in her as she sat in the dark, and it grew in the other sisters. As the witches eroded the distinction between today and tomorrow, they blurred the lines between me, you, she and it. Their experiences were like possessions that could be lent, borrowed or shared.
Minor magics were used to clarify the sense of foreboding. The sisters lit a whale-blubber candle and asked it for a vision. They could have asked anything to direct them but they chose the candle because it had once been a living thing and so its connections to the outside world were more solid than those of the rocks of the caves. First the candle revealed its past, as it would to anyone, the fish stink filling the cave. The sisters, though, could sense more. They breathed in the stress that had seeped into the fat with the whale’s beaching, its discovery by hunters and its killing. The candle burned on, and they began to see that, for the prophecy, the quality of its light was the important thing.
Then a sister, because it felt right, reached forward and snuffed out the flame. The light disappeared but the thought of the light, its residue, filled the witches’ minds. Underneath the sickly yellow of the flame, they thought, was a darker colour, a bright slate, the colour of the sky before a storm. The link was followed, and rainwater was brought down in a cup from the top of the Wall, and it was noticed that the water felt heavier than normal water, or rather it held a sentiment, a wish. The water, thought the sisters, still wanted to fall, to be rain again. The smell of it too was sharp, like ozone. The link to the coming storm seemed stronger.
A witch went to the top of the Wall to observe the birds. They had moved from the north face of the mountain and come around to the south. In the valley, she could sense, other animals were moving to shelter. The gulls had come inland and insects were burrowing into the earth. Why were these things happening? Because the witches were looking. The animals didn’t move to offer auguries to the ordinary people of the mountains.
The portent was clear then - a storm, a magical storm. In the winter the message became clearer. The smoke on the wind bore the scent of funeral fires; the rats that ran through the caves seemed to carry an excitement and an expectation; more ravens than gulls were seen in the sky; a vision of the hangman’s tree seemed to resonate in the witches’ minds, day and night, the creaking of the rope waking them from their dreams, intruding on rituals where it had no place. Death was all around them, they knew, waiting for its moment to touch them. The time for subtlety was over.
A rune would need to be carved. The ordinary people knew runes, scratched symbols that allowed them to record simple messages or list things. But to the witches they were much more than that, more even than charms for amulets or to guard a chest, as some of the healers and wise women of the farmsteads knew them to be. They were living things that took root in the mind and grew within it, changing it utterly, feeding on sanity and blossoming into magic.
Rune carving was not something the witches took lightly. Runes were powerful sources of magic given by Odin - or rather taken in pain and anguish and wilful madness from the dark god by the earliest women who had retreated to the mountain.
Generations before, there had been just one witch. She had sat alone in the caves, her mind falling through the dark, until her pain had matched the dead lord’s when he hung on the tree for nine days and nights pierced by the spear and chilled by the moon at the well of wisdom. Her reward was a rune that meant daylight and, though it had no name, it shone in her mind and warmed her bones like the sun on a summer’s afternoon. The presence of the rune inside her gave her the power to heal the people of the mountain and the ability to reveal glimpses of the future to them. In return, they had sent her three girls to train.
One
Minor magics were used to clarify the sense of foreboding. The sisters lit a whale-blubber candle and asked it for a vision. They could have asked anything to direct them but they chose the candle because it had once been a living thing and so its connections to the outside world were more solid than those of the rocks of the caves. First the candle revealed its past, as it would to anyone, the fish stink filling the cave. The sisters, though, could sense more. They breathed in the stress that had seeped into the fat with the whale’s beaching, its discovery by hunters and its killing. The candle burned on, and they began to see that, for the prophecy, the quality of its light was the important thing.
Then a sister, because it felt right, reached forward and snuffed out the flame. The light disappeared but the thought of the light, its residue, filled the witches’ minds. Underneath the sickly yellow of the flame, they thought, was a darker colour, a bright slate, the colour of the sky before a storm. The link was followed, and rainwater was brought down in a cup from the top of the Wall, and it was noticed that the water felt heavier than normal water, or rather it held a sentiment, a wish. The water, thought the sisters, still wanted to fall, to be rain again. The smell of it too was sharp, like ozone. The link to the coming storm seemed stronger.
A witch went to the top of the Wall to observe the birds. They had moved from the north face of the mountain and come around to the south. In the valley, she could sense, other animals were moving to shelter. The gulls had come inland and insects were burrowing into the earth. Why were these things happening? Because the witches were looking. The animals didn’t move to offer auguries to the ordinary people of the mountains.
The portent was clear then - a storm, a magical storm. In the winter the message became clearer. The smoke on the wind bore the scent of funeral fires; the rats that ran through the caves seemed to carry an excitement and an expectation; more ravens than gulls were seen in the sky; a vision of the hangman’s tree seemed to resonate in the witches’ minds, day and night, the creaking of the rope waking them from their dreams, intruding on rituals where it had no place. Death was all around them, they knew, waiting for its moment to touch them. The time for subtlety was over.
A rune would need to be carved. The ordinary people knew runes, scratched symbols that allowed them to record simple messages or list things. But to the witches they were much more than that, more even than charms for amulets or to guard a chest, as some of the healers and wise women of the farmsteads knew them to be. They were living things that took root in the mind and grew within it, changing it utterly, feeding on sanity and blossoming into magic.
Rune carving was not something the witches took lightly. Runes were powerful sources of magic given by Odin - or rather taken in pain and anguish and wilful madness from the dark god by the earliest women who had retreated to the mountain.
Generations before, there had been just one witch. She had sat alone in the caves, her mind falling through the dark, until her pain had matched the dead lord’s when he hung on the tree for nine days and nights pierced by the spear and chilled by the moon at the well of wisdom. Her reward was a rune that meant daylight and, though it had no name, it shone in her mind and warmed her bones like the sun on a summer’s afternoon. The presence of the rune inside her gave her the power to heal the people of the mountain and the ability to reveal glimpses of the future to them. In return, they had sent her three girls to train.
One
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