Unpublished
From the unpublished historical fantasy novel FINN'S LEGACY by C.M. Hind. This excerpt is shared for portfolio purposes only and does not constitute first publication.
The queen in oak was perfect, but the real Queen Hildeburh was not.
She paused before a newly carved doorpost. Her likeness stared at her—serene, composed, regal. Skilled hands had captured her appearance in oak: proud tilt of chin, graceful curve of neck, a subtle hint of authority. That was how people saw her, how history would remember her—an elegant queen who had brought dignity to Finn’s salt-marsh kingdom. She traced a wooden curl of hair, comparing the carving’s idealized stillness to this wild anxiety surging through her veins. A queen in wood never lost her composure, never felt mounting terror. But the real Hildeburh, flesh and blood beneath royal trappings, snubbed her perfect image and called once more, her voice fraying: “Frealaf!” Her son’s name echoed across the construction site, competing with hammering of mallets and chopping of adzes, grumbling thralls and cursing workmen. Laborers watched from the meadhall’s half-thatched roof while thralls glanced from their muddy efforts to extend this terp. Ignoring them all, she searched around the timber framing of her new bower and then entered the still-doorless meadhall—dim and cool without a lit hearth, empty of benches. No sign of him.
When she turned, the master builder was blocking much of the doorway with his considerable belly. She asked, “Have you seen my son? Frealaf?”
“No, my Queen. I—”
She pushed past him.
Elka rushed up, sandy hair disheveled and shawl askew. Usually pert and pretty, she was now flushed and sweat-sheened. “The other boys haven’t seen him, lady. Nor Femke, since morning meal.”
Hildeburh noticed her daughter then, behind this woman who was once her child’s minder. Ten years old and barely half-a-head shorter than Elka, but still a child. Her precious child. “Femke… Friðumærth.” She deliberately switched to her daughter’s adult name. “Where did you last see Frealaf? Did he mention anything that might help us find him?”
“No…” Femke trembled, casting about as if Frealaf might emerge to shout “Tricked you!”
She gathered Femke close. “Hush now. All will be well” But her voice lacked conviction.
“Folk search each house and byre,” Elka added. “Every shed. We’ll find him, surely.”
Hildeburh turned on her, Femke forgotten in her sudden rage. “You had best pray!” Her finger stabbed Elka’s ample breast. “To Mother Earth.” Her words marched louder. “To every ancestor.” A fleck of spit struck a blanching cheek. “And to any hearth-god you hold dear. That we find my son hale, or else...”
A hush had fallen, mallets and adzes silenced. Workers sought less conspicuous tasks until this dragon-queen had departed.
A public scene—unbecoming of a queen, but so very typical for a daughter of Hoc Halfdane, terror of the whale roads. Her skin flushed warm. She took a breath, trying to straighten her composure as if it were Elka’s twisted shawl. She stepped to terp’s edge, scanning blue and green fields of ripening flax and salt-marsh pastures. Hazel shrubs fringed streams and pools, which reflected bright sky and drifting clouds. Cows and sheep grazed. But no little boy. No Frealaf. Searchers pushed through fields. “Frealaf!” she shouted from the fullness of her lungs, her voice echoing like a distant whisper. Frisia flung like a woven tapestry to the horizon—realm of King Finn… and his worry-crazed queen, Hildeburh. This view was beautiful under other, less gut-churning circumstances.
Two shadows drifted closer, hovering in fearful silence. But she was calmer now, her terror clamped tight once again, but lurking like a shadow-stepper in dark recesses of her mind. “Have you searched…”—she willed her voice to be steady—”…the wells?”
“There first, as instructed,” Elka murmured.
Her chain of thoughts: a sea of grass and winding streams; memories of her father, sea-king Hoc; morbid mind’s-eye drownings. A notion surfaced; she clutched it.
“Femke…” She stroked her daughter’s braid. “Did Frealaf say anything about the coast?” Hinting. Hopeful.
Femke scrunched her freckled face in concentration. The shadow-stepper eased closer, rank breath ticking her neck, still hidden but eager to lurch into view and terrorize her once again. “He claimed he was Hnæf Hocing. Sworn to repel an invasion.”
“Good girl!” The shadow-stepper recoiled from this glimmer of hope, however fitful it might be.
“Do you know where he is?”
“I have an inkling.” Her mind raced. “Return home, Femke. Stay where I can find you.”
“Yes, mother.”
The lead carpenter had been watching this exchange. Hildeburh called to him. “Arrange a search of the marshes from here to the coast. We are looking for my son. He is this tall”—one palm held below her breast—”pale blond like his father, King Finn.” Invoking the person who fed and sheltered them all was often a powerful motivator.
“I know the boy, lady,” he said with an apologetic smile.
“But your workers may not,” she snapped. A tiny flare of Hocing temper, a spark. Yet his smile vanished. He set about directing his workers. She nodded, mollified.
