The hollow pump of the bear’s breaths echoed, sending white puffs fogging the air around his snout. He came down onto his front feet and took a step toward us, his nose in the air. Fiske’s whole body went rigid, his eyes lighting up with something I knew well. It was the same thing pulsing through every inch of my body—death coming close. Whispering in my ear. I’d known that feeling since I was a child, watching the Herja slither out of the forest toward Hylli.
Fiske’s hand wrapped around my arm and pulled at me slowly as the bear moved closer. “Don’t run.” He said it so softly I barely heard him over the sound of my heartbeat in my ears.
There was nowhere to run anyway. The ice-crusted river ran behind us and the bear stood before us, coming closer. Fiske moved me behind him and my heels sank into the water as he shifted in front of me. I leaned to the side to look around him and held my breath. The bear was so close to us that Fiske could reach out and touch him. The sunlight turned his brown fur golden at the tips and it fanned out around his heart-shaped face, his shining nose wet at the end of his snout. He leaned in, sniffing Fiske’s chest, and I tightened my grip on his armor vest, my fingertips numb against the woven leather. I peered over his shoulder and my heart stopped altogether.
Because the bear’s eyes were set on me. Wide and deep and open. Looking right at me.
He stepped closer, nosing around Fiske. I gulped down a breath as the bear stilled, his huge paws sunken into the snow and Fiske’s back pressed into me. I set my mouth against the back of his shoulder and stared back at the creature. It was as if he was going to speak. As if he had something to tell me. His black eyes glistened, boring into mine, and the chill of it ran down my spine, tingling in my fingertips.
Without warning, he dipped his head down, took a fish into his mouth and turned. He didn’t look back as he walked, the colors of his thick hide shifting in the light.
Fiske relaxed against me but I still held onto him, feeling like I might fall over. Like the tremors in my legs would send me through the ice. We waited for the bear to get out of sight before we moved. Before we breathed. When Fiske finally let go of my arm, he turned, looking down at me. He stilled, his lips parting as he took a step back, a question in his eyes.
The fish flicked their tails on the ground between us and when I looked back down the bank, the forest was empty. Nothing but tracks were left, winding a trail through the trees.
NINETEEN
In my mind, I traced the path through the forest to the river.
I sat in the corner and ate, looking at the wall.
I kept to myself.
I went about the chores without instruction from Inge.
I obeyed. Like a dýr.
Iri stayed close to me, rarely leaving the house, and I continued to ignore him. When he and Inge spoke about the betrothal, I went to feed the goats. When he offered to help me carry in the firewood, I pushed past him, carrying it on my own.
I dropped to my knees in the garden on the side of the house, working the soil with a small spade and tearing out the dead roots of autumn still trapped beneath the earth. The cold, rocky ground broke beneath my blows and I raked out the garden’s remnants, one plant at a time. Soon, it would be time to sow again. My father would be doing the same, turning manure into our garden and getting it ready for turnips and carrots. I sat up onto my heels, rubbing the place between my eyes with my thumb and looking up to the smear of white clouds stretching across the blue. It seemed impossible that it was the same sky that hung over the fjord. Home felt an entire world away. But it was only snow and ice between me and Hylli.
Across the path, Gyda was hanging clothes over the fence that bordered their garden. On the other side of the house Kerling sat on a tree stump, one hand on his knee, above the missing leg. His pale face turned up toward the sky and the light caught the blond in his beard, making the hairs shine like threads of gold. He’d been sitting there all morning, staring out at the trees. It wasn’t until that moment, seeing him with his eyes closed and the sun on his face, that I remembered him from the journey back up the mountain from Aurvanger. He was one of the men lying in the back of the cart.
Iri’s shadow fell over the broken ground as he came to stand over me.
“Is he your friend?” I asked, still looking at Kerling.
Iri followed my gaze across the path. “He is.” When I didn’t look up, he lowered down onto his haunches and waited, folding his hands together. “Eelyn.”
