Home. It had been months since Saga and Durnir last laid eyes upon the port town they had called home for the last few years. The last time they had seen it it had been set ablaze by a raiding party sent by Grimward, shortly after the moot at Clan Ironmound, in one of the first attacks of the war.
They had their excuses for not returning here sooner. They were busy proving themselves to the Stormjarl Einherjar, or they had to go see about helping Clan Shattered Spear to the North, Gaia protect them, or Saga needed to help out at the Hospital. But there was one other reason they hadn’t returned yet. They feared the worst.
The last time they were here their daughter, Maeva, had been ripped from Saga’s arms in a crowd of fleeing and frightened people. In addition, Saga’s entire family had been in town that night and none of them had managed to contact her since. All were missing.
In Saga’s mind, it was as if so long as they hadn’t returned here she could live with the belief that Maeva was fine. Saved by a passing stranger or found by Saga’s Mother or Sister or Father. Surely, she thought, Gaia would look out for Maeva and protect her until they could be reunited. She just needed to keep her faith in her heart and pray to Gaia the way her Mother had taught her. So long as she hadn’t returned here Maeva could survive in a sort of liminal space in her mind, somewhere between life and death.
Now, as their small boat, the very same one they had escaped in, approaches the shore she finds herself staring not at a thriving town in need of a little repair but a burnt and blackened shell of what used to be. She had hoped to see the survivors of that night hard at work on fixing what Grimward had ruined. Instead there is no one. It is eerily silent.
Of the homes closest to the docks themselves only the frames of the houses remain, none fully intact. Saga is immediately gripped by anxiety and worry. Stuck reliving the moment Maeva was lost, stuck thinking of what else she could have done that night. Breathing in and out deeply to steady her emotions, Saga scans the shoreline looking for any dock still intact enough to moor their boat.
She spots nothing. Grimward’s raid was nothing if not successful and efficient. The docks are utterly destroyed; only a few wooden posts sticking out of the water indicate where they used to be. The remains of a few ships that never managed to leave their moorings provide further obstacles for any ship trying to get near.
Seeing the near-total destruction, Durnir begins to row their vessel closer to bare shore. With a heave, he runs the ship aground slightly, enough to hold it in place as he dismounts into knee-deep water with a splash. He begins to heave the boat onto dry land, his wife still in it, that he might keep her dry. Only once there’s dry enough ground for her to step onto does he stop and consider his thoughts and words for a moment. “Saga… We should not expect to find much here. Survivors would not stay in these ruins.”
Saga sighs. “I know… but maybe we’ll find something. A note or a body or… or something.” Saga takes Durnir’s hand to steady herself as she leaves the boat taking with her the long rope they would normally use to attach the boat to a dock. Looking around she finds the remains of a signpost and ties the rope off.
Navigating the town without the landmarks she is used to is a difficult task. Her mind turns to the corridor between two close buildings where she lost Maeva, but she’s not ready to go back there yet. Not now. Not yet. Instead she focuses on other family members. “Dalla’s home should be nearby,” she says, mentioning her younger sister, “The fishmonger’s store was right near the docks and Dalla lived so close by her home always stunk of fish in the afternoons.” Saga smiles remembering Dalla’s boisterous complaints about her neighbors. “And Mother and Father lived above Mother’s clinic near the center of town. Maybe they left a sign there for me, if we can find it.”
Durnir set himself to the grim task of having to be, barring divine intervention, the one there to witness his wife’s despair. “Let us go to the clinic then.” The silence around them was deafening, punctuated only by the slight scuffing of their boots on the street’s cobblestones, and the scraping of the debris tossed by their strides. It was a silence he was normally comfortable with, one that was very familiar to him. But now it served only as a start reminder of how much had been lost. It was the absence of life and laughter. It was, in every sense, haunting.
As the two make their way through the ruins of their own home they are faced with the distinct lack of evidence of the raid left behind by the fire. There are few bodies here. Only a few white bones picked clean by animals have been left behind. No charred Grimward raiders lying dead next to the slain town guard. Saga grips Durnir’s hand tightly. “I thought there would be more here,” she says.
