As the latest trial reached its seventh day, the day of Blót, Svea had fastened herself a bow. She was disappointed to miss the final day of the year, but all of the girls were earning their place in Valkvann. Instead, she focused on her creation. With little time to spare, she had scoured the bare forest for the most forgiving and flexible piece of wood she could find - one that already bore the natural curve needed for a bow.
There hadn't been time to carve the perfect shape, no matter how small the flaw might have seemed. The sinew she had harvested from her dinner the night before had been repurposed for the bow string. The remains of her meal now forming a line as taut as her nerves. Only the arrows remained. She ran her fingers along their shafts, counting them again, each one a fragile thread of life stretched between herself and the wild. It was all she had to survive this trial.
The fletching, carefully scavenged feathers, had been the least of her worries. The arrowheads, however, were another matter entirely. She had never crafted them herself. Bone and stone were the old ways, the ways she had been taught, but carving bone out here in the open would attract wild beasts to her like a storm would herd them to their shelters. So she had made so, fashioning the tips from wood and sharpened them to jagged points. Not ideal, but necessary. She wasn't there to make beauty, only to make sure that if the moment came, she would have the means to kill.
Freyja, bless this bow. May I eat tonight.
She prayed silently.
Winter had already warned the animals to hide. It was cruel to send girls out when food was so scarce that even the adults of the village were barely hunting.
But what better way to test them?
She settled low on her perch in the tree, her body still as the quiet branches above, watching the path below. Her heart was steady, her breath controlled, her senses attuned to every rustle and ripple within the woods.
Under her, the frozen river gurgled - a reminder that life still moved beneath the ice holding it in place.
That sound alone was enough to mask any she might make, though her cautious nature would have kept her silent regardless.
She knew all living things would eventually need to take a drink. They would come in search of water, which had prompted her to choose this place. If she broke the ice, she could drink too. She could also eat the snow, but she didn't want to leave tracks the other girls might find.
The branches creaked beneath her weight, but she had learned from the women of Valkvann how to move without sound, how to become one with the forest.
Now, she was being called to prove it.
Her eyes lingered on the trail where a small figure picked its way downhill toward the river. The traveler grunted with each step; their footfalls were clumsy, crunching the snow so deeply that Svea wondered if they had put hot coals in their boots to keep warm, melting the snow in their wake. Where a deer would have stepped lightly or a wolf would have been silent, this revealed the true nature of the wanderer: neither hunter nor prey, not a creature of the wild. The closer they came, the louder the light clink of metal on their body became.
Svea's fingers tightened on the bow, caressing the string, testing its tension. She was ready - ready to strike. She could tell now it was a girl headed down to the river. One who was traveling on a path dangerously close to the steep drop by the frozen water: one misstep and she would tumble into the hidden rapids that hadn't succumbed to the winter.
Svea could end it right here, right now.
One arrow.
That would be enough.
She would kill if she needed to.
She would kill, just as Herja had done before her.
It was the way of Valkvann - it was her duty to the village. No one came near their home, not unless the mist, their eternal tenant, deemed to invite them in. The village was hidden from the world, veiled by something even the women rarely acknowledged. There were times when Svea wondered if they lived at the very ends of the earth. They had kept it a secret for generations, training and surviving in silence. Outsides did not belong there. They never had.
Outsider
A small thrill ran through her veins in the thought. At the realization that instinct had already taken hold, pulling her into the rhythm of the hunt.
She was the predator here; she was the lone mountain lion who would defend her home at any cost.
It was simple.
Svea knew one truth, not that it was necessarily natural, but that it was right.
Her body shifted, slinking along the thick branch like a shadow. Muscles coiled beneath her tunic, preparing for the moment to strike. She would drop down in a single heartbeat - quiet and fast. No more, no less. The bow would be nocked, the string would sing its deadly song. There would be no warning, no mercy. She had learned during her time under the Jarl that mercy was a luxury reserved for the weak.
Something, though, made her pause.
The girl reached the river's edge, kneeling to splash water onto her face. Using the stick beside her, she probed for a soft spot in the ice, then jammed her knife into it, cutting with slow, deliberate motions. She grumbled to herself softly, unaware of the danger lingering above. The huntress nearby could not hear her words.
Instead, Svea satisified herself with watching every movement. Her eyes narrowed sharply. Her head tilted slightly, absorbed into the scene. She had the girl's every motion mapped, every step accounted for, as though her mind had already traced the pattern before it happened.
Her fingers toyed with the bowstring, dancing across it. Was she hesitating or was she excited? Even she couldn't tell the difference anymore. Just a breath more, and she could draw it taut. The string and arrow would come together in a song all of their own, one that would still the world around.
She could end it all before a snowflake even reached the ground.
But there was something strange about this girl - something that tugged at Svea's thoughts, something that would haunt her for the rest of her life if she acted as her foremothers would have.
Before her, the girl's hair shimmered so pale the strands resembled threads of moonlight that had been enlisted to sit in the tight bun secured against her head.
The girl was practical.
Svea could tell that much. She even assumed a merchant.
