, and roust the infant teeth.
And the son awaited his fourteenth year, when the shoulders did swell with manly strength, and the legs measure high as a colt's.
18. Goes the story,
Into his father's mead he crumpled his mother's herbs,
And weak with poison,
Mikael, son of Bjarke, knelt in dishonor, with the black blood running through his teeth.
19. The skin of his tormentor,
He wears folded close to his heart,
As another man might position his icons of faith.
Hear ye, O England, of this ruthless fratricide, and cast at last your God at fleeing feet?
20. Stretch long the shadows,
And burn long upon the dragon does the sun.
Hear ye the flames of war, and smell the fat of books,
Cooking in their bindings?
21. Hear ye the cries of faithful men,
Who hath waited too long;
And kneel now not in obeisance.
Headless, they sway for a moment.
22. Or, fired with victory thirst,
Their conquerors rip their robes from pale nakedness,
And spill their warm sin between clenched cheeks.
O, Christ, hath thee no hand to lift?
23. Hath Christ,
Met his match?
He strides like a god in the ashes of his first planetary experimentations-
But oh, the blood, Father, the blood- he tastes it between his teeth-
"Get up, boy," Father snarls, and jerks him back to his feet. "You shame me, you little coward."
He returns home a bit broader through the shoulders.
What must he look like, to the little hanger-on who must surely wait with bated breath in the doorway of the house, who has kept his vigil as any worshiper before his altar?
His cheeks have taken that beating of the sea, and to the lice has the fledgling beard been sacrificed, the cloak lies in its snow of fitful salt, the hair has surrendered its gloss to the same crust-
And oh, little brother, his hands.
He scrubbed them to the elbow, and still what right has he to soothe the little head to sleep?
Autumn has crinkled the leaves, and with her first tentative frost killed the tenderest crops.
Father has stopped to speak with Knud, whose horse stretches out a tentative lip to snatch his tunic, but there's the door, just ahead of him, past the stables, open as he suspected, and the tiny foot doodling its post-chore boredom, when the thralls have shifted what little burden Mother has expected him to bear to their own weary shoulders.
He stops.
Mother has let Kol's hair grow, and shaved the sides and front manageable, the back wavy from the braids he no doubt yanked soon as Bekah turned her back.
He smiles.
There's such a dawning in the breast of a brother.
Oh brother, little brother, he thinks, if you had seen this great hero which your young eyes have whittled from spineless truth.
"Nik Nik Nik!" Kol roars when he looks up, and darts out of the doorway, his hair flapping about behind him.
He has to shoot out his arms to catch him, for Kol never leaves any sort of dignity to a favorite unprepared, and the little body is warm with sun, and a little heavier than he remembers, the feet just as dexterous as Kol scrambles right up his chest and seats himself on the slightly broadened shoulders, and for a moment, he shuts his eyes.
He presses his tears into the dirty ankle.
Little brother, little brother-
Oh, Kol.
He's sorry for all the sagas that will molder unwritten in your head, to your fond memories that have conjured a champion far larger than his truth.
You will ask him, was he very brave?
And did he make Father happy, and will great poets sing his name, and down through each festival will it be handed, swelling with the retelling of it?
He kisses the dirty ankle, and bounces Kol on his shoulders as he blinks himself back to manhood. "Where are your shoes?"
"I took them off," Kol tells him helpfully.
"I can see that. Where did you happen to put them? Mother's going to stitch you into them, you know."
"Bekah likes one of the thralls."
"Does she now?"
"His name's Harald."
"And does Harald know where your shoes are?" he asks with a smile, giving another bounce as he hooks his hands round Kol's ankles.
"I made you a horse!" Kol declares, and thrusts a rude chunk of wood under his nose.
"It's wonderful, Kol. But I already have one from Bekah. Remember?" He slips it out from beneath his tunic. "She made it for me before I went away."
"This one's better."
"Is it now?" He begins to walk toward the stables, where he can hear Bekah prattling away at someone who has neither her volume nor her volubility. "How so?"
"It's Sleipnir! Bekah's horse has only four legs. This way you can come back to us even faster!" Kol grabs a handful of his hair.
"I'll tell you what, Kol. How about I wear them both? Then they won't be lonely." He nudges open the door to the stable, carefully, so he doesn't jostle the boy on his shoulders.
"But if you put them side by side, won't they make a baby?" He can hear the frown in Kol's voice. "Mother said that's how I was made. She and Father were in the same bed, and then there was a baby."
He tries not to laugh. "I'll keep a close eye on them," he promises solemnly, and then Bekah shrieks, "Nik!" and flies at him from round the corner, and suddenly she's got him by the legs, her face smashed into his sternum, the little flowers loosely braided into her hair scattering round his feet.
"All right, then, give me a kiss," he tells her, and lifts her one-armed by the waist to his cheek, where she gives him several enthusiastic pecks, swatting at Kol, who gives her a kick to the head.
"Nik, he just kicked me!" she snaps, and then he's suddenly wrestling her for Kol's ankles as she tries to tumble their brother right off his shoulders.
"Get off him, Kol! Where are your shoes?" she demands.
"I'm going to tell Mother about Harald!"
"You will not!"
"I will too!" He lands another kick.
Bekah bites his ankle.
There is a general flurry, he has to deflect a knee from his groin, the brooch at his throat snaps, the cloak plummets, Bekah has got her legs somehow round his waist, her arms wrap Kol at the knees, he feels her feet kick themselves a hold on either hip bone-
"Stop," he tells them patiently, and peels her from around him.
Kol he takes from his shoulders.
He sets them down side by side, and squats to give them this intimacy of eye to eye, to take them into his confidence as he gathers his cloak from the dust, and taps them each on the nose. "What do we say to one another?"
"I'm not apologizing," Rebekah says crisply, and sticks her nose in the air.
Kol slaps her and runs shrieking out into the afternoon, Bekah only a step behind him, the brooch she has rescued from the dust arcing a near miss past Kol's head.
He follows them slowly back to the house, cloak draped over his shoulder.
And Mother-
Mother kisses him regardless of whatever it is Father has said, and stands for a moment with the love in her eyes, her hands upon the shoulders she has to stretch to reach, as though he is a man after all, and when he has taken a moment to reassure himself, Father is not in the house, Elijah and Finn are yet away, he says, "Mother," with that horrible choking in his voice, and shivers into her touch.
"Mother, Mother, Mother," he sobs, for all the men who are never to say it again.
Oh, he wanted you so horribly, through all of it.
He lets Bekah and Kol both share the bench with him that night, and because the wind tears at the thatching with divine fury, they press together the cheeks which so easily forget those little offenses of childhood, and beg a few of Loki's most mischievous adventures from him.
He watches them sleep, the lashes long on Kol's cheek, and the fist still a little fat with youth balled beneath her chin.
Kol's hair he smoothes, Bekah's skirt he resettles.
There is a new shifting within him, he is opened a bit more, his heart feels all the raw sting of first love, into the new sands of the world he is thrust naked, that he might feel every ray, and crush beneath his heel each barbed weed.
Every time, the little beasts.
And so he has tasted first death, and still he knows-
Mother's love will have to be enough.
But Father.
He did everything you asked.
Of course he flagged for a moment, and sank on failing knees into your hands, but did you not need to be forged, Father, did you open your mouth to welcome first blood, to feel it warm upon your teeth, and wet in your beard, did you not perhaps think to yourself, but he's a man, he's a man, and picture his mother, his poor mother, who will weave away her years in vain-
Did you not-
Did you not, in the belly of you, feel the first clop of the axe echo far deeper, and understand, oh, the reaches of death?
And the books-
Because a man earns something not at the point of his sword but rather at the edge of his pen, does it entitle the sword, does it invite man with his salt beard and his cloak with the foreign spring still in it, and say to him, claim what you have not earned, for a spear is that final arbitrator of those material treasures of Man?
But of course, these are not the ruminations of warriors.
And that he could muse such a thing aloud to Kol, who stands beside him in the grass, waiting for that spark of divinity which is to be passed from elder to lesser.
By the touch of his sword arm does he impart his bravery, and his skills of great ballads, he says somberly, and he wants to cry.
But he playfully wiggles the head beneath his hand, and adjusts the grip on the shaft, and with a gentle touch to Kol's forearm, positions the boy's arm so that he's the spear cocked at just the right angle.
Kol shows great aptitude for the spear, and though his limbs are yet sticks, he tumbles the other village boys about with not two defeats in twelve, and with each spurt of maturity in the legs and through the shoulders, he feels those fingers ease just that much more from round his chest, for certainly, oh Gods surely, the boy will grow up not like his third eldest brother, to whom love must be rationed, that he might not liquefy altogether as any soft thing will weaken further.
You who are not to be loved by anything which doesn't yet know better understand: someday the boy will pass out of his hands, with the stars gone from his eyes.
Perhaps he will think with the gentle tolerance of that great distance between favored and shunned oh, he threw well enough, my brother Nik, and guided faithfully my hand, but he ought to have been birthed into a skirt, and mislabeled as he was by the Gods, he grew up lesser than either.
He repositions the arm, and cocks the spear just so till Kol's arm is limp with it, and then on pretense of one of Kol's favorite games, he organizes sprints through the trees, with the boy thundering on ahead of him just as fast as he can go.
Perhaps Father can love the pupil if he cannot love the mentor.
And if just a hint of some affection might turn its yet blind eye to the teacher whose arm is not so feeble, whose legs propel him on muscled thigh- if perhaps he might just see-
Oh, Father.
Mother kisses him tenderly when there aren't eyes to judge.
Elijah and Finn return from their expedition to Greenland with ice in their beards.
Elijah's is braided magnificently, Finn is resplendent in his necklaces and arm rings-
Father beams at them both.
Kol and Bekah must stroke the fine beard, and exclaim over the bright ornaments, and Elijah of course has not forgotten him in this press of younger siblings, he looks up with a smile, and he asks, "How was your first raid, Niklaus?"
"Believe me, son, he has nothing worthy to speak of," Father answers for him, and begins to talk of those house finances to which he is not privy, ushering the two of them in through the door.
Kol comes looking for him in the stables a few moments later, looking particularly solemn beneath his loose hair. "Nik, are you sad?"
He rubs the little triangle of soft white at the end of Balder's muzzle, and looks up with a smile for the poor boy, who must not yet have all his tender little illusions shattered. "No, no. I only came out for a visit; I haven't been to see Balder here all day."
"I won't tell Father."
He rubs a bit lower on the nose, so the snuffling nostrils may have a sniff at him, and satisfy their curiosity. "Kol, go back to the house."
"Do you want me to put something in Father's boots? I have a snake."
There is a laugh which escapes so helplessly, as he looks down upon this little terror with the unkempt hair, and the rumpled tunic, and the devotion bright as any which makes sacrifices of men and their beasts.
If men have need of wives, it is because they don't have brothers such as this, to warm their hearts with this pure and complete love.
He is as they say, little brother, weak not in his knotted thighs, or the shoulders muscled as any man's, but beneath his breast where must he house a lion and instead nurtures a mouse.
He lost his courage and his bread all in one foul gush, beside his first man who was taken not by his own hand, which ceased to feel, and grew nerveless as the spear shaft in his fingers, and must be assisted by the great and fearless Mikael, who will not have a daughter for a son, boy- how clearly he pictures that still, the blood in the long fair hair which he in the privacy of his own pre-slumber mist likens to his own, and with such longing in his breast searches for what other similarities must surely exist; the knotted hand round his own, and the broad back with its timely interjection blocking from the other raiders this unsurprising shame-
There are great heroes whose immortality shall outlast his sons' sons.
Perhaps they shall even whisper of this Kol, son of Mikael, who gutted Paris and who ruled London, who had, it's believed, a third eldest brother whose name vanished into his grave.
Perhaps you will stand surveying your conquests, and remember him anyway, an earnestness like this, a devotion like this-
You won't let go of him?
When the sheen of youth has fallen from your eyes, and he glows no longer, when you stand eye to eye with this deity of your boyhood-
You won't-
You wouldn't love him like Mother, just when it's appropriate, and there isn't a soul to witness such an embarrassment?
He puts out his hand.
Kol steps under it, and leans into the stroke, and he feels under his fingertips such fine childish strands, oh brother, brother, don't stretch your bones another inch-
He lifts the boy by the front of his tunic for a kiss. "Don't let him catch you at it," he says, and leans his forehead against Kol's, so for a moment they can share their conspiratorial smiles, with the breath warm between them, and the dust of the stables in his brother's long lashes.
And so it goes.
Elijah has a touch of caution, Father has surely told him of the raid, he thinks as he eyes this new distance between them, but Kol has still his youth as a shield, and he wants to be brought along, he wishes to know what are they doing, how is he to be just like them, may he wear Nik's best cap, and heft Elijah's axe as the great steed Bekah carries him to victory swift as Sleipnir himself-
"I don't play horses," she says crisply, and throws Kol off her back when he leaps onto it with the cap on his head, and the axe missing from his hand.
