Embers of fire help us get through the cold winter

Three more sunrises and sunsets passed, and Harald said it was time to go to the fields.

At dawn, while the mist still lingered on the fjord's surface, the family had already gathered outside the longhouse. The elderly and very young children remained inside; the women came, then the men, and the teenagers followed behind their fathers and brothers, their faces etched with barely suppressed excitement. Tora stood at the edge of the crowd, clutching her small wooden sword, as if preparing for battle.

Harald removed something from a nail on a pillar of the longhouse. It was a branch about an arm's length long, with a few withered leaves still clinging to the top—a beech branch broken off from the sacred grove of Frey during last year's sacrifice, which had hung under the roof all winter, its bark now a pale silver. He ran his thumb across the branch, his rough palm rubbing against the smooth wood, making a soft rustling sound.

Then he turned and walked towards the ridge of the field.

People followed behind him. The mist dispersed with each step, then quickly closed up behind him again.

Harald stopped at the end of the ridge. Before him lay the first ridge of black soil, cut by the plow and soaked with snowmelt. He knelt down and planted the beech branch deep into the soil, until his entire arm was submerged.

He crouched there, one hand gripping the thin, pale silver branch. Mist drifted past his knees. The sun had not yet risen above the ridge, and the light was greyish-white, casting his shadow as a short, crouching outline along the edge of the field.

Tora looked at her father's back, not understanding what he was doing. Ragnar looked at the branch. It stood alone in the middle of the empty, newly thawed field.

Then Harald stood up, turned, and walked back into the crowd. He nodded toward the warehouse.

Uncle Brody led several men into the warehouse, and when they came out, they were carrying a clay jar on their shoulders. It was a huge jar—dark brown, almost up to a grown man's waist, its rim worn smooth as bone by generations of use. They carried it to the edge of the field and carefully placed it on a flat stone slab.

Olaf stepped forward.

Her movements were much slower than in winter, and the curve of her belly made her fur coat look very full. She squatted down in front of the earthenware jar, first supporting her knee with her right hand, then placing her left hand on her side, and then slowly, like a boat docking, lowering herself. Tora subconsciously took a step forward, then stopped.

Olaf reached his hand into the bottom of the tank.

The dry, grayish-brown seeds slipped through her fingers, then she scooped them up, and they slipped away again. She closed her eyes, as if listening to something. Then she opened her eyes, scooped a handful from the jar, and held it up to her eyes.

"This is barley."

As she looked at the seeds, she quietly explained them to her children beside her.

"The seeds we switched to last year have heavy ears and plump grains. If the autumn harvest is good, we'll keep half for ourselves, half to feed the cattle, and the rest to exchange for the Hai Shu family across the fjord—their harvest was poor last year, and they probably won't even have enough to grow grain this year."

She poured the handful of barley into the leather bag the woman behind her handed her. The barley grains fell onto the leather with a dry, full sound.

"This is the most durable." She picked up another handful, lighter in color and with finer, longer grains. "Oats. They can grow in cold or wet conditions. People eat them, and horses eat them too. Last winter, the old mare in the stable survived thanks to three extra bags of these we left after the fall."

She poured the oats into the leather bag as well. Then came the third handful.

This handful of seeds was very dark, almost blackish-brown, with long, thin grains and slightly wrinkled edges. She held the handful of seeds and weighed them in her palm.

"rye."

She paused.

"Only two families in the fjord grow this. It's not because it's hard to grow—it's actually the easiest to grow. It can grow in sandy soil, barren soil, and even soil that barley doesn't like to grow in. It's because it's planted at the wrong time. It's planted in spring and harvested in autumn, and it has to stay in the ground for the whole summer. In summer, you have to weed, chase away birds, and protect yourself from wild boars. Too much rain can cause root rot, and too little rain can cause insufficient sap filling."

She poured the rye into the third leather bag.

"But its bread is black, and it smells better than barley bread when baked, and it keeps longer." She looked at the long, thin, dark seeds. "If things go well this summer, we can still eat black bread when the polar night comes again."

