The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay (15 page)

“Dudo and Brunhilda rose from the blanket. They shaded their eyes from the sun to get a better view. ‘I think they’re headed this way,’ Dudo said as the two gliders swung around in their direction.

“‘This is a habitual landing place for eagle gliders. There is moss underfoot—it is soft.’ As Brunhilda predicted, Ursula and Thorar made synchronized swoops slowly downward. ‘Don’t they look grand together? They make a striking couple, no?’ Brunhilda asked.

“‘Hmm,’ said Dudo.

“Ursula and Thorar were perhaps ten feet from the ground when a circling gust blew through the trees and slammed into their wings. They both lost control of their equipment and came tumbling down at a great speed. Ursula’s wings came right off her arms, and she splattered straight into King Dudo, who went down with a crash.

“‘Mother of—’ King Dudo said as he tried to right himself. ‘We meet again. You do know how to make an entrance, servant girl.’

“Thorar landed with a bump and rolled and rolled and rolled along the moss-covered forest floor. Brunhilda ran to see if he was hurt. Ursula stood and helped Dudo to his feet.

“‘You were telling me yesterday,’ King Dudo said, ‘of the bear and the ice and our first meeting.’

“‘I was?’ Ursula responded, shyly glancing at Dudo as she made to follow Brunhilda.

“‘Yes. Yes, you were,’ Dudo said as he motioned to Ursula to sit down on the picnic blanket. ‘The first time you crashed into me and caused me to scramble in the dirt. Sit, please. They will be some time, I think. I saw poor What’s-his-name hit his head on a rock but don’t fret—my darling Brunhilda will revive him in a tick.’ Ursula moved to go and help them. ‘You doubt Brunhilda’s nursing abilities?’ King Dudo asked, pouring beverages for the two of them and motioning once more for Ursula to sit down.

“‘No, of course not,’ Ursula began. ‘It’s just—’

“‘I think it best to leave the boy’s revival to her kind hands,’ Dudo said and handed Ursula a drink and a sausage roll. Revive yourself, peasant. Eat and drink,’ Dudo said. ‘So! You were telling me’—he sat back and crossed his arms—‘the bear, the ice; then you showed up. Don’t deny it, you admitted it yesterday. Unless you have a twin sister—perhaps an
evil
twin sister—and I find that highly unlikely.’

“‘I do not deny it,’ Ursula said. ‘It was I. I was having a stroll along the beach, and I heard an unearthly wailing sound, and I figured someone or something was in trouble.’

“‘I take it you are referring to my singing,’ Dudo said, a little deflated.

“‘So I took to the water and followed the wailing—I mean singing—and found you and the bear on the ice. I climbed onto the little island, wrestled the bear—’

“‘You did what now?’

“‘I wrestled the bear and forced it back into the sea—’

“‘No, no—hold on a minute. You’re telling me you fought with the bear, all on your own—alone, with no help, just you—and you won?’

“‘Sure. It was no big thing. We are an island of warriors, you know. To be honest, I did want to ask you why you hadn’t fought the bear yourself; it would have seemed a lot simpler a solution than trying to deafen it with your wailing.’

“‘I, eh, um, I didn’t want to hurt such a magnificent creature,’ Dudo said quickly. ‘I didn’t, you know, think it would be fair.’

“‘I see,’ Ursula said, unconvinced. ‘Then, it was my intention to dive back into the ocean and swim away, but you opened your eyes. I couldn’t just swim away.’

“‘You couldn’t?’ Dudo asked, softening for the first time. He sat up straight and looked at her closely. He took her hand in his. ‘Because you felt something? You felt something deep inside you, like your heart turning into a million butterflies floating and dancing within your rib cage, and you knew, you just knew that after all the wishing and hoping, after all the years of longing and dreaming, of never meeting your Heart’s True Love, you realized that in front of you was—’

“‘No,’ Ursula said with finality. ‘Because you fell off the ice and cracked your head.’

“‘Oh. So, it didn’t mean anything to you?’

“‘Not at all,’ she said, and Dudo thought, hoped, she looked a little uncertain.

“‘So why bother?’ King Dudo asked in a huff.

“‘I could hardly let you drown, now, could I? You looked so pathetic.’

“‘Path
et
ic?’

“‘Like a wet rat.’ Ursula stifled a grin.

“‘I have had enough of this insolence, peasant! Servant girl! Away with you!’ Dudo snapped around and turned his back on Ursula.

“‘You did ask!’ Ursula said as she got up from the blanket and walked into the woods, humming, in the direction of Brunhilda and Thorar. From the woods, Dudo could hear Brunhilda and Thorar burst into laughter, clearly at something Ursula had just told them.

“Dudo strode across the clearing and stood at the edge of the trees. ‘Brunhilda, Brunhilda, come away. Our picnic has been ruined by these interlopers. I am taking you eagle gliding.’

“‘Oh, no no no no,’ Brunhilda said, emerging panicked from the trees. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, my liege. I’d much rather go back to strolling. Strolling was good. I liked strolling. Let’s do some more strolling.’

“The following morning, the day after the eagle gliding date, on Brunhilda’s last day before heading south, she and Dudo went for brunch in the harbor. Dudo was not comfortable. He still hadn’t gotten used to the brace on his neck. The cast on his leg was itching like madness, and the bruises all over the rest of his body still hurt like all hell.

“‘This is just lovely,’ Brunhilda said, ‘even nicer than strolling, which, of course, you’ll be able to do again in six to eight weeks depending on how that break heals. Just lovely. I never much cared for eagle gliding anyway. It’s overrated. Of course it was not your fault at all that you careened headfirst off the mountain as soon as you took flight. It was a bad day for wind.’

“‘Brunhilda, beautiful Brunhilda, I’ve been thinking,’ Dudo said through his wired jaw.

