Woman of fire

I stare at Skuld in stunned silence. Otherworlder? Does she know where I came from? But how?

As if she can see me connecting the dots, a wicked grin spreads across her face. "Yes Otherworlder, I know what you are," she begins to stalk around me, stabbing that iron staff into the earth with each step as she circles. "Dancer among the stars, warrior who rips the throats of monsters, rider of flying beasts!" Each description gets an accentuated stab of the staff and her voices rises like a chant. Huh? There's no way she's actually referring to me.

Suddenly her left hand shoots out, hovering inches above my eyes, and I flinch. She turns her head to the side and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply, then nods. "Yes. I see it all here."

"You are certain?" Frode stands behind and looks over her shoulder and narrows his eyes, as if he's trying to see what she sees.

Skuld opens her eyes slowly, and that sly, wicked grin returns. Honestly it's a bit unnerving, and I have no idea what she's talking about. "Yes Jarl, the gods have spoken. She is the woman of fire I told you of before. A fire that dances and spreads." She lowers her hand, studying me hungrily in a way that reminds me of a mad scientist looking at a test subject, with both rapt fascination and potential manipulation. That feeling of uneasiness returns and I sway again.

"Hmm...her flame seems rather flickering at the moment," Frode observes.

Skuld clicks her tongue in exasperation."You simply know not how to feed it," she says to Frode over her shoulder and grabs my wrist. "Come!" she says to me with that wicked grin, eyes alight, like we are school girls heading off to perform some mischief instead of attending class. And with that, she starts taking me with her, away from a bewildered Frode and back towards the tavern.

"I trust you'll keep track of her, Skuld." Frode calls after us, command in his voice.

Skuld lifts her staff to the sky by way of answer. Then she adds, "of course Jarl, I will keep your precious flame close." Whatever the fuck that means.

"Um...where are we going?" I trod behind her, my hand still in tow.

"I need young girls. They will aide me in my rituals," Skuld says. Girls? For what? We pass the tavern and start heading towards the field and block house were the thralls were taken. How she knows where she is going is beyond me. It's my impression that it's her first time here, yet she seems to know her way around better than me.

A group of grazing roosters cluck nearby, unbothered by our haste through the town. They wobble on much shorter legs than the ones I've seen in my home world, and one in particular hobbles onto the path we are on, his spotted plumes shifting in the breeze. Skuld eyes it, unhands my wrist and points her staff at it. "Take that chicken."

"You want me to pick up the chicken?" I ask incredulously.

Staff still pointed towards the rooster, Skuld gives me what I would describe as a side eye. "Yes. We need it." She's completely serious.

Ok.....Guess I'm grabbing the chicken. I carefully tip toe over to the rooster with my arms raised, trying not to spook it. He seems pretty accustomed to people and barely notices me. Almost there...

"What...are you doing?" Skuld looks at ME like I'm the insane one.

"I'm..." I motion to the chicken with my outstretched arms "grabbing the chicken?"

"Why must you...do it so strangely?" Skuld crosses her arms and studies me curiously, tilting her head.

"So it doesn't run away?"

Skuld giggles, and I get that odd sensation that we are in a different time and place again. "You are are strange one. Well then, proceed," she motions one hand to the rooster.

At that point, I feel like an idiot, so I give up the careful tip toeing and trudge the final few steps to scoop up the fowl. It doesn't protest, just clucking and rotating its head to and fro. I smile sheepishly at Skuld, who simply turns with a swish of her cloak and continues towards the field, chin held high like she's on a mission. Thud. Thud goes her staff with each step. I follow her, awkwardly, with the rooster in arms.

"What exactly are the girls for?" I ask, afraid of the answer, but I need to know what I'm getting myself into.

"They must sing. It helps me reach my trance state for practicing Seidr, where I can see what is to come and speak to the gods. I shall teach them what to chant and sing, and they shall accompany me during my stay here."

"So...you just need them to sing? No sacrifices or anything?" My stomach flips with worry about Sorcha and her mother.

Skuld pauses and turns to look at me over her shoulder. She's smiling that wicked smile of hers. Damn, this lady is freaky.

"Don't worry, it is not serious enough for that."

My body involuntarily shudders, and the rooster clucks in my arms and flaps its wings, agitated. Rather than asking what would be serious enough for human sacrifice, I decide to change the subject. "What you said earlier, about me dancing with the stars and such. What did you mean by that?"

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Skuld's smile falters. "You are not yet what you will become, my little flame. I must see your path once again to get us answers."

I raise an eyebrow and start to ask what she means by that, but Skuld shushes me with the cluck of her tongue and turns away towards the field, trudging on with the thump of her staff. A croak comes from above, and Muninn swoops in to land back on Skulds shoulder as she walks. She strokes him absentmindedly.

"Yes, yes a chicken is good...but a horse would be better.." I hear her mutter to herself, or Muninn? as we reach the fenced off field. Some of the highland cattle remain from earlier, continuing to graze and occasionally tossing their large hairy, horned heads as they chew. One of them uses his massive horn to scratch an itch on his side that he otherwise wouldn't be able to reach. The thralls are no longer outside, but Skuld opens a gate in the fence and proceeds towards the block house. The clansmen I saw earlier stands guard outside, whittling a piece of wood with a large knife. When he notices Skuld, he eyes her warily, but gives her a nod. She is respected here. She might be my only chance of getting through this alive and not severely traumatized, I think. I shudder, aggravating the rooster in my arms again, as I think of what Frode promised earlier in the tavern. I definitely need to stay on Skuld's good side.

