The wind from the east was sluicing across the waters of Skaldvik fjord, carrying the smell of resin, tar and the change coming from the north. Above the roof of jarl Gunnlaug's long house, the aurora danced, like a green banner unfurled above the blackness of the sky. Snow glistened on the palisade, and cords crunched between drying nets, struck by gusts, as if an invisible skald was practising the rhythm of his own song. Einar Sigvaldsson counted the ribs of the new knarr's hull, running his hand over the patches of tarred wood fading into the gloom. He had the hands of a carpenter and harpooner, grizzled but attentive in movement, measuring the world by the length of the beam and the depth of the water. On the beam beside him sat Astrid, his younger sister, and drew on a flat paddle made of whale bone. She would start with the shore of the island, then put dots like stars - boulders, markers, coves. She had sharp eyesight and rare patience, which counted for two things in Skaldvik: storm and council. - 'If we move north in the spring, you'll have to avoid the treacherous shoals off Copper Cape,' she muttered, without taking her stylus off. - The current slashes every cup of water there like a knife. - 'Spring is still a long way off,' Einar replied, but there was a bitter taste of the unspeakable in his mouth. He remembered autumn and the ship of the merchant Orem Ketilsson, which had disappeared into the milky mist as if someone had drawn it behind a curtain. Then there was the sound of a horn. Not insistent, not martial. A prolonged, bewildered one, as if the fjord itself wanted to say something and was running out of words. Ragi emerged from the stilts, a scout with a face frostbitten by years and eyes that saw more than he spoke of. He pointed deep into the water, into the clearing between the shadows of the rocks, where the moon shone like a claw. - Drakkar! - he shouted. - No sails! The men of the long house ran out, pulling on furs and gloves, and the wind immediately snatched up breaths, rumbles, questions. Jarl Gunnlaug was the last to come out, wearing a helmet shell and with a foxskin cap pulled over his eyes. At his side walked Ulfhild, a bard with hair as white as ash and a gaze that could pass right through a man as if he were a thin sheet of ice. The drakkar, which was approaching the pier, carried a carved raven on its prow. The raven was looking straight into the bay, and its wooden feathers were covered with such a layer of frost that they looked like the real thing. There was not a single person on board. No oar moved in the sulk, no belt creaked from the strain on its arms. And yet the ship sailed on, not clattering against the glass-thickened water, as if someone was pushing it obediently with two fingers. Einar clenched his jaw. - 'It's the Raven Dream of Orm Ketilsson,' he said quietly. - 'Look, Astrid. Those rivets on the port side. I drove them myself in the spring. Astrid slid off the beam and moved alongside her brother. The cold was whispering in her ears, but there was a light in her eyes that neither wind nor night could extinguish. - She pushed it away from the current," Ragi chuckled, unhooking the mooring. - He let it slip between the pilings. Like a weasel. - Why do you use comparisons? - burbled Halvdan, the old skald, who was standing next to him and warming his hands against a cup of booze. - The eyes are enough. - 'Eyes sometimes need to be turned up with words,' Ragi answered him, but his voice died away when the drakkar touched the platform, lightly, silently, as if the wooden planks knew all the other winters. The Jarl nodded to Einar, and Einar nodded to Astrid. They stepped onto the deck, taking steps where he knew the planks like the palm of his own hand. Frost crunched under leather boots. The bells from a bag of dried fish that had been tethered long ago chimed softly, as if someone had shaken them just now. There were no signs of a struggle. There were no abandoned axes, tilted shields, scattered wool. Just three wooden bowls of dried porridge - ice had gripped the porous surface of the porridge and turned it into grey, uneven stone. - They hadn't eaten fully,' Astrid whispered and knelt down. - Walking away, not chasing. Einar nodded. In the moonlight he caught sight of something przyrida: a chest. Small, but heavy just looking at it. Reinforced with strips of iron as thin as a fingernail, with fittings lost in an elaborate weave that pretended to be the branches of a rowan tree. On the lid someone had carved deer horns, spread wide, like a constellation above the night