The Girl the Sea Gave Back

by Adrienne Young

  I nodded. The lie was so easy to give him.

  “Sowilo.” He pointed to the stone, smiling up at Vigdis. “Eydis will grant us victory.”

  “I want to hear her say it.” Vigdis grunted, his arms crossed tightly over his broad chest.

  I swallowed before I spoke, smoothing my face. “He’s right.”

  “Because of Ljós. And Utan. You’ve changed our fate, Vigdis.” Jorrund pressed his hands together before him, as if in prayer. “You were right.”

  Vigdis let out a long breath. “See, brother?” He said it so softly I almost didn’t hear him, the emotion heavy on his face. He was relieved. “In the morning, we take Hylli. And the Svell begin anew.”

  The warriors filed outside, leaving only Jorrund and me standing before the table in the meeting tent. I stared down at the stones, feeling the weight of my own words. I’d never lied about the runes. Never, until now. I wondered if I’d broken some ancient, sacred oath or if the Spinners would curse me for it.

  But in this moment, I couldn’t find it within me to care.

  I could feel the runes’ meaning beneath my skin. I could hear it like a song. And if it was the last thing I did, I’d make sure this fate came to pass.

  12 YEARS AGO

  Village of Liera, Svell Territory

  Tova set one finger on the rune stone before her and slid it across the table. “Mannaz.”

  “Mannaz,” Jorrund repeated, picking it up and setting it into his palm.

  He studied the symbol carefully, turning it in a circle in his hand to see it from every angle. It had been almost a year since he’d brought Tova to Liera, but their lessons had only just begun. The Svell Tala wanted to know the runes the way she did. He wanted to understand them. But when the stones were cast, he couldn’t see their patterns the way Tova could. He couldn’t string their meanings together or fit the pieces where they belonged.

  “Mankind, friends, enemies,” she said, quietly, “social order.”

  She remembered the runes like she remembered how to buckle the bronze brooches of her apron dress or fasten her hair into the intricate braids that fell over her shoulder. She just knew. Somehow, she remembered. But when she tried to pull back the memories from before she’d come to Liera, everything was washed out. They were the crumbling edges of pictures that never came together.

  Sometimes, they appeared in dreams, spinning like a wisp of smoke until they disappeared again. She’d wake with her heart racing, trying to go back. Trying to summon the vision again so that she could fit it to the other pieces that floated in her memory.

  She looked down at the marks that covered her arm, winding together in a maze that she couldn’t navigate. Why could she remember the runes, but not these? Why couldn’t she unearth them from where they were buried in her mind?

  “What is it?” Jorrund leaned forward, his voice gentle. He looked down at her with soft, slanted eyes.

  “It’s nothing,” she answered, setting her hand into her lap and clenching her fingers into a fist. Jorrund was never cruel to her, but she didn’t know how deep the well of his kindness was. She didn’t want to find out.

  He tilted his head curiously. “What is it, Tova?”

  She thought carefully, saying the words in her head before she dared to say them aloud. She’d asked him before about her people and the place she’d come from. But Jorrund never gave her answers. He only turned her questions into something else. “Have you ever been to the headlands?”

  He looked surprised by the question, his eyebrows lifting as he took his elbows from the table. “I haven’t. No one has.”

  Tova swallowed hard, thinking that maybe she’d misread the moment. She shouldn’t have asked.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  She picked at the unraveling linen that frayed at the edge of her sleeve.

  “You can tell me.” He attempted a rigid smile.

  Tova studied him, trying to see beneath the look on his face. She’d learned not long after Jorrund brought her into the village that he rarely said what he meant. He was always molding the people around him. Always scheming.

  “I want to go home,” she whispered in the most brittle voice. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t remember the place she’d come from. With everything inside of her, she wanted to go back.

  Jorrund surveyed her, his back straightening. “You can’t go home, Tova.”

  The sight of him blurred in the tears springing to her eyes. “But why?”

