blood eagle;

[wingborne]

Denmark found the boy standing near a thicket of forests, not far from the shore. The dry grass broke under his steps as he saw the child sitting on a rock, sword in hand, face placid even as blood splattered on his leather jerkin. Wrapped in the thin fur of dead bears, he seemed to be part of the forest.

“Norway,” he said, the name on his tongue. “Norway!” He had to climb up the steeper parts of the hill, short legs scrambling over the rocks. Though he was a small child, his Vikings said he was strong, and he liked hearing it. Dry skin flecked off with blood against the harsh cold dirt, unable to grow any life for the coming winter.

Norway, though, barely looked up. He reached down with his small hands and cracked the white ribs to the plain blue sky. His sleeves had become bespeckled with blood, with his fingers coated with the redness. He seemed indifferent to the mess, grabbing his sword and cutting away neatly at the spine even deeper, carving away at the meat and tearing at the flesh with his fingers when it wouldn’t come neatly.

“What’re you doing out here?” Denmark sat next to him, plopping so hard that he scraped the palm of his hand against the rock. Norway bent over, his hair blocking his placid eyes, as he pressed the ribs against the dirt, open to the sky. The cracking sounds resounded in the forest.

“Playing,” Norway said softly.

Denmark thought Norway was weird and quiet, like Sweden, but different. He knew Sweden but he thought Norway was really strange. He had seen charred land to the north, but hadn’t expected to see Norway himself at the rock. It wasn’t bad seeing him, just weird.

“Playing what? I want to play.” Denmark patted the hilt of his sword by his side, which made a blunt scraping sound against the hard cliff rock. The tip was dull, blunt from sawing through bone, but the flat was still sturdy and he liked his sword.

Norway only shrugged and began to pull out the lungs, heaving masses that still quibbled with breath, shallowly inhaling and exhaling. The bloody ribs became a background for the two pink lungs, which Norway held in his hand. The child’s lungs were small enough that he could hold both in his hands easily, carefully digging in his blunt nails into the walls of the chest muscles, not so far as the stringy sausage-like intestines.

“Can I hold them?” Denmark leaned forward, opening his dirty hands. Norway seemed reluctant to let go of his prize, but passed over the lungs. In the passage, the child seemed to inhale sharper, which made the lungs thinly draw together, flaps pumping. Denmark thought it felt strange. They were still warm, but they were also moving with the invisible force of life pressing into them. Still covered in blood, they were slick in his hands, and he almost dropped them.

“Careful,” Norway said sharply, the sharpest that he had ever heard. He grinned at him easily, because he was finally talking and they were talking together. In his excitement, he might have pressed too hard on the lungs, because the child made a soft movement by his hand. It was hard to tell if he was conscious or unconscious, eyes half-lidded under the massive eyebrows.

Norway took them back, just as quietly as he gave them. This time, he arranged them with the ribbed wings from the body. He looked at his work with satisfaction, then dug into his jerkin until he fished out a small brown leather bag. He opened it and began to sprinkle salt on the wounds, the white mixing with the red and dissolving softly.

“Are you staying longer?” Denmark asked, leaning forward to watch.

“Don’t know.” Norway stopped sprinkling salt for a moment, looking up at the sky. It was completely clear, but it wasn’t a bright color. The grayness of winter seemed to slowly spread, a length of depression that covered the air.

“Where would you go?”

“Don’t know.” But Denmark pressed closer to Norway, not threatening, but eager. He was still taller than him, though, and it must have been that towering that made Norway’s eyes flicker to him, not as a warning, but judging, measuring, thinking. Finally, Norway shrugged. “Maybe west.”

“That wasn’t so hard.” Even as Denmark praised him, Norway seemed to have decided that the conversation was over. He wiped his fingers along his trousers, blood already caked under his nails and dotted along his arms.

“You staying?” Norway stood up.

“Maybe.” Denmark watched him. “Don’t go already. That’s no fun. You’re no fun.”

Norway, again, shrugged, and began to set down the cliff. He stepped over his victim easily, but his shorter legs made his journey downhill slower. A brisk wind picked up, rustling the nearby trees like a cascade of sounds, leaves slapping against each other and branches snapping like the sound of ribs caked with blood slowly bent back to allow for wings to grow. Denmark thought about stopping him, but he forgot when he looked down again at the body. He squinted his eyes, tilting his head, and looked at it differently, and then he saw it.

It was an eagle. A blood-red eagle with majestic broken wings.

When Denmark looked up, Norway’s figure had already disappeared along the distant coast.