Bracelet of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

Trondheim.”
    Then Solveig stood up. She felt in the pocket of her reindeer skin for the walrus bone she still had not finished carving.
    SOLVEIG THE SUN-STRONG FOLLOWED THE STRONG SUN EAST AND SO . . .
    Solveig laid down the disk at the end of the jetty.
    “You, Kalf and Blubba . . .” she whispered. “Asta, you . . . Will you find it? And you, wind and waves and days and hope, will you help me complete it?”
    Then Solveig edged down the ramp on her bottom and scrambled into the boat. At once she realized she hadn’t untied the painter.
    “Solveig! Solveig! Where are you? Solveig!”
    She was sure she could hear Asta calling her.
    Solveig picked up her carving knife. She hacked and slashed at the painter. She severed it.

4

    A s soon as Solveig had rowed the first few strokes, she realized the tide was so strong that it was taking her in the wrong direction, farther up the fjord, away from Trondheim. She shipped her oars and scrambled over to the mast and pulled up the old sail.
    Asta’s right, she thought. It’s a rag of a thing. Less like a sail than a colander.
    Then she remembered her stepmother’s bitter words: “You? You wouldn’t get as far as Trondheim. Wolves would eat you.”
    At least there aren’t any wolves out here, thought Solveig. There are other things, though. Things I can’t see. Things without names.
    For a little while, Solveig could still see their farm in the breaking light. Then she thought she could. Then she knew she could not.
    Everything, she said to herself. The farm, this fjord, they’ve been everything to me.
    She could feel tears welling up.
    What am I without this water, this earth? This is where I was born. Where my father taught me to fish, and told me stories, where he showed me how to carve the runes, and . . .
    Solveig swallowed loudly.
    “You know all I am,” she whispered. “Will I ever see you again?”
    But then she tossed her head.
    Where will all this get me? I must look ahead. I’m following my father.
    Running across the wind down the widening fjord, Solveig had soon traveled farther from the farm than she had ever been on her own. To begin with, she listened to each creak of the little boat, and stared at each dark wave welling up in front of her, and bit so hard on her lower lip that she tasted her own blood. But after a time, she began to yawn. She trailed her right hand in the freezing water, and when she raised her fingers to her sore lips, she could hear her father telling her the tale about the salt in the sea.
    “. . . But once he’d got it started, Solva, the skipper couldn’t stop it. The quern stone ground more and more salt, just as it had ground a whole waterfall of herrings and broth, and ground so much gold its owner was able to plate his whole house with it. The quern stone ground and ground, and in the end it ground so much salt that it sank the ship. But even then, Solva, the quern didn’t stop. It’s down there on the seabed, grinding. That’s why the sea’s salty.”
    While Solveig was still listening, and at the same time wondering why tears taste salty, she realized that someoneon the waterside was waving to her. Waving and shouting. He was too far away, though, and she couldn’t make out what he was saying.
    He can’t be after me, she thought. How can he? Has Asta . . . No, that’s nonsense. All the same, she might get Sven or someone to follow me, to bring me back.
    Almost at once, there was a terrible grating. The boat jolted and pitched Solveig forward. It was as if some god had ordered the quern stone on the seabed to grind the boat into sawdust.
    Solveig didn’t know what it was, not at first. Then she saw. Her boat had collided with a thick sheet of ice, and the boat was so light that it was lifting its nose, its whole body, while the ice slid under it.
    One of the seams in the bottom of the boat began to ooze where the grim ice had gouged it, but as far as Solveig could see, there were no other