The boy awoke. Unsure of whether he was alive or dead, he prised open his salt caked eyes. The boat had grounded on a rocky shore, seagulls called overhead as they appraised the newly arrived flotsam.
He scanned the coastline. Dark jagged rock peppered with yellow lichen, low trees bent almost horizontal from the wind, no signs of habitation to speak of.
At least it was solid ground. He didn’t exactly count himself lucky to have washed up here, but the fact he was alive at all must be a blessing from Njord.
A routine chore, fishing with his father, had turned into days adrift after a squall whipped up from nowhere battering their tiny vessel and ripping the oars from their hands.
Towering mountains of blue black water had spun them around and heavy clouds had obscured any chance of navigation by stars. By the forth day they had put all their trust in the gods.
“Keep faith in your heart boy. We will not be forsaken” his father repeated hour after hour, his voice descending to a gruff whisper in the freezing air.
“Pull us ashore boy”. His father’s command pulled the boys attention back. Heaving himself up on the gunnels, he unsteadily stepped over the side. His numb feet barely registered the cold water and stone as sharp as glass gouged into what remained of his goat leather shoes.
Gripping the prow, he strained against the tide to haul the boat over the rocks. For ten of his fifteen years he’d been hauling, chopping or heaving – his body had been forged through thankless labour.
His father slumped silently in stern. To be lost at sea would shame his wife back home. What kind of fisherman goes missing in summer seas?
As the boy hauled his nausea subsided, “hard work hardens boys into men” his father had said. Crabs scuttled from his approach he as ground inch by inch along the foreshore the keel shedding splinters onto grey, gravel sand.
Looking up through sweat glazed eyes the boy could see a copse of trees on a small gorse covered hill. “A good a place” his father said “you know the ways”.
Distracted, he stumbled, foot slipping on wet samphire, his knees crashed into hard stone taking his breath away.
Waves beat on the reef behind him, flinging white spray high into the slate grey sky. Heavily he rose and set his hands back to the task at hand.
As the weak sun touched the horizon the boy reached the tree line and collapsed to the grass. “I need the rest boy. You have hundreds on sun rises ahead of you. Make good while there is still a little light in the sky”.
The boy took up a fallen branch and – guided by the suns guttering rays – cut a shallow bed. Leaning into the boat he gently lifted his father out and placed him into the ground.
He pulled the hood up around his father’s ears and unclasped the golden broach at his own chest. Placing the proper symbols in their rightful places he hoped he remembered what his grandmother had taught him. He hoped the gods would approve.
Finally, he upended the small boat over his fathers resting place and sealed the edges against whatever scavengers roamed these shores.
With all signs of his people and gods removed and entombed with his father, he turned his gaze inland. This place will make as good a place as any to start again.