Spring Planting
"Uncle Erik?"
Erik Hardhead takes his hand off the crooked branch from the woodpile. He turns to Trym. The boy's strictly his first cousin once removed, he's not about to correct him.
"What is it, Trym?"
"I... I miss Mom and Dad."
Erik smiles slowly, sympathetically. He pauses for thought before speaking, though he stoops down to put a hand on Trym's shoulder while he does so. Perhaps this is what it's like to have a son- a foster son, in effect, now. For little Trym had been staying with him, mother, and Svanfrid while Tyrm's parents went sailing, and then the Jomsvikingr descended on Gotland while they were still gone.
"Well, that's only fair, Trym, and I'm sure they miss you too. But just think- with them off to Hedeby to sell your mother's weaving, at least they're off safe and sound, eh?"
"But I wish they were... here, having adventures with us! And... here with me." Trym looks down, biting his lip and clenching his fists.
"I wish they were too here, Trym. Me too. But... hm. Maybe some day you can go out on the sea looking for them, or they may come here and find you. Who knows? Until then, we'll have to make the best of it, eh?"
Trym sighs, then squares his shoulders and looks up, looking Erik squarely in the eye. "I guess- no, you're right."
"Good boy!"
Erik picks the branch up, hefts it lightly, and then swings it through the air. For a split second the wood softens and he gives it a
crack like a whip. When his hand stops, the branch is entirely straight- and suitable to be used as a stake. "Now, you whittle a point on this one with your knife, boy, while I do the next one."
...
Erik reaches down and gives the stake he's pulled down into the ground a judicious wiggle, then leans on it. Not so good.
THUMP
There. Now it's about a foot deeper. Wiggle, wiggle. That'll do.
"Now Trym, do you know what we're going to do next with our little palisade?"
"Uncle! Of course I know!" Trym sounds exasperated as only a child can. "Lots of branches and things woven in from side to side."
"Right, right. Now, if this were a proper field fence we might try weaving in living plants to make a hedge of it, but for now, this will do. It should mostly keep the creatures out."
"But Uncle?"
"Yes?"
"Why didn't you make a big proper fence out of rails?"
"Well, Trym, the way I figure it, we don't have so many logs that we can waste them on every little thing. Besides, anything big and strong enough to bull through this would probably be able to bull through a log fence besides, and this may stop things that would slip under the logs."
...
At last, the fenced-in garden patch close by the house is done. It's a carefully laid out square of earth tilled and cleared as best the family could do, nearly the length of a small longship one way, and over half that length the other. The fencing is meant to act as a windbreak and keep away vermin. Svanfrid and Unna weave together a little squad of scarecrows and set them on poles,
Let that which walks on four legs run away, let that which flies on wings take flight!
It will be Trym's job to see to it that the runes stay painted, and warn him if they seem to be degrading or failing. And to watch the little field of golden grass for anything that slips past...
EDIT: Oh hey, skeleton attack! Well, this takes place whenever it does. I'm gonna get caught up on the skeleton raid.
