“Gods, Ginn!” My head shot up. But he must be calling some other woman? He breathlessly pushed through shoulders and arms, leaving irritated and curious faces all turning after him, toward me. A small space opened up around me and Betta. The man stopped just inside the circle and went still, sheer amazement in his eyes.
“It is true.” His voice broke, as if with relief and joy. In a sort of trance, he said, “You live.” Then he shook himself and came running to me. He took me by my waist and lifted me high in the air, spinning me so hard my hair and skirts whirled. When he set me down, he looked at me with the darkest blue eyes in the world, shining with tears of happiness.
“Oh, Ginnlaug.” His straight dark hair fell across his eyes, and he pushed it away. “I thought you were gone forever.” He ghosted his fingers over my cheek, eyes all wide concern when he noticed my scar. “Sváss min. I heard of a lost woman here, with hair like snow, but I could not believe it was you.”
I took his hand, and with great sympathy removed it from my face.
“It is not me.” The words were so stupid, meaningless. Whoever this man had lost, he thought he’d found her. It was heart wrenching, awful, this widower’s delusion. “I don’t know you,” I told him.
A rapt crowd watched us now. The man’s heavy brows drew down hard as though he might cry, and then his wonder and happiness began to fall away. “But Ginn,” he said. His voice was still light, but I heard something subtly wrong underneath it, some dark and slippery form gliding under the surface of a lovely stream.
“It is me, Asmund. Your husband.”
My heart dropped. His eyes were full of a lifetime of love, and he was so sure, that in a disoriented moment I felt maybe I was wrong. Maybe I really did know him. He was my husband, and the 22nd century had been my amnesiac dream. I was Asmund’s sváss, his shipwrecked love. But I shook my head and backed into Betta, who was warm and reassuring. Her long fingers closing around my waist reminded me of who I really was.
Asmund was still sure I belonged to him. His hand closed hard on my elbow. “Or would you rather stay with Rakknason?” The words were bitter and cold as dried fish. “Deny me for a rich house?”
The nervousness that fluttered in my chest became full blown fear. He wasn’t sad, all of a sudden. He’d turned from a hopelessly grieving lover to a threat. Suspended between his grasp and Betta’s, I sent her a silent plea. Know me, I thought. Don’t let me go.
Asmund jerked me free of her. Betta gasped and I could feel her falter behind me, could feel her skirts twitch, physically turning between the only choices, to go or stay. I wanted her to go get help, but the idea of her leaving me here terrified me.
“Ginnlaug!” Another breathless man made it through the growing congregation. “Brother!” He addressed Asmund, astonished. “It’s true, you have found her.”
I pulled harder, but I couldn’t shake Asmund off. The dark navy sky of his eyes turned smug. You are my wife now, his gaze seemed to say. This crowd my witness.
His brother turned and spoke to the crowd, bursting with the story. “We learned of a woman searching for one of her family.” He looked at me, then, as if he were my long lost brother-in-law. “We heard you traveled with Rakknason God-Maker. Is it true, the great chieftain saved you, good sister?”
My voice shook when I answered, but I made my eyes brave and clear. I looked right at Asmund, and I used Heirik’s awful name.
“Let me go now,” I glanced at the man’s wrist, where he held me. “Or Rakknason will make a god of you, too.”
He hesitated, drew back inside himself for a second, and he seemed to be considering meeting the chief. My words hadn’t been a threat, but more a warning. If he didn’t let go of me soon, he would be as good as Eiðr with one precise swipe of Heirik’s blade.
But instead of stepping away, Asmund made a decision. I could see him set his resolve. He grimaced and tightened his grip. His brother grasped my other elbow. Panic began to pulse in my veins. Both of them bored into me with their eyes, telling me I’d go with them, no matter how much I exclaimed or struggled.
I appealed to the crowd. “I don’t know these men!” I yanked and pleaded, “Leave me alone.”
I threw my weight into pulling free, fell back against Betta who caught me in her capable arms and hugged me tight. Asmund reached for my face again, and then he froze.
