The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay Read online

  “Well, a lot can happen in a month, Dani. May I continue?” Granny looked around at Mum, Ruairi, and Dani who all smiled and nodded.

  “Still confused,” Dani said, “but do go on.”

  “Now,” Granny said as the Millers made their way from the arrivals hall up two flights on the escalator to the departures hall where they stood in the queue to get on their next flight. “Where was I? Oh, yes, I remember …

  “Leading the fleet of longships away from the patch of water that had terrified him witless, Brother Brian gestured in a northwesterly direction toward a jutting headland familiar to all who had traveled this way with King Dudo before. Just in time too. The Vikings were so hungry by now that Brother Brian was starting to look tasty.

  “‘Too gristly,’ Brother Brian overheard one of them say.

  ‘He’ll be all right with a bit of salt,’ said another.

  “‘Look! Look!’ Brother Brian screeched hysterically as he was being surrounded. ‘Land!’

  “They disembarked as the sun rose. The Vikings had camped in this cold and inhospitable land when they had traveled west in the past. They created makeshift shelter, and they were hopeful of finding something to hunt in the nearby wood.

  “The forest was one of snow-covered trees that began inland some way from the bay. A team was dispatched to bring firewood to the camp and to begin the hunt for fresh meat.

  “A man of action, Dudo was of this hunting party. When they reached the trees, two men set about gathering wood into slings to drag back to camp. The rest fanned out as silently as they could manage, given the crispness of the icy slush underfoot. King Dudo positioned himself on the flank of the group as they all crept softly into the depths of the forest.

  “Reaching the edge of the dense plot of trees, Dudo was distracted by a tiny bird with soft purple feathers off to his right. The bird took flight. Following, King Dudo found himself emerging alone from under the dim forest canopy into a field of light between the tree-brown dankness and the sea-blue stillness. Trees to his left; to his right, the sea. Nothing else.

  “Enchanted by the spectacular beauty of this place, Dudo walked across a white hollow toward the water. His men continued forward in their hunting circle, not noticing the king had wandered out of position. King Dudo looked out across the vast ocean toward his homeland. He tried to imagine what his Danish subjects were doing at that precise moment—sleeping, eating, or working in the fields. He reflected that he was a lucky man. He had sailed the waves, explored foreign lands, and had seen beauty of a kind most of his subjects could not even imagine.

  “King Dudo was startled out of his reverie by a low grumbling noise not twenty feet behind him. He turned, slowly. Before him, a giant white bear padded noiselessly out of the woods. The king looked at the bear, and the bear looked back. The bear slavered. It bared its teeth, and juices slobbered from them.

  “King Dudo was trapped. There was no escape. He could not go backward—there was only icy cold water behind him; he could not go forward—there was only the bear. The hollow was narrow—there was no space to go around. He could not call out to his men for fear of startling or angering the white bear. He stood as still as he could, trying to come up with a plan. “The bear continued toward King Dudo and made its way down into the hollow. As it did so, King Dudo the Mightily Impressive heard the loudest crack he had ever heard and felt the earth move beneath his feet.”

  “I can’t hear you very well now, Granny,” Dani shouted to her great-great-great-grandmother, who was seated right beside her on top of their luggage and the thousands of boxes in the hold of the cargo plane taking them on the next stage of their journey.

  “Let’s wait till we land,” Granny screeched back. “We’re nearly there now.”

  “What did you say?” Ruairi shouted at Granny.

  “We’re nearly there!” Granny said.

  “What?” Mum shouted over the noise of the engines of the cavernous plane. Granny pointed out the window at the airport building that appeared closer every second.

  Dudo and the Bear

  “With the sudden noise, Dudo felt the white hollow of earth start to shift beneath his feet,” Granny said, once they’d landed and had walked across the tarmac into the airport building. “It had broken clean off from the rest of the headland and had started to drift out to sea.

  “The loud crack was not heard only by King Dudo. Immediately, the voices of his men broke through the trees, and the sounds of twigs breaking and branches creaking let him know they were coming. He hoped they would not get to him too late.

