Notes: I'm adding this story from AO3, where I kept this chapter as the first chapter in a new story as series installation 2. you might see some odd summaries in this chapter that were designed to get brand new readers up to speed. Hopefully they will not be too distracting :)
Faye lay in bed, savoring the dreamlike peace she felt upon first awakening in the morning. The sound of birds, the light chill in the air, the softening darkness, and the weight of furs pressed around her. Then an earthquake struck her bed.
"Mother! Mother!" Atreus whispered, shaking her bed. "Can I take my new bow today?" he asked, for the twentieth day in a row.
She cracked open an eye to her son leaning in over her. Well, peace time over.
"I do not know," she said, stifling a yawn. "Can you use today it without accidentally skewering an animal, or one of our neighbors?"
Atreus clattered away to retrieve the bow, eliciting a series of inexplicable banging and thumping noises. Faye savored a few more short seconds of relative peace in the bed, wincing as Atreus knocked over something tall and heavy. She rolled over on her side and propped herself up on one elbow. Atreus appeared at her side, the new bow they had crafted together clutched in his hand. He held the bow straight up over his head, pulled the bowstring to full draw, lowered the bow to a neutral firing position for a long hold. He then slowly relaxed the bow, and repeated the movement nine more times.
"Go on, then," she said with a smile. "This time, without raising it over your head."
Raising the bow over the head was a much easier position to draw from because if offered more leverage compared to a more neutral draw. It was good for developing strength, but it was not good for hunting or combat because the exaggerated motion made a misfire more likely, and left one vulnerable to attacks.
Atreus held the bow out from a neutral position. There, he drew back, and the wood began to bend. He strained as he approached the end of the draw, arm quivering with the effort, his breath shaky, struggling. Finally, for the first time starting from a neutral position, the bow finally yielded and came to full draw, starting from the more difficult neutral position. He tried a second time, but faltered half-way through. His eyes shone with excitement.
"Did you see?" he asked. "I did it!"
"I did," she said, raising an arm to invite him into an embrace. He pounced on her, hugging her around the neck, his cheek pressed in close to hers. She breathed deeply, capturing his scent, his warmth, and released him. Approaching nine years since she had first held him, and it felt intoxicating every time.
"You come closer every day," she said. "Keep practicing. Pull and hold that neutral draw to the count of ten, ten times,no shaking."
"I know, I know," he said, deflated that she had not suddenly changed the rules of their agreement.
Atreus prepared their morning meal while Faye sorted the seed sprouts she had started inside small planters. Somehow Atreus managed to stay underneath her feet at all times, but he did a good job of making them a meal of boiled grain and tea. Their midday meal would also be boiled grain and tea, and their evening meal would be boiled grain and tea. Early spring was the leanest time of year for them, with the fermented vegetables from the previous year depleted, the next harvest of forage and crops still under preparation. They could have hunted, but early spring was a fragile time for game as well, and Faye liked to give the the animals a few weeks of respite and uninterrupted breeding in early spring to help strengthen the population for the rest of the year. She and Atreus were nowhere close to going hungry, even if the food was monotonous, bland, and never quite satisfying for a few weeks.
"When do you think father will be back?" Atreus asked, for the twenty-fifth day in a row."
Faye leaned back in her chair and calculated. She wondered, with a passing thought, what prophetic vision of horror awaited her this time she reunited with her husband. Unwanted, grim prophesies had been harassing her for years. They were natural consequences of her choice to ignore and defy the collective wisdom of the Giants, who saw Kratos as nothing more than a tool and a threat. The most recent ones, though, were starting to get a little bit farfetched and outlandish.
"When he gets tired of fording through rotten snow, so probably soon," she said. "The Draugr should be settling down, too, so once he stops seeing signs of them, he will come back."
"I have never seen Draugr," Atreus said skeptically. "We are out in the woods all of the time. How can there be so many, he has to stay out so long?"
"Oh, my son wants to see the Draugr" Faye said, raising an eyebrow. She crouched low and prowled along the dining table, circling Atreus like prey. "Are you so sure you want to? Husks of rotting flesh that stalk the night. Fragmented souls of men slain in battle, their thirst for vengeance preventing their spirits from moving on. Their fingers reaching out from beyond the grave!" She lunged from behind the table and pinched his arm.
A year or two ago, that would have been enough to make Atreus giddy with fright and excitement. Now, he just stared at her like she had grown a second head, and waited for her to give the real answer.
"These lands were infested when we first lived here," Faye explained, breaking out of character and settling back at the table. "Your father and I killed most of them, but a few small nests always survived our patrols. Once you were born, those few stragglers became a problem. Killing most Draugr in this valley is fairly easy; killing all of them is much harder, and takes much longer. And your father is on a war path to kill all of them."