We step inside the doorway, there is no door, and I see that the thralls are all chained by the neck now, sitting in a huddle in part of the one roomed structure. A few highland cattle are also inside, laying about, unbothered by their new roommates. It smells terrible in here. Like animals, piss and terror.

Skuld stalks along the huddle the thralls, looking at each one carefully. I spot Sorcha with her mother in the back corner, they look rightfully frightened, but otherwise unharmed. I breathe a sigh of relief, then eye Skuld, an idea forming.

"Can I make a suggestion?" I ask. Skuld pauses, turning to me slowly, curiosity in her gaze.

"You may."

"The two in the back right corner," I motion to Sorcha and her mother. Skuld looks over to them, and Sorcha's mother shoots me a terrified look. I try to nod at her and communicate in a way with my eyes that says, trust me, please. She studies me with a furrowed brow, clutching Sorcha to her, but then gives me the tiniest of nods. Skuld said that she just needed young girls for singing, and they would accompany her during her stay here. Sorcha's mother seems young enough to still meet Skuld's description, in my opinion. That means they can stay here in their home land without being sold and shipped off to somewhere else, god knows where. In my home world it would have been somewhere like Iceland. It's not completely freedom, but it's better than being shipped off to another land to be someone's slave. Who knows what cruelty awaits these others.

Skuld considers my choice. "Hmmm....Very well," she says, then shouts "Gunnar! I require some of these girls!" Her shout startles the chicken in my arms, reminding me that I'm still holding him. Munnin squawks in annoyance on her shoulder, but then proceeds to preen his feathers.

Gunnar, the wood whittling clansmen, soon steps inside. "Which ones?"

Skuld motions to Sorcha and her mother with her staff, then a few other young girls between the ages of 12-16. Gunnar grabs a set of keys hooked to his belt and begins freeing the ones Skuld selected, removing the chains around their necks. The fact that they are no longer in chains seems to make them realize their situation has vastly improved, and they huddle around us gratefully, eager to be closer to the women that might provide them some form of protection. My heart pangs for them, and I deeply wish we can help more. But this is a start.

One by one, Skuld turns to each girl, touching them on the shoulder or cheek tenderly, but addresses them all as she speaks. "You will aide me in my rituals, and will now be known as my apprentices," she places a hand gently on Sorchas head as she passes. "You shall be protected under my care as long as I walk this land," she vows. Sorchas mother looks to me then, eyes watering. I give her a grim smile in return.

"Now, come! We have work to do," Skuld says and with a flourish of her cloak, exits the blockhouse. The rest of us follow after her, me in the rear with my chicken. Sorcha and her mother hang back to walk beside me, hand in hand. Sorcha looks up at me curiously, eyeing the chicken.

As soon as we meet the outside air, Sorcha's mother whispers to me, "I dinnae know how to thank you love, and I dinnae even know yer name."

"I'm Beatrix. And...don't worry about it. I know I'm following Skuld and I have a chicken in my arms, but, I'm here against my will just as much as you are," I say.

She nods knowingly. "I assum'd as much, when I saw you bound earlier." She has an accent similar to Torsten, but not as thick, and it has a lovely sing song quality to it that I did not notice earlier. "My name is Iona. I's a pleasure to meet yeh, love. I'll be forever grateful for what yeh did today for us." I smile at her in response, and she returns it genuinely with a grin of her own.

"By th' way dear, why do yeh have a chicken?"

"I have no idea," I say. "Skuld said we needed it."

"Ahh..." Iona says and nods, like that makes perfect sense. "She is a witch, is she not? Perhaps it's for 'er magic."

Instinctively, my arms hug the chicken closer to me. This doesn't bode well for him, and I'll admit that I've started to grow attached throughout our little adventure together. I'm this close to even naming him. He looks like a Cluck Norris to me.

Shit, I named him.

"Does he ha'v a name?" Sorcha asks, as if on queue.

"I think he looks like a Cluck Norris, what do you think?" I look at her with a lopsided grin and angle him towards her, so she can see better. Sorcha giggles. "Aye, he look's like a Cluck Norris. A silly name for a silly rooster!" It's good to see her laughing, and Iona must think the same as she looks down with her in an emotion I could only describe as pure, unconditional love. I can't help but wonder where her father is, and if he's still alive. I didn't see a man near them in the block house.

We start to pass where Sorcha discarded her doll, and she let's go of Iona's hand to run and quickly grab it.

"Yer probably wonder'n where her father is," Iona says softly. "He died years ago from fever," she says, her eyes hardening in pain.

"I'm so sorry," I say. I can't imagine raising a child in this world by yourself, let alone dealing with raiding vikings.

"We do what we can, dear," she says, as Sorcha rejoins us, doll in her arms, and wraps her little fingers around her mother's hand once again. "I dinnae know what the future holds fer us," Iona says, "but we still 'ave each other. We 'r still a family, and family gives yeh the roots to stand tall and strong, no matter what." A pang of deep sadness hits me suddenly, as I remember that I have no family in this world. I am on my own here. But then I look down at little Sorcha, and Iona and their enjoined hands swinging as they smile at each other, despite their grim situation and what they faced today, and I wonder if some day I will find something like that again in this new life. Family. Maybe even love?