"He's prowling."
"Are we in danger?"
He raised his head and looked out to sea.
"With Gunnarr, yes, always. Come here and sit between my legs."
I went to him and let him embrace me with his strong arms, even though his clothes were still damp and the only thing I could feel was cold.
"The same as Nagorno then?" I said.
"No, you still don't understand, my darling Dana: Gunnarr beats us all. In everything. He beats Lür in humanity; he is irresistibly, artlessly, desperately human and empathetic."
"Gunnarr is empathetic?"
"He is, he's more empathetic than all of us. He's not cynic, he's not a sociopath, he's not a psychopath. On the contrary, he is charming and charismatic. But that's not the only reason he is above us all. He beats me in intelligence."
"I doubt that."
"For centuries I thought that Gunnarr had two brains. I know that it's difficult to understand, but believe me: you have never been and will never be before another brain like his.
"How do you think he beats Nagorno?" I asked, with a dry mouth. That detail worried me. It really worried me.
Iago rested his chin on my shoulder.
"He beats Nagorno in the arts of war and strategy. He has a panoramic vision of knowledge which gives him an advantage, it simply gives him an advantage. Gunnarr is all that and more, raised to the highest power. If Nagorno is ten steps ahead and I'm fifty, Gunnarr is a thousand. You can't beat him if you try to play his game. It's just best to withdraw and forfeit playing.
Ok
"And what drives him?" I asked, after thinking for a while.
"What?"
"Everyone is driven by something: a trauma, a challenge, a debt, a passion."
"He adored me, and I adored him. Despite how different we were. But what I did to him..., the betrayal..."
"What happened?"
"Gunnarr's right to be mad and upset with me. He trusted me and I betrayed him, I didn't realize the pain that my unconsciousness and frivolity caused him. I wasn't a good father, I wasn't even a good person."
"I find it hard to believe what you're saying, Iago. That's not the man I know."
"Stop looking at me like I'm perfect, that time I wasn't the hero of the story."
"You didn't answer me."
That made him laugh.
"Not today Adriana, not today."
"Tell me something," I pushed, "I need to know what we're facing here."
"Then maybe I should start with his birth," he gave in.
"That'll do for now. Let's go home, let's forget about the museum for today. We'll have something to eat, light the fire, have an afternoon of scandalously good sex and when you've cleared your head you can tell me the story that you find so hard to tell."
6
Bear skin
IAGO
Current Denmark, 800 B.C.
I'd been listening to the songs and spells for five nights, but the men didn't have access to the rituals to propitiate a good birth, even though in the skali, the big house, privacy was virtually impossible. We'd built the main house of our village in the same way as the Danish, a large, long building made of peat, with no rooms, doors or walls to divide the housing.
"Let me through, I said!" I shouted for the umpteenth time at the silent wall of women who were standing between the bed of my wife, Gunborga, and my poorly controlled impatience.
My father and Nagorno, or Nestor and Magnus as they were known when we were living in the land of ancient Denmark, were also on edge. The pregnancy had lasted for twelve lunar months and I knew that it held the secret hope that the new child would be like us.
After such a long pregnancy, Gunborga died of exhaustion, but the newly born was still alive a few hours later. Pricking her finger with a needle in the seventh month of pregnancy to draw symbols on a piece of linen that she kept until the day of the birth of her firstborn, or the Biarg rune to ease the birth, which she had carved into the bedpost had done nothing to help my late wife.
It was going to be an abnormal birth and we all knew it. She was carrying an enormous child inside her, and many thought that it was going to be a double birth, but I could only hear one heartbeat through her swollen belly, strong as that of an adult.
"Let him pass, but make sure that he doesn't become attached to this monstrosity. He's going to have to expose him," croaked the seidkona, an old women with a double chin with white hairs growing from it.
The old clairvoyant gave me the baby with a look of disgust. She was talking about the northern custom of úborin börn: when a newborn was deformed, the father had the right to reject it and expose it to the elements of the night so as it would die.
"We´ll see, old woman. We'll see," was all I said. I signaled my father to give her the proper food, porridge with goat's milk, and then I threw her out of the skali.
Under this beam, I am in charge, I repeated to myself, looking at the ceiling.
I had made Gunborga carve that inscription in the beam that held up the building, the same runes that I had seen carved in all the farms of the men in the north, although the truth is that when I held my son in my arms, I doubted my own words.
He was not just a giant baby. His whole face and body were covered in a thick layer of blond hair, almost white. His head was deformed, like a waning moon. He had a long face with a chin and forehead that jutted out.
"Is he my son?" I managed to say. "He looks more like an albino bear."
"Maybe the bear raped Gunborga and she didn't tell you," Magnus whispered beside me, without taking his eyes off the child.
"Maybe," I agreed.
We all knew the Nordic legend of the woman who was kidnapped by a bear and forced to lie with it for a week in its cave. The child she bore, half man and half bear, was the first king of what would later be known as Denmark.
"No, Kolbrun, he is your child," my father said, after leaving the seidkona, who was being cared to by the servants.
He opened the newborn's eyes and he complained. Something that sounded like a grunt came from his mouth, although it sounded more animal than human.