But really, Kratos does not have to stay out as long as he does to kill Draugr. It is a useful excuse he can use to avoid being around his son, Faye thought in exasperation.
Atreus faltered a little bit and frowned. Damnation, he was getting good at detecting her thoughts. Faye tried to empty her mind of anything other than contentment, letting her narrative stream of consciousness dissolve into the gentle flow of relaxed, and seemed happy enough with that particular question, before moving on to his next one of his incessant interrogation.
"This food does not taste like anything," Atreus observed, jabbing his spoon into the grain mash. "Mush. Do you think this is what all food tastes like to Baldur? You said he cannot feel or taste anything, right?"
That was a safer question. Faye took a bite of her own food, swirling the lumpy, tasteless mush around her mouth, and considered. When she answered, she spoke using the language of the forest trolls.
"Perhaps so. He has to eat, like most of the other gods, but it would never be very interesting."
"Apples taste like mush, venison tastes like mush, fish tastes like mush," Atreus pondered, adapting easily to the language of the forest trolls. He did not have the control of his vocal cords to use the troll speech, but he could understand it. "A grand feast in Odin's halls, all of it would just taste like mush. Does he feel anything?"
"The stories say Baldur feels no pain or pleasure, but I think he can feel how hard something is touching him. Otherwise he would not be a good fighter," Faye replied, switching to the language of Jotnar scholars.
She swirled her tongue over to her missing back molars, which were a testament to Baldur's fighting skills. Blasted things never grew back after Baldur tried to smash her face in with a priceless Vanim relic and few centuries ago.
"Huh. Maybe everything feels to him the same way mush tastes to us," Atreus mused, switching languages as easily as partners at a dance. He used a false cognate for "everything", but Faye let it slide because it sounded unobtrusive. "Warm sunshine? Mush. Getting a new bow? Mush. Everything the same. That sounds like his mother gave him a curse, not a blessing. Why would Freya do that?"
That was not a safe question. Faye stood up, trying hard not to think of that night. The harder she tried to not think about, the more she could not banish it from her mind. She went back to the table to sort her sprouts, using the physical work of her hands to help settle her thoughts. Dawn stance. Woodcutter. Ironwood. Stormbringer. I gave Atreus away to fate centuries before he was born. I have already promised his soul to the will of the vengeful Giants fallen to gods in battle. The Souls of the Slain are the Draugr of my people. Their hands are wrapped around my heart, and every day they reach for Atreus from beyond their graves. When those thoughts entered her mind, she allowed them to come and go, passing like leaves floating away on the river. They brought pain, but she did not fight them or dwell on them.
When she glanced back over her shoulder, she was relieved to see that Atreus had noticed nothing. Instead, he was chugging his grain mash by tipping the entire bowl into his mouth, and slurping it in a long draw. He sputtered and gagged, then grabbed the basin of water and began gulping it down. He fell into a fit of couching, pounding his chest with a fist. Faye raised an eyebrow.
Once Atreus was done choking himself to death on grain mash, Faye kicked the front door open with her foot and gestured outside. The yard was slick with melting snow, tufts of grass poking out among churned mud and ice.
"I think you have a little bit of time to look for the Aurora Silkwing moth before the rest of your chores," she said. "This might be a good year to find one. They will like this early spring thaw."
This was the fourth spring in a row she had sent him on the search for the elusive and mysterious Aurora Silkwing moth, and each year he seemed more determined than ever to find it. Beyond being a benchmark for gauging his empathic abilities each year, it was a fairly reliable way to get him out of her hair for a half hour or so. She loved him more than life itself, but it was nice to have some quiet every now and then.
She needed to say no more. Atreus bolted out into the yard and disappeared among the reeds, completely forgetting his unanswered question about a mother so terrified of fate, she cursed her son to a life of devoid of feeling.
As soon as he was gone, Faye pressed her forehead against the counter top and let out a long wooooooosh of relief. She had mastered her words and her facial expression years ago thanks to her blessing and curse of vivid prophetic visions appearing at inconvenient moments, but controlling her internal monologue was a whole different beast.
My son is starting to see the flaws in my stories, she thought with a smirk. I will need to work harder to stay one step ahead of him. It made her nervous, because he strayed close to dangerous secrets. It made her joyful and proud, because it meant he was growing and learning. The more she taught him, the more he could deduce on his own. How long before he pieced together long-held secrets?
With her head still pressed against the lip of the counter, Faye pulled out a small box from the adjoining shelf and peered inside. There was a small tusk cleaved from a boar who and had attacked Faye in a moment of misunderstanding and panic when Faye inadvertently trespassed into the forests belonging to the goddess Freya. There was a short leather thong that had once held a clay blessing pendant, which Freya had given as a gesture of goodwill and forgiveness for Faye's incursion into her territory. The blessing pendant had inadvertently allowed Atreus to be conceived, and had nearly killed Faye and any hope of bearing Loki into the world along with her.
