Marieke looks to me. “Løren?” She wants me to say what we will do. I’m uncomfortable with making the decision for us all, but this is my new role.
“We’ll evacuate anyone who isn’t with the guard from the island,” I say. Olina nods her agreement. Malthe is silent, both with his voice and his mind. Geir has no response. He can see just as I can that neither option has a high chance of ending well.
We decide that the best option is to evacuate to Valdemar Helle. The seas between Hans Lollik Helle and Årud and Nørup Helle have been under constant attack, and it would be best to avoid the Fjern, especially when we’ll be traveling with such a low number of guards. The scouts report that the seas between us and Valdemar Helle haven’t been under the patrol of the Fjern as frequently. They’ve also reported that some islanders who survived the battles of the south escaped to Valdemar Helle and created their own camp. There are only about twenty total, five guards and the rest islanders. The kongelig hasn’t bothered to lead an attack against the island. Though it’s close to Hans Lollik Helle, there is no source for supplies or food besides the fish in the sea. The soil is too hard and rocky, and the brush too thick with thorns. There’s no natural fort that the Fjern guards could use that compares to the mangroves and cliffs of Hans Lollik Helle. Geir believes this is why the kongelig will leave Valdemar Helle alone: They would rather focus their attacks on Hans Lollik Helle than waste their time and energy and supplies on an island for which they have no use. There is also the fact that us taking their royal island is the greatest injury to the Fjern. They won’t stop until they have Hans Lollik Helle under their control once more.
There are twelve surviving islanders who aren’t guards on Hans Lollik Helle. I’m not sure if they’ll all be able to stay on Valdemar Helle, but if we can prioritize taking them to safety, then we can attempt to send messages to the northern islands as well, asking for their aid in transporting our people away from the battles. Helga holds Anke’s hand as she guides her to the bay alongside all the islanders who carry their few belongings. The wind is strong today, whipping sand that lashes across our skin and into our eyes. The air is filled with tension. Everyone has heard of the dead scouts. There have been rumors that their headless bodies were left in boats that were returned to Hans Lollik Helle on the current. The Fjern could attack us at sea and slaughter us before we make it to Valdemar Helle.
Anke pulls on my hand. She complains that she wants to stay and fight with us. It doesn’t matter that she’s a child. She wants to kill the Fjern. She wants to punish them. Anke had watched as a pale-skinned man took her mother away from the slaves’ quarters on Niklasson Helle to be sold on the docks. When Anke cried in front of her mistress, she was slapped, and when she bit the hand of the woman, she was whipped for the first time in her life, though she was only eight years old. She’s a child, but we islanders are never afforded the chance to be children. We’ve never experienced the innocence that the children of Fjern have. Anke reminds me of myself when I was young. She has the same anger that I did, for the other islanders who refused to fight back against the Fjern. I hated the fear the others around me held. They would divert their gazes whenever my father and brother tortured me. They would accept their own whippings without complaint. I didn’t realize then that some didn’t want their freedom; that others couldn’t imagine lives that were not in chains. Anke doesn’t understand this yet, but she will.
I kneel to her in the burning sand and suggest that Valdemar Helle will need guards to protect them from the Fjern as well. It’s only then that she agrees to leave with the other islanders. We take boats out to the clear shallows, sunlight leaving patterns on the seafloor. We row to the single ship that waits. We decide to use only one so that we can keep the other two ships with Hans Lollik Helle in case the Fjern strike again. Boarding the ships to abandon the royal island if attacked by the Fjern isn’t an option, but if we can see the Fjern coming, the ships will need to be used in battle on the sea.
The ship we use comfortably holds about ten. With the twelve we’re evacuating and the ten guards, plus me and Malthe, there isn’t any space to move about. One woman unused to the sea falls ill, head in between her legs. Another man, injured badly from the ambush of the Fjern, lies on his back while a friend clasps his hand, promising he’ll live through the voyage, though this isn’t a promise he should so easily make.
