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Chapter Text

The morning the hospice nurse told them it wouldn’t be long, the sea was calm. That felt wrong to Sigrid. The water outside the window had always matched Ingrid’s mood; bright and restless when she was laughing, dark and wild when her lungs fought her breath. But that morning it looked like glass, smooth and unbroken, as if the world itself were holding still.

Sigrid poured the tea anyway. Ingrid believed routine was a kind of prayer, and she’d passed that habit down the same way she’d passed down her forge hammer, her stubbornness, and her sense that everything. Every nail, every stone, every drop of rain. Was alive.

The kettle clicked off. Sigrid lifted it carefully and filled two mugs, one of them chipped along the rim. She carried them to the sitting room, where her grandmother sat wrapped in three blankets, the pale winter light spilling across her lined face.

“Storm coming?” Ingrid asked without opening her eyes.

“Not today.”

“Then it’ll be tomorrow.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “It’s never far, not on this coast.”

Sigrid handed her the mug. Ingrid’s hands shook as she took it, but she managed to lift it to her lips. “You still use too much honey,” she murmured after the first sip.

“I learned from you.”

“I said too much, not enough.” Ingrid’s blue eyes opened; cloudy now, but still mischievous. “Though I suppose a sweet death isn’t the worst thing.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Sigrid said quietly.

“I have to, lita.” The old Norwegian endearment...little one...rolled soft and familiar. “Otherwise you’ll think death doesn’t speak until it knocks. But it’s been whispering for weeks, and we might as well answer politely.”

"I would much rather not answer it at all Mormor." Sigrid sank into the chair beside her. The house smelled of smoke and lavender oil. Outside, gulls cried, their voices thin in the wind.

They talked for hours, as they often did. About the forge out back and how the hammer handle still fit Sigrid’s hand better than any store-bought tool. About the summers in Norway, the time Ingrid had made her swim naked in the fjord “so the gods would know your courage,” and the day they’d forged matching pendants from scrap iron. The conversation wandered like a tide: retreating into silence, then surging forward again.

When Ingrid grew tired, Sigrid read aloud from the old journal, the one filled with her grandmother’s cramped handwriting. Recipes, sketches, fragments of stories. At one point Ingrid reached out and touched her wrist, tracing the faint lines of ink that curled there.

“You’ve kept the runes true,” she said.

“They’re part of me now.”

“They always were.” Ingrid’s voice thinned with weariness. “When I’m gone, you’ll finish them. You’ll mark the journey...raido. And you’ll take me home.”

Sigrid looked up. “You mean back?”

“Back to the fjord. To the water that taught me fear and love in the same breath.” Her smile was small and sure. “Promise me, Sig. By fire and wind, you’ll send me home.”

The promise settled heavy between them. Sigrid nodded, unable to speak.

In the weeks that followed, they sewed together the garments Ingrid wanted for her passing; simple linen, soft wool, every stitch a prayer. Ingrid insisted on doing the embroidery herself, fingers trembling as she pulled the needle through cloth. “It’s important,” she’d say. “The dead should wear something made by love.”

When the fever finally took her, Sigrid was ready in every way except the one that mattered.

The days after the death blurred into motion. Signatures, phone calls, quiet condolences from neighbors who didn’t understand the pyre permit she’d requested. She moved through it all with mechanical calm, the same focus she used at the forge. When night came, she’d sit by the cold anvil and talk aloud to the empty air, just to hear her grandmother’s name spoken.

On the seventh day she stopped talking and began to build.

She gathered driftwood from the shore, split logs from the shed, and arranged them on the sand in careful layers the way Ingrid had shown her long ago. She lined the base with herbs; rosemary for remembrance, thyme for courage, sage for purification. Each motion felt deliberate, ceremonial.

When it was done, she stood back and looked at it. It was beautiful and terrible, like a gate.

That night she couldn’t sleep. She dreamed of Norway. Of the cabin tucked between birch trees, of mist over water, of Ingrid’s laughter echoing through the valley. When she woke, her pillow was wet with tears she didn’t remember shedding.

She dressed before dawn, pulling on the ceremonial garb they had made together. The air outside was sharp and blue, the kind that made every breath taste clean. The sea beyond the dunes shimmered under the first light, calm again, waiting.

Sigrid brushed Ingrid’s hair one final time, wove sprigs of heather through it, and whispered, “You’ll go home soon.” Then she wheeled her grandmother down the path to the beach.

The beach wore the dawn like a veil. Mist gathering in low, luminous bands along the sand, the Atlantic breathing in and out with a patient hush. Lanterns burned along the path Sigrid had staked the night before, their warm circles of light laid out like stepping-stones toward the pyre. The structure itself rose from the tideline on a bed of dark sand, driftwood stacked in crisscrossed tiers, split pine and oak tucked with kindling, resin-brushed, herb-layered, precise. It looked less like a pile of wood than an altar: built for passage, not for spectacle.

Two firefighters stood near the dune grass, their truck tucked back on the hardpack road like a respectful guest who knew when to keep quiet. One was an older woman with silver hair scraped into a neat bun; the other barely past twenty, jaw dark with stubble. They kept their voices low as Sigrid came down the path, the wheelchair’s small tires whispering over the boards of the walkway and then the damp sand itself.

“Morning,” the older woman said, not intruding, not performing sympathy, just a simple greeting that made room for prayer. “Wind’s in our favor. Tide’s low. We’ll keep watch—no rush.”

“Thank you,” Sigrid answered. Her own voice sounded far away, like it came from behind glass.

They had signed the paperwork in her kitchen yesterday. Special permit, contained burn, water line and suppression on site, sand berm built, distance from dune grass measured twice. Sigrid had explained it all: a cultural rite, carefully prepared. The older woman had nodded at the runes braided into the ink along Sigrid’s fingers and said only, “We’ll make sure it’s safe. You make sure it’s true.”

Now Sigrid knelt and set the brake on the chair. She drew a long breath, tasting pine sap and brine in the air. The wind pressed cool fingers against her cheek, testing. She untied the linen that lay across Ingrid and folded it with the care one gives to a child’s favorite shirt. Her hands were steady. They had been steady all morning.

“Ingrid Halvordottir,” she said quietly, for the first time speaking it not as a summons but as a benediction. “Mormor.”

She and the older firefighter lifted together; no rush, no clatter, the weight of a life borne on practiced arms and laid Ingrid where Sigrid had smoothed the upper tier of wood. Sigrid’s breath shook once. She placed her grandmother’s hands over her chest and tucked small tokens at the shoulders and feet: sea salt in a carved bowl, the bronze comb, a sprig of heather bound with blue thread, the bone disk etched with raido. She fastened the Mjölnir pendant snug against the linen shift.

The ocean breathed; gulls stitched white thread across the gray morning, their calls high and thin. Sigrid stepped back, wiped pine pitch from her palms onto a rag, and took up the flint and steel. She didn’t look at the firefighters again. She didn’t need witnesses. She needed the work.

“From earth,” she murmured. “To flame.”

The first spark kissed the resin-rich kindling and bloomed, small and stubborn. She fed it dry twigs, then slivers of pine, then a palm’s worth of breath, the ember leaping brighter with each gift. Fire learned like a child: by example, by patience, by trust. When it understood, it climbed.

Heat washed her face in slow waves. The scent was layered and holy: pine pitch and rosemary, salt and ash. The flames found the careful tunnels she’d left between tiers and threaded upward in clean, eager columns. The older firefighter retreated a step, not from fear, but reverence. The younger crossed himself without meaning to.

Sigrid began to walk the circle.

Bare feet on cold sand, hem whispering, she moved sunwise around the pyre, speaking the words Ingrid had taught her in a childhood made of summers and salt.

“Fra jord til flamme, fra flamme til himmel, fra himmel til hav.”

With each pass, the words settled into the rhythm of heat, into the rhythm of the tide. The fire breathed. The ocean answered. The wind stilled to listen.

On her third circuit, something changed so gently she almost missed it. The flames inclined toward her, a slow bow as if answering a teacher. Heat licked her forearms; and for a moment she swore that the runes etched into her skin shimmered. The sound under the crackle sharpened; not louder, but more distinct, the way a familiar voice clears from static on a distant radio.

Whispers. Too many to be one person. Not enough to be a crowd. Not words yet. Tones.

She paused, eyes on the fire. Through the shifting light she saw it: smoke curling just wrong enough to mean something. Folds becoming features and then smoothing away, a profile half-formed, half-remembered. A warmth that wasn’t heat laid a hand along her shoulders the way Ingrid had done every time a storm broke: I am here.

Sigrid’s throat closed. She swallowed. The whispers braided through the fire’s breath and the ocean’s hush and became the simplest thing.

Listen.

She made herself move again. Work steadied the world: tending the fire’s boundaries with a shovel, checking the sand berm, wetting down the seaward edge with a steel pail of cold Atlantic, not to quench but to honor. She spoke to the firefighters twice. First to ask for more distance on the truck’s angle so the wind could carry smoke cleanly seaward, and to thank the older woman for another coil of hose placed without being asked. The older woman only touched two fingers to the brim of her cap and said, “Aye.” Her eyes were glassy, but her stance didn’t waver.

The burn lasted, as she had planned, not long and not rushed. The wood was seasoned, the structure sound; the flames did their work with a hungry mercy that made Sigrid’s bones ache. She stood until she couldn’t feel her toes, until the center collapsed inward with a sigh like a home settling in the night, until what blazed became what glowed, and what glowed became what breathed only in red.

“Let it finish,” she said when the young firefighter took a half-step forward. Her own voice surprised her; soft, but absolute. “She’s almost home.”

He nodded, cheeks flushed, and withdrew.

When the embers lay like stars spilled on black sand, Sigrid went to her knees. The heat lifted tears from her eyes and turned them to steam. With tongs and a small iron scoop..the same she used for charcoal in the forge…she lifted what remained into the carved wooden urn. Bone powdered to dust under its own weight; some fragments held their shape long enough to clink softly before they became part of everything else. She did not hurry. When the last curl of ash had been gathered, she laid the lid across the top and bound it with a strip torn from Ingrid’s old shawl.

She rose carefully, legs trembling, the urn held close against her chest. The older firefighter shifted as if to help and then, reading the sanctity of the moment, stilled. The younger one wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist and looked out to sea.

“Thank you,” Sigrid said to them both. “For making room.”

“It was yours to do,” the older woman replied. “We only keep the edges from burning where they shouldn’t.”

Sigrid almost smiled. “That’s all any of us can do.”

They stayed until the last ember went dark, until the sand gave back its chill and the morning brightened into a thin silver that the gulls cut to ribbons. When they left, the truck’s tires made polite tracks that the tide would erase. Sigrid lingered, urn under her coat, the world narrowed to the hiss of receding water and the faint sweetness of rosemary still woven through her hair.

