When Hildur succeeded in getting him to push me away, I was immediately handed to Brosa. Hildur watched everything crumble. In desperation and against her deepest beliefs, she sent her little girl in to beguile the disgusting and dreadful chief. The most powerful one.
I had come so far, and for what? To be tied up like this? Taken far from home and family?
Nei, not a chance. I had come back to live in my true home, and I would get there. I had come for this time and place. To see this sky. To challenge Heirik to give all his courage and honor to me.
With all my strength, I sat up to look, and the air seemed to lift an epic sweep of pink and flame-blue clouds until they spanned above us all. They looked solid as the land, their surfaces rough, etched with orange and gold. A spring sunset over lava rocks that stretched forever, covered with moss and cradling the light in a million tiny crannies. I breathed and watched the giant sky, until my eyes turned glassy and my head became light with beauty.
We came to a small stream and Asmund untied me, so I could take a break.
Squatting beside the stream, my enormous wet dress snagged on the underbrush. It would trip me and tangle me up if I tried to run. I looked around, scanning for anywhere to go, any way to hide. There was nothing. Twisted trees stood everywhere, all in leaf, but the forest was sparse and I could see far in toward its heart.
I had no idea where on the island I might be. To get away, I would definitely need a horse.
When I returned, Asmund gruffly told me to give him my wrists. He tied me with the rope, and I did not wince when it bit my open skin.
“Think of your own wrists.” I spoke calmly. “When you meet Rakknason.”
“Shut up, Witch,” he told me, his voice shivering, though it was not cold.
We spoke less and less.
I frightened them, and they didn’t touch me any more than they had to. I did nothing extra to scare them, only existed with my terrible clothes and skin and eyes, just like Heirik.
We stopped to camp. Asmund watched over me, sitting bleary-eyed, trembling. In charge for the night. He watched me, until I pretended to drop off into dreams. I slowed my breathing and became as patient as a stone. I heard him shifting around in the dirt, pushing at the fire with his boot, dropping in more wood. And after a long time, I heard him stop.
I opened one eye the smallest amount and saw that he was asleep. Mord snored on the other side of the fire, curled like a raggy bundle.
Asmund’s leather bag was nearby, not too far. I crawled to it, two hands at once, then each knee, stopping so many breathless times to watch and listen as the men stirred. I seemed to creep forward for hours, each inch toward the bag stretching out like a mile. But they didn’t wake. They were exhausted and slept like the dead.
With both hands, I tipped the bag over and Swimmer fell out. Merely a sliver compared to a man’s seax, still the knife felt alive and strong to my touch. Morgan had sharpened it, and her edge gleamed with 22nd century precision. A few rusty traces of rabbit blood remained, reminding me of my capabilities. My intent.
I flipped it in my fingertips like Heirik would, and I tried to channel his grace and intention. Rather than watch, I closed my eyes and felt what I was doing. Felt the tip of the knife slide under the rope. At an odd and clumsy angle, I could get only the slightest pressure against the bindings, so I sawed gently, focused, forever. My tongue stuck into the corner of my mouth, the slumbering men almost forgotten in the task of doing this complex and real and heart-stopping task. It became contemplative, and the pain of rubbing wrist-skin burned, like mowing my acre.
When it was done, I didn’t waste a second. I took the bag, took both horses, and left.
By the time I heard the shouting behind me, it was far-off, like unimportant birds.
In my daydreams, I always approached home in daylight. Dress and hair flying under an orange midsummer sky, I would reach the house. I would see it, beckoning green and yellow in the fall sun.
But it was spring, unexpected and dusky. I rode in the chill of bluish gray, still wet, freezing. I knew I was pointed away from the ocean, and with only that knowledge, I rode as fast as I dared. Every few minutes, I felt like I wanted to surge ahead, and yet felt acutely how alone I was, how I could be, right now, drifting so far off course I might never be found. Swimming down deeper instead of up, toward the air.