"He has the eyes of your mother's clan."
"Blue eyes are very common in these parts," I reminded him.
"That's true, but not like yours. Yours were the same, almost albino, when you were born."
"Anyway, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to expose him. He looks strong but he's very deformed. Lyra," I said to my sister. "You know what it's like to have a mark on your face. If this child lives, he will be a monster and everyone will turn him away. His face and body are covered in white hair."
"It's lanugo, all babies have it when the mothers go through a traumatic birth. It normally falls off in a few months, you know that as well as I do," she said, between sighs. The other women from the farm hovered at a distance, pretending to do their chores, but waiting to hear our decision.
"This fur is more than lanugo, he'll be a bear for the rest of his life," I argued. "Even though we could shave him to make him look less repulsive, I'm worried about the shape of his head, that chin, that forehead."
"You can bind it," whispered Nestor, "I've seen it done in some ancient villages in the West. It will only be for a few months, his bones are malleable right now, we can give him a less monstrous appearance."
"Don't expose him," interrupted Magnus, taking the child. "The pregnancy was extremely long, like ours were. He should live. If he grows old and he isn't one of ours, we will die anyway, but if he doesn't grow old then he will be another member of the Ancient Family. Don't you want there to be five of us again? Don't you miss the long ago times with Boudicca? Maybe she's been sent back to us. He has similar features to our sister. His size and complexion are more than notable, and it was already possible to see intelligence and strength in that look.”
"That's not a good sign, brother."
"And what if they have the same destiny and Gunnarr dies in battle, like she did?" I thought out lo
ud.
Everyone lowered their head in uncomfortable silence. How many centuries had it been since anyone had mentioned Boudicca's name?
"It's your decision, Kolbrun," my father said, giving me a pat on the back. "I'll go and appease the seidkona and we'll get started with Gunborga's burial rituals. Lyra, cut her hair and nails. Magnus, order the slaves to come with an ax to open a hole in the wall. It must be big enough for Gunborga's soul to pass through. Tomorrow we'll cover it up so as the deceased's soul cannot return. It's going to be a cold night for everyone, what with the open hole and us being in the cruelest months of winter. You should find someone to sleep with and they can warm your bed."
Everyone left the building as a sign of respect and left me alone. I sat next to Gunborga's quickly cooling body with the newborn in my arms. I should call him Gunnarr. Gunborga had picked the name and I wanted to respect her last wish, but what should I do with him? Would such a deformed being have a decent life? Wouldn't it be more merciful to end a disastrous life right there?
I looked at the newborn and something amazing happened.
He lifted his arms from the thick wool blanket he was wrapped in and his tiny fists grabbed hold of the index finger on both of my hands. He raised his chin, opened his eyes and stared at me. He wasn't begging me, it was almost as though he was challenging me. Gunnarr squeezed his fists with a strength that was more typical of a bear cub than a human baby. I had seen other children like him before, ambidextrous straight from the crib, although I was sure that Gunnarr would become an exceptional human being.
That was his first act of seduction. There would be many more to come. Right then I decided that I wouldn't leave him to a certain death.
Days later I was walking around the barn with the baby in my arms, looking to alleviate the cold of that long winter with the heat of the animals, when I heard excited voices from outside the building. I peered through the gaps in the crooked wooden posts and could make out the blue cape of the old seidkona, with its white cat skin hood. She had a small knife in her hands and my father had confronted her, almost ignoring the weapon that the midwife was blandishing in front of him.
"For the love of all the Gods, old woman! What do you think you're doing?" Nestor bellowed, pointing to the door of the skali.
And that's when I saw it, and my blood ran cold. The old woman had carved a verndarrum on our front door, a wheel of protection with eight axes ending in pitchforks. It was the most powerful of all the runic spells.
The seidkona spat on the door.
"You didn't expose him, did you?"
"You know the answer to that, don't make me lose my patience. How dare you carve something so powerful?"
"It's for me. To make sure that I never come across him and don't have to be close to him."
"To the child? Are you afraid of a newborn baby?"
"He'll be like the rest of your family. And by Odin and his one eye I know what you are. You're the Wanderers, you are the Ancient People, the Ancient Clan, the Ancient Family. I heard my grandmother talk about you people once."
I saw the bewilderment in my father's face, but also the fear, a horror that I could not define. He went over to her and pushed her against the wall of the barn, just a few centimeters away from where Gunnarr and I were secretly listening. I held the infant to my chest. I didn't want them to find out that we'd been listening, and Gunnarr didn't look like he was planning on interrupting anything.
"The Ancient Clan? How many years ago did you hear that? Are you sure it was us?" he whispered in her ear, with his voice distorted by rage. It was very unusual to see my father like that.
"Who else could it be?"
"Quiet, old woman. You're delirious," he said, letting go of her throat. "What must I do so as you don't come back here or talk to anyone about us?"
"Give me one of those treasures you have buried underground. Loki showed me them in my dreams."
My father didn't say a word, and ground his teeth. I could see how hard it was for him to give in to that witch.
