Beautiful Wreck

by Larissa Brown

  Thirty cows and two dozen sheep changed everything, and Heirik was lost to the labor. A few of his animals still roamed, and the chief was absorbed in the facts of errant sheep and wild-smelling horses and men. On Vakr, he went out beyond sight all day. He came back late with the last few animals, falling down tired.

  I wasn’t waiting for him, nei. I only happened to be sitting against the house outside, and so I saw him as he nearly stumbled with exhaustion from the stables to the back door.

  I ducked quickly inside, where Betta was preparing food. I quietly begged a handful of dried fish from her, brittle like crackers in my fingers, and stashed it in the purse at my belt. I would give him this one small thing, along with a handful of dried berries. I walked casually through both rooms of the house to the mudroom door.

  It creaked when I opened it, but the sound was not enough to stir Heirik, who sat on the bench just feet from his bedroom door, dead asleep.

  His feet were planted far apart on the floor, one of them covered with just a sock, and his dusty boot rested across his lap. His shirts were untied and sleeves loose, his belt, knives and firestriker on the floor. A cup had fallen from his belt and rolled across the room. It rested at my toes.

  I looked behind me into the dark house and no one had followed me, so I stepped through the big door and let it close behind me as gently as I could.

  I stood, soundless and still, and drank him in. He was a big man. He didn’t tower over me when we stood together, nei. He was built differently from people in my time, not tall like Jeff, but far more substantial. Compared to his shoulders and hips, his waist was lean, and yet it was so thick I could never get my hands around a quarter of it. Watching him sleep, images came to me of his grace, how his hips moved with the elegance of water despite his size. I’d thought so many times about what it might be like to feel those hips pressed against me, while I reached my arms around his back and traced the curves I’d seen at the bath.

  I had dreamed of seeing the openness of his face in sleep, no concern, no hiding. And here it was. I took in his long straight nose and broad cheekbones, the hollows beneath them licked with moving shadows. I adored his dark lashes, the hair falling in his face, the color of blood that was part of his loveliness. His lips were parted like a child in slumber. I watched the tide of his breath, and I drifted closer to him, crossing the small room, standing almost between his knees so that my skirts brushed him ever so lightly.

  Betta and Svana were wrong. He was a handsome man.

  Nei, he was gorgeous. And I desired him. So much that I didn’t think I could wait any longer. I couldn’t wait for him to be ready. I needed to touch right now, to steal a brush of fingers against him, any part of him, even his shirts. I knew I shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. But I was so close, wanting, reaching. His filthy boot was warm in my hands. I turned it over, watching my own fingers against the leather.

  He stirred and I dropped the boot into his lap. I jumped, and nearly flew backwards toward the door.

  Heirik sat up in confusion and opened his eyes to find me standing still and breathless, just two feet away.

  “I …” I said. “You were asleep.” Brilliant.

  He took in his surroundings and then sat up with a start, suddenly alert.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “No one else has seen you.”

  “Já,” he murmured, wiping his cheek and chin with the back of his hand. “Good.”

  He looked at the boot in his hands, then at my skirts. A big swath of dirt streaked across my apron. I bent and picked his cup up off the floor and held it in both hands.

  He looked like he was going to speak, then stopped, and looked up like he would start again.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, and his voice was dark and smoky as the heartstone.

  He turned his boot over in his hands.

  Tomorrow. As if it would be the day that something would finally happen. He’d touch my palm, might kiss the hollow of my hand. I imagined his lips would be chapped from sleeping in the highlands. His beard would graze my wrist, ticklish and good. Kiss me, Heirik, I thought, and I felt my gaze blur, my lips open so slightly, uncontrollably. It would be so simple.

  “It is a day for intentions,” he said, removing his other boot.

  I drew my brows together. “What do you mean?” My voice was hoarse, the cup pressed hard between my hands.

  “The shearing,” he stated, pretending to focus on untying his bracers, and I thought he was practicing indifference. I’d watched him carefully enough these past months for me to know when he was hiding emotion.

