The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay (4 page)

“‘Like what, my lord?’ Brian asked.

“‘Oh, nothing, it’s ridiculous … but for a minute there, I thought I heard children laughing.’

Brother Brian gasped, clutched his chest, and went pale.

“‘It’s nothing,’ King Dudo continued. ‘The ocean is playing tricks on my mind.’ Dudo’s shoulders sagged, and he let out a big sigh. ‘This is ridiculous! What am I thinking? A magical island in the middle of the ocean … Enough. Time to let it go. Let’s get back on track and deliver my men to land.’

“The monk did as King Dudo said and altered the course of the fleet of longships, turning them back a little so they pointed toward a known headland.”

“Granny,” Ruairi interrupted. “Why did Brother Brian go pale? Did he see something? Did he see Yondersaay?”

“Good guess, Ruairi,” Granny said. “But no. King Dudo didn’t notice Brother Brian’s near fainting when he told him he’d heard laughing children. Nor did he notice Brother Brian immediately turning and marking the precise location of the laughing children in his charts. Brother Brian the Devout and Handy with Numbers would never,
ever
be coming this way again.

“You see, Brother Brian was a deeply superstitious man. In the lower lands where he grew up, a lot of the horror stories told around the campfire were about voices. If you heard a voice and couldn’t see the body it came from, chances were you were being haunted by a ghost. The most terrifying ghost stories Brother Brian had ever heard started with the sinister laughter of a bodyless child.

“When Brother Brian made it back to his monastery in the lower lands, he wrote a travel guide based on his voyages with the Danes.
Brother Brian’s Northern-Most Sea Excursions: Hospitable Hostelries and Bloodiest Battlegrounds
, became the best-selling book about the area and was reprinted edition after edition. At the back of the manuscript was an extensive glossary with maps and directions, and all studiously avoided this particular patch of haunted ocean. So every traveler who traveled the northern-most seas and who used Brother Brian’s
Excursions
as their guide—and the publishing house will brag that that is absolutely everyone who traveled the northern-most seas—followed Brother Brian’s routes. And
all
Brother Brian’s routes avoided this spot.”

“I think we have that book at home somewhere,” Dani said.

“Of course you do,” Granny said. “You’re Yondersaanians, so you’re bound to have one.”

“Half-Yondersaanian,” Ruairi said, glancing at Mum. With the same blondish-reddish hair as Dani’s, Mum was often taken for a Yondersaanian, but in fact she wasn’t Yondersaanian, she was Irish.

“Never mind,” Granny said, “You can’t have everything.”

“I can hear you,” Mum said, not looking up from the extra-thick, super-comprehensive, safety guide she had requested from the flight attendant.

“Where were we? Oh, yes,” Granny went on as the plane landed and bumped along the runway. “Now, Brother Brian, convinced he had made a terrible mistake in his calculations, spent the rest of the voyage going over his charts and calculations. At the end of a month of calculations and recalculations, Brian was utterly confused. Certain he had made a mistake but unable to find it, he vowed to beg King Dudo’s forgiveness, if King Dudo were ever to be found alive, of course. ‘I’m terribly sorry, my liege,’ he had decided he would say, if it turned out King Dudo hadn’t died a gruesome and bloody death like everyone believed. ‘I beg your mercy and forgiveness. It is to my shame and embarrassment that I admit to a heedlessness and recklessness in my long division and multiplication. I think I must have forgotten to carry the one.’”

“Granny, I’m going to have to stop you there,” Dani said matter-of-factly as she handed her passport over to be stamped at customs.

“Oh, yes?” Granny asked, squeezing through the space between the control booths. Ruairi, putting all his strength into it, shoved her heartily until she popped out the other side. She put her newly stamped passport into her handbag and led the way into the arrivals hall.

“Wasn’t King Dudo in the boat with Brother Brian just a minute ago?” Dani asked patiently while Ruairi came close to hear. “Why does Brother Brian think King Dudo died a gruesome death?”

