By midsummer fourteen souls lived on the mire, and Milava said people needed a feast, or they would sour like milk.
They kept Kupala on the dry rise by the river. Everything was done as it should be, as it had been from the beginning. The girls wove wreaths of meadowsweet and water lilies. Vyun and the fire refugees' children leapt over the small bonfire until they were hoarse. A tarred wheel was raised on a pole and set alight: the sun-wheel, sign that the year had passed its crown. Old Koren drank mead, remembered every ritual song at once and sang one through another, until they became a single endless and exceedingly contented song.
Kres listened and felt like a stranger. Everyone around him knew the words to those songs, from the old folk to the children, and he did not. His dreams held bridges and towers, lights without fire and stone hamlets that reached the sky, but this song was not among them. One day he might build these people a city, but for now he had to learn their song as though it were foreign.
He looked across the bonfire and met Jorunn's eyes. She did not know the words either and hummed only the tune. Kres understood that Jorunn felt the same, and it eased him.
Jorunn was no longer either guest or prisoner. Over the summer she had worked almost half the timber on the mire. It was Jorunn who showed them how to overlap planks so that a boat could run through shallow water without taking it in. She was also the one who rejected the first batch of rivets, bending one with her fingers, and Kres spent three nights reforging them, angry and learning. By then they could settle simple matters in words, while anything difficult was still drawn in charcoal. More birchbark lay scattered around the forge than wood shavings.
Milava approached her of her own accord. She sat beside the Northwoman and laid a wreath of meadowsweet in her lap: white, honey-sweet, the most fragrant of all she had woven. "For luck," she said. "Where I come from, you can't go without a wreath on Kupala. It's a bad sign." Jorunn took the wreath, turned it over and put it on squarely, like a helmet. Both women snorted. After that, they were no longer complete strangers to one another.
"We burn too," she said, nodding at the bonfire. "On rocks they make big fire, so sea gives its people back." She spoke clearly now, though her grammar still went astray.
"This is how we do it: a girl sets her wreath on the water," Milava explained. "Whichever way it floats, that is where her promised man will come from. And if some lad catches it, then it's fate."
Jorunn listened. Thought. She did not weave a wreath: she took a wood shaving from beside the fire, shaped its bow and stern with three strokes of her knife, like a true longship, set a coal upon it, glowing and alive, and launched it onto the dark water.
The little ship with its light sailed downstream, turning in the current. Fourteen souls watched in silence: the Forest had never seen such a rite.
Without thinking, Kres followed it along the bank. He caught the shaving by a snag downstream, burned himself on the coal and hissed. He came back holding the little ship on his palm, and now fourteen souls were watching him.
"This is how we do it," he told Jorunn very seriously. "The man who catches the wreath has to marry. What does the man who catches a ship have to do?"
"He has to build," Jorunn answered just as seriously. "Catch a ship, give it back to sea bigger. With crew."
Kres nodded. "Then we have a bargain. You build me a longship."
"And you forge me a thousand rivets for it. Real ones. Ones that do not bend in fingers."
"A thousand," Kres repeated, and they struck hands on it. Jorunn's palm was hard, callused by the adze, and Kres did not let it go at once. The people by the bonfire carefully looked away. Milava alone watched them directly, but before long she turned away too.
Then they leapt over the great bonfire. Kres had not done it since childhood: a lame leg was no thing to jest with. But on Kupala night people crossed the fire in pairs, Jorunn was already standing there waiting, and he could not refuse before them all. They ran. As they sprang, his bad leg failed him and Kres lurched sideways, straight towards the coals. Jorunn gave his arm a hard pull and hauled him through the heat. They both landed, and both stayed on their feet.
"I have you," said Jorunn.
The words were simple, among the first she had learnt. But they were not only about his hand, and they both understood it. Whistles and whoops rose around the fire, and Old Koren burst into a wedding song outright.
Then the whistling broke off.
Vyun was shouting from the watchtower in the oak, which they had put up only the week before. Shouting so loudly that the song faltered and the dogs crouched low:
"Sai-ails! Sails on the river! Three! Coming upstream, going to the hamlet, to the Vyazichi!"
Kres flew up the tower, forgetting his leg. Downriver, in the path of moonlight, three longships were coming against the current: long and predatory, their oars striking in time. Striped sails furled, shields along their sides. Not traders. Trading longships did not travel like that.
Two months remained until leaf-fall, until the tribute fell due. Gunnvald had decided not to wait.
Kres watched the longships follow the path of moonlight towards the sleeping hamlet that had cast him out to die. There remained the clan that had struck out his name, Hort and his submission, the clan hearth and his father's grave.
"Your clan drove you out," Jorunn said quietly behind him. She had climbed up after him and now looked the same way. "Wolf goes to them, not us."
"I know," said Kres.
Kres climbed down from the tower and roused everyone on the mire: he ordered them to take boathooks and axes and launch every boat. He did not yet know exactly what he would do. He knew only one thing: the clan had cast him out, but it was still his clan.
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