She spoke then. Not to the firefighters or the empty beach, but to the shape the day had taken. “From flame to sky,” she said, letting the wind take the words. “From sky to sea.”

The ocean breathed in reply. The whispers thinned to a memory.

She walked home slowly, the urn cradled in both arms, feeling each step like a bead on a cord. The path up the dune, the boardwalk through the marram grass, the short stretch of road where the sand always drifted back after a storm; each familiar, each somehow tilted by what had just happened. By the time she reached the porch, the sun had clawed its way above the spruce line, not bright, merely present. She slipped the key from the nail where Ingrid had kept it since before Sigrid was born and let herself in.

The house held the cold as well as it had held the heat last night. Sigrid set the urn gently on the kitchen table, beside the chipped mug and Ingrid’s reading glasses, folded neatly on a napkin as if they might be needed later. For a long time she stood with both hands on either side of the urn, elbows locked, head bowed. She could have wept then. She did not. Not because the tears weren’t there, but because the ritual had filled their place with a different kind of fullness.

She boiled water. She made tea without thinking: kettle, leaves, the extra honey Ingrid always pretended to scold her for. She carried her mug to the back door and leaned in the frame, feeling the house in her spine the way a person feels an old dog press against their calves; steading, familiar. The yard was a rough quilt of frost and dead stalks. The shed…her forge…squatted patient and dark beneath its tar-paper roof.

She went to it.

Inside smelled like iron and ghosts. The anvil wore a thin coat of ash the way old men wear winter beards: half dignity, half defiance. She set her palm on its face and felt the haunted cold of unused steel. “You’ll wait,” she told it. “I’ll be back.” Though something whispered in her that what she said was a lie. 

On the pegboard, her tools hung in order. Hammer faces gleaming dully, tongs like the bones of metal birds. She lifted the smallest hammer, the one with Ingrid’s initials burned into the hickory handle, and found the grip without looking. The shape of it would outlast them all. That was the truth of tools: if you built them well and held them right, they remembered.

“Blood remembers,” she heard herself say, and the forge-shed gave back its dry breath.

She left the hammer on the bench and backed out, closing the door with the tenderness people use for the hands of the dying. In the kitchen, she washed the iron scoop until the water ran clear and set it to dry on a towel. She packed without ceremony. A process so spare it startled her when it was done. The urn in its linen wrap and leather straps. Passport. Wallet. A single change of clothes. The small tin of needles and the bottle of ink she’d brewed herself from soot and vinegar. Ingrid’s journal. Her grandmother’s scarf, smelling faintly of rosemary and smoke.

She didn’t make lists. She didn’t double-check. The knowing beneath her ribs had hardened into shape: you are not coming back. That certainty was not grief; it was geometry. The line she had been walking had reached its turn.

Afternoon bled into early winter darkness. She moved through the house like a steward rather than an owner. Closing windows after airing, banking the embers in the woodstove and then, reconsidering, letting them die. She folded the shawl and left it on the hearth. She washed the last three dishes by hand and set them on the rack, water beading on their edges like small new eyes. She wrote a note and left it under a magnet on the refrigerator for the neighbor who sometimes checked the mail: Gone to Norway. Don’t worry. She did not add goodbye.

At the threshold, she looked back once. Not at things. At the space. At the way light held the corners, at the way the floorboards creaked inside her memory even when they were silent. Then she locked the door and slid the key onto the nail.

Night lifted from the ocean in one slow piece as she drove toward the airport. The road unspooled between pine and salt marsh, black water knitting and unknitting along the shoulders. Somewhere past Kittery she laughed once, short and bewildered, at nothing. At how calm she was. At how her hands did not shake even on the long bridge where the wind pushed at the car and the guardrails hummed. The urn rode seat-belted beside her like a quiet passenger, the rune on its lid winking when the streetlights stuttered past.

She slept in the hard angles of an airport chair for two hours, her head propped on her rolled coat, the urn tucked between her calves, hand braced across its top as if holding down a piece of paper in a wind. When her flight boarded, she carried it like a newborn and did not apologize for refusing to put it in the overhead. The attendant with the braid and the kindness made room in the empty seat beside her with a nod that said of course and don’t explain and my grandmother’s name was Eliza. They didn’t say that last part out loud, but Sigrid heard it all the same.

The plane rose, and the coast unstitched beneath them. Clouds took the windows and turned them into pale mirrors. Somewhere above the Labrador Sea the cabin lights dimmed and an infant let out three brave, outraged cries and fell asleep again. Sigrid dreamed on and off of water that wasn’t water and fire that didn’t burn. Ingrid’s voice threaded through both, saying: When I go, follow the fjord. The gods favor those who keep their promises.

She woke with the taste of iron in her mouth and the certainty, fresh as a cut, that Part I of her life had finished and Part III had already begun.

The wheels kissed the runway in Oslo as if laying down a blessing.

Customs took her through bright, sterile corridors that might as well have been a hospital or a chapel. The urn earned her questions that were more about form than doubt; she answered calmly, showing the paperwork from Maine and the letter she’d written to herself in Norwegian just to see the words on a page: Jeg bringer min bestemor hjem. I am bringing my grandmother home. The border agent read it twice and slid it back with a nod that meant both safe travels and welcome home.

Outside, winter bit her cheeks through the glass doors. The air was an old song she’d forgotten she knew. Sigrid tightened Ingrid’s gray scarf and lifted her hand for a taxi.

She would reach the cabin by evening and the fjord by morning. But before the quiet took her again, the world made space for one more human thing.

“Where to?” the driver asked in Norwegian, voice warm, a middle-aged man with callused hands and a wedding ring worn smooth.

“Eidfjord,” she said. “To the edge of the property called Halvordstua, if you go off the main road.”

His eyebrows climbed a shade. “It’s a long drive. Beautiful, though.” He glanced at the urn as he pulled into traffic. “Family?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m taking her home.”

He made a small, respectful sound that wasn’t quite a word. They fell into the easy rhythm of strangers sharing a road. Norway slid by as if painted fresh on glass—spruce dark as ink, water like hammered pewter, villages stitched close to the shore as if they didn’t trust the mountains not to roll over in their sleep.

After a while he said, “I used to fish that fjord with my father. Before he died. We didn’t talk much,” he added, half-smiling. “Men, you know. But I remember the way he stood in the boat. It looked like praying.”

Sigrid looked out at the ribbon of river that would soon widen to sea. “My grandmother laughed during storms,” she said. “Said it made her lungs bigger.”

“That’s the thing about old people,” he said, pleased. “They tell the weather what to do.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel, thinking. “You’re speaking like a local.”

“I was taught to,” she said. “In summers.”

“Then the fjord will remember you.” He said it simply, as if commenting on the quality of the road. “It remembers those who come back.”

They stopped once for coffee at a station that smelled of diesel and cinnamon buns, and the driver carried the urn for her without asking, not cradled like something fragile, but held like something important. When they climbed the last hill and the road narrowed to gravel, he killed the radio and rolled down his window to breathe the air, the way men do when they are almost home.

“You want me to wait?” he asked at the turnoff, where moss swallowed the signboard letters and birch trunks made palisades of white. “There is no signal out here. If you find the place colder than memory, you might want a car back to town.”

She shook her head, already seeing the path even if it was half-eaten by frost and leaf mold. “No. I know the way from here.”

He looked at her; noticing, for the first time maybe, the tenderness along her forearms where the linen peeked from her sleeves, the set of her mouth like a woman crossing a river with no bridge. “All right,” he said. “Gods go with you.”

She smiled, surprised by it. “They’re already ahead of me,” she said. “And behind.”

He nodded, accepting logic older than asphalt, and eased the car back onto the road. The taillights went small and then were gone.

The forest gathered itself around her like a cloak. The air changed. The path waited.

And Sigrid, carrying an urn and a promise, stepped forward into the listening trees.

The forest breathed around her as she stood at the turnoff, the gravel road dwindling behind her into fog. The driver’s taillights disappeared among the trees, leaving her alone with the silence of Norway’s winter heart. She adjusted the pack on her shoulders and pulled the scarf tighter, the urn’s weight firm against her chest. The air was colder than Maine’s — older, too. It carried the smell of pine resin and wet stone, of earth that remembered the tread of centuries.

She followed the narrow trail through birch and spruce, her boots pressing softly into moss slick from melted frost. The hush of the woods was absolute, broken only by the occasional drip of water and the rustle of a raven shifting high above. Every few steps she reached out, brushing her fingertips against a trunk the way Ingrid had taught her. Touch what carries you, her grandmother used to say. The land listens when you do.

The slope rose gently before curving down toward the small valley where the cabin waited. When the trees thinned, it appeared. A shape half-swallowed by shadow, its roof sagging slightly under the weight of frost. It was exactly as she remembered. The sight of it struck her like a pulse beneath the ribs, both pain and homecoming.

She stood for a moment just looking, listening to the wind whistle low through the eaves, then climbed the short wooden steps and pushed the door open.

Inside, the air was still and dry, heavy with dust and cedar. The faintest trace of their summers lingered: the oil Ingrid used to polish the carved shelves, the herbs that had hung drying from the rafters. Sigrid set her pack on the floor, eased the urn from her chest, and placed it gently on the table.

For a long moment she did nothing. Just stood there, absorbing the quiet. Then, slowly, she began to move; opening shutters, shaking dust from a wool blanket, setting kindling in the stone hearth. When the match finally caught, the fire flared with a sound like a sigh, filling the small space with flickering gold. The warmth found her hands and face first, the ache of travel easing.

She brewed tea in the blackened kettle still hanging from its hook, using the last of the herbs she’d brought from Maine. When she lifted the cup, the scent of rosemary and smoke drifted through the room, familiar and bittersweet. She sat by the hearth and sipped in silence, the firelight painting shadows across the walls.

Outside, dusk deepened. A storm was forming somewhere beyond the mountains. She could smell it, metallic and sharp, rolling in slowly from the coast. She took a deep breath, then reached for her kit.

The small tin box held everything: her wooden-handled needles, the soot ink she’d made herself, the linen for cleaning. She unfolded the cloth on the table, lighting an extra candle until its flame steadied. The reflection wavered in the urn’s bronze banding.

Sigrid rolled her sleeves to her elbows, revealing the faded patterns already inked into her skin. The runes of her youth, marks for strength, patience, craft. Ingrid had called them her armor. But tonight was for something new, for the small patch of skin on her wrist that she’s been keeping bare.

She cleaned her tools with the precision of a ritualist, not an artist. Her grandmother’s voice guided her, steady as ever: The gods see the hand before they see the work.

The first needle dipped into the ink. The first tap met her skin. The sting was sharp, grounding. With each mark she whispered the rune’s name.

“Fehu,” she breathed. Wealth, but not of gold…of spirit, of memory. 

“Gebo.” Gift, given and received.

