Beautiful Wreck

by Larissa Brown

  He told me about his uncle. Stories of Hár caring for him like a father, teaching him about axes and stars and boats. He loved him almost as much as he loved Heirik, or more but in a different way.

  I told him about summer and spinning and distaffs billowing with clouds, about the fields and walls. I told him about learning to ride Gerdi, and we laughed about her somnolent way of transporting me. I could walk faster than ride that girl, but I had some affection for her. I told him about Drifa. About how I felt so at home in the white woods. It stabbed my heart to think about Heirik there with me, but if felt good to tell Brosa about the beauty of the quiet, and the baskets of leaves and herbs and lichens for dyeing. I told him I’d yet to find Saga back among the trees, though I could feel her presence there. And somehow Brosa’s way of listening made these minor adventures seem as exciting as a trading voyage.

  In the quiet moonlight, something made him change direction entirely—perhaps our talk of the goods he brought home, or the cloth and bread and bandages I’d made. The things that would sustain us. It was almost a whisper. “This wreck,” he said, gesturing with his chin toward the whale. “It is my mother’s blessing.” Wreck was fond. A way to name the whale. Something good, given by this lethal sea.

  “I know,” I whispered back. The animal would feed the whole extended family for some time. There was abundance, beyond enough, just like every year since Signé married Ulf. “I’ve heard very much about her.”

  He smiled, inwardly watching his mother. Then he looked at me. “I could tell you one more story, before you fall into sleep.” Brosa touched my toe with his, in a friendly way. It was true, I was tired.

  His grandfather, Magnus Heirikson, was among the first settlers. “They were rich,” he said plainly, nowhere near describing their wealth. “They came in two great ships with people and animals and thralls. Jewelry and weapons and tools.” He chuckled and shook his head in wonderment. “I think of my grandmother on a ship, with sheep at her knees. I don’t know where they thought they were going with their glass cups and furs. But I am glad now that they brought them,” he said, and with his foot he nudged the fur that now lay across my lap, much bigger than any Icelandic animal, a treasure beyond price. It brought to mind Signé’s fox jacket. The one Heirik let me wear months ago in the snow, the night we were lovers.

  How could I really let him go? He’d pushed me away finally this time. Absolutely. But I’d felt his need first tonight, not Brosa’s, in my heart and against my thighs.

  I drew their grandmother’s fur around my legs and rested myself heavily in the hollows of my log. I had a powerful urge to go to sleep, to put aside this muddled mess. Put aside the unassuming but steady fact of Brosa’s foot still resting against my leg.

  “They waited until dark on the night the farm was born.” He looked into the firelight and began to tell it like a children’s tale, the way he must’ve heard it a hundred times in his blankets, curled into the body of his loving uncle. “And Magnus took his fastest horse and lit the fires all around.” He poked at our small fire with his stick. “And Amma could see it from the hill where she waited, the farm lighting up like a fiery ring in the wilderness. And where she stood, they built our house.” He drew a rectangle in the sand, to be the house.

  His voice was deep, the cadence reverent.

  “Then what?” I whispered, in a kind of trance.

  “Já, well,” he said at full volume. “Then, a whole lot of backbreaking work began, and everyone was very sorry they’d come to Iceland.” A laugh rumbled in his chest.

  Awake, I kicked his foot, a bit harder than he’d done mine.

  “Alright, alright.” He smirked. He got up and came to sit next to me again, putting his arm around me. “But you have to close your eyes, Litli Sládreng.” Words like small and slain mixed together to mean tired little boy. What he was called, when this story was told to him?

  He stroked my shoulder and started in again with the bedtime story, wrapping me up in a rhythmic, slow litany of all the things that were blessed with sacrifices of all kinds and sizes. The fields and house and barn and woods and bath and sea. The weapons and tools, the hearth, the horses, the walls as they were built. The beach where we sat now, the fishing camp. And the gods were very pleased, and Magnus and Amma had many children, including two sons, Ulf and Hár. “Ulf married a beautiful princess named Signé. And Ulf and the princess had two pups.”