My eyes ached watching the darkening horizon, willing one of the cairns to appear—the ones I’d seen on the way to the Thing, on the way to the coast, anywhere, any combination of rocks that pointed the way to Hvítmörk.
The horse’s ribs expanded and fell in a hard rhythm under me. She was tired. The second horse kept pace, watching me with one wary eye.
After more hours than the horses and I could stand, we topped what seemed like the hundredth small rise. I dragged my gaze up to look ahead, knowing I would see more of nothing ahead of us, and yet hoping for something. I held my breath and appealed to Saga. I’ve come, I told her.
And I saw them, like giants moving against the night. The stone sisters.
My heart soared like a hawk, and then my chest contracted and I sobbed, a rasping, empty sound. Fear and anger and uncertainty had blasted through me, leaving me hollow, and now the promise of home filled every space. Now I knew. I would get there. Not tonight, but I would.
I dropped down off the nameless horse, and the three of us stumbled the last mile, near to collapse with exhaustion. We made it to the base of one of the giant women. A pool of warm water barely touched the earth’s surface, just enough for us to drink mouthfuls that tasted of sulfur and wet wool. The animals chewed weeds. I rummaged in Asmund’s bag and found dried fish. I would be able to eat, too.
Leaning against the terrifying maiden, her head looming high above me, I crunched on fish and named the horses. Rifs, Plunder, would be the bony one, because I’d stolen such a fine girl. Lisi was the one who watched me all day. It meant something like Small Fish. They chewed and nosed close to me, and I wrapped their reigns around my wrists. I laid down next to the little pool and watched the sun drop from the sky. We would rest, and then I’d switch horses. That simple plan was all that remained in the world. I laughed at how easy it sounded, as my eyes drifted closed.
The next day, I put the stone women on my left and followed their path home.
The house sat curled into the hills, the grass on its roof blending with the land around it. It waited for me, a patient animal. In my delirious hunger and desire for this place, I could feel it perk its ears up like a giant beast and know my presence.
The horses and I crossed our river at its narrowest point. They walked right through it without a second thought, and my skirt hems skimmed the water. We rode up the path, past homefield and cows and sheep. As we got closer, the chickens came to regard us with their cocked heads.
I felt satisfaction. No skyward reaching of my heart, like when I’d spotted the great stone sisters. Not the outpouring of wonder and elation I’d felt at seeing the vast and velvet sky, the safety and glory of Hvítmörk. None of those things I’d imagined I would feel. Just a sense of numb completion. I was here.
Hildur stepped up to the threshold.
Vaguely aware of a handful of people in the yard, I saw only her pinched and vile face. I dropped down from the horse without taking my eyes from her, and I began to cross the yard, my dark skirts ragged from sleeping on rocks, a hundred and three days of hunger and pain in my chest. Every ragged edge of my heart was her work. Every brittle icicle that was left in my soul had been shaped by her. It was too much, her daring to stand there in my place.
She backed away as I approached, backed into the mudroom, her face gone white as a spirit. I followed her calmly, as she fled into the house. She was afraid of me. Good.
In the hearth room, with nowhere else to go, she stopped and faced me, and from a sheath at her belt she drew a knife. Like Swimmer, it was a cooking knife, no longer than a hand. Made to cut the heads off fish. But she raised it to me as though it were a
battleax.
I’d always been docile. Even as Hildur’s eyes widened in fear as they roamed my face and dress, I could tell she still thought of me as little Ginn, the one who mooned over the chief and let myself be hurt at every turn. I had always been the weak and yearning one, full of hope and love. My strength was in my capacity for those sad and romantic notions.
Not for this.
I breathed in, and even as my foot traveled, I saw the whole movement as though complete. I felt my leg unfold, my skirt a massive blue-black wing that traced the shape of my kick, defined it in the air. It was the most graceful thing I’d ever done. I felt the connection, and could hear it, too—the moist, solid crack of bone.
I kicked Hildur, and I watched her face crumple, watched her fall. Her head bounced hard off a bench and she was down.
I drew Swimmer and calmly gripped it, not even breathing heavy. The little knife glinted with confident intent, an invitation to fuck with me. But no one else here would.