“Raido.” Her hand faltered for a moment at that one…journey. She pressed the tip gently against her skin, the ink spreading dark. “For the path that brought me here,” she whispered.

“Algiz.” Protection.

When she was finished, the runes ran along her forearm in clean, dark strokes, the skin reddened but proud. She cleaned them carefully, then held her arms close to the firelight. The ink shimmered faintly as if reflecting something unseen.

She wrapped the fresh tattoos in linen, poured the leftover ink into the hearth as offering, and whispered: “Blood remembers, and blood keeps the vow.”

The air shifted. A gust swept down the chimney, scattering sparks, and for a moment the room filled with the scent of rosemary again; stronger now, vivid, alive. The flame flickered toward her, and she felt it, deep beneath her skin: that same hum from Maine, the presence that was neither heat nor sound but awareness.

She bowed her head. “I’m listening,” she murmured. The fire gave no answer, but the pressure in the air eased, as if satisfied.

She sat until exhaustion took her. When she finally lay down on the old cot near the hearth, sleep came in fragments. Thunder behind the mountains, the rush of waves, a woman’s laughter threaded through the wind. Ingrid’s laughter.

She woke before dawn. The storm had held off, but the sky outside the window was bruised gray and heavy with rain. The fire in the hearth had burned low to embers. Sigrid rose, her movements slow, deliberate.

She dressed in layers; dark jeans, a black long-sleeved shirt, heavy boots, and her grandmother’s gray scarf. Her jacket hung damp from the hearth’s heat; she slipped it on anyway. The linen around her arms had dried stiff, the runes beneath tender but solid.

She packed light for the hike: a thermos of tea, a small knife, a coil of rope, and the urn. The world outside was steeped in mist, the air dense and cold enough to sting her lungs. She followed the same path she’d run as a child, the one that led down through the birch groves to the fjord.

The descent was steep in places, the rocks slick with frost, but her steps were sure. The forest felt alive. The kind of silence that listens. When she reached the edge of the trees, the fjord opened before her like a sleeping god.

The water was still, the surface smooth as glass. The mountains rose on either side, half-veiled in drifting fog. A single cry of a gull echoed through the valley, then faded.

The dock was waiting; weathered, its planks damp and dark, but sturdy. And tied at its end, bobbing gently in the soft current, was the same small rowboat. The paint had long since peeled away, the spirals her grandmother had carved faint but still visible.

Sigrid set her pack down and rested her hand on the bow. “You waited,” she whispered.

She climbed in, careful not to rock the boat, and settled the urn on her lap. The oars creaked softly as she pushed off. Each stroke cut a clean ripple through the water.

When she reached the fjord’s center, she let the boat drift. The mist closed around her in slow coils. She could see her reflection in the dark water…a ghost of herself framed by fog.

For a while, she just breathed. The quiet here was different than anywhere else. It wasn’t the absence of sound; it was the presence of stillness.

Memories began to rise like the tide. Ingrid teaching her to swim, her laughter echoing across the fjord. The clang of metal behind the cabin, the smell of iron and salt. The storm they’d watched together when she was twelve, lightning painting the sky in white fire.

Sigrid reached for the urn and held it close. “You’re home,” she said softly. “Just like I promised.”

She began to sing.

Her voice was low, uncertain at first, but it steadied as it filled the mist. The hymn carried across the water, each line trembling with the weight of memory.

“Gudene følger deg gjennom storm og hav,
Der lyset dør og mørket gav,
Der vinden taler og bølgene ber,
Må du finne fred, min kjære…”

When the last note faded, she removed the lid from the urn. The ashes inside were pale as snow, fine as sand. She let the first handful fall through her fingers. The grains scattered on the water, drifting outward in delicate ribbons.

“From earth to flame,” she whispered. “From flame to sky. From sky to sea.”

She released another handful, and another, until the urn was light in her hands. Each breath of wind carried the ashes farther, dissolving them into the silver surface.

The mist shifted. The air changed. A strange calm settled over the fjord — not silence, but anticipation.

The runes beneath her sleeves began to warm, pulsing faintly. The water beneath the boat shimmered as if lit from below.

Sigrid’s breath caught. She looked down, and there…just beneath the surface…something moved. Shapes, faint and luminous, circling like reflections of light.

A voice, distant and layered, brushed her ear. “Daughter of fire and ash… you kept the vow.”

The glow beneath her brightened. The wind rose, carrying the scent of salt and rain and something else; ozone, like the breath before lightning.

She looked up. The clouds above the fjord had begun to spiral, light flickering at their center.

Thunder rolled.

The first bolt struck the water not far from the boat. The flash blinded her; the sound split the air open. Waves surged, rocking her violently. The oars clattered against the hull and vanished into the water.

“Stop!” she gasped, gripping the sides, but the wind had risen to a howl. Rain lashed her face, the cold so sharp it burned.

The light beneath the boat turned gold, then white. The runes on her arms flared to life, searing against her skin, their glow spilling through the fabric.

“Raido,” she whispered. “The journey.”

The next wave hit broadside. The world spun. She fell forward, arms instinctively reaching for the urn, but it slipped away, tumbling into the churning dark. She plunged after it, the shock of cold stealing her breath.

The water swallowed her whole.

Down she went, deeper, the light blinding now. A storm turned inside out. The voices returned, clearer this time, hundreds layered into one.

“You followed the path.”

“You are seen.”

“You are marked.”

Her lungs burned. The pressure around her chest grew unbearable, and then, suddenly, it eased. She wasn’t falling anymore. She was floating.

The light swirled around her, forming patterns that echoed the runes on her skin. Faces flickered in the brilliance. Vast, unknowable, the eyes of gods.

“The path continues,” they said. “Fire to flame, flame to sky, sky to sea.”

The last thing she saw before the light consumed her was the faint shape of Ingrid’s face smiling through the glow.

Then everything went dark.

The first breath was salt.

Sigrid gasped, her body convulsing as seawater spilled from her lungs. The sand beneath her was coarse and wet. Gulls cried overhead.

She rolled onto her side, coughing, the torn sleeve of her shirt clinging to her arm. Her coat was gone, her scarf vanished, the salt stiff in her hair.

When she finally lifted her head, she saw the outline of wooden huts beyond the dunes, smoke curling from their roofs. Children’s voices carried on the wind…laughter, curious, bright.

And not far off, two small figures stood frozen at the edge of the tide, staring.

The boy’s hair was pale gold, his tunic simple wool. He clutched a small fishing spear, knuckles white. The girl beside him held a basket of shells.

Their eyes were wide. Not with fear, but wonder.

The boy turned to the girl and whispered, “Get Father.”

And as the girl ran toward the village, Sigrid closed her eyes again, the roar of the sea fading into silence.

The journey had only just begun.

Chapter Text

The sea had been restless all night, hammering against the rocks like a drumbeat meant for gods. By dawn, the storm had passed, but the air still carried its wildness — sharp and cold, laced with salt and thunder. Ragnar Lothbrok was mending a fishing net near the longhouse when Gyda came running, hair unbound, breath clouding in the chill.

“Father! Father, come quick!”

Her voice cracked with urgency. Ragnar straightened at once, dropping the hemp cords from his hands.

“What is it, little one?”

“There’s a woman on the beach!” Gyda gasped. “She came from the sea. Bjorn’s with her!  She’s alive, I think!”

A woman from the sea. Ragnar didn’t waste time with questions. He grabbed his cloak and followed her toward the dunes, long strides eating the distance.

The sand was damp and cold beneath his boots when he reached the shore. Bjorn stood near the waterline, spear forgotten in the wet sand. “Here!” he called, pointing.

The woman lay half-buried in the tideline, her hair tangled with kelp and shell fragments. Her clothes were strange — no wool, no leather, no linen — and her boots gleamed faintly where the surf had washed them clean. One sleeve of her shirt was torn away, exposing an arm marked in dark, fluid lines.

Ragnar crouched beside her. She was breathing; shallow, fragile, but alive. Her skin was pale as moonlight, her lips tinged blue.

Gyda hovered a few steps away, eyes wide. “Did the gods send her?”

Ragnar looked at the sky, where the last of the storm clouds tore apart into ribbons of gold. “If they did,” he murmured, “we’ll know soon enough.”

He slid his arms beneath her and lifted her easily, water streaming from her clothes. “Come,” he said. “We’ll take her to the hearth.”

By the time they reached the longhouse, the fire was already roaring. The smell of smoke, pine, and seawater filled the air as Ragnar ducked through the doorway, the half-drowned woman still in his arms.

Lagertha turned sharply from the hearth, wiping her hands on her apron. “Who is this?”

“The sea returned her,” he said simply. “The children found her.”

Lagertha’s eyes narrowed. “Or it threw her out.”

Gyda stood just behind him, her face pale, voice small. “She’s alive, Mother. Barely.”

Lagertha hesitated. Only a heartbeat, before saying, “Lay her by the fire.”

Ragnar obeyed, lowering the woman onto the furs near the hearth. Her hair was long and tangled, her skin pale as bone. Lagertha pressed two fingers to her neck, then her lips.

“Cold through,” she muttered. “We’ll have to strip her. Those clothes will kill her faster than the sea.”

Gyda’s eyes widened. “Mother—”

“She’ll die otherwise,” Lagertha said briskly. “Fetch clean linens.”

Ragnar stayed silent, crouching near the fire as Lagertha began to unlace the stranger’s boots. They were light and strange, woven from a substance finer than leather. When she pulled one free, seawater gushed from it.

“No hide I know of,” she said. “No stitch I recognize.”

Ragnar turned the other boot over in his hand. “Strange work,” he murmured. “Soft, but strong.”

Once the boots were off, Lagertha moved to the woman’s trousers. The fastening at the waist gleamed faintly, catching the firelight. She frowned, tugging at the metal teeth until they gave with a rasp.

“What kind of clasp is this?” she asked, pulling the fabric down.

Ragnar leaned in. “No seamstress I’ve met could make such a thing. It’s as if the cloth itself is alive.”

The trousers came free with a wet sound, and Gyda gasped. Beneath the fabric, Sigrid’s legs were covered in ink.

The firelight made the markings shimmer — black and clean, wrapping her skin in intricate patterns. They weren’t random. They told stories.

Lagertha froze, her eyes tracing the designs. “By the gods…”

“What is it?” Gyda whispered.

“These aren’t just runes,” her mother said softly. “Look. Here.” She pointed along Sigrid’s thigh, where a great tree spread its roots and branches across her skin; Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Beneath it coiled the serpent Níðhöggr, gnawing eternally at its roots. “That’s no traveler’s mark. That’s the story of all things.”

Ragnar leaned closer, his breath slow. “She wears the Nine Realms upon her flesh.”

Lagertha moved lower, wiping away salt and sand. Along her calf, twin wolves chased the sun and moon. Sköll and Hati. Across her other leg, a ship sailed through curling waves beneath the shadow of a serpent’s tail.

