“Where are we going?” Kirstie asked.

“You need to tell Chief Birger what you just told me.”

Kirstie nearly stumbled. She did not get dragged willingly, but she did not really resist. When they got to the big house Inga did not think twice about butting into the middle of the men. “Tell them,” Inga insisted. “Tell them what you just told me.” The older men were polite enough to listen.

Kirstie noticed the looks of sympathy that covered the men’s faces, but she quickly looked at Inga and repeated what she said, beginning with the idea that there must be a power driving the Vanlil to come and fight or otherwise they would have no reason to risk their lives for strangers. When she finished, the men nodded, like they may have been thinking something in that direction but maybe did not spell it out quite so clearly. Then Chief Birger said something to Kirstie that struck home.

“I’m so sorry.” That was all he had to say.

Kirstie felt the tears come into her eyes and she shouted for her mother. She ran out of the big house, Inga on her heels, yelling. “No. We have to go to Mother Vrya. We are supposed to stay with the Witcher Women. Kirstie! Come back.”

Kirstie ran all the way home. Inga gave up at last and walked the final leg. When Inga arrived, she found Kirstie on her knees, weeping. The house still burned. The livestock had scattered. The dead littered the ground. A dozen men, including Captain Kerga stood around staring at the destruction and talking softly about getting shovels to bury the bodies or maybe building a funeral pyre. The spring was full on, but the ground might still be too hard to dig deep. Kirstie’s mother and baby sister were gone. Dorothy was dead, her arms wrapped around Kirstie’s dead dog, Toto. The three farmhands, the lion, the scarecrow, and the tin man all died, but they took a half dozen of the enemy with them, so it was a battle.

“To make war on women,” one man yelled. “These Vanlil have no honor.”

Captain Kerga responded in a loud but calmer voice. “Their ways are not our ways.” He kicked the boot of a dead man. “But I remember this one from so many years ago. He lived in Haudr above the Skaun before King Harald came.”

“Captain,” a man interrupted. “It looks like the women picked up weapons. I would guess they tried to defend themselves.”

Kirstie sat and cried for a long time, but eventually, Inga got her to move.

Inga took Kirstie to Mother Vrya’s hut where they had a cot already made for her. The Witcher Women on that farm consisted of three older widows of the sea and the Viking lifestyle where the men lived with the constant threat that they might die on some distant shore. Sometimes, such women had no prospect of remarriage, and had no offspring to care for them. Younger women always had a chance to remarry, but some older women had nowhere else to go, and often died before their time. The Witcher Women cared for one another and stayed alive, farming a little, and making textiles for the village.

Mother Vrya was the Volve, which is the seer and something like a shaman. She had chosen Inga to teach and pass on her knowledge and skills, and Kirstie got to sit in on some of the lessons. Mother Vrya built a place on the edge of the village and invited the widows to live on her land. Kirstie was not the first orphan child the Witcher Women cared for, and she would not be the last. Caring for the orphans was another way they helped the village, and the village respected the women in return.

When Kirstie was shown where she would sleep, she fell to the cot and curled up under the blanket. She refused to get up for supper and spent most of the night in tears, eventually crying herself to sleep.

In the morning, Inga found Kirstie down by the docks. “My father should be coming home soon,” Kirstie said. “I will wait here.”

Inga frowned. “That could be months from now.”

“I will be safe here, by the fjord. There are farms and mountains with cliffs to my left. The Vanlil will not come from that direction. To my right are the docks.” She pointed to where Captain Kerga’s longship and a Karve, a fjord trading ship rested, and some men were milling about. “And beyond the docks are the ship builders. The exiled chiefs and men may come for the ships, but there are men there, workers and such to fight them while I escape. I will be safe here where the skiffs and fishing boats come to land.”

Inga put her hands to her hips and deepened her frown. “And what will you eat? And how will you shelter from the storms?”

“I will be fine,” Kirstie insisted. “You have lessons to attend and much to learn from Mother Vrya. Don’t worry about me.” Kirstie turned her head to look out on the fjord. She did not want Inga to see her tears.

Inga may have wanted to reach out and grab Kirstie’s wrist again to drag the girl back to Mother Vrya’s place, but she kept her hands to herself and opted to bargain instead. In the end, Kirstie agreed to let one of the Witcher Women bring her food in the morning, and she agreed to come to Mother Vrya’s at sunset for supper and to sleep on her cot. But otherwise, Kirstie insisted on staying by the docks and waiting for her father to return.

Yasmina

Yasmina stood by her mother looking out from the upper floor window. Yasmina waved to her father who was going to Medina, a whole host of soldiers following him. She never saw much of her father, but he was always nice to her when she did see him. She never saw much of her mother, ether, for that matter. She had plenty of duties of her own. Mother was more strict, but she generally hugged Yasmina and genuinely cared about her.

Suddenly, Yasmina began to weep great big tears. She practically wailed, and her mother was right there to say, “Yasmina, your father will be back. He has made this trip before. He is going for thirty days, and he will be right back. Why are you crying?”

Yasmina reached out and hugged her mother. “Just don’t leave me,” she said between her tears. “Don’t ever leave me.” She held on to her mother thinking Kirstie could never do that again.

************************

Monday

Kirstie is gifted by the gods and Yasmina does not know what to think about that. Meanwhile, Kirstie is told something important. It is a matter of life and death. Until then, Happy Reading.

*