Sky in the Deep

by Adrienne Young

  “They know the way back.” He stepped out onto the ice.

  It groaned beneath his feet, making my heart twist up on itself. I gulped down a chest full of air, lifting my eyes to the other side, invisible in the dark. I started behind him, walking at an angle like my father had taught me to keep too much weight off of the ice. The powdery snow slid under my boots as we got farther on the surface, and then dissipated, leaving the ice smooth and polished.

  The sound of the wind blowing whistled around us and I gasped when I finally looked down, stopping mid-stride. I turned in a circle, my eyes going wide. The night sky was reflecting on the ice in crisp shapes and colors, bright strings of stars swirling out around each other and a huge, round, speckled moon staring up at me.

  It hung above its reflection, like the sky was folded in on itself. We were standing on it. Like the world was upside down.

  I touched my lips with my fingertips, my eyes flitting over the surface. Fiske stopped, one thumb hooked into the strap across his chest, watching me. The light bouncing off the ice lit up the side of his face.

  He looked up at the moon. “It only does this for a week or two. The ice starts to cloud as it thins.”

  I squatted down and pressed my hand to it, watching it fog around my fingers. When I lifted them, the hazy outline was still there, frozen onto the surface. “When we were little, I almost drowned in the fjord. I fell through the ice.” I looked at myself in the reflection. “Iri and I were trying to see how far out we could make it and when I heard the crack, I looked up and saw his face just before it gave way beneath me.”

  He took a step toward me.

  “It was so dark. I could hardly see. And then his hands had me, yanking me up and throwing me back onto the ice.” I remembered the way it looked. The water was a darker blue than I’d ever seen. “I don’t know how he didn’t fall in. I was so angry with him for coming to the edge like that.” My words trailed off.

  Once, he’d loved me enough to jump into the frozen water for me. But then he left.

  “We do things we have to do.” Fiske broke the thin silence between us. “If he hadn’t jumped in, you would have died.” He paused. “If I hadn’t taken you that night in Aurvanger, that Riki would have killed you.”

  I stood to face him. “I know.”

  “If I hadn’t put the arrow into your shoulder, someone else would have put one in your heart. If I hadn’t taken you as a dýr, you’d be in one of those other burned villages on the mountain.”

  “I know,” I said again.

  “I would do it again,” he said. “All of it.”

  But still, those things singed. Another moment and Fiske’s sword would have been the end of me. And that night, I would have killed him without thinking twice. Now, the thought made me feel like I was trapped under the ice beneath us, sinking into the dark.

  I looked at him. “Why did you come with me?”

  He let go of the strap on his chest and shifted on his feet.

  “Why are you here?”

  And when his eyes finally met mine, they were open. They let me in.

  I took a step back.

  My mouth opened to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. They were stuck in the back of my throat, wrapped tightly around my windpipe. I was suddenly aware of the icy, opaque depths beneath us again, waiting for the smallest crack to pull us down into it. Waiting to feed on us. My heart pulsed in my veins as the fear pressed down on me, making me feel heavier. It was terrifying—that feeling—like there was something tying me to him. Because if one of us fell into the darkness, the other would too.

  I stepped around him, walking faster toward the other side. Toward solid ground and safety. The lake grumbled beneath my weight. Growling. Hungry. I closed my eyes, trying not to see it. That depth within me, sealed down under the surface. I kept my eyes ahead, leaving Fiske standing in between the middle of the two night skies, the stars and the moon encircling him. The only hot, living thing on the ice. The only thing I could feel.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  We didn’t stop. Because I couldn’t.

  We walked through the forest in the dead of night as the sky darkened and lightened with the clouds passing overhead. The moon disappeared beyond the valley as the sun pulled up over the mountain behind us.

  I stayed ahead of Fiske, each step coming a little quicker as I felt the fjord getting nearer. The trees thinned as we reached the valley, spreading out from one another as the ground pushed up from under the snow. The shadow of treetops gave way to a sun-drenched sea of new green grass so bright I had to blink at the sight. It was the first push against winter that would make its way up the mountain in the coming weeks.

  We kept to the forest, out of the exposure of the valley. I could smell the sea. The cool, salty taste of it ran over my tongue and it begged me to forget where I was and what I was doing. To forget about the night I saw Iri and the pain in my shoulder and the raid. To forget the Herja. I walked the trail I’d walked my whole life, through the valley and toward the fjord, and it felt like none of it had ever happened.

  But memory crept in again, slithering up the back of my mind as the land lifted up in front of us and led to the bluff that overlooked my village. The grass faded into rock that warmed in the sun and when my feet touched it, they stopped. They held me there as the slice of blue sea came into view. It sat beneath a gray winter sky, calm and clear, and Fiske’s footsteps stopped beside me, waiting.

  I looked at my boots, taking a breath, and then I walked straight for the drop-off. I picked up my pace as I came up over the ridge, the view peeling down until I could see the beach. An alarm sounded in my mind. It was too quiet.

  Another step and the village came into view. My home. And the wind was snatched from my lungs.

  Below, Hylli was nothing but ash. Destruction and slaughter.

