Runestone Read online

  As a child, ANNA CIDDOR loved reading, drawing and writing, but she never dreamed of becoming an author and illustrator. It was only when she married and had children of her own that the idea first crossed her mind. In 1987 she decided to take a break from her teaching career and ‘have a go’ at writing a book. The teaching career has been on hold ever since! Anna is now a full-time writer and illustrator, with over 50 titles published. She based the stories of Runestone, Wolfspell and Stormriders on research into real Viking lifestyle and beliefs.

  Anna lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and two children.

  In 2003, Runestone was chosen as a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book and shortlisted for several Children’s Choice book awards.

  To find out more about Vikings and the background to the Viking Magic series, go to:

  www.viking-magic.com

  This book is for my parents and sisters, who have encouraged my story-writing since childhood, for my family who have let me get on with my obsession, and for my nieces and nephew – the new generation to enjoy my stories

  First published in 2002

  Copyright © text and illustrations, Anna Ciddor 2002

  Copyright © cover artwork, Steve Hunt 2002

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Ciddor, Anna.

  Runestone.

  For children aged 8-12 years.

  ISBN 978 1 86508 689 7

  eISBN 978 1 9525 3401 0.

  1. Friendship—Norway—Juvenile fiction. 2. Children—Norway—Juvenile fiction.

  3. Northmen—Norway—Juvenile fiction. 4. Magic—Norway—Juvenile fiction.

  I. Title. (Series: Viking magic).

  A823.3

  Cover and text design by Jo Hunt

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters

  10

  Teaching notes for Runestone are available

  on the Allen & Unwin website: www.allenandunwin.com

  Secret rune messages

  Runes are the letters of the Viking alphabet (the Futhark).

  Runes also have magic powers.

  If you unlock the secrets of the rune messages in this book you will find out how to make your own

  (the Futhark at the end of the book will probably come in handy).

  Contents

  1 Changelings

  2 Thora

  3 Oddo

  4 Magic on the mound

  5 Making plans

  6 Not so easy

  7 The first of May

  8 Oddo’s runestone

  9 Casting a spell

  10 Odd one out

  11 Back-to-front magic

  12 ‘We must be able to fix it’

  13 A helping hand

  14 The Little Folk

  15 Eggs and feathers

  16 The secret garden

  17 The Cormorant

  18 Thora’s decision

  19 A charm for the boat

  20 Setback at sea

  21 A wand and a way

  22 Under the waves

  23 Thora alone

  24 Oddo and the shark

  25 Silver and spice

  26 Thora the healer

  27 Heading home

  28 Voices in the garden

  29 Midsummer’s Eve

  1

  Changelings

  Sigrid seized the stone the midwife held out to her and rubbed at the magic rune carved on its surface. Immediately, she felt her pains ebbing away.

  ‘Don’t tell my husband you gave me a runestone,’ panted Sigrid. ‘He doesn’t like magic. He’ll be angry.’

  Gyda the Midwife patted Sigrid’s forehead with a damp cloth.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear. I know how to deal with husbands,’ she murmured soothingly. ‘In a few moments Bolverk won’t be noticing anything except his new baby. He’ll be such a proud father.’

  ‘Only if it’s a boy,’ moaned Sigrid. ‘He says if it’s a girl, he’ll dump her in the woods and leave her for the wolves.’

  Gyda glowered and muttered under her breath. But out loud she spoke in a cheerful, confident voice.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s sure to be a boy,’ she said.

  Just then, a voice called from outside. A wizened hand pushed aside the animal skins draped across the doorway and Granny Hulda slid into the room. She pointed at Gyda the Midwife.

  ‘Gyda Goodwife,’ she said. ‘You’re needed over the hill. My daughter-in-law’s about to give birth again.’

  ‘She hardly needs me,’ snorted Gyda, ‘She’s had plenty of practice!’

  Sigrid gave a sharp cry and the midwife turned back to her patient.