I brought the spade down with both hands and its edge cracked against a buried rock.
“Look at me.”
When the rock was pried free, I tossed it to the side, almost hitting him.
“I know you’re angry.”
But I wasn’t angry. I was aflame with fury. I was filled with something so dark it was poisoning me from the inside out. I lifted the spade again, pointing it at him. “How could you do it? How could you be here all this time living a new life with a new family?”
He looked down at the ground between us. “I can’t explain—”
“I know about Fiske,” I snapped. “I know he was there that day. That he went over the edge with you.”
He looked around us warily. If there was anyone nearby, they would have heard me. But I didn’t care.
“Tell me what happened.” The tears came back up and it made me even angrier. Because as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t hurt. I couldn’t hide that I was cut deep with what he’d done.
He sank onto his knees beside me, taking the spade, and started digging. “That day, I got separated from you in the fight. Fiske came out of the trees behind me and opened up my side with the first swing of his sword. You were fighting in the distance. I could barely see you in the fog.”
I stared at the ground, remembering the shine of his blood and the smooth pearly skin where the scar stretched around one entire side of his body.
“I dropped my axe and stumbled forward, trying to hold the wound together. Before I knew it, I was going over the edge. I reached out and caught Fiske’s armor vest and pulled him over with me. I remember hearing you scream. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t make a sound.” He pried another rock from the earth. “When I woke, Fiske was trying to climb the wall with one arm and one leg. He used his knife, fitting it into the cracks of the rock to lift himself, and every time, he fell. He thought I was dead. So did I. I could feel my soul dying. I remember it. I remember every thought that came into my head and every feeling. When night came and I finally closed my eyes, I thought it was the end.” He stopped, staring into the dirt. “But it wasn’t. I woke again and it was morning. I thought I was dreaming. Or maybe that I’d made it to Sólbjǫrg. But Fiske was kneeling beside me, packing snow against my wound.” He sniffed, wiping his eyes with the back of his arm. “He looked down at me. His face was pale, his eyes red and swollen. He said, ‘We’re not going to die, Aska.’”
I stared at him.
“For two days, he kept me alive. His father found us, and when he called down from the ridge, he swore to me that he wouldn’t leave me behind. And he didn’t. When they pulled us out of that trench, we were brothers. Sigr abandoned me that day, Eelyn. Thora saved my life. I was reborn. I came here to Fela and I didn’t know it for a long time, but I was becoming one of them. Inge became my mother. I fell in love with Runa. Thora honored me. She gave me favor.”
And though I couldn’t imagine it, maybe I did know what he was saying because I could see it. He’d found a place here and he fit.
“You still have Aska blood in your veins. You still belong to my family.”
“I will always be your brother. I was born Aska. But I’m something else now.”
“You’re either Riki or Aska, Iri. You can’t be both. You told Runa who I am.”
He didn’t meet my eyes. “Yes.”
“How long until she tells someone and they come to kill us both?”
“She would never do that.”
“Well, I’m not going to
stay long enough to find out. I’m going home. With or without you. I’m not going to wait for the thaw.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “Then you’ll die.”
“Vegr yfir fjor, Iri. Honor above life.” My voice turned weak. “Didn’t you think about me?”
“I’ve thought of you every day.” He watched as I wiped the tears from my face. “Fiske’s father gave me a choice to be traded back to the Aska, Eelyn.”
“What?” I could feel the words prying my mind open.
“I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave this place.” He reached to take my hand. “The path of my soul has taken a turn, just as yours has.”
“This is not the same.” I glowered at him. “I want to go home.”
“I know. But you will never be the same. You will never be the same person you were.” He paused. “You are seeing the truth. I see you thinking it, every day.”
“What truth?”
“That they’re like us.”
I put my face into my hands, trying to escape what he was saying. Because it made me feel like the world was turned sideways. Like everything I’d ever been taught didn’t fit into the shape of this world.