"Kol, you carry your sister. It will bring the strength that much swifter to your shoulders," Elijah suggests, and suddenly Bekah is keen indeed on the game, and hitches up her skirt to keep her legs free of it as she clambers onto Kol.
A fight breaks out over the cap.
Kol has divested himself of Bekah, and pulled the ear flaps out to either side, and stands sticking his tongue out at her, so that his mockery distracts for that vital second his reflexes, and he takes her slap square across the face.
He bursts into tears.
"Men do not weep like maidens," Elijah reminds him, and a wind-up of his arm, and Kol cracks Bekah just as smartly across the nose.
"Nik!" she howls. "You horrid little beast! I'm going to drown you in the pond!" she sobs, flinging off her kerchief and trying to throttle him with it.
But a revolution of the clearing up ahead, three solid whacks to Kol's head, a pinch of her bum, one particularly livid bite mark on his cheek, and they are friends once more.
She has a flower Kol has picked for her threaded into her hair.
He lets her mother the blood off his cheek with her kerchief.
After days such as these, he tucks them beneath their sheepskins, and if Father is not yet home, gives them their bit of story, kisses the slumbering eyelids, watches them sleep till he is heavy-lidded himself, and when Father is safely in his bed closet with Mother, takes out his tablet from beneath the benches where he has hidden it among Mother's weavings, and sets to work with his stylus.
On many such nights, he can hear their pleasure sighs from beneath the bedclothes, Mother's soft gasps, the grunting triumph of Father taking whatever it is men get from women they have known, and soon after Mother is sick with the usual maternal affliction.
Bekah hopes for a sister, not quite so pretty as she, of course, but something she can dress up as a doll and teach to do all her weaving for her, Kol wants to know if Mother might not birth a Sleipnir herself this time, Father looks right at him and says his next sacrifice shall be to Frey, for a real son this time, who might not cringe from his duties as though he's smooth between his legs.
But he is used to your barbs, Father, and Elijah has warmed to him once more, there is between him and you that fortification of brother and brother, he will square his shoulders, you will look upon his new beard, there will come, at last, a turning point, ah Niklaus, what definition in your arms, see how long your spear flies-
And warm in his certainty of Elijah's fondness, he swells, just for a moment.
Father is only a man, you know.
What is a man- blood, bone, a belly of ale, that old white scar upon the waist that proves he may be scored, that he is no God however he may carry himself- you are just one. Frail. Mortal, Father-
Autumn has graced them with mild afternoons, and the village youths are at their athletics long into the evening.
He stands watching them for a moment, smiling at their jests, and deep down feeling that pang which reminds him there is no man complete without friend.
When one of the fairer ones glances his way, Father slaps him.
"You'd be on bottom, boy, and isn't that all I need, tale of some village youth using you making the rounds of the next feast."
For a moment, he hangs his head.
There is the pulse in his throat, the hot ache in his cheek, that distress of the belly which he sometimes feels when Father has pushed him hardest, and with the laugh harsh in his throat snatched from him that frail, frail hope of encouragement- he has thrown so well, and if not first in the youths' latest run, still he is barely a step behind, he hasn't failed, Father, if you could perhaps call out "Klaus" rather than "boy" he must surely push himself that final step more, he must certainly strive all the harder for your pride rather than your ire-
"Don't sulk, boy," Father says, and lifts his hand again.
He catches it by the wrist.
For a moment, they look at one another.
Mikael, he thinks for a moment, Mikael, not Father, and he is just a man, the strength courses through him, he has to his sword's name a thousand heroic boasts, but the bones in his wrists are brittle as any man's, he could with the grip he has trained on a thousand stones crush it, just a flex of his fingers, Father, Mikael, boy, how do you like it, to be made to beg, to kneel before him with the pain bright in your eyes and wet on your cheeks- what does helplessness feel like, Mikael- he can in the stuttering beat of your heart make it out, and in the sudden flash which suddenly makes of your great conqueror's eyes something fallible, squirming, human-
Elijah touches his shoulder.
Brother, don't bring him round, do not say to him in your most soothing voice, Niklaus, come brother, if he could but squeeze, Elijah-
Wouldn't it-
Wouldn't it make him feel better?
To know all man sometimes flags, he is not alone, cowardice is merely a human affliction and not the singular yoke to be born by one stammering boy?
"Klaus," Elijah says softly.
To his own side you were always supposed to stand, brother, he thinks, and he lets go of Father's wrist.
"Of course I should have guessed you wouldn't have had the manhood to follow through," Father tells him, and walks off toward the stables.
Elijah stares at him a moment longer, and then turns for the house.
He stands with his burning cheeks, and for a while longer watches the boys from the outskirts of their games.
Finn finds himself in love, and has made himself scarce round the house.
Elijah rouses him at dawn most mornings to track the deer and remove him safely from that woman's domain of food and childcare in which he sometimes lends a hand, when Father is not home, and Bekah and Kol are restless at his absence.
He slips inside the house one afternoon to find Bekah swaddling Kol like an infant, and in her lap cradling every inch she can contain with her smaller frame.
"I'm a baby," Kol tells him, wiggling the toes poking out the end of the sheepskin. "But also a man."
"You're not a man," Bekah corrects him. "You're my baby. And now I'm going to nurse you."
"But you don't have what Mother has."
"I do too."
"Girls don't get those till they're older, isn't that right, Nik? Bekah doesn't have any twattles."
"A twattle is something on a turkey, you idiot."
"It's a wattle, Bekah, love," he corrects her, setting his bow on the bench beside them.
Kol tries to pick it up.
Rebekah slaps his hand. "Babies cannot do archery." She undoes the brooch at either shoulder strap on her dress. "Here, I'm going to nurse you now. You must drink or you're going to die. And then Hel will come and get you and I won't have anyone to play with anymore."
"Nik, can we go hunting?" Kol asks, wriggling on Bekah's lap.
"I was just out," he says, ruffling the boy's hair affectionately.
"But why did you go without me?" There's such plaintiveness in the question that he sits down on the bench beside Bekah, one leg to either side of it, and motions for her to pass Kol over.
"I'm playing with him, Nik."
"Give him here, Bekah, there's a good girl," he says, and takes Kol gently off her lap. "I'll make you a carving later, all right?"
"Will it be better than the last one you made Kol?"
He dimples playfully at her. "Of course." And into the boy's ear: "Don't worry about it. I'll make you another one as well, just as good as Bekah's."
Kol sits up on his lap, still wrapped in the sheepskin. "So why did you go with Elijah and not me, Nik?"
He kisses the top of the boy's head, and puts his arms round him while Bekah unclasps the brooch on her shift. "Bekah, I appreciate your dedication, but let's put the dress back, hmm?" He bounces Kol on his knee. "Elijah and I were after a bear this morning, Kol. You're not big enough to accompany us on those hunts yet."
"But every time Elijah comes home, you spend all your time with him. You don't like me anymore."
"Oh, shh. Let's not be dramatic." He tweaks Kol's ear. "When you're older, you can come with us, and you'll never feel left out again. All right?"
He thinks it over for a moment, wrinkling his brow very seriously. "All right. Bekah kissed Harald."
"Kol!" she shrieks. "I did not!"
"Ah, you didn't?" he asks her, widening his eyes. "With cheeks like that? Someone's telling a fib, aren't they?" He smoothes his thumb over one of her red little cheeks. "Be at peace, Bekah. As long as Harald hasn't kissed you back."
"What will you do to him, Nik? If he's kissed Bekah back?"
He unwinds Kol from the sheepskin without answering, and swings him over the side of the bench. "Bekah, give his hair a good combing, would you? He'll need to be presentable for the feast tonight."
"I don't like feasts," Bekah informs him, clasping her brooches once more. "Everyone has funny breath." She straightens the front of her dress. "I don't like your beard either, Nik. It's ugly."
"Is it now?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to have one just like it," Kol interrupts. "In just a year or so, Nik, right? I'll surely have a beard in a year."
"That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Here, let's see what you look like with one right now," he says, and bends down to pull his hair together in front of Kol's chin, so there's a long tuft of blonde for them all to spin and readjust while Kol assumes his most mannish pose and tugs thoughtfully at it.
"Fetch me my mead, woman," he tells Bekah.
"I won't fetch you anything, you little scab."
"We're playing. Now I'm the husband, and you're the wife."
"You ought to be careful how you speak to a wife, Kol, depending upon which one you get."
"Well, I'm going to marry Bekah, aren't I, Nik?"
"Why would you marry Bekah, Kol?"
"Because I don't want to marry anyone else."
He smiles and flips his hair back over his shoulders. "I imagine you'll probably change your mind one day. There will always come a girl."
"One he likes better than me?" Bekah demands, and oh, the suffering in her little face.
"Nope, nope," Kol says, shaking his head.
He smiles down at them both, and if he is to be remembered for anything in this short ignominy of human life which he is enduring rather than living, he loved them so dearly.
When half the village is reeling with drink, and Father has forgotten him somewhere in his tenth mug, he sneaks away into the woods where he may put his head back on one of the flat stones broad as a man, and fill his heart to its content with stars.
He always wondered: what manner of magic holds them aloft? Are they distant peoples, gazing upon him with the same curiously cocked head? Or do the gods peer down through Yggdrasil's branches to watch these pale replications batter Midgard with their puny mortal concerns?
What must such an eternal unlife hold for creatures who never know a sickness, whose battles are but playful reenactments of human fragility? To know: tomorrow and tomorrow after that will I rise, and tremble the world before me?
One of the youths, he realizes, has followed him from the feast.
There is alcohol bright in his cheeks.
The beard is coming in patchily, though they must be of an age, but he's the shoulders of a man.
He feels a sudden tightening in his stomach.
He knows some of the other boys play at lovemaking amongst themselves, when they've no woman for the moment, or have for their manly friend developed that admiration a boy's natural curiosity likes to satisfy in all ways.
He has lain awake on his bench enough nights to know how these nighttime excursions end, in the soft pleasure breaths he hears from Mother and Father's closet.
"Hello," the boy says casually, and clambers up onto the rock beside him.
He shifts just slightly away from him, and folds his shaking hands on his stomach.
"Niklaus, yes?"
"Klaus," he corrects softly, and swallows.
The boy smells of ale, but his gray eyes are clear, and there is the soft scent of herbs from whatever mixture it is he has used to wash his hair, and it's not unpleasant at all, the warmth of this boy beside him in the dark, the soft breathing synced to his own, and the tightening in his gut which has crawled nervously down to his groin.
He recognizes the hair blonde as winter. "Alexander, right?"
"Yes. Is this what you do, then? Forgo the feasts for a lay in the woods?"
He opens his mouth, shuts it awkwardly. "Well, I wasn't- I mean, I didn't…I didn't come out here intending for- for…you know."
Alexander tilts his head back and laughs. "I didn't mean that. I meant you skip the drinking games, and you come out here instead to look at the stars?"
"I like it when it's quiet."
"Just as well, Klaus, my friend. There weren't any pretty ladies tonight," he says, and shifts a leg till they are touching at the knee, with that casualness of the unconscious gesture. "I think the most promising ones are wanting a few more years."
For a moment they lay in silence, it's quite easy, he thinks, with that little lift inside him Father likes to so often stifle, and the tension begins to ease from his stomach, he feels the softening of his cock, which that sweaty curiosity had stiffened, and loosens the hands on his stomach just slightly.
But if the boy is not here for those soft pleasure sighs, then could he- could he have followed him through these trees to extend that first warm olive branch of friendship? Does he touch the knees not in romantic intimacy, but simply-
Simply because he has watched, and thought to himself, here is a boy worth knowing? Here is a boy, here is a man, who must be so full of conversation, so full of love, that any family, friend, lover, might be honored to have?
He flinches a little when the hand touches his thigh.
There is a slow stroke of the thumb along the muscled inner thigh, and his stomach tightens once more.
He has wondered, under his sheepskin with his family snoring softly around him, what a woman's hand might feel like, wrapping the shaft of his cock when it hardens and he can only get it to lie down once more by grasping it with his own, and pumping till the heart nearly beats out of him and there is suddenly the warm gush across his fingers.
A woman's hand must be so soft, and her breasts will go all puckered at the nipples, as he saw once beneath the shifts of a few village girls bathing in the river. She will kiss him on the lips, and rub herself against him, and he will smoothly slide up over her hips the skirt and the shift underneath, and slip inside when he is hardest, and it will be wet, that he knows from the other boys' snickers, and if the girl likes it, she will scream and tighten so hard around him the gush of warmth will come in great spurts like he's never known from his own hand.
Alexander slides his thumb lower, feels the half-hard cock, pulls his hand back. "Have you ever had a woman?"
"No," he says thickly, turning his head so they are watching one another in the moonlight, their faces a mere few inches apart.
