By C. L. Baptiste
Hafdìs waited.
The house was dark except for a bed of coals, which sat half-buried in the fire pit that Lars had built two summers ago. Hafdìs blew on them, and a tender flame sprouted.
The snow outside had stopped, leaving everything still and clear. She heard distant church bells tolling for midnight Mass. She would normally have been there with the rest of the village, but after the choices she had made tonight, all she could do was stay home and wait.
The one-room house had an earthen floor. One door, which she had barred. Bags of raw wool and carding combs sat in the corners. Hafdìs spun a slim, even thread from her drop spindle in the silence.
Little Svana lay asleep in a nest of blankets beside the fire’s small island of warmth in the middle of the room, her woolen cap pulled down over her eyes. Near her, Lars lay buried under the hearth. A new ancestor. Hafdìs had dug the hole herself just after harvest-time, refusing to ask anyone for help and clumsily heaving her husband’s great, stiff body down into it as Svana watched with somber, reddened eyes.
The clergy in this village preached that dead family members should be exiled to the cemetery, but the walls of the little stone church still held a small handful of sensible people who refused to entertain this barbaric notion, and alongside their Sunday Mass, they kept much older customs. Before Hafdìs began filling up the grave, she had sung an old chant over Lars’ body. It was not a Christian tune.
Near the door sat a sack full of neat spools of thread for Goodwife Kristìn, the weaver and Hafdìs’ main buyer. Svana was seven years old and big enough to deliver the thread by herself, but those trips had mixed results these days. Last time, the child had come back with her hair braided and her belly full of porridge, which was an unexpected boon, but the first thing she said to her mother was, “Are you a witch? Because Goody Kristìn says you are, and she says it’s wrong to talk to things that aren’t Jesus or the saints.”
Hafdìs had decided that next time she would deliver the thread herself. Tomorrow. Once she could bring herself to drag her heavy body over there, leaving Svana in her blankets by her protective father’s side.
A gnawing fear shifted deep in Hafdìs’ gut, where it had been building all evening. That fear sat next to the child who also lived there, pressing tiny feet against Hafdìs’ insides and trying to get out. The sounds of Mass finished in a swell of singing voices, and Hafdìs heard the crowd begin to slowly pour out of the church.
And then came the knock.
Her thread broke.
Svana opened her eyes and lifted her head.
Hafdìs sat frozen for a moment before the words came.
“Who is it?”
“Just let me in, wife. It’s cold out here.”
***
Under the old pre-church customs, Hafdìs should have observed Lars’ funeral rites by building a bonfire and inviting friends and neighbors to nullify any debts and grudges they might hold against him, by inking their grievances in runes on wood chips or scraps of sheep hide and casting them into the fire. If Hafdìs had done this, she could also have asked the gathered community for help. Without Lars’ smith work, would Hafdìs’ spinning alone be enough to feed her, Svana, and the little one on the way?
But she had not. Yes, she had made those silly traditional grievance tokens on her own. One for every silent meal, every cold night, every unmet need. But instead of burning them, she had stuffed them into her pillow to cherish like threads binding him to the house, stitching him to her side.
Tonight, on Christmas Eve, Hafdìs felt that the veils between things were thin. Three or four hours ago, she had spoken some biting words to Lars from her heart, pricked her arm with her spindle, and made a delicate smear of blood on the hearthstones. This little sin should carry some consequences, although she wasn’t sure what she had expected.
Not an actual knock.
***
Svana sat openmouthed, staring at the door. Then she sprang towards it.
Hafdìs’ world slowed as she watched Svana’s eager trajectory. Her own stone-heavy body made a decision, then moved with desperate speed. She caught the small girl around the waist and held her. Svana thrashed like a fish on a line.
“Let go!”
“Hush, love.”
“We have to open it!”
“We can’t. Not yet.”
The voice spoke again from behind the door, so familiar that Hafdìs felt the breath rush out of her.
“Svana, love? Is that you?”