“What are you thinking now?”
The weight of it fell from my head, down into the rest of my body. The words were small but they were true. “I’m thinking that I wish you’d died that day.”
TWENTY
Fiske didn’t return until dark. He came through the door with Iri, carrying a basket full of cleaned fish and keeping his eyes off of me. He hadn’t looked in my direction since we went to the river and for some reason, he hadn’t told the others what happened.
Iri, too, had turned cold. I could see the anger wound tight around him. But I meant what I’d said. More than I wished I did.
Inge took the basket from Fiske and nodded toward me. “I need you to take the stitches out of Eelyn’s arm.” She filled another basket with the jars of garlic we’d made. “We have to get these to the cellar and then we’re going to Runa’s.”
Fiske’s tight gaze was fixed on Inge.
“You’ve done it a hundred times. We start on the barn at dawn.” She brushed past him and Iri and Halvard followed her outside.
I stood against the wall, looking at Fiske as the door swung shut. He pulled his scabbard up over his head and laid it down beside the fire. I didn’t like being alone with him. I wished Halvard had stayed.
“Kerling’s barn?” I asked.
He nodded. “He set the posts for the frame before we left for the fighting season. They’ll need it finished so they can buy goats before the baby comes.” He sounded tired, the words riding on a deep breath. “If you sit, I’ll take them out.”
He walked to a wooden box on the shelf and lifted the lid, fishing out a small metal tool, and I sat down close enough to the fire to keep warm. Every day was colder than the last and my clothes weren’t made like the Rikis’.
He sat down in front of me, straddling the bench and scooting closer. I pulled my arm from the sleeve and into my tunic, but when I tried to lift it up out of the neck, I couldn’t. The muscles around the bone were still too weak and it was too painful to lift that high. He caught my fingers and I flinched, leaning away from him. He let me pull against his hand until the arm was free and I let go, the sting of him still hot against my skin.
I turned to the side so he could reach the stitches. I wanted to remind him it was his sword that had cut into me in the first place, but I stared into the fire instead. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to feel him touch me. He picked up the tool and pressed his fingers against my skin before he slid it under the first stitch and carefully pulled against it until it broke.
“It was you. That day,” I said. “It was you in the trench with Iri. Inge told me.”
He broke the next stitch and I winced. “Yes.”
“Where is your father now?”
His hand dropped down to his leg and he looked at me. “He’s in Friðr.”
I knew the word and what it meant. Peace. It was where the Riki went when they died.
“He died last year of fever.” And though his voice didn’t change, something in the set of his mouth did. Something behind the eyes.
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why did you save Iri’s life?”
He sat up straighter, letting the silence between us stretch out and pull like the thoughts in my mind, trying to find a place to land. “Because we were dying. Because it was the end. And at the end, life becomes precious.”
He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes running over my face, and I could feel it—his gaze dragging over my skin. Like he could see Iri there. Or something else. The red stung beneath my cheeks.
He pulled the last stitch free. “Iri…” But then he stopped.
I pulled my braid down around the front of my shoulder. “What?”
“Iri never planned to stay here,” he finished. “Not in the beginning.”
“I know.” I twisted the ends of my hair around my fingers. “But he did.”
He helped me work my arm back into my tunic. I shivered, suddenly cold.
“I don’t belong to you,” I told him.
“No, you don’t.” He looked at the floor. “But you aren’t going to make it through the winter without me.”
“I told you. I’m not staying.” I met his eyes again and this time, I didn’t look away. I waited to see something I hated. Some trace of the man I’d tried to kill in Aurvanger. But I couldn’t see past the soul who had saved Iri’s life. The soul who had packed snow against his wound and wouldn’t leave him behind.
“We should uncover that.” He looked at the bandage over the burn on my neck.
I reached up, touching it.
He pulled it back slowly and the cold air on the skin tingled.
