excerpt
Ari found a special friendship in Grey Wolf, once Grey Wolf learned from Ari that
he had been avenged for the loss of his ear. Grey Wolf and Leaping Water expected
their first child before the end of the next summer.
Throughout the winter, Rordan and Ula created a deep special connection with
Running Deer and the other camp children, teaching them simple songs in the Celtic
of his own childhood. They called Ula, Aira, meaning Of The Wind, because she
could run like the wind and beat almost anybody in a race. She was expert at throwing
a knife and could hit a target at twenty paces. Ula didn’t mind the new name
because both names sounded so similar and she loved the acknowledgment of her
prowess and strength. The Natives gave Brother Rordan the name Mountain Thrush
for his pleasing voice and happy laugh, though many of the elders referred to him as
Ominotago, Beautiful Voice. The children were also fascinated with his blonde hair,
almost the colour of the cotton traders brought from the Lands of Winter Sun.
For the first time in many years, Brother Rordan had found his niche as a singer
and teacher of song among the Natives. Finten regarded the transformation from
surly boy to happy Brother as a miracle and didn’t object that Rordan and Ula
seemed to spend all their time together. Perhaps this was God’s country after all. He
often thought that if singing were praying twice, the singing of the children would
surely bring conversions.
Music contains a power stronger than many medicines and Brother Rordan’s
chanting was healing Ula’s sadness but she still remained wary, especially toward
Father Finten and Bjorn, both so much older than she or the Brothers. It took a
period of fever, when Ula had to be nursed by Chochmingwu Corn Mother, Brown
Bear’s wife, for Rordan to reach a new closeness with Ula. It was then that he saw her
vulnerability, as she revealed her childhood suffering through fevered ravings and as
he witnessed her tears.
Since her daughter’s murder by Illska, Corn Mother had dedicated herself to healing
the village children and young people. It was a testament to her loving heart that
she nursed one of the white strangers. She also appreciated Rordan’s commitment to
the children and so she reached out to his constant companion.
Corn Mother’s herbs worked their magic. Ula began to speak to Rordan of her
past as she recovered from the fever that had racked her for two weeks, and as she
saw the relief and warmth in Rordan’s eyes.
“How did I come to be a slave? No, I wasn’t taken by Vikings. My parents weren’t
killed in an awful raid. I didn’t crawl out of the flames. My pigshit mother thought
I’d make a good nun and sold me to a convent. A good nun, ha! Could you see me
in a convent?
“My father? I had three fathers. All of them were my father. None of those assholes
was. I was traded to the convent for six chickens and a pig. A pig! My mother got the
better of the deal: She got the pig; they got me.
“I was there a whole bloody year. Thought they’d rescued me from a life of shame
following my mother’s trade. I was their prisoner, more like it. Stale straw and kitchen
slops and prayers, prayers, prayers, morning, noon and night. So I ran off dressed
as a boy. Then they were going to hang me up for a loaf of stale bloody bread. The
sheriff sold me to a Norseman instead.
Manolis Aligizakis 