Svana gasped, then flailed even harder.
“Let me go!”
“Not yet,” Hafdìs said again.
“Why?!”
Hafdìs tried to speak, but her words came out in a whisper.
“I—love, I’m not sure.”
“Not sure about what?”
“I’m not sure that it’s Pappa.”
Svana gave one more wrench against her mother’s grip, then stopped and slowly turned around.
“If it’s not Pappa, then who can it be?”
They stared at each other.
The knock came again.
“Who are you?” Hafdìs called through the door. She let go of Svana, who stood still.
“Who do you think, wife? Let me in. It’s cold out here.”
“But you’re dead.”
As the words left her mouth, she felt almost as if she were telling him that he hadn’t washed for dinner.
She had expected a whisper or a shadow, if anything. Not this.
“And still you called me. Let me in.”
Mother and daughter stood still, their eyes darting from the door to each other and back.
“Things must have changed.”
Lars’ voice was matter-of-fact.
“Someone else has come to care for you. A new man? It’s been long enough.”
“No!” Hafdìs snapped, breaking out of her paralysis. “How dare you? I don’t want another man!”
“No one’s taking care of you?”
Lars’ voice was gentler now, in a way that she hadn’t heard since long before his death.
“No.”
“Not the church? They should be.”
“No.”
She took a step towards the door to hear better.
“Not the women? The neighbors?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Then here I am. I’m glad I’m not too late.”
Hafdìs realized she was pressing her ear against the door now.
“You’re—you’re not—”
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone, love. Let me take care of you now.”
Then her hand was on the door handle. Not to fling it open—just to look. She had to look.
“Mamma!” Svana seized her hand and hung onto it like dead weight. “Don’t open it! You said! You said we can’t open it!”
Hafdìs felt a blaze of fury and shoved Svana aside, now hungering beyond reason for what was on the other side of that door, years of cold memories melting in the presence of one glowing hope.
Svana placed her small body in front of the door, blocking it. Her eyes were huge.
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment.
Then Hafdìs slowly sank to her knees and opened her arms. Svana grabbed and clung to her with both arms and both legs, her whole body shaking as she buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.
“You’re right, little one,” Hafdìs murmured. “Those aren’t the kind of things Pappa would say.”
She rocked back and forth, trying to soothe Svana while her own breath became short and shallow with fear. She began to inch herself and the child away from the door.
“You won’t let me in?” said the visitor softly.
“No,” murmured Hafdìs.
“Then take this gift from me.”
She felt something pass through the solid wood of the door, something sharp, something colder than the air outside.
Pain began to well up through her arm. A deep, dull, sick pain, starting from the place where she had pricked herself with her spindle. She crumpled, and Svana gave a cry.
“Mamma…”
Hafdìs clutched her arm, a growl of agony escaping her throat.
“Mamma, what’s happening to you?”
“I don’t know, love,” Hafdìs gasped.
The pain grew, slowly seeping into the bones of her arm and shoulder and ribs. She heard only silence from the other side of the door, but she could still sense something breathing out there in the dark. She fought to keep her own breathing steady, but her body twitched and convulsed, and she wanted to wail with every breath.
Svana built up the fire, mopped Hafdìs’ forehead with a rag, and climbed into her lap.
“Can’t you heal your arm? Can’t you cast a witch spell?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Are you going to die, Mamma?”
“I don’t know, love.”
“What do we do?”
“We wait. For that—” she waved at the door— “to go away.”
“How long—”
“I don’t know, little one. I don’t know anything.”
***
Many hours later, Svana said, “It’s light, Mamma.”
“Good,” Hafdìs slurred, barely seeing the light. Even using her eyes hurt.
“Is it safe to go?”
“I hope. Maybe,” Hafdìs murmured.
Then came the knock.
Both of them flinched and clutched each other.
“No,” whispered Svana, “No, no, no.”
