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annoyed whale indeed. They survived their immersion, and regained their boat
without further mishap, and soon found a third island, where dwelt a solitary
monk who had gone mad, and who claimed he was Judas Iscariot, exiled for his
great sin. Eventually Brendanos became the first man to discover our own home
island, which he called
Thule, after a legendary kingdom in the far north.
"That voyage took seven years. Returning home to Hibernia, Brendanos lingered
for many years, before setting out to sea again, though some of the others
took their families to Thule. But at last Brendanos, having become rich,
outfitted a fine oak ship with trade goods and a crew of sixty men. After
visiting his people on Thule, he sailed west, and during the fourth moon after
Christmas, encountered an island entirely of ice, in the shape of an arched
doorway. It must have been a wandering island, because no one ever saw it
again.
"The first land southwest of the ice island was home to great beasts with
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cat's heads and tusks bigger than an old boar's. The crew killed some, because
they had eaten their last pigs, then prevailed on
Brendanos to sail more southerly, in hopes of finding warmer seas and more
hospitable lands. Indeed, in the weeks that followed, the sea became warm
enough to swim in, and the air itself smelled of spices and honey. On one
small island, seeing smoke, they found an elderly monk, a hermit, exiled from
a colony of
Hibernians to the west. He gave them directions, and that is how Brendanos
found the Fortunate Isles."
The tale-teller paused, grinned, and held out his horn cup for more ale.
Several Viking sailors hooted and urged him on, but he waited until his cup
had been filled, then downed it in two great quaffs. "The land next
encountered, eight days to the west, was ripe with fruits and flowers, and
when they found the monks' colony, they were feted like returning sons, and
their ship was restocked with everything the land could offer. The monks told
of a lovely city inland from their colony, whose king lived on top of a
mountain, though they said nothing of gods living in wells, or of feathered
cloaks. If the people of that city were rich in gold, no one ever said so nor
would they, if they were smart, and wanted to get as much of
that as they could, for themselves.
"Brendanos and his men sat out afoot, for there were no horses in that land,
and they hiked northward.
They searched for forty days, and though they found villages aplenty, there
was no city, and when they encountered a river too wide and deep to cross,
they turned back.
"Brendanos returned home by sailing directly east, on strong winds that bore
him almost to his own doorstep, and his next voyage was in a different
direction to Rome, with a letter from Festinus, bishop of the Fortunate Isles,
and from there he went to the Holy Land . . ."
The tale continued, but Pierrette lost interest. She pondered everything she
had heard. The two accounts, different as they were, did not discourage her.
Neither place was her destination, but both mysterious lands contributed to
the legend, and thus served what she believed was the goddess's end.
Not only that, the stories implied that should the earth prove as vast as
Eratosthenes of Cyrene had calculated, the unexplored portion was not all just
trackless ocean, but included islands, perhaps whole continents, untouched by
the malaise that threatened the known land the Black Time.
How that could be was not clear. Had such undiscovered lands always existed,
or did they somehow spontaneously appear, just over the horizon, off the bows
of the first ship to sail toward them, or just over the next hill but one from
the intrepid explorer by land?
So lost was she in thought that when the tale-telling was over and the
gathering divided itself into multiple centers of conversation, she alone
remained uninvolved, until the big Norsemen Egil sat next to her and proffered
a wooden tankard slopping with fresh-drawn ale. "Are you morose?" he asked.
"Ale is the cure for horizon-struck eyes." One of the two untonsured Irishmen
also sat. Close up, Pierrette saw that he was still a boy, no older than she
purported to be.
"You speak Gaulish?"
"It's near enough to the Hibernians' tongue," Egil replied, "and my family has
long traded in Brittany."
Brittany? Oh, yes that was what immigrants from old Britannia called Armorica,
"Little Britain."
"Traded? Not raided?"
"Is every Roman an emperor? Is every Hibernian a priest? It only seems so."
"Tell me about your island Thule? I had not heard of that, except in the most
ancient accounts of
Pytheas's explorations, over a thousand years ago."
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