Finn’s workers could return to her husband’s stupid construction project once her son had been found. Once, rather than if. Soon workers fanned across the salt-marsh westward.
But the closest coastline was north, across the Rith. On a hunch, she headed that way, Elka following. She walked the riverside path and, sure enough, soon spotted a skiff wallowing on the opposite bank amid reeds, locked between sluggish current and incoming tide. She called to a fisherman checking his traps, had him ferry them across.
Heedless of her skirts, she struck off northward across ragged gorse and through shallow stream-beds. Elka struggled to maintain a semblance of dignity while chasing her queen’s much longer stride, her breath catching in soft gasps through parted lips. Hildeburh hoped the young lady remained too winded for words because hearing her voice would trigger another angry flare. This woman had been flirting with a guard when both should have been minding little Frealaf.
She hurried to the coast, gusts tugging her shawl, grit causing her to squint. She peeked behind every tall tuft of rippling sea-grass and scanned the haze-clouded sea at each crest. A gurgle and hiss of waves smacking against mudflats grew louder.
She blamed Elka. But she also blamed herself. She spoke often of Hnæf. Not as a rover, but as a dear brother. Yet Frealaf latched onto tales of sea-kings like Hnæf because they excited his imagination. She constructed her own imaginary world, but one where grief replaced glory.
Wade’s Sea revealed itself—an immense patchwork of glistening mudflats stretching to the horizon. Tide had turned, creeping across silt in fingers of foam. She scanned the expanse, searching, and then froze.
There. A small figure on a patch of mudflat, brandishing a stick like a sword. Her son! He waved cheerfully.
“Frealaf!” Relief and fury mingled. “Get back here! Now!” But even as those words left her lips, she saw a problem. Incoming tide had carved channels of seawater between her son and safety. Frealaf’s smile faltered. He turned one way, then another, as he sought a path through a maze of water.
“Never mind!” she shouted. “Stay there! Don’t—”
Too late. He waded into a shallow channel. Two strides, three—then he stopped, sunk past his knees. His stick fell as he windmilled for balance. His cheerful adventure had transformed into something else. “Mother!”
The shadow-stepper pounced from its hiding place, offering no mercy—only cruelty and dread. Quickmud could trap a person until a merciless tide swallowed them.
Keys jangled as she flung her girdle aside. Her woolen cyrtel came next, golden brooches tearing free and thudding into sand. She hesitated only a heartbeat at her smoc, aware of driftwood collectors scouring the beach. Propriety warred with necessity.
Frealaf shrieked.
Her linen smoc joined the pile of discarded clothing.
Naked, she plunged into the shallows. Cold water shocked her skin. Her feet sank, mud sucking at her ankles, then her shins. Something sharp—a shell, perhaps a stick—scraped her calf. She pushed forward another step and mud claimed her knees. No further. She threw herself forward, arms outstretched. The water was shallow enough that she hit bottom, her breasts and belly scraping against hidden debris. But the mud lost its grip. She kicked and pulled, half-swimming, half-crawling through murky water. Her childhood in Geatland had prepared her for this—summers spent in cold northern lakes with her brother Hnæf, safe from their father’s fists.
Frealaf had sunk to his waist, still struggling, which only drove him deeper. “Stop moving!” she gasped, coughing on dirty brine.
She reached him, grabbed him around his chest, and with a kick against silty mud pulled him down onto her outflung body as if she were a raft. The quickmud released him with an obscene sucking sound. He clung to her neck, nearly choking her, but she didn’t care. She dragged him toward shore, water growing shallower with stroke and crawl until her knees found purchase.
She collapsed onto dry sand, still holding Frealaf. She crushed him against her. Alive. Whole. Safe.
“My lady…” Elka clutched Hildeburh’s bundled clothing.
Driftwood collectors had started to migrate down the beach to investigate what sea-beast had floundered ashore. Soon they would be openly gawking at their naked queen if she didn’t dress herself. But she tightened her embrace, pressing her cheek to Frealaf’s damp hair. One moment more. Just one moment more to feel his heartbeat, his breath, to know with certainty that the shadow-stepper had been denied its prize.
Against her shoulder, a small voice: “I lost my stick.”
A laugh burst from her—half-sob, half-genuine mirth. She loosened her grip enough to look at him. Mud streaked his face, his eyes red from crying, but he was here. He was here.
The shadow-stepper had retreated to its hidden lair once more, but it was still waiting. Always waiting.
A truth that gnawed beneath relief: the real danger wasn’t mudflats or tide or even her son’s reckless adventuring. It was her own nature—that Hocing blood that surged cold with worry one moment and hot with fury the next, that drove her to rashness and rage and terrible, consuming fear. The shadow-stepper lived inside her, fed by her love and nurtured by her dread, and it would lurk there always, waiting for its next chance to pounce.
