Beautiful Wreck

by Larissa Brown

  “What do you want, Ageirr?” He kept saying his name. Lulling him, making him feel drowsy and safe. Hár was on the ground, moving slowly to retrieve a dropped spear. Heirik held Ageirr’s eyes, so my captor didn’t notice when Hár handed the spear to Heirik.

  Dreadful realization came. I saw Heirik’s plan. He would throw a weapon right at us.

  I cast my eyes around, wanting bravery, wanting a way out, and all I saw were discarded blades and a severed hand reddening the foam at the water’s edge. I drew my eyes away, my thoughts inward, searching for strength, or at least ignorance. What I found were sims, and I almost barked a sick laugh. I thought I’d seen men fight in the cage, punch and kick and dislocate and wound. I’d seen nothing. Useless memories passed by, of cheering at things I didn’t understand.

  And then a memory of an elbow to an opponent’s head, two, three, four times, and there was cringing and howling from the crowd.

  Heirik held the spear loosely, hanging by his side, casually waiting for his chance. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to do something. And so I curled up and then struck out with my elbow, up at Ageirr’s chin, harder than I had ever done anything. He grunted and loosened his grip so that I hung from his arm. Far enough away.

  In the slowness, I watched Heirik. His face was cold resolution. His throw smooth and easy. A breeze lifted loose strands of my hair as the spear went by. It was that close. Then I hit the ground, my head bounced hard off a piece of driftwood and I was free.

  Gray washed all over and above me, from the greenest, moistest clay to blackest iron. The colors of the sky swirled together, purple and dark blue, twisting and crossing. I was lifted from the ground, and things shimmered silver all around, enchanting. There were faces, too, beloved ones. Hár held me on his horse.

  Byr picked his way through a sea of knee-high plants, green against the black sand and gray wood, and I let my hand drop to skim them with my fingers. I almost fell off until Hár grasped me. I leaned back into the old man and smiled. This was the second time he would carry me, drowsy with pain and cold, home from this beach.

  Heirik rode before us, just like on the first day I arrived, when he was still the chief and I was Jen. He led Drifa beside him. His hand rested lightly on her saddle, mottled fingers closing over the leather where I’d sat, stroking with his thumb.

  The peace of wading through driftwood and greens exploded with force as soon as we were clear, and the horses took off on flat ground. Hár crushed me to him, and we flew.

  They drove the horses hard, and the wind scoured my face. I felt Hár’s long beard on my cheek, reassuring and ticklish, and I thought of my friend kissing him, touching him. My head fell to the side and I watched his thighs hanging on to Byr, his muscles like iron. A thick, red mess was flowering on the brown wool on his leg.

  I’d been held by Betta’s lover far more often than my own.

  It was a single wistful thought, lost to the darkening sky that yawned above and sucked all air out of me. The temperature seemed to drop a dozen degrees in the space of a breath. The weather gathered itself, and the sky stretched out above us, endlessly churning. And in the next instant, it turned to steel and closed over us like a vault. Soon, the stark stone sisters rose to meet the blackening sky, and water ran into my eyes, blurring their terrifying forms. Like condemned spirits, they made their endless way, the shortest first this time. Leading us home.

  I dozed off, and when I woke the winter had risen all around us. Hard whipping gusts of wind drove it into us, freezing and raw. The horses—even with wills and bodies like the gods themselves—were driven off course. They bore down, every person, every horse, focused now only on the promise of shelter. I believed in the idea of warmth, I had to.

  The notion of going somewhere safe seemed important. But where?

  Anywhere but this time and place, with its iron and steel and blood that ran as freely as the men felt necessary. Not here, where hands were shorn and spears thrown. Here where I rode on a gorgeous horse, at the confluence of violence and clear beauty. I sputtered as ice cold rain flowed over my face. Water filled my nose and I pursed my lips and blew against the spray so I could breathe.

  A sense of white and glass came to me, big skylights, interiors brilliant with sunshine. The clean lines of a stainless steel coffee table. The smell of coffee itself. A quilt warm from the dryer. It smelled like detergent. The sensation of someone’s arms around me. I imagined the feeling of a bearded chin against the bridge of my nose. That was safety. I imagined lying my forehead against a warm chest, the feel of skin and metal and leather. The smell of smoke was safety.

