Page 71 of The Bewitched Viking

It was a land ill-suited to farming, but goats and sheep would do well here. She smiled to herself at that last. “Tykir the Great” as a sheepherder? She thought not.

With fat snowflakes billowing down on the scene, Dragonstead, with its valley and lake backdrop, presented an exquisite picture. Magical, even. A land where fairies and elves and other woodland creatures might very well reside, if one believed in such fanciful notions.

She was seeing it through winter’s filter, of course. How much more beautiful would it be when spring burst on the valley with its greenery and wildflowers and native animals abirthing, like reindeer and beaver and great bears? Or summer, when ducks and other feathered fowl came to nest here?

Tykir came up to her then and took her by the forearm. “Come,” he said tersely. “Don’t stand about dawdling.”

She would have reacted to his rudeness, but she was too engrossed in the scene before her. “Your home is wonderful.”

“Huh?” His head came up alertly, and his eyes widened with surprise.

“If this was my home, I don’t think I would ever leave.”

She could tell her words pleased him, though he tried to hide his emotions from her. “Is this another trick of yours?”

“To what purpose?” she scoffed. “I give you a compliment so that I can gain…what?”

He shrugged. “To avoid your punishment.”

“Oh, that! I thought you were serious.”

“I am serious. You are going to be punished for your many crimes, in ways you cannot imagine.”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

“Did you open my gifts?” he asked.

“Yea, I did. That was some grand jest you played on me.”

“’Twas no jest.”

“Adam is laughing.”

A look of disgust passed over his face. “You showed Adam?”

“Yea. He says you are perverted.”

Tykir threw back his head and laughed. “That’s truly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I will have a talk with that guttersnipe if he is calling me names. Perverted! Indeed!”

“Well, actually, I’m the one who called you perverted, and he just agreed.”

Tykir was shifting from foot to foot, gazing about his homestead with an expression that could only be described as unbridled love. Unbidden, a thought occurred to her. What would it be like to be favored with such devotion from a man? Nay, not any man. What would it be like to be so loved by Tykir? Alarmed, Alinor reined in her untenable mind-spinnings and turned her attention back to Tykir.

Without thinking, he stuck his tongue out and was letting snowflakes melt on his tongue.

“You are such a child,” she said, but her heart turned over at the innocent gesture. “I can just picture you as a mischievous boy, throwing snowballs with your friends. Chasing the girls with icicles in a game of catch-me-if-you-can.”

He cocked his head in surprise. “I had no friends as a child. We moved about too much, and had no real home, as such. Except later for a short while, mayhap, when I lived with my grandparents at Ravenshire. Nay, there was just me and my brother Eirik, and he was older, and much too somber in his ways for such trivial pursuits as snow-play.”

He seemed to make a conscious effort to pull himself out of his wistful musings then, and added with a deliberate twinkle in his eye, “But, yea, I recall now that I did give more than one girling hot pursuit with many a cold icicle. ’Til one day the goatherder’s daughter, Elfrida, upset with my harmless taunting, stuffed a handful of snow down the front of my braies. God’s bones! ’Twas an experience I would not want to repeat.”

She smiled at that image. “And did it teach you a lesson?”

He shrugged. “For a short while. But I got back at Elfrida, to be sure. I flipped up the back hem of her robe during a Michaelmas feast. Turns out she wore no undergarments. And everyone got to see her bare backside…as wide as a fat bishop’s, I might add.” He grinned at her, unabashedly.

“For shame!” she scolded, but only halfheartedly.

“Well, Wallace the Privy Builder proposed marriage to her the following sennight,” he informed her with a continuing grin. “Must be he had a taste for overlarge backsides. Perchance it had something to do with his trade.”