  “The loud crack was not heard only by King Dudo and his men. The white bear was standing just beyond the fissure and seemed terrified by the thunderous split and the movement of the ground. The enormous white bear reared up on its hind legs and bellowed a deafening roar directly into the face of brave King Dudo the Mightily Impressive.

  “The roar was loud enough and angry enough and scary enough to spread a ripple of terror through the men now rapidly approaching the edge of the woods and the space where the snowy ledge used to be. The warriors got there just in time to see their lord and king float gently away on a sliver of ice. His only company: an enormous, ravenous, snow-white polar bear.

  “Intent on saving his king, one of the warriors jumped straight into the water. He was stunned so badly by the icy cold that not only did he not save Dudo, he could not even swim and in fact required his own rescue party. Two men remained behind to save their overzealous companion while the rest ran at full speed back through the woods to their fellows on the beach. They shouted as loudly as they could to raise the alarm even before they were in sight.

  “They jumped into their boats; the rowers sliced the water with all their strength and ploughed through the waves, around the headland, in the direction of King Dudo and the white bear. They put their full might into each stroke of the oars, cutting the blue water like hot swords through melting butter.

  “A thick gray fog had been resting atop the trees since they had set foot on land, threatening to descend. And now, at this most crucial of moments, the promise was fulfilled, and the fog tumbled down past them. It stirred up the waves and blocked their view entirely. Men ran along the decks of the boats casting about for signs of their king.

  “This Viking squad was a hardy bunch, so desperation did not set in immediately. They kept on their course. They took turns shouting for their king and remaining quiet, listening for a response. But they heard nothing. Not a sound but their own shrieks and eventually their own sighs of despair.

  “What was that, dear?” Granny stopped her story abruptly and turned toward Dani and Ruairi.

  Dani and Ruairi looked at each other and at Granny Miller.

  “What?” Ruairi asked.

  “What did you say, my dear? Did you ask me something?”

  “No, Granny,” Ruairi said, casting about. “Nobody said a thing.”

  “Oh! I could have sworn … Oh well, if you say you didn’t say anything … if you’re sure now.”

  “No, Granny. We didn’t so much as open our mouths,” Dani said.

  “Well, if you’re sure. Now. Where was I? Oh, yes.” Granny settled back into the comfiness of the armchair in the corner of the departure lounge and sipped the cocoa Mum had bought her at the coffee shop. “And so it was that King Dudo’s lifeless body washed up on the unfamiliar shore of an unfamiliar land in the middle of the northern-most seas.”

  “Nooooo!” Dani and Ruairi shouted out together.

  “What, my dears?” Granny calmly looked over her glasses as Dani and Ruairi jumped up from where they had been lying on the floor of the airport concourse.

  “No, Granny!” Dani said frantically. “That’s not where we were; we were floating away on the ice with the bear and the Vikings and the fog and the Vikings were calling out trying to find King Dudo.”

  “Is he dead?” Ruairi whispered anxiously to his mother; this wasn’t a Dudo story
he had heard Granny tell before. Mum shrugged, she didn’t know.

  “Oh, yes. That’s right, that’s right. Well. They didn’t find him,” Granny said and continued. “And so it was that King Dudo’s lifeless body washed up on the unfamiliar shore of an unfamiliar—”

  “But the bear, Granny! What about the bear?” Dani asked.

  “Yes, Granny, the bear! What happened with the bear?” Ruairi wanted to know.

  Granny was looking a little confused now. “What bear now?”

  “The bear!”

  “The ravenous snow-white bear!”

  “The ravenous bear … the ravenous bear. No. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “The big white bear that broke off from the land with King Dudo, the one with the fangs and the slavering and the … the … big-ness,” Ruairi said, demonstrating how big the bear was with his arms.

  “Oh, right, I’m with you now. That bear. The ravenous bear. Yes, but,” Granny paused, “are you sure you want to hear about the bear?” She looked at the two of them. They nodded.

