PARABLE
Viking Told a Secret.
My father, Svard the Great, went a’viking this season. He came back with silver, iron, and saints’ bones. He also grabbed a book.
We can naught read, but oh, the pictures! Dad calls them illuminations. They be magic. Scattered stars on a field of darkening blue, bright winged angels, tall wizards in robes, sunlit landscapes with castles and fields — I could stare on their lot for a fortnight.
If only I could ably read and write, I’d fill a diary! I’d lay out words about misty gray fog over longboats in Akronthorpe Bay. This past feast of Jól would take a page compleat since me and Alvis dressed in bison heads to scare the girls.
Most over, I’d set the stories of old-man Triggaford into runes. My whole compeerage, boys and girls together, sit by the hearth of this kindly fellow and his wife every second Thor’s Day to listen about the ancient deeds of Odin, Loki, Freyja, and the rest.
Last Day of Thor he laid afore us a claim outlandish. Two autumns past, he revealed, “I drowned in the Aspen Run as a flood came a’flashing o’er the boulders by the Aardjórn bank. Verily, the rush pulled me under. I held my breath until a snarl of it filled my lungs.”
Twasn’t Valhalla he hailed to but some honeyed place with a loving lot who fool the dead with their own cravings. They told the late Triggaford he had chosen his life here afore he were birthed.
Yes, verily, he told us we all forget the afore time. They had asked him where his hankerings lay. He craved adventure, so they shewed him a place with warriors great and women of alchemic allure.
They asked if he could face the highest challenge. “Aye,” he told them, “whate’er it be — put me at the helm of a longboat on the Skræling Sea or by the mouth of Grendel’s cave. Put a sword in my hand and a gusty wind at my back.”
So then, yes, they dropped him into a challenge, but it waren’t the one he sought. They sent him to a father who drank hisself ugly and a mum who talked to ghosts. They gave to him weakling flesh in a brotherhood of steel. They gave to him cold vapors in a land of stout hearts.
It were as great a test as any boy could muster toward. Verily, he shewed hisself a match to it. Young Triggaford bested his demons. He ousted the strangling beasts of his shadow.
How, ye ask? He laughed at the bullies. He wore their insults upon his tunic. He ne’er coveted their titles, nor their claims, nor any of their songs. He steered his rudder to follow a kindly current. He spoke to the lonely, calmed the sick, and lifted up the down of heart.
My father, Svard the Great, pulled Triggaford from the rush. He heaved him o’er a log and beat the run’s water from his aching lungs. Back flew the wayward spirit to the corpse from the honeyed land beyond. Hence, now we know the tale.
Whene’er a blackguard pal of Loki sets upon me with heavy words, I remember old Triggaford. Puny? Punky? Slow tongued? Arse brained? Whereas ye can naught blandish me to aim these arrows at meself, they shall naught find a mark.
