My Dear Fiona

Chapter 12 - Back at Skara Brae

You get mixed up in stories and legends and soon you can't distinguish them from facts anymore, because history and legend are uninterrupted threads twining through the fabric of time, and the events' meanings connect across centuries, as if they are all a part of a greater whole we could see if we lived long enough. How long is long enough, Fiona? Although I shouldn't ask you, should I?

In all the times I dreamt of you, I've never seen you old, my princess. I can't see past that fateful day whose menace prompted you to pack all your power and will inside a gull and set it free. You looked so young it broke my heart, but I don't think you died that day. In fact, I think you never died at all.

Hodr of the mail coat lets the halter of the arm hang on my hawk-trodden hawk-gallows;

I know how to make the pin-string of the shield-tormentor ride the gallows of the spear-storm.

The feeder of the battle-hawk enjoys the greater praise.

The florid poetry of your ancestors reverberates in the halls of the Gods, making you smile across centuries, fair child of Norway. What are you smiling about? What is it you're not telling me?

It's so easy to lose myself in eternal time here in Orkney, especially when I'm out in the green hills, near the lochs or the stones. There I see the same sunrise, the same moon, the same sea you did.

The creations of our minds are not much different from what we call the real world, and eventually we realize that, when we become lucky or wise enough to notice. Then we see how the initiating kernels of our thoughts transform our world and continue to do so even after we've forgotten them, like candles illuminate a room some time after we left it. We're all too busy to look back on our mental creations, enticed as we are by the illusion of planning our future, so sure the past no longer changes, so prodigal with our present.

I close my eyes and see your world, and wonder if this is a vision we share in Kairos time, one that belongs to neither of us, the same way people share common reality in the present.

If I keep dreaming with you long enough, details start to unfold with pristine clarity, the clothes you wore, your jewelry, your weapons, surprisingly well made given the skills and tools of the time, engraved with runes and spells to imbue them with magic.

I can see your heart-shaped face, too soft and innocent for battle, with a little mole above the left eyebrow, and a cleft chin, the indubitable proofs of your heritage, of the blood of kings running through your veins.

I can see dogs running about and can hear Jorunn humming softly a melancholy tune, trapped inside her own past, the lost world of her childhood.

You and yours must have found safety, a temporary hideout, in the abandoned underground maze of dark tunnels at Skara Brae, tunnels that open here and there to large rooms, warmed and lit only by cozy fires burning in their centers, but it doesn't feel gloomy at all. It's filled with the laughter of children and busy people going about their chores and the delicious smell of roast meat, and hidden from the threats of enemies and inclement weather, a little cave haven rosy with the warm glow of embers.

You hear a noise, a rushed trampling of footsteps and hushed voices that carry through the tunnels, not loud enough to understand the words, but enough to feel the anxiety caused by their message. It's the middle of winter and you're holding a baby, Fiona. Whose baby is that? It's a little boy with chubby cheeks who's swaddled in soft furs and bears the trademark family dimple. He whimpers softly, as if he could feel the tension in the air.

You get up and gave the boy to Jorunn, and she takes him without a word and disappears in the dark tunnels, while men with spears keep searching through the rooms, upturning cauldrons and extinguishing the fires.

I can sense your fear, Fiona, the fear you feel for your son, but also for yourself. How could you not, poor child who had to grow up too soon? They ignore you because they don't know who you are. They heard the blood of viking royalty was brought across the sea, but never thought you could be a girl.

You're just standing there, shaking like a leaf in the storm while the rooms get ransacked by men with swords and spears who walk past you oblivious, too busy in their search to really see you.

You close your eyes and focus on a rune, convinced it will render you invisible, as long as you don't move at all, and keep even your mind still until you become that rune, a scribble on the ground, nothing more.

The room is dark now, and filled with smoke from the grease that spilled in the fire, and every instinct in your body tells you to scream or run, but you stand perfectly still holding on to the image of the flaming rune inside your mind and grasping the Sonnenrad amulet hanging around your neck for protection.

The sounds of the invaders' footsteps grow fainter as they advance through the rooms, walking in the dark tunnels between them, which make orientation challenging for strangers and provide perfect hiding places for the dwellers.

You can feel the latter cradled in nooks and crannies, quieting their breaths, still as statues, petrified with fear.

The underground burrows went silent eventually, echoing only the winter storm outside.

You're too scared to cry, or even think, until some time after they're gone, and your first thought is for your son, although you don't expect to see him for a while.

Jorunn's words of power have opened a door to another world, and she won't be returning to this one until the next moon is full. Words hold great power, she taught you. They can change everything, even physical reality. Jorunn's words are just as fierce as her sword and her will is a shield that protects you and your child at any cost.

Her wisdom never disentangled life from war and art. They were always aspects of the same whole, and she would be surprised to see us sort out our lives neatly in compartments labeled entertainment, defense, career, health. I often wonder if we didn't evolve to become too complex for our own purpose.

We're all slaves to our zeitgeist and I'm trying very hard to wrap my head around the fact you were a mother and a queen at fourteen, and shouldered more responsibility than I can possibly imagine.

What was his name, Fiona? Your son. What was his name? Who was his father?

I'd like to believe yours was a romantic love story, but reason won't allow it, not in those times, not considering your lineage.

It was more likely a political alliance, through which the intertwining of royal bloodlines guaranteed future peace.

I opened my eyes, almost surprised to see the windswept hill and the cairn in the distance, a little disoriented by this sudden fast forward in the timeline and wondering where you disappeared.

Back in your time Jorunn had returned, your son grew up, and learned from her how to wield words to unlock their power, the art and magic of poetry. He lived and ruled and had descendants, and through them your blood was passed down through the centuries to me. When so many lifetimes and so much history stand between us, Fiona, how is it I can understand you so well?

You did not become a poet, like your wise mentor, but you learned to tell stories, and you make them so interesting I have a hard time figuring out which ones actually happened. The historical records from the time are so sparse it is impossible to corroborate the happenings you describe.

Your stories live in dreams. They mix myths and facts and distill them into esoteric thought. Gods, magic and destiny were very real for you, the invisible forces that shaped future and reality.

I know you forged your strength and skills in battle and ruled without questioning your own authority, because that was what you were born to do.

The florid poetry of your descendants will reverberate in the halls of the Gods too, to tell of the next battles, of bravery, victory and loss, to immortalize heroes.

Then Bur's sons lifted | the level land,

Mithgarth the mighty | there they made;

The sun from the south | warmed the stones of earth,

And green was the ground | with growing leeks.

Einarr, I felt your answer. His name was Einarr.