“A gruesome and
bloody
death,” Ruairi said in hushed tones, putting his passport back in his inside pocket with all his boarding passes.

“I haven’t gotten to that part yet,” Granny said. “If you’d listened carefully, you’d have heard me say Brother Brian took a month of sweating over his calculations to find out what mistake he’d made with his sums.”

“Yes, I remember that bit,” Dani was stumped.

“Well, a lot can happen in a month, Dani. May I continue?” Granny looked around at Mum, Ruairi, and Dani who all smiled and nodded.

“Still confused,” Dani said, “but do go on.”

“Now,” Granny said as the Millers made their way from the arrivals hall up two flights on the escalator to the departures hall where they stood in the queue to get on their next flight. “Where was I? Oh, yes, I remember …

“Leading the fleet of longships away from the patch of water that had terrified him witless, Brother Brian gestured in a northwesterly direction toward a jutting headland familiar to all who had traveled this way with King Dudo before. Just in time too. The Vikings were so hungry by now that Brother Brian was starting to look tasty.

“‘Too gristly,’ Brother Brian overheard one of them say.

‘He’ll be all right with a bit of salt,’ said another.

“‘Look! Look!’ Brother Brian screeched hysterically as he was being surrounded. ‘Land!’

“They disembarked as the sun rose. The Vikings had camped in this cold and inhospitable land when they had traveled west in the past. They created makeshift shelter, and they were hopeful of finding something to hunt in the nearby wood.

“The forest was one of snow-covered trees that began inland some way from the bay. A team was dispatched to bring firewood to the camp and to begin the hunt for fresh meat.

“A man of action, Dudo was of this hunting party. When they reached the trees, two men set about gathering wood into slings to drag back to camp. The rest fanned out as silently as they could manage, given the crispness of the icy slush underfoot. King Dudo positioned himself on the flank of the group as they all crept softly into the depths of the forest.

“Reaching the edge of the dense plot of trees, Dudo was distracted by a tiny bird with soft purple feathers off to his right. The bird took flight. Following, King Dudo found himself emerging alone from under the dim forest canopy into a field of light between the tree-brown dankness and the sea-blue stillness. Trees to his left; to his right, the sea. Nothing else.

“Enchanted by the spectacular beauty of this place, Dudo walked across a white hollow toward the water. His men continued forward in their hunting circle, not noticing the king had wandered out of position. King Dudo looked out across the vast ocean toward his homeland. He tried to imagine what his Danish subjects were doing at that precise moment—sleeping, eating, or working in the fields. He reflected that he was a lucky man. He had sailed the waves, explored foreign lands, and had seen beauty of a kind most of his subjects could not even imagine.

“King Dudo was startled out of his reverie by a low grumbling noise not twenty feet behind him. He turned, slowly. Before him, a giant white bear padded noiselessly out of the woods. The king looked at the bear, and the bear looked back. The bear slavered. It bared its teeth, and juices slobbered from them.

“King Dudo was trapped. There was no escape. He could not go backward—there was only icy cold water behind him; he could not go forward—there was only the bear. The hollow was narrow—there was no space to go around. He could not call out to his men for fear of startling or angering the white bear. He stood as still as he could, trying to come up with a plan. “The bear continued toward King Dudo and made its way down into the hollow. As it did so, King Dudo the Mightily Impressive heard the loudest
crack
he had ever heard and felt the earth move beneath his feet.”

“
I can’t hear you very well now, Granny
,” Dani shouted to her great-great-great-grandmother, who was seated right beside her on top of their luggage and the thousands of boxes in the hold of the cargo plane taking them on the next stage of their journey.

“
Let’s wait till we land
,” Granny screeched back. “
We’re nearly there now
.”

“
What did you say
?” Ruairi shouted at Granny.

“
We’re nearly there
!” Granny said.

