Embers of fire help us get through the cold winter

Three days later, at dawn, before the light had even reached the ridge on the east side of the fjord, the open space outside the longhouse was already filled with people.

When Ragnar was pulled from the straw mat by Tora, his mother was wiping her arms with a cloth soaked in snow water. The cold water caused her skin to flush a fine red, and she rubbed hard, as if trying to scrub away all the sluggishness accumulated throughout the winter. After wiping her arms, she handed the cloth to Harald.

The father took it, with the same movement and the same force. Water droplets rolled down the muscle lines of his forearm, dripping onto the muddy ground and forming dark dots the size of fingernails.

He wasn't wearing armor. The chainmail that had hung on the pillar, its edges worn and revealing a dull metallic sheen, remained quietly in its place today. He wore only a dark brown, belted wool coat, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, revealing his strong arms, honed by years of wielding oars, swords, and axes.

Outside the door, two bulls were already yoked.

These are the two most valuable livestock belonging to the Fuyoldra family. They are brownish-gray with high-set shoulders and brassy nose rings. They stand quietly, their breath heavier and more forceful than a human's, their hooves impatiently pawing the ground, digging black soil from the snow.

Harald walked up to the cow and squatted down.

He pulled a small leather pouch from his pocket, untied the rope, and poured out a little dark red powder into his palm—it was the blood of the sacrificial animal from last autumn's festival, mixed with the first handful of fresh soil of the year, dried, crushed, and stored throughout the winter. He dipped his thumb in it and drew two short arcs on his forehead, one pointing upwards and the other downwards, Frey's "Horn of Abundance."

Then he applied the same powder to the foreheads of both cows.

No one spoke. Even Tora stood quietly at the edge of the circle. She looked at the two red marks her father's fingers had left on the cow's rough hide, her lips pressed tightly together.

Haral stood up.

He gripped the handle of the heavy wheeled plow, the muscles in his arms bulging with effort, then he turned and glanced at the silent crowd behind him—his wife, his children, his people, his warriors.

"The land does not remember its oath."

His voice wasn't loud, but in the stagnant, cold morning air, every word sounded like a wedge driven into frozen soil.

"I only remember the plow blade."

The whip tip drew an arc in the air, but did not strike the ox's back; instead, it made a crisp "snap."

Both cows took a step forward simultaneously. Muscles rolled beneath their fur, the ropes of the yoke snapped taut, and the wooden frame creaked and groaned—

The plow blade cuts into the soil.

The frozen soil had not yet thawed completely; three inches below the surface remained a hard mixture of ice crystals and soil particles. As the plow passed over it, the black clods of soil, like thick fur forcibly torn apart, curled up at the edges, revealing a damp, dark red new layer mixed with last year's withered grass roots.

Harald pressed all his weight onto the plow handle.

The first furrow was crooked and uneven, like the first ink mark a child makes when learning to write. But no one laughed. Uncle Brody followed closely behind, wielding his pickaxe to break up the large clods of earth that hadn't been cut through. The women bent down to pick up the stones they'd turned over in the soil—some as big as fists, some as small as thumbs—throwing them into their leather pouches at their waists, and after a few steps, dumping them on the clearing at the edge of the field.

Tora picked up a rock that was bigger than her own head.

Her face flushed red, her cheeks bulging taut, and she strained to lift the stone from its base, her knees bent at a deep bend. The stone pressed against her leather coat, creating a deep crease. She took three steps, then stumbled on the fourth, the edge of the stone scraping against her collarbone, the pain bringing tears to her eyes, but she didn't let go.

No one helped her.

This is the rule. Clearing the ground is the children's job, and it has been like this since the great-grandfather's generation. Who can lift the stone, who can't, who cries out halfway, and who holds back their tears—these are all things that are observed and remembered.

Tora threw the stone into the pile of stones by the field.

She straightened up, panting, looked down at the reddening skin on her collarbone, pressed it with her finger, and grimaced. Then she turned and walked towards the next rock.

Ragnar squatted beside a haystack at the edge of the field.

He wasn't assigned any work—he was too young; the clearing ground complained he couldn't lift stones, the sowing ground complained his hands were too unsteady. His mother settled him here with the pregnant ewes and newborn lambs, next to two large pots resting on the embers.

A pot of thick porridge simmers, oats mixed with chopped dried meat, the fat forming golden rings on the surface before melting away with the steam.

In another pot, seawater was steaming slightly. My mother used a long wooden tong to immerse bundles of brown, slippery seaweed covered in fine sand into the hot water. After scalding them for a few moments, she would take them out, drain them, and place them in a wicker basket beside her. The seaweed smelled strange after being scalded and softened; it was fishy, ​​salty, and pungent, like seawater concentrated dozens of times.

