Bracelet of Bones Read Online Free

Asta’s words as the way she said them, and what she did not say, that hurt Solveig.
    “Hard work, Solveig, I know it’s hard. But you and me and Kalf and Blubba, what are we meant to do? Your father’s not half the man Einar was.”
    Solveig glared at the marl floor.
    “No one pushed Einar around. He would have stayed loyal to the family.”
    Solveig’s eyeballs grew hot.
    “What are we meant to do?” Asta repeated. “We must work all the harder.”
    Sometimes Asta narrowed her eyes and saw straight into her stepdaughter’s head.
    Once, while Solveig was weaving coarse cloth for the new canvas sail: “You wouldn’t get as far as Trondheim. Wolves would eat you.”
    And again: “Words! Words! Words make promises. Words break promises.”
    And for a third time, while Solveig was cutting wax for new candles: “You’re just a girl, Solveig. Fourteen winters old. You’re soft as beeswax.”
    Kalf overheard his mother. “Soft, and stuffed with secrets.”
    Solveig’s fingers tightened around the handle of her knife.
    “Me and Blubba never know what she’s thinking.”
    “I know, all right,” said Asta in a cold voice. “I know exactly what she’s thinking.”
    Solveig’s eyes were hot. She glared at the beeswax and jabbed at it.
    “But I do know . . .” Kalf said slowly.
    Solveig held her breath.
    “I do know she’s hiding something . . . and I’ll find out what.”
    On some evenings, Asta drowsed beside the hearth, worn out by her day’s work, and Kalf and Blubba fooled around in the dark outside or drank themselves stupid with ale, but Solveig sat upright on her bench and scoured and scraped at a piece of walrus bone. She shaped it into a kind of oval, and then she began to inscribe it with runes.
    My father, she thought, his real name is Asser Assersson. His mother was Swedish, but his father was Danish. That’s why everyone calls him Halfdan.
    I can’t remember my mother. She died to give me life. Sirith she was called, but my father calls her Siri. When he says her name, his voice is always gentle.
    He’s the only one who shortens my name. Solva, he says. Solva. Sun-strength!
    He doesn’t care about Asta in the same way he still does about my mother, and it’s the same with Asta. She still loves Einar, her first man, Kalf’s and Blubba’s father. He was drowned.
    What I believe is my father needed a woman and Asta needed a man. For comfort. To make a household. To bring up their children. They argue half the time and sometimes go to bed bitter.
    I think my father must be glad to have escaped Asta’s tongue. And Kalf’s as well. They’re as sharp as each other.
    He’s never liked Kalf, and Kalf’s never liked me.
    Actually, I don’t think Asta minds my father going all that much. She complains, all right. And it’s true, we all have to work harder without him. But . . . but you promised. You must have known it was our last day together. You must.
    “You’re fourteen, Solva. Rising fifteen . . . Fifteen and rising.”
    Were you just waiting for me to grow up before you went away?
    One day, a young Christian priest from Trondheim, Peter, came to talk with Asta and the other folk living along the fjord about building a church.
    “King Olaf and his warriors,” he began, “sailed back from Garthar to reclaim his throne and kingdom—and he fought in the name of the White Christ.”
    “Much good that did him,” said Asta.
    “At Stiklestad, three thousand men fought alongside the king,” Peter went on. “Norwegians, Swedes, shoulder to shoulder.”
    “Not because they were Christians,” Old Sven said. “Because Olaf was our rightful king.”
    The young priest sighed and clasped his hands. “But it was one man against ten, the huge heathen rabble loyal to King Cnut. The largest army ever seen in Norway. But although King Olaf died, Christ, the Prince of Peace, will live forever.”
    “Don’t you preach to me about that battle,” Asta told him.
    “There’s not a