Fantasy short. A priest of Freyr receives a strange visitation.
Fantasy short, 3.6k. A little bit of Norse godliness versus Norse priestliness.
Adapted from a TweetFic earlier in the week.
Esben first appeared in
It was raining heavily, the skies open to pour out thick sheets of weighted water, when a knock pounded so mightily on Esben’s door that his house shook to its very foundations, and he stumbled in his haste to answer.
Kottr was on his feet, growling from low in his throat, and Esben bade the dog hush, but didn’t dissuade him from coming to stand at his hip, facing the door at his side.
Hundr remained comfortable in his old basket beside the fire, but his gaze was on the door, and his ears were back.
When Esben pulled open the door, the brightness of the hearth from within his hut was the only light around — the moon was made invisible by the dark, foreboding clouds, and the rain created walls between Esben’s hut and any of the others nearby.
The fire cast the stranger in an unwholesome light: bent forward, one wizened hand gripping tight at an ancient staff, was an ancient bedecked in a heavy green cloak.
It was oiled with something, so that water ran off it, but it made no difference.
The man’s clothes looked so soaked with water he might as well have swum here — and coming through the thick mud that was the yard outside, Esben thought that perhaps he almost had.
He could not see the old man’s face, his cloak forward and putting it in such shadow as to render it featureless — or, almost.
Esben saw the glint of one grey eye from within that cloaked hood’s abyss, and one eye only.
“Are you the priest?” asked the old man. His age showed in his voice for all Esben couldn’t see his face: it was hoarse and dry, like dough left to crumble in the sun. “They said I might find the priest here, and I have walked — ”
“Walk no further,” said Esben, stepping back from the door and nudging back Kottr as he moved, the dog still grumbling under his breath. “Please, come sit at my fire and warm yourself.”
“You invite a stranger, sight unseen?” asked the old man. In the deep recesses of his hood, Esben caught a glimpse of thin lips and white, gleaming teeth.
“I invite a traveller, weary to his bones,” said Esben, “as I see him before me. If you have walked here in search of a priest, as that priest, I would feed and water you.”
“Please, no more water,” said the old man, and stepped inside. “I couldn’t take the strain.”
The old man dripped rainwater onto the floor, and Esben rushed to clear him a space close by the fire, gesturing for him to sink into it. He thought the old man would remove the cloak, but he did no such thing.
As Esben pushed the door closed again, he went to the hearth and pushed his kettle over the flame, bringing to heat the stew he’d eaten earlier.
Kottr was quiet now, but he didn’t go to the stranger. He went to Esben’s pallet, and sank down into the blankets over the hay.
The light was changed, in the hut, and yet still, Esben could not see the old man’s face, spied only a single silver eye. He did not set his staff aside either, but lent it against himself. It was exquisitely — suspiciously — carved all over, a beautifully varnished staff with carvings of runes from its handle down to its very base, and along its length were seven gold rings of shining, painted colour, smooth and uncarved.
The paint gleamed in the firelight.
“Do you always invite strangers so freely into your home?” asked the old man in his crackling voice as Esben hooked another kettle onto the fire to boil some water.
“Is hospitality not my duty, sir?”
“It’s a dark and stormy night.”
“All the more reason.”
Esben did not prompt the man to remove his sodden clothes, feeling the suspicion already deep in his own bones, and he instead picked up a blanket and laid it on the table beside him, an offering if not an insistence.
“Who are you priest to?” asked the old man, and Esben considered the question for a moment as he pulled out a bowl for his stew and a mug for his tea. There were icons around his hut, of course — two strings of bells were hanging from the wall beside his bed, alongside his travelling cloak, but he had carved pieces on display of antler or bone or wood, a mix of those he had made himself and those that had been gifted to him by those he had tended to.
Several of the statues showed Freyr, dancing or singing, cock proud and heavy where it stuck out from beneath his loincloth if he had been carved with one; others showed his sister, Freyja, alongside him; Forsetti, Tyr, Baldr, Loki, Thor — he had all manner of the gods represented in his home, if not established on their own altar.
Over the hearth was a carving of Odin, his wolves at his side.
“To the gods,” Esben answered evasively.
“All of them?” was the prompting reply.
“To all of mine,” said Esben, and the old man’s laugh was like the crumble of distant hillsides.
“And what gods are they?” he asked.
“The gods of this land,” said Esben. “The gods of these people — my people.”
“This village has no slaves?” the old man prompted him immediately. “What of their gods?”
