There was a woman named Not, daughter of Thord, who was neither large of stature nor swift of foot, but possessed a mind as sharp as cold iron. With her fared a sea-bird’s chick—a puffling, round and covered in soft down, which Not carried in the breast of her woolen kirtle and called Snorri.
They had been driven far west into the Hafgerðingar, the great ocean-swells where no land is seen, after a gale snapped their steering-oar. Their vessel was a longboat of twenty oars, ridden by serious women of the VÃk who spoke little and worked much. At the forward bench sat Astrid the Deep-Minded, whose gaze could split timber, and behind her pulled nineteen oarswomen of the Fjord-Settle, their arms corded like hawser-rope and their faces salt-crusted.
Food was scarce, and water scarcer. On the fifth morning, the sun rose like a red shield over the gray waters. Astrid stood at the prow, her hand shading her brow.
"We row into the maw of Rán," said Astrid. "The wind is dead, and the stars offer no council by day."
Not stepped from the stern-board, her mantle tucked tight. From her kirtle poked the black head of the puffling, her beak bright as rowan-berries.
"The bird knows the way," Not said. "Snorri was taken from a burrow on the cliffs of Vestmanna. Her belly is light, and her heart craves the high turf."
The oarswomen paused, their blades dripping quiet silver into the trough. Helga, who sat at the waist, spat over the gunwale. "We are guided by a ball of fluff and a woman named after nothing?"
"Names do not row boats, Helga, but eyes see what ocean-gods hide," Not replied.
She lifted the puffling into the palm of her hand and held her above the gunwale. The bird stretched her tiny, downy wings, turned her head thrice against the salt breeze, and leaned resolutely toward the south-southeast, chirping a thin, dry note.
"There lies the herring-run," said Not. "Where the herring swim, the fowlers gather."
Astrid looked from the bird to the flat horizon, then turned to her crew. "Put your shoulders to the ash. We follow the chick."
For two days the women pulled without song, their breath rising together like the steam from hot springs. Not sat at the helm-possession, binding a spare spar to the tiller-head with wet rawhide. When the bird preened toward the port side, Not shifted the beam; when she slept against Not's ribs, the course was held true.
On the third evening, as the light turned violet, Snorri fluttered from Not’s lap to the gunwale, piping loudly. A thick mist rolled over the swell, smelling no longer of deep brine, but of wet basalt and rotting kelp.
Through the fog came the heavy, drum-like thud of surf breaking against stone. Astrid stood, her iron spear clinking against the ribs of the boat. The mist parted, revealing the black teeth of the southern firths and the smoke of turf-fires rising into the dusk.
The women pulled the boat high onto the shingle, their iron-shod boots crunching in the gravel. They had returned to the lands of men, brought through the trackless waste by a woman of quiet words and a bird no larger than a fist.