Embers of fire help us get through the cold winter

The next morning, Tora discovered that a boat was missing from the dock.

She squatted by the dock, picking up a few broken seashells washed up by the tide last night. When she looked up, she found that the spot where Tolmod was moored on the east side of the dock was empty.

An old fishing boat used to be moored there. There was a birch patch on the bottom, irregularly made, with a thin crack sticking out at the edge. Tolmod said, "It's still usable, it won't leak much." The boat rope was wrapped around the stake three times, in a way he figured out himself, wrapping it half a turn more than others, which Tora learned after a long time.

Now only an empty cable remains on that wooden stake, bobbing up and down on the water like a hand without anyone holding it.

Tora stood up and ran back to the longhouse.

Brody leaned against the fire pit, the burlap bandage on his forehead had been changed, and fresh blood seeped pale red from the edges. He was pressing the edge of the wound with his thumb, checking if it still hurt.

"Hiss—" The hand stopped.

"Uncle," she said, "where is Tolmode's ship?"

Brody's hand paused for a moment.

"We need it," he said.

Ragnar stood on the threshold and heard the name "Tormode." He knew it was the man who lived in the third room on the west side of the longhouse, who mended nets, had graying sideburns, and a half-missing tooth when he smiled—the same missing tooth as Eric, but not the same one.

He looked toward the dock.

The boat is indeed gone. The empty rope is still swaying gently on the water.

A soft weeping came from the inner room of the longhouse. Astrid had awoke; her mother was humming a lullaby about lambs and spring. The song, sung through the curtains and mingled with the crackling of the hearth fire, was the constant background noise in the longhouse.

At dusk, Eric towed the old boat, Tolmod's own six-oared fishing boat, out of the dock. The birch patch on the hull gleamed pale brown in the twilight, the water stains around the edges spreading out like tree rings.

The men gathered at the dock.

Everyone was silent. Eric stopped the boat on level ground, straightened up, and placed his hand on the gunwale. The edge of the gunwale, which Tolmode had been rubbing back and forth for thirty years, had been worn into a shallow, palm-shaped groove, just big enough for his thumb to sink in.

Haral walked over.

Two old oarsmen carried Tolmode behind him. He was already cold, and the crossbow wound in his chest was tightly wrapped in burlap and no longer visible. His face was smaller than when he was alive, his cheekbones were prominent, and the usual half-smile line at the corner of his mouth was still there.

Eric turned his head away, avoiding looking at the face.

He stepped into the cabin and, kneeling on one knee, cleared away the old fishing nets, ballast stones, and half-emptied cans of seawater from the bottom of the hold. He moved slowly, picking up each item by hand and handing it to the people below.

Tolmod was put into the cabin. Eric propped his head up a little, then a little, and finally took his old wool cloak from his waist and tucked it under his neck.

"Yours is thinner than mine," Eric said. "You'll have to make do."

He straightened up and jumped off the boat.

Changing clothes was a matter for the elders. The two old oarsmen untied the leather armor Tolmode had worn when he went to war—the edges of the hole in the chest had hardened to a dark brown, the arrow shafts had been pulled out, but the leather armor could not be removed. They used bone knives to cut the seams of the shoulder straps, removed the leather armor in one piece, and then dressed him in a long woolen coat.

He kept his gray-blue long coat at the bottom of a trunk, a coat he only wore when he wasn't at sea. It was washed clean. The coat had been pressed for so long that the creases were too deep to iron out, and there were still a few crooked lines on his body.

His battle axe lay on his right side—his first battle axe from his youth. Brody tucked it into the side of his palm, pried open his stiff fingers, gathered them around the handle, and then closed them again.

He also put down the bone knife, placing it out of his reach.

Eric led a horse from outside the dock.

It was Brody's old draft horse, fourteen years old, its coat a mix of gray and white, with an old scar on its back worn smooth by the saddle. It had carried cargo and pulled plows, but had never been to the battlefield. It didn't know what it was going to do today, it just stood quietly in the twilight, its head bowed, sniffing the dried water stain on the edge of the ship's gunwale.

Brody squatted down in front of it.

He placed his palm on its forehead for a very long time. The old horse blinked, its long eyelashes brushing against his knuckles. He pressed his forehead against its brow, closed his eyes, and it seemed like an eternity had passed.

Then he stood up and brought the axe down.

Like a plowshare cutting through frozen soil during spring plowing. The old horse's front legs buckled, but its hind legs remained in place for a moment, as if considering whether to kneel down as well—then it fell to its side, its eyes still open, its pupils slowly dilating, reflecting the first bright star in the leaden gray sky.

Ragnar stood at the edge of the crowd, Tora holding his hand tightly. He felt no pain, only staring at the horse. As it fell, its eyes remained fixed on the direction of the ship, on the old vessel, on the irregular birch patch on its hull.

"Is Ma coming too?" he asked.

Tora didn't answer. She pressed his head into the crook of her shoulder, preventing him from looking.

He could smell the lavender from his mother's house on his sister's fur coat, mixed with the saltiness of the seawater at the dock, and the fresh dirt she had picked up while running.

The horse's hooves stopped moving.

noon.