“You refer to the Tuath Dé? The Children of Dôn?” asked Esben. “Those are not my gods, but I have no quarrel with them. It’s hardly the place of a priest to quarrel with gods.”
“Isn’t it?” asked the old man, voice rich with a creaking humour.
Esben stirred his stew. “What brings you to me, at so late an hour, on so dark and wet a night?” he asked.
“It was not so late, nor so dark and wet, when I began my journey,” said the old man. “I have travelled a long way.”
“You took no time to rest?”
“I’m resting now.”
Esben looked past the old man to Kottr and Hundr — the both of them, hound and cat, had sunk down into their beds, but neither of them were sleeping. Each of them watched their visitor with keen, slitted eyes.
“I am told,” said the old man, “you are a priest of Freyr.”
“Who tells you?” asked Esben.
“Friends,” said the old man.
“What friends are they?” asked Esben. “Perhaps we have them in common.”
“Perhaps we don’t,” replied the old man, and Esben suppressed the shiver that wanted to run down his spine.
“Stew,” he said, pouring a bowl and setting it down in front of him. “I’m sorry I have no bread to serve it with, but I was going to start a new load tomorrow.”
“Eat with me,” said the old man. “I would not eat of your pantry while you ate nothing.”
“I’ve eaten, sir.”
“Eat again.”
Esben didn’t argue. The air felt thick and crackling, as though it was soon to give way to lightning even though the rain was cold, and the air had been thin before. He poured himself only a little of the stew, enough for politeness’ sake.
“Is it a wise man who lives along on the edge of nowhere, in so small a village as this?” asked the old man.
The one-eyed man. The man cloaked in unnatural shadow. The man with seven golden rings about his carved staff… The man who spoke of wise men.
“I could not say,” said Esben. “Is it a wise man who walks to greet him in the pouring rain?”
The old man’s long shirt hem and trouser legs, Esben realised, not to mention his boots, were completely clean of mud and dirt, as though it were summer and the clothes were freshly washed in the river. His cloak, sodden through a minute ago, was already dry.
“I could not say,” answered the old man.
“We are each cautious men, I think,” said Esben slowly, and brough the bowl up to his mouth, drinking from it.
The stranger hadn’t yet drunk any of his, only held it in his wizened palm.
“Perhaps,” said the old man. “A cautious man is sometimes a wise man.”
“And other times?”
“There is such a thing as over cautious.”
“Do you think I ought have been more cautious?” asked Esben. “Denied you shelter on a night like this, and bade you drown in the rain? Is there such a thing as too much hospitality?”
“Our warriors land on distant shores at this very moment,” said the old man. “Do they not reward hospitality with ropes around the necks of those who would deny them?”
“I don’t know that hospitality has a place in war or plunder, sir.”
“By the gods,” said the old man, “you must hope, then, that I am here for neither one nor the other.”
“Something tells me you are not.”
“What is that?” he asked, leaning forward. “Have you a god ear beneath those curls? Do you listen to words on the wind?”
“Who can hear the wind on a night like this,” asked Esben, “over all this rain?”
“I can,” said the stranger.
“Oh?”
“Oh, yes.”
“What says the wind, then?”
“The wind says the priest would not have invited a man with two eyes inside.”
Esben laughed. He had to force the sound, but it sounded natural once it came out, and he set his empty bowl down. “Then the wind lies to you, sir,” said Esben. “Surely I would have invited a man with two eyes inside.”
“Surely?”
“Surely.”
“And a man with no staff carved as mine is, with no rings of gold about its length?”
“He might sit here beside us. As might,” Esben went on, “a man with muddy boots or a cloak that stayed wet, or a man the shadows didn’t mask as surely as he was wearing a shroud.”
The old man laughed his crackling laugh. “I was told you were a keen one,” he said.
“Might I ask who told you?”
“So many questions asked, as if I have any answers. What is it you take me for, a wise man?”
“You mean to tell me you’re a fool?”
That was a step too far, and the air from the fire felt suddenly cold, the silver eye in the depths of that darkened cloak suddenly icy.
“Careful, little priest,” said the old man in soft, steely tones. “Hospitality does not protect a man from repercussion for all slights.”
“Have I slighted you?” asked Esben breathlessly, his lungs aching in the sudden cold of the room, though it was already beginning to thaw. “Then I offer my apologies.”
“Offer me something else.”
“Tea?”
“That will do.”
“Will you drink it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’ve not touched your stew.”
“I haven’t?”
The stranger’s stew bowl, when Esben looked, was quite empty.
