The Falcons of Fire and Ice (53 page)

We make slower progress at night. The moon casts long shadows of us as we walk, but we can see the glint of its reflection to warn us of marsh pools and streams, and as long as I trust to the sense that is calling me I know we will not be led astray.

Suddenly the sharp wind carries the smell of the ice to us and, as we round the curve of the hillside, I stop as a thrill of excitement and joy shudders through me. There, between two jagged rocks, which rise like pillars on either side, is the vast, glittering expanse of blue ice, frozen in waves and peaks as it tumbles down the mountainside. It sparkles in the moonlight and, at its feet, a lake is turned to liquid silver beneath the stars. Isabela claps her hands over her mouth and gasps. We do not need words to tell each other how beautiful it looks. It is more wondrous than I ever remembered.

We start towards the edge of the river where the ice stops abruptly and little rivulets run from it towards the lake. Although I cannot see it, I know that at the far end of the valley the lake drains into the river, and the river meanders through the valleys until it pours into the great crashing waves of the sea.

I clamber up on to the first ledge of ice, feeling the frosted air rise up around me. I stand there, holding my arms up like a child to its mother. We are home. Valdis and I have come home at last.

All through those long years in the cave we would talk about all the things we remembered, the way the wind would blow over the grass in summer making it roll like waves in a green sea and the river of blue ice singing to the stars on a frosty night. We remembered how we used to gather the spring flowers and lay them in cracks in the ice and mark their place on one of the rocks close by, and every day we would run back to the river to see how far they had travelled. They would stay as fresh as the day we picked them, and before the snows of winter came and covered them we would see they had crept the breadth of our little hands closer to the sea. One day we knew they would reach it, and tumble out into the waves and float across the world.

I turn to the side of the frozen river and begin to scramble up the rocks. It is hard to climb, holding Valdis up in my arm. But I cannot rest until I know. It has been more than forty years since I have seen my father, more than forty years since my mother took us to the cave. I need to tell her that we never blamed her, not once in all those years. Perhaps she has given birth to other children since we’ve been gone. I hope so, for her sake. She needed a child she could cradle in her arms. Her children would be grown by now, have children of their own. Our nieces and nephews, our own family sleeping in our little bed, listening to the crackling of the frozen river, and running down in spring to place their own flowers in the ice.

There is a clatter of stones behind me and I turn, clinging to the rocks. Isabela and Marcos are climbing up behind me. I had forgotten them. Let them come, then. Our family will welcome them.

The boulders give way to a steep slope with patches of shale between the moss and grass. Valdis and I used to run down it, on our single pair of legs, heedless of falling, but now our legs ache and burn as I force them up and up.

I am almost at the top of the rise. I stop. The icy air rolls up from the river below and the moon shines down on the peaks of ice, a luminescent ribbon winding between the dark rocks. Just a few more strides will take us over the rise and I will see the house where we were born. I have become a child again.

But suddenly I am afraid. What will I read on my father’s face when he opens the door, what will I see in my mother’s eyes? I am suddenly conscious of the cold, decaying body of my sister, cradled in my arm. I am ashamed of our bodies now, as I was on that day she took us to the cave to shut us away out of sight where we could do no harm. But they must be told that their daughter is dead. They should be allowed to say goodbye to her. We are their flesh. They made us.

I hear Marcos and Isabela panting up the slope, behind me. Marcos curses as he trips over a stone in the darkness. I take a deep breath and stumble up over the rise.

The house squats between two long fingers of rock, still and dark. It is late. They are all sleeping. I walk towards the door. But I see something in front of it, something that had not been there when we were children. I edge closer. It is a long mound of stones silvered by the moonlight. And with a terrible understanding that makes me almost cry out with the pain of it, I recognize what it is. There is no cross, no name. It lies before the threshold, a mute curse upon the house and land. But who lies beneath it?

Something is glinting on the top of the stones, a knife, a rusty hunting knife. It is my father’s blade. Only a sorcerer or a man who commits self-murder is buried beneath such a cairn, and my poor father was never a sorcerer.

I skirt the cairn and push against the door. There is no use in knocking. I know even before I enter that my call will only be answered by my own empty echo. I have no need of light. I know every inch of this long, narrow room. The cooking pot still hangs over the cold fire pit. The cords still dangle from the beams above, where once herbs and fish and meat dried in the smoke of a warming fire. I touch one of the covers that still lies upon the bed. The corner tears in my hand. It is rotting away. If my mother has left, she has taken little or nothing with her. How long has she been gone? Did she bury my father or did he harm himself after she left? I will never know. Wherever she is now I hope she has found peace.

I turn to make my way out, and in the small, cramped space knock my arm against the long, narrow bed that runs along one wall. Something makes me look down. A river of moonlight from the open door eddies along the bed. Someone is lying beneath the rotting covers. But they will not wake. I am too late. A skull rests upon the mouldering pillow, the dark empty sockets stare upwards into the moonlight. Her long dark hair lies tangled around the bone and in her hair – two white falcon feathers.

Isabela and Marcos are waiting for me outside. They stare at me curiously, wondering, no doubt, why I have come here. I bend to pick up a stone, and groan as a spasm of pain grips my back. I have carried Valdis for so long. I place the stone carefully on the cairn. Isabela hesitates, then she and Marcos solemnly add stones too. I am grateful for their kindness.

We return the way we have come, as in life we always do, but now I am weary, so very weary. As we scramble down the last boulder, I see a tall figure standing at the foot of the ice-river. I might have guessed Heidrun would come, just as she had come that night Valdis and I were awakened.

‘It is time now,’ she says.