Durnir finds himself relieved. Though he was no stranger to corpses, they were the bodies of the freshly slain that littered the battlefield. Warriors, cut down, still fresh to the point that they might be confused with the living, given away only by their wounds and their vacant gaze. The bones, on the other hand, were so far removed from the people he knew here, that they might as well be the remnants of animals. He’s not sure he has the stomach to look upon the dead body of someone he knew in the liminal state- recognizable enough that their identity could not be denied, but decayed and disfigured enough that neither could their death.
Keeping his focus on the street ahead, not willing to let his eyes wander and risk falling upon something truly grotesque, he pulls Saga towards their destination. The sheer desolation in the town did nothing to dissuade him of the notion that they would find nothing of hope here. He realizes that he hasn’t said anything in too long, and searches for something to break the silence. “Even if nothing is here… It may simply mean they fled in haste. If we find no bodies… We should take that as a good sign.”
Saga nods, “You are right, Durnir. However, it is equally likely that they died here and something happened to their bodies. It has been months. Animals may have eaten them and scattered the bones, someone could have taken the bodies and cremated them. If we don’t find them here among the dead we may never know for certain.”
Saga pauses to crawl under a fallen support beam of a nearby home that now leans precariously against the side of what used to be someone’s home. “It occurs to me that no one from our village knows that we are alive and have joined the Einherjar. They could be mourning us, Durnir. We may have had our funerals already. It’s… a disturbing thing to imagine.”
He isn’t sure how to respond. He heaves the beam out of the way when he comes to it, the clattering echoing for a moment through the vacant streets. He tries to move the conversation back a step, to where he felt he had at least slightly more to say. “Perhaps we should leave a message, the kind you are hoping to find. Others may come here looking for us in the future. We cannot wait around for them, but we can tell them we’re okay.”
Saga considers Durnir’s words thoughtfully. “With the way the town looks now white paper stuck under a rock should be easy enough to see. So long as we find a spot protected enough from the elements, someone should be able to find it. Quite a few people in the village could read and write after all.”
Then they’re standing before the clinic. The upper story has collapsed inwards but somehow the lower walls still stand. The door, swung permanently inwards, is crookedly supported by only the bottom hinge. For Saga there is a gravity to this place. A heavy emptiness that hangs in the air. A palpable sense of loss. She remembers that there was a future for her here once. She had been working in the clinic before the attack, learning under her mother’s tutelage. Her mother’s arthritis had been getting worse and though she had stepped in just to help relieve the burden of sewing wounds temporarily, she had taken to the work quickly. She was supposed to take over for her mother next year. This was supposed to be her clinic.
There are memories here too. Happy ones. Maeva was born in the clinic with Saga’s mother acting as midwife and Durnir pacing the floor and panicking. So different from his usually calm demeanor. She had first met Durnir in the clinic, her mother had decided to take up the cause of increasing literacy among the people of the village and he had shyly turned up for lessons. They spent countless days together in that room going over letters and sounds together.
But before Maeva and Durnir this was her home. When Grimward destroyed her family’s original hometown they had fled to this village, to this home. It was within those four walls of the small clinic that they had decided they could live a new life. Where they had hoped they would never face war again.
The feeling of water hitting skin brings Saga back to the present. Touching her face she realizes she has been crying. Quickly she tries to rub her tears away. “Sorry Durnir… I’m sorry.”
This is something he knows how to respond to without much second thought. He puts an arm around her shoulder, pulling her head against his chest, giving her a comforting hold and fabric to dry her eyes with. “There is nothing to apologize for. These are hard times. It is only right to grieve them.”
The two of them begin scouring the clinic from top to bottom, looking for any indication of the survival of Saga’s family. For any clue to where they might be. After nearly half a day of turning over every stray piece of furniture and rubble, they are left tired and empty-handed.