From behind and above him, a shining blade slid up against his cheek, the sharp edge just an inch from his throat.
“She does not know you.”
Heirik’s voice was calm. I looked up, and he was dark and terrifying atop Vakr’s back. His short sword rested simply against Asmund’s face, the steel pricking up the hair of the man’s dark beard. Every bristle was defined by the sunset, and gold and purple lit up the blade that nestled there. Asmund swallowed, wanted to speak but his voice failed. He sputtered as though his throat were already cut. He slowly removed his hands from me, and without looking at his brother croaked out an order. “Let go, Mord.” Mord let go of me, too, and I lurched free.
Heirik removed his blade, and Asmund turned to look up at him. Framed in bloody sunset light, Heirik looked like a wronged god. His black hair was lit with the orange flame of late sun, his wolfish eyes committed and cold. He didn’t speak. His eyes let go of Asmund, done with him for the moment, and found me. I saw terror under his vicious exterior. His fear for me, that no one else could see.
He gestured with a silent, curt nod for me to get up in front of him on Vakr. Impossible. I’d never be able to climb up on Vakr in front of a crowd. All black hair and steaming breath, he seemed a hundred hands tall, Heirik a giant on his back, and I could already feel myself falling, tumbling from Heirik’s grasp. Then Ginn from Hvítmörk would die. I’d be lost here, Ginnlaug, Asmund’s wife.
Heirik reached for me. He put his hand out.
For a moment, his big palm, his fingers and bracers seemed unreal, and I stared dumbly. But I took his hand, and it was solid. I stepped into the stirrup and pushed off, and with ease and grace he settled me on the saddle before him. He turned Vakr to leave.
I looked back to see mayhem erupting behind us, but to me it was a roaring silence. Men running, escaping, chasing, horses upset, a chicken fluttering at their knees. Magnus had arrived on his shining horse, Faxi. Hár had come. He held Betta against his chest. I couldn’t hear any of it. I put it all behind me and looked forward to wherever we might go.
We walked at a deliberate, solemn pace, and our silence cast a cold pall over the crowd. They deferred to me and Heirik, cleared a path, and then closed again, wordless, behind us.
We were away soon, out of the market, and Vakr continued to walk out past the booths and tents of the camp city, past dozens of glimmering fires and upturned faces, past a thousand big rocks, to the water. A small river ran through the plain, branching and joining other currents and waterways that cut into the dusty land in the distance. The water gleamed a deep turquoise.
We stood at its bank and watched it go by.
A cloud rolled in, white like a fox and filling half the sky. It made the sun’s last light slant and shift, throwing up mysterious sparkles from underwater rocks. The bank curved, rich with moss. Big stones reached into the water, every inch covered with the green of lichens, moss, grass. Where the grass was submerged, it had died and turned gold. The river combed it like a water spirit’s long hair.
Heirik and I were beyond anyone, alone. In the presence of the river, his arm slipped around my waist, and I was still. It became hard to take any more than the shallowest sips of air. Everything was heightened. Every color, the sound of the current. Heirik’s chin and nose touched my hair. The sky turned dark blue. His heart beat against my back.
After a long time, we returned to the booth, me atop Vakr and Heirik walking alongside, his hand resting on his horse’s mane. The sky was gray now, but the moon made it easy enough to see our path.
I did what I’d wanted to do when we walked this way long ago. I reached down
and brushed Heirik’s hair with my fingers, drawing it off his cheek and back behind his ear.
“This was a mistake, bringing you here,” he said, but it wasn’t cold. He didn’t mean to shrug me off, he was just speaking his thoughts. “Magnus will take you. In the morning, you will ride.” He turned his eyes to me. “Go home.”
When we reached the booth, Brosa sat at the entrance tapping on his thigh with a knife. I’d never seen him anxious before. When he saw us, he surged up and came to my side, took me by the waist as I got down from Vakr. His eyes shone with relief, but also something sharp and bottomless that took me a moment to recognize. So foreign to him. Anger. He crushed me to his chest, but I hardly felt it.