  “It’s just, well, I thought maybe you’d rather not hear about the bear. Ruairi was looking a bit queasy, and Dani was getting very agitated when I started talking about the bear. Maybe you’re not old enough for the bear story yet. It can get quite gruesome. It looked like it was getting to be a bit too much for you.”

  Dani and Ruairi sat down and tried to look as unagitated and unqueasy as they could.

  “Oh no, Granny,” Dani said, “not at all. We were just worried that maybe the hot chocolate wasn’t chocolaty enough for you, or that you maybe needed another pie. That’s what had gotten us worried.”

  “Yeah,” Ruairi went on, “not the bear. No way. I couldn’t care less about the bear. In fact, if you don’t tell us about what happened on the floe with the ravenous, slavering, snow-white bear, we won’t mind one bit, not one bit. Only—”

  “Only?” Granny looked amused.

  “Only,” Dani went on, “it might get a bit confusing later on, you know, if there are details pertinent to the rest of the story, and we don’t know about them. It would probably be good background, for later on, you understand.”

  “Ah, yes, I see, for later on. Yes, I understand,” Granny said and flashed a quick smile at Mum.

  “Well, in that case, very well.” Granny muttered to herself. “The fog, the Vikings shouting, the ravenous bear … yes, yes, I know where we are, but we’ll have to pause a few minutes. They’ve just announced our flight. This is the last one, my younglings; the next time we set foot on land, we will be on Yondersaay.”

  The Ravenous Bear

  “King Dudo stood perfectly still on the edge of the ice floe,” Granny said as soon as they were all settled on the Yonder Air flight to Yondersaay, and she had unbuckled her seat belt and lowered her tray table. “You’re both sure you want me to tell this story?”

  “Yes!” Ruairi and Dani said.

  “Well, okay, if you me want to,” Dani said more calmly.

  Ruairi glanced toward the galley and saw the Yonder Air flight attendant roll the dinner cart out of the galley kitchen and into their aisle. Ruairi could see Mum looking out for it—Granny Miller had lowered her tray table mere seconds before every meal and every snack was served on every flight they’d been on all day.

  “Dudo studied the bear, and the bear studied Dudo,” Granny went on. “Staying as still as he could, Dudo wondered, could he fight the bear? He looked at the massive creature. Powerfully built, sinewy and strong, it was twice the width of the king, at least. On its hind legs, it was over three times as high. One swipe of a paw would knock the life out of the biggest, strongest Viking in King Dudo’s army.

  “Dudo had noted the bear’s poise and grace when it had padded so elegantly out of the woods to face him. This animal was equally at home on the ice and in the water. There was no way King Dudo could wrong-foot this magnificent creature, which had spent all of its life walking and running on snow and ice, and get it to lose its balance. Even if somehow, against all probability, King Dudo did manage to topple the bear into the water, there would be absolutely nothing to stop the bear from climbing back to where it was right now, growling and snarling mere feet from him. Nothing in the world.

  “So, attacking? No. Wrong-footing? Not a chance. Escaping? King Dudo had seen what had happened to the brave but foolish warrior who had tried to save him. The king could not spend more than a few minutes in the water and survive.

  “King Dudo thought and thought about what to do. He had once been told that lullabies calmed farm animals ahead of a procedure by an animal doctor. He was reluctant to give singing a go. For one thing, his men might hear him and think he was daft, even though he wasn’t sure how close they were; he hadn’t heard them calling for him in a while. For another thing, he had about the worst singing voice in the Land of the Danes.

  “King Dudo counted his options on his fingers. The bear let out a low, grumbling roar. It came back down onto four legs and snarled, softly inching closer and closer across the ice. Running out of time, King Dudo, threw all his doubts out of his mind. With as much vigor and energy as he could muster, he opened his mouth and started to sing.

  “When King Dudo was a little boy and was upset or low with an illness, the song his mother sang to soothe and comfort him was about the tight grip love has on the heart. About how helplessly changed you are when you meet your Heart’s True Love.

  “The song was more than a simple love song. There persisted a subtle note of sadness. Though it spoke eloquently of the power and fire of love, her song also spoke of the vagaries of it, the shifts in the depths of love over the years.

