Translator's note: Sorry if I had taken so long to update... here is chapter 8

Chapter 8

Eric didn't get too close to me or flirted with me in the next four days. Twelve days after our sowing a huge tremendous storm happened and we discover with horror that we had a couple leaks at home.

Eric climbed to the roof the morning after, he already had a beard with a few days growth and he was gorgeous. I grieved a little when he began to lift the layer of green grass growing on our "hobbit house" to find the point of leaking. He sent me to Freira's house to get a bucket of tar which they used to waterproof boats and I took half a dozen chicken eggs and a pair of quails to pay her.

Freira's husband was a sailor, had left a week after Eric returned with a couple of ships to Greenland's seas, it was winter and they went searching seals and polar bears. She had a small boat which she set sail to the sea on good days, along with her eldest son, who was fifteen, and drew fish for them to redeem for other food, as they lacked farmland.

"Good morning" I greeted.

"Hello, beautiful" I smiled and put the eggs on the table.

"Eric told me to come to you for a bucket of tar."

"Yeah, he told me that you have leaks" I shrugged my shoulders.

"Yeah, it's weird, because they haven't appeared till now. And it has rained."

"It sometimes happens, the ice of the last few days and the grass could have broken the wood" I pulled out a bucket full of black tar. It stank.

"I brought half a dozen eggs, I hope it's enough."

"Sure, don't worry. I would have preferred a beautiful bread, but... okay. Hey, here" she handed me a motif that men used to be knotted woolen tunics "Eric left it last night at home. You can tell him..." she lowered her voice "if he comes tonight, to do it later" I nodded, not knowing what to say. I liked Freira, at least so far. She had always been nice to me and the children, and had never considered this because of Eric. I discovered in her head that she and Eric had been together sometimes, but it was never anything serious and never would be, and that's what she liked about sleeping with Eric.

Dalla wasn't like Freira, not at all. She was as nice to children as when she wasn't sleeping with Eric, I mean she was very nice. I was a bit annoyed that Erik and his young son, Gunnar, play together. Even so, I made a good size ball of wool and sewed furs to keep it isolated until it was a fairly decent ball. Kids enthused their new toy.

The more I lived with them the luckier I felt. It was true that Erik and Leif helped in the sowing and taking care of livestock or going out looking for mushrooms or gull eggs, but they also had plenty of time to play and Eric never interrupted their fun time. I was lucky because other children in the village had to help their mothers cleaned pigs, and worked since very young doing chores for other families as collecting firewood or walking goats and pigs in exchange for a wage or payment in species. My kids could be kids.

I had been sixty-four days with the Vikings, I had improved a lot with the language and was used to the sober and simple lifestyle. Although I think I wouldn't have endured without the kids. I missed the sun and sometimes I missed my vampire.

It was a nice day, running a damp breeze that carried the smell of sea salt and the sun shone. Later we would go out into the woods to look for mushrooms. I was going to milk the goats when Eric stopped me.

"Don't go near the pig" he shouted at me.

"What's up?"

"The female is in heat" Eric took the chickens and goats from the barn and closed the various fences separating the animals and tied the horse. He carried a huge barrel onto his back and laid it on the floor of the barn.

"I want to see" the small girl said. He carried Audr and sat her on top of the barrel, then grabbed me by the waist, lifted me over his head and laid me on the horse. Erik and Leif also took a place above the woods.

"Don't come down anyone" Eric let in one of the sows that were in the pigsty, outside. The male started screaming like crazy, so loud that Audr and I cover our ears. He opened the cell door and stallion ran, he jumped and climbed beside his daughter and placed her over his shoulders.

The male went over the female with terrifying ferocity. Audr got sacred and me too. Eric give her to me over his shoulders and I grabbed her and hugged her. The suckling pig was mating strongly with the sow while Erik and Leif were talking about massacres and boars. Eric jumped and dived with us in the cubicle of the horse, he climbed the horse gracefully sitting down behind me. He wrapped me with his arms and pinched his daughter's cheeks.

"I do not know why you want to see if you get scared"

"I'm afraid, too" Eric smiled at me.

"The beast cannot resist" he whispered "But men have to restrain with some females, but sometimes we are dying to jump on her and ride her like an animal does" I got all the creeps. I leaned back against his broad chest, and despite the noisy situation, I almost fell asleep against his rhythmic breathing and his hot body.

A while later, Eric left the boar in its place, and left the sow out and brought us down of the horse. I went home to finish preparing breakfast and knitting a wool fabric. Eric had asked me if I was knitting the sail of a boat, because of the dimensions, but I said no, it was a shade for the house. I finished it at dusk and hung it so that a corner of the long room that was our home, was isolated from the rest.

"Now I can wash up, and you won't have go out" I told Erik and Leif. They snorted. They didn't understand my demure and my modesty. Like his father, had no qualms about walking through the world in the buff.

The next morning dawned cold but clear. I completed my ritual of early morning chores with a little bitterness because Eric had returned visiting Freira on the night. I went to milk the goats and pull out the oatmeal that had put to boil, I removed them from the water and put them a spoonful of honey on top. I smiled and let them cool and dry until my children were awake. Leif was the first to sit at the table, as usual. The last was Audr, I helped her to get dress because she was still too little and because I liked to.

