The Land of the Silver Apples

Chapter Three WASSAIL

“Fine weather,” said Giles Crookleg, gazing up at the bright blue sky. The sun blazed along the icicles on the roof.

“Perfect,” agreed Jack. He picked up a birch rod and a skin bag full of cider. Father already had his. Their feet crackled the icy covering of the road as they set out for the village. Jack saw crows sliding down a small, snowy hill, exactly like boys on sleds. They landed with a whump, flew back to the top, and slid down again. John the Fletcher’s fighting cock was wearing itself out chasing another crow that kept landing within tempting reach and flying up again when the enraged rooster charged after it.

“Wake up!” Jack called to the leafless apple trees as they passed.

“Oh, aye. They’ll wake up soon enough,” said Father. “Both boys and trees improve with beating.”

It was one of Father’s usual remarks, but Jack refused to let it bother him. The air was too clear, too bright, too alive.

A noisy crowd of men and boys waited outside the chief’s house. They all carried birch rods, and some of the boys chased each other in mock sword fights. Colin, the blacksmith’s son, challenged Jack. They set off across the yard, slashing and cursing. “Vile barbarian, I’ll have your head!” cried Colin.

“Sooner will it decorate my doorpost!” swore Jack. Colin was heavier than him, but Jack had learned a great deal about fighting from the Northmen. He soon had Colin on the run, shrieking, “No fair! No fair!” until a blast from the chief’s hunting horn brought them to a halt.

The chief stood in his doorway with the Bard, who carried his blackened ash wood staff. Only Jack knew what power lay in it and where it had come from. His own smaller staff, won with great effort in Jotunheim, was stored at the Bard’s house. Jack could practice with it there without listening to Father tell him about demons waiting to drag evil wizards down to Hell.

The boy felt a sudden rush of joy at the rightness of the gathering. It was good to be in the middle of a crowd with the sun shining and the air fresh off the sea.

The Bard held up his hand for silence. “The long night is past, and the sun has turned from walking in the south,” he proclaimed in a ringing voice. “It comes toward us, bringing summer, but the journey will be long and hard. The sleep of winter still lies over the land. We must wake the orchards to new life.”

The old man nodded to the chief, who spread his arms wide and cried, “You heard him! Let’s go wake up some apple trees!” Everyone cheered and spread into the chief’s orchard, slashing the trunks with birch rods.

“Waes hael! Waes hael!” the men and boys cried in Saxon. “Good health! Good health!” The Bard followed behind, his cheeks rosy with cold and his long beard and robes as white as the snow. After each tree was struck, he placed a morsel of bread soaked with cider in the branches, for the robins that would sing the apples back to life.

The villagers moved from farm to farm, blowing on wooden flutes and bawling songs at the tops of their voices. In between, they stopped to drink cider until most of the men were drunk. The last place they visited was Giles Crookleg’s house because it was the farthest out of town. “Waes hael!” bellowed the villagers. Mother came out to greet them.

“Waes hael!” yelled the blacksmith, slashing none too accurately at the tree shading the barn. He sang in a loud, blustering voice,

“It’s not wise to threaten powers you don’t understand,” the Bard remarked, placing cider-soaked bread in the branches. The blacksmith belched thunderously and staggered off. “I’m glad this is the last of it,” the old man said to Jack. “You’d think I’d be used to drunks, living with Northmen so long, but they still irritate me. And speaking of irritation, we have yet to discuss what happened during the need-fire ceremony.”

Uh-oh, thought Jack. He had hoped to escape punishment.

“Yes, I see you understand what I’m talking about. You knew as well as Giles that Lucy had that necklace.”

“I did try to stop her, sir, but Father—”

“You’re thirteen years old,” the Bard said sternly. “In the Northman lands you’d be considered an adult.”

“Father doesn’t think so.”

“Well, I do. You’ve fought by the side of Olaf One-Brow. You’ve been to the hall of the Mountain Queen, seen Norns, and drunk from Mimir’s Well. You vanquished Frith Half-Troll, something even I was unable to do. How much more growing up do you need?”

Jack wanted to say, A lot, but he knew that wasn’t what the Bard wanted to hear. He was caught between two men, both of whom he’d always obeyed. Now the Bard was asking him to make a choice.

“I’m teaching you lore men would give their entire wealth-hoard to learn,” the Bard went on. “There are few like me in the world. Each year there are fewer, and I have chosen you as my successor. This is a high destiny.”

Jack felt ashamed for letting the old man down. The Bard had believed in him and had given him so much.

“There’s more,” said the Bard, gazing at the bright snow-fields and blue sky beyond. “Something happened during the need-fire ceremony, and the wheel of the year was turned in a new direction. I can feel it in the bones of the earth. Change is coming. Enormous change.”

“The Northmen won’t be back, will they?” Jack hoped he didn’t sound as appalled as he felt inside.

“Nothing so trivial as that,” said the old man. “I’m speaking of something that will topple gods and spread its influence throughout the nine worlds for centuries to come.”

Jack stared goggle-eyed at him. All this from Lucy wearing a necklace at the wrong time?

“I really must train that slack-jawed expression out of you—completely undermines your authority,” said the Bard.

“But, sir, who could topple a god?” asked Jack. He knew, of course, that his own God was the enemy of Odin and Thor, and a good thing, too! Who needed bullies who told their worshippers to burn down villages? Less comfortably, Jack realized that Christians were opposed to his mother’s beliefs in the powers that ruled the fields and beasts. And some of them even denounced bards.

It was all mixed up in Jack’s mind. He was a good Christian—or tried to be—but he had been at the foot of Yggdrassil and had seen how everything belonged on it. What was wrong with the Christians having one branch and the Northmen another?

“I spoke too rashly. No one actually topples gods,” the Bard said softly. “They are simply forgotten and fall asleep.”

“That’s what happened during the need-fire ceremony?”

“Not exactly.” The Bard drew a pattern in the snow with the tip of his staff. It might have been a sunburst except that each ray had branches like a budding tree. It was the symbol on the rune of protection. “At the right time a very minor event—a hawk taking one chick and not another, a seed sprouting where it should not have grown—can have consequences that even the Wise cannot see. When Lucy failed the ceremony and Pega took her place, a profound shift happened in the life force. What this means has something to do with you three, but I don’t understand it yet. All I ask is that you take your duties seriously.”

“I won’t fail you, sir,” Jack said fervently.

“I hope that’s true.”

The old man frowned at the blacksmith, who had collapsed in the snow. Father knelt beside him in a fit of drunken remorse. “I should have been a monk,” Giles Crookleg moaned, rocking back and forth on his knees. “No farmwork, no worries. I would have been happy as a monk.”

“There, there,” said the blacksmith sympathetically.

“Throw a sheepskin over those idiots before they freeze to death,” said the Bard. He strode off, his white robe merging with the white snow so quickly, it seemed he’d vanished.