  “The bear was at first perplexed by King Dudo’s singing and stopped in its tracks. It cocked its head to the side as though trying to figure out what was happening, as if to say, ‘Why is lunch behaving in this strange manner?’

  “King Dudo closed his eyes and sang, certain this was his last moment alive. He allowed the song to envelope his heart. He thought about his mother and the love in her life. He felt the loss she must have felt when he grew up and grew away from her. Dudo thought of his parents’ love for each other, which was still as strong now as the day they first laid eyes on each other and knew they had found their Heart’s True Love. He thought of their love for him, as unblemished and pure as the white of this bear’s fur.

  “Acutely, he felt the loss of never having experienced true love of his own. King Dudo was not a married man and was not particularly young. Nevertheless, before this day, he held a firm belief that he would meet his Heart’s True Love. On this patch of ice in the middle of the northern-most seas, it occurred to him that now he never would.

  “King Dudo found himself wishing a last hopeless wish. He sang, and he wished; he wished, and he sang. The wish that emanated from his heart as he sang to the bear was ‘let me live to spend a year, a month, a day, with my Heart’s True Love. Let me live just that long.’

  “King Dudo was approaching the end of his song. There were at least two other verses, but he couldn’t remember anything more. He considered starting from the beginning again since it seemed to be working—he was still alive. Instead, he hummed a bit after the song had ended and slowly went quiet. He couldn’t hear anything. The snarling was gone. The growling had stopped. There was no soft padding of paws on snow and ice.

  “Slowly, King Dudo opened one eye. And then the other. The bear was no longer there.

  “On the ice in front of King Dudo was not the enormous, angry, ravenous, snow-white polar bear. Instead, there stood, wet and dripping, a woman!”

  “The woman’s skin was as white as the bear’s fur had been. Her hair was long and wild and a shade of red King Dudo had never seen before. Her eyes, a piercing blue, were trained directly on him. She stood straight and strong, almost close enough to touch. Soaking and shivering, wearing only a simple dress, she was wet from head to toe.”

  “No way!” Ruairi jumped up on his s
eat. “Did the bear turn into a woman? Did it, Granny? Did it?”

  “Was it his wish coming true?” Dani asked. “Did the bear turn into his Heart’s True Love?”

  Distracted by a passing Yonder Air flight attendant, Granny grabbed his arm and said, as sweetly as she could, “You wouldn’t mind grabbing me an extra few packets of peanuts, would you? I’m peckish.”

  “Certainly, madam,” he said and went to get them for her.

  “Granny, are you sure about all this? There was a woman there?” Ruairi cocked his head.

  “Yes, I’m sure,”

  The flight attendant came back with a tray of peanut packets. Granny took nine.

  “Well, let’s come back to that in a moment, shall we,” Ruairi said, looking puzzled. “Answer me this, Granny—why did King Dudo’s lifeless body wash up on the shore of the hidden island?”

  “Ah, that’s a very good question. And it’s very simple to answer.” Granny fanned out her packets of peanuts on her tray, opened them all up, and continued with her story.

  “King Dudo could not believe his eyes. The bear was somehow gone and in its place stood a woman. The woman stretched out one arm to him and took a step toward King Dudo. King Dudo was startled out of his mind. He instinctively let out a shriek and jumped away. There was nothing behind him to land on, so King Dudo tumbled backward. He somersaulted, head over heels, round and round in the air. Seconds before his body made contact with the iciest waves he ever had the misfortune to plunge head over heels into, he smacked his head on the edge of the floating ice and was knocked out cold. The woman raced to the edge of the little white island. She knelt down and thrust her arm into the water after King Dudo to try to catch him. She almost had him when a wave came under the icy island, rocking it up, and swept King Dudo out of her reach.

  “The sea had not exactly been calm, as you know, but now it was positively roiling. King Dudo and the bear had floated a long way, and the floe was now close to shore. A different shore. The tide was going in. King Dudo was unconscious in the water.