Oof! Something smashed into my back.
Oof! Now it’s pulling on my tunic. I’m curled with my arms around the babe and my knees up behind him. My back is to the room, but I know it’s a pig behind me. The animals have returned, and I slept through it. I slept the entire day.
Oof!
If I don’t react fast and hard, the lot of them will attack. I go rigid; I’ve seen pig attacks. Though these pigs are short, I know they can get vicious. There’s got to be at least three, and there could be four, even five. But there’s nothing in this barn—no stone, no club, nothing I can use to fend them off.
He’s tugging harder. My tunic tears.
I clutch the babe tight, turn over as fast as I can, and slam my head into the pig’s snout. He screams and runs off. The others snort and squeal as he pushes through them.
I lower my face to the babe’s head. I think he’s still warm—I’m so hot myself I can’t be sure, but I think he is. His forehead is soft under my lips. I feel his back and legs. He moves just the slightest.
Good. I grit my teeth. Fight, fight. We both have to fight!
I reach around and feel for the cow, up her hind leg, to that udder. It swings empty, a withered sack. Of course. They milked her just before putting the animals back in the barn for the night.
My stomach is a pointed flint that jabs at my gut. And the babe needs food even more.
And, most of all, pigs are smart. It won’t take them long to realize we’re defenseless.
I can’t think what to do, though. These are Vikings. Oh, I know not all Norsemen are Vikings—only the bad ones. But these ones are bad. It’s dreadful enough to kill a baby. It’s worse by far to kill an unbaptized baby. And it’s the worst thing ever to kill a baby by throwing it to the pigs. Because that’s what he—she—meant to do.
I have no understanding of a girl who would throw a child to the pigs. I have no understanding of Vikings.
And why does she dress like a boy? Something’s wrong in that girl’s life. She’s afraid. I swallow. I know the kind of fear that makes a girl dress like a boy. Mother made Mel and me dress like boys when she shooed us away from Downpatrick before the battle.
But it doesn’t matter how bad the girl’s fear is. Nothing can excuse what she did.
The baby moves again. I hug him close, and he somehow manages to lift an arm and close his fingers around the thumb of my mangled hand. That’s all it takes: I love him. If only he lives, he can be mine.
“We won’t die here with the pigs,” I murmur into the matted wisps of hair on his roundest of heads. “I promise you that, little one, little egg, because that’s what you are, hardly more than an egg. I name you Og, then. And in my heart I baptize you.” I’m not a priest, so it doesn’t count. But he’s a baby; he can’t know better.
I take a deep breath. No one beside that disguised girl knows about Og, I bet, so maybe no one else wants him dead.
And, in the end, those people out there are the only chance we have. They have food and warmth; we have nothing.
I get to my feet, trying to hold in the scream from pain. But maybe it would be better if someone heard and came running.
Unless it was the girl.
No. I bite my tongue and stumble through the animals.
A pig noses at my side. I hold Og tight with my good arm. Then I lean over and jab my elbow hard into the pig’s face. The pig shrieks. I must have gotten his eye.
And I like pigs. The old sow back home won’t let anyone else near her baby piggies. She charges all the others, but with me she lies there on her side as I tie ribbons around their ears.
It’s a gift I have, this way of understanding animals. Mother says that.
And now I’ve injured this pig when all he did was what any pig would do.
It’s unfair I had to fight the pig. It’s unfair I’m here at all. I hurt all over and this baby, my Og, is hardly alive, and he didn’t do anything to deserve such a rotten start in life. We’ve both been cheated. I’m screaming now. I can’t help it. I’m screaming as loud as I can.
I plow through the rest of the pigs and stop short at the door. The hatefully heavy door that hangs all wrong so it drags. These people can’t even hang a door right.
I can’t put Og down or the pigs will snatch him. So how am I to pull open this most horrible of doors?
I lean my cheek against the door and practically slide off, I’m so drenched in sweat. A wave of nausea washes over me.
I pull off my tunic with my bad hand, and it starts bleeding again. The blood rolls along my arm. The smell must be driving the pigs crazy, because one’s already back nuzzling me hard. I’m scared to be naked like this. I have to hurry. I struggle and twist and pull and every move hurts so bad, but I manage to make that tunic into a sling that hangs around my neck, and I tuck Og in it—he’s so tiny and limp, it’s easy. Poor little starving thing. I throw all my weight into lugging the door open.
