The wind smelled of tar, seaweed and salt, and the whole village on the Ravnfjord sounded like one familiar instrument: the creaking of the piers, the clanking of the ropes, the sopping of the sea. Waiting in the slip was a new knarr, not yet christened, with sides so fresh that the resin glistened on them like tears. Eirik moved his hand along the concave shape of the keel, searching for knots and bumps. His hands were criss-crossed with tiny splinters and a gaze that rarely looked back. Next to him, on a stone, sat Sigrun, a year younger. She held in her lap a slab of whale bone into which someone had long ago incised runes. Time had worn away the marks, but not their meaning. - Here we go again,' she muttered, squinting her eyes. - Everywhere I turn, I see the same arrangement: three ravens, a wave and a flame. - And I see a Jarl axe at my neck if I don't end up with this keel before the first star,' Eirik replied with a wry smile, but something in his sister's words pinched him under the ribs. They were the children of Leif, a sailor who disappeared two winter cycles ago beyond the Glacier Tear, where the fjord passes into the grey abyss of the North. Since then, Ravnfjord has learned to walk more quietly. People whispered less and the crows sat higher. Jarl Sigvard, on his return from his expedition, forbade anyone to head west beyond the elongated cliff that fishermen called the Cold Isthmus. The currents there were said to beckon like fire in the dark. Sigrun moved away from the slab, as if the slab had suddenly become too heavy. - 'Halldis says the pattern repeats itself when something wants to be remembered,' she said quietly. - 'The ravens are messengers. The wave does not carry them by accident. Eirik shrugged his shoulders, but his fingers stopped at the edge of the wood. He listened for a moment: on an ordinary evening, he could hear the long, lazy strokes of the oars of the returning boats and the laughter from the long hut. On this evening the sounds seemed to have moved away from the shore. In the long hut, the jarl handed out salted mutton, measured beer and new orders. No one stopped Eirikia and Sigrun - since their mother's death they were used to being a shadow by the fire, then a shadow by the door, and finally a shadow by the water. They waited for the words that could re-establish the boundaries of their world. - 'Three nights without sailing,' Sigvard announced, without raising his voice. - A light was seen on the water that no fire gives. The sea sometimes gives back what was ours, but sometimes it brings only trouble. Sigrun raised an eyebrow. Eirik looked at the jarl and saw a trinket that others would not have noticed: a braided silver bead woven into his beard. It was the same one worn by Leif. Eirik felt bile pooling under his tongue. - Where did you get this bead, Sigvard? - He asked later, when the fire had dimmed and only those who were not afraid of the dark remained around. He asked the question too quietly for the others to hear, and loud enough that the jarl could not ignore it. - 'The sea throws up all sorts of things,' Sigvard replied, as if he were talking about the weather. - Not everything you find on the shore belongs to you. Sigrun grabbed Eirik's arm before he could say something that could not be taken back. They walked away under cover of laughter and the rumble of footsteps, and the wind, growing colder, carried with it the scent of distant snow. That night the sky above Ravnfjord opened high and wide, and the stars looked like the stabs of a skewer into black leather. Late in the evening, as the campfires were dying down, a bright-eyed raven perched on a post by their hut and tapped the wood with its beak. Three times. - 'I don't like it when birds knock,' muttered Eirik, but went off nonetheless. On the ground, just below the post, lay a knotted rope tied with tarred leather. Sigrun had managed to untie it before Eirik called out for her not to do so. Inside were two objects: an iron ring shaped like a snake with a tail in its mouth, and a narrow strip of sealskin on which were carved runes and lines in what resembled a map, except that the lines did not lead according to how they knew the coast. There was also a spot of solidified tar in the corner, as if someone had tried to hide the mark and given up halfway through. - 'That's his hand,' Sigrun whispered and moved her thumb over the incisions. - The letters put down quickly, as if on the road. See: the Cold Isthmus is marked, but the path does not go through the narrow stream. It leads under overhanging ice. Eirik picked up the ring. It was heavier than it looked. On the inside he could see the outline of a rune that Leif had once engraved on the handle of a knife. Eirik's heart tightened into a tight knot. - If it's a trap? - he asked. - If someone is pushing us into it? - And if someone no longer has the strength to shout otherwise? - replied Sigrun without