  ‘Go away, Granny. I’ll come when I can,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t let Bolverk see you, Granny,’ Sigrid pleaded.

  ‘Nay,’ cackled Granny Hulda. ‘Nobody sees me if I don’t let them.’

  Granny Hulda was a witch. She lived in the house-over-the-hill with her son Runolf the Rune-maker, his wife and seven children. Bolverk had banned Sigrid from having anything to do with ‘those rune-scratching, spell-chanting charlatans’.

  As the skins swung back over the doorway, a pink, slippery baby slid into Gyda’s hands and started to cry.

  ‘Is it a boy? Is it a boy?’ gasped Sigrid.

  Gyda looked at the squeaking, squirming infant and hastily wrapped it in a cloth, binding it tight with a piece of red string.

  ‘Of course it’s a boy,’ she said.‘Now I’m just going to take him to his father.’

  Quickly, before Sigrid could even glimpse her own child, Gyda picked up the infant and slipped from the room. Outside, the sound of voices carried on the still night air. Bolverk was tilting the horn with his friends at the next farm, getting in early with the celebrations. But instead of crossing the cow paddock to the neighbours’, Gyda headed in the direction of the house-over-the-hill.

  A wolf howled in the distance. The midwife clutched the baby close to her chest.

  The door to the house-over-the-hill was lit by an oil lamp resting on a spike in the ground. Gyda saw the silhouettes of children romping outside. They cheered when they saw her coming, and ran into the house to announce her arrival.

  Gyda slipped Sigrid’s baby inside her cloak as she entered the narrow entranceway. Children grasped at her clothes and hurried her forward into a large room bursting with noise and activity. Roaring green flames leapt from the firepit in the middle of the floor and strange odours bubbled from the cooking pots. Gyda’s patient, Finnhilda, was propped uncomfortably on the bed with a whimpering toddler tugging at her long, tousled hair.

  ‘All right. Everybody out,’ ordered Gyda.

  Seven little voices wailed a protest. ‘But it’s cold and dark outside!’

  A tall, gaunt man rose from his seat by the fire. ‘Tush now. Begone. Do as Gyda bids you.’ Runolf had trailing hair and beard and a long
, wobbly nose. He flapped his hands at his children.‘You were content enough to wait outside before Gyda arrived.’

  In a few seconds the room was clear. Gyda dumped Sigrid’s baby on the floor and rushed across to the bed – just in time to catch the next little infant as it arrived, squealing, into the world.

  As soon as the new baby felt the midwife’s steady hands wrapping him up, he stopped crying, shoved his fist in his mouth and began a quiet, contented sucking. That same moment, Sigrid’s baby woke and began to squall. Runolf and the children burst back into the room and clustered round the crying baby in the middle of the floor. Runolf bent down, picked it up and cradled it in his arms.

  ‘Be it boy or girl?’ he asked.

  The midwife hesitated a moment. Nobody had noticed the other baby she was tending at the foot of the bed. They were all patting the child in Runolf’s arms and exclaiming with delight at its curly hair and pudgy cheeks.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ she answered, slipping the boy baby under her cloak. ‘What will you name her?’ she asked, as she headed towards the door.

  ‘Thora,’ answered Runolf proudly.

  ‘Thora, Thora,’ chanted her brothers and sisters.

  Nobody paid any attention to Gyda as she left the house. With a thudding heart she now turned her footsteps towards the house where Bolverk was waiting to greet his new son.

  2

  Thora

  Ten years had passed since the night Thora was born. Some of her brothers and sisters had grown up and left home, but younger ones had taken their place. Thora’s baby curls had grown into thick, honey-coloured hair that she plaited and twirled round her head. Her face was still rosy and chubby, but this evening she was frowning as she tried to scrape the burnt remnants from inside a cauldron.

  ‘Thora, stop fiddle-faddling with the cooking pots,’ called Granny Hulda. ‘It’s not natural. Bring yourself over here and pay some attention to your spellwork.’