  He took a deep breath, pressing his mouth into a hard line. “I didn’t want to tell you this.” He paused, waiting for her to look up at him. “You didn’t get lost from the headlands, sváss. You were sent away.”

  She wrung her hands beneath the table, trying to understand. “What?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you,” he said again. “But your people … they cast you off.”

  “Cast me off.” She repeated the words, as if saying them with her own lips would help make sense of them.

  He leaned in closer to her. “Do you know what a sacrifice is?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “That’s what you are. Your people tried to sacrifice you. To their god.”

  A sick, twisted feeling pulled behind Tova’s ribs and she pressed her slick palms to her knees, trying to steady herself.

  “You can never go back,” he said. “If you do, they will kill you.”

  The tears welled in her eyes and though she swallowed down the cry in her throat, she didn’t try to keep them from falling. Jorrund set the small rune stone back onto the table and slid it toward her. She stared at it.

  Mannaz.

  Friends. Enemies.

  Her eyes flickered up to Jorrund, and she blinked, wondering which he was.

  Village of Fela, old Riki Territory

  Halvard stared into the pail of water at his feet, where his wavering reflection looked back at him. His eyes were red and swollen, his hair a tangled knot at the nape of his neck. He wiped the tears from his face with both hands before he opened the door, where his mother waited inside.

  She looked up from where she sat beside his father’s body, giving him a small smile. He’d woken in the loft to the sound of both his brothers crying, and as soon as he’d opened his eyes he’d known his father was dead. When the sun had set the night before, he’d wondered if he would go to sleep and never see him again and he was right. Having a mother who was a healer had taught him to recognize the look of death.

  “Come.” Inge held her hands out for the pail and he took his place at his father’s side as she lifted the hot kettle from where it sat on the coals in the fire pit.

  He watched her pour the steaming water into the melted snow and they each took a linen cloth, folding it neatly before they dipped it into the warm water. She dragged it over his father’s shoulder and down his chest, cleaning the skin, and Halvard did the same on the other side, rinsing the cloth as he went. The sweet scent of herbs filled the house and he tried not to look up to his father’s face, keeping his attention on his work. He had been sick for days, and his mother wanted him to go to the funeral fire clean. She had already set out one of his dress tunics and oiled his boots, so he would look his best when he went to the afterlife.

  She finished with the washing and sat beside his body on the table, taking her time to braid his beard in elaborate strands. Halvard dropped the cloth into the pail and listened to her hum a song he’d heard her sing his entire life as she fit silver beads onto the ends of the braids and tied them off with strips of thin leather.

  It seemed wrong that his father would die of sickness when he’d survived so many battles. Halvard had sat in the loft for the past three nights, begging Thora to spare his life. And as he woke that morning, he wondered if he’d ever pray to her again.

  The door opened and Iri came inside, his hands and arms painted with the same gray mud that stained his tunic. Dark red cuts and scrapes traced up his skin where he’d gathered the wood for the funeral fire
. Halvard waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He pulled the dirty tunic over his head, dropping it on the floor, and his blond braids fell down his back as he washed the mud from his arms silently.

  Iri had come into their home mostly dead only three years before, an enemy survivor from battle. But now, he was Halvard’s brother. He was Auben’s son. And there was no mistaking the pain that the loss of him had struck Iri with. His shoulders shook with his silent cries as he cupped the water, washing his face.

  It was almost midday when Fiske opened the door. They were dressed in their finest linen, their hair combed and braided. Fiske and Iri carried their father on a set of planks and Inge and Halvard followed. His hand fit into hers and she picked up her skirt as they made their way to the ritual house in the snow, where the village had gathered to honor Auben. He’d been born in Fela and after forty-six years of life and six fighting seasons, he’d go on to meet his ancestors in the afterlife. There, he’d wait for his wife and his three sons.