Ragnar looked at the three leather pouches. Barley was the most abundant, followed by oats, and rye the least. His mother didn't explain why—she was simply stating a fact, like stating the ebb and flow of the tides.

Olaf stood up, supporting herself on her knees. As she straightened her back, she became once again the woman who had overseen the spinning and weaving throughout the winter. She glanced around at the silent crowd at the edge of the field.

"Plant the beans later, after the ground has warmed up a bit more. The cabbage, onion, and leek seedlings are in the greenhouse behind the house; we'll move them out after this frost has completely passed."

She patted the dust off her hands.

Uncle Brody shouldered the first bag of seeds and stepped into the already plowed furrow. He bent down, starting from the first furrow, and spread his fingers to let the wheat grains fall evenly through them. Behind him, the woman gently covered the furrow with a wooden rake, burying the brown grains in the damp, awakening black mud.

Tora squatted by the field, watching intently. She saw her uncle's hands—those hands that held oars, wielded axes, and furled sails in the storm—now, with extraordinary tenderness, feeding seeds one by one into the soil. His movements were slow; with each shovel, his wrist drew a uniform arc in the air.

Ragnar was watching too. He watched the tiny dust particles kicked up as the wheat grains fell into the soil, and the fine comb marks left on the surface of the ridges after the wooden rake had leveled the soil.

Harald stood at the edge of the field, watching the men's backs as they bent over to sow seeds. The sun had risen directly south of the fjord, casting a pale golden glow on his short, stiff stubble. His hand rested on the beech branch stuck in the field, and remained there.

Tora suddenly tugged at Ragnall's sleeve and asked in a low voice, "That stick...did Frey receive it?"

Ragnar didn't know how to answer. He looked at the pale silver branch standing alone in the middle of the field beside his father. A breeze blew from the mouth of the fjord, and the few withered leaves at the top of the branch trembled slightly.

He remembered the way his father squatted down when he planted the tree branch—like placing something on someone else's doorstep one morning and then turning away.

"You'll receive it," he said.

He didn't know what he was saying. But Tora nodded, as if he believed her.

The men sowed seeds along the furrows, the black soil compacted under their feet and then loosened again by wooden rakes. The women followed behind, picking up the newly turned stones from the field and putting them into the leather pouches at their waists. They walked to the edge of the field and dumped them on the pile of stones in the shallow ditch.

Olaf sat on the fur coat by the field, her hand on her belly, watching the people working in the furrows. Her lips moved slightly, but no sound came out, as if she were silently reciting something—perhaps the name of each furrow, or perhaps her favorite song, a song about lambs and spring.

By evening, the wheat planting was finished.

Uncle Brody put down his empty leather bag and wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. His back was soaked, and his sweater clung to his shoulders, revealing the contours of his muscles. He looked at the field that had just been sown and suddenly grinned.

"Wait for forty days and nights," he said, "and you'll see green."

Harald loosened his grip on the beech branch.

Dusk crept in from the horizon, turning the newly turned earth a dark red. The tree branch stuck in the field was just a blurry, slender shadow in the fading light.

Tora had fallen asleep nestled against her mother's legs, her little hand still clutching her wooden sword. Ragnar was awake. He gazed at the black soil where the seeds had just been planted, imagining how, forty days and nights later, those tiny, green shoots would emerge from the earth.

He knew the wheat seedlings would sprout. Just as he knew the sun would rise again from behind the ridge tomorrow, climb a little higher, and linger a little longer.

The wind blows from the mouth of the fjord. At the top of a tree branch in the field, a withered leaf, dry all winter, trembles gently, as if in response to something.

Inside the longhouse, Mother began to hum a lullaby. Father sat by the hearth, carefully polishing his battle axe, which he wouldn't use tomorrow, or the day after, but would use someday.

Ragnar closed his eyes.

In the darkness, he saw countless tiny grains of wheat preparing deep in the soil. They sucked up the snowmelt, jostled each other, and in places unseen, pushed out the first thin white root.