Winter was chipping out of the fjords like glass cracking underfoot. In Hrafnfjord the smell of tar mingled with that of dried cod, and on the beach wet stones glistened as the waves receded, leaving translucent jellyfish like abandoned jewels in the hollows. Thin smoke drifted over the roof of the long hall, floe and snow slipped from the shingles into silent, still chutes. Above it all was the rustling of flags - white with black raven - that fluttered as the wind came down from the mountains. Eira stood on the quay, her hand stroking the sharp edge of the frame. She was born with a face that betrayed no emotion, and eyes in which others saw a glint of ice, though they could flare with warmth when she listened to song. Her hair was tangled with an amber pendant - a tiny, milky nugget that her mother had silently pressed into her hand that night when a storm had ripped up the sand by the southern headland and exposed the old barrows. It was Leif who first called her to the breach in the ground: - Eira! Come! - the skald's voice reverberated down the slopes and came back like an echo, colouring the darkness. In his hands he held a piece of whale bone, smooth as ice and heavy as a tale that refuses to be told to the end. Tiny marks were scrawled on the bone. Fleece by fleece, intricately, dryly gleamed in the moonlight. Asgaut, an old mating, slipped between them quietly, as if used to walking on worlds that know no noise. He had one milky eye, the other as dark and deep as water in a well. He spread the bone in his hands, leaned over, felt it with his cheek, as if listening for a pulse. - This is no ordinary bone,' he muttered. - A flipper, judging by the curve. And old so long ago that even the salt had managed to forget its taste. Someone had held it, a long time. Someone knew what to put on it and when. Eira leaned over, and Leif ran his fingers over the grooves. - 'It's a map,' he said quietly at last. - Listen to the song. - His finger went from sign to sign, and he folded the sounds as if he were talking about things that only pretend to be signs, but are really the way. - Here is a star that does not go out. Here is a stone that sings under the aurora. Here is an oar that does not return empty to the water. In the bar of the long hall, people laughed and clattered their cups; beyond, the sea breathed and the whales rolled over somewhere further away, heavy and still. Eira looked at the bone and saw more than a sign. She saw a line to the north, along the clumps of dwarf birch, past the shoulders of the rocks, towards the waters where the shore stops talking and starts listening. - We are sailing," she said. There was a question in Leif's expression, but Eira did not name it. - We swim before the ice lets go completely. Before someone hears the song instead of us. The others burbled that it was foolish, that the sea was still hungry, that the spirits of the barrows did not like to be disturbed. And yet, as they began to tar the planks in the morning, as Eira checked rope by rope, sail by sail, as Leif laced up his bag of poems and sunstone, and Asgaut leaned his staff against the side and closed his eyes, more and more hands found occupation. This was how it used to be in Hrafnfjord: resistance softened in the warm light of action. Their longship was named the Silver Doe. The prow was adorned with a sculpture of dark glass eyes; her gaze reached further than the product of her hands should reach. Eira felt the ship tremble as they pulled it into the water, as if it was waiting for the gesture itself. The sky was clear, with only a lighter band trembling above midnight - a promise that the night would not be completely dark. They sailed out at low water, when the gulls' nests were empty and the air was icy and thin. Waves pressed under the boards and the water slammed several times, as if trying to see if it was really time to move. Ravens from the cliff circled above them, two circled in wide arcs, then sat on the rudder and watched silently, as if following their every move. - 'I don't like it when the birds are watching,' muttered Brodir, who knew his knots better than his singing. - There's always something going on then. - Everything happens,' replied Leif with a smile. - That's what the story is all about. - After a moment he added: - 'I'll have another look at the bone at night. Starlight can bring out from the runes what the sun does not carry. The sea, though cold, was kind. They sailed through the day, and when night came, Asgaut spread the bone on the deck and Leif set a bowl of cod liver oil beside it, into which he inserted a thin needle of frothed wood. The flame of the lamp was not large, but it trembled in a strange rhythm, as if somewhere far away someone was tapping out an answer through the water. - 'It is about her that the old women's songs sing,' said Asgaut almost to himself. - 'About the island that isn't on maps because you can't see it when you want to see it. You have to listen, not look. You have to feel the stone speak. - He smiled crookedly. - And stones can talk for a very long time. Eira picked up the sunstone that Leif always carried in his pouch. The crystallised blue shot a thin ray towards the north. - 'There,' she said, 'is our way. - The word 'our' was like a rope thrown into the darkness: someone grabbed it and pulled, and the ship responded with tension. The next day the clouds went grey and settled low over the water. Fog came out of the cool valleys, spilling over the sea with a milk that smelt of nothing. Sounds became muffled, shorter. Footsteps seemed too close, whispers too loud. In the distance, beyond the veil, an occasional murmur passed - whether it was a whale or cracking ice, it was not easy to tell. - Can you hear it? - Leif tilted his head, his hand touching his bones. Eira heard it too: a steady rumble, like a child's drum being struck with a small hand, very far away. A deafening tone ran across the boards, then disappeared. - Stone likes rhythm. - Leif spoke softly, but there was something in his voice that made even the wind stop at their lips. - 'Aurora,' someone said, and they all raised their eyes. The sky