“Rán’s hall,” Lagertha murmured. “And Jörmungandr himself.”

Ragnar nodded, voice hushed. “A seer might carve one story in her life, a warrior another. But this…” He reached out, tracing the air above her leg without touching. “This is all of them. Fate, gods, beasts, and endings.”

“Whoever made these,” Lagertha said softly, “knew the old tales by heart.”

“She might be the one who told them,” Ragnar said.

Lagertha shot him a sharp look. “Don’t speak that way.”

He smiled faintly. “Wouldn’t be the first time the gods came in flesh.”

They continued stripping away the soaked clothing. Beneath the strange fabric of her shirt lay more tattoos; fine runes crossing her ribs, protection symbols beneath her collarbone, lines curling up her neck. The firelight caught on them and made them glisten faintly, as though still wet with ink.

“She’s a living saga,” Ragnar said quietly.

Gyda looked from one to the other. “Then we must keep her alive, or the gods will take her back.”

When the last of the wet cloth was gone, Lagertha covered her quickly with linen and furs. “There,” she said, her voice softer now. “We’ve done what we can. If she lives, it’s by the gods’ choice.”

That night, when the longhouse had gone quiet and the fire burned low, Ragnar sat beside the hearth, staring into the embers. The woman’s breathing had grown steady now, her color returning. Her skin shimmered faintly where the firelight caught on the ink that wound across it; the runes and symbols that told stories older than their own.

Lagertha stirred from her place near the door and came to sit beside him. She poured them each a small cup of mead, handing one to him in silence.

“You’re still watching her,” she said.

“She’s not from any village I know,” Ragnar replied. “Nor from any land our maps remember.”

Lagertha followed his gaze to the sleeping woman. “Her markings are of our stories. But her clothes are not. And her speech…”

“...is half of ours, half of something else,” Ragnar finished.

Lagertha sipped her drink, thoughtful. “So what will you do with her?”

Ragnar’s eyes lingered on the faint glow of the rune at her wrist. Raido, the traveler’s path. “When she wakes, I’ll take her to Kattegat. The Seer will want to look upon her.”

“The Seer?” Lagertha frowned. “You think she’s an omen?”

“I think,” Ragnar said slowly, “the gods don’t cast storms for nothing. If she came from beyond the sea, perhaps she brings a message we’re meant to hear.”

“And if it’s not a message?” Lagertha asked. “If it’s a warning?”

Ragnar smiled faintly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Then we’ll see which god sent it.”

He looked down once more at the woman’s tattoos — the World Tree sprawling across her thigh, the wolves chasing the sun and moon, the serpent beneath the waves. The symbols gleamed faintly as if catching light from some fire only the gods could see.

“After the Seer,” he murmured, “perhaps I’ll speak with Floki.”

Lagertha raised an eyebrow. “About what?”

Ragnar’s voice was quiet, full of something half wonder, half danger. “If the gods sent her from beyond the sea... perhaps it’s time we learned how to follow.”

Lagertha said nothing more. The wind sighed through the thatch, and the fire whispered low. Outside, the tide rolled in and out — the steady heartbeat of a world that was about to change.

The woman’s breathing had deepened, steady and slow. Her arm lay outside the furs now, the ink along her wrist catching the firelight.

Ragnar’s eyes lingered on it.

“The path of the traveler,” he murmured to himself. “The road that leads from one world to another.”

A gust of wind rattled the shutters, making the flames dance higher. For a brief moment, the light seemed to twist, and the runes shimmered. Not with color, but with motion, as if they were shifting under the skin.

Ragnar blinked. The illusion vanished.

He leaned back, gaze still fixed on her. “If the gods sent you,” he said quietly, “I’ll find out why.”

Outside, the sea murmured against the rocks, slow and eternal. Inside, the fire sighed and sank low, casting the last warmth of the night across the woman the sea had returned.

Chapter Text

Warmth pressed around her like a heavy quilt. The scent of burning pine drifted through the air, mingling with the faint tang of salt and smoke. For one blissful moment, Sigrid thought she was home again.

Her fingers curled against coarse fabric. The soft crackle of fire filled the quiet, and the steady rhythm of the wind against old shutters brought comfort. Her chest ached when she breathed, but the air was warm. Too warm to be the sea.

“Mormor?” she whispered hoarsely. “Mormor, why is it so cold.”

The word slipped out before she could think, instinctive, tender, shaped by a lifetime of love.

She waited for the familiar shuffle of slippers, the hum of an old folk tune, the kettle clinking on the stove. She could almost smell the cardamom and wood oil, the faint trace of sea salt that clung to Ingrid’s hair.

“Mormor?” she tried again, weaker this time.

A shadow crossed the firelight. A woman approached; tall, strong, her pale hair braided back, eyes sharp and steady. Her movements were practiced, deliberate, the kind of grace that came from both battle and hearth.

She knelt beside the furs, studying Sigrid’s face for a long, silent moment before speaking. The words that came were strange, old, yet familiar enough to understand by rhythm and root.

“Du er våken?” the woman asked.

You are awake.

Sigrid hesitated, then nodded weakly.

The woman’s expression softened. “Drikk,” she said, offering a wooden cup.

Sigrid accepted it, hands trembling. The water was cool and metallic, grounding her. “Takk,” she murmured.

The woman tilted her head, a flicker of understanding crossing her face at the word. She understood that one.

Sigrid blinked against the firelight, her throat tightening. “Mormor?” she whispered again.

The woman’s eyes softened, and her voice gentled. “Your grandmother is not here.”

The words fell quiet, but they struck true.

Sigrid’s chest tightened, grief rising like a wave. She looked down at her hands, pale against the fur, and whispered, “No… she wouldn’t be.” Her eyes lifted to the fire, its glow blurring through unshed tears. “She’s found her place among the gods.”

The woman’s gaze warmed…still solemn, but touched with empathy. “Then the gods have been kind,” she said. “Few find their place so easily.”

For a moment, time folded in on itself. Two women separated by centuries but bound by the same truth of loss and belief.

Sigrid let her eyes close, breathing deeply, listening to the steady rhythm of the fire and the faint roll of the tide beyond the walls. She could almost believe that somewhere, far beyond, Mormor was listening.

The door creaked open, a gust of cold air sweeping through the longhouse, carrying the scent of sea and pine.

“She wakes?” came a man’s voice;  low, smooth, confident.

Lagertha stood “Aye,” she said simply. “And her wits with her.”

Sigrid blinked, looking toward the doorway — and froze.

A man stepped into view, tall and broad, his hair pulled back, his beard neat. The fire caught in his pale blue eyes, and for a moment, she forgot to breathe. He carried the weight of command without trying, his presence filling the room.

“I can understand you,” she said suddenly, her voice weak but clear.

Both of them turned to her.

“You understand?” Ragnar asked, slowing his speech.

Sigrid nodded. “Not all. But… most. Your words are old, but close to mine.”

A flicker of surprise crossed his face, quickly replaced by curiosity. “Then we can speak, you and I.”

Lagertha moved to the chest near the wall, pulling out a folded bundle of linen and wool. “If she’s to stay alive, she’ll need dry clothes,” she said simply.

Ragnar crouched near the fire, studying Sigrid. “My son and daughter found you. You were half-buried in the tide.”

“I remember the water,” she said softly. “And the light.”

“What were you doing in the sea?” he asked.

“I was scattering ashes,” she replied, voice trembling. “My mormor’s. It was her wish.”

Ragnar’s expression shifted, the faintest respect touching his tone. “A promise kept, then.”

Sigrid gave a small nod. “I thought it would end there. But… it seems the gods had other plans.”

He studied her for a long moment, as though trying to see the shape of the gods’ will behind her words. “You speak of them as if they are yours, too.”

“They are,” she said quietly. “Always have been.”

That earned her a slow, knowing smile. “Then perhaps they sent you here to remind us of something we’ve forgotten.”

Lagertha approached with a clean shift and tunic, setting them beside her. “These will fit well enough. But you’ll have to keep your boots; we’ve no shoes to spare.”

Sigrid glanced down at her own; black, modern, still damp but intact. Seeing them against the dirt floor made her throat tighten.

Lagertha crouched, touching the material curiously. “Strange work. Not hide, not wool. Yet they’re well made.”

“They’re meant to weather storms,” Sigrid said softly.

Lagertha’s eyes flicked up. “Then they’ve served you well.”

The man watched her closely. Ragnar tilted his head. “You said you scattered ashes; in what sea?”

“The fjord,” Sigrid answered. “North of here, I’m not sure. A place called Geiranger.”

Ragnar frowned. “I know no such place.”

The truth struck her like a cold wave. Of course he didn’t. It wouldn’t exist for centuries.

Her silence said enough. Ragnar’s gaze sharpened. “You speak our words, yet not as we do. You name places that have no place. You wear our stories, but your cloth is of no weave I’ve seen.”

Lagertha stood, arms folded. “If the gods sent her, questioning won’t make their meaning clear any faster.”

Ragnar’s smile returned, faint and wolfish. “You think I question the gods?”

“I think you question everything,” she said dryly, moving to hang her damp tunic by the fire.

Sigrid caught enough of it to understand their tone, even if not every word. “You are… husband and wife?” she asked, cautious but curious.

Lagertha’s brow arched, and Ragnar’s smile deepened. “Once,” he said. “In this life, perhaps again.”

Sigrid’s lips curved faintly. “You sound like Mormor.”

The woman handed her the tunic. “Then she was a wise woman.”

Sigrid pulled the garment on slowly, the wool heavy but comforting. “She was.”

The man studied her for a moment longer, then said, “What do we call you, woman of the sea?”

She hesitated; not from fear, but from the weight of it. “Sigrid Halvordottir,” she said softly.

He repeated it slowly, the old tongue shaping it differently. “Sigrid,” he said. “A good name.”

He gestured toward the woman. “I am Ragnar. This is Lagertha.”

The names hit her like a spark to dry tinder.

Familiar…achingly so…not as people she’d known, but as stories she had been told.

Her grandmother’s voice whispered through memory:

“There was once a farmer chosen by Odin himself, clever and restless, who dreamed beyond the horizon…”
“And the shieldmaiden who stood beside him, fierce as any storm that lashed their shores…”

Her pulse thudded in her ears. “I know those names,” she whispered, eyes wide. “From the old tales.”

Ragnar’s smile turned sly. “Then perhaps the tales remember us better than we thought.”

He stood, shadows flickering across his face in the firelight. “Rest now, Sigrid Halvordottir. Tomorrow, we go to Kattegat. The Seer will want to see you.”

“The Seer?” she echoed faintly.

“He speaks the tongue of the gods,” Ragnar said. “If anyone can make sense of your coming, it’s him.”

Her stomach twisted. “And if he cannot?”

