‘Who are your gods?’
‘The sky and the blue of the sky.’
‘How conveniently ungraspable,’ said the wolf. ‘They’re all at it nowadays — mysteries and cant. What would you say to a god who gave you something actually useful? A solid god, a big pale, beautiful flame-haired immortal who occasionally likes to appear as a wolf?’
‘I would follow him.’
‘And if he didn’t want scabby scratchy followers like you?’
‘I would… I would…’
The half-wolf put his fingers to the healer’s mouth and slapped him on the back with the other hand so that he coughed out air.
‘I would say thank you,’ said the healer as the creature manipulated his lips to form the words.
‘I will offer you a charm.’
‘And what must I do to get it?’
‘Go to Helgi, take his gold. But let his little girl, the one fierce in heart, drink this.’
‘Drink what?’
The wolf took a bottle from the healer’s pack and poured its contents onto the floor. Then he bit deeply into his hand until blood dripped into the bottle.
‘I offer rare bargains to those who please me.’
‘I will take your charm.’
The creature put the bung of cloth back into the bottle.
‘Here is the charm,’ he said. ‘Congratulations. You are an instrument of destruction. But be of good cheer. It is death that we destroy. We are its enemies.’
He scratched something onto a piece of birch bark and passed it to the healer.
‘This one must the sons of men know, those who would heal and help. Carve it once when you need it most. It calls forth the fever.’
On the roof, under the stars, the healer didn’t know how he had forgotten that night. How had he forgotten the fever charm? It had not seemed at all strange to him to sit talking to a man who was also a wolf. It had not seemed strange when he had given the girl the blood for a fainting fit she had suffered one day. And it had been alarming, but not strange, when the fever had fallen upon her shortly afterwards.
He stripped a piece of bark from the roof with his little knife and carved the sign the stranger had given him. He didn’t know what to do with it so he just put it on the girl’s chest.
*
The girl spoke — ‘Liar. Where are you, liar?’ — and sat upright, clutching the bark to her, staring wide-eyed over the town.
Then he was no longer alone on the roof. Beside him, squatting next to the girl, was the pale flame-haired man.
He smiled at the merchant and chanted,
‘When I see up in a tree
A corpse swinging from a noose,
I can so carve and colour the runes
That he walks and talks with me.’
‘Who are you?’ said the healer.
‘I am a fever,’ said the pale man, ‘a fire to light the bones within you.’
‘You are a man. I have seen you before.’
‘House-rider, troll-witch,’ said the man to the healer, ‘make your way back to your shape.’
The little girl did not understand the literal meaning of his words but understood the man was telling the healer to return to being something he had once been before.
The healer climbed down through the hole in the roof and the pale man sat holding the girl’s hand. She stirred and looked up at him.
‘I have dreamed of you,’ she said.
‘And I of you. What did I say in your dream?’
‘My home is in the darkness,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘I am of the dark.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there a darkness near here?’
‘They have found one under Gillingr’s barrow,’ said the pale man. ‘Would you like to see it?’
‘I would see it,’ said Svava. ‘I know you. You are the wolf’s father. The begetter of death.’
‘Yes.’
‘I have a fierce heart, everyone says it. I am not afraid of you.’
‘No.’
‘What am I?’
‘A little broken thing,’ said the man, hugging the girl to him.
‘Will I ever be mended?’
‘First you need a little darkness, where the lights inside you can shine,’ said the pale man. ‘Do you fear the dark?’
‘No.’
‘Then come with me.’
Svava went down the ladder in the loading tower, past the winch that pulled up the goods, where the healer now hung from a rope like a forgotten sack, and out of the town, hand in hand with the pale man.
They went to the barrow, the naked grave, its black mouth open to the stars. The height of two men down was a deeper darkness, a hole.
‘The Romans mined here,’ said the man, ‘but bad luck dogged them. Many men were sacrificed, by accident and design. Mercury was worshipped here. He lived here. Old man Odin, to you modern people. This is the place.’
‘What place?’
‘The appointed place. Here the things that need to be seen can be seen.’
‘These tunnels are a city beneath the earth and its people are the dead,’ said Svava.
‘You can see that already?’ said the man.
‘Yes.’
The pale figure trembled and let go of her hand. ‘You are sure you are not afraid of the dark?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I think rather it is afraid of me. See how it shrinks from me. Even in there it dare not face me.’
‘The dark is a wolf who runs from fire.’
‘I am a fire.’
‘You are a fire.’
‘I would talk with these dead fellows,’ she said. ‘The ghosts must be merry now they have no lives to lose.’
‘Then go in.’
The little girl walked forward and bent to the mouth of the hole. Then she crouched down and crawled inside. The god smiled his wolf smile and turned away.
In his great hall, Helgi was dreaming of the vast offerings he had given to Odin — the warriors he had taken in battle, the slaves and the cattle, the gold cast into mires. He saw himself piling them up — the bodies of animals and men, the treasures of silver and gold — but every time he looked away from the pile it seemed to shrink, requiring ever more corpses, ever more jewels to make it look right again. Dreams have their own sense of right and wrong, and to Helgi it seemed that a body hoard was only satisfactory when it challenged the mountains with the shadow it cast.
In his dream Svava stood in front of him, a pale child in a dirt-stained shift.
She spoke: ‘Better not to pray than to sacrifice too much. One gift always calls for another.’