‘But it is too soon. Not yet, not yet. I cannot do it yet.’ I have not even grieved for those who lie in that cold, dark house. I cannot let them take Valdis from me now.

Heidrun holds out her hand.

‘Wait,’ I tell her.

I walk over to Isabela. I gaze deep into her bright eyes. If I had ever had a child like her, I would have been proud to call her daughter. I touch her cheek, and she does not flinch from me. I know I am forgiven. I pull the horn lucet from around my waist and loop the thong around Isabela’s neck. She smiles, clutching at it, rubbing the smooth surface with her fingers as Valdis and I used to do when we were children.

I turn back to Heidrun, but before I can speak Isabela cries out. She is staring in fear up at the dark sky. A long ribbon of bright green light is ripping across it, obliterating the stars. Another, fainter, one undulates behind it. Great bands of opalescent green light begin to fill the sky, writhing and dancing. The air vibrates with singing. I spin around watching the waves of green and yellow and purple leap like flames across the dark sky, as if the whole night is afire.

Isabela and Marcos are standing motionless, gazing upwards. I do not know if she even realizes Marcos is holding her hand, for she is lost in utter awe, no longer afraid now, but consumed with the sheer wonder of it.

I gaze up the length of the blue river. The spirals of light flickering in the sky above are captured in the ice, making a thousand tiny gold-green lights tumble and spin in the heart of the frozen water. I hold out my hand to Heidrun. She takes it and helps me to clamber up on to the ice.

Isabela, still hardly able to draw her gaze away from the flames in the sky, tries to climb up and follow us. But Heidrun turns and shakes her head. She points to some rocks close to the base of the hill. She is telling them to wait there for us. What I have to do now for Valdis cannot be witnessed by them.

I watch the pair of them wandering off, still hand in hand, their heads craned up, transfixed by the rippling curtains of light in the sky. Then I turn and, clasping Valdis’s body tightly in my arms, I slowly follow Heidrun up the river of blue ice, stepping carefully around the crevasses and over the rough peaks of frozen water. And as we three walk silently together, the cold green flames dance above us in the dark sky and blue ice answers them with its ancient song.

Chapter Fourteen

At the very dawn of creation there appeared in northern lands a snow-white egg, the like of which had never been seen before or since. The shell of this egg cracked open and two birds were hatched from it, the gyrfalcon and the ptarmigan, twin sisters born from a single egg, and like the egg from which they sprang, the feathers of both birds were as white as the hills in winter.

The gyrfalcon flew up high into the mountains and found a home among the rocky crags, while the ptarmigan sought shelter in the long grasses of the plateau. They lived apart for so long that the two birds forgot that they were sisters. They each built their nests and laid their eggs, but when the chicks hatched they cried for food.

The gyrfalcon saw her chicks were hungry and she went hunting. She spread her white wings and glided down across the valley and over the plateau. For a long time she hunted, but she could find no prey. Then her sharp eyes spotted something running. She stooped down upon it and, seizing her kill in her sharp talons, she carried it off to her nest. She tore at its breast until the flesh was bare and bleeding and fed it to her chicks. Only then did she look upon its face. Only then did she recognize the face of her sister, the ptarmigan. When she realized who it was she had torn apart with her cruel beak, her grief knew no bounds. And her cry of sorrow,
krery-krery-krery
, will ring out to the end of time, for she repeats her murder daily and daily repents too late.

Isabela

Hot gorge –
when a falcon is allowed to feed on prey it has just killed. A bird may be permitted a full gorge – to eat until its crop is full – or a half gorge or quarter gorge.

I woke with such a start that I must have lashed out, for my arm hit something soft and I heard a grunt of pain beside me. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. The light was startlingly bright as if a thousand candle flames were being shone in my face. I was numb with cold. Then I realized that the light was coming from a low, bright sun dazzling over the top of a hill, and I was lying not in the warm cave, but on damp mosses tucked under an overhang of rocks. Marcos was lying in front of me, curled up like a baby, and groaning as he stirred awake.

Embarrassed at finding myself pressed into a man’s back, I could not think how to extricate myself, since I was wedged between his body and the rock. I nudged him again, hoping it would make him move away, but he turned over and opened his eyes, staring with a frown up at the lightening sky as if he had never seen it before.

He crawled out from under the overhang and staggered painfully to his feet and gazed about him. ‘Sweet Jesu, I thought I’d just dreamt this!’

I scrambled up, trying to smooth my clothes and tousled hair. My clothes clung damply to my goose-pimpled skin, and the breeze only made me feel wetter and colder. But when I glanced up to where Marcos was staring, all the discomfort and cold vanished as I too gaped at the sight.

We were standing on the edge of a broad flat plain of dark green mosses and golden sedges. Above us towered a great mountain of sparkling bluish-white ice, tumbled down between two jagged black peaks. The frozen river flowed out around the base of the rocks, ending abruptly about four or five feet above a shelf of black sand. Little streams of water were running from beneath the ice and trickling into a wide, dark lake in whose ruffled surface the white ice and black rocks trembled. Ribbons of soft white mist drifted across the ice-river and above it the sky was such a dazzling blue it hurt my eyes to look at it.

Marcos slowly shook his head. ‘That … that could never have been a river, could it? How could anything that deep freeze solid?’

For a few minutes all we could do was stare transfixed. Then, as the breeze once again reminded me how cold I was, I glanced around.

‘Can you see Eydis anywhere?’ I asked. ‘I thought the other woman said to wait for her here. She should be back by now, but I see no sign of her.’

Shielding his eyes with his hand from the glare of the sun bouncing off the ice, Marcos pivoted slowly around.