Her clothing was unlike anything Svea had ever seen on a warrior or a farmer. She wore a blue tunic so vivid it could have been woven from the wings of a butterfly. It was a color no one in their village could mix, nor one Svea had ever caught so much as a glimpse of in any trading post.
It wasn't just the color that left her unsettled. It was the girl's skin - how it seemed to glow, kissed by a sun Svea's snowbound homeland had never known. The warmth of her presence stood in quiet defiance against the cold breath of Valkvann itself. There was something about her, foreign and unplaceable, that tugged at Svea's curiosity to the point it pulled her focus away from the kill.
The girl splashed water onto her arms, washing away the grime of travel. Her grumbling continued, soft, distant. Human in a way that made Svea's bow feel suddenly heavier in her hands. Svea slid lower along the branch, leaning forward, barely daring to breathe.
She needed to see more.
She needed to understand.
In a single motion, the girl turned.
Her eyes met Svea's, and for a fleeting moment. . . the hunter froze.
Her brown eyes were deeper than Svea had ever seen - dark as the earth after frost had melted away. They held stories Svea recognized: the same hollow winters she had seen in her own people. Eyes emptied of hope. Eyes that no longer lived for the day, that no longer fought for anything but the next breath.
And yet, beneath the weariness, lingered a distant memory of joy, of adventures Svea could scarcely imagine.
Like Thor striking his anvil, Svea's heart pounded against her ribs. She knew what she had to do, what she was meant to do, but she still hesitated. Sweat trickled down her spine as she tightened her grip on the bow.
This is my trial. I am fighting for my place in Valkvann. I cannot abandon their beliefs now.
But how could she? How could she kill someone whose eyes spoke the same language as her own soul? The girl might have been an invader to the land, but she was no stranger to Svea. Even as instinct urged her to release the string - to end this moment before it grew into something else entirely - she faltered.
She hesitated.
The girl's gaze held her. Steady.
Svea dropped from the tree, landing silently in the snow. Flurries scattered from the branch above, glinting like stars as they fell behind her.
"Who are you?" She demanded, maintaining a low voice, as if to warn the girl that her answer would in fact determine Svea's next actions.Firm as iron.
The merchant girl turned toward her, and in that instant, Svea understood the familiarity.
They had been destined to meet.
They would always find a way to meet.
She continued her line of questioning.
"Where is it you hail from?"
Svea's boots sank into the stubborn moss that had refused to disappear from the edge of the river when the snow had arrived. The damp earth absorbed her weight as she centered herself. Her bow remained drawn with her eyes locked on her quarry. She moved with the slow precision of a hunter circling her prey.
The girl stood motionless. Her gaze flickered once to the weapon, then back to Svea's face.
Fear did not touch her features.
"You're not from here. I do not recognize you."
"No," the girl admitted with a small smile that made Svea's brow twitch. "My father is from your stories but my mother is from the ends of Midgard."
Svea had seen that knowing kind of smile before - that tell. Behind grace, the stranger hid amusement.
Her lips parted again, as though she meant to continue, but silence overtook her instead.
Svea waited tensely.
She had expected the girl to speak in a foreign tongue to her - something unfamiliar, something that would make it easier to justify the kill. But instead, her voice was clear. Calm. Strange in its rhythm.
The words Svea had known all her life now sounded different on this girl's tongue - melodic but careful like a child learning the language of the gods. With each phrase, her accent softened with each word as the ability to practice settled in. Even so, it was unmistakable that she had not been born among them.
At last, the girl spoke again, "I don't seek to cause you harm."
Svea furrowing her brows, the confusion deepening. "From the ends of Midgard?" She repeated.
The girl nodded. "It is a land of endless winters, where the sun dances low on the horizon and the reindeer roam vast tundras. My mother's people are of snow and stars. Even when the land offers little, it gives all we need. . . if we know how to listen."
Svea narrowed her eyes. "Why leave this abundant land you speak of?"
The girl's lips curved faintly. "I don't enjoy the cold.
Svea circled her again, taking her time. "North?"
The girl nodded.
"Then you claim to come from the northern winds with ancestors sculpted by the ice itself?"
She laughed in response, the sound bright against the frozen air. "You Northmen - always so poetic in your speech," she teased, eyes sparkling with amusement.
For someone so young, the Viking girl before her spoke like a woman twice her age.
"Today I claim I come from the Eastern Seas," The stranger went on. "A land called Serica, at times. There, people weave silk so fine it feels as if water is slipping through your fingers. There is a wall so long I once believed to be Jörmungandr himself." Her voice quickened, almost musical as it drew Svea closer with every word. "Their markets are my favorite - brimming with treasures beyond counting. A simple spice that can make any meal a feast. Metals worked into shapes as delicate as the wings of a bird by the same fire we all know."
*Serica: refers to a region in Northern or Central China.
Svea's eyes wandered to the silver band around the girl's wrist. It had been chipped for slivers of value; this was the mark of a traveler. More than that, a mark of a merchant who traded small pieces rather than carry cumbersome coin. Silver, after all, was the universal tongue of barter.
