Oath Bound: Day 12

Word Count: 72,010

Summary of Events:

Friðljót was woken by one of the brothers, who helped her to prepare breakfast and chatted with her a little bit while they waited for the rest of the brothers to wake up. Aðalbjörn, due to the outbreak of war, elected to head east until he reached the coast, and then go south, so as to not encounter the conflict, but that didn't prevent him from encountering men going to war or seniors, women, and children fleeing the battlegrounds. Friðljót was taking a break from her work when Fróðvinr, the middle brother, sat down and chatted with her, still expressing disbelief that human sacrifice would be acceptable to the gods . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

“And, even if such a sacrifice was permitted,” Fróðvinr went on. “Surely there would have to be some rules regarding who was to be sacrificed.”

“Such rules as would prevent me from being sacrificed for having not done what I was told?” Friðljót asked.

“Yes,” Fróðvinr replied. “I think that your mother was honestly just looking to get rid of you one way or another, and figured that by marrying you off as a least wife for a man with many or killing you off was the best way for you to disappear and no longer be in her life. But still, why would a mother do that? I have never known a mother to hate her own child so much.”

“Neither have I,” Friðljót replied. “I have even seen many other children who receive nothing but love, care, and affection from their mothers, while I receive absolutely nothing of the kind.”

“Are you even sure that she is your mother?” Fróðvinr asked.

The question jolted Friðljót. She stared at the dancing shadows of the leaves as the breeze picked up just a little bit more. How could that be possible? How could her mother not be her mother? She had no memory of a woman who loved her — aside from Sólstigr, but there was no way that Sólstigr was her mother — not even a vague sense that there might have been someone, even if only for a rather brief time.

“You have not considered the idea?” Fróðvinr asked.

“I know not how she could be anything else,” Friðljót replied. “I have no memory of another.”

“Nor does my mother,” Fróðvinr replied. “But the woman she knew as her mother wasn’t her mother, for her mother died while bringing her into the world. Surely it is possible that your own mother may have died in that fashion, leaving your father with just one wife.”

“But surely she would have children,” Friðljót said.

“It is just as strange to think that she would have only one,” Fróðvinr said. “Yet you seemed unquestioning of that fact.”

“Well, I knew of another woman who had a child, but suffered so terribly that she nearly died, and was thereafter never able to have children,” Friðljót replied. “So I suspected that was what had happened to my mother, and that part of her contempt toward me was because I had harmed her.”

“That is possible,” Fróðvinr said. “Or maybe it is possible that she suffered the same but her baby died, and she resented that you lived, even though your mother died where she did not.”

“Maybe it would even explain why I have raven hair, when neither my father nor the woman I know to be my mother do,” Friðljót mused, more so to herself.

“It may,” Fróðvinr said. “But I don’t know if there is a line of raven-haired people, I know not how they come to be, I merely know that there are not many of them.”

Pronunciation:

Fróðvinr: frowthvihnner