Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

Know this, then. I was content, even before Nara came. I care for my Steading, which was my father’s before raiders sent him to the God, ten years past. I care for my first three wives, and my two brothers, and my oldest son, who works beside me in the fields. I care for my littles, even those too small to work.

I’ve seen you Heralds scowl. You think Holderkin men care only for themselves. Yet I know well enough the gifts the God has granted me, and I give thanks for them.

Just as I give thanks for the winter day last year, when I visited my cousin Jeth to trade a sure-footed plow horse for some wool. As I followed Jeth into his hall, I heard a high, sweet song, above the crackle of the fire and the whir of the spinning wheel.

Birdsong, I thought—but the voice was human, a girl’s voice. I looked across the room and saw her, bent over the spinning wheel, dark hair hiding her face. She sang of a time when the Goddess freely wandered the fields, feet bare and hair unbound, before she met the God. A woman’s hymn; men do not sing it. Yet hearing her, something inside me woke, and grew restless, and yearned to answer the song. My fields and hall seemed suddenly small, simply because her voice wasn’t in them.

You say such things are known, in your ballads and your lives. But they are not known here.

The girl looked up, and her hair fell back, revealing dark eyes and pale skin. She looked at me without shame, and I met her over-bold gaze. She fell silent then, her song unfinished, and without warning she smiled.

I smiled back. Her face grew red, and she leaned back over her spinning.

I knew, then, that I could not leave without her. I turned to my cousin.

“Your daughter,” I said, for this had to be one of his daughters. “Do you intend to arrange a marriage for her soon?”

Nara’s Voice

You ask for our story. I do not know how to tell a story. I only know that until I came to Garen’s Steading, I was not content.

I had my work, in my father’s home: endless spinning, and weaving, and cooking, and caring for littles. The work needed doing; I understood that. I understand it still. Is it different in the north? Here, we know that every person is sacred in the eyes of the Goddess, put in the place we are put, given the work we are given, because that work matters, and is meant for us.

Yet knowing this, I still longed to walk the barren ridges, to look out over the narrow valleys, to feel the wind tangling my hair. When I was younger, I’d spent my days outside on sheep watch, and been happy; but that was long ago, before I was replaced by littles too young for other tasks. By the time Garen came, my days were mostly spent indoors, with my mother and my sisters and the other wives of the Steading.

But the Goddess never gives us a task without also giving us what we need to complete it. And what She gave me was song.

I sang as I worked, hymns and teaching songs, songs no one could find improper. The work went better when I sang. The walls and roof felt less near, the wind and sun less far. I was fortunate; my father’s firstwife welcomed my songs, perhaps because the littles also worked better when I sang.

Then a stranger entered my father’s hall and met my improper gaze. And—I do not know how to say this. When I looked into his gray eyes, I saw open fields and the spaces between clouds. For the first time, I thought maybe marriage—the marriage I knew my father must arrange, soon or late—might be more than just another set of walls.

Garen’s Voice

Of course I left without her, that day. There was the dowry to negotiate, and the priest to consult, and the ceremony to arrange. But at last we knelt together, beneath the open sky, the men and the women of our households around us. It was one of those rare spring days, when the sky is so blue you fear it will break in two, exposing the first level of Heaven above.

But I forget—you don’t believe in Heaven, only in endless Havens and countless gods, with none to tell which is true.

The priest chanted the ritual prayers. We gave the ritual responses, and if my attention was more on the curve of Nara’s neck and the sun on her bound hair than on my own words, still I meant those words.

At last the priest asked for our vows. “Do you, Garen Aranson, vow to serve the God and honor the Goddess? To defend your Steading and your fields, your brothers and sons, your daughters and wives?”

“I do so vow.”

“And you, Nara Jethsdaughter. Do you vow to serve the God and honor the Goddess, and to obey your husband and your elder wives in all things?”

Nara smiled. “I do so vow.”

The priest drew us to our feet. I looked into Nara’s dark eyes; they seemed as large as all the sky. I could have gazed at her forever, but then she bowed, as the ceremony demanded, and stepped back to join the women of my household, showing she accepted her place as one underwife among many.