The last of the afternoon sun made the wooden walls of the room glow as if they had been gilded, and it warmed her as she sat before the loom. Outside the window, her bees droned in the borage planted along the cottage walls. It would be time to take the last collection of honey, soon, before she left the hives alone to store their over Winter supplies. Time for the last brewing of mead; Annukka smiled to think of the taste of that mead on a Winter night, sweet and sharp at once, and holding the memory of Summer in it. Time soon to collect nuts in the forest, herbs for Winter medicines and teas. Harvest was coming, and this cloak she was weaving would be needed to drive the cold Winter winds away. There were no other sounds within these walls but those of her weaving. Annukka lived alone on the edge of the great forest of firs, above the Viridian River. It had not always been so. She had once had a beloved husband, but he had taken her to wife in his old age and had lived only long enough to see their son grow to a stripling. Mikka had built this house with his own two hands, long before he had married her, and there was not a finer house in all of the village. Her friends teased her that she had married him for this house — but no, she had married him for himself.
What a man he had been! His hair, once golden, still had gold threads among the silver, and his open, honest face had remained curiously unlined right up until the day he died. The only wrinkles were those around his bright blue eyes, and they deepened when he smiled. He had not been handsome; his jaw was too long, his nose too beaklike for that. But she would not have had him look any other way. She still missed him, his kindness, his strength of character, missed the feeling of his arms around her, sheltering her, missed the gentleness of his hands.
The house was very like the man, plain, sturdy, substantial, sheltering. The walls were of peeled logs, matched for size, fitted so closely together that they hardly needed any chinking, and the Winter winds never whistled between them as they did in other homes. The house boasted two floors and three rooms, which was one floor and one room more than
most. Two of those rooms were on the lower level, which had a wooden plank floor painstakingly smoothed until not even a thought of a splinter remained. One small room was the bedroom that Annukka had shared with her husband, and that now she slept in alone. The other held a big table that Mikka had also made, and two fine benches to sit at, as well as Annukka's loom, spinning wheel and three stools that were works of art. Here was the hearth where she did her cooking, built from stones brought up from the river, and the kitchen cupboard, stout enough to keep out a Bear, cunningly fitted together so tightly not even the most determined mouse could find a way inside. The second floor, reached by ladder, had been their son's as soon as he could climb unaided. It was empty now, and she used it to store fleeces and bundles of herbs.
The pot simmering over the fire this late-Autumn afternoon breathed forth a savory aroma, and the bread just pulled from the oven built into the side of the fireplace added its scent to that of the soup. But there was only one wooden bowl and one carved spoon laid out on the table, for her son Veikko had gone in the Spring to seek his Teacher.
Their people, the Sammi, did not have a King; they were one of the few lands that did not. Towns rarely housed more than a thousand people, and villages were much smaller. Half the population tended the migrating reindeer herds, which made it difficult to have a settled life. In Winter, the deer were always on the move, foraging for food as they traced paths through the trackless wilderness. Only in Summer could these folk settle, as their herds settled to graze on lush meadows and drop their calves.
Life moved at the pace of the land here, not the pace of man. As their fathers and their father's fathers had done, so did the people here. In Spring, the reindeer herds returned, to join the sheep and goats at their grazing, and with them, the herders. It was a slow life, but hardly a dull one. Those Bears, wolves and uncanny things found deer and man equally tasty; the storms of Winter could be unpredictable and equally deadly. In other lands, not one person in a hundred had to contend with the kinds of dangers that faced the Sammi every day. And in other lands, a child would probably have been forced into the paths of his or her parents. But not here.
And Annukka would not have had things any other way. Even if our ways have sent my son far from home.
Tradition was not so important here as being good at what you did. Sometimes Annukka wondered if that had to do with need, or with the fact that there was no single ruler here and no ruling hierarchy. With no king, and no order of landowning nobility beneath him, there was no one to answer to except to one's own neighbors, who were not likely to take “because I said so” as an appropriate answer.
She smiled at that thought. We are a stubborn people, we Sammi. A King would have a hard time with us.
Whatever the cause was, when a child came of age, his or her runes were cast, and it was those runes that predicted the future for that child. Not what was to happen, but what he was to become.
There was, for instance, the rune of the Herder, which meant you would tend domestic animals of one sort or another. There was Hunter, of course, which was self-explanatory, and Home, which meant you would do well with all possible domestic skills. Those marked with Healing were very much sought after, as were those of the Forge. There was the Salmon for Fishing, the rare rune of Fellowship — which meant the skill to lead people. More common than Forge was Craft for the smaller handicrafts, and Wood for the hewers and shapers. Rarer than Fellowship was Singer, which covered not only the making of music, but the composing of it, and the ability to play one or many instruments. Last of all were two that were seldom seen in these parts, Warrior and Mage.
The boys and girls whose runes had been cast to follow the deer — the Herding rune with the Wanderer — took over the work of watching, tending, doctoring and milking them, under the direction of the adults. When the last of the frost left the fields, they were sown by those whose runes had marked them forever with the Plough.
For in the land of the Sammi, the man did not choose the occupation, the occupation chose the man. And at twelve, based on one's runes, the child took its first steps into the adult world.
Annukka smiled again to think of her son. Never had she seen a boy more confident than he was at that age. The runes had not surprised him; it was as if he had known from the time he was born what they would say, and he greeted the reading with a laugh and a nod.
She passed her hand over the cloth already woven, to make sure the weft was consistent, and felt the tiny tingle of the magic there.
It was possible to get mixed runes, of course; that was considered very, very lucky. All runestones had a blank side and an inscribed side, and it was theoretically possible for all of them to turn up inscribed, though Annukka had never, ever heard of that happening. Usually, not more than one or two showed their faces in a given reading. Three was highly unusual. Four, almost unheard of.
Annukka was a mixed-rune child, of Hearth, Craft and Mage, although the Wise Woman who had cast them only whispered that third into her parents' ears, and Annukka had not known, until the woman returned to teach her the Mage skills two years later, that she had been so marked. The Mage rune meant that she had the power, the ability, to do much more than the little domestic magics that all women could do. She had been schooled in some of the greater ones, magics that would permit her to do extraordinary things.