Esben’s laugh, this time, was soft but quite genuine, and he poured them each a mug of nettle tea before he said, “I don’t think I like your sense of humour.”
“Why laugh, then?”
“Because I am not a wise man.”
“Isn’t that what priests are?”
“Not me, sir.”
“What are you, then, if not wise?”
“I am devoted,” said Esben. “That is all.”
“Can a devoted priest not be wise as well?”
“I’m sure he can, but I am not.”
“The priest lies to me,” said the old man under his breath, as though to someone at his shoulder, and Esben almost thought he might see a bird leaning over, but of course, there was nothing. “Why would he do that?”
Esben, not addressed, did not answer, and instead asked his own question: “If I ask you the same question twice, will I receive the same non-answer?”
“I hardly know. What’s your question?”
“Why are you here?”
“These are my lands,” said the old man. “I belong here — except for when I belong somewhere else.”
“And under this roof, in these walls?”
“Aren’t you a priest?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you quarrel with gods?”
“You are imagining things, if you think I am quarrelling with anyone.”
“What would you say, were I to be a god in disguise?”
“What is any priest meant to say to a god? I would say my prayers.”
“And if I wasn’t?”
“If you weren’t?”
“If I wasn’t a god?”
“I would think you a very queer old fellow,” said Esben, “and ask again why you’ve come here.”
“You wouldn’t ask that again were I a god?”
“It would depend on if you seemed inclined to answer.”
“You’ve a quick tongue.”
“I’ve honed it.”
“From?”
“From what it was.”
“Good answer.”
The two of them sat in the quiet together, Esben sipping from his drink, the old man holding his in his palm.
“Tell me how you picked your calling,” said the old man.
“I cannot, because I didn’t,” said Esben. “As the phrase implies, I did not pick anything — I was called, and answered that call.”
“To be a priest.”
“Yes.”
“To be a man.”
Esben looked up from his mug. Of course, he could glean nothing of the old man’s expression, could see only his eye amidst all that thick shadow, and with the hood of his cloak down, he could not surmise even the angle of his head.
“You seem afeared to answer that question,” said the old man.
“Hardly afeared, merely cautious,” said Esben. “I was called as a man, and became one — perhaps I was not a man before, but there was a man waiting within me, as a piece of wood or antler has the ghost of what it will be waiting within it before it is ever whittled into sculpture. Such as it was.”
“You are grateful?”
“For everything.”
“But that, in particular,” said the old man. “Your manhood.”
Esben considered the question for a few moments, and then nodded his head. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “But not to the exclusion of everything else.”
“The moon will wax full,” said the old man. “In another week.”
“Yes.”
“And then you become a pilgrim, once more trek to meet the subject of your devotion.”
“Did a mutual friend tell you that?” asked Esben softly. “Or do you simply watch where I go?”
“Who says it is you I watch for?” replied the old man. “Perhaps I simply look, and see all.”
“Perhaps you don’t.”
The old man was quiet for a few moments, his liver-spotted fingers tapping against his mug. “Go on,” he said.
“A hooded man knocks on my door at night, one-eyed, dry where he ought be wet, holding a tall staff etched with care. Perhaps it is Grimnir, Hovi, Hoárr, whatever name has he. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is another wearing his same disguise.”
“And from one wise man to another,” said the old man, “do you not think that such a man might put such flaws in his costume simply to feign a trick where there was one? Meeting with a priest as he is, after all?”
“A double bluff?”
“Exactly.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps he might fold in these flaws, and then call it a double bluff, simply to see if I would say what I thought. The gods value clear, direct talk, do they not?”
“Not always,” said the old man. “Sometimes, they loathe such talk — particularly when it is true.”
“They are but my thoughts, sir, I share them as I am asked.”
“And what should a wise man care for the thoughts of a priest?” asked the old man.
“Forgive me,” said Esben, “but it is my guess that we are neither of us wise men.”
The old man laughed, laughed hard and loud, and the crumbling noise to it deepened, brightened, echoed. As he shook with laughter, the hood fell to the man’s shoulders, and Esben saw that he had two eyes after all: the grey one was light in colour, and the green one was the colour of emeralds. He had a crooked nose and a crooked, smiling mouth, laughter lines, freckles; his wrinkled, liver-spotted hands gave way to smoother ones, marked all over with a mix of scars and freckles.
His hair was red as wheat at sunset.
“I am as man as you are,” said Loki (for who else could it have been?) and proffered his hand. “But I am not as wise.”