I poured them a bowl of hot milk and I invited them to try out my latest creation. Children used to be impressed with my culinary skills, so attacked oatmeal like lions to hyenas. Eric came later, he had gone to take a look at the field that we sow a week ago. He was in a good mood, the bastard. He sat at the table and I gave him a bowl of cold milk and a piece of stale bread from the previous day. He frowned and reached for the oatmeal. I hit him on the back of his hand.

"It's for the kids."

"So I'm back to get cold foods, huh?" he again reach out and take, not without challenging me with his look, a handful of oatmeal that went directly into his mouth. He chewed challenging me, but left the rest to his children.

"They're delicious, Sookie" Erik commended me.

"Not bad, no" Eric the father said. I wish I had a sharpened stake in hand. I got up and began to drain the lentils I had left in soak overnight. I shook them with excitement and covered with water in a saucepan. I put a little salt and went to the cold room. We were running out of meat. I was about to ask Leif to kill a rabbit to put meat on the food, but I preferred not to. All that we had left was a jerky piece of smoked bacon, and I couldn't put it into the vegetables. I grabbed a basket and put in some mushrooms that I had picked up with the kids yesterday, I covered them with a cloth and left home. I went to the port, where some women changed things for other things. I greeted Freira, she was also disgustingly happy that morning and other girls and boys from the village.

"Hello, Bera."

"Oh, hello, Sookie" she greeted me "How's the roof? Freira told me yesterday that you had a leak" she was an elder woman, about forty-five. But she had smooth skin, perhaps because she lived so close to the sea. She was good to the eyes and she had some extremely sagging breasts because I gathered from what I knew about her, eleven children whose she had had since she started to give birth at fourteen. She was a widow and had been a widow for a long time and she wasn't interested in men. Actually she liked men, but she was afraid to get pregnant again. Apparently it was the type of woman who gets pregnant just with thinking about sex. Freira had no land, but she had livestock and a small garden near the town's fence which provided her with some vegetables like beets, onions, parsnips and carrots. All other things: vegetables, grains and fish she got from trading it in exchange of her wonderful meat.

"I think it is repaired now, but Eric says he won't be sure until it will be another storm."

"You speak our language very well" Ivar her son said. He was a young man of about twenty years, but he was pretty hardened by the harshness of life and he could look older. He didn't like the sea, so he take care of his mother's cattle. He married a young nineteen but she had died at childbirth with her first child a few months later, since then he lived with his mother and hadn't married again. Which was a shame and a rarity, in my opinion, because he was very handsome and hard working. I don't think that he will stay single for a long tame because I had "heard" he is an eligible young man.

"Helga said that you kill an animal a few days ago" I commented to Bera.

"I would had wanted to wait until the weather gets colder, but we needed the meat. And this year our piglets weren't healthy" she lamented. She was worried, poor she, about the quality of their pigs.

"Well, I'm sorry. We also have the pantry empty. I brought these mushrooms" I uncovered them and showed them. I had been there enough time to know the value of things and changes. "I was wondering if you could give me some good bone, or a piece of fresh bacon. Something to throw in the lentils."

"I'm sorry, Sookie, we give out all meat from the slaughter except one piece of ham and a few pieces for us in exchange for one sack of oats and other of barley."

"Here" Told me her son. He handed me a few bones of ham and dry hoof "is not much, and the bones are old, but it's something."

"Thank you" I handed them the mushrooms, but they refused. But I left them for them to taste them at mealtime.

When I came back and started to make lunch, I put into the lentils: one chopped carrot, pig hoof and bone, half an onion and half parsnips. All morning was at slow fire from the chimney with its blop blop impregnated the house with the sweet scent of the food.

It was delicious so I felt bad about spoiling it to annoy Eric, so I gave him a piece of hoof (which was juicy) and a plate of lentils. I made a mental note to thank Bera and her son, the gesture of giving me a few pieces of pork.

That night was freezing cold. Eric set up a pile of logs for the fire and made sure that the beds were dry and warm. He said he was going out for a while and if I wanted, I could sleep in his bed with children. I didn't want to sleep between the same furs he did, because they gave off his scent and it was very painful for me, but it was cold and it would be good for kids that we slept together.

I lay awake thinking about it, now he would be fucking Freira against a wall or above a barrel, or at her comfortable bed. I knew he liked me, I had heard in his mind, but apparently his interest shouldn't be too great, because since he was with us he had already been with two women in "his bed" and none of them was me.

It saddened me think about my vampire occasionally I seemed to perceive through our blood bond a wave of love, concern, anger... but that did nothing but torment me further.

Eric the vampire had developed a fatal attraction to me at the minute one we met. From there, it was all over. But Eric the Viking seemed not more interested in me than in any other woman, like Eric the vampire hadn't been interested in a woman more than another until I came along. Me with my fairy blood.

I told Eric I'll be with him until I find out if the blood bond was all that was between us. For months I had feared that my feelings and Eric's, were due only to the influence of our blood. Now, through blood, Eric the Viking felt about me the same interest as the vampire Eric felt for any fang banger. For human Eric, the man, I wasn't special at all, therefore, according to the horrible logic of my thoughts, which makes me especially for the vampire I love is not me, but my blood.

I wiped the tears and the throbbing headache triggered most times because of being strong and continually mourning, I fell asleep.

Translator's note: Just remember if you follow or favorite I appreciate that but is like spanking my butt and running away.