  I could feel him smile at that. As a child this part of the story must have been very exciting and silly, when it got to the part about himself. I smiled, too, and nestled into the darkness of Brosa. In the second before sleep took me entirely, I heard him whisper, “And Ulf and Signé died and had no other.”

  I woke, curled around the silver remains of a driftwood fire. Its warmth had faded to a few embers, and I shuddered with a deep cold, blinking my stiff eyelids. Then I felt him, warm against my back, and I smiled. I pressed myself into the solid heat behind me, snuggling into him. I remembered waking once before like this, his voice a murmur against my shoulder.

  I caught my breath and went still.

  It was not Heirik. It was Brosa’s hand heavy on my hip.

  The previous night came back to me in half-forgotten voices and images, bit by wretched bit. I had thrown off my clothes and slid into bed with Heirik. I’d done it to save his life. But I knew how we were. I’d felt the call of my body, and the solid and steady response of his. With the slightest movement, his hips had fit into mine. He’d pressed his lips to my forehead. I went away marked as his, without hope of living in that love. No hope of living in a daily state of grace, expressing my burning in a hundred small ways, making food and clothes for him, tending a cut on his hand, tying the leather strips of his gauntlets and braids in the morning. These notions were really over.

  I felt sick and lightheaded, and more aware of the man who laid against my back now. I’d allowed this brother to embrace and soothe me. Taken powerfully by the radiance of Brosa, I’d let loose all my fresh anger and lust.

  Brosa let me go, but something carnal and possessive had been awakened. I had the sense—nei, the knowledge—that his was not just a generous kiss in my loneliest hour. I added the memory of his animal eyes to the heap of shameful moments.

  They were so much like his brother’s, those eyes, Heirik’s sun reflected on Brosa’s sea. I confused him with his brother more and more as I laid here, staring at tough grass and sand. I tried to remember the difference. I had to look and find it. I had to see Brosa right now and observe with cold objectivity that he was a separate man. Already open and easy when he was awake, I wondered how he looked in sleep.

  I turned over, slowly and stealthily, barely breathing, until I could see.

  The sun was making a first weak attempt at the horizon, and in the bluish pre-dawn, his white scar seemed to glow. It came so close to his eye, dipping into the crease of his eyelid like Heirik’s mark did. My heart sped up with fear for him, even now, though he’d cut himself a decade ago. He was too pretty to be like me. Heirik’s mournful voice echoed in my mind. I imagined this grieving boy with dead parents, desperate to belong with his big brother.

  I dragged my objectivity back into place, like a heavy, sea-soaked dress. It was a physical struggle to put feelings behind me and just study. His nose was too short. His hair, though kissed with joyful gold, was a mess. I imagined the sea green that hid under heavy eyelids. His eyes, when he thought no one was looking, seemed tired. His eyebrows menacing. He slept with gravity. Rather than the reckless abandon of a child, this seriousness was what sleep released.

  The heaviness would be forgotten when he woke and smiled. He laughed a lot, so hard that he often slumped against a wall to recover, thumped a friend’s back, raised a cup. He was constantly alive with a kind of jovial kinship. I couldn’t quite understand that this was him. Mirth was his strongest feature, a part of him as much as an eye or ear. It was missing as he slept, and it was almost as though Brosa was absent.

 
His beard was trimmed close, except for a ski slope of a point on his chin that made him into a benevolent blond devil. Svana’s touch—she had trimmed his hair just days ago. I felt a pang of guilt as I secretly touched my fingertips to her handiwork.

  I ghosted my finger along his bottom lip, afraid to wake him, but he slept like a stone. The skin there was unbearably smooth, so soft I could barely feel him. The memory of his tongue sent a rush of blood to sweet places. I didn’t want to get up and run from him, run down the sandy hill and slip into the chaos of waking bodies to pretend I’d never been here. I wanted to stay.

  A violent shake startled me, and Kit’s fierce whisper. “Get up, Woman. What are you doing?”

  A good and simple question. I tried to imagine how I looked, lying on the ground with Brosa, one finger lingering on his sleeping lips.

  Kit glanced down the hill to assure herself that no one else was looking. “It’s a good thing we came up here so early.” It was then I noticed Ranka on tiptoes, trying to see what was happening while her mother pushed her behind her skirts.