The journey is a little more than half a day when there are clear skies and still seas, but the wind becomes stronger, as if we’re still in the midst of the storm season. The ocean is rough. Waves swell and make the ship lean dangerously, back and forth without end. With so many of us on board, there’s a possibility that the ship could become unbalanced and capsize, sending us into the depths of the sea. Everyone senses the danger. The journey is silent. If anyone speaks, they only whisper. I hear the murmurings of a prayer. I hope that the ancestors are listening. Rain begins to fall, splashing us with its cold water. We shiver and shake in the wind that pushes us across the sea. Helga believes that she’s going to die. She always felt she was meant to drown in the sea. She has had nightmares of falling into the ocean and of the spirits of islanders, angry that she still lives, pulling her beneath. She’s afraid to die, but she’s also resigned. She accepted years ago that hers was not a life she was meant to keep. Helga allows me to take her hands. She doesn’t question me when I close my eyes. I imagine reaching into her spirit and grasping her fear. The fear comes to me as a little girl, a child huddled and shivering. I wrap my arms around her to comfort her. Helga, an older woman, looks at me with a steady gaze. She doesn’t understand what I’ve done. There’s a trickle of unease, but gratitude also flows through her.
A woman screams. I stand, unbalanced in the rough waves, as I slip across the deck, avoiding the tangle of arms and legs. I hurry to her side to see what she sees, along with the islanders around her who turn to look. There’s a beast in the ocean, gray and with skin like sand. It has one beady black eye that looks at us as it rolls beneath the waves. A spout of water sprays from a hole and it lingers beside us. It could push our ship into the water, but it doesn’t. Its tail rises from the sea and crashes back to the surface, and within moments it’s disappeared into the black depths of the ocean. The rain stops, the wind clears, and the sea stills. Valdemar Helle appears through the haze on the horizon.
Sharp coral reefs make it difficult for the ship to get too close to the shore. Malthe, the guard named Steef, and I all take a smaller boat, the waves bloating beneath us, saltwater spraying as we row. I’d met Steef before on Hans Lollik Helle. He was a guard who’d asked for advice on the crafting of arrows. He’s nervous that he doesn’t row quickly enough and that Malthe will promise to have him whipped for his slowness.
Steef is older than I am and has been training in the guard for many more years, but he doesn’t feel that he was meant to hold a machete. He can never remember the formations, and he doesn’t cut with the same precision as others. He’d seen me fight when the Fjern ambushed us. Steef believed what the others had whispered around the campfire: I wasn’t a human being. I appear to be a man that has flesh and blood and bone, but many devils and monsters in our legends do.
Steef remembered a legend his mother had told him many years ago, before he was taken away to be sold to a new master on Larsen Helle. There’d been a slave who tried to escape, but he was captured and hung. His body was left to rot in the tree from which he swung, but the following night he pulled the rope from his neck and tried to run again. He was captured once more, but the Fjern were confused, for they’d been certain the man had died. They burned him alive this time, but the next night, he walked out of the ashes. It was only then that the Fjern decided to let him leave with his freedom.
The islanders knew that Engel Jannik had been my father, but what of my mother? No one spoke of her. None of the guards knew of her. The islanders said she might have been a spirit who walked from the shore. She might have pretended to be a slave girl. She allowed Herre
Engel Jannik to think he forced her to his bed. She gave birth to me, hoping that I would be the one to take revenge on the Fjern, before she walked back into the sea again.
Steef believes this might be true. There’s no other explanation for the way I hold a machete and dance through the bodies of the Fjern. Some of the guards envy my ability, but Steef doesn’t envy me. He doesn’t envy any guard who has a talent for killing. Steef wasn’t meant to be a guard. He’s too gentle for the task. He hates the way the machete vibrates in his grip as it tears through skin and muscle and knocks against bone. He hates the sound of anguished cries and the smell of blood. But this is what he was ordered to do, so he has no choice but to fight. Steef has a large body, so many assume that he is talented on the battlefield. He fears disappointing us. What will Steef do once he isn’t forced to hold a machete anymore? He fears not having an answer to this question most of all.
Malthe doesn’t speak as Steef and I row. His mind has returned to his natural silence. For a moment I can feel how infuriating I must have been for Sigourney Rose when she attempted to read my mind but could not, seeing that I had thoughts and emotions but unable to access them. Malthe must be enraged. I wish I could sense what he thinks so that I could have a chance of calming him. But he hides his feelings as we make it to the rocky bay.