  Fiske and Iri set their father’s body atop the funeral pyre they’d built that morning, and then they took their places at Inge’s side. Iri set a hand onto Halvard’s shoulder as the Tala dropped the torch and together, they watched their father turn to ash.

  When everyone had left, Halvard still stood, staring at the smoldering embers, trying to understand how his father could just be gone. He looked up to the sky, where the smoke was disappearing, imagining it taking him to the next life. But something about the thought didn’t bring him the comfort it seemed to bring the others.

  The crunch of boots in the snow made Halvard blink and he looked back to see Fiske coming back up the path. He pulled an axe from his back as he reached him and held it between them, the image of a yew tree engraved in the blade. It was their father’s.

  Halvard stared at it.

  “It’s yours,” Fiske said, setting it into his hands.

  Halvard looked up at him. “You don’t want it?”

  “I want you to have it.”

  Halvard hugged it to his chest, the weight of the iron heavy in his arms, and Fiske got to his knees before him, meeting his eyes. They were still glazed with the loss of sleep and the tears he’d shed. “It falls to me now to raise you,” he said.

  Halvard looked at his boots, buried in the snow between them.

  “Will you trust me?” He held out an open hand.

  Halvard breathed through the pain in his throat as he set his small hand into Fiske’s. His brother stood, towering over him before he picked him up, and Halvard wrapped his arms around his neck, his muffled cry buried in his shoulder. And as the snow fell and the sun went down, Fiske carried him home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  HALVARD

  I walked the path through Hylli alone, stopping before the closed door to our home in the dark, my hand on the cold latch as I listened.

  I’d spent the last hours after the ceremony with Latham and the others, crowded around the fire as we talked through the battle that lay ahead. I’d tried to meet their eyes as the leaders looked to me, asking me questions about what I’d seen in the glade and in the valley. How many Svell there were and how fast they were traveling. How they’d attacked Ljós and Utan. I’d answered them, trying to sound sure.

  But now, my family waited inside, their voices low around the fire. And there was no way to be strong for that moment. There was no way to tell them how sorry I was and I wondered if I would look different to them when I came through the door. If they’d see the shame of it all on me, the way they always saw everything.

  I closed my eyes and swallowed hard before I pushed it open.

  Fiske and Iri looked up from where they stood before the fire pit as I stepped inside, the rusted iron hinges creaking. Eelyn stood behind them, her pale eyes red and swollen. She pushed between them, walking straight to me with heavy steps until she was pressed against my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her as a soft, brittle cry escaped her lips. Fiske took the back of my neck, pressing his rough cheek to mine, and Iri did the same, putting his arms around the three of us. The familiar smell of them filled me, making my chest tight and my legs weak until they were the only thing keeping me standing.

  “I’m sorry.” I spoke into Eelyn’s hair through a strangled whisper as she cried.

  Iri squeezed tighter before he let us go and when I looked up, a tear streaked the side of his face, running into his blond beard.

  “Halvard.” My mother’s voice sounded beside me and I looked up to see her face.

  She’d been crying, but her eyes were set on me with her usual strength. Maybe because she was a healer. Or maybe because she’d lost my father so long ago. But she always seemed better able to face loss than the rest of us, her faith in the gods stronger than everyone else’s combined. The silver streaked through her hair in thick, pleated strands and she smiled as she reached for me, tucking me into her with her hand stroking my hair. I kissed her cheek, trying to meet her eyes reassuringly. But I was barely holding myself together and she knew it.

  “How did it happen?” Iri asked the question and everyone went quiet, waiting for my answer.

  Aghi wasn’t only the last of any blood family Iri and Eelyn had. He was the anchor of the one we’d all built together after the Herja came. And now, he was gone. I didn’t know what that meant. What that made us.

  Eelyn wiped at her face with the back of her hand before she sat down. “Were you with him?”

