Winternights.
The village began to transform as the day waned, with fires lit inside and out, candles peppering the paths and the table-tops. Cooking pits were made and pigs grunted and squealed as they were slaughtered. The smells of roast deer and elk, boiled cabbage and red seaweed, baked rye and barley bread filled the longhouse - Aslaug had insisted it be used as it usually would, even though she was in her bed-chamber at the far end.
It was a feast, Athelstan had explained, to celebrate the hunting season and to ask for protection against the coming cold. He had also said that it was to celebrate the dead, watching her carefully as he did so. He now knew about her dead as much as she knew about his.
Winter. The dead. Sansa felt full of memory, both warm and painful, as she sat next to him at the end of a feast-table, eating boiled bacon and fish, crusted with salt and rosemary. The longhouse was packed with people. At the far end of her table, Bjørn entertained his young half-brothers with goat-bone swords and potato shields.
'Where is Ragnar?' she asked Athelstan.
He took some more bread. 'He has gone up to the top of the mountain. There are old graves there.'
'But – does he not want to feast?'
It was getting noisy. Athelstan leant closer. She could feel his warm breath on her ear. 'It is believed that if you sit on a grave all night, on this night, that you will have –' he was searching for the easiest words. 'You will be able to talk to the gods. You will have the power to heal others. You will have the gift of poet-'
There was a sudden, alarming noise, like a cow giving birth.
Floki was standing on a table, a horn at his lips. When everyone stopped and turned to him, he looked amazed by the attention and giggled, looking at Helga. She, with her baby swaddled to her chest, nodded with solemn encouragement, her ringed black eyes shining.
'It has come to me,' he said, unfurling a hand, 'I hardly know why, to begin our Winternights feast on _ of King Ragnar.' Behalf? He took a different horn, streaked brown and cream and with an ornate bronze rim, from Thorsten and stood tall. How had she ever thought him a fool?
'On this night, we _ our feast to the Dísir for watching over our queen.' Offer. Dedicate. There were nods and murmurs around the room as he held it towards the wooden walls that separated the main room from Ragnar's own house. 'And in their honour, we first ask our ladies, our own Dísir who keep watch over their men like sparrowhawks over their eggs -' he grabbed his crotch and giggled again, to groans and laughter from everyone. 'To drink.' And he cast his eyes about the room, before settling on Sansa. 'Princess.'
He unwrapped his arm like a ribbon towards her.
Her? Oh Gods. Athelstan was looking at her, a smile on his face. Go on. She smiled, sat up straight, and took the horn from Floki. A small sip. Mead and ale, mixed. Honeyed and bitter.
Everyone cheered.
V*V*V*V*V*V
It is a long walk to the top of the mountain. There are no trees and the wind is an opposing shield-wall.
Below, Ragnar can hear the revelry of the village, sweet and dark as elderberries bursting. He can see the flickering fires. But they are not for him on this night.
He is to be alone. Him and his gods.
V*V*V*V*V*V
Feasting had turned into drinking and drinking into laughing and dancing to the two drums, drums that never seemed to stop. Drums like the waves.
Sansa danced. Dancing had always been something done with a partner, even in Winerfell, waiting to be asked by some elderly lord that she couldn't refuse. Dancing had been something done with Joffrey, whispers in her ear of everything he would do to her, digging at her ribs with his fingers. Here, Thorunn had pulled her up and wiggled violently in front of her until she couldn't help but do the same. It felt utterly wild, free. She was a wildling, one of the freefolk, her own North, a wolf.
She danced amongst the drums and a flute, high, bird-curling above the pounding skin-rhythms. Occasionally she felt the hands of someone on her hips, but Thorunn always bashed them away, or dragged Sansa to a different corner.
After what seemed like a whole night of dancing and drumming, Sansa flung her arms down. Her head was reeling a little.
Thorunn grabbed her by the shoulders. 'No.'
'I can't. I have to stop.'
Her face was very close. 'No, Sansa. Do not stop.' It was very difficult to say no to this girl. The girl who insisted she rise early to run and kept trying to make her lift logs, squeezing her upper arms as you would to test the ripeness of a melon.
Thorunn glanced over Sansa's shoulder and suddenly wheeled her round. As she turned, almost stumbling, she felt warm liquid spatter her face and her hair. She unscrewed her eyes to find Bjørn holding a bowl of something in one hand, and a wooden spoon dripping with red liquid in the other. He was grinning broadly.
Sansa put a finger to her face, eyed it and placed it on her tongue. Thick, metallic. 'Bilberries?' she said.