  My eyes searched the broken rooftops as I ran, my feet sliding over the loose rock down the ridge. The village looked empty, and in the distance, a black halo stained the earth where the ritual house once was.

  My hands flew out to steady me before I clapped them over my nose against the stench of rot. I came down the end of the trail with my feet stumbling over each other and took off, jumping over the bodies decaying in the afternoon sun.

  “Aghi!” I screamed, but I could hardly hear my own voice over the thunder between my ears.

  I pushed harder, flying past the burned-out, crumbling structures. When I came upon our home, I doubled over, my hands on my knees. It was barely standing, the walls jutting up from the ground in sections. My chest pushed and pulled beneath my armor vest, my eyes burning.

  In the doorway, a clay bowl lay broken over the threshold.

  I stepped inside as Fiske came down the path and looked around with my breath still held hostage inside of me. More broken dishes littered the floor around the fire pit and my cot was lying on its side with the blanket half burned and wet from water dripping from the hole in the roof. Flies buzzed over an iron pot spilled over with spoiled food.

  “Eelyn.” Fiske’s voice sounded behind me.

  But I ignored him, picking up the table and setting it upright and then gathering the pottery pieces from the ground. I stacked them neatly into my hand, my mind racing.

  “Eelyn,” he said again, louder. “The tools and weapons are gone and the bodies outside are Herja. The Aska have left.”

  I set the shards carefully into the pot, waving the flies away, and picked up the cot. I pulled the blanket into my arms. My mother wove it when she wasn’t much older than me. Now it was an unraveling mess, the red and orange designs coming undone.

  “If it was bad enough that they left, he’s dead,” I choked. The strangled sound pierced my throat again and I pushed my face into the wet blanket, sobbing. “They’re dead,” I cried. “They’re all dead.”

  The warmth of him wrapped around me and I collapsed into it, letting his arms hold my weight. I reeled, my fists pressing into my chest, and I felt it being to
rn from me. The small, fragile hope I’d carried down the mountain. The faith that the Aska were strong enough.

  But they were gone.

  Fiske’s arms pulled tighter around me and my legs gave, imagining my father’s body. Burning on the altar. His beard catching flame. His flesh blackened. And if he was dead, then we all were. Because he was the strongest of us, and without him, my world lost what held it together.

  Fiske’s voice was soft in my ear. “The Aska bodies were burned. The house is cleaned out. There were survivors, Eelyn.”

  I couldn’t let myself believe it. I couldn’t hold the possibility in my mind. There was no room for it in the heartbreak that was consuming every part of my body. The grief of losing my home. My people.

  “Think. Where would they have gone?” He let go of me, holding me back to look up at him. His hands pushed the hair from my face. “Where is a safe place? Another Aska village?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to think. I knew where they would go, but I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone who wasn’t Aska. It was a secret. And I’d never even been there. I looked up into his eyes and they stared back at me, searching. Willing me to seize control of my frantic, desperate mind. They were like torches lit in the dark.

  “Virki.” I wiped my face with my sleeves. “They would go to Virki.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Fiske built a fire in the pit as I picked up the pieces of my home and put them back together. If we ever lived here again, it would have to be rebuilt. Most everything was ruined. But I needed to put things back in their places, even if I never saw this place again.

  When I was finished, I took the fur up from my father’s cot into my hands, smelling it. Spice and dirt and sea. The sting behind my eyes made me blink and I pressed my lips together, trying to keep the tears at bay.

  I sat down on the stone in front of the fire. Fiske came to sit beside me, handing me the last of our bread, and I took it, turning it over in my hands. He leaned closer to the flames, stretching his fingers out against the heat and then curling them into his palms. He always changed in the firelight. The look of his face was harsh. Like the way I remembered him when I first saw him in Aurvanger. But that seemed so long ago. Now, the look that had once made the fight rise up in me broke me down. Peeled me back.

  “What do you think would have happened if you’d killed me that night?” I picked at the crust of the bread in my hands.

  He chewed, his eyes moving from the fire to me. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Iri would have ever known. Maybe I would never have known who you were.”

  “What if he knew? What if he didn’t get there in time?”

  “I don’t think he would have ever been able to forgive me.” The depth of his voice made him sound afraid.

  “He’s like you.” I shifted on the stone to face him, suddenly desperate to hear the things he wasn’t saying.

  His eyes changed again, falling down to the small space of stone between us. “What do you mean?”

  “Family is everything to you.”

  He took another bite.

  “How many people have you killed?” I asked.

  He turned to face me and I almost wanted to scoot back again. “I don’t know.” He pulled the axe sheath over his head and set it onto the table behind us. “How many people have you killed?”

  I tried to think about it even though I knew the answer. I had no idea. I shook my head in answer. “Who was the first?”

  The air between us changed—the space growing small.

  “A man in my first fighting season.” He scratched his chin. “I was fighting with my father and he knocked him down. He held him up and told me to cut his throat. So I did.” He looked back at me from the top of his gaze.

  “How old were you?” My voice quieted in the dark.

  “Twelve. You?”

  “Eleven.”

  He didn’t ask who it was or how it happened and I was grateful. It was the only time I remember killing someone and feeling something other than survival. I’d been scared. And I’d been deeply ashamed of my fear.

