by Ruby Sirois
“I haven’t been on a date since my divorce six months ago,” he says. “Has it been long for you?”
“My divorce was five years ago. Then I was—well, I was seeing someone for a while, but it fell through pretty recently.”
“His loss, my gain. Right, beautiful?” Pelle gives me a big, suggestive grin.
I force a laugh. “Ja, sure.”
What’s with this guy?
“So Pernilla told me that you own a restaurant?”
“Ja, that’s right. A brewpub, actually. We specialize in small-batch mead. Maybe you’ve heard of it? So Mote It Bee, in Gamla Stan.”
“Mead? That’s like, Viking beer made from honey or something?”
“Well, mead is its own thing, it can be like wine or like beer depending on how you make it.”
“That sounds way over my head.”
I shrug. “I guess it’s not something everyone is interested in. So what do you do?”
“I’m a super boring guy with lots of boring stuff to say.”
“What?”
“In other words, I’m an accountant.”
“Ha! Good one.”
“Did you go to school for the restaurant industry?”
“Nej, I’m an ex-homebrewer gone pro. I used to be a server, though, so it wasn’t a stretch to switch lanes and get to where I am now as a professional mazer. I guess Pernilla didn’t elaborate on that. I’m head of production at So Mote It Bee Meadery. Are you into craft drinks? Have you had mead before?”
“Nej. Actually, I never drink. I don’t like the taste of alcohol.”
“Oh, okay. Not everyone does.”
I don’t have anything against a teetotaler, but now I’m at a loss.
“But that sounds interesting. That must be fun for you. I guess you like getting drunk a lot?”
“It’s not about getting drunk all the time,” I say, trying not to sound indignant. “I’m not an alcoholic or anything. What I really like most about my job is experimenting with recipes and flavors. Yeast is a living thing, so it’s sort of like combining cooking with having lots of pets. Or a garden. It’s fun to watch everything grow.”
He looks unconvinced.
I change the subject to something less sensitive. “Do you like to cook?”
“I’m a terrible cook. My ex always used to get angry with me because I can burn water. So I just eat out, or buy frozen dinners. Don’t get me wrong, I love to eat, but talking about food isn’t all that interesting to me. I don’t really know how people can watch cooking shows all the time.”
“Um.” I love cooking shows. Hell, I could be one.
I look down at my nails, picking at a cuticle.
Think, Emelie. Say something.
“I have a cat,” I offer at last. “He’s a big black Maine Coon. Do you like animals?”
“I’m not really an animal person, either. I’m allergic to dander. I have a nice collection of plastic plants, though. Best part is, they never need watering and they don’t make you sneeze.”
“Oh really?” Gods, this guy’s a bust. “So… what did Pernilla tell you about me?”
Obviously, none of the important stuff. I don’t see how we would ever have anything to talk about.
“The way she described you made you really sound like my type.”
“Really?” I am genuinely confused. “Your type?”
“Physically, I mean.”
Oh. Ohh.
“How so?” Fan. Why did I even ask? I can just feel it coming: Creeper Alert.
He gives me a smile. “I like bigger girls. Women. You know, the thicker the better. Always have. It’s my preference.”
“Ah.” Just as I suspected.
What the hell, Pernilla. Damn you, you evil hag.
“So, Emelie, what’s your type?”
I have to bite back Ragnarr. Ragnarr is my type, and you sure as hell ain’t him.
Nope. Diplomacy, Em.
“My type is, um, I like someone with similar interests. Someone smart, who likes architecture, going out, trying new restaurants and wines. That kind of stuff. Someone I can be myself with. Someone who likes me for me.”
“I already think you’re gorgeous. Does that count?”
“Um, I guess, maybe.”
Nej. Nej. Nej.
“I guess it just takes me a while to see if I click with someone new usually.” A pause. “I never rush into things when I first meet a man.”
A flash of Ragnarr in the woods.
Lies.
Sure, I’m full of it, but it’s essential to head this guy off at the pass.
Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to Creeper Jail.
“Fair enough. You have kids?”
“I like kids a lot, but nej. My ex really wanted them, but it never happened for us, so I don’t have any. I guess you have one? Several? How old are they?”
“I don’t have any yet, but it’s something that I’m really looking for in my next partner. I always wanted a big family. I put all that on hold for my ex-wife, because she wanted to wait and get her career in order first. I don’t want to compromise like that again.”
“So you’re really looking for someone serious, then.”
“Ja. Definitely.”
“What a shame.” Not really. “See, kids aren’t in my future.”
“So you don’t actually like kids?” He jumps on that like he’s uncovered a huge secret. Watch out for Inspector Gadget over here.
“It’s not that I hate them or anything. I just—I can’t have them.”
“Oh!” He sounds relieved. “That’s not such a big deal. There’s always IVF, egg donors, surrogates, adoptions.”
“I went through all that with my ex-husband. I’m sorry, but it’s just not for me. I can’t go through that again.”
“Not even adoption?”
“Nej, I don’t think so.”
“But don’t you think your life is incomplete?”
“What?”
I can’t believe he just went there. Does this guy have a single clue?
