Gods' Death Saga

She gathers together her wyrd sisters and the village's mothers, but tries not to look at them. They're daughters she'll never see and wives she'll never be, a choir of women there to sing their grandmothers' old-songs. We are already with them. We sleep in the stool she sits on and dwell within her beating staff. We buzz through the air to snatch glimpses and watch from the rocks, we play through the goats, and lie atop the rolling mists. Everyone from their village has gathered to hear her speak our words, while we are just out of view. The Jarl's partner brings her berries and honeyed breads; she claims it's better to summon us.

The women's singing is imperfect, but it's fit for purpose. Girls struggle to pronounce many of the old words, and aged wives find that they cannot match their daughters' vitality. But still, their songs are enough for us. Hel, a drunken sailor's slurred chanting is enough to bridge our world to theirs. Their divine seiðkona has eaten a heifer's heart and wears its skin pinned over a woollen tunic, which itself is layered over her sweat-stained dress. The cow's death didn't need to happen for us to take notice of her, but we do like the razor clamshell she wears as pins. They're nice.

Snowflakes begin falling in time with their singing, but they're human, so they wouldn't notice such things. Meditation follows and everyone is silenced. She abandons her body as it beats out a trance-pulse on an oaken staff.

Free of body she walks through her mind, carried by the song of her ancestors, along a golden meadow and atop firm strides, over supple briars who bear thoughtful fruit. The ageing seiðkona reaches her imagined ash tree and gazes deep into its root-filled mouth. We see her miss a step with uncertainty, but soon she steels herself and climbs inside. We are waiting for her in there.

She arrives in our world refilled with conviction. We flock to meet her alongside the creeping land and crawling skies, however, they're more excited to see her than we are. She calls it Alfheim, this Tír na nÓg across the sea, or an Annwfyn if you head further south. We've never needed to name our home, but the Seiðkonur do. We greet her with open limbs, smiling through a collection of faces she's more comfortable with, and try to wear various abstract bodies, but she wastes no time on our pleasantries.

These aren't the same conversations we had when she was young. Girlhood-her sings to us about moss wives and trölls, she shines and loves the adventure of simply being, but this wiser-woman is dull inside, our meetings are technical and specific. She calls, and we respond.

The seiðkona has come to us to make the village's rye and barley plots flourish again, because they died wholesale last year, and seem to be suffering from the same fate this season. She asks us to heal the land, but what does she expect us to do? Talk to the crops and make them fatter? Threaten Sol and force her to shine brighter? Scare away the creatures they this are pests? Her words are so expectant, and her expectations are so empty.

Behind the veil, her watchers line-up to find out what will happen in times to come. We answer her and she sings to them, but she's an unreliable orator and they're a selfish audience. We must be word-wise with our response.

Our advice is quite simple. Their crops are not flourishing for several reasons. Nutrient erosion has occurred because they are ripping down their forests, they bleach their fields by regularly burning its fallow, and they're only rearing monocultures rather than employing the biodiverse techniques of Turtle Island. The clan must stop burning their lands. Inedible plants should flourish alongside their crops to encourage nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium exchange in the soil, and they should integrate their farmland with the ancient forests to the north, rather than ripping them all down.

She listens to us patiently. Without any thanks, the seiðkona takes our advice and returns to her world content. We have given answers to the clan's prayers, but she will answer them.

On the return from the astral and back to her body, enlightened with the knowledge of how to save these people, the woman grins a confident smile. The beating staff stops and so fades the way between worlds. Her breathing happens to be in perfect unison with that of a pig and two goats watching her from outside of the circle. We are still there, too. With a smile, their seiðkona awakens, takes a deep breath, and sings the agricultural wisdom she has learned from us.

1. From the hound's proud seed grows a burning tree,
2. to destroy the house of mead and harm good men at sea.
3. Fields of fresh ash will sow tomorrow,
4. abandoning tradition can only bring sorrow.
5. I see the life returning to Ísaland’s shores,
6. now brothers fight brothers on the Isle of Boars.

The clan is overjoyed to hear her words. New life is returning, and they don't have to do a thing. Their Jarl offers her even more gifts of clothing and mead, which she graciously accepts. At sunrise, the woman wearing a cow's skin sails back to Suðreyjar. She leaves the clan comfortable that their future will be fortuitous, thanks to her pure and indelible seiðwork, and she leaves us unheard.