irminar-vihwl

The ninth winter of Oswin’s life came on hard frost and clear nights.

The fields lay white each morning, the grass stiff with ice, and the ruts of wagon wheels turned to pale ridges in the frozen earth. Smoke rose straight from the roofs of the Harthmar steadings, for the air was so still that even the wind seemed to sleep. In such weather, folk kept near their hearths. Bread, broth, and quiet talk were meant to be enough until the sun found its strength again.

But Oswin had never been good at staying where he was meant to.

The bucket knocked softly against his knee as he walked the path down the hill. It was an old thing, bound with metal hoops that creaked when the wood shrank in winter cold. The rope handle had frayed where many hands had gripped it before his.

Fetch water before the sun touches the spring. It was not a hard chore, only a dull one. The spring lay in the hollow below the field, where the ground stayed wet even in deep frost. The path to it bent past a crooked willow that marked the edge of the lower field.

Oswin took the long way, as he always did.

Krume went with him, because Krume went everywhere. She came nosing out from under the bench the moment his hand touched the door, and now she ranged ahead and behind and underfoot all at once, her breath steaming, her tail going, stopping to push her nose into every frozen thing as though the cold had hidden something worth finding.

He kicked at a crust of frost and watched it shatter into pale shards.

“Hold the line,” he told her, low, the way he had heard the elders speak of warbands. “They come from the wold.”

Krume did not hold the line. She found a clot of ice and bit it.

Oswin took up his stride again all the same. The frozen ruts of the wagon track were a river he was crossing, the water black and quick under the crust, and a man who set a foot wrong would be carried off and never found. He stepped from ridge to ridge of frost and did not fall in. The pasture beyond was no pasture now but a country no man had walked before him, white and waiting, and he the first to come into it.

A crow flapped across the sky above the field and settled on the stone wall, black against the morning light. It tilted its head as he passed.

Oswin slowed and looked at it the way he thought a traveller ought to look at the folk of a strange land; gravely, and without fear.

“Well met,” he told the crow. “I’ve come a long road. What’s the name of this place, and who holds it?”

The crow said nothing. It shifted along the wall and watched him with one eye.

“You’ll not say. That’s fair. A wise folk keeps its names.” He gave it a small nod, as though they had struck some understanding, and went on; and the crow stayed where it was, neither following nor flying, which seemed to him exactly what the first creature of a new country ought to do.

He had watched his father do this; stand at the edge of a field, or a grave, or a doorway, and speak to it. Lay words on a place the way other men laid hands on a tool. Oswin had never been let near enough to catch the meaning, only the weight of it, the slow fall of the sounds. So he tried it now because a new country ought to be greeted, and there was no one to see him do it wrong.

“By stone and root,” he muttered.
That sounded right.
“By hearth and hall.”
That sounded right, too.
“By bread and… bucket.”
A frown. Perhaps not bucket.
“By bread and bird!”

That was better. That was much better.
He waited.

A proper warding ought to do something. The air ought to stir, a tree ought to creak, a hidden thing ought to hear and hold still.
Nothing happened.
The crow blinked.
Oswin nodded as though this had been expected.

Krume sneezed and broke the spell.

He grinned in spite of himself and went on.

When he reached the willow he slowed.

The tree stood apart from the others, its trunk twisted and hollowed with age. Even in summer its branches drooped low, but in winter they hung bare and thin, scratching faint lines across the sky. The frost at the base of the tree had not yet been broken by footprints. Moss clung to the roots in soft green clumps, bright against the pale ground.

 Erla had once sworn there was an eye in its bark.

Oswin searched the trunk until he found it.

A knot in the wood, long and oval, with a ridge above it that looked almost like a brow. The shape was so plain that once seen it could not be unseen.
The eye watched the path.

He stepped closer. Then he looked back to Krume, who had stopped several paces back, low to the ground, her tail gone still. A sound came out of her that Oswin had never heard from her before; not a bark, not the play-growl she gave the hens, but something thin and steady, pulled up from somewhere deep. Her lip was off her teeth. She was looking at the tree.

“It’s only the willow,” Oswin said.

Krume did not move, and did not stop the sound.

Oswin set the bucket down and reached out, pressing his thumb against the knot.

The bark was icy to the touch.

He thought the grain shifted beneath his thumb, like touching the hide of some wild beast. He pulled his hand back in reaction.

Nothing happened.

A small breath of wind stirred the branches overhead. Oswin let out the breath he had been holding and laughed softly to himself.

“Just a tree,” he said.
Something rustled at the base of the trunk.
Oswin looked down.

A lump of moss and twigs shifted slightly as though something beneath the leaves had shifted in its sleep. Two faint glimmers caught the light, dark and wet like river stones.

The shape held still.

Then, it crumpled and scattered across the frost.

Only leaves remained.

Oswin stared at the ground for a long moment.

The barren field lay quiet behind him. The homestead fence stood crooked in the distance, its rails dripping with ice. Nothing moved.

He rubbed his hands together and picked up the bucket again. “Just the wind,” he muttered.

Still, he did not touch the knot in the bark a second time.

Behind him Krume had sat down, still making that sound. When he turned she broke and went, not playing now, glancing back to see that he followed.

He followed.

The spring lay at the end of a gully, where the earth stayed soft beneath the frost.

A thin ribbon of water slipped out between two stones and gathered in a clear pool before running down the hollow. Even in winter it never froze entirely, though ice crept at the edges.

Oswin knelt and dipped the bucket.

The icy water made him hiss. He filled the bucket quickly, lifted it out, watching the surface bounce and settle.

He crouched there, breathing mist into the cold air.

From where he knelt he could see the edge of the old grove beyond the homestead. The trees there stood thicker and darker than the rest of the wood, their trunks rising close together like a wall.

He knew he was not meant to wander there alone.

The elders said the grove had once been used for keeping swine, long before he was born. The old pen had fallen apart over the years, its rails rotting and its posts leaning like tired bodies. No animals browsed there now.

 Oswins folk cut no wood from there. Even hunters kept to the outer trees.

 He watched the grove a moment longer.

A steady slurping sound broke his thoughts.

Krume had her nose in the bucket. He brushed her aside and refilled the bucket.

The bucket felt heavier now that it was full. Water sloshed against the rim as he started up the path.

“Hold still,” he muttered.

Krume pressed against his legs as they walked, no help at all, nearly underfoot.

Halfway up the slope his boot struck a hidden root.

The bucket swung wide.

Cold water spilled out in a bright arc, scattering across the frost. By the time Oswin caught his balance only a shallow pool remained at the bottom. Krume drank the rest.

His breath rose in white clouds before him.

Somewhere beyond the field, a starling burst into noisy chatter.

Oswin scowled at the sound.

“Well,” he said at last.

He looked down the hill toward the spring, then back toward the houses above.

With a groan he turned and started down the path again. Krume followed.

The willow stood silent when he passed it the second time.

But as he passed beneath the branches, a faint rustle stirred somewhere in the tree above him.

He glanced up quickly.

The limbs swayed only slightly in the still air. Nothing was there. Still, for a moment, he had the strange feeling that something high in the branches had shifted to watch him go.

Oswin tightened his grip on the bucket and hurried down the hill.

Krume followed, but even then she kept her distance from the willow, circling wide beneath the bare branches.

The tree stood still against the winter sky.

Neither of them looked back.