"So be it, old woman. But don't ever blackmail me or my family again. This will be a one off. I will not pay for your old age with the sweat from my brow just because you have crossed my path."
"Don't you call me old woman," she said, straightening out her hat. "I'm barely a girl next to you."
And as she walked away, she turned and shouted:
"The white bear will outdo you all!"
Which is when Magnus appeared, or maybe he had also heard the whole conversation, it was difficult to tell with him.
"Get out of here, you old superstitious hag!" he shouted, kicking her out. "Show her out, Nestor. If I see you hanging around our farm again, I will kill you. And you know as well as I do that I'm telling the truth."
Gunnarr had that effect, from the day he was born. We all wanted to protect him.
Magnus wanted to protect him because he was convinced that he was a longevo. Lyra took charge of breastfeeding him. Her milk had not dried up since her last daughter had died a few months before from a fever, and Gunnarr had such a strong jaw that he had destroyed the breasts of the wet nurses I had paid. In just a few days, every one of them had quit.
As my father left with the seidkona, accompanying her to the valley, Lyra came out of the skali, alerted by Magnus' shouting.
She glared at him and said:
"You shouldn't do it, she's not a fake."
"Are you going to believe her?" asked Magnus, throwing his arms in the air.
"Whilst Gunborga was giving birth she put me in a trance as well. She needed another woman who knew how to recite the chants and Gunborga prepared me because she knew that she wouldn't survive the birth. The seidkona made me see things, brother," Lyra whispered.
"What did she make you see, and what are you so scared of?"
"It will be one of us, Nagorno. But I saw something that I don't understand: Gunnarr will rise from the dead and will disrupt everyone's lives. Urko's, Lür's and yours."
Magnus stared at her, not believing a word.
"How convenient, how come he doesn't disrupt your life?"
Lyra sighed, and that sound has caused me endless pain.
"Never tell anyone what I just saw, Nagorno. Never tell father or Urko."
"Fine, tell me."
"When Gunnarr rises from the dead, I won't be there to protect the family."
He was quiet, taking in the implications of what he had just been told. Quite simply, I refused to believe it.
Lyra wasn't going to die.
Never.
I would always be at her side to protect her and make up for the bad things that happened to her.
They looked at each other for a long time, just a few centimeters separating them. Then Magnus rested his arm on her shoulder.
"So I'll be there. I'll never stop looking out for the members of this family.
Lyra looked away.
"That's not what I saw."
I was listening, with the infant in my arms, but Gunnarr was also listening, and if it wasn't for the fact that I knew it was impossible, I would have sworn that he understood each and every word of what was said that day...
... and I don't think he will ever forget.
"Adriana, you couldn't imagine the things that you can believe when a child as exceptional as Gunnarr appears to be a possible longevo. They were happy times for me, watching him grow year after year.
Every morning there was a reason to get out of bed, and Gunnarr gave it to me. He brought joy to the farm, nobody could resist his charm. He was always willing to work, ever since he was a boy. For years I suspected that some old slave woman had told him I was on the verge of exposing him and he was so grateful that he survived, that every sunrise was a reason to celebrate.
He woke up before anyone else, fed the animals, helped my father with the fish that had been caught and accompanied his uncle Magnus to the port to trade. Lyra taught him about the runes that Gunborga had carved and he began to carve stones.
Before long there wasn't a single object on the farm that didn't have his mark on it. All of our daggers had some protection spell on them, the shields, the horns we used to drink from, even the back of the chair I sat on to preside over the banquets.”
"Look, father! I always hit the tree trunk and I don't even have to look. Uncle Magnus has trained me, he's better than you with axes," he said one day as he threw two small axes at a tree where he trained every morning."
"Why do you use both hands for everything?" I asked him, trying to hide my fatherly pride.
"The question is that we walk on two feet, we listen with two ears, we see with two eyes. Why do you all use just one hand, as if you didn't have another?"
"Not everyone has your ability," I repeated for the umpteenth time.
"I can see that, but don't try and hold me back just because the rest of you can't match my skills, father," he said laughing, with that squeaky, broken adolescent voice.
“That's how extraordinary Gunnarr was. For centuries, until Medicine convinced me that it was impossible, I thought that he had two brains. Possibly a bright one and a dark one. He learned how to write with both hands at the same time, different texts, different languages. He finished his tasks fixing the boats before anyone else because he used different tools simultaneously.
But Gunnarr also had a side to him that was impossible to tame, which soon began to cause problems for everyone. It happened when he had seen twelve winters. He was already taller than me, and ever since then he has been known as he is now, as a giant. He didn't blend in anywhere, which was possibly the reason why he attracted the berserker."
"Berserker? I'm not familiar with that term, Iago," Dana said, interrupting me, not understanding what I was talking about.
I sighed, tired of stirring up old memories and kept staring at the fire. Then I stood up and went over to one of the bookcases, pulling out the Gesta Danorum, the first chronicles of Denmark, written by Saxo Grammaticus in the 12th century. The thick book hid an archaeological treasure: a bronze plaque of a warrior in combat with a man, half bear, half human. I held it out and Dana studied it in awe.