reddened at the top, then greens, then runs of gold. Strings of light hovered over them like ribbons that someone is slowly, carefully pulling between their hands. In this light, the runes on the bones twitched and, either it was just a shadow or indeed - they flashed in response. - 'Behold the stone that sings under the aurora,' Leif repeated the line, and Asgaut nodded, as if recognising an old acquaintance in the crowd. Then the wind died down and the water became as smooth as if someone had polished it. An outline emerged from the mist: a dark horizontal rectangle - a bank? no, something higher - and above it an arch of ice, like a cathedral built of silence. The ice arch shone through, whitened with an inner chill, and yet, as the aurora danced on it, the ice began to sound; it did not creak as usual, but whispered quietly in thin, clear tones. The ship itself slowed down, as if it remembered to slow down when singing. - 'An island,' whispered Brodir. - By all the gods, an island. It wasn't a big one. Dark, toothy rocks stood out of the water like fingers that want to cover something and yet cannot. On the highest peak stood a stone, taller than a man, with winding grooves. One of the ravens broke suddenly from its rei and swam in that direction, like a black mark on a grey sheet of paper. He sat down on the stone and crowed once, just once - as if he were giving a report. Eira felt everything in her come into focus. That her breathing, her heartbeat, the movement of the sail, the rhythm of the water and the sound of the ice became one thread. - Prick," she said briefly, and the men handed over the anchors. The iron entered the water quietly, though it seemed such a moment should like noise. The rope tightened, the island moved a hair closer, and then they stood. They were at the mouth of a small bay where the water was darker. Above it, scratches were drawn on the rock, as if something had written on the hard with a knife. Eira touched the side, adjusted her hood and reached for her bag. She slipped a whale bone inside. She put on her knife belt, though she hoped she wouldn't need it, and picked up a long pole to probe the bottom. Leif slung the lyre he never left over his shoulder, and Asgaut adjusted his coat, grinning crookedly. - 'I'll go first,' Brodir said, but Eira shook her head. - Me. - Her voice left no room for objection. - It's me the bone speaks to and it's my name called out in the night. - Your name? - Leif looked at her carefully. Eira nodded her head. - Someone had spoken it. In a whisper. As if trying to pronounce them for the first time. They slid the boat down. The water was as cold as the first sip after a long walk. The oars dipped lazily as the depths seemed to watch the pace. At the ice bow, the aurora blazed harder and the ice responded with a sound that went through Eira's bones like heat. Arriving at a rocky patch of shore, they jumped out and climbed onto the rock. It was rough, overgrown with low moss that sprang underfoot like morning grass. Up close they could see that the tallest stone did indeed have grooves on it. These were not the runes that Eira knew from pillars and swords. These were spiral lines, crooked, going into each other, turning back. In their hollows lay icy snow. When Leif rubbed one of the grooves with his sleeve, they saw something that resembled a drawing - a ship like their Silver Doe, just below the arc of ice. - 'They were here before us,' Asgaut said, and there was something between awe and sadness in his voice. - Someone listened to the same song. - Perhaps they have returned? - suggested Brodir - 'Or maybe,' Leif shifted his gaze to the raven, 'they're still listening. The wind picked up for a moment, blew over the crown of the ice arch and rustled quietly. Eira took off her sack, placed the bone on a stone and stuck a stick next to it so it wouldn't slide down. Rune by rune, the glow of the aurora, the breath of people. Somewhere at the edge of the bay, the water whispered differently, as if tickled by something that wasn't there. Eira turned her head and saw that right next to their boat the surface was cracking with tiny circles. As if from rain. And the sky was dry. - 'Don't touch the water,' said Asgaut quietly. The aurora, as if it had heard, trembled harder. The light spilled over the ice arc and penetrated its interior, and then a tone came from the depths of the rock - deep, long, similar to the singing of a whale, but more attentive. Eira felt a chill on the back of her neck. Leif began to respond, barely audibly, as if recalling a melody familiar since childhood but forgotten for lack of opportunity. The sounds came together in the air and formed a beam that slowly settled on the bone. And then she heard it. Clearer than in the night. As if someone was standing right next to her, although there was no one new. - Eira - said something from beyond the light and water. It was not whispered with lips or sung with strings. It sounded like a name written in shadow on the snow. Brodir cursed in a half-hearted voice. Asgaut let the air out through his nose, as if this was how he expected the words to sound when they came. Leif closed his eyes and touched his bones with two fingers. - What do you want? - Eira asked towards the bow. Her voice didn't need strength; it needed truth, and it must have carried it, since the sound of the ice quieted for a moment. The water by the boat moved, the way dust moves when someone walks past a window. The circles on the surface thickened. A shadow moved from the depths of the bay, long and narrow. The Silver Doe whimpered quietly, as if someone had touched her from underneath. The anchor rope swelled and tightened, and the sail, though coiled, twitched. - 'Eira,' repeated the thing, and this time the name sounded closer, as if it came out of the water itself. On the ice bow, the aurora lit the brightest of the night. The ice crackled with thin lines of light that diverged like rivers from a map. And then from beneath the sheet, right at the bow of the boat, something began to emerge, pushing the water away, leaving a dark, perfectly smooth spot amidst the rippling circles....