Landfall: Book III in the Book of Bera Trilogy

CONTENTS Cover By the Same Author Title Dedication Special Thanks Contents Author’s Note Hiraeth 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Acknowledgements A Note on the Author Supporters Copyright 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR
 
 Sea Paths: Book I of the Book of Bera Trilogy
 Obsidian: Book II of the Book of Bera Trilogy
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Women are great but this book is dedicated to the male of the species, as the skern might say. There always have been good men, and I’ve loved a few of them. You know who you are.
 
 
 
 
 
 With special thanks to Rory Bremner for his generous support of this book.
 
 CONTENTS
 By the Same Author
 Dedication
 Special Thanks
 Author’s Note
 Hiraeth
 
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10
 11
 12
 13
 14
 15
 16
 17
 18
 19
 20
 21
 22
 23
 24
 25
 26
 27
 28
 29
 30
 31
 32
 
 Acknowledgements
 A Note on the Author
 Supporters
 Copyright
 
 Author’s Note
 Some readers of Obsidian, Book II of the trilogy, requested an explanation of skern and Drorgher, so here is a brief glossary of terms adapted from Norse mythology.
 Skern is my term for fylgja, literally translated as ‘follower’. It’s a form of twin spirit, and in some of the sagas it takes the form of an animal, which can reflect the character of its human twin. You’ll have your own idea of Bera’s skern but the word can also mean ‘afterbirth’, which gave me the idea of them cleaving in the womb.
 Valla is Völva in Icelandic, which is a witch or seer. They can sometimes read Fate, but I gave Bera greater purpose.
 Drorgher is draugr, a revenant. Only careful burial rites keep the walking dead away, which is true of many cultures. The various forms of prevention in the books are all taken from real practices, from knocking a hole in the wall and taking out the corpse feet first, to filling its mouth with a stone so that it cannot bite its way free of the shroud.
 My debt to Celtic and Norse mythology, to ancient sites and to the Icelandic sagas is clear. Weaving it all together is the warp and weft of fiction.
 
 HIRAETH
 
 
 
 Hiraeth is a Welsh word for an emotion that has no direct translation because it’s so personal. Always poignant, it’s to do with homesickness, or grieving for something that may never have been known. The word tugs at a yearning within me that I cannot name. It’s certainly to do with loss and never belonging; it’s a call from deep time, the long dead and the sadness of being exiled from a home I have never found.
 
 1
 Hefnir was dead.
 Bera told Heggi to keep heading out to sea and went up to the bow. She was weary to the marrow of her bones and had no more to give a man who refused his skern.
 Beneath the hull of her beloved boat, sea creatures were returning to the empty sea; shimmering and flicking quicksilver flashes that should have made her glad and proud. Instead, she scried the fear inside herself that was summoning her from beyond the sea rim, almost hearing a command bound in stone…
 ‘Papa’s alive!’ Heggi shouted. ‘He made a noise!’
 Bera comforted him by checking. Her husband’s face was waxen and his eyes crusted with oozing poison and death, and yet… a breath rattled like a chain underwater and the hope of healing made her own chest ring. She raised Hefnir’s head and put a spoon of water at his cracked lips. It dribbled down into his beard. Still deep in the poisonous world of wolfsbane but not yet in the dark.
 ‘Lash the tiller, Heggi, and come and help.’
 ‘The wind’s dropped.’ Heggi kneeled beside her. ‘Will Papa live?’
 ‘He’s fighting and he’s strong.’
 ‘What can I do?’
 ‘Stay with him, talk to him. Give him something to live for.’
 ‘He doesn’t care about us.’
 ‘He might, when he wakes.’
 He won’t. Her skern lay on the deck like a puddle. The misery around Hefnir is of his own making.
 Despising her husband gave Bera energy, and a Valla’s duty was to heal. She hoped Hefnir’s gaze was inwards, to repair his faithless heart. He also needed food. She found some smoked meat, which she chewed, rolled into a ball and then tried to push into his mouth. There was no getting past his teeth, so she threw it for the gulls.
 He had not taken another breath.
 ‘His eyes make me feel sick,’ said Heggi.
 Bera spat on a cloth and wiped them. ‘Come on, Hefnir, you are aboard the Raven. This boat is more powerful than we knew.’
 ‘He can’t hear you.’
 ‘Hearing is the last sense to go.’ Or so Sigrid had said when Bera’s mother lay dying.
 ‘I’m here, Papa,’ Heggi tried.
 Bera was holding her breath, as if the gasp of needing air would force it into his lungs. Hefnir, whose wide-ranging life across distant seas had narrowed to this boat deck, was choosing death. Then it came, the shuddering of bones that loosened the chains that bound him to this earth.
 ‘It must hurt, though,’ Heggi whispered.
 He took his father’s hand and gasped. On the underside of his wrist was a rough black tattoo, like a strange wheel with three turning spirals.
 ‘The Serpent King had this tattoo,’ Heggi said.
 ‘Don’t touch it!’
 He dropped the hand. ‘I wasn’t going to.’
 ‘I would rather touch a snake. In Iraland, believers in Brid have to earn it. Hefnir did but Egill did not.’
 ‘What did they have to do?’
 ‘I hope we never know, Heggi.’
 ‘What is