Free Two Ravens by Cecelia Holland

doorway. Bjarni held out the sack. He made signs with his hands to show that he wanted food; he showed the goodwife the silver coin. Her eyes widened. From her own hut she carried the sack around to the other two and came back with two long loaves of bread, a wedge of cheese, and some onions and turnips. Bjarni argued a little, and she added a sausage. He gave her the coin and went back to the well.
    Gifu sat with her back to the edge of the well, her arms wrapped around her knees. “You’d better give me back my money,” she said.
    He gave her a bit of the cheese and some of the bread. They sat together eating. The wind was coming up, and the well sheltered them. Up over them the stars began to prick through the darkness of the sky. He lay down on the grass, his arms behind his head. The memory of Hiyke sprang into his mind. He would see her again; he was eager to think of her. The wind stirred the grass around him. He would tell all this to Hiyke: when he was home, he would make poems to tell everyone.
    “Look at that,” Gifu said. “I hope they don’t bother us.”
    Three or four boys in a little group moved along the far end of the green. Their voices grew louder. They threw rocks at the oxen and the great cattle lumbered away.
    Gifu asked, “Will they throw stones at my horse?” Standing up, she went off through the windy grass toward the horse, midway to the nearest of the huts. Bjarni lay back again. He watched the stars. They were different here. The summer square, just rising, was nearly in the arch of the sky.
    “Hey!”
    The shout brought him up to a sit. The boys, indistinct in the dark, had come up the meadow and were throwing rocks at the old woman in the doorway of the hut. It was Gifu who had shouted. She ran forward, shouting again, and bent for a rock and threw it at the boys.
    They turned on her. She squatted down and coolly dug rocks up from the grass and flung them much better than the boys did. One of them yelped, and another ran away. The two remaining hurried after him. Gifu rose from the grass. The door of the hut opened and the hag was taken in. Gifu came back to Bjarni.
    “Here,” he said, and gave her an onion.
    She sat beside him to eat it. He lay down again to watch the stars.
    “Bear?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where are we going?”
    He lay still a moment, the starlight in his eyes. At length, he said, “We are both going home—you to Fenby.”
    “I am never going home. Where is your home?”
    “Iceland.”
    “Iceland! What is that—a country made of ice?”
    He did not answer. His beard itched and he scratched through the wiry hair at his chin.
    “Where is it? Iceland.”
    He pointed to the North Star. “Almost directly beneath that star.”
    She sat up, leaning against him, to see the star he was pointing toward; she looked along his arm. “That’s at the edge of the world.” She bit into the onion. “How will you get there?”
    “Over the sea. But it is not at the edge of the world—Iceland is at the center of the world, or very near.”
    “Then why have I never heard of it?”
    “You have never heard of anyplace,” he said. He pointed to the North Star again. “That star, you see, we call the Millstem. The world is a mill, with the sky as the upper millstone, and the land and sea as the nether millstone. Only a few days’ sail north from Iceland, the sea rushes down through the hole in the nether millstone, which is at the center, of course.”
    She was eating the onion. “That is un-so. The center of the world is Jerusalem, as everyone knows, where Jesus was nailed to the Cross.”
    “I am going to sleep,” he said. It was a mistake to talk to her, to enjoy her company. She would get him in trouble. He lay down and put his head in his arms.
     
    THE CITY OF YORK was by a river that emptied into the sea, and seafaring ships were anchored there, moored up in rows between the banks where sheep grazed. There were no ships from Iceland. Bjarni spoke to such of the