Nameless
Far between the folded peaks,
there lies a narrow vale.
The moon hangs vast above the frost,
and all the trees stand pale.
The ling lies thick on lower ground,
with berries red and blue.
No snow has fallen in that cold,
yet frost has bitten through.
A low outcrop of broken stone
lifts from the waiting lea.
Upon its crown, against the moon,
there burns one crimson tree.
Red vines run dark about its roots,
not thick enough to hide.
They spill in broken, blood-dried threads
and stain the old stone side.
Then the girl steps on the frost;
her breath lifts thin and bare.
One word lies locked within her breast,
too dear for oath to swear.
From pine-dark comes her Wardr forth,
a woman, pale and slight.
Her white gown slips past age-dark steel
and gathers up the light.
Her wolf-bent legs move sure and low,
soft paws press into loam.
She walks as one who crossed no gate,
but was already home.
A silver mane falls down her back,
her still eyes hold their mark.
No softness asks within her face,
she straightens in the dark.
“Again you come to me,” she says,
“though tongue lies still as stone.”
“What would you hear?” the girl replies,
“that I must make need known?”
The old speech coils through frost and dark,
too close, too long ago.
The Wardr leans with narrowed eyes:
“Do you not do so?”
“I am not your Fylgja, child,”
her answer falling low.
Her dark eyes hold the girl in place,
where no turned lie may go.
Then silence rests between them both,
like snow that has not weighed.
“What cradles life?” the Wardr asks,
with neither need nor blade.
The girl’s hand shifts beside her hilt;
she does not draw or flee.
“I will not do the riddles now.”
“What cradles life?” calls she.
“A mother’s blood,” the girl replies,
beneath the moon’s white stare.
She speaks as if the answer asks
no price but passing air.
The answer scarcely leaves her lips
before the Wardr: “No.”
Then winter rises through the vale
and bends the dark pines low.
No spell is shaped, no hand is raised,
no seidr gives it sign.
It bends the trees and stirs the frost
and shakes the blood-red vine.
The Wardr draws her sword and seax
in one clean, ringing slide.
She lets them hang, not raised to strike;
her stance is deep and wide.
“You seek a life you will not name,
yet cast its thread aside.
No blood can cradle what the tongue
refuses yet to guide.”
No crouch, no threat, no pride was there,
no warning and no fret.
She lowered, leaned, and waited there,
as though his name a debt.