Ragnar’s eyes gleamed with quiet conviction. “Then we’ll see which god sent you,” he paused. “And why.”

The door creaked again, and two smaller figures slipped in with the chill win; a boy and a girl, bright-eyed and curious.

“Father!” the girl said softly. “She’s awake!”

Ragnar’s mouth curved. “So she is.”

The boy stepped forward boldly. “Is she one of the gods?”

Lagertha smirked faintly. “She’s a woman, Bjorn. Though the gods may have had a hand in her coming.”

The girl. Gyda. Crept closer, eyes widening at the sight of Sigrid’s arm. “Your skin,” she whispered. “It has pictures.”

Sigrid smiled, her exhaustion softening her fear. “They’re stories,” she said, careful with her words. “Of home. Of the gods.”

Gyda tilted her head. “Of our gods?”

Sigrid nodded. “Of Yggdrasil, who holds all the worlds. Of Sköll and Hati, who chase the sun and moon. Of Rán, who gathers the drowned in her hall beneath the waves.”

Bjorn crouched beside his sister, pointing to the rune on Sigrid’s wrist. “That one means travel,” he said proudly.

Sigrid’s brows lifted. “Raido,” she murmured. “Yes. You’re right.”

Bjorn beamed.

Gyda’s gaze wandered lower, to where the hem of Sigrid’s borrowed tunic revealed the faint edge of the great tree sprawling across her thigh. “The World Tree,” she breathed.

Sigrid nodded. “Its roots run deep. Its branches touch the stars.”

“The Seer says its roots reach into the realm of the dead,” Gyda whispered.

Sigrid smiled faintly. “Then maybe Mormor rests there now. Among the roots.”

For a long moment, silence filled the room, the fire crackling softly between them. Even Ragnar seemed still, his sharp eyes thoughtful.

Finally, Lagertha spoke. “Enough questions. Let her rest. She’ll need her strength.”

Gyda instead climbed up onto the bed with Sigrid, unafraid of the strange woman in her home.. “May I stay, Mama? Just for a little while?”

Lagertha nodded once. “A little while.”

Sigrid leaned back against the furs, the warmth lulling her. Gyda nestled beside her, her small hand resting lightly over Sigrid’s wrist. Right over the rune that marked her as a traveler between worlds.

Ragnar watched from the firelight, his expression unreadable. “Sleep, Sigrid Halvordottir,” he said softly. “Tomorrow, the gods will have their say.”

Outside, the sea sighed against the shore.

Inside, the gods listened in silence.

Chapter Text

Darkness wrapped around her like velvet. Not cold, but endless. Somewhere far below, water lapped against unseen stone. The sound of it echoed through her bones, steady as a heartbeat.

Sigrid floated in the quiet, weightless, her body neither here nor there. The air. If it was air, tasted faintly of salt and ash.

“Mormor?” she called softly.

The name drifted outward and came back to her, carried by the faintest breeze. But when it returned, it wasn’t her grandmother’s voice that answered.

“You are far from your hearth, child of Halvor.”

The voice was deep, ageless…neither man nor woman. It rolled through her like thunder through water.

Sigrid turned, or thought she did, but there was no horizon. Only shifting mist that glowed faintly gold, like the light before dawn.

“Who’s there?” she whispered.

Another voice rose behind the first, clear and sharp as breaking ice.

“You called upon us when the pyre was lit.”

“You offered fire, smoke, and song. We answered.”

“I-I didn’t mean to call anyone,” she said. “I only wanted to keep my promise.”

A third voice, distant and melodic, spoke like wind through pine.

“Every promise binds two souls. One to keep… one to claim.”

The air rippled, and she could suddenly see.

Below her stretched a vast plain of stars. And from the center of it rose a great tree, its roots coiling into the void, its branches piercing the heavens. The World Tree. Its bark shimmered with veins of silver light, each one pulsing like breath.

At its roots, something moved; a vast serpent, coiled and waiting. Its scales gleamed black as night, its eyes like molten gold.

“Níðhöggr,” she whispered, recognition blooming in her chest.

“You know our names,” the first voice said.

Sigrid’s eyes flicked upward. Above the branches, she could see shapes; wings unfolding, figures shifting between flame and shadow. The air trembled with their laughter and their wrath.

“Odin,” she breathed. “Frigg. Freyja. Njord.” Her throat tightened. “What do you want of me?”

“The same thing you have always wanted, child,” came the reply. “To keep what was promised.”

“I did,” she said quickly. “I lit her pyre. I sang the words. I gave her to the sea.”

“And I arrived,” said another voice; warm and familiar this time.

Sigrid froze. “Mormor?”

From between the roots, a soft glow bloomed. Gold and gentle as sunlight through thin curtains. And out of it stepped Ingrid, her shawl drifting like mist, her face calm and kind.

“Mormor,” Sigrid gasped, reaching forward.

Ingrid’s smile was tender. “You kept your promise, lille due. You did well.”

Sigrid’s eyes filled. “I tried to bring you home.”

“You did,” Ingrid said softly. “But your home was never meant to end where mine did.”

Sigrid frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Ingrid touched her cheek, her fingers warm despite the mist. “You asked to see what came before the stories, didn’t you? You wanted to understand the gods as I did.”

Sigrid swallowed. “Not like this.”

Her grandmother’s eyes glowed faintly, like sunlight caught in deep water. “We cannot choose how the gods answer, only that they do.”

A whisper stirred through the mist. This time not Ingrid’s voice but many, overlapping, as if the gods themselves spoke through her:

“The storm is a gate.”

“The traveler must walk both paths.”

“Raido marks the way, but not the end.”

“Blood remembers blood.”

Each word rippled through her, sinking deep into her bones.

Sigrid shook her head. “I don’t understand!”

Ingrid’s voice softened again, slipping back to the grandmother she had known. “You will, when the time is right.”

Sigrid reached for her hand, but the mist began to pull away; the light dimming, the warmth fading.

“Mormor, don’t go—”

“Wake, my dove,” Ingrid whispered, her voice already distant. “The gods are watching.”

The words faded into the sound of waves, growing louder, sharper;  until they became the creak of wood, the whisper of wind through thatched walls.

Sigrid gasped and sat up.

The longhouse swam into view — the embers still glowing low in the hearth, a faint light bleeding through the shutter slats. She could hear gulls outside, their cries echoing across the water.

Her pulse still thundered in her ears. The scent of salt and smoke clung to her hair, and the gods’ voices still tangled in her thoughts. “The storm is a gate. Raido marks the way. Blood remembers blood.”

She pressed a hand to her temple, trying to breathe through the confusion.

Beside the fire, Lagertha was already awake, plaiting her hair with quiet efficiency.

“You dream loudly,” she said without turning.

Sigrid blinked. “Did I speak?”

“Enough to wake the fire.”

Sigrid gave a shaky smile. “That sounds like something my mormor would say.”

“She must have been strong.”

“She was,” Sigrid murmured. “Stronger than she ever let on.”

The door creaked open, and pale light spilled in; the color of morning fog. Ragnar stepped inside, the chill air curling around him.

“You’re awake,” he said.

Sigrid nodded. “The gods wouldn’t let me sleep.”

“Then perhaps they’re impatient for us to leave.”

He handed her a cloak. Coarse wool, faintly smelling of smoke. “Eat something. We’ll leave within the hour.”

Lagertha looked up, her expression unreadable. “You’re still taking her?”

Ragnar nodded. “I’d travel to Kattegat regardless, business to speak with Floki“

Lagertha’s gaze shifted to Sigrid, her tone cool but not unkind. “Mind the paths. The forests still hold wolves.”

“I’ll keep my knife close,” Sigrid said softly.

Ragnar smirked. “She’ll have mine, too.”

That earned him a sharp glance from his wife;  but she said nothing more, only tightened the straps on the sack she handed him. “Two days’ food, if you ration it. Don’t come back with another mouth to feed unless she’s worth feeding.”

Sigrid inclined her head. “I’ll try not to be a burden.”

Lagertha’s expression softened, if only slightly. “The gods will decide that.”

Outside, the air was cold enough to sting her lungs. Mist rolled low over the fields. Ragnar led the way, his steps steady and sure, his axe slung across his back. Sigrid followed in silence, her boots crunching over frost-hardened earth.

They spoke little that first morning. The wind carried the smell of pine and distant sea salt.

By midday, the sun hung weakly behind a veil of clouds. They stopped by a narrow stream to drink.

“How far?” Sigrid asked.

“Three days if the weather holds. Four if it doesn’t.”

“You travel this road often?”

“Aye. To Kattegat for the Thing, and when the raiding season calls. The Earl gathers his men early, before the thaw.”

She studied him for a moment. “And you go because the Earl commands it?”

Ragnar’s mouth twitched. “I go because I was born to.”

“You sound like a man who wants more than he has.”

He glanced at her. “And you sound like a woman who’s seen more than she should.”

They resumed walking. The sky darkened; the first flakes of snow began to fall. Soft, silent, clinging to her hair.

By dusk, they found shelter beneath a dense stand of spruce. Ragnar gathered fallen branches, striking flint until sparks caught in the damp wood. When the fire finally burned, it filled the small hollow with warmth and shadow.

Sigrid sat with her knees drawn to her chest, watching him. His movements were quiet but deliberate. Not rushed, not careless. He moved like a man in rhythm with the land itself.

“You’ve done this many times,” she said.

“Enough to know the fire listens if you feed it right.”

Sigrid smiled faintly. 

They ate sparingly…hard bread and dried fish…and shared the last of the water before settling close to the fire.

After a while, Ragnar spoke again. “You said the gods speak to you.”

Sigrid nodded slowly. “In dreams.”

“And what do they say?”

“That the storm was a gate,” she whispered. “That Raido marks the way. I think… they sent me here for a reason.”

Ragnar studied her through the firelight, the corners of his mouth softening. “Then I hope you find it.”

He looked away then, into the trees. “The gods send few gifts without a price.”

Sigrid followed his gaze to the darkness beyond the firelight. “Then I suppose I’ll learn the cost soon enough.”

The silence that followed was not cold. Only heavy with thought.

When dawn came, the air was still. The frost on the ground glittered like broken glass. They ate quickly and began to walk again, their breaths rising in small clouds.

By late afternoon, the trees thinned. From the ridge ahead, the world opened into a vast valley, the river winding below like a ribbon of steel. Beyond it, faint and distant, shimmered the glint of open water. Kattegat’s fjord.

Ragnar paused, squinting against the light. “We’ll camp here. Tomorrow we’ll see the Seer.”

Sigrid sat beside the small fire he built, her hands outstretched to the warmth. The flames licked the edges of her sleeve, illuminating the faint marks of her tattoos; ancient shapes winding across her skin.

Ragnar’s gaze lingered a moment too long. “You wear their stories,” he said quietly.

“I remember them,” she corrected. “They’re part of me.”