“‘Yes?’ Brunhilda replied, sipping elegantly on a beverage.

“‘I have something to ask you.’ “Dudo heaved himself off his seat and painfully got himself into a position which from certain angles could look like he was on one knee. ‘Ow, ow, ow, ow ow,’ he said. ‘You are a very nice person, and we get on quite nicely, don’t we?’

“‘I think we do, yes, and thank you. You are a very nice person too. Not very sporty but very nice, yes,’ Brunhilda said.

“‘One comes to a point in one’s life,’ King Dudo continued, ‘when one thinks one might be better off being with someone else, someone nice, to do things with and share things with and bear heirs with. Do you agree?’

“‘Yes, I think I do agree, King Dudo. I think I do. Someone nice is far preferable to someone who is not nice. And one really should get around to bearing heirs before it is too late for one.’

“‘In that case, Brunhilda, and I know we don’t know each other very well as yet, but I was wondering …’

“‘Yes?’

“‘I was wondering’—Dudo took Brunhilda’s hand and looked earnestly into her eyes and screeched—‘
you have got to be kidding me
!’ For just then, Ursula and Thorar, laughing hysterically as usual, came speeding into the harbor riding on the backs of two dolphins. ‘No, seriously, come
on
! Does that servant girl ever do any work?
Ser
iously!’

“Ursula and Thorar came to a sharp halt at the water’s edge next to where Dudo was kneeling before Brunhilda. They sent a wave of saltwater into the air as they halted. Brunhilda nimbly dove out of the way, but Dudo, slow to react, was sent sprawling by masses of icy-cold saltwater.

“Dudo glared at Ursula. Ursula looked back coyly. ‘Oops,’ she said as she leaped off the dolphin’s back onto the promenade beside King Dudo.

“A dripping Dudo, shivering from the icy water, turned to Brunhilda. ‘Beautiful Brunhilda,’ he said, and as he waited for Brunhilda to come back to him from the dry part of the verge, Dudo thought he saw Ursula’s smile fade as she moved away to allow Brunhilda space. But he couldn’t be sure. It was this uncertainty that cut Dudo to his core. When the others had laughed at him under the canopy of trees, he knew Ursula had laughed with them, but the timbre of her laugh had lacked the vigour of theirs. When they emerged, he thought he caught a look of sadness on her face. An admission that what she’d said and done did not reflect how she felt about him. It was an impression only, a feeling, and a fleeting one at that. Nothing he could count on; nothing he could grasp firmly and say ‘Here, look. This is what you did or this is what you said, and this is how I know my love reflects yours. This is how I’m sure your heart beats in time with mine. And why I can never love another, even the fabulous Brunhilda with her hair of sleek ebony and her thighs of thunder.’ But he didn’t have that certainty, and with noon blazing its silken presence on Brunhilda’s last day on Yondersaay, Dudo’s mind was set.

“‘Brunhilda,’ he mumbled through his wired jaw as he heaved himself back onto his one good knee, ‘Darling delightful Brunhilda, will you marry me, today, at sunset?’

“Brunhilda, undoubtedly startled by the sudden mumbling, gasped before eloquently answering, ‘Um, all right.’

“Dudo rose and wetly limped as quickly as he could, so not very quickly at all, with as much dignity as he could muster, which wasn’t very much at all, away from the harbor toward the dwelling place. ‘Wonderful,’ he threw back over his shoulder, ‘until sunset!’

“His last glance backward took in a startled Brunhilda, a gorgeous Thorar the Smouldering, and although Dudo could not be certain of this, a pale and stricken Ursula, who with an almost imperceptible step back clutched the dirty rock that hung on her neck. As Dudo left, he heard the faintest whisper of Ursula’s voice as she hummed sadly and strolled away.

“The wedding of Dudo and Brunhilda,” Granny began.

“That can’t be right, Granny. Are you sure you’re remembering the story correctly?” Dani asked.

“Yes, Granny, how can Dudo marry Brunhilda when Ursula is his Heart’s True Love? You sure you’re not mixing it up?”

“Do you want to hear the story or not?” Granny said sternly.

“Yes,” Dani and Ruairi replied.

“Do you want me to tell it to you the way it really happened, or do you want me to make something up so it all ends Happily Ever After?”

“The real way, Granny,” Ruairi said.

“Well, all righty then.” Granny looked at Dani and Ruairi and sighed. “We’d better take it upstairs. It is ludicrously late. Go brush your teeth and get into bed, and I’ll come up and finish the story up there. I’ll just make myself a quick snack while you’re getting into your jammies. I’ve barely eaten a thing all day.”

“
We’re ready
!” Dani and Ruairi shouted from their bedroom a few minutes later.

Granny vigorously bounded up the stairs and threw herself into the giant beanbag on the floor of the bedroom with her feet sticking up and out. “Where were we?” Granny settled down deep and began again. “Word of the proposal spread quickly, and as everyone on the island always wanted in on a good party, they all came together in the village and got stuck into preparations for the wedding feast.

“The island’s men—fishermen and farmers naturally but also warriors to the core—were a little saddened that the chances of bloody battle between them and the Danes were seriously diminished. They had hoped Dudo would take Rarelief’s first option and go off, find his men, ixnay the jarl’s line, and scootch back to the island for battle. However, they bore the disappointment stoically and got into the party spirit instead. There was much goat sacrificing and mead drinking in honor of the happy couple.

“As the day wore on, smells of cooking mingled with the smell of the sea and wafted all over the island. Villagers hung banners and lights for the sundown ceremony. As the hour approached, men and women, dressed in their finest gear, which happened to be their battle gear, paraded down the main thoroughfare of the island. They held aloft huge flaming torches, which lit hundreds of giant candles placed all over the settlement.