  Thora pulled a face. She added the cauldron to the pile of burnt and dirty pots and went to join Granny at her loom.

  Granny was so ancient she had shrivelled. Her hair looked like a tangle of dusty grey cobwebs, and her bones creaked when she moved. She made quite a racket as she stood there weaving at the tall loom. Her elbows rasped, her finger bones squeaked, and the clay weights on the warp threads clattered together. Granny’s weaving was crooked and full of gaps, and the wool she spun was lumpy and scratchy because she didn’t bother to comb out the brambles. But Granny seethed her cloth with spells as she wove, so although the clothes looked strange, they felt comfortable and they had magic powers. Everyone in the family had a cloak-that-could-not-get-wet for wearing in the rain. Granny could even make a cloth that would save a man from drowning if he fell in the sea.

  Thora knelt on the earth floor next to Granny’s loom and quickly tried to pick some of the burrs out of her wool before Granny noticed.

  ‘Don’t you bother with that, girl,’ said Granny, without even turning to look. ‘Hurry up and get on with your spinning. You need to weave yourself a new kirtle. That hand-me-down of Astrid’s is getting too short for you.’

  Thora coiled the wool around the distaff rod and stood up. She tucked the distaff under her arm, wound the end of the wool onto the spindle and gave the spindle a twist to start it turning. Concentrating hard, she began to spin, trying to make the thread as smooth and even as she could. The spindle turned and turned and the thread grew longer.

  ‘Now,’ said Granny, ‘start your seething. Which spell are you putting in this dress, hey?’

  ‘The spell to make me wise,’ muttered Thora.

  Granny sniffed and gave a loud creak.

  ‘Well, you certainly need that, my girl. You’re as silly as a drowned fish when it comes to spellwork.’

  Thora knew that the spell she wove would not work. None of her spells ever did. Thora thought there must be something wrong with her. Even her youngest brother, Ketil, who was only three, could make himself disappear when he put on the magic goatskin hood. Nothing happened when Thora put it on.

  Thora looked round the room as she spun, and hoped no visitors would call in today to ask for a runestone or a spell. She hadn’t been allowed to tidy up properly for a week. Besides the dirty cauldrons, there were bones, webbed feet and feathers from tonight’s supper of seagulls, and the floor was littered with leftover ingredients from spells and potions. There were spiky lemming whiskers, wolves’ teeth, rainbow-coloured puffin beaks and dried leaves off the bunches of herbs that dangled from the rafters. There were gritty scrapings from Runolf’s runestones, and sticky blobs of alder sap that shone red like spilt blood and stuck to her feet when she walked.

  Her younger sister, Edith, was dropping juniper berries into the incense burner.

  ‘What charm is she making now?’ wondered Thora.

  Edith was obsessed with protective charms. She was covered from head to foot with leaves, twigs and runestones that were all supposed to guard her against different things.

  As the incense started to smoke, Edith began to chant a spell and circle round the fire, the burner dangling from her fingers. Astrid, who was sitting on one of the log benches near the fire, waved away the smoke with an impatient gesture.

  ‘Do you have to seethe that spell right now?’ she asked.‘It’s hard enough to see what I’m sewing without your blowing incense in my face.’

  Thora tried to hold her breath as the smoke wafted past. She didn’t like the bitter-sweet smell. She thought enviously of all their neighbours, outdoors in the fresh air working on their farms, while her family crowded indoors, doing spellwork. Thora closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself outside, planting neat rows of seeds. She would water them and watch them carefully and one day she would see them sprout into little green shoots. Surely that was a kind of spellwork? But once, when she had taken a stone and tried to loosen some soil for planting seeds, Runolf had been horrified.

  ‘Cease that!’ he’d cried. ‘You’ll anger the Little Folk who live underground if you poke around like that, and then they’ll seek revenge on you! The Underworld belongs to them and we must not disturb it.’

  ‘But all our neighbours dig the ground and plough their farms,’ Thora argued. ‘Why don’t the Little Folk bother them?’