“Incomplete. Like, how can you be a real woman without children and a family. It’s just biology, it’s natural. Doesn’t it feel like something is missing for you?”
“Maybe eight or nine years ago I felt a little like that, but not now. I’ve put all that in the past. It’s not going to happen for me, and I’ve made my peace with that.”
“So you’re just going to give up on a dream? It means that little to you? I thought that you wanted kids.”
“I don’t give up on the things that are truly important to me. It meant more to my ex in the end, I guess. I’m happy with my life and my career, and I’d rather focus on that than divert my energy at my age. And speaking of which, I’m forty-one now. I’d rather not be sixty with a teenager at home. Having a whiny, mouthy cat is bad enough.”
My joke falls flat, but I’m not surprised.
“I mean, I can’t be mad that you got divorced, because then you wouldn’t be sitting here with me, lighting up my day. But, don’t you think that, when you meet the right person, you’d do anything to make them happy? To make sacrifices, to create the family you always dreamed of?”
“I only just met you.”
“Sure. I mean hypothetically.”
“I don’t give up on what’s important.”
“You say that, and yet you’re here with me.”
That hits the mark deeper than I expected. Ragnarr. Did I give up on him? I swallow hard.
“You’re divorced too. Aren’t you being a bit hypocritical?”
“But you’re a woman. Women are more naturally devoted to family.”
“Are they?” What is this, 1953? “Why did your ex leave you, then?”
“She was—well, actually, I left her.” An awkward pause. “She got this thing into her head, lost a bunch of weight. Much too much, if you ask me. So then she met someone at her new gym, was totally obsessed with him. Some big meathead, I don’t know. But she was
way less attractive to me by then, anyway.”
He is so pathetically transparent. Sure, Mr. Potato-ey. You left her.
“Was she?” I say. “Sorry to hear that.”
“I don’t know why she lost all that weight in the first place when she knew my preference. It was the end of the relationship in my eyes, even before the cheating.”
Under my breath: “Can’t imagine why she would.” Good on her for getting away.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.” I pull out my phone. “Oh wow, it’s getting late. It was nice meeting you, but I actually have to go.”
Honestly, I can’t blame the poor woman for escaping. In fact, I envy her. I’m thirty seconds from gnawing my own arm off to get away, myself.
“Really? That’s too bad.” He is genuinely disappointed.
“Ja, there’s, um, some alcohol I have to check on back at the meadery. It’s a very sensitive process, it might blow up or turn to poison if I don’t go and take care of it right away.”
Nothing is going to explode or turn poisonous, but this clod doesn’t know that.
Said clod is duly impressed. “Wow, that sounds dangerous. I hope you’re being careful.”
“It really is,” I say, wide-eyed. “So I’ve got to run. It was so interesting to chat with you, though. Enlightening.”
“Give me a call, it’d be great to meet up again soon. I’d love to take you out for a nice big dinner. You like sushi, right? I know this great all-you-can-eat place.”
Fy fan. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s fish.
If there’s two things I hate, it’s fish and Mr. Douche E. Potato-ey.
I’m not even going to get into it, though. I just want to get out of here.
I shoot him a tight smile. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Ass.
28: Emelie
The clink of bottles. I fill them, one by one by one, with a bottling wand hooked up to a bucket of finished mead. It feels like I’ve been at it for years, and every time I look up it seems like there are more bottles to be filled, not less.
For the first time in a long time, I consider accepting Linnea’s offer of an assistant.
I have to admit it: she’s right. It would make my life easier.
I no longer have the patience or the energy to do everything all by myself. This doesn’t feel sustainable anymore.
A noise from the corner.
I startle, turn around.
“Ragnarr?” I don’t know whether to be relieved or enraged. “Is that you?”
I raise my chin, ready to give him a very large piece of my mind.
How dare he come here like everything is fine?
“Nej. Not Ragnarr.”
It is a dragon, but not Ragnarr. Like Ragnarr, he is also very tall, but with vivid red hair that reflects bright copper in the clear morning sunshine streaming in through the windows.
The dragon steps forward and makes a half-mocking little bow.
“We have not met. I am Eiríkur Thoringr, one of Ragnarr’s half-brothers.”
“Eiríkur Thoringr?” A wry little laugh escapes me. “I didn’t even know he had brothers.”
Add yet another something to the long list of facts I didn’t know about Ragnarr. The knowledge tastes acrid in my mouth.
I swallow it down with an effort, steel myself to deal with yet another dragon.
“Okay… so what are you doing here, Eiríkur Thoringr?”
He makes a face. Eiríkur’s coloring is different, the shape of his face a bit more fox-like, but there is definitely strong family resemblance in the beautiful symmetry of his features.
It makes my heart ache.
So close, yet so far.
“Normally I wouldn’t bother to get involved,” he says, “especially not with a häxjävel. But this isn’t exactly normal.”
“Oh, fuck off!” I round on him. “Did Ragnarr ask you to come? Well, both of you can just—”
“Ragnarr doesn’t know I’m here.”
“…Oh.” I deflate, just as suddenly.
This is how I am now. I don’t like it, but I can’t seem to not be this way—volatile, emotional, listless in turns.