'No. Pig's blood,' said Bjørn, beaming. Thorunn yelled something, jumped on his back, her legs sticking out, and they weaved through the crowd, Bjørn flicking his blood across people's faces, and everyone holding their chins up, ecstatic.
Pig's blood. She looked across the room to see Athelstan, propped up on his elbows on furs, a cup in his hand, grinning at her.
V*V*V*V*V*V
Máni and Alvsinder pull the moon across the sky.
Ragnar counts his sons on his fingers, holds his hand up so that it seems as if he is holding the moon.
He shivers.
V*V*V*V*V*V
Sansa was tired. Perhaps it was time for bed. Though she couldn't possibly sleep with the noise everyone was making. Shouting and singing and laughter. The room had become emptier, and she hadn't helped but notice men taking women's hands, or women taking men's hands, and their smiles and nods as they disappeared from the longhouse. She knew she should be shocked, but the ways of these people were becoming more apparent to her. She had dared ask Athelstan about it two days ago, and felt as brazen as a whore for even mentioning it.
But Athelstan had received her question as he would have one on sentence structure.'Yes,' he had said, with a small smile. 'It took me a while to get used to it. It is not the way of my old country either. But –' he glanced at her with a pensive look, one that turned brighter. 'It is better, I think. People are more free here.' There was a faint blush on his cheek, a dusk-rose against the black of his beard, and he hadn't asked why she had wanted to know.
Now, as she stood, wobbing faintly, she watched as a girl with curling brown hair stood by Athelstan, trying to pull him up. He was shaking his head and smiling back, not in the least embarrassed.
'Hello, Blóðughadda.' Floki was behind her, a long snake-curl grin on his face. He always called her that. Blood-red sea-foam. It didn't sound like a compliment.
'Hello, Floki.' She still found him a little frightening, this man, though he had been nothing but kind to her since she had drawn the boats. He would come clutching his own pieces of bark now, showing her them, and she would do her very best to nod and re-draw and wonder if he was going to build a boat that would only sink to the bottom of their sea.
'A gift for you on Winternights,' he said, his voice like a song, and lifted an arm. On the tips of his fingers sat a wooden bowl of steaming liquid, with small round things bobbing in it.
'Oh no, thank you.' Sansa put her hand on her belly. 'I am fat.' Not fat. 'Full.'
Floki's cheeks remained high. 'No,' he said, and the word sounded like a long, bending string being played. 'This is a _.' Dessert? Delicacy?
His smile was the sort that wouldn't take no for an answer. 'Thank you,' she said, and took the bowl from him, sipping. It was salty, oily, with little soft dense things she could chew on.
He stood watching her, waving his fingers upwards. Drink, drink.
She would definitely not have room for berries and buttermilk now.
V*V*V*V*V*V
It is cold on the barrow-mound. It is cold and he will stay here, listening to his loss. To his grief. His grief is the wind whistling over the mountains. It is the eagle-cry. It is the heave of the waves on the rocks.
He does not care for the gift of poetry on this night, but it is in him nevertheless, like a curse.
He does not care for the gift of healing, for his heart cannot be healed. He thinks of his daughter. He thinks he sees Gyda there, in the sky, riding Máni's chariot.
He will wait for his gods to come. To come and explain why they have done this to him. Why they have taken another son.
V*V*V*V*V*V
The night had become a long song. Sansa moved through a long song of people, their arms waving like nests of asps, like fish amongst seaweed, like trees tumbling in a storm, like locks of hair in the wind, like silks in a market. She put out her hand, and touched them. Asps fish trees hair silks. Fish trees hair asps silks. She saw their open mouths. Silk-mouths. Tree-hair. Some of them touched her back as she drifted through them, making her giggle.
Among the faces were those she knew very well. Bjørn. Siggy. Her father. Helga. Thorsten. Her mother. Floki. Robb. Thorunn. People of winter and the north. She could not see Bran, or Rickon, or -
A wave of northern sea. What was happening? When had everything -
The floor. Straw and mud and wood. The fire.
Everything had lost their edges. Tables dripped. The fire became liquid and she wondered about drinking some, though something deep down in her told her not to put her face near the flames. She put her hand out instead.
'Hey raf refr, what are you doing?'
A tall man, brown hair, brown fur, green eyes. He could be anyone.
'I don't know. Fire.'
Sitting down next to her. 'Fire. You are all fire. I think I could cut you open and fire would come out.' He was saying strange things. Her tongue was heavy and thick with tar. 'Hey, don't touch that.' A hand on her wrist. A hand waving in front of her face. 'What is wrong with you?'