He nodded, looking toward the horizon. “Then perhaps that’s why you’re here.”

Sigrid turned her eyes to the darkening valley. The air hummed faintly. The same quiet, waiting stillness that had filled her dream.

The storm is a gate. Raido marks the way. Blood remembers blood.

She didn’t yet understand the path ahead:;but as she sat beneath the stars with Ragnar Lothbrok beside her, she could feel the gods watching still.

And somewhere, far beyond the veil of the night sky, her grandmother’s voice whispered again…soft, proud, and unafraid.

Walk well, my dove. The gods are listening.

Chapter Text

The wind shifted at dawn, carrying the smell of salt and smoke long before the sea came into view. By the time the sun climbed over the low ridge, the sound of waves and voices rolled together. Distant but unmistakable.

Kattegat.

They stood at the edge of the world Ragnar knew best and Sigrid had only heard whispered of in stories.

The valley opened below them, framed by dark pines and streaks of morning fog. Wooden rooftops huddled along the shore, ringed with longships pulled onto the pebbled beach. Smoke rose in gray ribbons from cooking fires and forges. The air thrummed with life; shouting traders, the bark of dogs, the hammer’s rhythm on iron.

It was louder, rougher, and more alive than anything she’d ever seen.

Sigrid’s breath caught. “This is—”

“Kattegat,” Ragnar said. “Home of the Earl. And where the Seer lives.”

His tone carried quiet pride but also caution. He adjusted the strap of the sack over his shoulder and glanced toward her. “Raise your hood.”

She blinked, startled. “Why?”

He nodded toward the settlement below. “You’ll stand out enough as it is. There’s talk enough about omens this time of year. No need to tempt a man into foolishness.”

Sigrid tugged the wool hood forward until it shadowed her face. The smell of smoke and sea salt mingled in the air, sharp and heavy.

Ragnar’s gaze flicked to her hands. Ink glinting faintly in the weak light. “And your hands,” he said quietly. “Hide them. There are marks on you that speak too loudly.”

Without question, she drew her cloak tighter, tucking her fingers beneath the folds of fabric.

Ragnar nodded once, satisfied. “Good. Keep to my left when we go through the market. Speak only if spoken to.”

She met his eyes, calm despite the nerves building in her chest. “Do you think someone will notice me?”

“I think,” he said with a faint smile, “you’ve already drawn the gods’ attention. Men are less forgiving.”

They started down the slope, the path narrowing between boulders and frost-crusted grass. The air grew warmer the lower they went, thick with the scent of tallow, wet wood, and tar.

By the time they reached the outskirts, the noise surrounded them. Hammering, shouting, laughter. Smoke drifted through the narrow lanes, clinging to every surface.

Sigrid kept her head bowed, watching the mud-slick ground. Boots splashed past her; people brushed close. She caught snatches of conversation; voices haggling over fish, the sharp cry of a child, the low murmur of gossip.

Every accent, every tone felt both familiar and foreign, like a dialect half-remembered from childhood.

Ragnar walked ahead, unhurried, commanding enough presence that the crowd parted for him. Traders greeted him with nods or wary glances; one man clapped his shoulder in passing, muttering something about the coming Thing. Ragnar returned the greeting easily but kept moving.

Sigrid risked a glance up.

She saw the harbor then. A dozen longships moored in the shallows, their dragon-headed prows jutting toward the sky. Men worked along the beach, stripping rigging, hammering planks, their muscles slick with sweat despite the cold.

The sea stretched beyond them, gray and endless. Somewhere out there, she had come through the storm; torn from her own world and thrown into theirs.

Ragnar followed her gaze briefly. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s alive,” she whispered.

He smiled faintly. “That’s one word for it.”

They passed a forge, its heat spilling out into the street, and the sharp scent of coal and iron filled the air. The ringing of hammer on metal echoed down the lane.

Sigrid hesitated for a moment, drawn instinctively toward the sound.

Ragnar noticed. “You’ve the look of someone who knows the craft.”

“I do not just know it, metal and ink… it’s speaks to me. I…um” she said softly. “I shape it, mark it, give it life.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Then you’d like Floki. He’s a craftsman of another kind — builds ships for the gods. But he doesn’t live among us. He keeps to the trees.”

“He builds alone?”

Ragnar’s grin was faint and fond. “Always. Says the trees must give their blessing before he shapes the keel. He listens to their whispers before he cuts them down.”

Sigrid smiled beneath her hood. “Then we are alike, he and I. We both listen before we make.”

Ragnar glanced at her sidelong. “Then perhaps you’ll meet. When the gods see fit.”

They turned down a narrower lane that sloped toward the heart of Kattegat. The houses here leaned close together, their walls blackened from years of hearth smoke. Children darted between them, scattering chickens and laughter.

A pair of women passed, casting wary glances at Sigrid’s hooded form. Ragnar’s posture shifted slightly, protective without being obvious.

“The Seer lives near the sacred grove,” he said quietly. “You’ll wait outside until I call for you.”

Sigrid nodded. “What will you tell him?”

“The truth,” Ragnar said simply. “Or enough of it.”

The path wound uphill again, toward a cluster of ancient trees at the edge of the settlement. The air grew stiller, the noise of the market fading behind them. Birdsong replaced the clamor, and the smell of earth replaced the salt.

Ahead, the grove waited. Its trees twisted and old, roots coiled like veins through the earth. Offerings hung from their branches: bones, feathers, and carved charms glistening with old wax. Beneath them stood a hut built of driftwood and bone, its doorway dark as a wound.

Sigrid felt the air shift. It pressed against her skin; heavier, older. Alive.

Ragnar stopped before the hut and turned to her. “Wait here.”

She nodded, her pulse quickening.

He pushed aside the hanging charms and stepped into the dimness beyond.

Sigrid lingered at the edge of the grove, her fingers brushing the Raido rune hidden beneath her sleeve. The wind whispered through the trees, cool and soft — like breath against her ear.

From within, she heard the low murmur of voices: Ragnar’s deep and sure, and another…rasping, ancient, almost inhuman.

The Seer.

Though she couldn’t make out the words, the sound of it pricked at the base of her skull. The language was old,  older even than what her grandmother had taught her, older than memory itself.

Then, suddenly, silence.

The grove seemed to hold its breath.

The doorway curtain shifted. Ragnar’s hand appeared, beckoning. “He will see you now.”

Sigrid’s heart thundered. She stepped forward, ducking her head beneath the low lintel. The scent hit her first; herbs, rot, damp earth, and something metallic beneath it all.

Light filtered weakly through a hole in the roof. Smoke curled upward from a shallow firepit.

And there, crouched in the shadows, was the Seer.

His form was bent and thin, his skin pale and scarred as though the gods themselves had pressed their fingers into his flesh. His eyes were sewn half-shut, lids crusted with age and ritual, yet sightless or not, they found her. His mouth was stained dark; lips painted in pitch or blood, no one could tell… and a heavy ring hung at his throat, carved bone and bronze strung on a cord of sinew. The stench of herbs and rot clung to him, mixed with something sharper, metallic, like old iron or blood long dried.

When he breathed, it sounded like wind dragging through hollow wood.

“Ah,” he rasped, voice low and wet, “so the storm brings a child of two worlds.”

Sigrid froze, the air catching in her throat. Ragnar stood beside her, silent, watchful.

The Seer’s cracked lips curled into something between a smile and a snarl. “Come closer, inked one. Let me taste your fate.”

Chapter Text

Sigrid’s breath caught as the Seer’s words slithered through the air like smoke.

“Come closer, inked one. Let me taste your fate.”

Her feet refused to move. The shadows around the Seer seemed to pulse, alive with unseen motion. The smell of him; rot, damp earth, and metal. Pressed into her lungs. Her pulse thundered in her ears.

Ragnar took a step back, intending to give space as was customary when one stood before the oracle, but her hand shot out…quick and instinctive…fingers brushing his wrist.

“Don’t—” she whispered. “Don’t leave me alone with him.”

Her voice trembled only slightly, but the plea beneath it was raw.

Ragnar’s eyes flicked down to her hand, then back to her face. For a heartbeat, his expression softened. “He won’t harm you,” he murmured. “But he will see you.”

“That’s what frightens me,” she said.

Ragnar hesitated. He’d seen proud men crumble in this hut. Some had wept, others had raged, but none had walked out unchanged. Still, he gave a slow nod. “Then I’ll stay.”

The Seer’s head tilted toward them, his lips curling into something like amusement. “The wolf guards the lamb?” His voice rasped like rusted iron. “No… the wolf fears the shepherd.”

Ragnar’s jaw tightened but he didn’t rise to it. The Seer’s riddles were not to be met with anger, only silence.

Sigrid swallowed hard and forced herself to step forward. Her boots scraped the dirt floor. The fire pit crackled weakly, smoke curling in thin ribbons that carried the sharp tang of herbs and resin.

The Seer’s blind eyes turned toward her as though he could see the movement. His hands…long, skeletal things, their nails blackened and cracked; lifted slowly from his lap.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

Sigrid hesitated, then slowly extended it. Her sleeve slipped back, revealing the edges of her tattoos; black lines and knotwork swirling across her wrist and forearm. The Seer’s breath hitched.

His fingers brushed her skin, and for an instant, she felt nothing but cold. Then…

A rush.

The air thickened. The sound of the fire faded. The hut dissolved into darkness.

A thousand whispers filled her ears ; a cacophony of languages, voices overlapping like waves breaking over stone. She could taste salt on her tongue, could smell rain and blood and the sweetness of burned pine.

The Seer’s voice rose within the storm of sound, no longer frail but vast and everywhere.

“Born of fire and sea.
Marked by iron and ash.
A thread pulled from one tapestry to mend another.”

Sigrid gasped, her knees nearly buckling. Images flickered in her mind — the storm, her grandmother’s pyre, flashes of runes glowing bright against her skin.

She saw ravens. dozens, hundreds…swirling over a great hall of light and shadow.

She saw a ship with a wolf’s head prow cutting through black waves.

She saw herself. Or someone who wore her face; standing in the surf, blade in hand, blood dripping into the tide.

“The gods tore you from your own time,” the Seer whispered, “for the world remembers what the world requires. You are Raido’s path;  movement, journey, the wheel that turns between realms.”

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

The Seer’s mouth twisted. “You will. When the blood moon rises, and the raven king stands before the western sea.”

Her stomach turned cold. “What am I supposed to do?”

The Seer leaned closer until she could smell the sourness of his breath. “You will do what all who are chosen must: serve.”

Then his tongue; black and slick,  flicked across his palm, and he pressed it to her forehead. The touch burned like ice.

Sigrid cried out, staggering back. Ragnar caught her before she fell, his arm steady around her shoulders. The Seer’s laughter followed. Thin and sharp, echoing through the dim hut.

“She walks between storms,” he crooned. “One already carries her name.”