hesitation. - Halldis said that there are signs that find a person when a person stops looking for them. Halldis, an old soothsayer who lived by the bay where the stones chattered after the storms, had once tried to send them away from the water. Now Sigrun wanted to go to her immediately. Eirik hesitated only a moment. - 'We'll wait until dawn,' he decided. - The darkness lies. Too many things look like what they are not. The sky twitched. A pale, greenish glow spread northwards, thin as a breath. It wasn't the aurora full of dancing they saw in winter. It was something thin, like a thread, stretched over the water. The sea responded to it with a deep, steady sound that could not be related to either the tide or the seal's breath. - Can you hear? - Sigrun asked. - It was as if the iron sang underwater. - 'It's just the ice far out there,' he said, although his throat was dry from lying. They went to the boat shed. The boards creaked with such a sound as if they remembered Leif's every step. Inside it smelled of old resin, fish and wet wood. Eirik lit the lamp, covering the wick with his hand. The flame smouldered cautiously, as if afraid of the light itself. Under the bench in their little boat, the one they had named Raven's Bone, lay a box that had not been there before. It was attached to the stave by a cord, and a rune similar to the one on the ring was carved on the lid. Eirik cut the string. Inside, apart from a handful of dried algae and a piece of wet cloth, he found a thin wooden plaque. On the tablet, with a needle and a hand he knew, the words were outlined: Don't believe the water when it is silent. The crow's path begins when the paddle does not make a circle in the mirror. The lamp rang with smeared glass, as if someone had touched it with a finger. A cold breeze swept through the gap between the boards of the shed, extinguishing all of Eirik's good thoughts at once. A dog barked in the distance, once, then a second time. The third time, it shifted into a hiss and fell silent. - 'We're going out,' said Eirik. - But quietly. If the jarl has sent guards, they'd better not see us until morning. Sigrun slipped the map and ring behind her belt and pulled her hood up. As they both moved towards the door, they heard an even sloshing, so even as to be unnatural, from the water side. Something dark and long shimmered in the crevice between the boards. A boat. Their eyes were not eating them, it was not the play of a wave - it was a shape sailing without light, with shadows sitting along the sides. On the bow was a sea serpent carved in wood with a splintered tusk. - 'This is none of ours,' Sigrun whispered, and Eirik nodded. He knew all the boats in Ravnfjord by sound. This one was otherwise silent, as if the oars were going into the water in their sleep. The boat braked at the pier and then, without a jerk, moved back half a length. The shadows over the side did not move. Only for a moment, as the flame of the lamp trembled, did Eirik see something that made the skin tighten on the back of his neck: on the knuckles of the hand of one of the sitters shone an iron ring, like the one Sigrun had tucked behind her belt. At the same time, somewhere above, a raven tapped once on a pile, and the water touched the beam of the platform so gently that the boards responded with a groan. A wispy mist seeped in through the gap, making contact with the knuckles of Eirik's fingers, as if something wanted to call him by name. - 'Someone is standing at the door,' Sigrun breathed out. - I can feel movement. Eirik lifted the lamp higher, shielding the flame with his fingers so as not to betray the light. Then they heard a creak. Not from the platform. From the threshold of the shed. Someone gently lifted the bolt from outside. Eirik looked for his sister's hand, but where he expected warmth, he found the cold metal of a ring. The cold went through him like a wave to his knees. The hinges groaned. Board by board the door swung away from the frame, and a streak of greenish light appeared in the gap, the same one they had just seen over the water. - Eirik - a whisper rang out. It was not the voice of the jarl, or Halldis, or any of the fishermen. It had salt and distant winds in it, it made something fixed in Eirik's memory burst forever. The door sprang open a hand's width away. A figure in a dark cloak stood in the threshold, dripping with water though it was not raining. An iron snake with its tail in its mouth glittered on its finger. At the same moment, a low sound, like the beating of a drum, rolled across the water just outside the shed, and something large moved under the mirror of the fjord, slashing the darkness like a stealthy sword. Sigrun held her breath. Eirik felt the world narrowing to a single movement - a moment in which he would either grab the ring or flee through the window. The figure in the threshold raised a hand, as if toasting, and took a step forward.