Seven

The turning of the days became heavy and thick.

The short tide of daylight was gray and grim, as an unborn violence took root in the soil beneath the snows.

It was unseen, but it was felt by all, and it grew.

Very soon, it would burst up out of the ground.

*   *   *

Eirik and I clung to each other.

“What will be?” I whispered to him one night, as we lay in our bed, in the small room behind the longhouse. Our parents slept soundly, beyond the fire, but Eirik and I were full of fear and of wondering.

“Why do they not speak to each other?” Eirik whispered back.

It was true. Mother and Father were not speaking.

Tor strode around the village as if he were the chieftain, not Father. Some sneered at him as he passed, others took his hand in friendship, and so the village grew divided, and quiet, and brooded.

Eirik and I shivered and shook, and waited for something to happen, and we did not have long to wait.

*   *   *

One night, the violence that had been growing between Father and Tor erupted.

At mealtime, as we sat and silently chewed our food, the doors opened and there stood Tor.

I heard my father say, “Name him, and he’s always near.”

Heads hung, others lifted.

Words were muttered, as once more, Tor walked around the tables, and out into the center, by the fire.

He stood facing Father and then, without looking at us, his hand pointed in our direction.

“Those barn,” he said, “are mine. They are my seed, and mine to own. I will have them to me.”

Father stood.

Now all eyes were lifted, and all hands shook.

My father stood and walked around the high table, into the center of the great longhouse, and walked up to Tor, till their toes touched.

He said a single word to Tor, but no one knew what that word was, so quietly did he speak.

And then they were on each other.

I could not see who struck first, so fast it was, and it mattered not, because in a moment they were one beast, rolling in the dirt.

It would have been usual at such a fight for shouts to ring out, for voices to cry and for hands to hammer on the tabletops.

But not this time. This time there was silence, and the only sounds were the sobbing of our mother, and the grunts of the men grappling.

I felt for Eirik’s hand and he felt for mine, just as our father’s and our uncle’s hands felt for each other’s throats.

It didn’t take long.

As they rolled, I wondered why it was that our father, some years older than his brother, seemed the younger. His skin was younger, his back was straighter, his arms stronger.

And his hands.

He was astride Tor now. Like a horse. Even at the awful moment, I remember that I thought it looked as if he rode a horse.

But he didn’t, he rode a man, and as I fingered the hare at my throat, Father’s fingers closed around the throat of his brother, and squeezed.

They squeezed until the blood went from his fingers, so it looked like hands of bone, hands of a skeleton that tightened, and dug into Tor’s neck.

Tor’s eyes opened wide, his mouth opened wide.

His legs scrambled at the mud, but his arms were pinned to his sides by Father’s legs.

Tor’s heels ripped the earth of the floor like the furrows of the farmer’s field.

Then they stopped.

Nothing moved.

No one moved, or even breathed.

Then, slowly, finally, Father’s weight shifted, and his hands let go of his brother’s throat. He sat back, still astride the horse.

Tor’s eyes stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing.

They could not see now, so they did not see the tears that ran down his brother’s cheeks.