Ragna Stonehand

Ragna's life is bound to the mine community and to Bair's ordinary, irreplaceable personhood.

In The Highlander

Ragna Stonehand is Bair Stonehand's wife and the mother of their young daughter. She kept watch while Bair struggled after his rescue from the Ink Hollow, placing their daughter's wooden horse in his hand, and over Mauda's salt bowl admitted she was angry that he lived, angry that he nearly died and angry that she might have to thank people she disliked. When the possessed Bair seized her wrist, she punched him and held on.

When Branok and Torin came to end it, she told them that killing Bair while he was still himself would cost more than Bair, struck Torin across the face, and ordered everyone out after the death. She washed her husband's body herself and charged Eira to keep him from becoming only a lesson. At her threshold she made Torin apologise plainly and told him not to carry Bair as one more weight proving his strength. At Dagna's duel she watched from the smokehouse steps, answered Branok's claim that the duel was lawful with "So was Bair's death, I suppose", denied aloud that Torin's washed blade was clean, and carried the third stone of Dagna's cairn.

Family

After the books

A grieving witness who refuses language that makes Bair's death clean or useful. Her correction of the language around Bair's death becomes part of the community's moral record.