"Have you had a man?"
"No."
Alexander's hand is warm, from the cloak where he has kept it, or from his own surging blood, he isn't sure, but the fingers are hot, and they close round his own, and pull his numb hand into Alexander's lap, so that he can feel the hard cock through the thin linen. "Do you want one?"
"I don't- I don't know what to do."
"Touch it like you'd touch your own," Alexander says a little breathlessly, and loosens the drawstring on his trousers.
There is a thick patch of hair round his belly button, and another round his cock.
He hesitates for a moment, watching his hand move beneath Alexander's trousers, the fingers nervously skimming the warm skin, and then finally wrapping the base, where he most likes to squeeze.
He wonders if it will feel much differently, Alexander's large thick hand on his cock, not so different from his own, with the rough finger pads, and the big palm, but Alexander seems to like it, and pushes his hips up a little, his eyes half-shut, the breath rough in his nose.
There is a rhythm he himself most likes that he settles into now, a little clumsily at first, but it's no different from his own explorations, until Alexander turns his head, and gives him a wet kiss.
He isn't sure whether he likes it. Are the lips always so moist, do they all have that layer of slime, does the tongue push so insistently at the mouth, so that he must seal it up tighter?
"Open your mouth," Alexander whispers, and he hesitates for a moment before he obeys, and now the tongue is there once more, but it glides more smoothly this time, and he feels a strange jolt in his cock when it meets his own, and flicks along the edge.
He forgets his hand in the heat of this odd distraction, and Alexander pulls it out of his trousers.
The warm hands lower to his hips, and pull him closer, so he can feel, when Alexander turns onto his hip, both their cocks through the flimsy linen, pressed against one another, and the embarrassing spot of sticky warmth on the front of his own trousers that means he's close.
"Did you come?" Alexander asks, and does something to his neck with tongue and teeth that makes him gasp, and push himself forward into the hand that slides down between both layers of cloth, to raise goose bumps on his belly. "No." For a moment, his cock is fondled along the underside and at the tip of it, the piece of skin he must move to piss pulled aside, so Alexander can rub that smooth and sensitive head underneath with his thumb, and draw a hiss out between his teeth.
The backs of his eyelids are red when he squeezes his eyes shut, and the smooth glide of the thumb over the damp head, back down the throbbing underside curl his toes, and with a pop his back arches, he shudders a breath through his nose, oh Gods, Gods, he's going to spill already, isn't that the sort of thing men are ridiculed for-
But Alexander pulls his hand back in time, and they begin again that strange wet kissing of the mouths, the soft suction, that little shivery dancing of the tongues which he feels somehow in his belly, in his groin, and then Alexander pushes his tunic up over his hips, bunching it onto his chest, so his belly flinches away from the night, and he feels his drawstring unknotted, and the grainy scratch of the stone underneath him as his trousers are drawn down so that his cock springs free.
"You can kiss it, too," Alexander tells him, and he sits up on his elbows for a moment, blinking in confusion, and then the head bends to the tip of his cock, the tongue dips out to touch it, the lips close round it, his toes crack loudly when they spasm, and smoothly, with the tip of his tongue tasting the pulsing underside of his full cock, Alexander slides his head down till the head of his cock is enclosed by the throat.
The stars spin before his eyes, there is a hot pulse in his groin and a clench in his stomach, he has to grab a handful of the boy's hair, and arch his hips up into the warm mouth as the hot surge tightens for a moment in his balls, and then empties into Alexander's throat.
He cannot stop thinking of women since his excursion with Alexander, so that he has to hurry past them with his head down, that they might not see his embarrassed cheeks.
They must feel as Alexander's throat did, he thinks, spongy and damp, warm in a way a hand cannot possibly imitate, and his cock stands at such humiliating alertness when they pass him with the soft pink nipples somewhere underneath their dresses that he has to hold his quiver awkwardly in front of him all the way through the village.
One of the girls is milking a cow when he ventures into the stables one afternoon, and she looks up with a swipe of her arm over her fair forehead, and with a smile tells him sweetly, "Hello, Klaus."
He stands petrified for a moment, watching her work the teats.
Kol walks in with his cloak thrown proudly back from what will be his sword arm, his hair a little unruly, his smile just as sure as any youth with his first beard and his newly anointed spear. "Hello, fine lady," he tells her, and bows very neatly.
She stops milking to positively light up at him. "Hello, there! It's Kol, isn't it?"
Kol grips the hand twice as large as his own in his skinny fingers, and raises it to his lips, where it is kissed with such adult gravity and smoothness she is too charmed to laugh at him. "You remembered," he tells her, and winks.
She puts a hand to her chest and looks up from his brother to him with a delighted little giggle.
"This is my brother Nik," Kol says, and slaps him quite sharply across the ass. "He just went on his first raid, and slaughtered a great many men. He has a very large thing. My thing is going to be just as big one day."
"Kol!" he stammers out after a moment of horrified silence in which he is stricken dumb, all of him shut up upon itself, the throat, tongue, lips set as though they have been cast, and await the sculptor's bronze, the hands frozen in that strange reproduction of stale death which is so often playacted by terror.
"Remember us, fair Revna!" Kol calls cheerfully, waving to her as he is taken by the collar of his tunic, and roughly hauled from the stables. "Nik, what are you doing? I was helping!"
"Help yourself home to Mother," he says tightly, letting go of the collar when they are safely away.
"But you do have a big thing. Isn't that what girls like?"
He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Kol, please. Go home."
The nostrils flare for a moment, and there's hurt in the big brown eyes, but he won't cry here in front of the men, he's so easily bruised, little Kol, but Father has already thrashed into him, a man doesn't waver before his comrades, he settles his grief privately, or not at all.
"I was just helping."
"You weren't helping, you embarrassed me."
"I'm sorry."
And oh, he does genuinely look it, the little imp.
He sighs. "Please just go home, Kol."
"Bekah says that when boys start to like girls, they ignore everything else. Like with Finn. Are you going to do that, Nik?"
"Of course not. Rest easy, little brother. We could live a hundred years, a thousand, and I wouldn't forget you. All right?"
"And when I'm a man, you'll take me hunting instead of Elijah?"
"I'll take you both. Now go on." He jerks his head toward the house, and gives a little flap of Kol's cloak to encourage him on.
He likes to watch Mother weave.
She has swelled a bit at the waist, and moves not so gracefully as usual from one end to the other of the vertical loom, but her hands are just as deft, the threads on their heddle rods spin forth another colorful marvel he will touch with soft and reverent fingers when no one is looking, he will for hours straddle his bench sharpening his axe, or adjusting the set of his spear head, that he might watch her work, and feel in his chest this breathless squeezing of his love for her.
She's so beautiful, Mother, and he thinks sometimes, in those depths of night where he finds himself often awake, there is a secret, Mother shares it only with him, she has in her eyes a knowledge that is just theirs, to be passed like something special between them, and perhaps it's only perceived, perhaps he has with his unhappy imagination dreamed himself out of his solitude, but he's so grateful, Mother, you'll never know-
"Mother, I love you," he tells her a little desperately, looking down at his axe so he can't see her eyes.
"Thank you, Niklaus," she tells him with the soft smile in her voice, and he colors and for a moment keeps his own smile just between himself and his axe head.
Father leaves on another raid, and Elijah and Finn are to accompany him this time.
He is left unceremoniously behind.
It's just as well, Mother tells him, she needs a man round the house, heavy with child as she is, and two handfuls already.
We'll be very good, Bekah assures her sincerely, and sets off with a shriek to chase Kol round the house when he snatches the kerchief from her hair and runs along waving it over his head.
He practices his sword play with any who will challenge him, and when shyness has frozen his tongue, lets Kol talk them into spear practice with a group of the older youths who admire Kol far more than they have ever looked up to him.
He sometimes meets Alexander in the woods, when woman is a torment and his own hand is no satisfaction, and for a while the wet groping of the tongues and the hot constriction of the throat quiets his belly, and calms the ache in his groin.
Kol tries to follow him, and has to be gently turned away.
He tries to do it kindly, but there is a gulf widening between him and the boy, he has shed his youth and donned his manhood, and though it wrenches him, he must leave the boy behind.
Just for a while, little Kol, will age and experience dig this abyss, and leave you small and brotherless to the one side of it.
Father is home but briefly when he decides he wants to sail for Iceland, where he has seen for himself the natives are not so barbarous.
Mother has no interest in leaving.
Their fight lasts long into the evening, and ends when Father lifts his great knotted hand past his ear, and backhands her across the cheek so hard she sits down on the packed dirt of the floor.
Elijah and Finn politely ignore what is to be kept between a couple, but he has his axe in his hand, there is such a frothing in him, and the frightening red haze which sometimes eclipses his sight and his good sense, he stands with the weapon in his hand, and rises from the bench with the courage not trickling as ice water through his bowels, and evaporating somewhere in his belly where it squeezes him sick, but hot and foaming in his chest.
"Don't touch her, Father."
"Niklaus," she warns, climbing awkwardly to her feet.
Kol looks terrified.
Bekah is holding his hand, and softly strokes the skinny little fingers till they uncurl and let her slip her own down through them.
"Go on, boy. Chop me in the neck. Prove you can do more than piss your trousers when confronted with a real man."
He shifts his slippery fingers on the axe handle, swallows, feels the hot foaming in his chest and the hard knot in his belly and in his knees there is hardly a tremble, he faces Father at last with his legs steady, his chin up, he is not to be cowed, not this time, with the weapon heavy in his hand, and all the muscles in his arm standing out, the awed look upon his little brother's face, that he must gaze up and up to this mountain of a man, Elijah's startled respect, yes, family, see him now, when none of you would but lift your eyes to this shadow Father casts over them all, look at him with the pity in your eyes, ah poor Niklaus, whose great heart sly Loki snatched, and replaced with a mere girl's-
Father knocks the axe out of his hand, and punches him in the face.
"Mikael, stop," Mother cries out, and fear has throttled her voice so tight, he tastes the blood upon his lip, and realizes Father means to kill him.
"You little coward," Father hisses, and punches him again, in the belly this time, so that he can only bend helplessly at the waist, holding what Father has bruised and perhaps broken with the one terrific blow. "You cannot be my son."
"But I am, I am, Father," he sobs, and it isn't till he tastes the tears mingled with blood he realize he's crying, not merely that instinctive trickle of the eye when wounded, but openly, he's sorry, Father, of course he has shamed you, but please don't erase him in such a way, please, please, Father, Mother, tell him he has he tried, oh he's tried-
She's so quiet.
He can hear the rushing of the blood in his ears, the muffled blow of Father's next hit, the ringing in his ears which precedes some injury or another, the taste of his blood, his snot, the tears which he hotly lets stream, for whom might he now persuade that he does not deserve such a reprimand, and he spits, he squints through his swelling eyes and the blood-gummed lashes to the smallest of them, huddled together on the bench, Bekah crying and holding to her neck Kol's trembling head.
Mother says, "Enough" when he can no longer feel his face.
She will later put something in Father's mead that will send him into a cold grave-like sleep, but for another hour or so, he must endure the drinking game which Father plays though he has no willing partner, composing all his verse round this failure of a third son.
"There once was a boy called Niklaus; oh wait, no there wasn't. For where should have hung a ball, there was none at all. Elijah, your turn," Father slurs, and though he'll apologize later, Elijah mumbles the next stanza beneath his breath.
Mother helps Father afterward into the bed closet, so he might not hurt himself, blundering into anything which is not nudged hastily out of his way.
Bekah pats some of the poultices she has learned from Mother onto his cheek.
"I don't think you're a coward, Nik," Kol tells him.
"Father's rhymes stink," Bekah adds, and kisses his nose.
Next morning, he climbs to the top of the waterfall, and stands for quite some time watching the ground, and feeling this final cold leap of the spray onto his neck, onto his throbbing face, though his heart may be numb his skin experiences still that pinprick all life inserts beneath the skin, and so makes man remember what he believes is no longer worth that taxing draw of the breath.
But Kol has followed him again, and he can't kill himself in front of the boy.
Winter leaves the trees, and recedes from the harvest, and fair spring shyly bares her breast.
Kol grows another inch.
Bekah's dress begins to stretch at the chest and the hips.
He fumbles round in the grass with another of the youths, because he can't yet think how to approach a girl, and when Elijah catches him out at it one afternoon, he frowns worriedly but says nothing.
Alexander still sometimes accompanies him into the woods, occasionally for that mere innocence of slaughtered deer, snared rabbit, more often for the rough caresses in the grass which leave them both sticky against one another, and when one evening Alexander rolls off him to pull up his trousers and collect his bow, he says, "Meet me back here later tonight."
"Why?" he asks, tying his drawstring.
"Just meet me here later. After sundown," Alexander insists, and strolls off into the trees with the quiver swinging from his shoulder.
