had spoken to her. She allowed the darkness to envelop her once again. Before drifting away, Kiera let the glorious Celtic words sink into her memory.
SIX
It was as if she were trying to swim up from the depths of the darkest ocean. Kiera floated through layers of grey thoughts and foggy memories. She remembered the time she had burned her hand on the hot kettle, and the fiery tears as her mother bathed her injury in a barrel of cool rain water. She tasted the salt on the fish her grandmother had always prepared before the family attended evening mass. She felt the icy cold rain that had pelted her shivering body as she was led away, sobbing, in the hold of the Viking ship after the invaders had sacked her home and village. Kiera wondered if she was living her life in reverse. Was this the process of life after death? She searched for a beacon to follow, a light to guide her to the afterworld.
Pain! Her cry of anguish cut ferociously through layers of confusion and opened a cruel portal back to reality. Somewhere deep within her mind, she was aware that she was being moved, and with each bump, an invisible knife sliced cleanly through her lower leg. Her senses began to return. The thundering of the ocean surf was now only a distant rumble. The scent of wet pine tingled within her nostrils.
With great effort, she forced her eyes open. Perhaps she was still dreaming, for there was darkness everywhere. No. There was a strange shadow hovering above her. It looked like the upside-down and backwards silhouette of a man. In her delirious state, she found the angle almost amusing. What was happening? Under her, she felt a soft cushion that bounced in a rhythmic pattern. Her fingertips reached down and touched soft pine needles. It was then that she realized that she was being dragged on a thick bough of pine.
Before she could completely piece together her thoughts, the improvised stretcher jolted upwards as it struck something large and unseen. The stranger grunted at the impact. The collision rocked her body onto her injured leg. Unbearable pain tore through her. It was simply too much agony to bear. Her ragged voice managed a hoarse whimper before her tortured thoughts disintegrated back into the comforting darkness of unconsciousness.
Kiera's nose twitched at the tickling sensation of smoke. She wondered why she couldn't hear the children playing in the longhouse or the women chattering as they began the morning meal preparations. A gentle breeze kissed her forehead as she struggled to open her eyes. Something was wrong. The air in the longhouse was always stale and stuffy.
Kiera squinted into the bright morning light. She gasped at the unexpected sight. Next to her was a crackling fire. Several pieces of fish were skewered on sharp sticks and were roasting above the heat of the flames. Her body lay within a small, shallow ditch that encircled the fire.
Suddenly, the memories of the storm flooded back. The longboat. Her leg! Her hands reached along her body, checking for injury as her eyes continued to adjust to the morning sun. Her injured limb had been raised off the ground, supported underneath by several layers of folded fur. A large grey pelt covered her lower body, providing her with warmth against the cool morning air.
Kiera ran her hands under the cover and found that her injured left leg had been secured from her ankle to her knee by several thin but firm pieces of hewn tree limbs and securely bound together by many pieces of leather twine. Whoever had immobilized her leg seemed to know what they were doing.
From behind, a hand touched her shoulder. Kiera looked up, then screamed. Two concerned white eyes stared down at her from a female face stained blood red. The woman's exposed upper body, along with the knee-high leather skirt, were also stained a dark crimson. Her hideous skin colour looked like the hide of the devil himself.
The reddened woman, holding a large wooden bowl, also screamed. She flung the bowl high into the air, its contents spraying Kiera and the surrounding ground as it spiralled skywards. The woman turned and sprinted away, disappearing into the forest.
Kiera was alone again. It took several minutes to regain her breath. Where was she? Who was that strange woman? Could she have been the one who had rescued her from the beach? If she was indeed her rescuer, then she had frightened away the person who had just saved her life.
Shivering, a thought passed through her mind. Perhaps they were going to kill her. In the past, other skraelings had not hesitated to kill. But why, then, would they have bothered to mend her leg?
Tears began to trickle down her pale cheeks. She was crippled and alone with frightening people she did not understand. What was to happen to her?
A twig snapped. She wiped her eyes with her arm and turned towards the sound. Appearing silently from the stand of cedars was a man, completely covered in the same red stain as the woman. He wore only leather breeches hanging loosely from his waist. Kiera dug her fingernails into the soft dirt, readying to drag her body away in retreat, if need be, from the skraeling.
But the man approached no further. Instead, he slowly stepped sideways towards a birch bark basin. He knelt, held his stained hands up and opened his palms towards her. He lowered his eyes, cupped his hands and then began to splash water onto his face. With a piece of leather and what looked like a gob of animal fat, he began to vigorously scrub his skin. After a minute, he paused and lifted his head. Kiera's mouth dropped open in astonishment. His cleaned skin was much fairer than the dark complexion of the northern skraelings. His skin was, well, almost European. His handsome mouth was framed by high cheekbones. His dark, kind eyes crinkled slightly as his lips curled upwards in a friendly but cautious smile. Although he looked older than her, she could not guess his age. His skin was deeply etched as from a lifetime of wilderness survival, but his eyes sparkled with youthfulness.
Again, he held up his open hands.
“I no hurt.”
It was the voice!
“I wasn't dreaming!” she spluttered. “It was you who saved me!” She then realized she was speaking the language of the Vikings. She switched over to a language she hadn't used in nine years.
“You rescued me!” she said in her Celtic mother tongue.
“Yes,” he replied.
“How is it possible that you know the language of my ancestors?”
He shook his head. “Story long. You sleep two days. Tired. Hungry. Must eat.”
The spoken words were choppy, and the skraeling seemed to struggle to find the right words, but his voice was one of the sweetest things she had ever heard. She stared at him in amazement. Was she dreaming all of this? This was impossible! How could she be speaking Celtic to a skraeling who was living an ocean away from her home?
He cautiously moved to the fire and lifted a stick of fish. Then he turned and called into the woods using a strange language. The woman whom Kiera had seen when she had first wakened reappeared with another wooden bowl. She approached, her eyes fixed suspiciously on Kiera. Kiera noticed that above her left eye was a pattern of three black triangles that together looked something like half a flower.
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