Bracelet of Bones by Kevin Crossley-Holland

turned back toward the boat.
    “She’s walking between worlds,” observed Solveig.
    “Lurching,” said Vigot.
    “There’s an old woman in our fjord like that,” Solveig told them, wrinkling up her face, “and we never know how much to believe.”
    “In any case,” said Bruni, “Red Ottar’s not going to be put off by a ghost. Not likely!”
    For a while the three of them watched Odindisa, and then they continued into Earth Town.
    “You see that building over there,” Bruni told them, “the big one with the conical roof . . .”
    “It looks like a squatting troll,” Solveig said. “Some trolls wear hats like that.”
    “Earl Rognvald’s house,” Bruni said. “He rules this town. Red Ottar told you.”
    Solveig smiled and tapped her head. “He did? I fear the ale was speaking more loudly than he was.”
    “Do you know why the Rus are Christian?” Bruni asked her.
    “I didn’t know they were.”
    “You don’t know much,” said Bruni. “There was a king in Kiev who decided it was time for the Rus to choose one faith.”
    “Why?” asked Solveig.
    “Stop interrupting me,” Bruni said testily. “I wasn’t there, but the Swedes, and the Finns, and the Balts, and the Slavs, and the Bulgars, and the Khazars, and the Arabs all had different gods, I suppose, and . . . I don’t know.” Bruni waved his hands in exasperation. “So this king, Vladimir, sent his ministers to many, many countries to find out about their religions. They rode into Asia, they sailed the length of the Great Sea, and when they reported their findings, the king thought that Islam—the faith of the Arabs—was the best religion.”
    “Why?” asked Solveig.
    “But then his ministers told him that the followers of Islam never drink liquid that’s fermented or distilled.”
    “What?” said Vigot. “They don’t drink ale?”
    “No! Not ale or cider or wine or any ardent spirit.”
    “What do they drink, then?”
    Bruni shrugged. “Moldy water. Milk.”
    Both Vigot and Solveig slowly shook their heads.
    “When Vladimir heard that,” Bruni told them, “he shook his head like you two. He said that a religion forbidding ale would fall flat on its face.”
    “In Norway too,” said Solveig.
    “So then the ministers who had traveled to Miklagard . . .”
    Solveig’s ears pricked up.
    “. . . they told the king how glorious the Christian church was, the great church of Hagia Sophia, and all the ceremonies inside it. ‘On earth,’ they said, ‘there’s no splendor to compare with it, no beauty to better it.’”
    Solveig’s eyes were shining.
    “So King Vladimir decided the Rus should be Christian,” Bruni said. “But you can be sure most of them worship their old gods as well. In fact, I’ve heard there’s even a word for it. Garthar, they say, is dvoeverie —a country of two faiths.”
    From the moment she lowered her head under the lintel and stepped into the little log room, Solveig felt she had crossed into a magical world.
    It was hot and stuffy and sooty, and everywhere, on each surface, in each corner, lay treasures such as she had never seen.
    Here, a pile of glass beads, forget-me-not blue and mossy, pearly, crocus yellow . . . there, a piece of amber almost as large as a kneecap . . . there, a stack of rivets . . . two silvery birch baskets . . .
    Solveig could scarcely look closely at one object before her eyes were drawn to another. She felt quite breathless and would willingly have stayed right there for the remainder of her life.
    There was a stirring in the inner room. Then the tatty piece of curtain dividing it from the workshop was swept aside, and out jumped—out bubbled, almost—a slight littleman with a head too big for his body. He had such a warm and open smile, and the whites of his eyes were almost as pink as pink roses.
    “Oleg!” exclaimed Bruni.
    “Bruni!” exclaimed Oleg.
    The two men embraced, and, with their hands still on each other’s shoulders,