There is a girl with soft blonde hair, and high round breasts when he slips into the little clearing just shortly after the moon has risen.
He freezes.
She lifts her long lashes, and tilts her head at him, and he can see beneath her shift the nipples standing out sharp as arrow tips, and the elusive shadow between her legs which he thinks must be the bush of hair he hears girls have the same as boys.
He licks his dry lips and clenches his wet hands and the nerves tighten all the muscles in his belly and stroke the strange lightning down his cock, and he shudders and ducks his head in embarrassment.
Alexander has his tunic off.
He usually just pulls it up when they are playing round, so that the material is clear of his knees and he can work the trousers down over his hips low enough that his cock is freed, he's seen before the tight muscles of the abdomen, and the line of hair which he knows extends from belly button to cock, but the pale brown nipples he looks upon for the first time, and the defined chest, the long afternoons of sword play in the broad shoulders-
What is he to do with his hands, he wonders, and wipes them on his trousers, twists them in the hem, clasps them finally behind him.
The girl's shift rides up when she sinks back to lie flat in the grass with a giggle.
He sees the long white line of the thigh, and the shadowy hint beyond, and looks away.
Alexander is smiling at him.
A kiss loosens him slightly, puts a gap between the fingers, rearranges the tension in his gut and at the base of his spine.
Alexander rubs him gently, till he's fully stiff with the attentions, and then somehow he is led over to the girl with the night this great mist around him, and made to kneel before her.
He feels Alexander's teeth break the skin of his neck, he's perfected this pressure just so, that it might please but not mark, and now over his head is lifted his tunic, so the small girlish hands can feel his flat belly just above the waist of his trousers, and the rough manly ones can walk themselves down his spine, so the shivers are a little lower each time.
Alexander's cock is hard against his ass.
The girl spreads her legs.
He vaguely feels the drawstring undone, by whose hand he knows not, and the cock at his back suddenly warm and bare against him, wet at the tip, and now the final knot unravels, and his trousers sag, Alexander helps them down his thighs to his knees, and moves his hair aside so he can kiss the top knot of his spine, right at the base of his neck.
"I want to watch you touch him," the girl says, and Alexander obliges her.
He feels the nape of his neck kissed once more, and the hot slide of the cock against his ass, slippery with that small amount of pre-slickness that heralds the final spurt.
He looks down to see the hand glide over his cock, moving the skin in a slow ripple, and just beyond this the girl's parted legs, and the white thigh, and that unknown between where she puts her hand now, where first one finger and then two vanish.
Alexander runs his lips over his shoulder.
When he sinks at last into the girl, Alexander has already pumped a choked cry out of him, and caught the long pulse of his cum in the palm of his hand.
"It's all right. Most men can do it again," he says, and then the parted legs hook over his hips, and his still throbbing cock is enveloped, and over his shoulder Alexander watches as he works himself inch by inch into the girl, trembling to his toes, the fine hairs on his arms lifting themselves with that static charge he feels just before a storm.
Alexander grips him by the hips.
"Go slowly, else you'll come too fast," he says right into his ear, and bites it.
There is another streak of lightning discharged down his spine.
The clearing swims.
He pulls back carefully, shuddering as he catches at each inch of him, she clenches that hard around his cock, and opening his mouth when the breath must have outlet besides his nose.
He feels Alexander begin to thrust against him, and realizes hazily the boy's cock is between his thighs, he is holding the hips for leverage, he is breathing just as harshly, and pleasuring himself against the balls, against the damp underside of Klaus' cock as he pulls nearly free, just the tip of him embedded now.
He pauses for a moment to examine this sensation, the hot stickiness of sweat and cum and what fluids the girl herself seeps, the sharp prickle of Alexander's nails in his hips, the breath hot on his neck, the girl moaning underneath him, the pounding in his cock, blood in his ears, spring's brisk evening taking from his bare ass cheeks that harsh nip of winter still lingering foe-like at the outskirts-
He hears Alexander's breathing change.
The nails in his hips draw blood.
He slides back into the girl, and feels Alexander's cock slip back, over the wet underside of his own cock, over his balls, back between his thighs-
And now the first hot jet, hitting the underside of his cock when he pulls back again.
He feels Alexander slide one of the hands from hip to ass, run it lower, till he can feel it no more, and then suddenly he feels the warm release against his back, down his ass, Alexander gasping against his neck, the hand Alexander uses to pump another hot spurt knocking against his spine-
Alexander gropes for his ass cheeks with his sticky hands, and cups them as Klaus pushes into her again, feeling with his thumbs the clench of the thrust, the slow loosening of the pull back, his breath still hot and struggling on the neck, his cock still alertly jabbing Klaus in the thigh-
The girl suddenly bears down.
He remembers again that first wet pressure of the throat, and comes.
Mother is getting fat, Kol points out, and he hushes the boy before he can have the ears boxed off him.
He thinks perhaps he walks a little taller, after taking his first woman, but to whom is such a glow obvious, surely Father does not see it, and clap him with congratulatory smile on the shoulder, and in his proudest voice tell them all, Niklaus my son has cleared his final hurdle.
Alexander twice more promises to bring the girl, but fails to produce her, so they hunt for a time and then strip off for the waterfall, sitting on some rocks just behind the spray, where they are indistinct but not altogether invisible to anyone who might happen past.
Alexander leans in for an open-mouthed kiss, and rubs on his thigh close enough to his cock that it stirs in defiance of the cold water, and begins to fill when the hand sneaks beneath the water to grasp it by the base.
It's not as interesting now that he has known the warmth and wetness of a woman, but what difference does the lightning that shivers at the base of his spine and coils in his belly know, there is the warm friction and the piece of skin at his cock tip moved aside, and the smooth thumb stroking him where he is most sensitive.
"Do you want to know a secret?" Alexander asks, lazily stroking his hand up and down, and lingering over the spots that prompt that little shuddery twitch of his shoulders. "I prefer it with men."
"What are you going to do when you have a wife?"
"Oh, I'll get lots of sons on her still, and go with one of the other men when I'm bored of her." He lolls his head on Klaus' shoulder. "We'll come out here and do just the same."
"What about when I have a wife?"
"So? Put some sons in her belly too, and then we'll go hunting, and afterward lie in the grass just as we always do. If you put meat on the table, and give her children, a woman has no cause for complaint."
The hand picks up pace.
He has begun to lose his train of thought as the familiar ache builds once more in his balls.
"Well, I prefer women," he says, though there is a wad of linen on his tongue, and another in his brain.
"You haven't really had a man yet," Alexander tells him, and bites his shoulder hard enough to split the skin when he comes.
He is out cutting firewood when Kol comes thundering through the trees shrieking, "Mother's had our brother!"
He wipes his forehead and props the axe on its head, leaning his forearm on the shaft. "What?"
"Come on, come on! It happened very quickly!" He is seized round the wrist, the boy tugs him forward, the axe handle slips from his hand, and suddenly through the brush they are careening, what animals are happily at home among it fleeing before them.
Mother is half-unconscious.
Bekah has a bundle in her arms, and with such maternal tenderness does she peer down at it, and for a moment he feels a pain in his chest.
He will one day lose her to her own son, who will forever implant himself in her heart, and hold more sway than ever a brother did wield, and till he dies stand merely to the side, and watch her love someone better.
And then the bundle is put into his own arms, and he feels the helpless smile stretch his lips, and the warm loosening in his chest where his heart has softened a little more, to receive this new little one with the tiny fat hands, and the head of soft down.
"Hello there, little Henrik," he says softly, and loves him so absolutely at the first bright dawning of the infant smile.
2014, New Orleans
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," he says cheerfully, and steps to the edge of the crumbling wall upon which he stands, hands behind his back. "You're wondering, of course, who is this handsome devil, and why has he brought us here?"
He snaps his fingers.
Twenty of his finest rise from the ruins of Fort Macomb as a fog might lift from a winter stream, and he dimples.
Such beautiful timing; what a magnificent stagehand he would have made.
But, of course, such anonymity is for that lesser race to which he has not belonged in ten long centuries.
He snaps his fingers again, and among the humans his little helpers disperse themselves, holding to their bleeding wrists the guppying lips which plead for dream, divinity, drug, whichever savior it is they prefer, and he steps out casually from the wall, and plunges to the grass below.
What he likes most of all is not the cherubic curls, nor the baby blues, no, not this boyish pockmark of the cheeks which strike reassurance into the hearts of man, surely such a face must not mask a demon, there is but a peculiar looming of the moon, which makes pits of such innocence-
You see first the lithe shoulders, and the lean waist.
In his arms is the definition of an athlete, but he has not the mass of a linebacker, the hulk of a wrestler, he walks among you without remark, there are men taller, wider, angrier, they call first the eye, and then the frothing nerves, you divert around them, and bump with hasty apology his own slender shoulder-
But what a roiling in your stomach, hmm?
And the eerie little prickling at the base of your spine, perhaps the nape of your neck- have you a spider tiptoeing each knot of the spine, and ridge of the ribs?
As he walks, the one foot in front of the other, the hands behind the back, is there that impending loom of catastrophe with which all prey are imbued, does the very clay of you form with its primordial instinct the little mouths which reverberate you down to the toes, are there within you such shrill warnings as to stop the heart, and seal the throat-
That's presence, mates, to your best actors do you throw your money, your adulation, adoration, it's no different, where is his applause, he has struck you dumb with his mere aura, and left you gaping in his wake, let's have a little clap, shall we?
He strides from human to human till they have all obliged him.
The ruins fill with this thunderous appreciation.
He stands for a moment basking in its echo.
"Thank you, thank you," he calls out, flashing them his best dimples. "Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I have something very special for you."
He takes the pistol out of his pocket.
He does miss the weight of a good weapon in his pocket, mates, humans do pause too long between their global conflicts, oh, when was the last of them anyway, that little business in the 40s with that Hitler chap?
He shoots the man in front of him casually through the head.
The woman beside him screams, and has that peculiar failing of the knees humans so often seem to become afflicted with around him.
"Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I have brought you here…to die. Go bravely and well, etc. etc. Is that what they say now?" he asks politely of a woman who trembles and makes some strange noise in the back of her throat.
He shoots her in the back of the head, catches her on the way down, licks the blood from the nape of her neck.
His helpers spread out.
He does love a good Monday mass murder.
There is no sun, Tuesday morning.
He leans on the railing of the terrace, letting his hands dangle over the side.
Technology has blighted that particular frisson a good cloud cover inspires in the bravest of men, when the horses were splashed to the hock with street mud and the lamps must be lit by that toiling human reluctance which, robbed of its delights, sulks at its duties.
He does miss a good London fog, fresh off the Thames, which no man or machine may defeat, and must instead merely outwait.
But if he may but turn the leaves of his mind, and squint his eyes a bit, one can see where those old ghosts of long-dead steeds must have clopped submissively along, and the imposition of those wheeled contraptions beginning to prod into obscurity their four-legged predecessors.
On a day like this: the ladies being conveyed to their theaters, or welcoming to the candle-cheered parlors whoever might marvel at their paltry talent for whichever musical instrument they have decided to murder; the gentlemen smoking in their clubs; the boys restless for that sanctuary of midnight in which sin is merely a consequence of youth.
He might have diced with Kol, or taken Bekah to the opera.
And into what a night would he emerge, the candles merely a trickle to Nature's great deluge, his walking stick swinging merrily over his arm, perhaps a sibling or two or even three at his side.
There is a squeezing in his chest.
He leaves Caroline sleeping peacefully in their bed, and he slips on one of his lighter jackets, and turns up the collar.
The French Quarter is lively even at an hour such as this.
Father, Father, if you could see him now.
If the boy could have scried such a future as this, if those mysterious hands, Fate, might have for a moment lifted that misty curtain behind which the future enigmatically reclines, if he could with his blackened eyes have looked upon this beardless youth with the curls lying carefully finger-combed on the forehead, and seen man part round him with such gratifying swiftness-
Would he have felt, this boy, warm joy in his chest, and kneeled glad in his blood, where he dreamed away his beatings?
When a man has seen the edge of the abyss, he knows he can climb forever, though his arms have melted, his legs are nerveless, the feet weigh him down, the fingers cramp against their handholds.
If this boy had but known, Father will never love you.
But what a fleeting joy.
Respect, fear, renown, these are the stamps by which man is labeled time immemorial- does Alexander of Macedon's name inspire still our historian's pens because there laid beside him the faithful Hephaistion; has Caesar maintained his legend by his mere attachment to fair Cleopatra; in talk of Napoleon's Russian campaigns is there a woman, a man, whose fine cheek eclipses the two-cornered hat which stormed the history books if it faltered before snowy Moscow?
Love, love, love, he mused once to a dead man, you know.
It hadn't got him anywhere.
Now an army-
That's something else.
What soldier falls may be replaced; what line wavers is easily patched; what wounds are taken will smart but a moment.
