Chapter 16
Samira came up near midnight and found Torstein at the steering oar.
The sky had washed clean. There was no moon. The stars had come out the way they do at sea with no land near, so many of them that the familiar shapes were hard to pick out from among the rest.
"The men say you saved the ship," she said.
"The men say a great deal." He glanced sideways at her. "It was you who reset the steering oar."
"Your man lifted it for me."
"Take the compliment. It costs you nothing and it saves me having to say it twice."
She let that sit for a moment. Then she tipped her head back and looked up.
"May I show you something?"
"Aye."
She pointed low, well down toward the southern horizon, at a single very bright star sitting just clear of the water.
"We call that one Suhayl. In the deep desert my mother's people steer by it.
There are poems about it. A man coming home from a long journey will say that he has seen Suhayl again, and everyone who hears him knows exactly what he means.
" She kept her eyes on it. "It is lower tonight than it was three nights ago. "
Torstein looked at it. "It would be. We are going north."
"Yes."
"The further north we sail, the lower it will sit. By the time we are off Brittany it will be under the horizon." He said it plainly. "You will not see it again after that. Not at home in Orkney. Never."
"I know." Samira did not look away from it. "I worked out years ago from a table how far north a man must travel before Suhayl fails him. I never expected to be on the ship that proved the table right."
Torstein was quiet for a moment.
"There are others," he said. "Ones you have never seen.
There is a thing that happens in the north in winter, green fire that moves across the whole sky, from one side to the other.
My people say it is the Bifrost, the burning bridge.
I have seen it a hundred times and I still stop what I am doing and look at it. "
"Green."
"Green. Sometimes red at the edges."
She considered this. "Then I shall have to trade Suhayl for it."
"That is not a fair trade."
"No," she agreed. "It is not. But nothing about this journey has been a fair trade and I got on the ship anyway."
Torstein said nothing at all to that.
After a while she raised her hand again, higher this time, and traced a shape.
"Those seven. We call them Banāt na?sh. The daughters of the bier. Those four make the bier, the frame that carries a body to burial. Those three walking behind are the daughters, following it."
"That is Karlsvagn." He traced the same seven stars. "The wagon. The four are the cart and the three are the shaft that the horse pulls it by." He pointed at the middle star of the three. "Now look hard at that one. There is a small one sitting right up against it."
She looked hard. "There is."
"Aurvandil's toe. Thor carried him out of the land of the giants in a basket on his back and his toe was sticking out over the edge and it froze solid, so Thor snapped it off and threw it up into the sky.
" He shrugged. "We use it to test a man's eyes.
If you can see those two apart, you are good enough to stand lookout at the bow. "
"Your people looked at those seven stars and saw a frozen toe. My people looked at the same seven and saw a funeral."
"Aye."
"That is either very comforting or very troubling, and I have not decided which."
He laughed. It was the first time she had heard him do it properly. It changed his whole face, and she looked away from it deliberately.
She showed him the two eagles, the swooping one and the flying one, and how you could measure the space between them with your fist held at arm's length and know whether you were holding your northing.
He showed her how the wagon swings around the pole star through the night, so that a man who knows where it stood at dusk can tell the hour by where it stands now.
He told her about the sun-stone, a crystal the northern sailors carry that finds the sun through thick cloud by the way the light changes when you turn it.
She did not believe him until he described exactly how the brightness shifted as the stone rotated, and then she believed him completely and asked four questions about it in a row.
At some point their hands were on the same rail and their forearms were touching from elbow to wrist. Neither of them moved. Neither of them mentioned it.
The eastern sky was beginning to go gray when he spoke again.
"Two days to the Algarve coast if this wind holds. Then Lisbon after that."
"And then?"
"Then north."
She nodded slowly. Suhayl had set, or the haze had taken it. Tomorrow it would rise a little lower still.
"My mother never saw the sea," she said. "Not once in her life. She would have liked this."
Torstein looked at her for a long moment.
"There is a stretch past Brittany," he said, "where the land falls away west and you can see the whole southern sky at once, right down to the water. If we go out that way instead of hugging the coast, you will get one more night of your star before you lose it."
Samira turned her head.
"That would cost you a day."
"Aye," said Torstein, and went back to watching the water. "It would. But if it means that my wife gets to see a star that points to her home a little longer, then it is worth it."
Samira felt a tear track down her cheek as she smiled at this Viking husband of hers. That night she gave thanks to the heavens and when she finally fell asleep, her heart felt full.
***
THE FOLLOWING MORNING when Samira awoke and made her way to the main deck, she noticed a shift in the atmosphere.
Mainly from the crew. Several nodded their heads and smiled as she moved past them.
It was no longer the usual brief nod of deference they afforded her because of her husband.
This time they acknowledged her because of what she had done during the storm.
"What is happening?" she asked Torstein, who joined her.
"You saved the ship and a life in the storm. It was no small feat what you did and my crew are grateful. Bravery and skill are highly regarded among my people. You possess an abundance of both."
Samira blushed then greeted each man in turn.
From that day onward, Samira noticed the change. The crew included her openly in their conversations and banter and soon she was listening with a keen ear to learn their language faster.
***