  I was sleepy. I kept falling asleep.

  I didn’t know if Heirik had killed him. I wondered if Ageirr had fallen dead with me in his arms and let me go with his last breath. Heirik would kill someone to save me, I knew.

  The grass lashed all over the house. Heim, I thought, já, and trygg. I struggled for the English words, thinking they were important. Home. Safe.

  I was handed from one man to another. I searched their faces, but they were indistinct, so many. “Heirik?” I tried to call, and it came out weak. I heard a woman’s gasp, Hildur’s voice. “Child, the chief is right here!” It was a warning, not an answer to my question. Maybe his name? I had used his name? I heard him speak, then, and the words didn’t matter because his voice calmed me, even and strong. I clung to that voice, and it followed me.

  There was smoke and less light, and the familiar feeling of my bench. Someone lifted my head and put blankets there. Some more were dragged on top of me. The wool welcomed me into sleepy oblivion. I heard a man’s voice—it was Betta’s Da—saying “Child, wake up,” but I didn’t.

  I dreamed that I’d been injured and Heirik was caring for me. The chief himself, sitting to tend me. My eyes were closed, but I knew it was him because of his scent, like cinnamon and fur. It was mixed with the metallic smell of blood and the scent of juniper infusing a cool cloth on my forehead. I felt a brush of something silky on my face. I found it was his hair on my cheek. It fell like a curtain around me as he bent to speak.

  It was a vivid dream. I’d never seen him in my sleeping place, in this space where no color lit his irises. Never seen his eyes so dark, almost brown. He looked worried. I smiled to let him know I was alright, but it felt wobbly, like I’d had too much ale, and I laughed.

  I expected one of his sweet smiles to follow, but it didn’t come. He sat straight up and asked for someone to find Betta’s Da. I missed Heirik’s closeness. I didn’t want this part of the dream to end. I didn’t want to dream about Bjarn instead. I started to feel slumber coming, fast, like a train.

  “Stay,” Heirik commanded me. He brought the back of his hand gently to my face and brushed across my cheek. The contact burned like fire, instant and fierce. A good burning, so unbearably good. “Stay.” It was a whisper this time, a plea. I turned my head toward his hand and parted my lips to kiss his knuckles, and his bones were strong and hard against my mouth. He was speaking my sweet name, Litla, in a voice dry like bark. The curtains rustled and Bjarn appeared.

  “Oh,” Betta’s father said, an awed exhalation. He might have seen a god or goddess in the flesh, his voice was so incredulous, so full of wonder. He drew away, but Heirik stopped him with an order. The dream dissipated and my lover was the chief again.

  “Care for Ginn,” he said. “And speak to no one.” With swift grace, he was gone.

  SNOW & STARS

  Winter

  The next day snow came, fast and deep, and the world moved inside.

  In the morning, it was all we talked about, in tones that echoed differently in the snowbound house. It was amazingly fast, everyone said, how in one night it had piled up outside the doors, up past our knees. Nothing compared to what might come. Stories of past winters were murmured like charms against the elements, tales of houses buried, animals gone. The sudden and complete isolation was shocking. It made me panic, and thoughts of Ageirr came again.

&nb
sp; Nei. I steeled myself to be brave and live with the memories of the fight. The way Heirik would. And so I sewed together rips and hems with a spinning head, and followed gingerly after little Lotta. The snow was as tall as her, and she confirmed it by opening the front door over and over. We’d forget about her for a while, and then icy fingers would creep up under our dresses, and I would make my way to the mudroom to drag her back.

  The snow muffled everything. It wasn’t just my head. I had a concussion I thought, but there was something else hushed about the house, the silent bulk of snow making the voices and gentle echoes different. Besides Lotta’s delight, the rest of the children responded with a confused quiet of their own, broken by small cries here and there. It was the beginning of a long winter.