“Aren’t you?” asked Esben, gripping his wrist and feeling heavy scars under his palm, ground deep into the tattooed flesh there. There were tattoos all over Loki’s body, a few of them on his face, too, but that wasn’t all — there were dappled scars around his eyes, making the skin pale, the sort of scars one got from burns, or acid.
“I am not as cautious, at least.”
Esben took the kettle, and poured more tea for both of them, seeing that Loki’s mug was empty, although he hadn’t seen him drink.
“I’m compelled again to say I don’t like your sense of humour,” Esben said.
“Your laughter says otherwise, as does your continued hospitality.”
“You think I would throw you out in that, trickster or no?”
“I shouldn’t mind to see you try,” said Loki, eyes glinting with different coloured sparks, and when Hundr now approached him, he put his knees together, so that the old tomcat could clamber into his lap.
“What do you want?” asked Esben.
“Perhaps I don’t want anything I haven’t already been given,” said Loki. “Warmth and shelter and good conversation on a wet night.”
“Perhaps,” said Esben.
“You disbelieve me?”
“Perhaps you’ve heard.”
“Heard what?”
“That my binds have been relaxed,” said Esben slowly. “That I have liberties I did not, before.”
“What a funny way to phrase it,” said Loki. “Bondage, as if you have not opted in — liberties, as though you craved them before they were given you.”
“Who am I to say how a god views the post of a priest?”
“You aren’t,” said Loki. “But no, I’m not here to fuck you. I just wanted to see.”
“See?”
Loki nodded, and drank from his mug. His long fingers, scarred and as freckled as his face, curled in Hundr’s fur.
The beast was purring loudly, and it set Esben at ease.
“See what?” asked Esben.
“See a chosen priest of Freyr,” said Loki. “See how he goes, how he holds himself. See him, full-fledged, permitted leave from the nest so long as he forgets not his place.”
“What good is a priest who forgets his place?”
“Good,” said Loki, scratching Hundr’s scarred chin and making the cat close his eyes in bliss, “is a matter purely of perspective. Good in your eyes might be bad in mine.”
“With eyes like yours, I should think you see good and bad at once.”
Loki laughed. “He said you had a quick tongue,” he said softly, and Esben itched to ask, ask if this was Freyr he spoke of, if Freyr had said more of him. “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me. Would you like a boon?”
“I wouldn’t ask.”
“I’m offering. You have indulged me despite seeing me for what I am — that is more than many do.”
Esben looked into the green depths of his mug, and asked, “Can my boon be knowledge?”
“Would a wise man ask for anything less?”
“Why me?”
Loki laughed under his breath, shaking his head: his hair, which was a great mane of bright red woven with braids and pendants, bounced on his shoulders. To one side of his face were two braids of hair that didn’t match the others, one a darker auburn, the other black, and Esben was careful not to let his gaze linger on either. “Must you ask me questions I don’t know the answer to?”
“You must have some notion.”
“You’re like me,” said Loki. “Is that not notion enough?”
“Like you?”
“Have you not shifted your shape?”
“Only with Freyr’s guiding hands.”
“And did you not tell him where you wanted his hands to guide you, before he started? Did the ghost of the man you were to be not rest beneath your skin, as the ghost of a sculpture lingers in wood or antler?”
Esben considered. “Will you teach me magic, then?”
“You know magic.”
“Magic I don’t know.”
“To shift your shape? To walk the air? To master every tongue?”
“I’d like that.”
“Too great a boon,” said Loki. “It would take too much time.”
“What, then?”
“I could teach you the mask,” said Loki. “Teach you to shroud yourself in shadow — I did it from beneath a cloak, but you might secrete yourself in shadows to walk in secret, too.”
“Is that not too great a boon?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There is no other condition?”
“One.”
Esben’s eyes narrowed, and Loki beamed, showing his bright, gleaming teeth, his mismatched eyes glinting like two unlikely gemstones.
“Surprise your master,” said Loki. “Use what I teach you, and give him a scare.”
“Is that what amuses you? Asking a priest to play a children’s trick on his god?”
“Among other things,” said Loki evenly. “You think it’s a trick, that I conspire to have Freyr end you?”
“No,” said Esben. “No, I think he’ll laugh to be surprised, before he gets possessive at the idea of who might have taught me.”
“Two benefits for you in one, then,” said Loki, and gently nudged Hundr from his lap, grumbling before he went to lie on top of Kottr.
“The better to distract me from the question you didn’t want to answer,” said Esben.
Loki, undeterred, kept smiling, and offered his hand.
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