Beautiful Wreck

by Larissa Brown

  In the box lay a few slender bones, hollow and finely sharpened, just like Brosa said. I picked up the priceless vial of ink that lay next to them, and it fit into my palm. I laid these things out on the small table.

  “Everyone settled,” I started to write.

  I thought of how the diary looked in my contacts, and I made the shapes by hand. My words as powerful as the runes on a healing bone. Someday, I would teach him all the letters, and he could write me a love poem.

  A knock came at the door, and Brosa filled the doorway.

  He looked like a beaming bear, dressed in a work shirt, sleeves pushed back and crusted with mud. He’d wiped his hands on his pants, but they were still brown with dirt. He brought a gust of fresh air in with him, a waft of grass and sun, and I squinted as if he himself were radiant. How long had I been sitting here, with the edge of the bed biting into my thigh, my hand on Heirik’s chest? How long since I’d seen the sky? A night and a day and into the next evening, I thought. I couldn’t remember.

  “How is he?” Brosa asked.

  “Sleeping,” I reported. “No change.”

  Brosa took just one step into the small room and looked from there, seeming to assess his brother and then settling his gaze on me.

  “It’s shining outside,” he said. “You should come.”

  “I …” I tried to imagine sunshine, tried to picture myself walking in it ever again.

  I hardly knew how to speak, how to encompass everything I felt for Brosa. Here he stood, this brave and tender man who had been willing to put behind what he loved, put the sea and wind and the lure of other lands behind him, to stay here at Hvítmörk and marry me, give me a good life.

  “I am sorry,” I said, my voice cracking, my hand reaching for him.

  With alarm, he came to kneel at my feet and take my hands. “Nei, Woman! Why?” His nails were filled with dirt.

  “You would give up everything for me,” I said, barely rasping the words out, but I lifted my head finally. “And I turned from you in a heartbeat.”

  He looked up at me with those sparkling, sea-green eyes. “You told me that you would hurt me.” Then he winked and his broad smile came. “You are close to my heart,” he said. “You’ve given me the greatest gift any woman could. You love my brother.”

  I ducked my head. He was always so generous and good.

  “I heard you,” I told him, brushing tears from my face. “When you spoke with Heirik at the Thing. You told him I would become yours now.”

  “Ahhh,” he said, something beginning to make sense. “Já, well, you must have missed the rest of that conversation,” he said ruefully.

  “The rest?”

  “My brother said nei,” he sighed, “and tried to take my arm off.” Brosa looked down at his wrist and shook his hand out. “I reminded him it was not my idea.”

  He laughed, but I was quiet, my breath suspended.

  “He was sick with love-grief,” Brosa told me, as though it might excuse anything. Then with a big breath he said, “Anyhow, Egil and Rafnson came, and we had to make a good show of it.”

  I thought of Svana serving those men, of Heirik’s cramped mood, deftly hidden to all but me.

  Brosa continued. “We talked about you later, for a long time. About what he had done to you. What he had to do to make things right.”

  “Já?” My laugh was laced with bitterness, and I cast a dark glance at Heirik, sleeping. “He is devious. I can hardly imagine what else he thought he could do.”

  “Uh, marry you?” Brosa suggested.

  “Oh.”

  My heart lurched. In the gray pall of that miserable night, even as I stumbled to the water and washed my hands in the tide, even as I tapped out in bleak emptiness, Heirik had been changing his mind, resolving to ask me if I would live by his side. Like a bird looking down on it all, I saw him stand with resolution inside the tent at the Thing, orange lamps lighting the canvas. I saw me drop to my knees at the ocean, the water like black oil covering my hands.

  “It did take him a long time to come to that decision.” Brosa’s words brought me back. “And a great deal of ale to get him to admit he had been gravely wrong. Even more drink before he realized the world did not revolve around him, and that he might be too late.”

  “He was,” I said. He was far too late. Only because I fought to come back, did we have one more chance.

  Brosa lifted my chin and turned my head so he could examine the whale’s tail around my eye. He cocked his head to see it from another angle. “Where did you go?”

  “Where I came from,” I said reasonably, explaining nothing.