“Goodwife Hafdìs? Svana?” said a sharp, brisk voice. “I’m here to ask about some wool, I’m fresh out.” Another sharp knock. “I didn’t see you two at Mass last night, but I can at least take Svana to Mass today. It starts in a quarter-hour.”
Svana slowly crept to the door.
“Goody Kristìn?”
“Ah. So you are home, child. Off to Mass with me, then.”
“What type of soup did we eat the other day, when I delivered the wool?”
“Soup? You must be short on sleep, little one. I made porridge the day you came by. You had two bowls. I made another pot this morning.”
Svana flung open the door.
“Can you help Mamma walk?”
***
The days after that were a blur of voices and hands. Hafdìs heard a constant stream of prayers invoking Jesus and Mary and every major saint, and some obscure ones for good measure. Her arm turned deep red and became brutishly swollen, with dark purple veins visible all through it. The baby squirmed as if trying to fight its way out, as if it knew Hafdìs’ hours were numbered.
“Mamma, you can’t go.”
Hafdìs found Svana’s hand and gripped it feebly.
She traversed the pain, an endless downhill route, until nothing was real anymore. In the deepest bottom of it, she found herself awake and heard a droning song made up of archaic, half-understandable words. It was not a Christian tune, but the voices were familiar.
Goodwife Kristìn, along with two or three of the churchgoing women, sat beside her holding hands. An herbal poultice, bound together with rune-inscribed birch bark, lay over her mangled arm.
“Those aren’t prayers to any saint I’ve heard of,” Hafdìs said.
“That’s not a hurt any saint would know how to treat,” came Kristìn’s voice, sounding irritable at being interrupted. “A heathen wound needs a heathen remedy. What did you do to yourself, woman?”
Miles later, the road of pain leveled and slowly began to rise. The fever broke, and Hafdìs woke up to find that her mind was back even if her strength was gone.
Her arm throbbed slow and deep, as if the pain itself were a great sleeping animal.
Svana lay curled up at her feet, snoring.
“I’ll spin for you,” she told Goodwife Kristìn. “You shouldn’t have had to—”
“You can’t even hold a spindle, young woman.”
Goodwife Kristìn set a bowl of soup in front of her.
“Can you hold a spoon?”
Hafdìs managed after several tries.
Three weeks passed before she went home.
***
Then, the icicles started dripping, and the snow became mushy and thin. When it was time for Hafdìs’ labor, she sent Svana out to fetch help. Kristìn arrived with a loaf of bread, and she and a few women sat vigil with their spindles and knitting as Hafdìs paced and knelt and breathed. When the time came, they helped pull tiny Drìfa out and cut her cord. The new child wailed and sang. Svana cradled her like a doll.
On the last fire night in the spring, wrapping Drìfa tight against her chest with a shawl, Hafdìs took the bag of grievances from her bed. She held each one in her hand. Scraps of sheepskin or bark or wood, on each of which she had carved or inked a rune. Each one conjured a picture of her marriage in her mind.
She began adding them to the fire, one by one.
Svana peered into the bag. “What are those?”
“They’re things Pappa did.”
“Why… why burn them? I don’t want to lose Pappa.”
“Not all of him. These are just… the wrong things to keep.”
“What can we keep then?”
Hafdìs sat back on her heels, looked at Svana’s earnest face, and started to finally see her child through the sludge of grief that had covered her mind since Lars’ death. For a painful moment, Hafdìs felt what it might be like to lose Lars as a father instead of as a husband.
“What would you keep?”
“Maybe his laugh. I could keep it in my cap.”
“Could I listen to it too sometimes?”
“Maybe.”
Together they watched the smoke rise up, making a path from the bones under the hearth up toward the freedom of the sky.
C.L. Baptiste’s short fiction has appeared in Mobius Blvd, Electric Spec, Mithila Review, and (upcoming) Tales to Terrify. She lives in Oregon and is working on a creepy short story collection about gods, demons and questionable cooking. You can find her on Instagram at @c.l.baptiste.