The Starlight Medallions

Chapter 46 Starspinner Once long ago in the northern lands there was a boy named Simen. He lived with his father and mother in a small fishing village. His mother sewed their clothes and his father fished from his small boat. They had a vegetable garden that Simen tended. Simen’s eyes were blue like his mother’s and his hair the same flaxen gold. But he looked nothing like his father, who had come from the South and who was dark. It was said by some that the man with the fishing boat was not Simen’s father at all, but no one said that to the man’s face, for he was powerful and his temper was easily stirred. Simen loved the stars, and when the moon was dark and the stars were brightest, he would lie wrapped in his bedding by the forest’s edge, animating the heavens with stories he made up. It was a good and simple life and on his eleventh birthday Simen had much to be thankful for. But it is the lot of mankind that for each measure of happiness apportioned by the gods, there is an equal measure of sorrow that – like water hidden in the crevices of rock – one day freezes and shatters what seemed unbreakable and timeless. So it was that one moonless night, raiders from the South landed their ships, and with torches shattering the soft starlight, set ablaze the homes of the villagers. They took such livestock as would fit in their boats and killed the rest. Some villagers were fortunate enough to escape into the forest, as had their ancestors on occasions in the past, emerging days later to bury the dead and rebuild their homes. Others, including Simen’s parents, were not so fortunate. They either died in the fires or were taken as slaves by the raiders. Simen watched helplessly, wrapped in his blanket, tears running down his cheeks as his own home burned. There now came from out of the night behind him a great wolf whose eyes glowed like stars. The wolf stood beside him, and, when one of the raiders approached with his torch, bared his teeth and growled so deeply that the earth seemed to shake beneath them. The man took a step toward them holding out his torch to frighten the wolf, but the wolf howled and the torch went out. The wolf howled again and other torches were extinguished. He howled a third time and every flame expired. Now the men were very frightened, for they knew they were in the presence of a god, perhaps even Fenir himself. They went quickly to their ships and put out to sea. The wolf approached Simen and nuzzled his hand, then turned again and walked away. Simen understood that he was to follow and he did. He grasped the fur at the back of the wolf’s neck and walked close beside him. They walked northward for many hours, and when Simen was too tired to walk any farther, he rode upon the wolf’s back. The wolf carried him to the back of the north wind, behind the curtain that is called the Northern Lights and in whose folds all times are as one, to a land called Hyperborean. They came to a field of soft and fragrant grasses by a crystalline lake. Simen walked among the grasses and along the shore of the lake, wiping the tears from his face, wondering at the strangeness of it all. He picked up a stone and skipped it across the water where the night sky was reflected. Then he lay on the grass and looked at the stars, in hope that they might comfort him. He had never seen so many nor felt that they were so close. A curtain of colored light danced around him, and he fell asleep. Some say that the gods made the stars. One legend has it that Odin once threw the eyes of the giant and shape-shifter, Thjatsi, into the sky after he kidnapped Idunn. Some say the stars belonged to the Danish king, who fashioned them from gold in a great mill. Still others say that it was Rida Stjarna who speckled the night with light, each star a stone skipped across the celestial sea. It was he, some say, who created the constellations to amuse men and tease their imaginations. This great work he signed with his own image. Rida Stjarna was also called Starspinner. He stayed aloof from the struggles at Odin’s palace, which was called Valhalla. He lived behind the north wind and fashioned for himself a curtain of light called the Northern Lights. There he was content to contemplate and continue his work, for the heavens are forever being made anew. Some say that he was the oldest of all the gods and also the youngest. Now and then he would be visited by a child, for only children can travel behind the Northern Lights to the land of Hyperborean. When the child grew older, he would not remember that visit, for he or she would have achieved what adults call common sense, and common sense knows that no such place as Hyperborean could exist and that Starspinner himself was but a legend. Rida Stjarna was the keeper not only of the stars but of time itself. He asked the greatest of the dwarf artisans, Brokk, son of Ivaldi, a superb smith and jeweler, to fashion nine medallions from the ores and jewels of Asgard to represent the procession of the stars and as a gateway into time past. He himself fashioned a stone from the Northern Lights as a gateway to the future. Because it controlled the others, he called it the lykill. When the giants who had built Odin’s palace demanded payment, Odin sent his messengers out among the gods to gather together all the treasure that could be found. Knowing that these collectors would come for the medallions, which already had become legendary, Starspinner devised a strategy for their protection. He wove a coat of the kind worn by the mortals of the north, a colorful coat of which its owner would take great care. He made it to fit a child, and in its lining he sewed the nine medallions. As everyone knows, the gods often visited the underlands, taking the form of a mortal and, through some act, redirecting the affairs of men when they went awry. Often they slept with a mortal woman who would later conceive a child. The child, being half god and half mortal, could do the god a service that an ordinary mortal could not. Starspinner, being master of the stars and therefore of time itself, knew always what was past, passing, and to come; and it was with this foresight that he had fathered the boy, Simen, who now slept in the fragrant grasses behind the Northern Lights. Anyone who has ever seen a gull perfectly still in the air while the clouds rolled above and the sea crashed below, as if free from the currents of time, will understand why Starspinner had chosen the gull as his form in the world of mortals. And so, when the boy awoke, it was not the boy-god Starspinner, in his radiance he beheld, but instead a lowly gull, its head cocked slightly to one side. In the grass lay a coat. Simen looked at it with wonder and then searched the vast plain for its owner. Who could he offend by trying it on, he asked himself, and, being able to imagine no answer, he did so. An unfamiliar feeling swept through him, a feeling of being embraced and protected as if the coat were a living thing. A shiver of joy ran down his spine, and he hugged himself for pure gladness. As he did, the gull rose in the air. He watched it as it circled higher and higher and disappeared into the sun. Then he heard the sea crashing upon the shore and realized he was once again at the forest edge by his village, where people went about their daily tasks. The village was as it had been the day before. Had it all been a dream? Simen walked to his home, but even as he approached, he heard his own voice and the voice of his mother. He entered and saw them having their morning meal, his father already out in his fishing boat casting his nets. He spoke, but his voice made no sound. He walked to the table and stood at his mother’s side. He put his hand upon hers, and, for a moment she paused in what she was saying, but then, shaking her head, continued. It was very strange, because it was of such recent memory that he knew each word that would be spoken