. . .

Vaenwode goes to his lady-love Gunfrid. He tells her to make a rope for him; to gather the hair that she pulls from her, and weave it to the water of the waterfall and the songs of the birds; to the blood and the thunder of the stories that warriors tell; to the light of each morning’s first sun.

“If it is long enough,” he says, “in thirteen moons, to reach the svart-elves’ caves, then I shall return to you and we shall be rich forever, and all the miseries of our life like fading dreams.”

She looks at him and her eyes are unreadable. She does not say what she will do.

He kisses her, anyway, and he sets out to Hans’ farm.

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