He climbs once more onto the ruins of the old fort, and looks out over his new recruits, placid with their compulsion.
He smiles, that they may know, he has looked upon their deaths, and is pleased.
It's quite polished enough for the cameras, this smile, if you ask him.
Technology has spoiled warfare.
A fine Athens dust, the jingling of the harness, the helmets which take their blows musically, the shields that sound as bells, man locked sword to sword, the wheeling of the right flank, men foaming ocean-like in their own private battles, the sizzling of those Homeric arrows, blotting sun, comrade, cavalry- now there was a fight, mate-
What have robotics, computers, politicians to offer those histories of man which a thousand years from now will molder unread on some university shelf? When the machine gun rattles its warning, and man has not that trench which is merely a euphemism for pit, into which the souls are cast and do not rise, but his impenetrable tank, where he may sit comfortably sipping his coffee while the computer plots his aim and navigates this enemy terrain-
Of what possible comparison can he make to the pounding of the spear butts upon the shields, the weight of axe, sword, spear, the bursting of the eyes inside the helmet, the gushing visor, singing chain mail, that long line of the cavalry, pivoting smartly down to a beast-
Ah, brother, he does occasionally long for those days.
Elijah adjusts his tie. "One must advance with the times," he says, and grips him by the shoulder.
In the street below the hotel whose roof they have made their watch tower, three soldiers fire upon a man.
He watches them tiptoe carefully round the corpse, and prod it with their rifles.
"Shit. Shit," one of them says. "He's human."
He smiles.
They do carry out half his work for him, these humans.
Elijah leans in close to his ear, so that he can feel that faint mist of speech right on his cheek. "Do not think, brother, I don't see the wheels turning in your head. Or hear the whispers behind my back."
"Of what, Elijah?" he asks innocently.
His brother pulls back, and looks pointedly at him, with that obnoxious omniscience of the older sibling.
"Of war." He encompasses the street gracefully with a sweep of one arm. "And not this trifling nonsense."
"It's hardly trifling, brother. I've put a lot of work into it."
"Yes," Elijah says, and looks back at him with a frown. "To what end?"
"To what end, Elijah- don't make it sound so nefarious," he says, clutching at his chest. "I'm hurt."
"You won't be. But what of Rebekah and Kol?"
"Our siblings, who are similarly invulnerable?"
"Rebekah has the stake. And you know how poorly she places her trust."
He steeples his fingers, and slots them neatly against his upper lip. "It's taken care of, Elijah. Don't worry, brother; you can be sure I have absolutely everything under control."
Elijah makes a little noise in the back of his throat, and adjusts one of his cuffs. "That is precisely my concern, Niklaus."
He gives his brother the slow sideways look and the dimples which have preceded many a man's black fate.
You see, a whisper resounds quite loudly, to ears such as these.
And though the city has carefully muffled these rumors of one final witchy interference, he has through this network Caroline has begun and he has perfected gathered the threads of this plot, and held them here in his head, where no one save himself may get at them.
He does like a neat black scrawl on a crisp white page.
But he has no need of it.
To see his notes before his eyes, to marvel at his penmanship and that flourish of metaphor which pretties even the most mundane of jottings, to with great satisfaction open those cabinets which she keeps with such unfailing precision and offer as physical testimony what daunting knowledge he has acquired-
It's none of it anything to sneeze at.
But Caroline needn't understand everything.
He calls the pretty redhead into his office, sits through a few flutters of those simpering lashes with his boots on his desk, and his hands behind his head.
"I need a werewolf," he tells her when she has finished. "Preferably two, if you can manage them together, but I'll leave the other to another night if I must. Find a few with something to lose. Don't bring them back to the house; meet me at the theater on Common Street at 8:00. You have till Friday."
He hears Caroline clicking up the sidewalk, and smiles.
She has smelled the competition before she even sets foot through the door; the redhead does soak herself down a bit liberally for his tastes.
"Hello, love," he tells her, lowering his boots as she flashes into the room.
"Get out," she says rudely to the girl, who instead plants her boots, and with legs shoulder-width apart, stares down this opponent who isn't budging an inch, sweetheart, he can assure you of that, she did force yours truly to his knees after all, and stands still with her boot on his neck.
He spins his chair playfully, and when he has revolved to face the desk once more, up his boots go again, his mobile has materialized in his hand, the girls have moved neither designer boot nor painted lash. "Hello, Mark. How are we doing?" He makes a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat. "Still reeling a bit over the wife and the child, are we? Well, time heals all wounds, mate, and you've got a lifetime to forget how nicely that steak went down, haven't you?"
Caroline breaks her stalemate. "Klaus."
He swings the chair from side to side. "Check in with our friend Damon Salvatore, would you? Just to let him know I'm still thinking of him. I'd hate to think he felt the sting of my absence."
"Klaus," she says again, and he hangs up.
"Caroline," he replies warmly, and rises from his chair. "You're no longer wanted, Adelaide," he says to the girl, and with a smile turns his back on her.
She excuses herself, but not without another challenging look over her shoulder, if the expression on Caroline's face is anything to go by.
"She's angling for your spot, love." He brushes the hair from her ear, and puts his lips close enough to it to send a little shiver down her spine. "She's not so useful that I would protest whichever method you so choose to deal with such a usurpation."
"I'm not killing her."
He sneaks a kiss on her cheek, and pulls back quickly. "Well, that's a pity. I'd like to watch."
She crosses her arms and puts herself nearly toe to toe with him, and in his veins the blood leaps just a bit, and he smothers his smile as he waits for whichever admonition it is she has for him today.
He lifts an eyebrow.
She takes a step closer, and squints at him. "What are you hiding from me?"
He lifts the eyebrow higher, and assumes his best air of naïveté. He thinks the extra fussing he granted to that one curl lying just perfectly at the center of his forehead ought to do the trick. "I haven't a clue what you're talking about, Caroline."
"Right. You can drop the puppy-who-ate-my-favorite-shoes faux innocent tail wagging bullshit, Klaus."
He does smile now. What a mind beneath the curls, love. A bit longer, and she'll have it all unraveled herself.
He takes her gently by the shoulders and sits her down in his chair, where she twists to look suspiciously over her shoulder at him.
With a magician's flourish, the necklace he has coiled in the pocket of his jacket appears suddenly in his hand.
"Very impressive, Penn and Teller," she says with a roll of her eyes, but she consents to have her hair brushed carefully aside, and the necklace settled artfully round her neck, and when he leaves his hands on her shoulders, she slides her own up to warmly cup his fingers.
"So, who did you kill and steal this from?"
"Love, I do buy things occasionally." He lifts a hand smoothly to his mouth, and kisses it.
"So you actually paid for it?"
"No."
She spins the chair round to face him as he releases her hand, and crosses her legs, the arms draped imperially along either side of the chair, her chin rather lofty, and for just a moment he is reminded of Bekah with that flawless carriage of the empress, sitting her mere wooden stool as she may grace a throne.
"You can't just dangle something shiny in front of my eyes and think we're quits on the whole me sniffing out whatever it is the hell you are doing behind my back thing. If it's that tramp, I will end you, Klaus." She twirls the necklace carelessly on her finger for a moment.
"You know it isn't, sweetheart."
"I know," she says cheerfully, and bounces out of her chair, the curls jouncing along her shoulders. "I just wanted my voice to evoke the kind of…atmosphere that once made the biggest boy in the school cry. He put a balloon in the wrong place." She pats him on the cheek.
He turns his face into her palm, and kisses the perfumed wrist.
"Just imagine what I can do to you, then, with only my words."
And she throws him the exaggerated little wink over her shoulder as she blurs to the doorway, the mouth dropping open, and he stands for a moment as he always is, just a little overwhelmed by her, and all the little upsets she evokes in his long dead heart, the seismic realizations, that thickening of the dumb and helpless tongue.
His smile is a thing for a sibling to scorn, if they had bothered to stick round. "You're in a good mood today."
"I am. I woke up sad, because of my mom, and a little lonely, honestly. Don't you dare ever breathe a word of this to Rebekah, but I kind of…miss her. You were out already, so for a moment I just laid in bed, and I thought about the fact that with Stefan gone, with Rebekah gone, I don't really have any friends here, to just…go out to coffee with me when I need it. Bonnie's dead. I haven't talked to Elena since she called to bitch me out over you beating up Damon."
What about me, he knows his eyes must surely beg to know if his mouth is still clumsy with her presence.
"A boyfriend's not enough, Klaus. That's ok; that's the way it should be. So I am. I'm lonely sometimes. And I laid there and thought about that for a while, but it's up to me how my day goes, I get to determine that, and I decided it's going to be a good one. So it is."
Her eyes soften, when she smiles at him. "And I hope yours went the same."
She lets this linger between them for a moment, then claps once, sharply. "Now. I'm going to go run some errands, poke around a little, because I will find out what you're keeping from me, and then when I get back, you're going to quiz me on my Greek verbs, and help me translate a couple more of the Homeric Hymns."
"Don't you think translations are a bit of a stretch, for a beginner, love?"
"Not for this one!" she says perkily. "Just because your teaching skills are always a step behind me doesn't mean I should start slacking. Go study!" She jabs a finger at him. "I need you and your gajillion-year-old brain on their toes. Go."
She is down the stairs and out the door before he can even protest.
Wednesday, he hears Caroline and Adelaide reach the front door at the same time, and drops his hands from the lyre he has been tinkering with.
He sits back in his chair with a smile.
Elijah, tucked into the corner beside the library's largest bookcase, sighs and looks up from that old tome of Percy Bysshe Shelley's which he occasionally dips into throughout the centuries.
He can't remember- did he eat that one? He does seem to recall a pasty young man well acquainted to those sweaty malaises that, undiscerning, so often take man at the height of his youth and his talents.
Elijah tries valiantly to ignore the girls, and holds up his book. "I do wish you had turned rather than murdered him, Klaus."
Ah, well. That answers that, then.
Lad probably deserved it.
"He had such a grasp of verse. It was the kind of voice one encounters perhaps twice in even our lifetime."
Lad definitely deserved it.
"You have spent centuries with a muse just as gifted, Elijah. I don't understand why you must lament the passing of one marginally competent human."
"I believe Kol still has in his possession some tablets which would disprove that."
"I was twelve," he snaps.
"You were seventeen."
He sits forward to tune his lyre once more, glowering at Elijah. "You can hardly hold a man's teenaged transgressions against him."
"May I quote from the most recent entry in the journal you really must stop filing on the Classic Literature shelf?" Elijah clears his throat rather theatrically, if you ask him, and flicks a strand of hair from his eyes. "'Her hair, its rays doth shine upon my face, and awaken the morning dew upon my manly bloom'."
"If you had any taste for rhythm and meter, your feeble mind would easily grasp the subtle brilliance of such imagery."
"I fail to grasp any subtlety anywhere within a poem that opens with one's…dewy bloom."
"For God's sake, Elijah, just say 'cock'."
Elijah turns a page in his book. "I will leave the uncouthness safely in the capable hands of yourself and Kol."
Downstairs, the voices which he has tuned out with a practiced smothering of his senses rise.
He turns his ear to that delicious sharpness of Caroline getting particularly nasty, and absentmindedly strikes a chord on the lyre.
"Ok, well, you can turn your googly eyes somewhere else, or I'm going to rip them out of your head. That's all I'm saying."
Adelaide laughs.
He smiles.
Elijah shifts in his chair, and moves his finger to mark some passage or another in his book. "'Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, and moments aye divided by keen pangs till they seemed years, torture and solitude, scorn and despair, these are mine empire, more glorious far than that which thou surveyest from thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!' That is how you strike a chord in man with your words, Niklaus."
"Uninspired. Generic. Poppycock," he pronounces, popping the 'p' as he has so often heard Caroline do to add weight to her scorn.
"Excuse me?" Caroline blurts out below him, but Elijah's prattling has drowned whichever barb of Adelaide's has set off such a reaction.
"'Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, black, wintry, without herb, insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ah me! Alas, pain, pain ever, forever!'"
"Elijah, do you mind? I'm trying to listen," he snaps.
"I said, keep your nasty little-"
"'No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure. I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt? I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun-'"
"Elijah, be quiet."
"Seriously, I am not-"
"'Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm-'"
"Elijah!"
"Bitch!"
The front door slams.
He gives his brother a sour look. "Thank you, Elijah. You've made me miss the best part."
"Humanity weeps for you, Niklaus. Your chord is still slightly out-of-tune, B. T. W. Is that what the masses are saying nowadays?"
"Thank you, Elijah. I hadn't noticed. My hearing is, after all, compromised by my years."
"One would think so, after sitting through what I tentatively term your 'playing'." He nonchalantly turns another page. "Do you know, I once caught Kol having a try at it? He had quite the knack for it, actually. I do miss that sort of music. The type with actual rhythm, and impeccable timing."
