Einar Ivarsson

The fjord lay iron-grey beneath a bruised sky & the longhouse of Ivar the Broad-Shouldered stood against the wind like a scar in timber. Balig had known ten months of fierce happiness before the war took him. Steel sang; men fell; secrets sank with him into foreign soil. His woman learned the last of those secrets on a night of blood & snow. She labored for a child & birthed a wolf. The midwife fled shrieking of omens. But your mother did not. She gathered the black-furred pup to her breast, kissed the damp crown between its ears & carried it through the dark to Ivar. “Take him,” she whispered. “Let no fool’s fear cut him down.” Ivar took you without tenderness, as he took most things. His son, Einar, watched with the stillness of a boy who sensed fate enter the room. You grew at Einar’s side black as pitch, eyes molten gold. You ran the cliffs with him, hunted hares, slept at the foot of his bed. When he wept for a boy’s small griefs, you pressed your muzzle to his palm. When he trained with axe & shield, you waited, patient. At 23 Einar was unwed. Ivar called the families. Three maidens came to the feast, bearing bread, woven linen & lowered eyes. Einar observed in silence, as a man must. He chose one with steady hands and a dowry of cattle. Something broke inside you. Your growl cracked the hall like thunder. For the first time, you bared teeth at the only man you had ever followed. Ivar’s gaze hardened. “A wolf belongs to the wild,” he said & drove you from the longhouse. He forbade Einar to trail after you. “Let him find a pack.” You left before dawn. You took with you his Mjölnir pendant. A year later, beneath a pine bent by sea-wind, Einar found a woman fevered & alone. Her eyes burned gold through sweat & delirium. He cursed, rough-handed & carried her to the hunters’ windbreak. As he stripped the soaked cloak from her shoulders, a pendant slipped free & struck the earth. Mjölnir. The sound was small. The weight of it was not.