Anna Ericsdóttir was a wise woman for her young age of 23. Living in northern Iceland, she was a shaman for her tribe. She spoke to the gods and performed vital rituals pertaining to traditions. Due to this sacred task, there were sacred rules surrounding a shaman. Rule one was that they were never to have children. Two has that they were never allowed to cut their hair. Three, they cannot kill a living creature, as life is sacred to them.
It was the dead of winter when Anna met him. On a night so black that if you stepped outside, you wouldn't be able to see your hand if you held it up in front of you. The air was colder than it had been all winter. Anna was in her warm hut when she heard the call. It was like a wounded animal and a howl, or a shout for help. She immediately grabbed her medicine bag and a makeshift lantern and ran out into the snow and wind. When a call for help is made, she must go.
She followed the noise and came upon a cave not too far away. She heard the cry again and went inside. Upon entering her lantern blew out. Alone in the dark, for once, Anna was scared. Sure she had been in the dark on a cold night before, but something about this was scary. She stood shivering in the dark, when suddenly she felt cold fingers on the back of her neck. She screamed but it was cut off by a hand covering her mouth.
"Hey, beautiful." The voice said. There was a long pause before the body belonging to the voice had it's way with Anna. She struggled and try to call for help, but she lost in the end. And when it was over, she was left on the ground, lying with her clothes in tatters and a child now in her womb. What Anna didn't know was that the voice belonged to a god. Boreas to be exact. All she knew was that she had been raped, and left out in the cold.
Morning came and when the villagers noticed that she was missing, they sent out search parties. It took them a while to find her, but eventually they did. By then her skin was cold to the touch, and she was starting to get frostbite. They quickly took her back to the village and to the tribe healer. There she spent a week recovering from her frostbite and wounds of her rape.
No one really knew what had happened, they just assumed she had been attacked. They took her back to the tribe healer right away, and there Anna spent a week healing. The healer knew right away what had happened to Anna. She was an old woman and had seen many things in her lifetime, this was one of those things. She tried to comfort Anna, as Anna knew that she had broken the sacred rule of being a shaman. The healer told her that it wasn't Anna's fault, but Anna was right. The rule had been broken, and eventually, she would have to leave the tribe.
A few months passed and eventually it started to show that Anna was pregnant. The tribe held a meeting to decide what was to be done with Anna, as she wasn't supposed to have children, or partake in any sexual activity. It was decided that once the child was born, Anna would be cast from the tribe, and forced to never come back. If she did she would be killed.
So after a total of 41 weeks, a little girl was born. Anna named her Svanna. A week later Anna was forced to pack her bags and leave. She was given enough food to survive for a few weeks in the cold if she managed to find shelter. She was also given many warm clothes. And so a new chapter in Anna's life began.
Anna traveled only a few days before she came across another tribe. They took her in without any questions. It was not in their nature to deny a woman shelter, especially when she had a newborn child with her. So Anna settled down in the new tribe. It took a year, but finally, she was accepted as a part of the tribe. It was also that year that Anna married Jon, a strong, handsome man who had lost his wife just two years before due to childbirth complications. The child was also lost. He was still grieving when Anna entered the tribe, but in Anna, Jon found a new life. Svanna was raised by both Jon and her mother.
When Svanna was six, her tribe was attacked by a rival tribe. All the men who were of age were expected to fight. Jon was one of those men. The battle went on for hours on the outskirts of the village. During that time, a few men from the other tribe snuck into the village, and started to set fire to things, rape women, and in general wreck havoc.
A few women managed to flee unnoticed, along with a few children. Anna and Svanna were in that group. They fled to the nearest tribe, which was Anna's former tribe. They heard about what had happened and agreed to take the women in until they could go back to their own tribe. They saw Anna among the group immediately.
Per laws set down by the gods of the tribe, Anna was sentenced to death. Svanna was to be put in the charge of her grandparents. Anna was led far out beyond the village and stoned her to death. Anna cried and cried, wanting to know where her mother went. They didn't tell her and just said that she was gone.
And so Anna grew up with her grandparents for the next many years. Years 5-10 Anna grew up learning a lot about her tribe, the rituals, what a woman was to do when she was married. But along with those, she learned how to be a tough spirit with the boys. She lived in the village, learning their ways and customs. Every now and again she would bring up her mother to the villagers but they would simply brush her off telling her simply that her mother had left of her own accord.
Years 11 and 12 of Svanna’s life, she learned more and more as the village nurtured her to understand life in the frozen landscape. She was growing into a strong young woman and often fought the boys in the village who tried to tell her that her mother was a harlot and had been kicked out for having her. She always refused to believe her mother had left by choice and on her twelfth birthday she found out her thoughts were true.