They leave a note in the clinic explaining what has happened to them and ask for any who find it to bring word to Saga’s family members. Now widening their search to the buildings and streets, including the alleyway where Maeva was lost, they find little indication of what may have happened. Then, there in the ashes, one small piece of detritus catches Saga’s eye. Pulling it off of the ground she looks in horror at the tiny parietal bone she clutches in her hand. The shape is unmistakable. It clearly belonged to a person, not an animal. The size… she turns it over in her hands. Not only is it too small to belong to an adult, the bone belonged to someone killed before the bones in their skull fused. It is too small to belong to a child. It… Saga imagines Maeva, how large Maeva’s head was when she last saw her. The bone is around the right size. It could belong to Maeva. She isn’t sure, but it could. “Durnir!” Saga calls out to her mate and holds the parietal bone out to him. Gripped with fear she is unable to say more.
The words catch in his throat as he tries to think of how to turn her away from the idea building within her. For her to believe even in a small way, even for a small moment, that their daughter is dead, he couldn’t imagine what pain that would wreak on her. It saddened him, too, deeply even, but he had already done his mourning in the days following the attack on the very village in which he stood. Maeva was dead, surely, but there was no need for Saga to suffer from such a conviction. The seconds pass. Too many. Hesitation turns to panic. He needs to say something, anything. “So many young ones must have been left behind here, it’s a great tragedy. When we find Maeva, we must let her know how fortunate she is to not have suffered the same fate.” He lies to his mate too easily. It sickens him.
By the time he speaks Saga’s face has already scrunched into a terrible frown. She crouches into a ball on the ground breathing heavily clutching both the bone and her head. “It can’t be her. It can’t be her.” she blubbers, “It isn’t fair, Durnir. It isn’t fair. She was just a baby. She accomplished nothing! It’s all my fault and she accomplished nothing!” Saga wails her tears causing her whole body to shudder.
“It isn’t her, I’m sure it isn’t. She will live, and grow strong, and do great deeds, even if we are not there to see them.” His stomach is turning over on itself. “Even if she is taken in by Grimward and raised as one of them, she will accomplish much.”
“How do you know Durnir? How do you know this isn’t her? How do you know that the Great Wolf hasn’t consumed her already? I might have killed her. You should hate me. Why don’t you hate me? I might have killed her!”
First, the easy truth. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.” Next, an honest judgment. “You did nothing wrong. Whatever happened to you, it isn’t your fault.” And lastly, wishful thinking. A belief held tenuously. “If anything did happen… Gaia would not allow innocent souls to be destroyed so unfairly.”
“But, I dropped her Durnir. If I had held her more tightly… if you had held her… she would probably still be here. It’s my fault.”
“Enough. Do not doubt yourself, Saga. I would trust our daughter in no one’s hands but yours.”
Saga sniffles, her tears stopped. She stands and approaches Durnir laying into his chest, arms limp by her sides, the bone clenched in her right hand. He embraces her. They stand there in silence for a moment. Finally Saga speaks timidly. “The bone… it doesn’t belong to Maeva?”
“No. It cannot be. I know it isn’t.” Truth gives away to lies again. “Our daughter is not here, Saga.”
Saga considers this. Constructing for herself a new safer truth as she responds, “Gaia protected you when you were a child. She is protecting Maeva too. So this can’t be her. And if it is her… if it was her…”
“Then she would be kept safe from the Great Wolf.”
Saga rubs the tears from her eyes, “We should ask a Daughter to help us pray for her, just in case. I’m sure Ylva would know the right rites and rituals to perform.” She looks down at the bone in her hands, “What of this child Durnir? We do not even know their name, but they must have been loved by someone.”
He thinks. This may very well be a part of his daughter’s skull. And even if it isn’t, a token gesture might keep her mind at ease. “Let us take it with us, and keep it safe. Better with us than laying here on the streets.”
“Right. Let’s see if we can find any other pieces and then, let’s go home.”
The two look for bones on that street until dark but find few other pieces. Then they return to their ship and set out for home both verbally expressing their agreement that their daughter couldn’t possibly be dead but neither willing to part with the small piece of bone they found. They wrap it in a soft cloth and place it carefully in a small box, making sure to keep an eye on it as they journey home lest they lose their daughter a second time.
