Midnight Eclipse (Paranormal Viking Romance, Completed)

Chapter 4: Blackberry Bush

Greenland, early 15th Century

How can a place be so beautiful and yet so dangerous? I can't help but wonder this as I leave my family's home before anyone else starts to stir. The whole world bathes in lavender light. The sky, the sea, and the mountains shine in the magical light. The sun has already risen because it never set. It has hovered high in the sky for weeks now.

Having lived here all my life, I should be used to the bright light of summer. But yet, every year the constant illumination takes me by surprise. It brings with it long nights of awakedness, lost in dark thoughts. And those thoughts are even worse this year.

I see Gudrun leave the hall every night with my father, being led into their marital bed. I stuff my ears with white moss and cover my head with a bearskin pelt to not hear a sound. But nothing can keep my imagination from running wild.

The brisk air momentarily washes those thoughts away. I climb high on a cliff, standing atop and letting the salty winds cleanse my mind. Out here, I can think. Out here, I can briefly escape into hope. I can conjure elaborate ideas where I take Gudrun's hand and we escape on a longship into the night.

But longships need rowers and rowers need rations. Rations around here are sparse and all are controlled by the chief of the village. My father. Who is steadfast in his belief that we cannot leave. He believes we can ride this string of endless winters out.

My elaborate ideas are nothing but sagas. I know that. But that doesn't stop me from escaping into them. When life is nothing but hardship and disappointment, living in a saga sounds like a better option.

A movement down by the shoreline catches my attention. Perhaps an animal? Instinctually I reach for my bow, putting an arrow on the string. In these lands, you need to strike whenever you can, so I always carry my bow on my back and a dagger in my belt. Swords are reserved for combat and there's luckily little of those these days. The skrälings would probably overpower us anyway.

I shudder as I think of the last battle. My father forced me to fight, reasoning that a boy who'd slayed a bear could slay a man. He was wrong. I hid in a crevasse as my father and his men attacked a group of canoe-faring skrälings, venturing too close to the shorelines he considered ours. Once the battle was over, seal-skin-clad bodies floated in the waters.

Nowadays, the skrälings stay away from us. Perhaps they have wisely moved to warmer shores, as their canoes quickly cut through the harshest waves. They move as elegantly and swiftly as the seals they hunt. And they fight as relentlessly as the huge walruses with their jagged tusks.

I suggested to my father that we should hunt for seals and walrus as well, but he only shook his head. "We're not skrälings," he said. "We don't eat what they eat. We're proud Norsemen. If we take up their ways then what is the difference between them and us?"

Perhaps that their children don't die? But I didn't say that, as I know my father wouldn't listen. His disdain toward the skrälings is strong, as two of his brothers were clubbed to death for fishing too close to a skräling campsite. Neither of them was little more than a kid. I've only heard the story from my mother, as it happened long before I was born.

Sliding down the side of the cliff, I discover the source of the movement. With a sigh, I put down my bow, crouching down in the brush to not disturb.

I would recognize that unruly mop of hair anywhere, tangled and knotted like the brambles right below the mountains.

Ivar.

My brother must have snuck out right after me, as he still snoozed away--or at least pretended to--as I left.