I looked around, finally, and they were my family, the ones who hadn’t gone to the assembly. Ageirr wasn’t here. Heirik wasn’t either. He would still be at the Thing.
There was no sound from anyone, especially Hildur. I glanced down and took in the sight of her flat on the floor, almost lifeless but for a stuttering, shallow rise and fall of her chest. With my free hand, I drew up my hems and gently prodded her with my foot. She was out like a stone. I used my toe to roll her onto her back. My kick had distorted her face, her jaw was shaped wrong and blood leaked from her nose.
She would be out for a while, maybe forever, but I placed my boot on her chest, in case she woke.
THIRST
Horses approached so fast and loud I heard them through the thick house and felt them rattle my bones. I heard Hár and Magnus calling from the yard. The boy’s beloved, newly dark voice, his father’s rasping call.
And then I heard Heirik. Just outside, angry and rumbling. “Ginn!” He commanded me, even now, to answer.
My pulse quickened. I’d made it, finally, all the way. I made it past months of pain, past the lab and back through 1200 years, past Asmund and Mord, past Hildur, through woods and streams, through time and fear itself, to be here where I stood right now. Separated from him by only our front door.
My pulse quickened, but nothing more. No great outpouring of love. No great emotion at all. It was like a fear response in my animal chest, cold and ready. He stepped into the house, breathless, searching for me, and I saw him for the first time in so long.
Everything slowed like in a fighting sim. He turned toward me, as if he were in a virtual cage match, suspended. He gripped Slitasongr lightly, his hand bigger than I remembered, skin blood red, fingernails black with dirt. He stood ungraceful and exhausted, his hair a horrible mess, stuck in strands across his forehead. I noted his dark brows and desperate, scared eyes searching the room for me.
He thought he’d lost me.
He had no idea.
Somewhere deep I had been bracing myself. I’d come home for honor’s sake, for vindication, to release my pain and the chief’s. But I also came to be with him, to try one more time to be lovers, and to have him by my side. I came to challenge him.
It wasn’t tenderness, not romance, or even simple lust. He was just mine, and I was here for all that was mine.
I stood before him, dressed in death, ink soaked into my skin, cold clarity in my eyes, and I waited. I waited, and time resumed, slowly, languidly enough that I saw everything register. The shock as he took me in, his eyes traveling over my face, dress, hands. Knowledge growing, the spark of realization, that I must have gone to my other place and time. Gone long enough to change. Then his face transformed with a lightening wonder that would have charmed me four months ago. A look in his eyes that would have melted me.
“You returned,” he said.
“This is my place,” I told him, and it wasn’t unkind, but I could hear no warmth in my own voice. “She tried to take it from me.”
Heirik followed my gaze to the floor, where I held Hildur under my foot, and his eyes widened. He grinned, and it seemed the sun filled the house. Já, he thought this was wonderful.
For him, anxious hours had passed. A few days of heart-stopping fear that I might be hurt or dead, two days of anguished remorse, maybe. For me, it had been months. I’d felt bone-crushing regret. I’d grieved for so long. I’d felt my own eyes slide closed and give up to the false, flat world. And I had let them.
My relief at seeing him was tempered by all these things that had passed.
In all the time I’d prepared for this moment, I’d thought of a hundred ways to start. I’d thought maybe love would rush fast and free inside me and the past hundred days would fall away in a tangle of bodies and mouths and pledges and endearments. I thought of simply touching him and saying nothing at all, just reaching for his cheek, brushing his beard with my fingers. I thought of telling him that a glimpse of his face on a cold screen was able to wake me, when nothing else could. I imagined starting off by telling him I loved him.
“You think you are a god maker,” is what I said. “You’re not. You are a man.”
He took a step back and cocked his head as if he hadn’t heard me correctly. Brosa came up beside him, breathless, concern across his features, changing to confused wonder when he laid eyes on me.
