Rune, by Michael Conneely
- First Text Excerpt
Cathal baited the hook and cast the line and started to wait. He must have gone into a daze in the strange white misty air, but the next thing he knew, the tarn spirit was before him, thigh-deep in the gelid oozing reed edge. Cathal was not one bit pleased to see her, but he said nothing and continued fishing, waiting to see if she would say anything.
‘Back so soon?’ the water-sprite asked him.
‘My, who’s observant?’ Cathal asked. He had had enough of being tactful for one day.
‘Take your temper out on he who made it, not on me, young man,’ the water spirit told him.
Cathal thought a moment, then said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So who is having pleasures beyond imagining tonight?’ the spirit asked.
Cathal groaned. He did not like the fact that she knew about his marriage. ‘I am’ he said. ‘I am.’
‘And what about me?’ the spirit asked, ‘frozen here since the melting of the ice. I could do with a beautiful little water child to keep me company through the centuries.’
Cathal suddenly became alert with anxiety, but he carefully said nothing.
‘Have you no pity on my loneliness, comely youth?’ the spirit wheedled.
‘I do not envy you your loneliness,’ Cathal told her, ‘but you do have your fine fish and the great beauty of the reeds and the loveliness of the hills and the shimmering insects in the summer and the many breeding waterfowl.’
‘I do, I do, and I keep them well, don’t I?’ she said with pride, ‘but I would have a child…. a little water child, to hold its hand and guide it through the currents and the water-flows.’
Cathal eyed the distance to the nearest firm bank from under lowered eyebrows, and wondered what she could do to him if he made a break for it.
‘You shall give me what I want,’ the sprite continued, and she squelched two paces nearer through the ooze.
‘I shall not,’ said Cathal, ‘for it is you who owe me, remember? I gave you a gift and the law of Balance on which the universe rests, says: you – owe – me!’
‘And reward you I shall, my fit young boy,’ the sprite hissed, do not underestimate the gifts that will come your way if you follow up your kiss with yet more.’
‘You would suck me dry!’ Cathal accused her irefully. ‘You know you must pay your dues before ever you try to tip the scales further to your favour.’
The sprite took two further squelching paces and now her blue-scaled hands were on the edge of the canoe. Her eyes seemed huge and saucer-like and Cathal felt their watery silver pull.
‘I shall not wait another thirty thousand years,’ she hissed.
She reached out her palm and when she touched him, Cathal felt the rasping scales on the flesh of the back of his right hand.
‘You shall give me what I want and from the making of that child you will have powers beyond your imagining,’ the tarn spirit promised. ‘You will have the power to change shape at will from otter to fish to water-bird. You will control the flow of tides. You will tell the location of waters under the earth. All these gifts and more will be yours, in return for the child I crave for to share the centuries in my tarn.’ She reached out a cold finned hand towards him. Cathal froze. He could not move back or the boat would overturn.
‘Do not go back from me, beautiful boy, give me what want. Give me what I want.’ In the intensity of her craving her voice took on a snarl. Cathal saw her teeth were pointed, ‘or I shall call my pikes from their bottom-pools and they will rise jaws snapping and they will tear the flimsy skins of your boat wide open and when you are in the water with them, they will strip the flesh from your very bones, then they will crack your bones for marrow. Give – me – what – I – desire – young – man.’
‘No! I will not give you what you desire,’ Cathal told her, and you will not call your pikes, for you owe me a favour according to the ancient law of Balance. And the favour I now insist you give me, or you know you will be punished in the end.
The sprite threw back her weedy hair and howled and sank into the water. ‘My price is a catch of twelve fish within the hour,’ Cathal called after her, shouting to the ripples, ‘or your tarn will turn sour and your fish will get disease, because you have broke the law of Balance.’ Cathal immediately felt a pull at the line. He landed a fish, then threw it in Brosni’s keep net and cast again and again. He felt soiled. He felt his day seemed ruined but he was determined to find a counter spell to shake it off. As he cast of the third time he flinched. He saw where her palm had touched him there glittered silvery blue iridescent slimy scales.
Rune, by Michael Conneely
- Second Text Excerpt
Cathal picked up the first tablet. Its luminescence peaked and surged and flared right up to his face which now glowed pale blue in the rune-light. The scales on his hand moved and surged like water. Lucy saw his face, so impassive and controlled, so calm and wrapt, like it almost always was: intelligence focussed, but directed like a craftsman’s, as if from a great distance. She shivered and she knew she looked on the face of a magician lover. Cathal looked down at the tablet. Its meaning reached straight into his brain, so he found himself knowing deeply each line, one after the other in turn, so that he could tell the lines not only as Cathal a young magician speaking from his place of knowledge in the twenty-first century, but also in such a way to suit his tiny audience who were hanging on his every word. He held in his mind always that those listening to him had the mind-set of the world of Northern Europe about one thousand seven hundred years before his own time. He was determined to do justice to the telling. He was determined, also, to speak beyond what any ordinary teller of the Sagas could. Before he spoke, Cathal prayed again before them to his father, the High One, Oðin, that he might embody the deepest meaning of the Skald. But as Cathal started to speak the words of the Saga, there was a crash and the door flew open and the cross-beams floated downward. ‘The Ravens!’ shouted Friðgeir. ‘Shut the door, please,’ Cathal murmured, as if he had expected it. As soon as the door was barred again and the Ravens had settled on the cross-beam, Cathal spoke:
Voluspa: The First Part of the Seeress’s Prophecy
‘Hear the words of the Seeress, she who speaks in answer to the High One.
‘Silence I bid of all the hallowed kindred, high and low of Heimdall's children:
At your will, Valfather, I shall relate ancient tales of the world, the oldest I remember. Silence I bid, you: Listen.
‘Now I speak to the question: the question the All Father has brought me
Of his obsessive quest for wisdom, of his seeking always to avert his doom.
‘I remember giants. I remember giants from earliest times, giants who reared me long ago;
‘Nine worlds I remember, nine great abodes, and a mighty World-Tree joining them. I who am born of giants remember very early.
‘I remember the ancient tellings, told to me when the world was younger.
‘Oðin, High One, All Father, Father of the Slain, you ask that I should declare the primordial history, I who know the beginning, and before that. I who know the end, and what will happen later! Listen while I speak it:
‘Unformed, chaotic, was the Abyss, the Void. The Void, Ginnungagap.
‘Would you know more?
And what?
The First World: Muspellheim is created
‘Eventually, to one side of the void Ginnungagap, in the endless darkness,
There stirred a spark: The first spark manifested. Elemental Fire
Spark was fanned to flame. Flame grew to inferno. Inferno turned to magma flare. And in the lava-heat and fire, the first world grew, Fire World, first of Nine: Muspellheim.
‘And forged from fire, Musspelheim’s great guardian arose: the Fire Giant:
Surt. Surt of the mighty flaming sword.
‘Would you know more?
And what?
The Second World: Niflheim is created
‘To the other side of Ginnungagap, a place of endless night and immaculate coldness: Niflheim was formed, second of the worlds. Niflheim: realm of ice and fog.
And at its centre lay the roaring, seething tarn of Hvergelmir, from which twelve icy rivers flowed.
‘Would you know more?
And what?
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