“
What
?” Mum shouted over the noise of the engines of the cavernous plane. Granny pointed out the window at the airport building that appeared closer every second.

“With the sudden noise
,
Dudo felt the white hollow of earth start to shift beneath his feet,” Granny said, once they’d landed and had walked across the tarmac into the airport building. “It had broken clean off from the rest of the headland and had started to drift out to sea.

“The loud crack was not heard only by King Dudo. Immediately, the voices of his men broke through the trees, and the sounds of twigs breaking and branches creaking let him know they were coming. He hoped they would not get to him too late.

“The loud crack was not heard only by King Dudo and his men. The white bear was standing just beyond the fissure and seemed terrified by the thunderous split and the movement of the ground. The enormous white bear reared up on its hind legs and bellowed a deafening roar directly into the face of brave King Dudo the Mightily Impressive.

“The roar was loud enough and angry enough and scary enough to spread a ripple of terror through the men now rapidly approaching the edge of the woods and the space where the snowy ledge used to be. The warriors got there just in time to see their lord and king float gently away on a sliver of ice. His only company: an enormous, ravenous, snow-white polar bear.

“Intent on saving his king, one of the warriors jumped straight into the water. He was stunned so badly by the icy cold that not only did he not save Dudo, he could not even swim and in fact required his own rescue party. Two men remained behind to save their overzealous companion while the rest ran at full speed back through the woods to their fellows on the beach. They shouted as loudly as they could to raise the alarm even before they were in sight.

“They jumped into their boats; the rowers sliced the water with all their strength and ploughed through the waves, around the headland, in the direction of King Dudo and the white bear. They put their full might into each stroke of the oars, cutting the blue water like hot swords through melting butter.

“A thick gray fog had been resting atop the trees since they had set foot on land, threatening to descend. And now, at this most crucial of moments, the promise was fulfilled, and the fog tumbled down past them. It stirred up the waves and blocked their view entirely. Men ran along the decks of the boats casting about for signs of their king.

“This Viking squad was a hardy bunch, so desperation did not set in immediately. They kept on their course. They took turns shouting for their king and remaining quiet, listening for a response. But they heard nothing. Not a sound but their own shrieks and eventually their own sighs of despair.

“What was that, dear?” Granny stopped her story abruptly and turned toward Dani and Ruairi.

Dani and Ruairi looked at each other and at Granny Miller.

“What?” Ruairi asked.

“What did you say, my dear? Did you ask me something?”

“No, Granny,” Ruairi said, casting about. “Nobody said a thing.”

“Oh! I could have sworn … Oh well, if you say you didn’t say anything … if you’re sure now.”

“No, Granny. We didn’t so much as open our mouths,” Dani said.

“Well, if you’re sure. Now. Where was I? Oh, yes.” Granny settled back into the comfiness of the armchair in the corner of the departure lounge and sipped the cocoa Mum had bought her at the coffee shop. “And so it was that King Dudo’s lifeless body washed up on the unfamiliar shore of an unfamiliar land in the middle of the northern-most seas.”

“
Nooooo
!” Dani and Ruairi shouted out together.

“What, my dears?” Granny calmly looked over her glasses as Dani and Ruairi jumped up from where they had been lying on the floor of the airport concourse.

“No, Granny!” Dani said frantically. “That’s not where we were; we were floating away on the ice with the bear and the Vikings and the fog and the Vikings were calling out trying to find King Dudo.”

“Is he dead?” Ruairi whispered anxiously to his mother; this wasn’t a Dudo story he had heard Granny tell before. Mum shrugged, she didn’t know.

“Oh, yes. That’s right, that’s right. Well. They didn’t find him,” Granny said and continued. “And so it was that King Dudo’s lifeless body washed up on the unfamiliar shore of an unfamiliar—”

“But the bear, Granny! What about the bear?” Dani asked.

“Yes, Granny, the bear! What happened with the bear?” Ruairi wanted to know.