sky. With his fingers he felt tiny indentations. They were not ornaments. They were marks. Different runes, each of a different shape, arranged in a circle as if to revolve around an invisible point. - Warm? - Astrid asked, not looking yet, but reading from his face. - 'Yes,' he replied. - It was as if she was lying by the fire. And ice all around. Ulfhild stood by the rail and did not go on deck. She closed her eyes and tilted her head as if listening. The wind quieted for a moment. The waves held their breath. - 'Don't open it today,' the bard said quietly. - Not until the sea sings a second time. The Jarl snorted, but not out of disregard. Out of impatience. The drakkar brought treasure or trouble; both things had to be named as soon as possible. He gave orders: the men pulled the ship back to the pier, the women brought blankets and lamps, the chest was removed carefully, passed from hand to hand like a child. That night the jarl's long house smelled of tar, juniper and heather honey. Wedges of light from the hearth danced across the faces, distributing a different shade of unease to everyone. Halvdan muttered a song in half-voice about past expeditions, but the verses twisted on his tongue. Jarl sat on the bench, slid forward, hands folded on his knee. Astrid had her spatula spread out, scribbling and noting every detail of the chest, as if the drawn marks could answer instead of the one that was silent. - A leather belt, she listed. - A blacksmith's buckle from Gardarika. Iron fittings thin but bent in a way I had not seen. The stag's horns spread not naturally, but as if... as if they were embracing the circle above them, not below them. - Whoever was doing this wasn't doing it for the first time," Einar added. - And he wasn't doing it in a hurry. - Perhaps it's a closed jug - Halvdan muttered. - On the words. - At whose words? - asked the jarl. - Orm Ketilsson? Ulfhild smiled half-heartedly, sadly. - There are words that only the wind speaks. And there are those that must be carried back to where they will be heard. - To where? - Einar felt the question escape further than his voice could reach. Ulfhild opened her eyes. As she watched, the hearth flame dimmed for a moment, or so it seemed. - 'Hjarnarholmr,' she said. - An island that one misses like one misses a dream one does not want to remember. There was a murmur in the long house. Hjarnarholmr lay to the northeast, like a dark spot on the maps, where even the skalds took pause in song. - 'Orm sailed that very way then,' Halvdan recalled, scratching his grey beard. - And he didn't come back. Maybe he wanted to cut the current, to shorten his route. Maybe he heard something... - We will set sail - decided the jarl. - At dawn. Einar, you lead the way. Astrid, take your maps. Halvdan, your ear will come in handy. Ulfhild... - I'll go if the sea is willing to take me,' she interrupted softly. - And if you let me listen before the demand is made. - Do we not open the chest? - Asked Ragi uncertainly, who had so far kept to the shadows as usual. The witch shook her head. - Not at night. Not here. In the morning they did just that. The dawn was milky, translucent, as if the day was just trying to put on its skin. The water was the colour of metal. The ravens sat on the palisade, silent, with their heads tucked into their wings. Einar led the knarr with fifteen men, the crate was placed under the canopy, with nets and skins. Astrid unfolded her paddles and parchments, smoothing each corner with her finger. Halvdan leaned against the side and muttered exactly as much as it took not to hear his own thoughts. Ulfhild sat with her back to the mast and her eyes closed, as if she were swimming in an internal river. As they passed the last rocks, the wind thickened with salt and the sea smoothed to a sheen for a moment, like a mirror in which one wants to see oneself when one does not know one's face. Astrid wrote it down on the side: "The water - smooth as the threshold of a door". In the afternoon, the chest trembled slightly. Einar felt it through the planking under his hand, as if something sighed somewhere deep. It was not unpleasant, rather alien. He put his ear to the skin. He heard a noise. Exactly the kind you hear in a shell pressed against your head - distant, without an edge, with something like a pulse at the edge. - Can you hear it? - Astrid asked, and there was no fear in her voice, only attentiveness. - 'I hear it,' he admitted. - But I don't know what. - No one knows everything,' she reminded him, as if she was giving him back the breath he had lost