Of the sagas and songs Freyga can call upon to warm a fellow’s ears, the youngest is her own. She sings it alone to herself, strumming her harp, eyes closed, rocking with the rhythm of her word-waves. It begins now, dreamed of but unwritten, recorded only by the mindful repetition of words that pop like pollen from a fresh bloom. It ends when she ends and will leave to others the tale of its telling.
I, hope-hearted,
Wandering, wayfarer,
Mead-drinker, song-maker,
Seek the stories
And songs of those
Who ended eager for glory.
These hills, these wooded waves
Of breathless stories
Buried in the earth,
Their red-water emptied,
Whisper of tales like wind
Through fingers of grass.
They sleep here,
Soundless beneath
Breeland’s wooded sea
As secret as the Downs,
the dawn, and the marsh
Where sickles fly.
But still at night like wights
Whose earth they’ve moved
And broken stones I hear them,
Calling.
A hollowness I feel,
A need to fill with song
This phantom room, this
Body-tomb. To fill with gold
The spirit-chest my head,
My heart the empty hoard.
So till the earth I will,
Unearth the graves
And unsung songs,
Breathe in the breathless
Echo of glory days
And greed of gold.
And the fire-storm of falling
Arrows, a massacre of fireflies,
And swords that sprout like reeds
Among the spider-bones
And the freshness, now dried,
Of the red-water spilled.