  “The shearing,” I repeated, dense.

  He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, long ties hanging. He asked, and it was a gentle query. “You don’t remember?”

  “Nei,” I said, and this time it was the truth. I’d never seen a sheep sheared, and I didn’t—couldn’t possibly—remember a thing.

  He smiled, stood and took a lamp from the wall. He flipped the latch on his bedroom door. “I’ll bless the harvest, and the viljandifalne will be plentiful,” he said, and this time the emotion was clear. Bitterness like a hard berry, spat out, a word I’d never heard. The willingly slain? I just looked at him.

  The lamp lit his face from underneath, and he closed his eyes for just a second, shy, lost in something, as if his voice failed. But it didn’t.

  “Sleep,” he told me, as soft as a kiss, and then he ducked into his room.

  “Goodnight,” I said after him, just before he shut the door.

  The course and crash of water echoed in the pretty ravine, louder than I remembered. Louder than I thought possible, as though the stream, at fifteen feet wide, was a lie. It was actually a raging river. Its volume drowned out all sense.

  I’d ridden out in the early morning to the little waterfalls. To the edge of the fast-moving water, where Heirik and I had once spoken of birds and elves and Hildur’s superstition.

  A big day ahead, everyone was ready to shear the sheep and celebrate the year, the coming winter, the growing world. A crush of people still slept in tents in the yard and in every crevice of the house. I thought of the party as rolling over days and days like that bank of clouds, huge and slow and inexorable.

  Most everyone was thrilled with having different people here to chat and work and be near, and weeks ago I would have guessed I’d feel the same. But I left that idea behind after the first night of the harvest party, and I was glad that today, after shearing and more drink, the celebrations would end.

  Now I sat on the bank, my skirts tucked under my crossed legs and cloak gathered around my shoulders. My gaze passed aimlessly over the water and settled on the tiny island. The foundation of Heirik’s stone fort still stood there. A few black and pumice gray rocks were a small testament to what happened here. At first, the chief had scared me, but then we splashed and smiled, and without my knowing it something had taken hold.

  I let my eyes wander over the opposite bank, the man-sized caves and steep, rocky slope up and away. Clouds moved above it, separating and joining and drifting for miles.

  In the city, there had either been clouds or not. The buildings stretched so high, we saw a tiny section of the sky, a slice only. Until I came here, I hadn’t thought about the possibility of lying low to the ground and seeing the clouds move, watching them roam the sky. Here I could see a mass bigger than the glacier itself, moving like a slow beast, slinking away. Its ominous, black bulk moved off, and as the sun rose higher it left only fluffy white scuds. Pink morning.

  Images of the harvest feast came—memories of heat and body odor and warm ale. Of ice blue fabric slipping through my fingers, and anger at Heirik for throwing me into a bonfire without warning or explanation.

  I lay my head gently on the rocky bank. I let my hand fall to my side, palm drifting open. My fingers broke the surface.

  What would today be like?

  The current tugged at my hand. I let my anxiousness go with it, remembering Heirik’s gentl
e words, the kiss of a single word, sleep. All hesitance and worry went with the water, calming my head, and—freed—my thoughts suddenly fell to the vision I’d had of nine-year-old Betta, and now I remembered details that I hadn’t before. A man, blond and shining, bent down to hand her a toy. It was a wooden doll he’d made, his carving knife still held in his other hand. She took it and twirled away with a flare of skirts, then ran down the hill toward the valley. I still couldn’t see young Heirik. I saw him as he looked last night in the mudroom, fully grown. He reached a hand to my brow, caring for me as if I were sick.

  I jolted awake to a blinding fear.

  A driving storm of white steam surrounded me. Opaque mist, streaming faster now, blown by a sudden, hard wind. The coursing steam was violent and beautiful and it pressed down on my chest like a snarling animal. I felt pinned to the rocks. This part was no vision. This fast-moving mist was real. And though it was abrupt and odd, it felt familiar.