  ‘Because farmers can’t be expected to know better,’ said Runolf scornfully.‘But we’re spellworkers. We must abide by the rules of the magic world.’

  Sometimes Thora would watch Farmer Bolverk and his family working in their fields. Once, she’d tried to speak to Bolverk’s son, Oddo, a thin boy with a pointy face, but Bolverk had roared at Oddo to run away and chased after Thora with a stick. She’d never spoken to Oddo again.

  ‘Thora, you’re daydreaming. You haven’t been saying your incantation.’

  Astrid was standing in front of Thora now, looking smug. Astrid was two years older than Thora, and very good at seething spells. Granny was always telling Thora to ‘watch the way Astrid does it’. Right now, Astrid was dressed in the new blue cloak trimmed with white cat fur that she had just finished sewing. She had the hood drawn over her head so that her face was framed by the white tufts of fur. With her slanty eyes, she looked very like a cat, thought Thora. A cat that had just killed a bird.

  ‘You can have my old cloak now,’ said Astrid. ‘You can wear it tonight when you do your first shape-change.’

  ‘Tonight?!’ Thora was appalled. She looked at Granny with beseeching eyes. ‘But I’m not ready . . . I don’t know how to . . . I’m tired . . .’

  ‘Look out,’ said Astrid. ‘Your spindle’s dragging on the floor.’

  ‘Tush, Thora, don’t be such a spineless jellyfish,’ said Granny testily. ‘Shape-changing is perfectly simple. You just sit yourself on Grandpa’s grave and let it happen. You had no trouble your first time, did you, Astrid?’

  ‘No,’ said Astrid. ‘It only took me a few seconds.’

  ‘But what happens?’ asked Thora.

  ‘Well, you sta
rt off with a trance, of course,’ answered Granny. ‘Helps you get out of your body, that does. Then you conjure up a different shape for yourself – a bird or a beast or a sea creature – and you ride inside that shape. Very handy it is, if you need to fly or climb a tree or swim in the ocean. You can pick any shape you like.’

  ‘I always turn into a cat,’ said Astrid.

  Thora was not surprised.

  ‘I’ll go and see if it’s dark yet,’ said Astrid. ‘Here, put this on.’ She dumped her old cloak at Thora’s feet and headed outside.

  ‘Well, don’t dilly-dally, girl,’ said Granny. ‘Let’s see you dressed like a proper witch.’

  Reluctantly, Thora laid down her spindle and allowed Granny to tie the cat-fur hood under her chin. She felt her nose tickle and her eyes begin to water.

  ‘Atchooo!’

  ‘Now here’s a wand to mark the protective circle, so no harm can come to your body while you’re riding another shape.’

  ‘Atchooo!’

  ‘And here’s a pouch of runestones.’ Granny untied a pouch from her belt.

  ‘Atchooo!’

  ‘Great bursting blueberries, stop sneezing!’ snapped Granny, shaking the pouch, so that the runestones clinked and her arm bones rattled.

  ‘I can’t helb it,’ snuffled Thora miserably. ‘I thing it bust be the cat fur.’ It was just her luck to be allergic to official witch clothes as well as being hopeless at seething.

  Astrid came bustling back.

  ‘Yes, it’s getting dark, you can start now!’ she announced.

  Thora’s wish to go outside had come true, but not in the way she had intended. To do the shape-change, she’d have to sit outside all by herself, in the middle of the night, on Grandpa’s grave. She knew she’d never manage to change shape, however long she waited. She knew she would just sit there, cold and terrified, waiting until Grandpa’s ghost rose up and scared her to death.

  She hugged her cloak tightly around her for comfort. But the cat fur tickled her face and made her sneeze again.

  ‘And what kind of trance do you think you’ll manage, making all that silly noise?’ asked Granny Hulda crossly. She handed Thora a large rag to wipe her streaming nose.‘Use a bit of mind control,’ she ordered. ‘Now let’s be off. Bring a lamp with you.’