  “I see.” His thumb traced the ink, and he seemed to decide this answer would be enough for now. He stood, and his hand on my shoulder was strong and sweet. “You will be his wife yet,” he said. “He owes you that much.”

  I smiled and wiped my cheeks and chin where tears gathered.

  “And he is a stubborn boar,” his brother added.

  I laughed the tears away. “Já, that he is.”

  I thought Brosa would leave then, but a pause hung in the air until it became awkward.

  “Ginn,” he started, and I looked up to him and felt my own eyes wide and lost. Brosa went on, “You need to come outside now. You are in charge of this house, and Hár and Betta marry tomorrow.”

  It felt like a kick to my chest. “So soon?”

  “Já, it has been planned this way, you know.”

  He looked tenderly at Heirik, at the place where my hand now rested defensively on my husband’s chest. “It’s already begun,” he said with a strong hint of apology in his voice. “People are arriving. We’re digging. Laying the stones and starting the fires.” He held up his hands, palm out, to show me dirt and char.

  I sniffled. “Já,” I said, slowly waking from a trance. This was what I’d wanted, had been born to do, to be the wife of this house, and yet I sat with clean hands in a small, dark room. “Já, I see.”

  I stood and looked around me, picked a shirt off the floor as though I could prepare for a wedding as quickly as straightening our room. I pressed my skirt flat against my legs. Then I rose to my full height. “I will need the thralls to bring up ale and food, get the tables down. The boys can finish helping you, and Ranka can bring out the cups and bowls and be in charge of shining.”

  Sleep or no sleep, glorious life went on growing like flowers on a house. And I would tend it.

  Brosa looked at me with profound relief. “You have seen this done before, then.”

  I nodded and laughed. “Já,” I said. “Hildur had me practice many times.”

  I glanced back at Heirik and bent to tuck a blanket around him. I kissed my fingers and touched them to his mouth, promising silently that I would be back, and then I walked out to join the wide, sunny world of the living. I willed him to follow.

  Hár walked down the length of the house, away from me. The sun shone on his back, and he held a gleaming short sword in his hand, swinging it unconsciously, like a song. It was the one from above Heirik’s bed. When Heirik and I were married in the open grass, outside this house, he’d given me Slitasongr for our sons. This sword, Heirik’s great-grandfather’s, would be for Betta.

  At the end of the house, Hár turned back to nervously pace this way now, toward me. He wore the torc Betta had given him—the one from the assembly market, cats snarling at his throat. The bronze played against the sky of his eyes and the gray at his temples and in his beard. He wore his hair all down around his face, more supple than seemed possible. It whipped around his strong jawline in a quick burst of wind.

  He smiled to me as he came closer, his hand brushing the house the way Heirik and I both did sometimes. He was all the colors of a deepening sky, the amber flash before becoming night, the way Betta saw him when they met at the woods for the first time.

  “We should wait for my nephew,” he said. He glowed with anticipation and love, and I knew he was saying this because it was right. But he wanted Betta.
And I wanted to see them together. Something good and promising on this windy day.

  “Nei, Old Man,” I said. “Brosa will do fine. Heirik would want you married.”

  If Hár was the sunset, Betta was the tall grass, exploding with life. She rose from her spot on the ground among the flowers, out near the forge where she’d sat to do her hair. She looked green and luscious, like a gift, loaned to Hár by the land spirits.

  The fabric he’d given her was rare, dyed a deep emerald that echoed her eyes. Cotton from the east, I thought—bómull, tree-wool, so gauzy it clung and fell like clouds. The dress she’d made was long and simple and flowed like mist over the subtle curves and hollows of her breasts, waist, hips. Snow white linen and pale bare feet peeked from underneath. She wore no jewelry on her arms or throat, the only adornment an intricate green-on-green embroidery that she’d worked into the bodice. It was a large square, criss-crossed and surrounded by radiating patterns that entwined just where Hár’s hands would hold her. Her skirt flew out with a sudden gust, and wrapped around her legs. She crossed the few feet of grass to me and threw her arms around me.

  Her bony shoulder blades stuck out under my hands, and I thought about how I would no longer feel them poking into me while I tried to sleep. I kissed her cheek, warm and dry.