  This was what it should be like traveling through time. I should have been able to feel it pass like this ferocious jet of steam, driving hard into my eyes and nose and stealing all my senses. Pulling on me mercilessly, like this watery wind. This would have been fair Not just a metallic ripping followed by being plopped on a beach.

  Any beach. Here in 900s in Iceland, or 1900s Atlantic City.

  I gasped and yanked my hand out of the current.

  I hadn’t thought of it before. I could have been stranded somewhere else. In the Gilded Age.

  My fingers dripped and water ran down under my sleeve in miserable streams.

  I could’ve been living in 1900s America right now, trying to get by in a world of bustles and straw hats. It had really happened, that night in the tank, hadn’t it? Something had pulled me back, brought me back, so I could go into the tank the next morning and land here instead.

  My heart beat hard. Saga, thank you, I thought, and I felt an answer return to me, not like an actual voice, but a lifting of the steam to let in a sharp blade of light. And with it a thought came so clear and bright and substantial it couldn’t be ignored. Something that happened once in a million lifetimes—or maybe once ever, in all of time—had happened to me. And it happened just right. It didn’t work when I went to turn of the century Atlantic City, because I was only meant to travel here. My right place and time.

  I sat up in the fresh air, the steam gone. The stream still rushed by my side, forever and ever. This stream that still ran under the ground so far in the future, maybe right underneath the lab.

  I’d been bumbling around hoping to hide my secret, trying to get by with my poor spinning and mooning wishes for the chief to like me. Waiting so dumbly for something to happen. But being here wasn’t a disaster, and I had no reason to wait anymore. I would touch and take Heirik today, somehow, if only by the hand, and it would be a start. That much of him would be mine, and the rest would follow. Yes.

  Betta’s secret would be mine, too. I would find out today.

  It was a day for intentions, he’d said. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know what it meant to be willingly slain or what any of my own intentions had to do with cutting sheeps’ hair. But I was ready.

  It turned out there was more waiting and work to do first, and the passion of my intentions dissolved into a morning of food preparation and bringing out a dozen more cups from the very back of the cave-like pantry. A few of the thralls had come up from the lower house and were setting up food and drink under Hildur’s strained and beady gaze.

  It wasn’t as formal or huge as the party several nights ago, but it was abundant. I drifted slowly around the tables in the back room, fingers trailing over the blond polished wood. I reviewed the food and drink, noted the big bowls of ale, metal ale geese hanging on their rims, their long hooks like beaks for dipping into the drink.

  Outside, a small crowd of farmers and wives and children were gathering around the circle of stable walls, kids and men climbing over to step inside with the sheep. The shepherd brought in a few wanderers, then lost another two before closing the wooden gate. I counted men, women, kids, then ducked back inside the house and looked over the tables once more. I did the math in my head—who was here, how many, what they would eat and drink—and the experience of the steam weakened.

  I’d felt Saga’s presence so sharply this morning, like she’d snapped her fingers in my heart, and I knew without a doubt that today I would pry Betta’s secret free, would touch Heirik for the first time. But after an hour of considering the facts of cups and ale and food, I wasn’t sure what I had left.

  In my alcove, I sat with legs crossed and pulled a comb out from under the skins. I wanted to stay in my cave for a little while, so I could miss Heirik’s entrance, everyone honoring him with bowed heads and bent knees.

  I drew all my hair over one shoulder and combed out the frayed ends. I had no way of knowing what I looked like anymore. Probably a confused mess of determination and desire, like a woman with well-brushed hair and no plan.

  I stayed in my alcove with the curtains drawn, listening to people come and pour drinks and go back out, and when the rush of people slowed, I emerged. I went to peek around the back door frame.

  Heirik was already at the stable, a few men standing around him talking. It was safe. And so I got a cup of ale for myself and went to hop up atop the curving stable wall and watch the shearing.

  Several women sat here, and all around me they cooed and laughed and whispered behind cupped hands. Everyone reveled in this break, a party, the sun, so different from spinning and cooking and squinting at looms in the half dark.

