•ᛉ• 5. "Algiz" •ᛉ•

Beneath the oaken veil I tread,
Roots whisper old words of the dead;
Wind-borne voices twist and call,
I follow shadow, I follow all.

In hollow groves where shadows breathe,
The twisted boughs their secrets seethe;
Roots claw the dark, the wind intones—
I walk with them, yet walk alone.

        When he awoke that morning, the world felt steadier than it had in years. The pull of home, of Father Byrne, no longer tethered him; such returns seemed distant, nearly impossible. Dawn filtered through the cast-stone cross window, painting the room in muted gray-gold, while the cawing of a few crows punctuated the stillness. Fingers still wrapped around the black feather he had carried so long, Audloed did what he had never dared: he slipped away. Cloaked in the black of his plague doctor’s garb—mask set aside to move unseen—he moved silently into the chill morning, heading back to Elverum, back to Eilif.

    Eilif welcomed him as one might welcome a brother lost to the wild, and Audloed, for the first time in years, felt his purpose reawaken. Together, they lived through the waning months of 1350, with Eilif recounting old Norse tales of gods, spirits, and wandering heroes. When Eilif began teaching him the runes, it was Algiz that struck Audloed like lightning.

    “That is Algiz,” Eilif said, tracing the symbol with a finger calloused by the earth. “The protection rune, the rune of the elk.”

    Audloed stared. 

    In that instant, everything crystallized. 

    The rune—the lines, the arms reaching skyward—was Fiadh’s symbol, etched into his memory long before he knew its name. She had been guiding him all along, protecting him from the shadows. Its form mirrored a cross, yet something older, wilder, pulsed within it. He began recording Eilif’s teachings meticulously, knowing no one else would see these pages. Yet Eilif warned him: the Church would not tolerate such symbols. Runes were dangerous now; their display, a declaration against the order of Christ. He thought of Norway’s slow, halting conversion: kings raised in England bringing the faith, missionaries trudging over fjords and forests, Saint Olaf heralding a new age. Still, every stave church he entered seemed perched atop places once sacred to the old gods, wooden pillars guarding secrets older than the cross. And Audloed, feeling the pulse of the land beneath his feet, sensed a magic older than priests or kings—a wildness that tied him to Fiadh and the forests she had once danced among.

    When Eilif passed in his old age, Audloed returned to the forested highlands above Kongsvinger. Alone, he tended to his friend’s body, crafting a burial with the rituals of Norse custom—stones, incense, whispered prayers to the unseen. For months he lingered there, abandoned by the Church, free from its contracts. The forest became his world, the elk and caribou his companions, the wind through pines and firs a choir older than memory. Yet even in solitude, Fiadh haunted his dreams: glimpses of her among deer, the echo of her laughter, the shape of her in the shadows between trees.

    On the eve of departure from the homestead, Audloed discovered a small book on Eilif’s desk. English letters scratched with a quill led him to a bump in the pages: a repurposed Roman coin, silver, etched with an elk. Below, a crude raven’s face, eyes wide, and a single word scrawled: Follow. Beside it, Algiz, flanked by two dots—eyes, he realized, watching over him. He understood then: his path was not homeward. It was deeper into the forests, into the wilds that had shaped him, into the mysteries of pagan lands where Fiadh still lingered in dream and memory.

    He painted the rune upon his mask, affixing blackbird and crow feathers to his cowl. Traveling from village to village, he treated plague victims, yet his presence carried something more: reassurance, protection, the quiet certainty that some force, some elder ancient magic that still existed and took shelter in the spruce of forgotten forests, guided him. Norse families whispered of him as The Raven Man, a healer unbound by Church edict, ministering with hands and herbs rather than sermons. He attended solstice gatherings, crossing freely between Sweden and Norway, following the elk herds, reading the landscape as if it spoke in runes. Each dream of Fiadh, each fleeting image of deer in snow or shadow, drove him onward.

    In this untamed northern realm, where fjords cut deep and winds sang through ancient pines, Audloed finally understood: he was neither priest nor servant of kings. He was a child of the old ways, a bridge between forest and village, rune and cross, life and death. And through it all, Fiadh remained, silent yet guiding, a presence in dream and symbol, a force that made the wilds his true home.
                                                   

Beneath the stone and spire I roved,

Through men’s hearths and the holy flame,

Yet eld-voices called from shadowed grove,

Where oak and ash murmured names.

The wind breathed secrets through bough and leaf,

Tongues older than the priest’s own vow;

Stones and streams, moss and frost-bound fern,

Sung of wyrd unseen, of things forgotten now.

Homeward I wend where twilight glimmers,

Through birch and silvered, whispering stream;

The gods of root and sky awake,

Their watching eyes in shadowed dream.