I sat in my bed, blankets drawn up around me, the curtain open just enough so I could see people around the fire and hear their happy voices.
I saw Betta far across the booth, sitting on Hár’s bed. Her father hadn’t come on this trip, and so the old man stretched out beside her, his head propped on his elbow so he could watch her with such adoration. She took down her braids before him.
I felt everything unraveling. Everything I accidentally found here, everything I’d built and hoped for and wanted.
Hár touched a brown strand and smiled.
The strange men—Asmund and Mord—sat tied up in the back of the booth, grumbling and every once in a while shouting curses. At times Magnus would go back there and kick them and tell them to shut up. At the fire, not far from where I sat, Heirik talked with Brosa. They discussed what to do with them. I let their words wash over me, Heirik’s dark voice flowing and mixing with Brosa’s softer tenor.
I turned my little whalebone knife in my fingers, let it balance in my hand, flipped it the way I’d seen men do a hundred or more times. I thought I should name it, even though it was tiny and meant for cutting fish or thread.
“Brother, you know I will do anything for you,” Brosa said. My knife stopped turning. His words jumped out against the soft background of nighttime murmurs. “I will give up anything you ask. But as I do this for you …”
There was a pause, a gesture I couldn’t see, then Brosa continued. “She becomes mine now.”
There was more. They talked about other things. But I heard nothing else over the roaring ocean in my mind.
Heirik had planned this. He’d made Brosa ask to marry me. It was his idea.
This was a mistake, he’d said. Go home.
Heirik meant for me to ride in the morning with Magnus, back to the house. But I started to think of another home, where no bright Faxi could carry me, where Magnus could never go.
I huddled in my blanket and made a plan, simple and dumb. I would wait until the darkest point of the short night, then say I needed to go to the stream to relieve myself, so that anyone might hear me.
I would only need to ask a stranger to confirm the direction, but I already knew the way to the sea. Even though the ground had moved and shifted over time, I could see the outlines of the place I’d visited in the far-off future. I knew the direction I’d have to look, past this lake to the ocean, and I would ride that way and keep going through rocks and rivers and trees until I reached the sand, then continue farther, all the way to the dashing waves.
In the back of the booth, where Betta and I had our bed, I sat against the wall and shook, even though I drew the wool close around me. I trembled with adrenalin, for what was to come, and with fear and sadness, teeth chattering. I sat in darkness and could see through a space in the curtain, everyone glowing rosily, seated on benches and around the little tables and upturned logs, drinking so much ale.
Egil and another man arrived, and there were shouts of welcome and an outpouring of drink. Heirik and Brosa returned from wherever they’d gone, and they sat and visited. Heirik was in a foul mood, but I watched him hide it, until finally he became lost in business and conversation. They spoke of ships, and the new man’s arrival from far-off parts of Europe. They talked about trading something, a word I didn’t recognize, and of loyalty and other men who were fools. I half-listened, absorbing the sounds of grave and important talk. Words that held other men’s lives in the balance.
Svana went to them with a skin of ale and quietly filled their cups. She brushed Heirik’s arm with her pale white hand, and he was startled, but he didn’t pull away. She smiled at Heirik, and it broke my heart, so sweet and wide-eyed, so pretty. The men were taken with her.
“You haven’t introduced your wife,” the stranger said, following her curves with his eyes.
Svana was coy, enjoying the man’s mistake. Her eyes flashed my way, and I thought she might be trying to find me in the dark, to make sure I was listening.
“You will remember Svana,” the chief said to Egil. “She is a daughter of my house.” And to the new man, he said. “I have no wife.”
As Svana walked away, the men watched her figure, and the rich trader cocked his head to one side. “Maybe it is time you take one,” he suggested to the chief. “She is old enough, já?” He rubbed his chin, where ale had leaked into his thick red beard.
Heirik looked past the man into the dark.
“Já,” he said absently. “She is.”
It didn’t touch me. In my mind, I was already heading to the sea.
When I went, it was with Heirik’s whetstone in one hand.
