The Girl the Sea Gave Back

by Adrienne Young

  “Thank you.” Iri’s deep voice broke the silence.

  “And I killed him,” I said, “the Svell chieftain who killed Aghi. I killed him.”

  Fiske looked up at me then, leaning onto the table with both his elbows. There was nothing to say. It didn’t lessen the blow of losing Aghi or even begin to make it right. But it was a blood feud that felt like my own. Even if our people had left those ways behind, they still lived in me. And I’d taken my first life, which had its own cost. I’d killed without even the slightest bit of hesitation or guilt. Even now, I wished I could do it again. And I wasn’t sure what that meant.

  I stood, setting down my empty cup before any of them could say anything. I didn’t want to talk about it, I just wanted them to know I’d done what they would have done. And I didn’t want them seeking revenge for Aghi in battle when the sun rose. I wanted them to fight with the peace of knowing it was made right.

  “Where are you going?” Eelyn wrapped her hand around my wrist, holding me in place.

  “To walk.”

  She almost objected until Fiske gave her a look and she let me go. “Alright.”

  I unbuckled my father’s armor vest, pulling it over my head and setting it on the trunk with my sheaths. The door closed behind me and I listened to the sound of my brothers’ voices drift away on the warm wind as I walked up the path that led to the beach.

  The stave burning on the hill in the distance had gone out, the Svell sleeping before their march down to the fjord. It was so dark that the place where the water met the black rocks was invisible, only the gleam of moonlight shining in a blade-straight line on the water.

  It was the same path I’d walked for more than half of my life. The same steps I’d taken as a boy, as a young man, and now, as the chieftain of a people that didn’t even exist when I was born. There was no accounting for the will of the gods or the futures that the Spinners gave to mortals. It was the reason Aghi, Latham, and Espen spoke the words lag mund. Fate’s hand.

  The battle that awaited us was only a knot in the thread on the tapestry of our people. And though I’d known for the last two years that I’d eventually stand before them, I’d never been so aware of how incapable I would feel in the face of leading.

  The Nādhir would follow me into the mist of the forest when the sun rose. And only the gods knew if we’d ever come out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  TOVA

  I dreamed of the water.

  The slice of cold against my skin and the twinkling light, dancing on the surface far above me. Slowly, it pulled farther away, growing smaller and the darkness spreading wider as I sank into the depths of the sea. And there, the woman’s song found me, the lilt of a quiet, gentle hum in the emptiness.

  Wake up, Tova.

  I followed the drift of the voice to the fire from the fragments of a memory that always found me in sleep. The glow of it cast across my bare skin as I sat naked on a stool, a pair of hands at work on the stag’s horns on my arm with a glistening needle. The shadow shifted, moving every time it came into focus, and I tried to hold it still long enough to find the pieces that fit together.

  Wake up, Tova.

  My eyes opened and I gasped, my lungs stiff and frozen, as if they’d been filled with the silver seawater that surrounded me in my dream. But I was no longer sinking in the black emptiness or sitting before the fire. I was curled up beneath a bearskin in my tent with the roll of a storm growling in the distance. I was in the valley.

  The repeating call of the nighthawk made me jolt and I sat up, the fur dropping from my shoulders. The camp was silent except for the slide of wind over the corners of canvas tents. Crisp night air blew in from outside and I pulled back the flap carefully until I could see the moon behind a stretch of thin clouds.

  Before it, the All Seer circled overhead.

  I breathed, listening to the beat of my own heart in lock step with the flap of the nighthawk’s wings. The Spinners had sent him, like they always had.

  But this time, he’d come for me.

  I pulled my boots on quickly, keeping my eyes on the light casting into the tent. There was no mistaking the runes, but the future wasn’t fixed. It was a thread that changed color with the shifting of the present and the past. A wave that rippled out to the vast, open sea. And if I wanted to be sure it came to pass, I needed to be there. I needed to stand before Hylli and watch the future come.

  Halvard’s axe hung heavily at my hip as I pulled the canvas back carefully, peering out to see Gunther at his post. He sat on an overturned crate with his knife in one hand and a whetstone in the other, sliding it down the blade in an arc to sharpen the gleaming iron. His sword was sheathed at his belt, his axe at his back. But the only chance I could take was with Gunther. I had no choice.

  I stepped out into the moonlight and he went rigid at the sound, the knife turning in the light. His fingers closed tightly over the stone in his big fist and his eyes studied my bloodstained hands before they lifted to meet mine. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m leaving,” I answered, my gaze flitting back to the sky, where the All Seer was still circling.

  “What?” He stood, hiding me in his shadow, and suddenly, he looked like one of the giants from the old stories of the gods. My heart thumped in my chest, watching the knife at his side and waiting to see if he would raise it against me. But the moments passed, the silence returning, and he didn’t.

  “I can end this,” I whispered. “All of it.”

  He didn’t move, except for the twitch of his hand on the handle of the knife.

  “I’ve seen the future. You should go back to Hǫlkn. Back to your family.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I won’t hide in my home while my clansmen fight.”

  I knew he wouldn’t. But I didn’t want to see him lying dead on the battlefield. I didn’t want to stand against him or see him fall. He was a good man.

  I reached beneath my sleeve and untied the bracelet around my wrist. “Then take this.” I held it out to him, the copper disk heavy in the palm of my hand.

  “What is it?” he breathed.

  “It’s a talisman. For protection.” I didn’t tell him that there wasn’t a talisman strong enough to hide him from the wrath of the Spinners.