  Three dozen people or more milled around the stables and yard—the whole family, Ageírr’s family too, his little brother Eiðr, all the thralls from both houses. Children and random animals ran in and out of peoples’ legs. Little boys and girls fought with wooden swords and shields, a puppy jumping and snapping between them. Older boys stood near the forge, joking while one of them sharpened iron shears on the big whetstone.

  Ranka’s Da grabbed Kit’s backside firmly. She swatted him away with a smile, but he stayed close, standing behind her and nuzzling at the crook of her neck. A tender moment that felt cozy and familiar. I was safe with these people. I closed my eyes to feel the sun.

  Svana broke into the moment, jumping up onto the wall beside me in a satisfied flounce.

  “Do you remember the shearing?”

  I told her nei, thinking of an arc on a screen. I’d watched it over and over, but it was no real memory.

  “Then you don’t know, já?” She grinned. “Why everyone is like this?”

  She thrust her chin toward Arn, who still clung to Kit, encircling her from behind. They were slowly swaying together, an unconscious dance, sex-infused and true. I looked around and found other couples talking close. Thora looked up from under her eyelashes at a boy who was half her width, women watched the men and whispered, a husband touched his wife’s nose.

  I looked for Betta and found her talking to Hár. He sat on the ground against the house, one knee bent. Betta stood over him talking, her hand shading her eyes, and when her skirt moved in a small breeze it caught on his knee. He left off carving a small block of wood and looked up at her, charming and potentially immoral. He was flirting as though he talked to young women every day.

  And then it hit me, fast and hard, like a blow to the head. Gods, there it was, a spark of sex between them. Her skirt still snared on his leg, neither of them removing it.

  It was Hár. Betta’s pulse of her heart. She was in love with the “old man.” I swallowed ale and coughed my throat ragged.

  Images of them came unbidden. Betta smiling at Hár, her big teeth beguiling him, an image of—gods!—Hár’s shaggy head bent to kiss her, her tight braids cradled in his giant hand. I saw her looking ravished, her hair messy and free, the night she came in from riding at sunset. Saw a beaming, blond man handing little Betta a toy doll. My brain spun and ale clogged my nose.

  Svana smacke
d me on the back. “Are you okay?”

  “Já,” I croaked and looked at her hair and eyes and dress before I thought of something to say. “Just thinking of other things.” Right. Like Hár’s rough hands all over my friend.

  “It is proof of a real man,” Svana told me, and I almost choked again.

  I focused hard on Svana, struggled to listen while the idea of Betta and Hár roared in my brain. He was more than twice Betta’s age, já, but still young enough to love her. To be her lover. Oh gods! I couldn’t even think of it, and yet couldn’t think of anything else.

  “To shear a sheep perfectly,” Svana said in her scandalized, little voice. “Ears to belly to toes in one piece, and nei cuts on the animal. It is a test.”

  The men teased each other about it, she said. They would make bets and dramatic gestures. The women would watch lasciviously, and at least one or two would grab a man and take him alone into the little woods near the ravine. If anyone would be so bold, it would be Betta. I could imagine her crashing happily into the birches, dragging Hár along behind her.

  While Svana chirped in my ear, I turned this impossibility over and over. Hár was Betta’s one, her breath, the man she wanted more than life.

  I had to talk with her. Now. To be sure I was right, that this was true. But I knew it was.

  Betta came toward me, a smile flowering into a toothy grin. I saw the very moment when she realized that I knew. Her step faltered, she staggered a little, all skirts and ankles, her grin left unfinished for just a second. She drew up her dignity and stood still for a moment until the fabric around her feet unwound, then walked calmly toward me and lifted herself easily onto the wall by my side.

  I felt flanked by birds. Svana chattering about sex. Betta folding wings protectively around her desire. She looked as if I might take Hár from her, take her dream.

  With a bustling all around us, I could talk freely in a low voice. But with Svana so close, I chose neutral words and hidden gestures. My fingers spread out on the wall between me and Betta. I flicked my eyes toward Hár, where he now stood amidst a knot of sheep inside the stable walls.