They Came On Viking Ships Read Free Page B

winter when the cows no longer gave their milk.
    Not all the village girls went a-milking. Some were too young, and a couple of the girls that had gone last year were married now, with barley fields of their own to tend—one even had a baby on her hip. This was the first year that Hekja was to go. She had twelve summers now, and would be the youngest of them all.
    The whole village gathered to see them off, the chief and all the men and boys, including Bran, staring at Hekja then pretending that he wasn’t. The cows were all garlanded with wild flowers, though the calves kept chewing off the flowers.
    The cows mooed, to keep the calves in line. They could smell the new grass up the mountain side, and remembered the taste of it from the year before. They’d been eating dry grass, kale stems and seaweed through the winter. Their calves had caught their excitement and were lowing too, with Snarf leaping round them all and snapping at their heels, as though he knew he was the only dog going up the mountain, while the chief’s dogs stayed behind.
    No other girl in the village had a dog. Dogs were for men.
    The women carried the wooden pails for the milk, the butter paddles and the cheese cloths. The girls carried their bundles, barley cakes and dried fish and cowhide blankets to keep them warm, for even summer nightswere cold up on the mountain. There were Raina and Reena, the chief’s two daughters and the oldest of the girls, Janna from the hut beyond the bay, Banna, Hekja’s best friend who lived in a hut nearby, and Hekja.
    Hekja’s ma had only one cow, with its calf at foot, while the chief had ten, but the village would share the cheese and butter out, a certain amount for each cow you owned, with extra for the families of the girls who’d looked after the cows up on the mountain. This year Hekja’s ma would share her extra portion with Tikka, to repay her for looking after Snarf.
    The clouds scattered across the sky, and out at sea the rain squalls sped across the islands as the procession headed up the great mountain with Snarf bounding ahead of them all. He was half grown now, with the long legs of his mother, and a coat as shaggy as a cow’s.
    The cows were slow and the calves kept trying to suckle their mothers, but the air was sweet with summer so no one was in any hurry. Finally they reached the mountain meadows and the sheiling 7 where the girls would sleep and keep the milk cool. It was no bigger than the huts down by the shore; of stone with a dirt floor, but no fireplace, as there was no wood to burn up here on the mountain.
    While the girls laid down their bundles, the women set up the buckets and the butter paddles, then cut turfs to mend the holes in the roof. Then the girls began to gather bracken for their beds, and the watercress that grew in the spring by the sheiling for their lunch.
    Once they had finished they sat on the grass and ate the barley bread and cheese with watercress, and the chief’s wife and daughters ate smoked beef too. Some of the women were tearful—it was the first time their daughters would be away. But the girls were exultant. After four summers of milking you were judged a woman, and could marry, with some of the cheeses you made up on the mountain for your dowry.
    Snarf sat on Hekja’s ma’s lap—or as much of him as he could fit—and ate some of her barley bread, spitting out the watercress, and licking away the tears that she was trying to hide.
    Then it was time for the women to go.
    The girls hugged their mothers. Hekja hugged her ma extra hard and watched her till she was well down the mountain. The other women had husbands and other family to go back to, but Hekja’s ma had no one else. Even her cow was on the mountain.
    ‘Take care,’ whispered Hekja’s ma.
    Hekja nodded. ‘I will. You take care too.’
    Her mother smiled. ‘What can happen to me down in the village?’ But her look was one of longing as she gazed at Hekja, and touched her cheek for one