Hidden

To the latest woman in my life, little Olivia.

Love, Nonna

Thank you to Ivy Drexel, Helen Everbach, Sarah Geselowitz, Abigail Holtzman, Christina Labows, Grace Leonard, Lena Lofgren, Kimberlyn McClendon, Julia Penn, Anna Rasmussen, Erik Rasmussen, and Valerie Shea for comments on an earlier draft. Thank you to Barry and Robert Furrow for discussing so many points with me. Thank you to Trinity College Dublin for a Long Room Hub Fellowship in spring–summer 2012 to work on this novel. Thank you to Damian McManus of Trinity College Dublin for help on the Old Gaelic, particularly the proverb at the end of chapter one. And a huge thank-you to my editorial team, Sylvie Frank and Paula Wiseman, both so quietly effective and so sweetly encouraging.

This story takes place in the first half of the tenth century AD. It opens in Limfjord, Jutland, in Denmark. A scattering of Old Norse words flavor the text and are gathered in a glossary at the end. Old Norse used some letters English does not use. The sound at the beginning of
thigh
, for example, is represented by
þ
, so the word
þing
(“assembly”) was pronounced much like the English word
thing
. The sound at the beginning of
thy
, on the other hand, is represented by
ð
, and in this story you see it in the name of the god Óðinn. I am inconsistent about using these other letters, though; I prefer to spell
Thor
and all names that start with
Thor
with an initial
th
to make sure they are easily recognized.

Many vowels of Old Norse were written with diacritics over a letter familiar to us, such as
ø
,
á
,
Ã¥
. Some of these vowels don't occur in English. Further, even some letters we easily recognize are not always pronounced as we might expect (so written
f
can sound like [f] or [v]). I encourage you, then, to relax about the pronunciations and simply enjoy the sight of the words, allowing them to play in your mind as you wish. Alternatively, you could Google “recordings
Old Norse” and visit a few sites—whose authority I cannot vouch for, however. And if you are a (budding) linguist, you could consult one of several fine books, such as
The Nordic Languages: An International History of the North Germanic Languages, Volume 2
.

Further, in Old Norse there was a case system, so nouns had endings that told their role in a sentence. For example, the root of the word for Norway was
Nóreg
, but if it was the subject of the sentence, it would be said
Nóregr
. In this book, however, I use the root form throughout, because I feared the reader would find it strange that most proper nouns ended in
r
.

Finally, Brigid calls her language Gaelic, even though Irish people today call it Irish. I do this with apology (since I wrote much of this novel in Ireland), because I believe it is more likely to be true to her time.

The shock of the cold makes me go instantly rigid. I lift my arms and break the water's surface and claw at my cheeks till I manage to pull the gag down, and I'm gasping. White glitters the water, the air.

Splashes come from somewhere. My arms flail. Shivers seize me. I clamp my jaw shut to hold down the chattering.

Monsters loom in the starlight. Snow accumulating on trees. I swim for it. It isn't far. It can't be far.

Crack!
My hand protrudes through the ice it just broke. A thin layer lines the riverbank. A stabbing sensation shoots across my hand, and somehow I know my palm is sliced open. I make fists and beat my way through the chunky stuff, grabbing at stiff stalks, so many of them, all poky and horrible, my feet are digging into bottom now, and there's frozen mud at last. I pull myself up onto land.

“Mel?” I croak.

A groan comes from so close I can feel her breath. I reach out and grab. An explosion of strange words from a crazy language. It's one of the boys from the boat! I can't
tell which one in the dark. I don't know what he's saying.

I look back at the river. The boat is far away now. I scream, “Mel!”

The dark bulk that is the boy gets up and runs toward the trees. But I won't follow; he can't know any more about where we are than I know. He was stolen too. All of us on that boat, we were stolen from our homes.

Home. Downpatrick, Eire. My Eire land. Where my mother and father and brother live. Where Melkorka and I should be. Across all that water. I'm so far from home now. It's been days. Days and days.