Ragnar’s voice was low, almost reverent. “What does it mean?”

The Seer tilted his head, the motion almost birdlike. “Ask your gods, farmer. Mine have already answered.”

Sigrid’s breath came ragged, the world slow to solidify around her: smoke, damp earth, the low hiss of the coals. Ragnar’s arm was still firm around her shoulders. The Seer leaned back into his shadows, the faint wet crackle of his laugh drifting over the firepit like steam off ice.

Ragnar eased his arm away with care, the way a hunter loosens his hand from a wounded stag; gentle, alert. “What price?” he asked quietly. “The gods have had their say. What price do you require?”

The Seer’s head swiveled toward him, blind eyes glistening. “You have not forgotten our custom, Ragnar Lothbrok,” he rasped. “Payment first or last, the door must be oiled to swing either way.”

Ragnar’s jaw worked once. Then he stepped forward without flourish, every movement unhurried, inevitable. He knelt and held out his hands, palm-up in offering. The Seer did not take them. Instead, with a brittle slow grace, he lifted his own right hand; thin as a bird’s claw, cracked nails like bits of obsidian. And turned the palm toward them. The skin there was old leather, crosshatched with scars and resin stains, the center shining dark as pitch.

Ragnar’s gaze flicked to Sigrid, then back. “You’ll not frighten me today, old one.” He leaned in, steady as if drinking from a spring, and set his tongue to the Seer’s palm.

Sigrid’s stomach lurched. Not with disgust so much as the shock of sacred intimacy. The hut seemed to draw a breath with Ragnar: the taste of ash and bitter herbs must have bloomed in his mouth like a draught of bad mead, but he didn’t break. When he drew back, the Seer’s lip twisted in a pleased grimace.

“The wolf pays,” the Seer said, voice softening into something almost fond. “The wolf always pays.”

Ragnar wiped nothing away. He straightened, eyes dry, face unreadable. “And the traveler?”

Sigrid’s pulse hammered. Her respect was bone-deep; still, her body resisted for the briefest blink. Instinct, not will. Then she stepped to the coals, lifted her hood back, and met those ruined eyes that somehow still found her. “I am Sigrid Halvordottir,” she said, voice steady. “I pay what is owed.”

The Seer’s palm rose again, hanging in the smoke between them like an omen.

She leaned forward until his breath touched her cheek; rot and herb and iron, and, with no more hesitation, laid her tongue against his hand. The taste was a shock of worlds: salt like the fjord, bitterness like burned pine, a strange sweet-green that could have been nettle or moss. Beneath all of it, metal; old coins, old blood. The hut tilted around her. She closed her eyes and did not pull away until the Seer made a small sound, almost a purr.

“Storm-salt,” he whispered. “And ink.” His fingers fluttered as she withdrew. “Yours is not the first tongue to pay me, traveler…but it is the first the storm has washed clean.”

A dizzy warmth pulsed behind Sigrid’s eyes; she blinked it back into something like focus. Ragnar’s stance had shifted. Still and coiled, protective without touching her again. She felt him there the way you feel a door at your back in a room with only one exit.

“What do the gods bind with that payment?” Ragnar asked.

The Seer tilted his head, listening to voices only he heard. “Threads,” he murmured. “A new weft pulled through an old warp.” His fingers traced the air above Sigrid’s arm, not quite touching the ink beneath her sleeve. “You wear their stories on your skin, child of Halvor. But the stories wear you now. That is the difference you fear.”

Sigrid swallowed. “What difference?”

“That you walked into the storm as a woman with a promise,” he said, “and crawled out as a promise with a woman.”

The words struck like a hammer on cold iron; she felt the shape of them ring through her chest. “My mormor—”

“—has her place under the roots,” he said, the rasp of his voice softening near-reverently. “She bought it with love and fire. You bought your passage with the same coin.” He cocked his head. “But the coin is double-sided. You think one face is hers and the other face is yours. The gods do not mint such simple money.”

Ragnar spoke into the hush. “You said ‘raven king before the western sea.’ Is that a man? A place?”

The Seer’s blind eyes glimmered. “A when.” A faint smile, tar-dark mouth splitting the pale ruin of his face. “Wolves run east to fatten, it is true. But ravens fatten west.”

Ragnar’s fingers twitched, the smallest betrayal of hunger. “West.”

Sigrid felt the word slip through her like a low note on a horn, resonant and unsettling. Her dream stirred: a wolf-prowed ship plowing black water, a horizon that refused to end, a sky stitched with birds. She pressed a hand over the Raido rune at her wrist, heat blooming beneath the skin.

“The storm is a gate,” she whispered, half to herself.

The Seer’s head turned toward her with unnerving quickness. “Good girl. Remember your riddle when men begin to answer you with fear.” He lifted his other hand and, with two fingers, brushed the air above her throat where the tattoos climbed like creeping ivy. “You mark yourself with what is true. Men will still call it witchcraft when truth threatens their bread.”

Ragnar’s voice cooled. “Earl Haraldson.”

“A man who eats from a cracked bowl will blame the soup,” the Seer said dryly. “Take care where you show her, Ragnar. The Earl has no patience for storms that are not his.”

Sigrid drew breath to speak; then the hut tilted again and was suddenly full of river. She could hear it: cold, high, braided with snowmelt. The Seer’s hands did not move, yet his voice swelled like floodwater.

“Three nights. One fire. A choice with iron teeth.
The traveler will stand where spruce roots clutch a broken shore.
The wolf will laugh, and the raven will grieve,
and the sea will forget nothing.”

The vision punched through her: spruce crowns whipping in hard wind; a shore gnawed thin as a knife-edge; torchlight gilding faces she hadn’t met yet but already knew by the ache they put in her. She saw a hand…her hand?...Draw a blade from a sheath that wasn’t hers. She saw blood not yet spilled and the wave that would take it.

“Whose blood?” she asked, hating the tremor in her voice.

“Blood that remembers blood,” he said, almost gently. “You will know it when it finds you.”

Ragnar stepped half a pace forward. “And if we do nothing?”

The Seer’s laugh returned; thin, delighted, cruel. “You have never done nothing, Ragnar.” He leaned into the smoke, blind eyes gleaming wet. “You were born with a question in your bones.”

The fire popped, flinging a spark that died on the packed dirt. Sigrid stared at it, remembering the pyre on the Maine shore, the way the embers had lifted like stars and then fallen as ash into the black water. She felt again her grandmother’s hand slipping away. Promise kept. Promise claimed.

“If we go to the Seer,” she said, “we must accept that the answer costs something.”

Ragnar’s gaze flicked to her, and for the first time since she’d met him, something almost like approval warmed his eyes. “Aye.”

The Seer made a sound that might have been an agreement. “Payment is honest,” he said. “It keeps men small before the gods.”

He lifted his palm once more, not demanding, only offering the seal of the custom. Ragnar did not refuse it. He bowed his head, brief as a knife stroke, and set his tongue to that ruin of a hand again. When he withdrew, Sigrid followed without prompting, without pause. The second taste was different: less ash, more green; less iron, more cold.

“Good,” the Seer murmured. “Now I can close what you opened.”

Sigrid opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but the hut answered first: the fumes of nettle and sage thickened; the smoke took on a resinous sweetness, like birch pitch melted in a cauldron. The Seer’s hands rose on a current only he felt, his fingers painting sigils in the air above her head. He spoke words that weren’t quite language, cadences shifting like oars in rough water.

When his voice thinned back into the rasp of a human throat, he was smiling. It sat wrong on his face, like a mask too tight. “The gate swings both ways,” he said. “But it does not swing forever.”

Her heart stuttered. “Are you saying I can go back?”

“I am saying,” he replied, each word a pebble dropped into a deep well, “that a door is only a door while it is still a door. When it becomes a wall, it is no longer yours to open.”

Ragnar’s jaw tightened. “When?”

“Not today.” The Seer tipped his head, listening again to some distant drum. “Not until the wheel turns twice; one season for blood, one for bone.” His lips peeled back, black and gleaming. “Do not squander the first in hope of the second.”

Sigrid felt the warning settle like frost along her spine. She thought of the fresh runes she had promised to carve for her grandmother in Norway, how ink could be a vow as much as a picture. Raido marks the way, but not the end.

“Will I see her again?” she asked before she could stop herself, the child in her rising. “My mormor?”

The Seer’s head bowed as if he granted a prayer, not an answer. “Roots are patient. If you feed them well, they will remember your feet.”

It wasn’t yes. It wasn’t no. It was the kind of truth the gods permitted.

The world beyond the hut stirred—the faint clatter of a cart, the bark of a dog, gulls like torn cloth along the wind. Life pressed its nose against the seams of the sacred. Ragnar shifted, sudden, practical. “We should go.”

“Go,” the Seer echoed, the word echoing as if he had thrown it into a cave. “Go carefully.” His chin lifted toward Sigrid. “And keep your hands hidden, inked one, until the wolf decides which men he wants fed to which gods.”

Ragnar angled himself between her and the door as they turned; habit, not theater. Sigrid ducked under the low lintel and the world hit her like a surf: cold air, the resin smell of the grove, the distant tide breathing in the mouth of the fjord. She pulled her hood up and drew her cloak tight over her fingers. Only then did she realize her hands were shaking.

Ragnar let the curtain of charms fall back into place behind them; bones clicking like teeth. For a moment, they stood without speaking. Kattegat’s noise was a muted thunder below; here, the birds ruled.

“What did you see?” he asked at last.

“Too much.” She tried for a smile and failed. “Not enough.”

He huffed a laugh. A brief, ghosting thing. “That’s the Seer.”

They started down the path from the grove, boots whispering over frost-brittle needles. After a dozen steps, Ragnar slowed. “Three nights. One fire,” he repeated, almost to himself. “The spruce roots and a broken shore.”

Sigrid nodded. “You heard it too?”

“I hear all that touches the raids and the Thing,” he said. “The Earl’s ears are long. So are the gods’.” He glanced sideways at her. “You’ll keep the hood up. The ink hidden. You’ll let me speak first.”

“Yes,” she said. She meant more than the rules of a walk through town; she meant: I will not break the weave you’re already bound to. “I’ll listen.”

They reached the edge of the lane where the grove gave back to houses; blackened timber, fish hung on racks, smoke in ragged veils. Downhill, Kattegat beat its rough, bright heart. Ragnar paused once more, his face turned toward the open water as if it could answer questions faster than men.

“West,” he said, not asking now. Deciding.

Sigrid looked where he looked and felt the riddle turn in her like the key of a door she couldn’t yet see. A raven’s shadow crossed the mud in front of them, there and gone. Somewhere behind her, the trees sighed.

“The storm is a gate,” she murmured.

Ragnar’s mouth crooked. “Then we should learn how to sail through gates.”