“Does it hurt?” He leaned closer.
My stomach dropped, pulling my heart down with it, and the pulse in my veins beat unevenly. He was too close to me.
I stood, the bench scraping on the stone beneath us. He looked up at me, and I tried to find something to say. But there was too much. It was all buried too deep. I couldn’t reach it.
“Everything hurts,” I whispered.
I climbed the ladder and went to my cot, tears filling my eyes until I could barely see. I wanted to go home. I wanted to hear my father’s voice and see the fjord. I wanted to erase the scars lifting on my skin below the collar and go back to that moment I saw Fiske on the battlefield. I wanted to tell myself to run.
I sat down on the cot, curling up on my side and tried to stay quiet as I wept. But the thing writhing inside me was too angry to be calmed. It was too hurt to be hushed. It was a living, breathing thing and it was trying to swallow me whole. And maybe it would. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore and only the sound of the fire remained.
Below, Fiske’s shadow reached up the wall from where he sat by the fire in the empty house. Listening to me cry myself to sleep.
TWENTY-ONE
Dawn fell on the village as Fiske was returning from the river. Halvard pulled a chest of tools from the wall and opened it, laying them out next to each other on a stretch of hide. Once Fiske had checked them, Halvard rolled them up over his shoulder, walking lopsided against its weight. He swung the door open and I could see the Riki were already gathering across the path, greeting each other in the morning cold.
Inge handed me the basket full of fish, still chilled from the river’s water. “They’re cleaned. When the sun is overhead, you can cook them and bring them over.”
I bristled, my eyes drifting back to Kerling’s house where the number of clansmen was multiplying.
Inge, Fiske, and Iri followed Halvard out the door. The Riki were already getting to work, their furs pulled tight around them. Children ran down the path, chasing the chickens, and I leaned into the wall, watching them through the window. The men hauled giant logs in from the forest and the women settled onto the ground planing them. They bent
low over the fallen trees, scraping at the raw wood in long, even strokes.
I cleaned out the iron pot on the fire and shoveled the ashes from the pit, listening to them. When the deep-throated laughs of a few men echoed out into the village, my hands stilled on the hard edge of the table and my heart twisted. It was all too familiar. Too much like home.
I went around the back of the house where I couldn’t be seen and washed the clothes Inge had piled in a basket. My hands turned pink in the cold water, my knuckles stiff as I raked them over the washboard. I’d be doing the same thing if I was home. Fishing with my father or doing chores with Mýra. I wondered what she was doing now. I wondered if she was training with a new fighting mate.
Winter was my favorite time of year on the fjord, when everything was dusted in a sparkling crust of ice. Each blade of grass glistened in the sunlight. It was what I’d always imagined Sólbjǫrg to be like. I’d pictured my mother there, sitting on a hillside with her skirt spread out around her, almost every night.
I hung the clothes on the railing of the fence, smoothing out the fabric as it flapped in the wind. When I came around the house again, the Riki already had planks going up along one of the walls of the barn. The structure extended off of the house, just big enough for ten or fifteen goats. If they were diligent, Kerling and Gyda could get by trading on what they grew in their garden patch and what the goats produced. It was clear Kerling wasn’t a blacksmith or a healer. He had been raised a warrior. Gyda too. Maybe she would join the next fighting season in his place. Maybe I’d see her there.
I took the basket of fish from the table and started on the fire. They were perfectly cleaned, their skins smooth where the scales were removed. I stuffed the cavities with herbs and salt and set them onto the hot coals to let them cook.
The rich, savory smell filled the house and I could feel the twinge in my chest again. This, too, was like home. I looked out the window, to where they were lifting more boards, stacking them on top of the lower ones to lift the walls. In Hylli, we’d often work on the boats of the Aska who were too old. We’d care for their animals and my father had me check their fish traps on the dock when I checked ours. The Riki, too, took care of their own.
Sky in the Deep Page 10