Family:

Mother: Ase Ragnasdatter

Ase spent her entire life as a fisherman, a trade she learned from her father, Ragnar. She owned her own ship, and had a knack for always knowing the best places to drop a net, which she said was a gift from the gods. Ase fought and died in the war.

Aunt: Hildur Ragnasdatter

Hildur is Ase’s much older sister, she remained behind and cared for her three infant grandchildren while her children went to war. None returned.

Father: Roald Ingridsen

Roald was a wandering storyteller before he met Ase. He played the fiddle, and his clever fingers were well suited to making and mending nets. Roald went with his wife to fight.

Older Brother: Arvid Asejarsen

Arvid was 16 when war broke out, and was left behind to care for me and Solveig. After the villagers left to join the main army, he snuck after them to secure glory for himself.

Me: Sigrun Asejardatter (Rune)

I was 14 when the war killed almost everyone I loved. Hildur agreed to look after Solveig as long as I earned our keep. The village was too short-handed for me to find a crew for my mother’s ship with a captain so young and untested, so I sold the boat and worked to tend lines and haul nets for the more experienced captains who remained. The first winter after the war was long and hungry. There were not enough able young people left to harvest food for the very old and very young who remained. When others turned to bitterness and resentment, my heart hardened with anger towards the invaders who had done this to us. Hildur spoke out authoritatively against rebellion. I knew that to fight, I would have to find others who shared my zeal. So when the warm days returned, I went north.

Younger Sister: Solveig Asejardatter (Veiga)

Solveig was an odd child, and has always been small for her age, and often sick as well. She had a wild imagination, and believed she could speak with trees. Our mother tried to apprentice her to a carpenter because she had no stomach for the sea, but she screamed bloody murder when he took her to fell a great oak, and he would not have her after that. She was 9 when our parents died, and became even stranger afterwards. One day, I returned from a long voyage to find that my sister had been absent for several days. Aunt Hildur said was too busy minding the younger children to waste energy chasing after one old enough to care for herself. I found Solveig in the deep woods, she had buried her feet in the earth and was stretching her fingers out to the sky. She said that when she closed her eyes she could feel her branches creak and hear the wind rustling through her leaves. When I asked her how long she had been there, she told me that a sapling can’t grow into a tall elm overnight. The next summer, when I left to join the Crows, I carried her with me on my back. She would have never survived on her own.

Friends:

Sigrid Gunnasdatter

The first friend I made in the crows, because her name is like mine. We fought together often, and became close as family. When we chose to become loomed, we did it together, she gained the strength, endurance, and teeth of the wolf. I, of course, gained the heft and hardiness of the seal. Afterwards we were assigned more often to different tasks, we were too specialized to work well together. Sigrid delivered the news to me of my sister’s fate. She is a native of the Winds.

The Dead Man:

Anders Berjitsen

Anders was the first to identify the promise in my sister, she learned many secret ways from him. In the beginning, Viega and I were able to spend much of our free time together, but over time as we each became more valuable to the Crows, we spent more time on our own tasks. I began to notice changes in her on the rare occasions when we could still see one another. There was a hungry ambition in her that she hadn’t had as a child. Anders remained her teacher and confidant through all the years I knew him. He dripped poison in her ear and stole her away from me.

The twisted ash tree:

They have bound a chain around me, fixing me to the tree at my back, and though I have tried with all my might to break it, it does not bend a whit. Crow smiths know their craft, I suppose. There is water at hand, a slow death serves the best deterrent. I have my armor and fur to protect me from the elements, and hunger will not trouble me, so I will last a long time. They will whisper of this in tents and huddled close to campfires; “Did you hear what became of Sigrun Asejardatter?” I’ve heard, I was there.

Sigrid brought me Solveig’s cape. It was folded and cleaned, white fur to blend in with the northern snow, Veiga had a liking for the cleanness of white. It puzzled me, but when I looked into her eyes I understood, my sister was gone. “It was what she wanted,” Sigrid told me. She was not the last to do so, but it didn’t matter. No platitudes could blunt my rage. They had to pry me off his corpse, my sister would never have sold herself so cheaply had Anders not led her down that dark path.

My axe stands up out of the earth, they sank it in deep when they bound me here, then they draped her cape across it. It is well out of reach, though I tried for it a few times in the first days. I know better now, I have to save my strength. For what though? I wonder why I bother. Sometimes I try to pry at the links with my mother’s little boning knife, but it was not made for such harsh use, it may break if I keep at it. I may break if I don’t.

I remember his face when I found him, his arrogance, he could not imagine that such a base creature as myself could ever dare defy him, wound him, kill him. His expression transformed soon enough, I think he was already dead by the time I sank the little knife in him.

It would appear that a near immunity to starvation does not in fact stave off the mad beast that is hunger. I try chewing on the ash tree’s bark, but it is bitter with the same poison that drifts through the sunless air and chokes my breath. Maybe when I die, my blood will water its roots and it will grow strong and healthy again. Maybe my parents and my brother already have fed this tree their heart’s blood. Maybe mine will only poison it further with the sick hatred that rots me to my core.

Sigrid said that Veiga walked four steps after she died. That she carved her own heart out and then walked four steps to place it in the hollow of the tree. Only when that was done did she lay down to never move again. Others told the same tale, but I thought them all mad, deceived by dark conjurings of sorcery, or misled with well applied apothecary. Nobody cuts their own heart out and keeps walking, it’s too incredible to be believed.

Now I am dying, and I wonder if I dismissed it too quickly, perhaps she found a better way to be free of the shackles of hate and violence and war. I hope she found what she was looking for, and her roots stretch into the earth, and her limbs reach into the sky. I hope it was an ash tree that she gave her heart to, that would be poetic since I am dying on one now. I close my eyes and strive to hear the wind in her leaves.