  I nodded, trying to swallow back the tears that were brimming. I’d imagined their faces a hundred times as I told them what happened in the glade. But the pain of it was so much harsher here, outside of the walls of my mind. “He was killed in a glade outside of Ljós. Brought down by a knife in his chest.” I breathed. “I was with him. I was with him until…” But I couldn’t finish, the memory of his blue, glistening eyes on the sky so clear that it snatched the breath from my lungs.

  Eelyn nodded, her hand winding tightly into her braid.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, crouching down before her. “I convinced them to go. Latham and Mýra were against it, but I convinced Aghi and Espen. I was—”

  “Stop, Halvard.” Fiske cut me off, his voice firm. “He died honorably. That’s all that matters.”

  Eelyn leaned forward, setting her hand on top of mine, and Iri nodded before he took a bottle of ale from the shelf on the wall and set cups onto the table. He filled them as I sat down beside Eelyn, my arm pressed to hers. My brothers took their own seats across from us and the door creaked again as Mýra stuck her head inside, a hesitant smile on her lips. She closed the door behind her and found a seat on the other side of Eelyn, sliding her arm around her waist and pouring herself a cup of ale. “Runa?”

  “She stayed in Fela,” Iri answered.

  I was glad. Both Fiske’s and Iri’s children would be safe with her up on the mountain with plenty of time to leave if the Svell came. But it didn’t feel like home without my nieces Náli and Isla here. And it didn’t feel like our family without Aghi sitting beside us, his bad leg stretched out to the side of his stool and one elbow set on the table.

  My eyes drifted to his empty seat, where I could still see him hunched over a steaming bowl of whatever my mother had made for supper. We ate like that almost every night, all of us together with the girls perched like little owls beside me.

  “Tomorrow?” Fiske looked to me.

  “Tomorrow. They’re already camped in the valley.”

  “How many?” The air changed, the softness leaving their faces as it was replaced by the fight that lay deep inside them.

  “We’re not sure. Maybe eight hundred.”

  The number’s weight fell heavily between us. The odds weren’t good, but my brothers, Eelyn, and Mýra had faced bad odds before. When they defeated the Herja, they’d been outnumbered.

  “What’s our plan?” Fiske asked.

  “We’ll either meet them in the bottomlands or we’ll try to keep them in the forest. Once they get p
ast the tree line, they’ll have the advantage and it will be a quick end.” I stared into my cup. Really, it was only a matter of how long it would take them. “If we can take enough down before they reach the clearing, it will be a better fight out in the open.”

  I watched as Iri and Fiske both nodded in approval.

  “You looked handsome up there,” Eelyn said, changing the subject with a half smile almost reaching her reddened eyes.

  “You looked scared. White as a goat headed for slaughter.” Fiske laughed into his cup and Iri followed before I reached across the table and shoved him, sending his ale sloshing.

  He tipped the cup back, still laughing.

  Mýra set her chin into her hand, watching us. “Aghi would have been very proud.”

  “He would have.” Iri refilled his cup. “It was a good death, Halvard. It was a death he’s wanted for a long time.”

  I wanted to believe it, but only part of me did. I knew he would be proud to die for his people, but I also knew that he had more years to live. He had more to teach me.

  “He felt left behind by our mother.” Iri sounded suddenly tired. “When the Herja came the first time and she died in the raid, he was haunted by it. He thought he should have died protecting her. But Sigr preserved him and he’d always been angry about that. Now, he’s in the afterlife with her, waiting for us.” He reached across the table for Eelyn’s hand and she took it, laying her head onto Mýra’s shoulder.

  The quiet returned until a soft rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. Before he was the man I’d met in Fela, Aghi was a husband who’d lost a wife and never found love again. He was a father who’d raised his children alone. Then, he’d helped lead both clans into one people. It was hard to imagine him as anything other than the warrior that went running to the center of battle in the glade. At times, I had wondered if Aghi and my mother would find love again in each other, but they’d both been alone too long, content with only friendship.

  “I left a stele for him in Aurvanger. It’s by the river.” I pressed my thumb to the sore wound in my palm, reopened by the Tala’s knife.