His jaw tightens.
He tweaks the lyre a bit more, and carefully strikes another chord.
"Kol would have had it tuned in half the time. Perhaps if you hadn't chased him off, we would right now be nurturing rather than assailing our ears."
"Is that what this is about?" He tosses up his hands. "You're angry with me for our brother's absence? He chose to leave, Elijah. Kol walked away from this family; I did not force him."
"I highly doubt that. What you cannot strongarm you kill, and as Europe seems to be in the grip of a rash of violence with the mark of Kol all over it, I assume our dear brother is still with us."
He remains stubbornly silent, plucking moodily away at the lyre, and deftly adjusting or letting alone its notes as they sing either true or false.
"Niklaus." Elijah closes his book, and sets it in his lap.
"What?"
His brother sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. "You did not always treat them so, if you recall. And they respected and loved you, however Father tried to influence them. Kol's respect you could have again in a moment, for nothing, if he thought it would not be used against him. Rebekah might need a bit of jewelry."
"So you think if I merely snap my fingers, he will return to me?"
"No. I think it is your turn to make the first move, Klaus."
Oh, he holds a card within his vest, brother, do not doubt that.
"He doesn't want to see me. He said he'll come back to me when he's ready, and if I force it, he'll kill me."
"Because your arrival always signifies the end of his happiness, Niklaus, not an addition to it."
He forgets the lyre, and steeples his fingers under his chin, dimly recognizing the distant tread of Caroline's heels upon the stairs.
Elijah.
He did, he does, he will love them for so long.
If he could but turn away from his dagger in his rage, and just learn: a man's solitude is his own penalty imposed, and ten centuries is so long to not deserve.
"I have a surprise for you," he tells Caroline on Thursday, and hands her up into the SUV with the tinted windows, and fields her questions with his dimples.
The stage at the Saenger Theatre has been carefully emptied of its previous production, just as he ordered, and the house of Heracles and Deianira erected in its stead.
"What's this?" Caroline asks, taking her hand from the crook of his arm, and touching the necklace she is still wearing.
"I thought, as a supplement to your Greek lessons, you might like to see one of the tragedies. I had the cast flown in from Julliard."
She furrows her brow. "You just keep a bunch of actors and actresses on hand and on a whim fly them halfway across the country because you're in the mood to see a play? Why not just get some local people to do it?"
"Elijah and I have spent years -centuries, even- culling the herd, love. I'm not about to throw that all out the window for some random grocery clerk who devotes his weekends to some lackluster rehearsing in between shuttling children to their football games. Also, actors, no actresses. I thought we'd have a traditional performance tonight, and these men are the best. Still in the first pink of their youth, and they've adhered faithfully to their voice exercises for decades, so that they may play the women's roles just as convincingly."
"Wait- are they all vampires?" She squints up at the chorus running through its exercises. "How old are they?"
"We recruited them at different times, but they're all within a hundred years of age. They return to Julliard now and again to keep up on the latest techniques. Elijah and I call upon them as needed."
"So what happens when better ones come along?"
He looks at her.
"You're not serious? You really just-"
"Shh, love. No need to muck up their performance with nerves, now is there?"
"Fine. But afterwards, I'm going to tell them to run."
She spends quite some time picking her seat, eyeing each aisle, and for a moment lingering here or there to test the acoustics.
The chorus vanishes into that dark unknown of the backstage.
The curtain is lowered.
Caroline seats herself carefully, and pulls him down next to her, so their arms share the same rest, and she can twine her hand in his, and now in the tense presentiment which that curtain imparts before any performance which its audience knows is to end in grief, there is a moment, there is a smile, he remembers another theatre, a different Caroline, and oh, love.
Return to him? One day?
The curtain rises.
Deianira steps forth in her robe and mask.
"It was long ago that someone first said: you cannot know a man's life before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad. But I know mine before I've come to Death's house, and I can tell that mine is heavy and sorrowful."
Friday, Adelaide meets him as pre-arranged.
She has two wolves with her after all, escorted by two of his bulkiest subordinates, whom he compels to forget their recent task.
He crouches in front of the youngest one, who has to keep wiping his eyes and smearing the snot from his nose. "Do you know who I am, mate?"
"Yes," the boy hiccups.
"Then I suppose no demonstration is necessary, hmm? And you're well aware that obedience is the wiser, less gruesome course?"
"Yes," the boy hiccups again, more quietly this time.
"Excellent." He tousles the boy's hair affectionately. "As you know, the full moon is coming up. And on it, I'm going to need a little favor from you. What's your name, mate?"
"James."
"James. Wonderful name. I had a friend called James once. James- could you do that for me? Carry out this one tiny little favor? I promise it'll hardly be-" He licks his lips in anticipation of his own genius.
"-any skin off your back."
1007, A.D., Vinland
"Now there are two races of Gods, Asir and Vanir,
Who meet as brothers, and farewell smiling.
Powerful Njord of the Vanir and the fair twins Frey and Freya,
Who make man and soil fertile
And prick human with fatal Love.
In their beauty were they loved by all their brother Gods, until Frey
One night when the stars are pale,
And man sleeps with his mortal lash heavy on his cheek,
Dared to sit the throne of wise Odin.
Through Yggdrasil's branches did he peer,
And in the midst spot mortal Midgard, where Man's dust is but fleeting,
And he raises little else.
Above, shining Asgard,
And his own fair Vanaheim, bordering it in eternal friendship.
Below, frosty Hel, and fierce Garm,
Who slavers at his chain, and with lust in his eye, yearns after warm Man
And blood-fatted God.
Next to northern Jotunheim did Frey's roaming eye turn,
And see first, fair of brow, and with a maiden's stain upon her cheek,
The giantess Gerd,
Daughter of giant Gymir and his wife Angarboda.
And now did fatal Love prick Frey's own heart,
And wither the land.
In mute devastation did he neglect his godly duties,
For unrealized Love,
That could not quicken between God and Giantess.
For never would mother or father release such a prize,
Without dear imbursement.
Frey's sovereign sword would it take,
To loosen what last children's fetters,
Are struck off by marriage.
But in great Ragnarok must the sword partake,
And seal indefinitely the Gods' eternal victory.
A God's heart is soft as a Man's, in matters of
Love, and guides him where sense will not steer.
So to fair Gerd did Frey send the trusted servant Skirnir,
Who bore in trade the vaunted sword.
Around Gymir's castle there leaps the enchanted flames which no creature,
Save one, shall cross.
So shod in cloth, Skirnir takes swift Sleipnir from sleeping Odin's dark stables,
And rides north.
With precious sword in hiding,
Does he attempt to persuade immovable Gymir and Gerd to accept,
More trifling gifts of lesser enchantment, and paler riches.
When wiles fail,
He turns his hand to bloodthirsty threat,
And promises daughter and Giant will he strike off the fair Gerd's
Golden head, if in rejection she persists.
Poor Skirnir, as an ant to daughter and Giant, sharpens his menace upon deaf ears.
To the immovable Gymir does he at last relinquish the sword,
And ride homeward in eight-legged swiftness.
In three days time does euphoric Frey marry his new bride,
And the land blooms anew,
The flowers drink once more from the sun,
And thick harvest falls beneath Man's reapings.
Now Odin, noticing from his throne this sudden change,
With his wise eye espies this tangled web Love has sown,
And black fury warms his breast.
Ignorant Asir, they who know not Frey's lovesick deeds,
Blame fair Gerd's mother, the Giantess witch, who must surely
Have conspired such a plot in her demon breast.
May Death teach her to foil the Gods so.
But to enter Hel's frozen realm, and toil forever in Nibelheim's castoff mist,
A witch must burn alive.
So in false affability do the Asir invite the Giantess Angerboda,
And her husband Gymir to a merry meal in their great hall.
And when the last bones are licked clean, and the mead swells each belly,
The Asir seize the Giantess Angerboda,
And into the fire in the middle of the hall they cast her.
Three times must they cast her upon the fire,
To still at last her demon breast, and shut the furious eyes.
In the ashes of the witch does beautiful Loki seek,
Her smoked heart, and consume it whole.
And in his breast feel the wicked stretch,
Of dark and troublesome magic.
Into the Iron Forest he flees,
To birth from this foul sorcery three monsters.
The Wolf Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent, and Hel
Draw their first breaths,
Among the trees of this great forest, and Asgard recoils.
Into the sea Odin throws the ever-growing Serpent, and commands it bite its
Own tail, that it might forever feel only venomous teeth, and stretch
Not another inch.
To the realm of death goes the daughter Hel, where she rules in bitter triumph,
With the white brow, and the lashes of golden youth,
And her lips of stinking death.
But the Wolf Fenrir the Asir keep for themselves,
Until his strength shows their folly, and prophecy whispers
That come the end of days, the great Wolf will slay wise Odin.
To the dead realm do they bring the wolf,
With promises of fat sheep which may slake even his great belly.
From the best of the dwarf smiths have they received a chain,
Insist the gods,
That great Fenrir may or may not break with his mighty strength.
Now the Wolf Fenrir senses their deceit, and so responds:
If one with iron heart may warm their hand in his dripping mouth,
Only then will he acquiesce to the chain, and if break it he cannot,
The Gods shall free him gladly,
Or lose this hand of their bravest to his jaws.
And so valiant Tyr offers himself, and bravely sets the hand.
Mightily does Fenrir strain at the chain,
And in vain feel it tighten with each great thrust.
How loudly chimes the music of this struggle,
Outdone only by the God's cheering,
And then does Fenrir understand their deception, and
In one bite cleave the valiant Tyr's wrist.
In their triumph have the Asir forgotten their brother kin the Vanir,
Who have learned of wretched Angerboda.
The witch stirred no Vanir heart any more than the watching Asir,
Who raised their horns,
To her smoking ruin.
But the law so sayeth, the Asir must pay,
For this married relation,
Which no Asir deigns to hear talk of.
And when the voices are all matched in heat, and petty squabbles
Outmatch cool reasoning,
Odin launches his spear over the heads of the Vanir,
And so declares the First War."
The poet stops to oil his throat with a bit of mead.
The battle is quite lyrical, and wanting of some sort of accompaniment, so out come a set of pan pipes and a flute, and to either side of him his brothers knock the table with their drinking horns, and roar enthusiastically, and with a laugh he lifts his own drink and throws back a good swallow.
His head's a bit muggy with it, but he's a full belly of good venison and fresh berries, and there's that cheer in the air which always tells a man he's not yet had enough, so when Elijah makes a good-natured gibe about the state of his horn, he slams back the full length of it, and stands to a rousing applause led by Kol.
The musicians are warming their instruments, and the poet freshening his vocals, when he realizes Kol has vanished from his elbow.
His brother has kept the whole length of their table sobbing into their beards with his well-timed jokes and anecdotes (at least half of them bare lies, but told so finely you couldn't spot a seam in one) and with his own poet's sense of narrative, brought them leaning across the table to hear him over the shouting of their comrades a table or so down.
The lad's a gilt tongue, no mere mead talent, but imbued with that certain something the gods gift only rarely, one of the men comments to Elijah, and asks where he's got off to anyway.
Another one makes a lewd gesture, and they all roar out their mirth, and bang the table once more, so that several drinks are upset, and not a few plates rattled.
The poet clears his throat, and he looks round to the other table, where sits one of the fairer maidens who's been making eyes at Kol all night, spots her sitting quietly listening, chin in her hands, cheeks dressed with drink, Kol nowhere to be found.
Sleipnir is harnessed for battle, one hears, with either that elucidation of drink or talent, the distant clank of the axes singing against their mail, and the first touch upon the wall, the initial sweating rush, the gurgle of punctured bowel, spouting throat, he feels in all the fine tendons of him where the hair stands on end the halls of Asgard shudder, the floors leap-
He slips quietly away into the woods.
It's an uncommonly hot summer, though the moon has cooled this night a bit, and he has only to loosen his tunic a bit at his neck to let in a fresh breath.
Kol has not got far.
He finds him in one of the clearings he's shown him over the years, prime for star watching and general loafing when Bekah is being particularly nasty, half-submerged in the long grass and wrapped in a cloak, as if he means to spend the night.
"You're missing your favorite part," he chides gently, kicking the toe of Kol's shoe with his own.
"He wasn't very good."
"Oh, he was a bit green, maybe, but he showed a lot of promise. He made a nice start of it, anyway, with the war." He cocks his head. "What are you doing out here?"
"I'm meeting someone later," he says quietly, and without his usual bawdiness, not so much as a wriggle of the eyebrows, or some gesture or another which will get him scolded if not slapped by Bekah.
"Hmm." He sits down beside his brother, resting his hands on his knees. "Well, she seemed quite engrossed in the poem. You might be waiting a while."
"Who do you mean?"
"That black-haired lass making eyes at you all night. Right next to our table. Don't be coy, little brother. I know you notice anyone who looks at you as you should be looked at, as you're fond of reminding us." He jostles him with his elbow, and smiles.