Ragnar looked at the pot of hot water.

The mother repeated the motion of immersing and scooping the seaweed in. The wicker basket was almost full, and behind her, next to the haystack, were piles of more blanched and cooled seaweed, waiting to be buried in the newly turned soil.

"What are you doing?"

The mother didn't answer immediately. She added another bundle of seaweed to the pot, watching the brown leaves slowly unfurl in the hot water, tiny white foam seeping from their edges.

"Seaweed contains salt," she said, "and things that don't exist in the soil."

She paused, then used tongs to stir the bottom of the pot.

"The fjord washes the gifts ashore. We pick them up and bury them back. Next year they'll become grains of wheat."

Ragnar looked down at the pile of seaweed softened by the scalding in the wicker basket. Salty. Soil that eats salty things will grow non-salty things. He didn't know where this idea came from, but it felt natural, as if someone had said something similar to him a long time ago.

Ragnar helped his mother pack the blanched seaweed into a basket, one bundle at a time.

Olaf watched him. His son was working very carefully, arranging each bundle neatly and facing the same direction, like a fleet of ships docked in port.

"You always put things like this," she said.

Ragnar tilted his head, not understanding.

"Tora can just throw them in," Olaf said, pointing to where his daughter was holding the stones. "You can't do it. You have to make them all face the same way."

Ragnar looked down at the neatly arranged seaweed in the basket.

"That way," he said, "when you need it, you can find it right away."

The mother nodded without speaking, and gently placed her palm on her noticeably protruding belly.

There is another life there, growing stubbornly alongside the wheat grains in this sowing season.

Under the slanting sunlight from the south, the temperature was gradually rising, and the snow line was receding from the edge of the field by a hand's breadth. More than a dozen furrows had been dug, like giant wooden combs brushing across the black earth. Tora had finished clearing her assigned plot of land and was now kneeling beside a pile of stones, rearranging a few loose stones with her hands.

Uncle Brody put down his pickaxe, walked to the edge of the field, grabbed a ceramic cup, and poured half a cup of cold water. He wiped the sweat from his face, and the old scar on his forehead turned a pale red after his hard work.

"The fishing grounds to the south," he said in a low voice to Harald, who was inspecting the plowshare, "were spotted by Bloodhawks yesterday."

Harald didn't look up. He ran his thumb along the edge of the plow blade, picking up a bit of sticky black mud, and rubbed it off on his trouser leg.

"Just something I saw."

“It’s not just about seeing,” Brody said in an even lower voice. “They’ve set up their internet over there.”

Harald's hand paused for a moment. Then he planted the plowshare in the ground, stood up, and looked south.

The sun has passed its highest point and is beginning to slowly sink.

The light of early spring is incredibly precious. After plowing the last furrow, the sun had already retreated to its familiar horizon.

The men unharnessed the oxen and led them back to the pen. The women washed their arms and faces with the remaining warm seawater, mud dripping from their fingertips into the earth. Tora was so sleepy she could barely keep her eyes open, but she forced herself to sit on the threshold, clutching her wooden sword, watching her father and several elders walk toward the field.

There is a shallow ditch there.

Last autumn, the men dug a ditch, shovel by shovel, along the edge of the land their family had cultivated for generations. The ditch wasn't deep; one could step across it in one stride, and there were no markings along its edge. Only every ten or so steps, there was a pile of one or two stones cleared from the field.

Harald stopped in front of a rock.

He bent down, gripping the bottom of the stone with both hands, his knees bent, his back arched. The stone was heavy, a size larger than the one Tora had carried. The muscles in his face tensed, the veins in his temples bulged, his breathing became heavy, and then the stone lifted off the ground.

He picked up the stone and carefully embedded it into the center of the shallow ditch.

The stone made a dull "thud" as it fell, like the final note of some kind of announcement.

Tora sat on the threshold, watching her father walk back to the next stone, bend down, lift it, and put it in the ditch. His movements were slow, each step slow. In the twilight, the figure of him, bent over, carrying the stone, slowly walking along a ditch by the field, resembled a seabird building its nest, carrying a dry twig from who-knows-where, back and forth, again and again.

She suddenly turned to Ragnar beside her and said:

"This is ours."

Ragnar looked at the stones embedded in the ditch. He didn't understand what his sister meant.

"The stone is the boundary," Tora's voice was low and earnest, as if she were reciting a vow she had just learned and did not yet fully understand, "The gods see."

She gripped the small wooden sword in her hand tightly.

"Who crossed over—"

She didn't continue.

The wind blew in from the fjord mouth, carrying the dampness of melting snow. Dusk dyed the entire newly turned land a dark red, and the stones embedded in the ditch edges looked like a row of silent, crouching sentinels in the gradually dimming light.