There were a few other gifts who's purpose Faye could not discern: a piece of crystal, a dragon's tooth, and a bundle of dried herbs with a distinct black and orange striped pattern crisscrossing the leave and stems. The herbs were distinct and unusual, and faintly jogged her memory. Faye thought they might have been from Vanaheim, but was not sure of their identity or their purpose. As part of the exchange, Faye had sent Freya five hunting falcons, one massive lone female and two breeding pairs to chase and slay the ravens of Odin, granting the goddess some reprieve from his spying eyes.
"Mother!" Atreus shouted, thundering back inside the house. Peace time over, again. "Mother, father is almost here! I saw him coming down the hill!"
Faye set the box away and smiled, a warm glow filling her heart. Familiarity. Companionship. Home. Haven in a storm. She made no effort to hide any of those emotions from her son, and let them shine like sunshine of an early spring.
A quarter hour later, Kratos dumped the carcass of a caribou cow into the yard. As always whenever she saw him, Faye was thrown into a prophetic vision sent to her from the Souls of the Slain, the remnants of Giants slain in the battles against the gods. In this vision, her husband was twisted into the shape of a beast, his face was replaced with a maw of gaping fangs and his hands were replaced with gnarled claws. The carcass he clutched in his talons was not a caribou, but mangled human body.
Once, these visions had terrified her. After Faye mastered her fear, the visions just pissed her off. After years of living with them, she had learned to acknowledge them for what they were, and send them along their way. She did not hide from them or block them from her mind, but simply let them go like seed pods on the breeze. Faye calmly looked past the vision of horror, and studied the caribou.
The caribou had a thick winter coat indicating her husband had harvested it from the higher alpine slopes. Faye noted that the cow had broken leg, possibly an injury from navigating the rotting snow, and nodded in approval. She prepared an array of game bags and butchering knives while Atreus went out to greet his father.
"Father, this one has such long fur!" Atreus exclaimed, tugging appreciatively at the thick tufts of hair feathering the beast's hind legs, causing the whole carcass to shake while Kratos was trying to skin the hind legs.
"Do not touch it while I am working."
"Sorry," Atreus said, jerking his hand back. "Where did you find her? Is this the same species as the ones that come down to the forest? What happened to her leg? She must have been hurting really bad." Atreus reached out and seized the rear hoof, which was dangling from the rest of the leg at an odd angle
"Boy," Kratos growled, gesturing to the offending hand with the tip of his knife. "Do not make me repeat myself. Either help, or step away."
Faye reluctantly let the exchange play itself out, watching from just beyond the threshold. It was not the greeting she had hoped for between them, but maybe being growled at was the best way for Atreus to learn his father needed more space and calm than she did. Besides, she had tried micromanaging before, and that did not work well, either.
"Oh. Sorry. Yes, sir," Atreus said. "Would you like me to free the hide, while you cut?" It was how Faye asked him to help.
Kratos grunted a negative. He preferred to skin and butcher animals without a partner, and he had no idea where he wanted Atreus to start working. Atreus hesitated, mistaking the grunt for affirmation, and tentatively began to loosen the hide from the muscle around the hind legs near his father's first cuts.
"I said no," Kratos said.
There had been a time when that reprimand would have sent Atreus scurrying off to find some less intrusive way to occupy himself, but their son was not so easy to scare these days. His curiosity about Kratos was beginning to exceed his fear of his father's grouchy demeanor, the same way his curiosity to explore the forests in all weather had surpassed his fear of rumbling thunderclouds. And Kratos had no idea what to do about that. Atreus stopped carving, confused about what his father expected from him, but still hovered nearby, awaiting and expectant. Kratos bristled under the attention, not sure how to untangle the trap he had placed himself in, tension building like static in the air. What would come next? A raised voice? Harsher words?
Time to make her entrance.
"Almost one month gone," Faye bellowed from her doorway. "Are you really going to make your poor, lonely, pitiful wife walk all the way over there in the mud to greet you?"
Faye swooned back on the doorframe and threw an arm over her face. She peeked out with one eye from beneath her elbow, studying her husband. He stared back at her with a flat expression, corner of his eyes twitching with a barely-concealed smile.
"Yes," he said.
"The nerve," Faye huffed. She hiked her dress up to her knees and tip-toed across the yard, taking exaggerated steps over and around mud puddles. She stopped by Kratos, and proffered her hand.
"You may now rise and greet me, in a manner befitting a lady of my rank and title."