  I’d fallen asleep in our tent that night with hot tears falling down my face and my father didn’t say anything. He prayed with me for my mother’s soul and then he sat beside my cot until I fell asleep. The next day, I killed four. The day after that, three. And I didn’t cry about it ever again. But I could feel them now—those same tears that had fallen down my face as a young girl. They were fresh and raw, seeping from the same place within me. Hot against cold.

  “What is it?” Fiske looked at me.

  One tear rolled down my cheek and I let it. “It’s a strange feeling,” I whispered.

  “What is?”

  “Being so alone. I’ve never felt like this.” I looked around the dark home. “Even in Fela, I still had the Aska.” I sniffed. “I was going through each day to get back to them. But they’re just … gone. I feel like…” I caught the sob in my chest and swallowed it, suddenly embarrassed.

  He leaned in closer to me. “Like what?”

  My eyes ran over his face. The scruff on his jaw. The dark lashes around his blue eyes. “Like I’m a flame about to burn out.” My voice was so thin it sounded like I could reach out and break it with my fingers. “Like I’m going to disappear.”

  The room quieted, the space between us sucking everything into it. His eyes dropped down to my mouth and the burning in my chest ran into the rest of my body. It found every dark, hidden place and lit it on fire.

  I tried to breathe, but it wouldn’t come. I was underwater, trapped beneath that frozen lake. And as soon as he moved, it broke loose and the sound of my breath rang in my ears so loud that every thought ran like a retreating army. The heat of him hit me just before his lips touched mine and I froze, trying to feel it. That stinging, throbbing pulse beneath my skin.

  I lifted my hands slowly, opening my eyes to look at him. My fingertips touched the lines on the sides of his face and he pulled his mouth from mine, looking back at me like he wasn’t sure I was still there.

  His breath touched me.

  Somewhere I didn’t know I could feel.

  Somewhere I didn’t know existed.

  “Fiske.” I said his name in a voice that wasn’t mine and it hung between us in the silence.

  He pressed his lips together. “What?”

  I stood at the threshold of the thought. The thought of Fiske that had been buried alive in the back of my mind. I looked over the edge of it, peering down into the darkness. It called to me. It screamed my name.

  And I jumped.

  I found his mouth with mine again, the breaths coming like the waves in a storm now—crashing into me and pulling me under. I grabbed hold of his armor vest and his hands pressed into me, pulling me forward. I slid across the stone, trying to get closer to him.

  The writhing, bleeding hole inside of me closed up.

  I let him erase it. I let him make it go away.

  His lips moved down to the hollow at my neck and when he stopped, breathing there, his chest rising and falling against me, the silence came back. And it was just long enough for it to erupt again. That pain.

  I fell into him, the weight so heavy that I couldn’t draw another breath. His arms slid around me and I pushed my face into his shoulder. I wept. A dark, sacred cry rising up out of me. He held me together, keeping the pieces from falling down around us. And I cried until I couldn’t feel. I cried until I couldn’t think.

  The moon rose up over my broken home and I broke with it.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I woke up in my father’s cot with the blanket tucked in around me as the seabirds called out over the water and the smell of the dead found me again. It brought me rushing back. Back to Hylli.

  I sat up, swinging my legs to the ground, and my head pounded inside my skull. I rubbed my swollen face, looking around the small house. It was empty.

  The sun was already halfway up the sky, sending the light casting down through the house in beams hazed with
ash and dust. I pulled my sheath and belt on and walked down the path to the dock with my arms wrapped tightly around me.

  The dirt turned to gravel and when I reached the water, the familiar crunch of my boots over the round black stones broke the silence of the village. I pulled the clean sea air coming off the water into my lungs and crouched down, scooping it up and splashing it over my face. My fingers raked back into my hair and I looked out to the horizon.

  The green of the water hugging the shore melted into blue as it deepened. I closed my eyes and opened them again. It was just the same. The same sea. The same beach. But then I looked back to the village. And the truth resurfaced in my mind. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  A splash sounded over the whisper of the wind and I looked up to see Fiske. He stood on the dock at the other end of the beach, pulling a net full of fish up out of the water. He had his knife between his teeth, his arms hinging against its weight, leaning back until it slid onto the dock. The fish were like crystals, glittering as they flicked back and forth in the sunlight.

  When he looked up to me, I blushed, still feeling the warmth of him on my lips. Remembering him touching me. Remembering feeling like I was so small that I could vanish into him. It was an arrow in my chest.

  I walked along the water’s edge until I reached the dock and watched him pull four fish from the net and let the rest spill back into the water. He walked to meet me halfway, stopping in front of me with the knife clutched in one hand and a pail in the other.

  The hair blew around my face and I caught it with my hand, holding it over my shoulder. “I’m sorry.” I squinted against the sunlight.

  His eyes searched mine. “For what?”

  I looked down at the water, trying to find the words. “For last night.”

  He smiled and the heat came back up into my face.

  “I—”

  “How long will it take to get to Virki?” he interrupted, saving me the embarrassment of finishing.

  “We can be there tomorrow morning if we leave now.”