somewhere. In the evening they saw Hjarnarholmr. On the maps it was just a blur, in reality it emerged like the dark back of a great fish. With a beach of black stone, with circles of boulders in the meadows elevated above the water, with a lonely line of standing piles that were shaped like great, thin hands. - 'Let's not come any narrower than necessary,' Halvdan asked. - Let us leave the sea a way to retreat. Einar gave the sign. The anchors dropped silently. Knarr swayed slightly, as if the island was breathing and the ship was tuning to its rhythm. They stepped into the boat. The six oars hit the water softly, like wings. When the sand circle lost its depth, they walked the last metres wading. The stones were smooth, as if someone had honed them over hundreds of years with their hand. It was quiet on the shore. There were no birds, no wind. Just a salty smell, but not a fresh, tangy smell, but an old, heavier smell, like after a storm that had stopped a few days ago. Two white reindeer were grazing in the distance, and they raised their heads and watched without flinching. The circle of boulders they had chosen as a site was larger than it appeared from the water. Someone - or something - had arranged them so that they formed three gates. Each gate led to the land, but each in a different direction, not apparently - really differently. Astrid knelt down and touched one of the boulders. With her fingers she felt shallow cuts. - 'These are not our signs,' she said. - But I understand them. They are not letters. They're streams. They're the way things move. Halvdan tilted his head, as if agreeing with something bigger than them. - 'Bring the box,' Einar instructed. - 'We'll put it in the middle. It wasn't heavy - it weighed as if there was air inside, or something that has no weight and yet exists. As they lowered it onto the stone, the stag's horns on the lid sparked softly, as if they had been touched by skry. It was not fire. It was a light that had no source in fire. Ulfhild opened her eyes. Her face seemed older than usual, yet softer at the same time. - 'When the sea sings for the second time,' she reminded in a whisper. Einar wanted to ask when that would be, but didn't have time. A sound came from the bay. Not a guard horn, not a cry. A song. A simple, single note, sustained by something they could not see, but which shook their bodies like a subtle tremor. The hairs on the back of Einar's neck stood up, as if touched by the cold. Astrid tightened her fingers on the stylus she had in her hand and put it down without looking. Halvdan stopped muttering and bowed as if welcoming a stranger to the doorstep. - 'Now,' said Ulfhild barely audibly. - 'If you must. The Jarl did not stand over them, as in the long house. He stayed on the ship. The decision was up to Einar. He looked at his sister. She gave him a kind, brief smile that turned a stone in his stomach into something soft that drooped. He knelt by the chest. The hardware was cool, but you could feel the warmth from underneath. The lock looked like a simple peg with a horn buckle, yet his fingers immediately realised that it was not a peg. It was a mechanism that waited for the right move, just as a river lock waits for the tide. - 'If we start, we can't stop,' Halvdan warned, without threatening. - Not everything that is opened wants to close back up. - And some things shouldn't wait - replied Astrid just as gently. - Because they will get old and stop being what they are. Einar took a deep breath. That note from the bay resounded in his ears again, but now it had something like a thin, trembling path that led straight to his hand. He put his thumb to the knot-shaped rune and pressed down. Nothing. He moved it a little, as an old carpenter had once taught him at hinges that didn't like strangers. The lock sighed. It trembled. It felt as if the whole stones of the circle had lifted by a hair. - Do you hear? - He asked, though he didn't need to. Everyone had heard. The sound of the waves disappeared from the sea. The reindeer in the meadow stopped chewing. The crows on the stilts raised their heads, once, evenly. Einar pressed again, deeper. Something in the mechanism jumped, quietly, like a nail scraping across wood. The light on the deer's horns spilled across the age, a thin, pulsating line, and then the ground beneath Einar's knees tightened, as if someone, long ago, had stretched a string and finally someone else had touched it with a finger. The peg trembled. Ulfhild tightened her fingers on the edge of her coat. Astrid held her breath. The lock gave way.