  The pantry was always cool, but today, with the new snow outside, the cold stole the smells of the most pungent cheese and sharp fish, leaving behind a clean wholeness to the air. I could relax here, with the door closed. All day, I’d cycled through intense, mixed up visions. The joy and pleasure of Heirik and me together, strong, seeking hands, smiling into a kiss, a hand severed, bone and blood and cries of aggression and panic, Drifa’s wild nostrils and scared eyes. Ageirr’s grief-stricken hold on me was the clearest of all. And the spear. Even now, I felt it whisper as it passed. So vivid, once I thought my hair actually feathered with the memory.

  Here in the pantry, I could blank my mind.

  Betta helped me, by opening the door and then returning the keys. No one knew I was in here. Leaning heavily against the wall, I let my eyes soften and my thoughts turn to a flat and open plain, a big blue sky. I let my gaze wander the shelves, and saw the precious box of herbs peeking out from the back of a high shelf. I’d seen Hildur put it away, and now I stretched on my toes and pushed danger aside, along with baskets and containers of lesser foods and sewing supplies.

  A wash of fragrance filled the room when I opened the little box. I picked out one tiny spear of rosemary—“ocean’s dew”—just a bit bigger than a grain of rice, and placed it on my tongue.

  The door opened, and I shoved the box back deep on the shelf.

  The silly guilt, and frustration at having so little time alone, both vanished in a second. It was Heirik ducking low under the door frame. He shut the door behind him without taking his eyes off me. He made that shushing motion everyone here used, palm facing me, fingers pushing sound away. He whispered.

  “Are you alright?” His voice sounded simpler here, absorbed by the close, earthen walls, but not flat. Still depthless.

  “My head hurts,” I said quietly, around the bit of rosemary. I added a light laugh to try for bravery, or nonchalance, but it sounded more like a whimper, without any reverb to buoy it. Sudden dizziness sloshed in my head and I bent forward, resting my hands on my knees.

  He covered the distance between us in one stride and caught me, and I fell into him without a word. His arms came up around me, awkward, unaccustomed, and it was too much—the spear, the pressure and pain in my head, the fact of Heirik’s years of isolation echoed in his too-tight grasp. I cried.

  It lasted a long moment, my silent crying, and he held me without a sound. Then I felt the vibrations of words in his chest even before I heard his voice.

  “Many times, I have wanted to care for you,” he said. “But in small ways. Not like this.”

  I smiled against his chest, warmed by the thought that his desire matched mine so exactly. That he wanted to care for me in daily moments. That his fingertips fit so well into the curve of my spine. With my nose buried in his smoky shirt and his beard tickling my ear, I’d come home.

  His hands came to my waist, and he lifted me onto the high bench. He stood between my knees. Swirls of apron and dress between us, no height separated us now. I looked right at him and lay my palm on his cheek. He sucked in air, unused to tenderness.

  “Ginn …” My name sounded twisted and wrong, and I didn’t like the sadness in his eyes. I brushed my fingers into his hair, and they snagged there in black tangles. He quickly kissed me, hard. He still had no idea how. It was reckless and new, and I let myself dissolve into it.

  Just like yesterday, the force of possession, hands on cheeks, fingers raking skin, his surprised murmur, “Sjordogg,” lost against my lips. Sea-dew. A taste of rosemary. I slipped my fingers under Thor’s hammer. They caught in the leather at his throat, pulling him closer, and then Heirik stopped.

  He leaned his forehead heavily into my shoulder, and let his breathing settle, and then he stayed there. It lasted a little too long, felt a little too much like resignation.

  “I am going away,” he said, and he lifted his head.

  “Nei!” I blurted it out, too loud. He would be gone from me? Right now, when this was so new and delicious. Suspicion and fear crept in. Was he going for Ageirr? In a breath, I thought of them fighting, of more blood and bones. A brother’s hand for a brother’s horse. What in exchange for me?

  “For two or three days only, Litla.”

  Out of all the many warning cries and questions in my head, I blurted out a dumb one. “How?”

  “How?” He echoed my question, as if he hadn’t heard me right.

  I rested my head on his shoulder now, and mumbled into his shirts. “The snow, it’s as high as Lotta.” So naive. What did I think? That he wouldn’t know how to deal with a couple feet of snow? He’d spend the whole winter in his room?