She thought very much about putting her head on the man's shoulder. The fur looked so soft. Like the fur of a direwolf. She touched it. He was very far away. Her hand had to cross the sea.
'Hello,' he said, as if they had just met. Eyes right in front of hers, very close. Eyes like tree-roots and moss. Staring.
She put her head on his shoulder.
'Are you tired?' His thumb was still on her wrist.
She wanted to sleep forever, right here.
'Where's your wolf?'
'Over there. With my mother.' A flash of snowdrift tail next to her skirts.
The flames danced. The burning wood was a drum.
'Floki,' the man whispered, and he laughed through his nose and shook his head, his hair tugging underneath her ear.
She knew Floki. Floki the snake. Floki the smile. Floki the dragon-boat. His shoulder was warm. Direwolf fur. 'Is it you?' she said.
He turned to face her, holding her up by the shoulder with one hand. One of his knees was bent up, his other leg around her a little. 'Don't you know who I am?' His voice was warm and low, like the sound of spring remembering itself under the earth.
Sansa put a hand up to his face. It was soft above the beard, and the beard was as soft as direwolf fur. She had always wondered what he would feel like -
V*V*V*V*V*V
Bloody Floki. Bloody mushrooms. He had a store of them, different types for every occasion. Sometimes you wondered if he ate them for every morning meal. It would explain a lot. When you thought of mushrooms, you thought of being sticky with blood, leaping over a shield wall, or you thought of having sex with pretty women in the woods, both of you swimming in dream-fog. But it was not the same if you hadn't had any as well. And Sansa - she seemed to think you were someone else.
You had returned to Kattegat in time for the end of the first Winternights feast, and the West-er-os princess, with eyes like dead trunks filled with water, had put her hand on your cheek. Her hair like summer foxfur, her smell of sweet onion. Blood-speckled nose. Blood and freckles. She touched the other side of your face, and before you could put your hand over hers, her look had changed from drifting to sharp, and she removed it as if she'd been stung. As if you were fire, or ice.
'Where are they?' she had said, and you wondered if she thought you had stolen something of hers, or if she just wanted more mushrooms.
And before you could say anything, she had got up, almost tripped over her skirts, and stumbled away, and you saw Siggy, watching you in the corner.
V*V*V*V*V*V
There is a flash of red in the lightening sky. Dellingr comes.
He thinks of the princess, the girl-of-wolves, telling him that she had no family at all whilst his son died. And yet here she stands, tall, speaking his words, learning to layer them as Floki does with tree-planks.
Living. Moving forwards.
It is time to return to his village. To be with his family. To look west. More west than west. He has five sons. One has a dragon in his eye. One has legs that are not legs. One is as strong as a mountain, as fierce and as light as the wind. His wife –
It is time.
V*V*V*V*V*V
Sansa woke with soil in her mouth. She put her fingers on her tongue. There was no soil in her mouth.
Soil in her skull. There must have been soil in her skull. She carefully pressed her fingers to her forehead. There seemed to be no soil there.
The drumming was still going on. In her ears, it was still there.
She could remember music and laughing and people in front of her like a forest. Thorunn with her arms in the air. Being carried around on Bjørn's back. Athelstan taking her hand and sitting her down and giving her water to drink. She could remember a man with fur on his shoulders. A warm voice full of breath.
Ragnar was leaning on the wall to her little chamber, looking at her. He looked less sad.
'Good morning, princess,' he said.
V*V*V*V*V*V
Norse mythology school:
The winternights festival is at the end of October, and is a three-day festival (ha! Poor Sansa's only just done one day!) of much drinking and feasting to celebrate the 'Wild Hunt', the six-month long period of winter and spring. It is a time when the dead are said to walk the earth, and one in which you may find out your fate for the coming year. It precedes and/or is related to the Celtic Samhain festival, Hallowe'en and the Day of the Dead, among others.
It was said, as Athelstan tells Sansa, that if you sat on a grave all night long, you would gain full divinatory, shamanic (galdr and seith) and bardic (skaldr) powers.
Dellingr: The Norse god of the dawn.
The word Dísirsimply means 'ladies' or 'maidens'. The Dísir were a family's female ancestral spirits who, according to various accounts, could behave like guardian angels, protective warrior goddesses, or fetches appearing to those about to die.
Mani is the Norse god of the moon. Alsvinder is the horse that pulls the Moon's chariot driven by Mani.