  We stood on the highest point, by the forge, and looked out over Hvítmörk. We gazed at the tossing mess of trees, stretching for miles, and the wind came like a god’s hand skimming over the treetops and flattening the leaves. It hit us hard, too, against our backs, pressing us forward. Everything streaming forward, our skirts billowing in demented swirls. Chickens moved around our feet, and my dog came to sit at my side, pressing my skirts in place with his heavy, hot body.

  This bittersweet wind had whipped all through the day. The best, most incredible day of Betta’s life, a glorious day she’d waited for since she was born. But without the chief to marry her to Hár. Without Heirik, who despite ugly curses and imprecations, had always been important to her. She’d knelt in our room and touched his face. It was tender, clearly something she’d wondered about but never done.

  “He was not for me, Ginn.”

  My heartbeat scattered, and two chickens pecked, as though they’d heard it fall in the grass. Gods, she always went straight into my thoughts, with ice-pick precision. And dumb and selfish I stood beside her, on her greatest day, thinking about myself.

  “He resisted wanting me just fine,” she added. Something far gone, that had passed between her and Heirik, was released. She smiled playfully and tugged on the keys at my waist. “Never you.”

  I laughed with her. “Nei, he couldn’t resist me.” It was true. “And his uncle failed completely at resisting you.” I reached for her hair. Long and indiscriminately brown, shaped with loose finger curls, it gleamed with the barest sheen of oil steeped in juniper and roseroot. It whipped and tangled in my fingers.

  Oska-byrr. A fair wind to one’s heart’s content.

  “You will not believe how gorgeous your man looks.” I told her.

  “Nei, I won’t be surprised,” she said. “He is beautiful to me every day.”

  “I challenge you, then,” I told her. “To stand unmoved when you see him.”

  “Fine,” she said, and she pushed at my chest with her palm and then took off running. I stood baffled for a second, and then realized she wanted to me to race. I ran after her, in the crazy wind, her wedding dress flying out behind her.

  They married by the ravine, under a billowing sky, with dozens of people who’d come for the party. Maybe a hundred, I calculated, wondering if my ale stores would hold.

  Betta rode the few minutes to home on a horse—Hár’s own Byr—carrying a bursting bunch of white flowers. Amma’s crown sat low on her forehead and sparked with golden light in the late sun. Her husband walked beside, leading his horse. When they reached the house, Hár swept her off the saddle and held her in his arms. It was a terrible omen if a bride stumbled in the door, and so he carried her across the threshold. Her hair trailed over his arm, and fallen snowblooms marked their wake.

  At the party, Brosa made the sacrifice and blessing, and I couldn’t watch. All I saw was Heirik, like a spirit, doing these things that should be done by him. The blood of sacrifice running from his ghostly fingers, not Brosa’s. A glass raised in blessing by his spirit self.

  Brosa sat on the high seat, then, and as the highest ranking woman in the family, I served him ale. Over the cup, our eyes met. His always looked ocean-tossed, and tonight they were full of bold joy.

  He touched my face and then bent to speak low and sweet in my ear. “My brother is strong. He will be well, Ginn,” he told me. I squeezed his hand and he kissed me, soft against my temple.

  By the time I’d served Hár, Betta, and a couple other people, Brosa was through with formality and shouted “Drink, Fools!” to everyone in the hall. Happy shouts came and everything dissolved into wonderful, joyous chaos.

  My work was done, and I wanted to be close to Heirik. I set all thoughts of cups and drinks aside, and I backed away from the party. I would go to him now. Now that my best friend was secure and happy, I would leave, and I would lay down beside him and tell him about the wedding.

  I stood for a moment, in the door to the back mudroom, and watched and listened. The voices were happy and filled the house like a packed barn. Among them, I could hear Hár’s thunderous laughter.

  The old man beamed at the center of a mass of people, and he lifted Betta onto his lap like she was a tiny thing. Brosa crashed his cup against his uncle’s and the two drank. Then Hár dipped his fingers in the ale. “Thor, give me strength,” he said, and made the T sign on Betta’s forehead. “There are too many hours before I can bed this woman.”