Kol is silent for a long moment, and he feels a sudden sinking in his stomach, and settles back on his elbows, so that their arms are touching, and he can feel the coiled restraint in the boy.
"I told Bekah to meet me later."
He feels the lump in his throat first, and the ache in his fingers next, which he must fist beside him in the grass; Kol's too old now to have his head stroked like a child's, fourteen already and big in the shoulders with it, if the rest of him is all still knobs and elbows.
He's the beard starting to fill in already, just a faint shadow on the lip and chin, and didn't he tell you, little terror, to keep the fat in your cheeks, and the boy's marble chin, must he look at you now, and see already the man looking back over his shoulder, and going on as though he's left nothing of import behind?
"Kol," he says gently.
"Do you think she'll find a husband at the Alþing?" he asks, and oh, you could choke on the fear in his voice.
"She's fifteen. It's time for her own family now. You want to see her married well, don't you?"
"I want her…to not leave," Kol says, and discreetly coughs the catch from his voice.
For a moment he just lies quietly in the grass, waiting patiently for Kol to speak or not speak, whatever he needs, whichever he can manage, and above them the clouds clear, and the moon paints that burgeoning beard with such a deft hand, so it stands out sharply enough to prickle his heart.
"You'll be married yourself before you know it, Kol."
"I don't want to be."
"You'll change your mind. I promise. And then you'll miss Bekah, but you'll understand, and you'll have your hands full with your own new family. And they'll give you just as much joy. Provided the children take after your wife." He smiles gently at him, and knocks their knees together.
But poor Kol hasn't the heart for it, and goes on staring at the sky. "What if I can't love her? What am I to do?"
"Your wife? It'll likely come. If it doesn't, be a kind friend to her, and get on her lots of strong children. And if you need fulfillment, there will be plenty of willing women."
"Would you do that?" he asks, and now the head slithers down to one side, to lie cheek down in the grass so that the eyes are fastened unblinking on him, and he feels the look straight through to the back of his spine. "Go with the female slaves while your wife takes care of your children?"
"It's not exactly unheard of, Kol. Just stay away from the other men's wives, and you'll be all right."
"But what about loyalty?"
"To a wife you don't love?"
"But I've pledged myself to her, haven't I? And she's sweated and bled for my children? And she's to just sit and smile while I plant my seed in the thrall I've bought ostensibly to help with kitchen work?"
He does reach out now, with a little pain in his chest, and the belly tight round its mead, to stir the hair on the still fresh cheek, smooth with his youth, and with a tender smile he cups his brother's cheek, just for a moment, and perhaps he's too old, perhaps they've their manhood to think of, and he's no right to hold the boy's head on his breast, and nurse him to sleep like a mother, but the trees stir with not so much as a deer, the moon is no betrayer, the sleeping rocks not an observer, he can merely hold him, and recall the little red face in its birthing blanket.
"You wouldn't do it," Kol says quietly, and rests his head on Klaus' shoulder.
He strokes the long hair absently, feeling the shaved sides Bekah trimmed carefully just the night before. "Men do it all the time. And we've certainly no other example in Father."
"But you're a better man than Father, Nik."
His hand stops, and Kol burrows his nose into the shoulder of his tunic.
"No. Father is-"
"Yes," Kol says simply, and there's such a finality in that single syllable, you could argue till sunrise, and never move him a step.
He smiles down at the bent head, and with such soft carefulness, touches Kol's hair once more. "Well. At least gladden yourself with thought of what exactly Bekah's husband has coming his way," he says, and feels the thin shoulders trembling in laughter.
"Can you imagine the wedding night? 'You're doing it wrong! And what is that, anyway? Surely it's not a cock; Henrik's is larger, and he's only just five,'" Kol snipes in his highest pitch.
"Father ought to pay the groom a bride price."
"I bet he cries within the first fortnight."
"I bet he attempts an escape within the first fortnight, and Bekah drags him home by his beard."
"We should wager on it."
"And what have you got of worth to me?" he asks playfully, tweaking Kol's nose.
"Perhaps a couple of well-needed words to the ladies? And a tip or two?"
He swats at his brother, who jerks away from him laughing, and rolls himself to safety in the grass.
There, now.
That's what he likes to see.
It's three days' ride to the Alþing, where he, Elijah and Finn set to work immediately erecting the fabric over their búðir with the dust of the road still upon them.
Father has disappeared to renew old friendships and Bekah escorted off to the bathhouse by Kol, who is sternly reminded not to peep upon the maidens.
He can see from here one of the traders, who has returned from Ireland with a string of that good Welsh stock typical of the island's horses, and has arranged them carefully to accentuate the turn of a fine hock, and the arch of a thick neck.
Have to pop over to that booth when he's finished, he notes absently, and darts out his hand for one of the poles as Elijah fumbles it.
It's a good turn-out this year, he sees, the meadow grass already flattened by the boots of a few hundred buyers and lawmen, who drift from búðir to búðir peeping in on the wares, and settling their purchases with either coin or trade, fine silks and sleek furs and the spices which smell of far alien fields, pots of glistening whale oil, the bronze and silver baubles which are sure to catch Bekah's eye first, and in this mist of dust and animal fat popping on the cookfires, men laughing and bending their heads to the juiciest gossip, and youths wrestling or warming their spear arms on a wooden target someone has raised only a few búðir down.
Elijah tests the sturdiness of one of the poles with his shoulder, and dusts his hands satisfactorily.
It's a day to yearn for a youth's naked chin; he wipes his forehead on his tunic sleeve, and flaps the hem of it to air his stomach.
Finn has spotted a peddler hawking a good dark beer, and breaks away to purchase a few of them; Elijah straightens his tunic neatly; he hides a smile at his brother's fussing, and to his lifted eyebrow just shakes his head innocently, and wanders off toward the horses. Finn will be a while in the line that's formed, and he wants a look at that soft-eyed beauty on the end, who stands placidly switching her tail at the flies.
"Nik!" Kol sings out, and materializes suddenly at his elbow; he startles slightly.
"Is Bekah done at the bathhouse?"
"I wouldn't know. They kicked me out. She's lots of girls to fuss over her, anyway. Or she would, if she didn't put them all off by pointing out all the flaws that aren't going to net them husbands." He touches the sword he has only been recently granted, a blunted practice one, Father won't hand over a true sword for a couple of winters now, when he is a man, but he's still to learn the weight and heft of one, and take his practice where he can get it.
"And why were you kicked out?"
"I looked at them while they were undressing."
He sets his hand on Kol's head, which is at his shoulder already, and shakes it playfully. "And weren't you specifically told to let them alone?"
"And weren't you specifically warned by prior experience that I wouldn't?" Kol pops back smartly, ducking the swipe at the back of his head. "You can't blame a growing boy's curiosity. Besides, with my smile I'll have smoothed it over in an afternoon anyway, and then they'll invite me in. Have you ever had sex with a whole bunch of women at once, Nik? Connor -remember him from last year's Alþing? He came from Ireland with his father only just a few weeks prior to it. He told me they settled in a village a few miles north of here. Anyway, he's had sex with four women at once." Kol wrinkles his nose. "Do you believe him? I'm not sure I believe him. His head looks like a potato."
He laughs and dimples fondly down at his brother, his chest light. "Did you take a breath for any of that?"
"I've heard women like it better when you can go for quite some time without one." Kol cuts him a sly sideways look. "Would you know anything about that, Nik?"
"One doesn't kiss and tell his brother, who has plenty of time to find out for himself."
The horse trader welcomes him profusely, and begins to extol the virtues of his stock, which he can see quite plainly, thank you, and with an absent nod, he lets the man's babble in one ear and out the other, and sets to examining each horse with his hands, feeling about the feet and then sweeping the withers to get a sense of their conformation, Kol watching him with what he's grateful to note are still those reverential glances of the worshiper for his deity.
He'll see it out of your eyes one day, little one, but give him this moment, in which any man would bask, if his celebrity is but fleeting, if he is to be neither recorded nor recited, let his heart, at least, remember awed words were said of his great presence.
Kol's breast is a fine enough place for the keeping of them, anyway.
Elijah crosses the meadow with a beer in either hand, and passes him one of the mugs while he sips from his own.
"All right, away with you," he tells Kol. "Go see if Bekah is finished. She'll want someone to chatter at while she prepares herself. And Father won't see the búðir unmanned."
"Can't I stay here with the two of you?"
"No," Elijah answers for him. "Klaus and I have some matters to discuss."
"I can discuss matters."
"No," Elijah repeats firmly. "Go find your sister."
He's off with only a bit more whining, and they watch him stop to talk to a boy neither of them recognizes, who appears to already be a good friend.
Elijah motions him away from the trader.
"It looks as though our sister might already have a suitor."
There is a squeezing in his chest.
He tips his beer back for a long moment. "She can't have been out of the bathhouse a minute."
"This one's had Father tied up in discussion since we got here. They're standing near the brewer's booth; Finn and I might have lingered while bargaining for our beers. He's a jarl from a village a week or so east of here; I've been a time or two with Father, for trade. He has a large estate there. It would be a good match for the family."
He looks down into the head on his beer, and swishes it for a moment, listening to the cries of the peddlers, and the cheers of the youths wrestling one another nearby.
But she'd be so far away, Elijah.
"Niklaus?"
He looks up with a jerk of his head. "Yes. Well. Um. Do you know anything else of him?"
Elijah furrows his brow, and looks out over the meadow, toward where he presumes the man is standing talking his way into Father's graces; he doesn't look. What does he care; if it's not one interloper, it's another, and of course he knew this day would come, of course he understood, the soft blonde head must not always bend to his own hand, and when ripe, lift to seek another, of course he saw: one day a Bekahless horizon, and cold emptiness on the bench beside him, but oh, Elijah, you put it off, and you put it off, till your head is such a safe space.
And oh, poor Kol. Poor, poor Kol, who takes all his losses as though each were his first.
"He's quite a bit older. And married once already; the first wife died in childbirth recently."
"How old?" he asks, swirling the beer with a frown, and looking up when he hears his name shouted across the meadow.
Bekah has emerged from the bathhouse pink with stimulation, her hair neatly braided and sprinkled with the flowers Kol keeps plucking from their weavings, and tossing on the ground, until Bekah turns round to smack him smartly across the mouth.
"Kol!" Elijah thunders, and their brother looks up innocently, folding his hands behind his back. "Conduct yourself like a man and not a child." He finishes the last of his beer. "Twenty-four. The suitor, I mean."
"He's practically elderly, Elijah!" he hisses as Bekah and Kol start for them, Kol pulling at her braids and Bekah fending him off with the dainty hand she whips out and, more often than not, lands nicely, on either their brother's face or his stomach.
He has the deftness to dodge her lower blows, at least.
Elijah, just four and twenty this month, rolls his eyes sideways, with a wry smile. "Yes, I can hear his bones creaking from here." He hands his mug down to Kol when the two reach the horse booth, still squabbling, though without much heat in it. "Take this back to the brewer's booth and get me another."
"Have Bekah do it; she's the wife now," Kol says, with that tinge of bitterness he can feel in his own belly, and coloring the aftertaste of his beer.
"Father hasn't beaten nearly enough respect into you."
"No, he's saved it all for Nik."
"Kol," Elijah scolds him, pushing the mug into his reluctant hands.
"Oh, we're not allowed to say it? My mistake."
He turns without another word, and runs off.
"What's the matter with him today?" Elijah asks, frowning after him, and with a sigh Bekah fusses one of her braids back into place, and holds out her hand for his own mug.
"Give me your beer, Nik. I'll go and talk to him."
"No, love," he says softly. "Let him alone, all right, Bekah?"
She frowns so that her pretty white forehead puckers in a way she'll be reprimanded for, come the stream of suitors she'll no doubt be entertaining throughout these long, long days.
Ah, Bekah. Had to turn out so lovely, didn't you?
Frey'd have nicked you first, sister dear, if he'd bent his gaze long enough on mortal Midgard.
"Why?"
"Just let him alone, Bekah."
Kol sulks round the booth during the day, and listens half-heartedly to the evening debates in which those little neighborly struggles must be mediated clear of blood feuds, chin in his hands, and his eyes on the eligible men more often than those arbitrators of law which command the center ring, and with their fine orations shame the lesser poets.
Father is intent on Bekah's presentation as she brings that touch of homeliness to the búðir Mother herself could not have bettered, and doesn't notice.
Elijah gives him a look one evening, when a slain farmhand's compensation is being argued, and he takes Kol by the arm and hauls him back to their booth, where an evening storm has sagged the roof, and knocked about one of the poles.
"Don't even think about it," he says, setting about the repairs.
"About what?"
"Whatever sabotage it is you're preparing in that head of yours."
Kol is silent for far longer than he would like.