  “Já, well, Lotta is not so high,” he pointed out. He pulled away from me so I would lift my eyes to his. He surely saw worry, wondering.

  “Vakr er stor hestur,” he said with a smile. It was like a line from a children’s story. Vakr is a big horse. I laughed, a birdlike laugh this time, and I bent to muffle it in his shirts.

  “Is Ageirr dead?” I asked into linen.

  “Nei,” he said, with a sigh in his voice, full of relief or regret, I couldn’t tell.

  When Heirik ducked out, he pulled the door shut behind him, but I could hear Hildur say “Herra!” Her shocked tone traveled like an arrow, right through the heavy wood. Somehow she both submitted to him and chided him at once. “If there is anything you need from the stores, tell me.”

  “Walk with me,” he told her, in a tone that certainly had her clutching at beads. I heard them move away.

  I pressed my lips together to seal our kiss before I went back out into the house to see the likes of her. Love was not Hildur’s to dole out. And real respect, not the kind born of superstition, was something she would never give.

  The house closed in on itself, beginning to stew with heat from the fire, packed in and reflected by the insulating snow. It started to stink right away, and I had to get out. I went through the tunnel to the welcoming, little pool.

  The horror of the fight, my new and epic love, my concussion, all kept me preoccupied, and I’d forgotten the sky. When I stepped from the tunnel, I almost fell to my knees with the weight and glory of it. Stars! They pressed down on me, a million of them at least!

  The enormity of the sky, its depths, bewildered my senses and I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to fathom it. The big stars were the same ones that I’d known. But in among them were packed a thousand more for every space I used to think of as empty. A sky of sifted sugar. It was really, truly dark out, and I was stunned.

  I floated in the hot pool, my head thrown back on the stones. At first, I felt trapped by the stars’ density, their unimaginable numbers, but then my eyes and mind adjusted and the sky opened to me with its depths and distances. So many things here—almost everything—were more heartbreakingly beautiful than I dreamed.

  The welcoming, little pool became an oasis, where I could be small amidst the stars and steam. Betta and I took the little girls with us twice a day and floated and told stories about fine dresses and foxes and hawks.

  They asked about how I came from the ocean, and I told them a big bird had dropped me on the sand like a stone. I thought they would laugh, but they looked at me with gigantic eyes, and I ha
d to tell them I was kidding, that I just didn’t know.

  Inside, Betta taught me to play tafl. It was a game of strategy, with smooth, round wooden men and one tiny carved chieftain, who hunched, curled around his long beard and gripping it with two hands. I’d learned the game before of course, in the future, but I pretended not to know. I let her show me how to move, to protect my chief, to take. We played with Magnus and Haukur, and it filled up some of the hours.

  On the second full day that Heirik was gone, Hár showed the little ones how to make char with the tiniest bits of linen that could no longer even be mended or used as a cloth. He stuffed them into a tiny metal box with a hole in the top and roasted it on the fire.

  I watched the smoke climb to the roof, and I sewed languidly, never finishing anything. I named the new colors that spread through the house and settled in. A dusky plum in the shadows, deepening until the eye couldn’t parse it from espresso, moist earth, then black. I thought of espresso fondly, like a long-ago lover. Doppio con pana. I put my finger in my mouth as if to lick the whipped cream.

  Not as though I’d forgotten where I was. Nei, I felt my home around me more acutely than ever, every hawk’s eye on me, wondering about me, probably searching for my reasons to want such a frightening man, because I clearly did. I couldn’t hide it. Striving for this rich house probably, to be the mistress of it despite the master I’d have to endure. That was a likely conclusion.

  About the lying, they would be right, not in the way they might think.

  I pretended I’d pricked myself, regarded my needle with mild betrayal. I went back to my lazy, disinterested project. A hem maybe. I wasn’t even sure, and had to look for a long moment to remember the soft, worn shirt in my hands.

  Men went to the stables to check after animals. They came back with brilliant sparkles of melting ice in their beards and the fur that ringed their hats. They brought out skið and rubbed them with foul-smelling fat, and again Magnus sharpened every knife in the house.