"We are lost."
An angry silence. Roaring ocean and thundering over the sky in quick flashes.
"They should be…"
Nervous jitters.
Antlers hovering over them, embracing their death.
A hard crash with the waves.
"We are dying," she finally breathed.
Frida opened her eyes and breathed in heavily, sitting up straight in the bed with a hand flying to her throat in the darkness of night, her eyes desperately searching around in the black room, her heart pumping achingly, panicky, in her chest.
It was only a dream.
She still breathed hard, as if she had been holding her breath for the longest of times, as if she had been drowning. She turned to look at Ragnar who was sleeping beside her.
His face was serene and calm, his mouth slightly open.
She cupped her face with her hands, finally sighing out in relief, the feeling of the dream retrieving slightly from her skin. She closed her eyes in her hands.
The image of Floki's angry face before a livid sky flashed before her eyes, and she gasped out, opening her eyes quickly again.
It was from her dream. But she already felt the memories of the dream disappearing into the corners of her mind, the visions gone, the knowledge lost. She cursed out in a whisper into the night, and turned in the bed.
All she could remember was her on a boat, with Floki, and then the danger.
The anger. The roaring of the sea.
She lifted her hand to let her hands travel over her throat. She felt strange, restless.
...
The restlessness endured all winter.
It was a cold and very white winter, with clear light gray skies and a bleached sun, only appearing as a small little circle above them through the heavy layer of frost that lay in the air during both the night as well as the day.
Frida kept herself busy. She clearly had to take care of her two lovely new sons, Halfdan and Ragnvald, who were growing bigger and stronger by the day. She could feel it as she fed them.
But when she was not being a mother to her children, she found herself pulled towards the forest that led her to Floki and Helga's place. She was working on her new project there. And while Ragnar sometimes accompanied her there, she often went alone.
She liked being there, she liked working next to Floki, while he was building his boats quietly beside her, only turning his eyes once in a while to make silent judgments of her work.
She wanted to decorate a stem for a boat, and while Floki had only let her carve into smaller pieces of wood before, he had finally thought her adequate to start on her stem. She knew that she would never be able to make ones alike his, for he did really have a gift for carpentry, one that she could never dream to imitate.
Frida did her best.
And for the moment, she actually did not think it to be that bad. She could easily see the difference between Floki's carved out stems and hers, the lines in his wood somehow both round and edgy, whereas Frida's carvings were very straight but weak still, causing her to skulk a bit over at the carpenter of Kattegat as she mirrored his work one evening in Tordmåned.*
She watched how he moved smoothly along with the grains of the wood, his shoulders rolling in glides with the resistance of the plank, and she turned her eyes to the smooth surface of the plank.
She looked at her own.
It was bulky and messy, as if she had violated some rules of the wood, misinterpreting the thing before her. She frowned.
"You have stopped?" Floki's voice snaked towards her, and she felt his eyes on her as she kept hers on the stem before her.
She sighed out. "Well…" she turned her eyes to him, smiling. "Look at it!"
She saw him casting his eyes upon her stem, before he giggled out nervously. His eyes turned to hers, and she burst out a surrendering laugh, throwing her tools to the table beside her.
Floki stalked closer, letting his hand run through his beard as he eyed the carvings on her stem closer, and when he was close enough, he let his hand run over her work. He sent her hard eyes.
"You attack the wood, Frida, destroy its patterns." He shook his head and once more let his hand run over the rough edges. "Listen to it, move along it. Softer."
She picked up her tools once more, and sighed out as Floki returned to his art.
When she raised her hands and let the iron touch the wood, she heard him giggling out. "I like your way," he breathed while glaring at her from out of the corner of his eyes.
She looked at the raven that was coming to show on the wooden stem in front of her. She puffed out a small gush of air.
"I'm trying to make it Viking, like your kind."
A long moment of silence passed between them. She noticed him shrugging his shoulders before he once more turned around to his work, and she furrowed her eyebrows as she eyed the stem she was working on.
She did believe that it looked very Norse, alike the many decorations around the village of Kattegat, however, she could not imitate it perfectly, and so her raven did have a different kind of edge to it. But she kept on working.
Summer was slowly coming closer.
And she knew that when it came, when the ice over the sea finally melted, they would fare out on boats of many, and they would go to her old lands. To Northumbria. That was what she had been told to do many times now, by dreams and visions, by children and animals.
The gods had told her.
She did not know what to expect from this journey, all she knew was that she had this feeling when she imagined herself walking on English land again, this strange feeling that she did not know. She could not recognize it.
But together with the restless sensation that covered her heart during this time of winter, she felt frozen in time somehow, as if she would live in this particular space forever. With her two newborn sons, Ragnhildir, Ragnar, family and friends, surrounding her in a warm embrace, an oncoming journey ahead of her but too far away for her to reach, anticipation repeatedly resounding in the many familiar voices around her, causing a nervous but excited energy to reside on her skin.
She felt a line of concern carving her forehead as she furrowed her brows, her entire body exhausted from standing up for so many hours straight, and she lifted her hand to her forehead, closing her eyes for a short moment.
She knew that she would not stay in this state forever.
Someone had plans for her, plans that revolved in her going back to England. What troubled her was why.
How could she going on the raid possibly help Ragnar in any way?
She bit her lower lip, and stared absentmindedly at nothing in particular. When she felt the weight of a hand on her shoulder, she started in surprise, and quickly turned her eyes to Floki at her side.
"It is late, I will take you home," he stated shortly, before stalking out towards the small boat he always used to go to the village.
Frida shook her head lightly before she followed him, and they were soon on the way back over the cold icy water through the narrow paths of the broken ice, the wind heaving lightly, crying out from the mountains. They were both silent as they made their way closer to the harbor, but Frida could feel his eyes burning on her, smoldering from behind his dark cloak as he rowed them along.
She saw the cloud of mist that was his breath appearing in front of him before she heard his voice.
"What is your concern?" he asked curiously, as he bent slightly towards her.
Frida turned her eyes to the enclosing lights of the village before them, and she shrugged her shoulders. "I, uh… I just have this bad feeling about this summer's raid, but I don't know why."
She closed her eyes as she heard the words come out of her mouth. They sounded ridiculous, stupid. She regretted having opened her mouth.
Floki made a strange noise.
His words sounded rehearsed and formal, as if they were not spoken from his lips, even as she saw them moving: "The unwise man is awake all night, worries over and again. When morning rises, he is restless still, his burden as before.*"
Frida furrowed her brows at his dark cloak, and she felt a smile curl her lips.
He was right.
It did not help her or anyone else that she spent her time dreading the future. Because it would come, as sure as comes the night, whether she was prepared for it or not. So she just had to prime herself, make herself ready for the oncoming journey, for her destiny.
She gave Floki a small hug before they entered the longhouse, as a thank you for helping her.
And she was surprised when he did not flinch away from her.
"Time, low waters and rivers await no one."*
*Tordmåned: This is a Danish Viking month of winter, reaching from the 14th of March to the 13th of April. They had their own monthly calendar, and it only divided the year into two seasons: summer and winter. "Tordmåned" means 'the month of the men.' (Don't worry, we have a 'month of the women' as well, named "Blidemåned")
*This is from the Havamal (The Book of Viking Wisdom)
*An old Danish saying.