The sun hung directly south of the fjord, at its brightest hour. The Fujoldra family slowly made their way up the slope, the men carrying ropes, the women holding folded fabrics, and the children following behind their fathers and brothers, their footsteps swallowed and then released by the shadows of the adults.

Shallow pits have been dug at the edge of the high ground.

The pit wasn't deep, only up to an adult's waist, just enough for the six-oared fishing boat to sink. The bottom was paved with round stones brought from the dock. Eric carefully placed them in one by one by hand. When he finished and straightened up, sweat streamed down his forehead, tracing the lines of his wound.

The boat was towed down the ramp.

Three ropes, twenty hands. The hull scraped against the freshly turned black soil, leaving two parallel, deep drag marks. It was slowly lowered into the pit, bow facing west—towards the setting sun, towards the sea beyond the fjord where he had rowed his entire life.

The men stepped forward one by one. Eric placed his throwing axe into the cabin. The blade rested on Tolmod's right side, next to the old battle axe.

Then it's the others.

Some dropped a flint, others a broken rope. Some simply rested their hands on the gunwale for a moment, then stepped back. No last words, no eulogy. Thirty years of sailing together, all that needed to be said had already been said in the storms.

Harald planted a broken oar into the soil at the bow of the boat—Tormode's oar.

The first shovel of soil was shoveled by Haral.

The shovel cut into the fresh soil piled up at the edge of the pit, making a dry, rustling sound. He tossed the soil onto the bottom of the boat, where it fell with a "plop."

The second shovel, the third shovel.

The men took the shovels. The women took the shovels too. There weren't enough iron shovels, so some used wooden ones, and some used their bare hands. The soil fell onto the bottom of the boat, onto the gunwales, and onto the sides of the horse carcass.

It landed on the linen cloth on Tolmod's chest.

Tora was allowed to shovel a spadeful. She shoveled a shallow layer of soil, very lightly, afraid that it would wake the people in the cabin if she shoveled too much.

The soil landed on the horse's back, raising a small cloud of dust.

Ragnar stood beside his sister, watching the old gray ship gradually being covered by the brown, damp spring soil.

First the hull, then the gunwale. Next came the birch patch on the side of the boat—the last grain of soil was stuffed into the cracks where the patch's edge had curled up, and it was leveled.

As dusk crept in from the horizon, the mound took shape. The men put down their shovels and stepped back a few paces.

Ragnar remained standing in the same spot.

He looked down and took something out of the leather pocket at his waist.

It was a gift from Tolmode. Last autumn, by the dock, the old oarsman squatted down and placed this smoothed seashell in his hand: "This can skip seven stones."

He didn't manage to catch it. The seashell remained in his pocket, its edges polished smooth from countless touches.

He squatted down and pressed the seashell into the fresh soil at the edge of the mound.

Only half of it was visible, grayish-white, like a small piece of snow that hadn't completely melted in the twilight.

He stood up without turning around.

The mound wasn't high, only about half a person's height. But from then on, a new mark appeared on the Fuyoldra family's map. Its shape resembled an overturned boat.

The longhouse door was ajar, letting in the firelight.

Olaf stood by the doorway. It was the seventh day postpartum, and she was stepping out of her room for the first time. She leaned against the doorframe, her fingers gripping the wooden frame, her face still somewhat pale.

She held Astrid in her arms.

The baby was wrapped in an old wool shawl, with only his rosy, sleeping face showing.

Tora skipped and hopped over there.

She didn't rush into her mother's arms as she used to—her sister was there, and her mother's embrace was already occupied. She stood beside her mother, looking down at her sister's face.

"She's not awake," Tora said.

"Hmm." Olaf's voice was soft. "The funeral procession is too far away for her to hear."

Tora remained silent for a moment.

"Tolmod," she said, "his ship was buried."

"Um."

"How will he go to sea in the future?"

Olaf didn't answer immediately. She pulled Tora closer to her, her gaze passing over her daughter's head and landing on the newly risen mound in the twilight.

"He doesn't need to go out to sea anymore," Olaf said. "He's spent his whole life at sea. Now it's time for him to come ashore."

Tora lowered his head.

Ragnar looked at her younger sister in her mother's arms, at the little hand clutching the stone, the edge of the stone pressing a faint red mark into her palm.

He looked at it for a while, then turned to look at the hillside.

As dusk fell, the outlines of the new graves merged with those of the old ones. Those were his grandfather, his grandfather's brothers, and his grandfather's father's brothers. He had never met them. He only knew that beneath those mounds lay boats, axes, and horses buried with him.

Their names are now just mounds of earth.

Tora lifted her face from her mother's shoulder and looked in the direction he was looking.

"Ragnall," she said, "what are you looking at?"

He was silent for a while.

"That hill," he said.

Which one?

"The new one."

Tora didn't ask any more questions.

She walked over and stood beside her brother, shoulder to shoulder, just like they had done on many polar night mornings when they waited for the sun together.

In the longhouse, Mother began to hum the lullaby about lambs and spring.

My younger sister is still asleep.

On the hillside, the broken oars of the new grave trembled gently in the evening breeze.

The sea is in the distance.

The tide is rising.