“Woman, what—” Brosa started, but I didn’t let him speak. I’d risked my life, with a desperate hope that Saga might bring me here again, and now I would say everything I needed to say. I spoke to Heirik.
“—Ageirr and Hildur are responsible for every bad thing that has happened to me. For stealing me away, for my burns and injuries. Ageirr,” I said, looking around the house, though I knew he was not there. “Hildur.” I spat her name, pushing at her with my boot. “Not your curse, Heirik. You are not special like that. You are real.”
Heirik just shook his head and found nothing he could say. Unreadable, even to my eyes. So I went on.
“They have taken so much from us.” My voice was clear like a polar morning. “If we remove them from this life, it will release us.”
The air went unnaturally still, everyone waiting.
I watched Heirik closely, watched all the small motions of his features and moods that I knew like no one else. He was fascinated, and he was considering. Like a season shifting in the course of a minute, his eyes turned from golden wonder to ice-cold rage, not at me, but at Hildur and Ageirr. I watched him come to agree with me, and it was like pure fire in my veins.
“Já,” he said, and that one word was vindication, promise, love song. It contained all of his belief in me, his agreement, his wish for justice. “I will find Ageirr.”
It was quiet for the briefest moment. Unstated words hung heavy, as if he’d really spoken them and they’d taken solid form. I will kill him, the very air seemed to say. And more. I will do whatever it takes. Even die. There was always that chance, even though he flew like a demon in a fight. The chance that Heirik might not come back.
His features changed before my eyes, from anger to fear.
He was afraid? I’d seen him swing his gorgeous ax and cut down men all around, seen him throw a spear with cold precision. But he looked, right now, as though this was the most terrifying moment of his life. Was he hesitating to fight Ageirr? After all the man had done?
After a silence, and a painful breath, two breaths, Heirik spoke.
“Be my wife.”
Oh. Heirik didn’t tremble in the face of death. Only before me.
He stepped close to me, finally, and it was him, my love, touching my face, tracing the tail that curved around my eye. “If only for a moment, Woman. Let us know what it’s like.”
I wished for joy. I wished that the softest and sweetest love would rush in, filling me with warmth and relief and the impossible glory of yearning fulfilled. But what I felt was a cold kind of rightness. It was done. I thought I should be angry. This—Heirik being brave and mine—was all I ha
d wanted, all the time I had known him, and he could never give it to me. Now here he stood, making it seem so simple. Now, after I’d put away hope and happiness with my farm notes and cherry dress. My whole body thrilled with anger.
A thousand times over I would marry him.
“Já, then,” I told him. “Be my husband.”
Only after I’d said yes, did I think to look toward Brosa. His words rang in my mind. She becomes mine now. I owed him an honorable breaking of our contract. He stood, back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, and at first I thought he was shaking with anger. Then I realized it was with amusement, barely restrained laughter. When I caught his gaze, he raised an eyebrow, and then nodded to me. His blessing.
“Uncle,” Heirik called in a massive bellow as we left the house. “Marry us now.”
Hár looked up from where he stood talking to Byr, and his bushy brows drew together, his mouth opened to speak. But he didn’t. He just looked at me dumbstruck. Finally, he turned to Heirik and nodded.
Hár called on our gods to make this marriage strong, all the while watching me, scanning my face with frank bewilderment. He joined us with the shortest possible ceremony that would suffice for the few witnesses. When the time came, I sat on an upturned log and Heirik placed Slitasongr in my lap like a babe. “For our sons,” he said with teeth gritted. At the threshold of death, he would give me such a thing.
Heirik turned to formally tell the few who stood around us. “Ginn is wife of our house now. Make sure this is respected.”
“Nei—!” An ugly screech came from the threshold. Hildur staggered, bloodied, out into the yard.
Magnus grabbed her by the arm and pledged, “I will make sure, Herra.” It sounded like a final vow.
Heirik bent to kiss me, and I met him with a kiss as empty as a shell. He asked for more. “Give me your sweetness, Litla.”
“It’s been too hard for me,” I told him with clear, dry eyes. “I’ve given up sweetness.”
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