The closer we come, the easier it is to see the two figures who wait. Both are islanders, one with a machete strapped to her waist. There are women who’ve picked up machetes to join the fight under Malthe’s command, so this doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me are the grim expressions and the biting anger in the woman who steps forward to greet us.
The woman is short for a guard. Her skin is raised with scars. Her name is Erla. She has kraft that she’d managed to keep hidden from the Fjern for nearly twenty years, since she’d discovered her ability at ten years old. Her kraft is powerful. She’s able to weaken anyone of her choosing. She looks at her victim and imagines sucking the energy from their veins and the strength from their muscles. It’s a useful kraft. This was partly why she’d been asked to join the whispers on Solberg Helle and became a key contact. Her memories of the night of the first battles are a dark shadow that sink into me and cloud my mind. The memories explain the dimness in Erla’s eyes and the fresh scar that lashes across her cheek. She’d been a personal slave of Jytte Solberg. Erla had come to the royal island for the storm season for many years, and she expected to be on the island the night of the uprising as well. She was prepared to kill her mistress with her own hands when the time came. But without any explanation, Elskerinde Solberg had ordered Erla to stay behind. Erla felt helpless on Solberg Helle, waiting to hear word of the attacks and whether we had finally won our freedom.
The manor was quiet that night, but Erla had been awake, watching the horizon for any sign of the fires and the smoke from Larsen and Jannik and Hans Lollik Helle that meant the attacks on Solberg Helle were to begin as well. Another woman, now dead, had whispered as they stood awake in the fields that they should attack without waiting for the signal, but Erla understood the importance in waiting. The islanders had to rise as one. If any island was too early in its attacks, we all risked the Fjern overpowering the islands one by one and winning the war.
But hours had passed, and the fires had not begun in the distance like they were supposed to. Hans Lollik Helle was difficult to see, more difficult than Erla had expected—it was bad luck that clouds hung low in the distance—and the clear outlines of Larsen and Jannik Helle didn’t burn. The night passed and the sun began to pale the sky. Erla and the others worked in the kitchens as they were expected to, preparing breakfast for the Fjern of the manor, cousins and guests of Jytte Solberg who tended to stay throughout the year. Erla was tense. She made silent eye contact with the islanders around her as she chopped the cassava root and spiced the goat meat. When a Fjern messenger finally arrived, he was out of breath and red in the heat. He yelled for Herre Antoon Solberg, a cousin of Jytte Solberg’s and an older man who had a habit of taking residence in the manor whenever Jytte was away for the storm season.
The messenger stood outside in the sun and held the reins of his horse as he yelled to Antoon Solberg and all the rest of the Fjern who had gathered in the manor’s entryway. He yelled like he wanted the islanders to hear him. He spoke of the slaves that had revolted on Larsen and Jannik Helle. They’d attacked their masters while the Fjern slept. They acted as cowards, killing innocent children. They attempted to take control of the islands, but the slaves had been subdued before the night passed. The messenger declared that hundreds of islanders had been executed. Blood soaked the streets and bodies filled the sea. He also announced that the royal island had been stolen by the savages. They only knew that Herre Lothar Niklasson still lived, but it seemed most of the kongelig had been killed, even those who had tried to leave the island only days before. There was still no word on the islands to the north, but it was clear that all of the slaves of Hans Lollik had meant to kill their masters in a bid for their freedom.
Antoon Solberg wasted no time. The islanders of Jytte Solberg’s manor were all ordered to the fields. It didn’t matter the age, and it didn’t matter whether they’d been a part of the insurgency. Erla could sense what was to come. A Fjern holding a machete had come to the kitchens to order them all into the fields as well. She used her kraft on him, sucking his energy until he fell to his knees. She ran to the slaves’ quarters before any of the other Fjern could stop her. She burst into the rooms and warned everyone not to go—to try to escape right there and then, immediately. She begged them all to leave Solberg Helle with her, but not many believed the danger.
