Seven Endless Forests - April Genevieve Tucholke Page 0,2
at the second door, and knocked.
The door opened slowly. “Is it over?”
I nodded, and my sister grabbed me. Her face pressed into my shoulder, and her fingers clenched my tunic at the waist, squeezing the cloth into her fists.
TWO
Aslaug used to say that all great tales begin with a journey and a quest.
She would lower her voice and whisper stories of Vorseland and the world beyond our steading. She told me of the Jade Fells, a wild, secretive people who lived in the Skal Mountains. They slept during the day and roamed the night like wolves, drinking blood and eating the hearts of their dead.
She told me of the wolf-priests of Frem and the Relic Hunters of Finnmark and the hedge-fighters and Butcher Bards of Elshland.
She told me of the evil Pig Witches, of the mysterious Drakes, of the Bone Women and the Whistlers and the Gothi nuns.
Each winter, her rich voice blended with the sound of the crackling wood in the hearth fire as she recounted the tragedy of the Child Wizards and the Moss Witch Massacre of the Western Hills.
She told me the stories of the Thirteen Crones—a fellowship of cunning female jarls who ruled Vorseland when Aslaug’s grandmother was a child.
She told me all the tales, both ancient and modern. She told me of the first Witch War, and the second, which was called the Salt and Marsh War. She told me how, on a warm summer night during a rainstorm, the Cut-Queen and her army of Pig Witches attacked the Sea Witches of the Merrows in a great battle of magic and blood. The Salt and Marsh Witch War raged across Vorseland for years. The Cut-Queen would die in battle, and peace would return for a handful of seasons, but there was always another resurrection, always another battle.
Finally, after the Battle of the Hawk and Hummingbird, the green-cloaked Sea Witches defeated the brown-cloaked Cut-Queen and her followers. They captured the queen, and this time the Sea Witches beheaded her, boiled her body down to the bone, and crushed her bones into dust. She did not rise again.
Juniper, the Sea Witch queen, took her women back to the famous Scorch Trees in the Merrows, and the second Vorse Witch War came to an end.
I would press my cheek to Aslaug’s neck as she spoke and breathe in the smell of leather and wool and straw. I would tell her that I wanted to be a Sea Witch like Juniper when I grew older. I would tell her that I wanted to fight wolf-priests and go on quests and find adventure and cross an Endless Forest. I would tell her I wanted to win a jarldom, like one of the Thirteen Crones.
“You can do anything you set your mind to, little Torvi,” she’d say. Unlike my mother, Aslaug believed I was capable of great things.
Her stories had thrilled me as a child, made my blood sing. I would shiver, despite being near the fire, and Aslaug would wrap me in her strong arms and tell me of the Boneless Mercies—women who had roamed Vorseland for centuries, killing the old and the sick and then finally dying themselves, forgotten, poor, and alone. On and on and on, until a young Boneless Mercy named Frey pursued glory and found a monster.
Bards in Great Halls everywhere sang of Frey and her companions—Aslaug said she knew a dozen or so Frey songs, and there were at least a dozen more.
My favorite stories were always about Frey. Her fight with the last Vorseland giant Logafell in a cave under the Skal Mountains. Her cunning and bravery during the second Witch War. Her travels with the Aradia Witches through the Sand Sea. Her time roaming the Green Wild Forest with Indigo and the Quicks.
“Will there ever be another Vorse hero like Frey?” I’d ask Aslaug, not for the first time.
“Yes,” she’d whisper. “When we need her, she will come.”
* * *
Morgunn and I sat on a thick wool rug in the main room of the Hall, near the central hearth. We were eating a simple supper of bread and aged cheese.
Outside, a spring thunderstorm howled unhindered across our stretch of green Ranger Hills.
I used my thumb to pick up crumbs from my wooden plate, my elbow touching my sister’s. The two of us were alone on a thousand-acre farm. We hadn’t seen another living soul in four weeks.
I hadn’t been to Trow since the snow sickness, though it was only ten miles to the