She asked her grandfather one more time what had happened to her mother and he told her she had left but she refused to believe it and sought out the medicine woman who had cared for her mother so many years ago. When she found the hut the woman lived in she entered and asked her what became of her mother. The old medicine woman looked at her from an aged face and sighed. She deemed her old enough to know, as a strong young woman and told her of the occurrences that led to the stoning of her mother. Svanna couldn't breathe. She openly wept as her mind tried to grasp what had happened. In a panic, she ran from the village. Her vision blurred by tears she had no idea where she was going or how far away she had made it. She collapsed onto her knees and cried tears of rage and loss.
Svanna lay on the frozen landscape for three days. Unbeknownst to her, the only thing that kept her alive was her immunity to cold weather was her demigod powers. On the third day of her leaving the village in despair, screeching woke her up and out of her daze. She looked around in confusion. It sounded like birds. They didn't see them too often because they were so far North, but it wasn't impossible. She looked up and screamed.
Above her was a large swarm of what looked to be golden birds. They screamed and screeched then dove down at her. She screamed again and scrambled up, running as fast as she could away from the swarm. They rose high into the sky again and collected together, getting ready to dive at her again. Ahead of her, Svanna saw cave entrances. She and a few boys had once explored those caves. They had gotten lost, and it took them 14 hours to get out. Svanna eventually realized that she somehow knew the way. She got them out of the caves and back to the village. They got yelled at and were forbidden to ever go near them again.
Suddenly Svanna had an idea. Maybe she could lose them in the caves. She decided to go with her instinct and ran towards them. When she got to the entrance, she looked back to see where the birds were. They were hovering about a fourth of a kilometer away. She gulped at hurried into the caves. She was determined to get through this. She was scared, but she was strong. She would survive, and that's what she told herself over and over as she hurried through the dark, icy tunnels.
She sensed where she was somehow, but she dismissed it as a memory of the last time she was in the tunnels. She heard the birds enter the tunnel, also determined to hurt her. Somewhere in her mind, she understood that they were bad, and not natural, and something to be scared of.
Svanna heard the birds clank against each other and thump against the walls of the tunnels, and they were getting closer. She saw the end of the tunnel and ran towards it. When she got there, she slid to a stop, and barely managed to keep her balance. She looked down and gulped. It was a dead end. Right into the cold, unforgiving sea. She quickly turned around and retraced her steps. The birds were heading straight towards her. In a desperate attempt to save herself, she ran at the birds, hoping to make it through and run through the tunnels again.
She felt something stir inside her as the birds attacked her. She covered her face and neck and kept running. Suddenly she felt the air temperature drop about 20 more degrees, and the birds fell to the ground. She didn't look back as she ran out of the cave.
She stumbled back to the village, following her own prints in the snow. As she entered the village she collapsed from the exhaustion of the past three days and was taken to the medicine woman she had just run from. She was treated for her exhaustion there and then taken back to her grandparents home where she slept for 2 days. When she finally awoke she was asked what had happened. She told the story of what had transpired 2 days prior and her grandma wept and her grandpa cursed.
They went to the village chief that evening and recounted the tale to him. The chief decided they had not a choice. The girl was speaking of impossible things. So they held a village meeting the next day and forced Svanna to leave. They gave her nothing as they believed it would offend their gods. So Svanna was made to leave with nothing but the clothes on her back. She roamed the frozen tundra for about two months, bouncing from village to village each time being forced to leave after a fight with a monster would be seen and her powers discovered and being labeled a demon.
As Svanna moved around the wastes one thing remained the same, she felt watched but also protected. The medicine woman from her village was a sight she saw often but it couldn’t be so she dismissed it as another monster trying to drive her insane. But after she was kicked from the last village the medicine woman came to her. She told her she knew a place where she would be welcome. She had a friend in the America’s Svanna could go to who would take her to this place. Before Svanna left, she gave her a sword, that she had made into a snowflake bracelet.
So 4 months to her 13th birthday she boarded a plane headed for the America’s. Supposedly the ticket had been bought but this friend. Upon landing in the Americas, New York City to be precise, Svanna was met by a woman with snow white hair and piercing blue eyes. The woman introduced herself as Blodwen. She asked her for her name and after introductions, she was ushered into a car that took her into the inner city of New York where she met a young girl whose name was Serona.
They spent the four months until her 13th birthday in that apartment fighting occasional monsters that would attack their home. Then finally one evening Serona declared that she was ready to go to the camp. So Svanna. Blodwen, and Serona all left the next day for the camp. Two weeks after arriving Svanna turned thirteen and was claimed by Boreas.