Like Eiríkur said: not normal.
“I can tell you, though,” Eiríkur says, “that Ragnarr’s not well. He’s wasting away.” A worried shrug of his shoulders. “We’re concerned about him.”
“Oh,” I say again.
I don’t know whether to be darkly pleased or disturbed at this news. At least I’m not the only one suffering—but it’s cold comfort.
“Well, that’s too bad, but I don’t know what you all expect me to do about it—whoever ‘all of us’ even are.”
“I expect you to listen to what I have to say. All of it.”
Home at last. I am worn to shreds.
My cheeks feel hot and tight, trails of dried tears like lines of acid.
My whole face hurts from weeping. My whole body, my whole heart.
I play Eiríkur’s words over and over in my mind, examining them from every angle. Looking for cracks, for tricks, for a lie that will discredit the whole thing. But I find none.
Ragnarr’s disc, with its fingernail of silver along one edge, glints up at me like the first sliver of a new moon.
New moon. New beginning. New hope.
Finally, I know what I’m going to do. What I need to do.
I take it between my palms, press it to my heart the way I want to do with my dragon.
“Ragnarr,” I whisper, my voice ragged. “Please. I need you. Please.”
I wait long moments. It feels like hours.
But nothing happens.
The tiny spark of hope Eiríkur kindled within me, the last spark of hope I had to hold onto, dies.
I can’t live like this anymore. I don’t know what to do with myself.
I can only think ten minutes ahead. Right now, all I can think to do is take a shower, shampoo my hair, wash the horrible burning feeling from my face.
I go through the motions, but it feels like I’m in someone else’s body. I see my hands, hear the hard spray of the water, feel the light scent of wildflowers float up on the steam like the memory of a wonderful dream.
But it doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem like me.
Wherever I am, it’s somewhere dark and empty.
Desolate, amorphous.
Dead.
Inside me is a black hole, eating me up from the inside. All I want to do is give up. Let it finish me.
* * *
A noise. I’m dressed now. I don’t remember when that happened.
I’m wearing my prettiest sundress, which he bought for me during our shopping spree: white linen with a big circle skirt printed with blue watercolor roses. The same ice-blue as his eyes, as the markings on his scales.
As the heart of the dragonfire which nearly incinerated me and my coven.
I suddenly want to tear the dress off my body, burn it—but I don’t have the energy. My fingers are numb. Everything seems so difficult. The air is clay and I must slog through it.
I want to curl up in bed, to never wake up.
I want to give up.
* * *
An empty plate. Only crumbs left. I have eaten, but I have no idea when or what.
My apartment echoes as if it’s five times bigger than it is. The whole world feels hollow.
I am a ghost, flitting through a dead land.
But I want to live.
I have to live again.
I have to try again.
* * *
“Ragnarr.”
I take a breath, say it again, louder. “Ragnarr! I call you!”
My voice is commanding, powerful, not to be denied. Its strength surprises even me.
A soft sigh.
“Can’t you just leave me alone?”
I turn, and bite back a gasp. Where he once was lean, my dragon now borders on haggard. There are dark circles under his eyes, as if he hasn’t sl
ept in days.
I once teased him that he looked not a day over six hundred, but now—he actually looks it.
My heart twists painfully in my chest. I want to run to him, comfort him. Kiss away the pain in his faded blue eyes.
“I have to make one more wish,” I say.
He laughs: one short, bitter bark. I haven’t heard him laugh like that since the day we met, if even then. It is the familiar sound of the black hole I have had living under my heart.
“Don’t toy with me, häxan. Don’t be cruel. Even the smallest wish would make you mine, make you my hoard. You can’t wish for a damned sandwich without losing yourself to me, and you know it.”
He meets my gaze, his eyes hollow.
“I know what you think of me now. You don’t want that. I’m a monster in your eyes. You don’t—don’t want me. You couldn’t.”
Every part of my being protests. But I do! I do want you! my soul cries.
But I don’t have the words. It’s just as Eiríkur said. Nothing I could ever do or say will convince him.
Nothing—except this. I raise my chin.
“Ragnarr Thoringr, I wish for a sandwich.”
He is dumbfounded.
I continue: “Smoked ham, with avocado cream cheese, on fresh-baked Danish rye bread.”
Ragnarr just stands there, blinking at me.
“And I want sea salt potato chips on the side—kettle-cooked, homemade. And a vanilla bean cupcake, with wild strawberry filling and caramel frosting and rainbow sprinkles. And a bottle of Dragon’s Blood melomel, aged four years. And two glasses.”
Ragnarr’s eyes are wary, but a spark of hopeful light has dawned in them. He is a starving wild animal being offered a gift of food from a stranger.
“Do you know what you’re—”
“You heard me,” I say haughtily. “Don’t forget the two glasses. I prefer crystal.”
“Lilla häxan—”
“My wish, please, Mr. Dragon.”
He has me in his arms in a heartbeat. The heat of him is a forge, singeing the edges of the black hole inside me, commanding its retreat.
A part of me wakes, uncurls. Reaches for the light of him like the tender green leaves of a seedling reach for the sun.