He drains the water from the fabric, and pulls all the corners taut once more, and motions with his head to the pole an angry gust has skewed, which Kol fixes competently enough, if quietly.
"Kol. She's going to be married. It's rather inevitable, I'm afraid."
"To some ugly old jarl with breath like the stables. I don't like him, Nik."
Well, neither does he, brother, but you don't see him kicking about with his mood permanently branded upon his forehead, hmm?
"You don't have to like him. Only Bekah does."
"She doesn't get a say." Kol crosses his arms. The heat has dipped a bit this evening, and he has his cloak flung back over his sword arm. "Father doesn't care. He gets a nice bit of coin for her, or a shiny new horse, or a whore, whatever he's been promised, and Bekah goes off to broodmare for some old goat weeks from us."
He sighs. "Father won't let her go to anyone who's going to mistreat her, Kol. And nothing's been decided yet. She's had suitors, not offers." He looks sternly down at his brother, and steps back from the booth. "Promise me you won't go mucking about in it."
"Why would you think I'd do that?"
He gives Kol another look.
"Don't I get a say in who she marries? You and Elijah and Father and Finn sit round discussing it often enough. But Bekah gets no say. I get no say."
"You're not a man yet. Bekah will agree to whichever match is best, and Father won't pick any of the lesser ones. It's not up to either of you. Trust in your elders, all right? And anyway, you know I'd never let Bekah go to someone who will abuse her. She'll be in good hands. Whatever you think of their age." He ticks off transgressions on one finger at a time. "So I don't want to wake up any morning and find that you've both fled. I don't want to find that you've shaved her head. I don't want to find that you've started a blood feud with any of the men who have come for a look at her. You're not old enough to duel for some man's smarting honor, and I'm not dying for your impertinent mouth."
Kol's face takes on such a beatific cast he knows he was considering at least one of them.
He sighs.
He watches his brother closely.
He misses two of the evening sessions (Elijah tells him the first was rather lively, the second exceedingly dull, one small complaint, a ruckus over some chicken or another, he hears) shadowing Kol, who busies himself with the other youths, and seems to have every intention of behaving himself as any boy of fourteen ought to, tumbling with the other sons and wasting the small allowance Father has afforded him on whatever nonsense he can scavenge from the booths (Father takes away the rune bones which Kol has been assured are the heirlooms of a powerful Celt sorceress), and to her great outrage, ignoring Bekah almost entirely.
But if he's not so much as a tug for one of Bekah's carefully plaited braids, neither has he any eyes for the maidens who are themselves on display, and look him over often with that giggle of the instantly enamored.
Someone looses all the Welsh horses one day.
You may guess who.
On the next, the horses are again cut free, and a good half dozen of the female slaves similarly unchained, some of them riding to what will no doubt be a brief liberty, unshod in those particular woods, but the perpetrator slips away in the chaos, and leaves the traders to sort their own booths when the horses upset several of them.
He is playing innocently with a ball he has got off one of the other boys, seated on the sleeping bench in their búðir and looking casually up from his throws to ask, "What happened, Nik?"
"I'm sure you don't know."
Kol smiles.
Next day, a fight breaks out between several of the youths, who appear to have suffered some rather grave insults, if their red faces are anything to go by.
Coincidentally enough, several of their fathers are suitors of Bekah's, and are called away from their lusting to attend to one of the fights, which has left both participants badly battered.
Some gossip or another, they grumble when they have returned, something about a boy who heard it from another boy who heard it from another boy that his mother was used by a cow; children's nonsense and games.
Elijah lightly touches his arm and motions him out of Father's hearing. "We need to take him in hand before Father finds out. Or Rebekah."
He looks with a sigh across the meadow to Kol, who is going thoughtfully from búðir to búðir, fingering his chin the way Elijah does when he's truly thinking about something.
"I've already talked to him, Elijah."
"Then it would appear the time for talking is over, wouldn't it?" Elijah brushes hair from his shoulder, and neatly aligns the sleeves of his tunic. "Finn and I will take care of it. It's a far kinder alternative to what Father will do to him," he says quietly, and then cuts across the field to intercept Kol, motioning to Finn as he goes.
They take him off out of sight, so he never knows precisely what ensues, but the horses are no longer disturbed, the slaves let alone, the traders left to their whole and peaceful wares.
Father praises Kol's unwavering attention at the evening meetings, and proudly boasts that in addition to a fine warrior, they might well have upon their hands quite the law speaker as well.
But there is a lad of some eighteen winters to whom Bekah grants her tactless preference, and he can see how it stabs his brother, that this man has in only a few brief weeks shouldered him aside, and made of him what afterthought she can spare between those coy calculations of eyelash flutter and cheekbone stain.
When one night they gather round Sven, son of Bjorn's búðir for the tale of Balder's murder, Kol vanishes.
He looks round for Bekah, and with a casual glance to their own booth, so Father doesn't notice, sees what he has already suspected, that she too is missing, and when Sven has reached the dramatic apex of his story, and each ear is bent fully to it, he sidles carefully off into the woods.
It takes him but a minute to find them.
Bekah's voice does carry.
Kol has contrived some excuse or another to spirit her off into the trees, but Bekah is rather immune to his charm, and has a particularly nasty habit of seeing right through one's little deceptions, she has quite a knack, his sister, for all the tells of man, the best of whom sweats through his smoothness.
He stays well back, leaning one shoulder against the tree he has chosen for his sanctuary, should he need, for instance, some shelter which might deflect a shoe or brooch or boyishly well-aimed rock.
"But you don't really like him, Bekah."
"I do too, Kol. Now if you'll excuse me, there are certain people I'd much rather spend my time with." She sticks her nose in the air.
She won't get far, little Bekah.
She does march three determined steps from her brother, who stands with his hands dangling loosely by his sides, and will right now be wrestling his tears, and remembering what it is Father does to boys who are hovering on their manhood, and must not be granted kindness.
"Kol, I'm sorry," she says, choking a little on her own tears. "I don't want to leave either. I'm afraid. I want a family, and to have babies, but what am I to do without you?" she asks, and in his tenderest voice, Kol replies, "Bekah," and can't say anything else.
He sees when they embrace that his little brother is already a head taller than she.
He raps his fist gently on the side of the tree, and leaves.
Bekah's bride price is settled three days later, and sealed with a hearty handshake between Father and the 18-year-old lad whose name he supposes he ought to learn.
The Alþing is disassembled búðir by búðir.
He tucks the little trinkets he has purchased for Kol into his horse's pack, and plans his unveiling for whenever they will bring most joy.
And so his years pass.
Bekah's bridegroom vanishes a mere two weeks later and is found murdered in the woods.
Kol reaches his fifteenth winter.
Finn makes for Iceland.
Father has bought a redheaded Welsh slave, and puts her to work in the kitchen, and later, his bed.
Mother, her wifely heights unchallenged by such unwashed castes as this, weaves placidly.
He sees occasionally, when about his chores, Alexander hard at similar tasks, and waves when his wife is not looking.
Come Kol's sixteenth winter, he falls in love.
Elijah and he have for some time speculated it's one of the village youths he's always careening madly about with, and have wagered an entire week's chores on their choice lads, but Bekah pops smugly into their conversation one day to tell them it's one of the maidens from a nearby village, whom he met at a recent wedding feast.
"He only flirts with the boys, because he needs everyone to love him." She rolls her eyes. "But he's never looked crosswise at anything that doesn't have breasts."
She is hanging meat to be smoked from one of the kitchen beams, and stops to primly wipe her hands. "Her name's Thurid. He likes her because she thinks he's handsome, but refuses to admit it. I hear from one of the other girls he spent all night mooning over her, and making sure his jokes were loudest so she'd be sure to hear them."
Elijah straddles one of the benches to sharpen his axe. "Is she of marriageable quality?"
"Who cares?" Bekah snaps. "He doesn't want that. He told me once he'll never marry."
"Well, that was before he realized women are more than a warm tingle in his trousers."
"Niklaus," Elijah scolds.
He sighs. "Sorry. I've been hanging round him a bit too much lately, I suppose."
"She's not from a very good family, so even if he were to depart completely from his sanity, and decide he needs any woman other than his sister, Father wouldn't approve."
"Wonderful. Now he'll only love her more." Elijah sings the whetstone over the edge of his axe, and tests it with his thumb. "I wish it had been a mere dalliance with one of the boys. Those are always got over quickly enough. You know how he is."
"You mean, he'll love her all the more since Father is sure to disapprove, and be absolutely crushed in the process? Or run away to Greenland. It's becoming rather well-explored lately, I hear."
"He's not going to take her anywhere," Bekah tells them coldly, mashing the berries which are to be put in the cake she and Mother are preparing for Father's birthday feast far more roughly than she ought.
And he doesn't.
For nearly a month, he goes about smiling at everyone, and cheerfully prodding Elijah where it most annoys him, and fussing over his new beard with a care to shame Bekah's own fastidious toilet.
In the bathhouse, he is good-naturedly mocked by the other young men, which he and Elijah oversee with a fond sort of caution, lest their barbs begin to prickle, and sit switching themselves with the willow branches to sweat out their day.
And then one evening he comes in, eerily solemn.
Mother and Father have taken Henrik with them to oversee the harvest; Finn is still away; he and Elijah and Bekah have set up the Hnefatafl board and are squinting at their moves.
Bekah is cheating, as usual.
Perhaps if Elijah wouldn't indulge her as he does.
He narrows his eyes at them both, and turns one of the pieces in his hands.
They all look up when Kol throws his weapons messily across the table, and begins sorting through them with polishing rag in hand, roughly clattering aside his spear for his sword, and taking it over his knee.
"Do you mind?" Bekah demands. "You're going to put an eye out."
He says nothing.
"Not been to see Thurid this evening?" Elijah asks carefully, examining the board so Kol himself does not feel scrutinized.
"Yes." He runs the rag down the flat of his blade.
"And?" Bekah prompts. "What did the slut do to you?"
"Bekah!"
"Well pardon me, Elijah, if I'm not going to tiptoe round it. Clearly he's upset, and she's a cow whore."
"Bekah."
Kol rubs the pommel furiously, blinking. "She's getting married."
"Ah, well." He claps his brother on the shoulder. "It's unfortunate, but her Father has final say in her match. And you know our father wouldn't have agreed to a union between the two of you anyway," he says gently.
"She knew she was getting married before she took up with me. She just wanted to taste something else before her wedding night."
He throws down his sword and stalks out of the house.
It comes out later that she laughed at Kol, who was apparently skilled enough but a bit overcome with his first lovemaking, and made quite the starry-eyed profession of his love afterward.
She is roughly sheared by a maiden who may or may not fit Bekah's description, and dragged by what is left of her hair through the cow field, also by someone who may or may not fit Bekah's description.
He'll love just as faithfully next time, Elijah laments.
Ah, brother.
Pity your poor soft heart.
You must be so careful with the clumsy, traitorous things.
In his 17th year, Father takes Kol on his first raid.
In his 18th, you can see how he fights it, but there's another lass, she is blonde as Bekah, and warm as their Mother.
She dies of some fever or another, and he thinks, is this his brother's destiny, then, to give his heart fruitlessly, to care always for what will leave him either purposefully or of that necessity that is mortality, must he forever hold aloft his smile, so the rest of them are not wounded by his pain?
And then there arrives the beautiful Tatia, and he nearly forgets he has a brother.
A/N: Elijah is quoting from Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound'. The Greek tragedy Klaus stages for Caroline is 'The Women of Trachis', and the quote is from the translation by Michael Jameson.
Vikings were not long-lived, so the eldest Originals are quite a bit older than average; I'm trying to stay in line with their probable canon ages. Also, violence against women was VERY frowned upon in Viking society, but the Originals all seem pretty frightened of Mikael, and it seems reasonable to assume that they would have been too frightened of him to step in if he hit their mother in front of them, so I tweaked that a little.
Though much of our understand of Viking culture is comprised of educated guesswork (theirs was an oral society; most of their history was written centuries after they were gone, by Christian authors, who imparted a certain bias), it's likely homosexuality was treated differently back then than it is now, that it was not looked upon as an actual moral sin (that particular concept wasn't introduced until the widespread Christianization of formerly polytheistic cultures), hence the rather casual attitude toward it. Everything I've read suggests that as long as a man fulfilled his proper role in Viking society, he and Sven were free to their sexual proclivities.
This is the final part of this fic, which means we'll be moving on to the 12th entry in the series. I also think I will do another Viking flashback, because I want to cover more of their human lives and expand upon a few things I started in these flashbacks; this particular update was just getting too long, so I decided to leave off until next time, for the sake of all our eyes. This site decided to fuck with my formatting in a couple of places; I think I caught all of it, so hopefully you won't come across anything fucky, missing lines, duplicated lines, anything like that, but if you do, let me know. And as always, thank you so much for sticking with me through all of this. I truly appreciate you guys.