I crawl along the bank, touching everything I can reach. “Melkorka? Mel, Mel, Mel.” My fingers can hardly feel anymore. I shake so hard, I think I may fall to pieces. Where is she? Where is my big sister? She always boasted that she and our brother Nuada could communicate with eyes alone, but she and I were learning to do that too. We were learning how on the boat. We did it even when our gags were off for eating; we kept silent. That was Mel's idea—to pretend we were mutes. I don't know why she did it, but I did whatever she did. I didn't need Mel's words to know I should copy her; I obeyed her eyes. And I'm sure an eye message passed between us the instant before I jumped. “Mel!” I'm screaming. She's a better swimmer than me. She has to be here! “Mel!”

I press on a stick and it slaps me in the face. I fall onto my back and hug myself.

I think back. There were only the boy's splashes. No one else. Two women, nine children, all captives on that boat, and only that one boy and I jumped. Mel didn't jump. Dear Lord, Mel, my Mel. Mother told us to stay together. “
Immalle
,” she said. Together, together.

Mother put us on the nag, dressed like peasant boys. In disguise like that, no one would bother us. We were to stay at Brenda and Michael's ringfort until it was safe to return home to Downpatrick. But we rode along the shore, and that awful ship saw us and snatched us, as easily as gathering eggs. Still, we were together. Like mother said.
Immalle.
Until now. “Mel!” I shout.

But Mel didn't jump when I did. I already figured that out. She can't hear me, so it's stupid to shout. And maybe dangerous. Who knows what wicked creatures might hear? I broke so many of those stalks climbing out of the water. What if they were bulrushes? I could have crushed fairy houses. Fairies might be coming for me, screaming, shrieking. Like the damned. My ears are too cold to hear them, but my head knows.

That's why the boy ran off now. Not because he knows where to go—but because this is a bad place to stay. I have to get someplace safe. I have to get warm, dry.

I manage to stand and take a few steps. One shoe was lost in the silt under the river rushes. The other flops loose. I go to tie it, but it's already tied. Water sloshes inside it; that's what stretched it. I try to squeeze out the water so I can tie it tighter, but the water has made the leather strings almost fuse together. And my fingers are so cold they can't curl the right way to work the strings anyway. I tug hard and rip the shoe off and throw it in the river and stumble as fast as I can.

Nothing's visible now. The dark is solid. I head directly away from the river, smashing through the trees.

I was right—the line of trees is only three or four deep. Almost instantly I come out onto a meadow in hazy, snow-dampened moonlight. The thinnest dusting of fresh snow covers the ground; it's not thick and hard like I expected. Spring has started here, too, just a little later than in Eire, but winter frightened it today. Maybe a week ago that river ice would have been too thick to break through and I'd have been swept underwater forever. My whole body spasms.

The wind blasts me, and I drop to my knees to keep from being knocked over. Still, I saw what I needed to see—mounds beyond this meadow—houses, they've got to be houses. The people there will help me. Anyone will help a princess, especially a little one—I'm only eight, and
I'm small for my age. They'll want to bring me back to Eire and collect a reward.

I try to stand but the wind stops me, so I scrabble in a half walk, half crawl through the grasses. The ground is bumpy. Why? I let my knees gather the information: long furrows, long mounds. This is no meadow—it's a farmer's field. Sharp stubble a hand-width apart. Parsnips, I bet—and I'm hungry. They fed us almost nothing on that boat—a single boiled parsnip for dinner. So I should try to dig, but with what? It's so cold, the ground is too hard.

Everything is too hard.

My chest is ice. Just breathing hurts so bad I could scream. I want to be home, asleep on my bedmat in Mother and Father's room, with Mel asleep on one side of me and Nuada asleep on the other, our five warm breaths mingling, binding us together like the good family we are. I should have a tummy full of milk and leek soup and lots of meat, and be dressed in a smooth linen nightdress instead of this rough peasant tunic. My hair should be brushed to a gloss by a servant. My feet should be warmed by the hearth. Tears well in my eyes.