The islanders who followed their orders didn’t think that their masters would kill them all. The ones who had nothing to do with the rebellion believed that their masters would let them live. After all, though the Fjern didn’t see the islanders as human beings, they were still worth enough coin that they wouldn’t be cut down. Erla knew that they underestimated the Fjern. The Fjern loved their coin, yes—but hadn’t they seen how the Fjern loved their power more? They loved the whip, loved their blades, loved how islanders screamed and pleaded for mercy they knew the Fjern wouldn’t give. Especially if the Fjern had convinced themselves that the torture they inflicted was justified, they would relish in the islanders’ attempts to convince the Fjern of their humanity. Erla had realized the Fjern would never see her as a human being. She could see that she would be killed if she went to the fields.
In the end, five women agreed to run with her, three with their young children. Dozens of others did as the Fjern had ordered. Erla was grateful she had run so that when the screams began, she wouldn’t have to see the killings. The Fjern hadn’t yet begun to patrol the sea, so she managed to steal a boat and lead those who’d escaped here to Valdemar Helle. They hid in the brush without food or shelter. It was under Erla’s guidance that a suitable camp was built and enough fish was caught to last them days.
At that time there was still confusion over which islands had been taken back by our people and which still remained under the control of the Fjern. She decided to brave the seas herself to investigate first Jannik and then Larsen Helle. The islands had been destroyed. The docks and villages were burned, and trees held the bodies of islanders swinging in the breeze. She crept through the fields and destroyed villages, finding women who hid, shivering with fear. Erla had once been a girl shivering with fear, too. Antoon Solberg had a habit of ordering her to come to his rooms at night when she was young. She would try to hide sometimes, in the kitchens or in the fields, praying to the spirits that she would not be found, though she always was. Erla helped each of the women escape and come to Valdemar Helle. Where Hans Lollik Helle and our leadership has been lacking, Erla has stepped in to fill the spaces. I’m grateful to her, but Erla wouldn’t accept our gratitude. She doesn’t want to be a hero. She wants us to do our jobs and to free our people.
Erla recognizes Malthe first as the commander of the guards
and gives a bow of respect, a ritual taught to us by the Fjern. She nods to me as well, but when Steef tells her that I’ve been named the leader of the revolution, she glances at me with surprise and eyes me with some disbelief. She sees me as a child, not a man who is prepared to lead. Maybe she’s right.
“Fine,” she says. “Come to the camp. There’s a lot to discuss.”
CHAPTER NINE
Erla leads us through the brush and to a clearing that islanders had cut from the thick tangle of thorns. The grass is still sharp, cutting my shins as I walk, and gnats stick to the sweat on my skin. Wasps linger on the sweet sap that leaks from thick leaves. There’s a rustling in the grass, the movement of an animal I can’t see, and birds call to one another high above in the mahogany trees that tower over us. The air smells like wet dirt and sweat and salt and piss, like the islanders haven’t been relieving themselves far enough away from camp. Sheets of different colors, already bleached yellow and brown beneath the sun and rain and salt-air breeze, are tied from the branches of trees and pulled taut to the dirt, held in place by stones. The sheets form a circle around the ashes of a fireplace where the sharp needlelike bones of fish are scattered in the weeds.
Though there are some guards that had escaped here from Solberg Helle and some who were rescued from Jannik and Larsen Helle, the majority are islanders who haven’t been trained. Most are women who bounce their children on their knees. Some talk to each other in hoarse voices, speaking of how they will find their food today. Many don’t speak at all. I don’t see the same joy that I’ve seen on Hans Lollik Helle at night, islanders laughing as they drink guavaberry rum and dance and sing over meals usually reserved for the king. There’s silent resolution in some of the islanders I see here, but others act like they’ve accepted their fate to join the spirits. Even the children seem to think they won’t live much longer. They’re thin, listless. One child’s head turns to look at me with hollow eyes. She and her mother were rescued from Jannik Helle. Her mother had hidden with her by the bay. It’d only been luck that Erla had seen them and led them to her boat on the shore. The child is barely five, and yet she’s seen more than any child should. She’s seen men cut open and fires set to skin, heard the earsplitting screams that still haunt her while she sleeps.
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