She couldn’t help it; she smiled, tired and fierce all at once. “You’ll need a ship.”

“We’ll need a ship,” he corrected, already moving, already threading them back into the noise. “And a boatbuilder who listens to trees.”

“Floki,” she said softly.

“Floki,” he agreed, and the name sounded like a match catching in dry tinder.

They stepped into Kattegat’s current. Voices, smells, the clang of iron, the bark of dogs. Sigrid kept her hood low and her hands hidden, but inside she was lit by the smallest, most dangerous ember: the sense that the path under her feet was not only real. It was hers.

Behind them, in the hush of the grove, the Seer settled back into his hut. Smoke curled upward. His ruined mouth bent toward a smile meant for no one.

“Raido,” he whispered into the coals, savoring the taste of the word. “Raido, raido.”

And the coals answered with a sound like far thunder, as if a great wheel had begun to turn.

Chapter Text

The forest swallowed sound the farther they went, leaving only the steady crunch of boots and the low whistle of wind through pine needles. Ragnar said little. He followed the faint trail that wound along the ridge above the fjord, one hand resting on the strap of the satchel slung over his shoulder. Sigrid walked behind him, her cloak drawn tight, eyes lowered to the mud-slick path. The Seer’s words still pressed at the edges of her thoughts like a half-remembered song.

When they broke from the trees, the world opened into a clearing that smelled of pine sap and smoke. Below them, near the curve of the water, lay a hollow of half-built hulls;  the bones of ships arranged like ribs against the stones. The air rang with the sound of hammering, rhythmic and alive.

Floki was singing.

Not a song for men, but for wood. A quiet, lilted murmur, half prayer and half conversation. He worked barehanded, his long fingers tracing the edge of a curved plank before striking it with the mallet in precise, deliberate rhythm.

Sigrid stopped at the edge of the clearing. Ragnar turned, his mouth curling faintly. “You’ll frighten him if you stay quiet.”

Floki looked up then, his grin sharp as a blade. “Ragnar Lothbrok!” he called, spreading his arms wide. “You bring me no ale, no meat, no reason and yet you come smiling. What mischief follows you this time?”

“Not mischief,” Ragnar said as he descended the slope. “Something stranger.”

Floki tilted his head, squinting past him toward the cloaked figure on the ridge. “A shadow, then. You’ve brought a shadow to my hollow.”

Sigrid hesitated only a breath before tugging her hood back. The wind caught her hair, and sunlight fell across her face, the faint glint of metal at her ear, the black ink curling over her fingers.

Floki’s laughter caught in his throat. He stilled completely, the mallet slipping from his hand. His eyes;  pale, bright, too aware…dropped at once to her hands. The runes inked along her skin were old, shaped in forms he recognized but arranged in patterns he didn’t. They spoke to him, those marks, humming softly beneath the light.

He stepped closer without thinking, the grin gone now, replaced by something deeper, hungrier. “Not a shadow,” he murmured. “Not a storm either. You… you’re a door.”

Sigrid’s breath hitched. “A door?”

Floki’s gaze darted from her palms to her eyes. “Between what was and what will be. The gods make such things when they’re bored or when they’re desperate. I’ve not decided which they are yet.”

Ragnar crossed his arms, amused but cautious. “You’ve seen many things in your solitude, Floki, but never one like her.”

“No.” Floki’s voice was soft now, reverent. “Never one marked like her.”

Sigrid lowered her gaze to her hands, the familiar ink suddenly heavier. “They’re only stories,” she said, but she didn’t believe that; they seemed more than just stories now.

Floki laughed, a dry, bright sound. “Ah, and so are we!” He circled her slowly, light on his feet, eyes never still. “The Seer told me once that every story the gods write must bleed before it ends. I think you’re one of those stories, little door.”

“I have a name,” she said.

“I know.” He smiled without looking at her. “But names are only useful to men. The gods already know you.”

Ragnar cleared his throat. “She came from the sea. The Seer called her Raido’s traveler.”

Floki turned, his grin spreading wide again. “Raido? The journey. The wheel that turns the world.” His laughter softened into something like awe. “Of course. You were carried here, not thrown.”

“I walked into the sea,” Sigrid murmured. “To keep a promise.”

“Then you are a fine kind of fool,” Floki said, delighted. “The gods adore fools. They’re so easy to use.”

Ragnar smirked faintly. “She’s no fool, Floki. She’s the reason I’m here. I need your craft.”

At that, the shipwright’s attention shifted, snapping to Ragnar with sudden clarity. “You want something new.”

“I want something that can go where others can’t,” Ragnar said. “A ship that rides the wind and not the oars. Something that can cross the sea itself.”

Floki stared at him for a long moment, then slowly shook his head. “You’ve been dreaming again.”

“I’ve been listening,” Ragnar said. “The gods speak to those who listen.”

Floki’s gaze flicked back to Sigrid. “And she hears them too, doesn’t she?”

Sigrid hesitated. “Not clearly. Only in pieces.”

“Pieces are enough,” Floki said. “That’s how gods speak. So we can ruin the meaning trying to make it whole.” He crouched beside the ribs of the unfinished boat, running a hand along the grain. “A ship that crosses the sea… the wood will need convincing. It must be blessed by hands that remember both worlds.”

He looked up at her again, eyes shining. “You have those hands.”

Sigrid blinked. “I forge. I tattoo. I don’t build ships.”

“Not yet,” Floki said. “But the gods like to teach through madness.”

Ragnar laughed quietly. “And you would know.”

“Better than most,” Floki shot back, grinning.

He straightened suddenly, gesturing for Sigrid to follow him. “Come. The pine I cut this morning hasn’t forgotten its voice yet. Help me remind it what it is.”

Ragnar started to protest, but Sigrid was already moving. She knelt beside Floki as he laid his palm on the wide plank, whispering something low and rhythmic. The scent of sap and salt filled the air.

“Touch it,” he said.

She hesitated, then pressed her inked fingers against the wood. Her pulse slowed. The surface was cool, smooth, alive in some quiet way. She whispered without thinking; half prayer, half instinct…words her grandmother had used when blessing the soil before planting.

When she drew her hand back, a faint mark remained. The outline of her palm traced in sap and dust. The air seemed to hum.

Floki’s grin returned, sharp and childlike. “Ahh. The wood likes you. That makes two of us.”

Ragnar exhaled through his nose, torn between amusement and awe. “So you’ll build it?”

Floki nodded. “For you? For her? For the gods who are whispering so loud my ears ache? Yes. But don’t ask the cost yet.”

“The Seer already warned us,” Sigrid said softly. “The gods will collect.”

Floki tilted his head, his smile softening into something unsettlingly tender. “They always do, little door. They always do.”

By twilight, the hollow was awash in gold. The trees whispered softly overhead, their leaves turning bronze in the sinking light. Ragnar sat a short distance away, sharpening his knife on a stone, keeping one ear tuned to the rhythmic tapping of Floki’s hammer and the quieter sound of Sigrid’s paint brush.

They worked side by side. Him shaping wood, her tracing faint runes into a plank that would become the keel. The two rhythms mingled: the pulse of creation, the heartbeat of something new.

Floki watched her more than he worked. The way she moved, the way her focus narrowed, reminded him of himself;  but where his devotion burned sharp and wild, hers was deep and quiet, like the pull of the tide. Her tattoos caught the last light; her hands, smudged with pine dust, seemed to hum faintly against the grain.

When she finished, she set the brush aside and pressed her palm to the rune she’d drawn…Raido. The mark glistened wetly for a heartbeat, then dried, leaving a faint sheen in the wood.

Floki exhaled through his teeth. “You see?” he said, voice hushed but reverent. “You speak in a language I thought only the gods remembered.”

Sigrid didn’t look up. “I only write what they already whisper.”

He tilted his head, studying her. “And yet you carry their words in your flesh. A door would only open and close. But you—”

He trailed off, stepping closer. The firelight flickered in his eyes, making them shine like molten amber.

“You hold them.”

Sigrid frowned slightly. “Hold what?”

“Their echo,” he said, a grin curling across his lips. “Their memory. You are… what they leave behind when they pass through.”

Nearby, a small pile of iron nails caught Sigrid’s attention. She crouched beside them, picking one up and turning it in her fingers. The metal was dull gray, rough at the edges, the head uneven. She tested its strength with a slight press between her thumb and forefinger; it bent far too easily.

“These won’t last,” she said quietly. “They’ll bend under strain.”

Floki glanced up from the plank he was fitting, snorting. “Bought them from that hammer-handed fool in Kattegat. The blacksmith thinks nails are just nails. No song in them, no prayer. He doesn’t speak to what he shapes. And it shows.”

“They’ll rust faster than the gods can blink,” Sigrid murmured, picking up another. She held it to the light, rolling it against her palm. “You’ll need stronger metal. Something that remembers fire better.”

Without looking at her, she began setting aside the rejects in a new pile beside her knee, separating the truer ones by feel alone. The rhythmic clink, clink of metal against stone joined the sounds of Floki’s hammering; small, deliberate, purposeful.

Ragnar crouched beside her, turning one between his fingers. “You think you can make better?”

“I can make what will hold,” she said simply, setting another bent nail aside.

Floki’s laughter trailed off into quiet curiosity. “The gods send me a woman who can hear wood, and now she judges iron. How greedy they are with their gifts.”

He glanced toward Ragnar, lowering his voice as Sigrid focused on her sorting. “You see? She doesn’t ask if the gods favor her. She already knows.”

Ragnar’s tone was low, wary. “You think she’s dangerous.”

“I think she’s alive in a way we aren’t,” Floki murmured. “The gods breathe through her, Ragnar. You bring me a gift like that, and you expect me not to stare?”

Ragnar gave a faint, humorless smile. “I expect you to help me build something worthy of her.”

Floki’s grin returned, crooked and sharp. “Then you ask for madness. But madness builds fine ships.”

They both watched as Sigrid tested each nail, dropping the weak ones into her new pile. The smell of iron and pine hung in the cooling air.

“She’s not a door,” Floki said finally. “Doors only open. She carries. Like the hull of a ship. She’s a vessel.”

Ragnar turned that word over quietly. “A vessel.”

Floki nodded, his grin softening into something like reverence. “A rune made flesh. A vessel that remembers every god who ever touched her.”

Later, when the fire burned low and the world sank into quiet, Sigrid lay near the unfinished hull, exhaustion pulling her into sleep. Ragnar had already drifted off, his cloak drawn around his shoulders.

Floki remained awake. He carved something small in his palm. A thin disc of pine etched with two runes: Raido for the path, and Laukaz;  growth, transformation, renewal.

He hung it above the keel where Sigrid’s palm had pressed and whispered, “Not a door. A vessel. A rune that breathes.”

The charm swayed gently in the draft, catching firelight.

Outside, the tide sighed against the stones…slow and deep…like the gods themselves exhaling after a long sleep.