  I sat up quickly, my drowsiness gone with a nearly audible snap, furs and cloaks tumbling off me. Brosa stirred and opened his eyes.

  He was instantly charming. “Vaenn dagan,” he said to Kit, with a wink. Beautiful morning.

  “And you stop, Man.” Kit had been instantly softened by his charm, but she managed to add a “já” that sounded like a deeply indignant tisk. Reproof slipping into affection. “What are you trying to do to Ginn?”

  “Not a thing,” I snapped. I stood and brushed black sand from my skirts. “He built a fire and talked to me.”

  One of her eyebrows rose in doubt.

  Brosa sat up, a broad smile on his face, his own eyebrows, and his hands, raised in a gesture of adorable innocence. Kit hissed affectionately at him, and pulled me along with her, down to the tents for morning meal.

  I sat in the scraggly woods of the high ground. A number of women surrounded me, spread out in all directions, dresses sprawled out and snagging on roots and juniper. We picked through the brush to find gripe grass.

  “Or you can call it toothflower,” Ranka told me, and she pointed out her good teeth. “We ate it all winter.”

  Of course I knew that, having eaten it all winter in stews, or by stolen, uncooked handfuls in the pantry. The only vegetable. Ranka showed me anyway, how to spot the delicate cup-shaped leaves, each curled around a sparkling bit of dew.

  She never tired of informing me of everything, and it was nice to let her voice blend into the sussurations of women all around me, and the waves far down on the beach. To let her chatter and announce and instruct in tones that jumped and fell.

  I pulled at grass and willed my stomach to stop roiling, but the more my thoughts circled the more it grumbled. I would silence my thoughts then for moments at a time, picking at the greens. Feather-light, they drifted into my basket.

  “Look, Lady!” Ranka was calling me.

  I gasped when I saw her.

  Her lips were stained a deathly blue. She laughed at my surprise, and the darkness dripped like raven-colored blood. It spilled from her mouth onto her white chin. My vision narrowed until I saw only her laughing face, stained teeth flashing, tongue reddish blue. Her eyes shone. The raven, come before death.

  “It is just berries,” she teased me.

  Betta asked, “Is everything alright, Ginn?”

  I shook myself and looked around, pressing my hands to the ground to steady myself. My voice wobbled more than I’d hoped. “Berries?”

  “Já, they are juniper,” Ranka began, and she told me they were second year berries that overwintered on the plants. I pictured them hunkered down low under dark, clutching branches. The juniper plants sprawled throughout this little wood above the sea.

  Her finger brushed my lips, applying some to me, too. I felt her fingertip stop and touch the space between my teeth. She was still fascinated by it.

  “You finish,” she said, and turned away to do someone else’s.

  I sat still with my finger halfway across my lower lip, feeling the skin where Brosa’s kiss had been. I’d cheapened and confused my own heart. So weak, reprehensible, to cling to someone who was so obviously a substitute. Gods, how embarrassing.

  I looked around me at these women, every one a blue-stained witch, and wondered how many knew that I’d woken in Brosa’s arms. Probably everyone, all over this beach. The chief included. A pang of regret came quick in my chest. I could hardly imagine the pain it would cause Heirik, to hear that news. When in fact, my heart and everything else about me were all for Heirik.

  But I was angry at that coward. My emotions veered and swerved.

  Ripping gripe grass felt good. I yanked away at plants and thought of the litany of what I’d given him. My heart, my body, the work of my hands. My faith in a future that he couldn’t see. Or wouldn’t risk enough to grasp.

  He’d pushed me away a dozen times. This would be the last one, I swore.

  The girls and I emerged from the brush with our baskets of moss and greens and tripped down the hill toward the sand. I looked up and noticed Brosa hacking away with a hatchet at something gross and glistening, and as naturally as though we’d called his name, he turned to see us. He stopped chopping and looked up, seemed to notice our supernatural lipstick. Then he put a hand to his heart. “One kiss, Lady,” he called to me. “It’s all I need.”

