Under the light of the moon, one runaway. His figure is slender, agile: a boy of thirteen. But his gait is shaky, slowing down almost defeatedly.

He is heading towards a swamp, but does not know it yet. As he steps down from a mound of earth, his feet slide on the muddy slope. He tries to regain balance, but instead, his feet slump in muck. Among reeds, he topples over and falls on his knees and hands, sinking to his elbows. A sharp and sudden pain makes him groan: a rigid stem of reed has cut across his face, leaving a bleeding gash under his right eye, stretching over the bridge of his nose and half of his left cheek.

The swamp is not deep - he can stand up. But he looks crushed. Fighting for breath, he wheezes, still in the mud. Blood is dripping from his nose. His body bruised, one of his eyes swollen. He can fight no longer.

A light in the distance. Firelight. A door contoured in warm-yellow. A farm.

“Who's there? Show yourself!” commands a woman's voice.

The boy comes out of the barn by himself. He wants to run no more, to be hounded no more. He has no more strength. So he simply staggers out into the rain - head in the ground, pain in his entire body - and goes to the seiðkona*.

While he was on the run – not only on that fateful night, but all throughout those past seven years - need and ambition had kept his mind sharp, his senses alert. But the warmth of the woman's pantry, the smells of dairy and meat and bread, the thought of fire and a cosy bed dulled him.

“What happened to you, lad?”

The seiðkona holds out her hand and catches his chin gently, wanting to have a look at him. He does not raise his chin. Through his wet, muddy and stringy hair, covering the gash still bloody and unhealed on his face, out of the eye that is not bruised, he can only see her fine shoes, the keys and pouch at her girdle, her apron adorned with beads. And her hand, wrinkled and warm.

And then... when she lays her hand on his shoulder, he finally does it. He does what he has held back for so long: he bursts into tears. After all he has done, after what has been done to him, it feels liberating.

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 Seiðkona – Female practitioner of seiðr magic. (Old Norse)