Thorolf's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

The buried oath-ring stayed in Thorolf's mind. He went back to the pool the next morning to find it, but the mud held only his own anger. A new griever had come, a farmer from the river homestead, his young son dead of fever. The man knelt by the water and wept. Thorolf lifted the amber amulet and began the rite. Then the farmer looked up and said, "Does it stop hurting? Tell me it stops." Thorolf's jaw clenched. Heat climbed his chest. He wanted to shout that nothing stops. He set the amulet down before his hand could crush it. He could not do this. Not yet. He told the farmer to wait. Then he walked away from his own grove, ashamed. He went to Hjördís Runedottir's dwelling. The blind seeress sat outside, braiding a cord, her antler headdress tipped toward the sound of his boots. The cloth over her eyes did not move. "You rush," she said. "Your steps say you are running from the water." "A man asked me if grief ends," Thorolf said. "I nearly broke the amulet in my hand. I keep leading others through the rite, but I have never walked it myself." Hjördís set down her cord. "Whose death do you carry that you have never named?" Thorolf said nothing. Then, low: "My father. He never once said he was proud. He died cold. I buried him and felt only anger." "Then you have given everyone a door but yourself," she said. "Go to the mound. Do the rite for him. Alone. The dead do not need your forgiveness. You need to stop fighting a man who is gone." Thorolf climbed to the burial mound that evening. The weathered stones stood in their rings. He carried the amber amulet and a skin of water from the pool. His bad hand ached as he knelt. He pressed the amulet into the dirt above his father's grave. "Your name," he made himself say, the way he made the others say it. He spoke his father's name aloud. His voice broke on it. The anger came first, hot and old. He let it come. Then, under it, grief he had never let rise. He poured the water over the amulet and his fingers. "I wanted you to be proud," he said. "You never said it. I carried that like a wound into every man I buried." He stayed until the sun dropped behind the trees. The anger did not vanish. But it loosened. For the first time, he felt the loss instead of the rage. He came down the mound lighter. At dawn he returned to the pool. The farmer still waited, red-eyed. Thorolf knelt beside him and lifted the amulet with steady hands. "It doesn't stop," he said. "But you don't carry it alone. Name your son." This time his anger did not flare. He led the man through, clean and whole.