Bracelet of Bones by Kevin Crossley-Holland Page A

him.”
    “Oh!” said Solveig, feeling disappointed.
    “But he was thinking more about what he’d left behind than what lay ahead. I could see that. The farm . . . Asta . . . One evening he told me about Siri . . . Sirith.”
    “My mother!” said Solveig eagerly.
    “But,” said Torsten, first considering Solveig, then laying a warm hand on her left shoulder, “it was you. You, Solveig.”
    Solveig held her breath.
    “Yes,” said the helmsman. “He told me how much . . . how most of all, he was missing you.”
    Solveig felt so hungry. For all that Torsten had told her, she ached for more. As if however much he told her, it could never be enough.
    On the other side of Torsten, Vigot hauled in his fishing line and grasped a glittering, jerking sea trout; he took the hook out of its mouth and smacked its head against the gunwales.
    Vigot gave Solveig a calculating look. “They can’t resist me,” he said, and he smiled.
    I can, though, Solveig thought. The one who really can’t resist you is you!
    Red Ottar and Edith were sitting in the shadow of the groaning sail. He was winding a piece of Edith’s long dark hair around her left ear . . .
    Bergdis was preparing the fish Vigot had already caught, tossing their entrails overboard, where they were snapped up by screaming gulls before they even touched the water . . . Bard and Brita were crouching over some board game, and their father, Slothi, was half watching them. Bruni Blacktooth was searching for something where the cargo was stacked, quietly swearing to himself. And away on her own in the bows, Slothi’s wife, Odindisa, was reaching out with both arms, far out over the water, singing and saying.
    She’s silver-eyed, thought Solveig. Sharp as a scythe. Was she for me or against me?
    All around Solveig, the traders were at their business or leisure, and slowly the chariot of the sun journeyed downward, chased by the wolf Skoll, always yapping and snapping just behind her.
    “The ravens!” screeched a voice right behind Solveig.
    “Oh!” gasped Solveig.
    “The ravens!” screeched Bergdis. “Thought and Memory—I can see them sitting on your shoulders.”
    Solveig scrambled to her feet. “I didn’t see you,” she said.
    Bergdis waved her filleting knife, and it flashed in the sunlight. “I need your help, and I need it now. Come sundown, there’ll be eleven hungry mouths and empty stomachs aboard this boat.”
    “What shall I do?” she asked.
    “The same as me. Heads off! Tails off! And then gut them.” Bergdis gave Solveig a shrewd look. “To be a Viking woman,” she said, “you have to be a man as well.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’ll find out.” She tapped her chin with the point of her filleting knife. “Follow me,” she said, and she waddled down the deck.
    Bergdis’s little hearth, just an iron plate surrounded by four iron fenders, was down in the hold, well protected from the sea breezes. There she and Solveig grilled their first meal aboard—the sea trout and mackerel caught by Vigot—and added cold mash of turnip and carrot. And after they’d eaten this, washed down with cloudy ale, Solveig felt too tired to begin carving. Anyhow, the light was failing fast.
    “Nothing goes to waste.” That’s what my father says, thought Solveig. He’d tell me that even if my carving hasn’t become part of my journey yet, my journey will become part of my carving.
    I like the way he plays with words, and it’s true, master carvers and poets do bring their days and years—their life journey—to their work.
    That’s why Odin says we should listen to gray-haired singers. Though they hang with the hides and flap with the pelts, he says, and though they rock with the guts in the wind, shriveled skins often give good advice.
    But believing, self-believing . . . that’s what matters most, isn’t it? Some people scoff at me and tell me I’ll never reach Miklagard. Even Turpin did to begin with. But I will! I