The pigs rush past me, stupid with the excitement of stirred-up hunger, baffled by being let out at night. I stumble after them and look around.
There’s nothing but that other building, the squat one. I don’t understand, because these people are normal size, tall even, but they have to be in there. Where else could they be?
I go to the door, every step a torture. Yesterday’s light snowfall has frozen into a stiff layer that crunches under my broken feet. The cold air nips at my skin, and I know Og doesn’t have enough heat of his own to last out here much longer. Tears make warm rivulets on my cheeks. It’s a reaction to the air. It’s not crying. I can do this.
Finally I’m there. I bang on the door with both fists.
It opens inward, and the blade of an ax shines, backlit by a fire that hisses loudly. The ax stops just short of my eyes. Beside it a startled, yellow-bearded face makes a shout and stares at me. I stare back. The man’s nothing more than a chest and head. His eyes reach level with my waist. I don’t understand. And if he doesn’t put down that ax, I might just faint dead away. I’m shaking all over.
He moves downward, and I can see he was on a strange kind of ladder. I go to take a step down and fall, tumbling-head first, holding onto Og for dear life.
Arms catch us, though they hurt maybe more than a flat fall would have. Screams fill my head, but I keep my mouth shut tight. We are hauled, Og and me, to a wooden platform built into the side of the room. They stretch us out, a naked babe on a naked girl. A woman—the one I saw pass the open door of the barn this morning—pries my arms apart.
“Og,” I call in protest as she takes him. My voice that seemed so loud in the barn is barely more than a whisper now.
“Øg!” says the woman, changing the sound a little. She holds Og at arm’s length, her eyebrows furrowed, her face alarmed. But slowly her expression changes. “Øg?” She looks at me in doubt.
I blink.
A blanket is already around me. I didn’t see who covered me.
“Alf.”
I turn my head to the voice.
It’s a child, no older than me. She comes to stand beside me and reaches out a hand toward my hair.
A man slaps it away. He chatters at her. I make out the sounds alf and øg in the quick stream of odd words. The air is warm and peat-smoke heavy, with the odors of a meal hanging in it. Fish. Barley. The room swirls with my hunger.
The woman calls out something, and then the boy who is really a girl shows up with a bucket that sloshes water, and his eyes won’t meet mine. I see the lines of fatigue on his face, and I know it must take all his will to keep up the act, to not let anyone know he gave birth just this morning. He’s pitiful weak. But not as pitiful as Og and me.
He turns to me purposefully, still not looking in my face, and I tense up. He snatches away that blanket that I’ve already grown attached to. There are so many people in this home that is half den in the ground—I hear their voices, and I know not a one of them will save me from the boy/girl.
He grabs an ankle and swabs my foot roughly. I jerk my knees up, but the girl child at my side throws herself across my legs, clearly to help the boy/girl, only she knocks my bad hand, and it hurts like the devil is shredding me. I curl around my pain, calling, “Mel, oh, Mel.” I need my sister so badly. “Mel,” I sob again. Please, Mel, make them stop, I pray inside my head.
The woman holding Og, who is now wrapped in a cloth, says something to someone beyond my view. A moment later a pelt is thrown across my chest. And another. And two more. All white. They are fox skins, I’m sure.
“Melrakki,” says the woman holding Og. She puts a hand on my chest on top of the furs. “Mel . . . melrakki.” She leans over me. “Sefask,” she says softly. She stands tall and calls out something.
A younger woman with a toddler on her hip appears quickly. She taps the little girl who is still lying on me, and the girl eases off and stands. The woman hands her the toddler. Now she undoes the brooches that hold the wool sheet wrapped around her body over her long shift. She opens the front and faces the woman in charge, taking Og from her and cradling him to her breast.
Og turns his head and bangs his face into the nipple, but finally opens his mouth and latches on. She puts out her free hand and strokes his arm, and he grabs her thumb.
Just like that, Og goes from being mine to hers. My heart breaks.
The air smells of honey.
Fire! What are they doing to my wounded hand? It’s on fire! Everything goes black.