The corners his mouth twitched, and he quickly turned away to hide the grin that flashed on his face, continuing his work on the caribou. Once he had composed himself again, he looked back at her with the same flat expression, and spat on the ground.
"There is your worthy greeting," he said.
"Put down that knife, and give me attention."
"No."
Faye latched her thighs around his head in a chokehold and lunged for his skinning knife. Kratos countered the grapple by standing up to deny Faye leverage from the ground, and held the knife out away from her at arm's reach while she scrabbled for it. He did not try very hard to keep it away from her. Faye released her chokehold and went for the knife. Once she reached it, Kratos let it go readily to avoid either them being cut. Faye roared in victory, and triumphantly flung the knife into the swollen river.
"Faye," Kratos groaned, staring into the water. "We needed that."
"Alas, poor knife," she lamented, flopping over his shoulder. "Forgive me, I was overcome with lust for battle. Also, just lust."
He heaved a strained sigh and walked to the edge of the floodwaters, Faye still hauled over his shoulder. She extricated herself, landed lightly on the ground, and then turned Kratos away from fussing about the knife and the river, and towards her. The sound of roaring water, the feel of cool and humid air, his warmth and scent enveloped her in a type of trance. They leaned in close, pressing foreheads together, arms clasped together. It was like a spot of light, a sphere nothing else could touch.
"I am glad to see you," she said.
"And you," he replied.
"As much as Atreus and I were looking forward to eating grain mash for the next two weeks, some steak will be welcomed. Thank you."
"I not think you do damage to the game population by hunting, now. "
"Probably not, but a few weeks of voluntary austerity keeps the mind sharp. Of course, I will not refuse a salvaged caribou," she said.
"I would have come sooner, if I noticed how fast the thaw was happening. The early sprint melt probably has tangled your fishing lines."
Faye winced. Sooner or later she would have to go fetch her mangled fishing nets that had been swallowed by the early floods, if she was to ever get them at all.
"Kratos," she said, allowing a flash of steel to enter her voice. "Your son has been asking after you every day. Three weeks is a very long time for him. He has been looking forward to seeing you. He is hanging on to your every word, right now. Are those the words you want him to remember from today?"
Kratos let his arms drop from her and shuffled in place, not quite ready to meet her eyes. He looked chagrined, like he knew he had blundered his first greeting with Atreus, but he did not quite know why he did it or how to stop it.
"I have been alone and in silence, for a while. I am out of practice," he offered. He did not seem happy with his own answer.
"Then, it is good you have just had a reminder," she said, her voice fully gentle again. "Go greet him more warmly, Kratos. He is forgiving, and always looking for the best in you. There is still time to change the memory of today."
Her husband gave a "hmph" of agreement, turning furtively to look at their son who remained by the caribou. He started to go, then paused, and glanced back at her, a strained rumble emanating from his chest like stone grinding against gravel. From the expression he wore on his face, it looked like she had just handed him her axe, and instructed him to go paint a picture with it.
"Yes, I know it is hard. Grumble, grumble, grumble," she said in sympathy, patting his arm. "Go, answer all of his questions about the caribou. He will like that. You two will have a few minutes alone while your eccentric wife recovers the skinning knife that she just threw into the river in a fit of passion."
He slanted his eyes at her in final exasperation at her stunt, and turned to leave.
As he left, Faye made a big show of wading into the water and pretending to search for the knife. She had tossed it onto a rock ledge that was submerged just below the level of the water in the shadow of an eddy, where it would be easy to retrieve. Across the opposite banks, a familiar gyrfalcon crept out onto the edge of a branch, her golden eyes glowing among the fir boughs. She stared at Faye, and dipped her head in question: You have brought meat?
"Wait a few hours, Jophie," Faye told her. "I will bring you out some split marrow bones later."
The falcon puffed her feathers out in indignation.
"And the eyes, I will not forget," Faye promised.
Satisfied, Jophie disappeared back into the trees.
Faye glanced back over her shoulder, checking on her husband and son. It was a pity how some aspects of their relationship seemed to sour a little bit more every year, and Faye had no idea how to stop it. Kratos was down on one knee, eye level with their son, while Atreus stroked and admired the caribou's long fur. Kratos was tense and agitated, like he was in dangerous territory and had to stay alert. Like he was surrounded by enemies, but could not see any of them. Atreus was relaxed and animated, soaking up every last drop of attention like an early flower turning towards the dim glow of sunlight obscured by clouds. He was generous like that, assuming and accepting the best intentions whenever possible. It made her proud, to see his unfolding spirit was filled with kindness and good will.
It made her feel guilty, because she knew she was not worthy of that trust. She had promised her son to a cause centuries before she had ever thought of him as a person.