  The men all stopped hacking and looked up. The girls around me laughed, and I ducked my head shyly, a lovestruck maid. He stretched his arms broadly to appeal to me once more. “ I swear I don’t stink …” he shouted. “Too bad.” Everyone laughed lovingly at his charm, and I found myself smiling despite my unsettled mood.

  He set himself to chopping again, but not before he gave me one of his devious winks. Gods, he was too easy.

  The whale was broken down efficiently, made into parts—muscles, organs, blubber, bones—every one precious and packaged for home. Gone so that it left nothing but a ghostly impression in the sand and an assortment of curious birds.

  Hundreds of eggs were packed in Hildur’s nest-like cups, every shade of blue-green, from sun-drenched ocean to a shell so pale it seemed tinted by the exhalation of a sea spirit. Juniper berries for drink and medicine were packed in a big basket, and a leather bag full of shells would serve us as scoops, spoons, ladles.

  We were ready for home, but we lingered one more night for a celebration, to thank the gods and the whale. Boys and girls gathered shellfish for our evening meal. Ale and butter were taken from the sledges the thralls had brought from home.

  I sat on the rise above the beach, leaning against the big silver log that was starting to feel like my own. Still wanting to be far from happiness. It wasn’t for me. Not with everything that had happened these few nights, what Heirik had done to me, what I had allowed to happen between me and Brosa. Thoughts circled like an infinity of crows.

  Betta and Kit thankfully scattered them by appearing with horns of ale. It tasted sour and watery, but it gave me numbness and freedom. I thought Kit must have had another cup or two already. She was happy in the dark, free of Ranka and the baby. She smiled at me, then watched me watching Heirik.

  He was bent with some kind of terrible mood. Sitting on a fur-strewn setberg—a seat-shaped rock—that acted as a high seat. Removed and above his family, he was all striking coldness. He sat uncomfortably, drinking and watching. Bunched in irritation, without his typical poise, he was almost beastly.

  “Já, he is fearsome tonight,” Kit said, deftly reading my mind.

  He softened just once, when Áki’s father approached and thanked him formally for his son’s life.

  “There is nothing to thank,” Heirik said gently and genuinely, as though taking the man by the shoulder with his words. “Only remember, when the boy is old enough, he trains with me with ax and spear.”

  The man ducked his head, probably terrified, and yet thankful, blessed.

  So smoothly, Hei
rik had turned a father’s humility into great honor. And Heirik himself was transformed by the task. These times when he took adulation from this family still thrilled and saddened me, and I imagined they did the same to him. He would feed them with the work of his own hands, save them at the cost of his own life, and he would and had killed for them. At once a father and a savage. No wonder they were so devoted to him.

  People murmured to Áki’s father as he returned to his family by the fire.

  And in the man’s wake, Brosa came forward. Heirik instantly returned to his foul mood. He sat up straighter at his brother’s approach, an uncharacteristic rigidity to his spine.

  Brosa dropped to one knee. He planted his ax before him like a sword, as though pledging his fealty. Everyone hushed.

  He was stunning. Brosa’s clothes were new and opulent, brought from his trading voyage. So crisp they shone. He wore leather as blond as his own beard, lighter than any I’d seen in this land, knee-high boots strapped tight around his great calves. Cool white linen showed at his wrists, unbound by any gauntlets, his sleeves hung loose over silver bracelets. His shirt was open at his throat, just enough to allow the glint of Thor’s hammer to show.

  The pale leather and linen contrasted with a tunic dyed the deepest auburn with an underlying touch of crimson—a difficult and rare color to achieve. Embroidered with the palest yellows that reflected and lit up his beard and the streaks in his hair. And oh, his hair. Parted in the middle, he’d plaited it tight against his head the way that Betta wore hers, but just to behind his ears. The rest tumbled wild, halfway down his back. Even with my fingers caught up in it, I hadn’t realized how very long and heavy his hair was.

  He bent his radiant head before Heirik, then looked up at his brother. Silence and tension hovered. This was something special, a declaration, or a request so great as to warrant splendid clothes and a stance of submission. Something drew me to my feet, to stand and listen. Betta and Kit stood beside me.