I crept into his bedroom, ducked past the sheet and saw the place where he would sleep later in the night. The rough wood of the booth was not our home, and this was not his real place, but the bed was a mess of sheepskins and furs that still held his impression from earlier in the day.
He’d sat right here. Had lain his head here.
I gathered the covers up in my arms, and I drew a deep breath of him, to take with me into the future. Then I stole his sharpening stone. I didn’t know what I would do with it. I just wanted it.
I held it in my left hand, and with my right I took out my new knife. It needed a name before I left. It was little, and it needed a name that felt small but strong. Swimmer came to me, suddenly and in English.
Before I left, I swept my eyes over the sleeping women, and it was still and peaceful. I didn’t even need to tell anyone I was going to the stream. The only one who saw me go was Svana, and she nodded. She would wonder when I didn’t come back, but more likely she’d be relieved. Rid of me.
Drifa was inside the tent, and so I took a nameless horse that chewed on the grass outside.
I asked a woman on my way out of camp whether I was heading to the ocean, and she nodded, looking like I was impossibly stupid. I thought maybe I was just that, a wandering and stupid thing. The horse stepped carefully through a maze of tents and sleeping bodies.
I thought of Brosa, so brave. He adored and feared his big brother, did all that he asked. He would change his whole life for Heirik, give up everything he desired. And yet he’d stood up to him today and said stop. Brosa would be alright without my kiss goodbye. He could take care of himself, and without me he could build his ship and sail away.
Betta sat on the bed with Hár, safe and joyful. I couldn’t face saying goodbye to her, so I just imagined her a few months from now, crowned in flowers, holding his sword in her lap on their wedding day. She would be fine, too.
My mind was already separating from them, going ahead of my body into the future.
The flat stone fit perfectly in my palm. A dark lava rock, Heirik used it for sharpening knives. It usually hung at his waist. I held it tucked inside my closed hand, just one finger holding the horse’s mane.
We rode for an endless, featureless stretch of time. The sky had turned completely dark at last, and I could feel the cold coming off the ground and up the horse’s legs, under my skirts. We passed right through a birch forest, on a road that was no more than a wide, cleared space in the trees. I shivered and swayed along with the horse’s cadence.
A crack sounded in the woods, and my senses woke. A tail flared in the brush, a blink of white highlighted by the moon. It happened again, a
long while later or maybe just a few minutes, the sound of movement. There was nothing to see. Nothing lingered.
It must have been hours later when I snapped out of my trance again. Salt slowly registered in my brain, the smell of the sea. And then I got so close, I could imagine the crashing, and then I could really hear it. The waves.
I salivated, desparately wanting what I had come for. The oblivion I would have soon.
I slipped from the horse and let it go. Eyes soft and unfocused, I struggled on foot the rest of the way. I stumbled when my skirts snagged on big pieces of driftwood. My dress collected the smaller ones, and I brought them with me back into the water, where we’d all come from, me and the sticks.
I went to my knees in the foam, and the cold struck me like a searing burn, for just a second, before my body gave up. I swayed with the water’s pull, in and out. It was time.
I placed my hands in the water, then raised my fingers to my opposite wrist to tap out.
I had loved here. I’d thought I found my soul’s match, my rightful place, all those serenely satisfying moments that make up a good life. The moments in the farm notes, come to life. But I’d come to a place I could study, just like I studied that book on a screen. I could hear the real language, the way I’d dreamed. Could study the gestures and emotions. But it was their place. A place of harsh logic I could intellectually understand, but that my heart couldn’t weather.
Could it?
I wondered at the simple question, and I drew my submerged hand out of the water and spread it flat so I could skim the surface, foam bubbling up between my bony fingers. I rested them gently on my other wrist, just for a second so I could think.
The diary, my romantic heart, they were what I was good at.
My sweetness had the strength of ten Viking boats. Was it really broken?
I heard a splash of something big in the water. I thought the horse had followed me, but then there was a groan, a man’s harsh voice cursing. Fear spasmed in my chest. I whipped my head up and saw Asmund and Mord wading through the water toward me.
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