"I see," Svea replied, "You are a merchant."
The pale-haired girl nodded, smiling in triumph.
"Yes, I am. You may call me Ulfinna."
She extended her hand, her smile widening until her eyes nearly vanished - a gesture so open it disarmed the air between the two. Svea realized, with faint surprise, how utterly defenseless the girl seemed.
It was strange that she offered no family name, especially after invoking such lineage.
"I am Svea," she answered in turn, "of Valkvann."
Finally, she lowered her bow and arrow, studying the stranger in earnest for the first time. Ulfinna was smaller, slighter - unlikely to pose any real threat. Yet Svea had known merchants all her life; they always carried something sharp.
She raised her brow again.
Ulfinna blinked, confusion flickering through her bright eyes. Now it was her turn to be cautious. She waited.
"Show me your weapons," Svea ordered.
"They're nothing," Ulfinna claimed quickly, "Just a simple knife to carve my fruit."
She produced the knife, offering it handle-first.
The knife's hilt was a pale, earthy brown. Svea brushed her finger along it, puzzled by the new material.
"Reindeer antler," Ulfinna explained. "It's traditional for my mother's people."
The blade was longer than a mere fruit knife as Ulfinna had claimed. Svea would argue it was long enough to be called a dagger. But she also understood that in the wilderness, everyone held the right to defend themselves.
Reluctantly, she returned it to its owner.
"Why are you out here alone?"
Svea replied before she could stop her, "I'm not alone. I'm. . ." her words trailed off as the light around them began to fade.
The forest dimmed, and quickly. Not with dusk, but with an unnatural dark. It was as though joy itself had been stripped from the air. The sky churn, the day turning black. Snow lashed sideways in a sudden blizzard; the goddess Skadi herself seemed to be clawing for the attention of the cosmos.
Ulfinna reached into her pocket then withdrew a narrow piece of carved bone. Reindeer antler again, though Svea had never seen one shaped like it. It bore slitted holes that narrowed the world into thin bands of light, shielding against the glare of snow. Svea tilted her head, studying it.
Sharp , angular lines had been etched across its surface which branched like roots, as if some spirit had clawed its story there. The symbols meant nothing to her, yet they belonged to Ulfinna as naturally as a braid over her shoulder. Later in their lives, Svea would recognize those very markings painted on her friend's face in war. For now, they were only grooves on a relic written in a language she could not understand.
Ulfinna raised the bone to her eyes, scanning the sky. "The dog has won!" she shouted. "Damned beast!"
Svea grabbed her wrist, pulling her under the trees as there was no safer place to be. Snow and pine needles battered them both as the wind howled.
"You mean the wolf, Sköll?" Svea requested.
"No! The dog that chases it!" Ulfinna snapped, gripping the tree as the snow lashed against her face. Her skin did not change. She turned her head, searching the dark as if she could see through the storm itself. "Our shaman has seen it, it is a dog without a name."
Shaman. The word struck Svea as strange. It did not exist in her tongue. If this "shaman" had seen something otherworldly, then perhaps they were what her people called a seer.
Svea considered, then spoke, her voice almost swallowed by the wind. "In these lands, among the people of your father, we believe twin wolves chase the sun and the moon. Every so often, a wolf catches what it hunts. The wolf Sköll chases the sun, his twin Hati chases the moon." She glanced upward through the whipping snow. "If there comes a day when both are caught, life will never be the same. As only one has been captured, she must be released."
She closed her eyes briefly, listening.
From somewhere deep in the forest came the sound of shouting. The other girls of Valkvann were crying out to frighten away the wolf. It was tradition.
By raising their voices, they distracted the beast long enough for its prey to escape.
Her heart beat faster. She didn't want to reveal her hiding place, but the sun was threatened. That was a cost she couldn't afford.
So she joined them; demanding the wolf be let go.
Svea cupped her hands around her mouth, shouting, "Go! Release her!" she struck the nearest tree with the flat of her bow, the sharp smack echoing through the forest.
Ulfinna flinched. "What are you doing!? Be quiet!"
"It must hear us!" Svea insisted. "If it hears us, it will turn its attention!"
Her voice grew louder. She knew that in the distance, back home, the adults would be doing the same: beating their drums, striking wood and metal together, singing to drive away the greedy wolf before it filled its belly.
Ulfinna hesitated, shaking her head. She reached her hand out to cover Svea's mouth but it was too late for the forest had already joined the battle. Branches rattled, snow fell in sheets, animals leapt through the underbrush, adding their own voices to the chaos. In only a few short minutes, those who had defended the sun had been victorious.
"Well?"
Svea looked to Ulfinna, uncertain what she meant. They had saved the day. . . what else could she possibly want?
The woods grew still again. The returning light filtered through the branches as if nothing had ever dared to threaten the balance.
Ulfinna studied Svea with a grin too wide for the moment.
"Shall we kill each-other, then?" she asked, proposing it as a jest, rather than a pact.
Instead of taking offense or reaching for her weapons, laughter escaped Svea, carrying through the thawing air until Ulfinna joined her.