  Betta choked just a little on her drink, her cheeks pink. I could see she was not truly embarrassed. She sparkled and smiled so that her teeth showed big and white. She leaned over and showed Lotta her ring, and the little girl reached out a single chubby finger to touch it.

  Heirik stepped up behind me. Alive.

  A tingling spread quick and low from my spine and filled every tiny space in my body, inside my heart, between my fingers and toes. His hair brushed against my cheek, and I stood still for a moment, as if moving might break this illusion, might make me wake. But he was really there. He smelled of stale sweat on linen, the most luscious scent in the world.

  My lungs felt light and entirely full for the first time in so long. I sighed and breathed out a thousand cramped and tiny spirits of fear and darkness.

  His shoulder was a promise when I lay my head back against it. He wasn’t gone. He was here and would not go again. He would be the husband of the diary, with the fourteen good fleeces, sweet to my eye. My whole body melted back into his and he sheltered and held me up. I gave up the days of managing and ordering, the hours of cleaning him as he slept, the night fears that gripped me with the thought that he was gone. I gave them all up, and I let tears flow. His heart beat into my back and right through me as if it were my own.

  “You spun,” he said.

  I laughed, but it was breathless. I couldn’t speak to answer.

  I felt Slitasongr’s handle against my calf, its iron cheek against my ankle. He was using it like a cane. With his wounds, he would have lurched here with desperate purpose, just feet from our door though it might as well have been as far as the sea. To be with me. His breath came hard against my ear, nearly destroyed from the effort. His mouth, his voice a pressure and flow of air against my neck. Panting, he pressed his lips there. And we stayed, swaying gently together, his chin on my shoulder, hand on my belly, sliding farther around my waist, until his breathing slowed. Exhale with me, Love. Onda. Inhale.

  He looked past me, over my shoulder at Betta and Hár.

  With one finger, the old man traced the neckline of Betta’s dress, and she laughed and sparkled.

  Heirik’s voice was like gravel, coarse and unused. His arm around me tight now, words agains
t my throat, he said, “Let that be us.”

  Winter again

  Thick skates carried me, made of the bones of fast FjoÐr. Leather thongs held them onto my boots, woven with expert twists and knots. We propelled ourselves with wooden poles tipped with iron spikes.

  The water underfoot was solid white and thick as a little glacier. We moved on its surface, free. Air speared my lungs, brilliant like metallic light. Heirik’s hand held mine too tight, a rough grasp of love.

  Lark-like voices echoed in the ravine behind us, Betta with the little girls. Then Hár’s gruff thunder. None of Svana’s lilting tones. She lived far across the fields with her husband, Eiðr.

  Heirik and I surged ahead alone. Fjoðr’s bones carried us as quick and glorious as the horse himself, slicing through a sudden wind.

  We glided over Heirik’s ice-buried fort, over the frozen current that had swept away our first awkward fear. We glided over everything that had come before. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He moved like a gorgeous nightmare, dark and bloody and grinning, and I was the rest of that terrible dream. I imagined my ink that matched his mark, thought of our eyes flashing gold and ice. A cloud of laughter burst from my lungs and was taken by the speed, a little puff of mist gone behind.

  Heirik suddenly grabbed me and swung me in a stunning arc. We flew off our feet and landed in a snow bank, a mess of bodies and skirts and bone-strapped feet. The cold bit my cheeks, and his lips burned against mine.

  Above us stretched an exploding sky, streaming with white and silver light. A storm was coming. Nei matter. We both smiled into our kiss.

  MANY THANKS

  To my husband Martin John Brown who parallel wrote novels with me, and my 8-year-old son Sebastian who wrote several books in the time it took me to write this one. To Shannon Okey, a publisher who loves my book with all her heart. SCORE! To my editor, Beverly Army Williams, and to my friend and adviser Sarah Gilbert, who got me poisonous angelica root when I wanted to make Viking mouthwash. Thanks to my very first readers whose excitement made me realize I had really written a book: Stacy Crockett, Laura Stanfill, M.K. Carroll, and Rachael Herron. To Arabella Proffer, Tamas Jakab, and Elizabeth Green Musselman for their help with the making of the book itself. To my mom Eileen Golden for the quiet time and love.