  Gunther looked down at me for a long moment before he tucked his knife back into its sheath. He took the bracelet from my hand, turning it over in the light.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Why did you come to the beach that day?”

  “Because you were a child,” he said, simply.

  He wasn’t a warm man. There was no softness to him. But he’d been kind and he’d done what he thought was right even when no one would have agreed with him. He was maybe the only person I could trust on this side of the sea.

  “I have no family left.” He looked up, suddenly. “My son Aaro died in the attack on Ljós.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “I didn’t know he was going. I didn’t know what they’d planned. I have no family left,” he said again.

  “Then stay alive to find a new one.”

  His fingers closed over the talisman until it was hidden in his fist and he walked to the edge of the forest, where his horse was tied to the trunk of a wide tree. He ran a hand up its snout before he lifted my bow from the riggings and untied the quiver.

  I smiled as he held them out to me, but he only stared at the ground between us as the shadow of the nighthawk swept overhead again. Its wail rang out above us as I dropped the bow over my head.

  “Thank you.” I reached back to feel the feather fletching over my shoulder as I secured it.

  Without a word, he turned, giving me his back as he walked away. I watched him grow smaller in the low light and I held my breath as he disappeared between the tents, the lump in my throat winding tighter. I hoped it was the last time I’d ever see him. I hoped his blood wouldn’t pay the debt for what I’d done.


  The nighthawk cried again and I looked up, watching him tip his wings and turn to break the circle. He flew out over the forest, headed east, and I knew. The same way I knew the sound of the woman’s voice in the broken memory. The Spinners had answered my prayer. They were leading me. And now it was time to follow.

  I didn’t look back, walking straight into the trees toward Hylli until the camp disappeared behind me, glancing up every few steps to keep an eye on the All Seer above. He flickered in and out of view, vanishing behind thick branches and then appearing again against the lambent, cloud-covered sky.

  The moon’s path curved overhead as the hours passed and I was swallowed up by the belly of the bottomlands, feeling alone for the first time since the Svell Tala found me on that beach. No Jorrund whispering in my ear or eyes trailing over my Kyrr-marked skin.

  He would know as soon as he woke that I was gone. He’d be frantic, afraid. And though I didn’t want to care or worry for him, a very small part of me still did. He was a fragile soul, even if he didn’t know it, built on the power he’d stumbled upon the day he found me. But that power was now slipping through his fingers with each breath, leaving only the man who’d lied to keep from losing his tight grip on everything around him.

  I’d been a fool to believe that I belonged with Jorrund. I knew that. In fact, I’d always known. But I’d never had anywhere else to go. He’d come looking, but he wouldn’t find me.

  This time, I was really gone.

  I walked. I walked until I couldn’t feel anything. My skin numbed in the icy rain, my hair and clothes soaked through. The forest was so quiet, my footsteps pulsing in an echo against the trees as each one hit the ground. I walked until the bones of my feet ached inside my boots. Until my arms were weak from carrying the weight of my skirts. Until my eyes were so heavy that the All Seer’s shape was a blur against the dark night sky. Halvard’s face was the pull that swept me through the forest, coming in and out of focus in my mind. He was the one I owed something to now. The only fate that mattered.

  Vigdis was right. I should have died out on the empty sea, but the Spinners had bound my fate to the young Nādhir from the glade. They’d wound our paths together for some purpose I couldn’t understand. It was carved into the Tree of Urðr. Written on my soul. And it was the one thing I was going to do right. It was the one thing I was going to do on my own.

  And with that single thought, I suddenly wanted to see him. I wanted to be near him, like I was beneath the gate in Utan. The whispers seemed to flutter back to life in the back of my mind, the sound of them melting into the wind and the sway of the trees.

  A crack of light split the darkness ahead and I stopped, hugging my skirts tighter to my chest. The scent of the sea met me, the churn of water and the slip of cold rocks breaking the empty silence. I came through the edge of the forest, into a gust of cool, salty air. It hit my face with the moonlight and before me, the black, sleeping fjord unfurled. It foamed white on the shore, my boots at the edge of a cliff that dropped straight down to a rocky beach below. The sound of it swelled and spilled over, washing out everything else until I could feel the hiss of whispers on my skin. The click of tongues on teeth.

  And I knew before I looked up that he’d be there. I knew it the way I knew the weight of the stones around my neck.

  I blinked, my gaze following the edge to the feet that stood down the cliff, the moonlight on his white tunic a faint glow. It pulled around him in the wind, his hair blowing across his forehead. And when I looked up into his face, Halvard’s eyes were on me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  HALVARD

  I could feel her. Like the creep of silent fog winding through the trees.

  The Truthtongue stood like a ghost against the night, her skin white as frost beneath her black dress. She looked down to the water below, dropping her skirts from where they were bundled in her hands, and they blew back behind her like unfolded raven’s wings.

  I blinked, expecting her to disappear the way she had that night in the forest. The way she had before the altar fire, the vision of her vanishing like smoke. But she didn’t. She stilled before she looked up, her hands tucked against her chest as her eyes met mine. And the same feeling that had come over me in Utan returned, like needles moving over my skin. It was something I’d never felt before the day I’d seen her in the glade, but now, it was becoming familiar. It was becoming something I recognized.

  I looked past her, to the trees, as I pulled the knife from my belt. “Are you alone?” My voice was lost in the wind shooting up the cliff.

  She stood frozen, as if she expected me to disappear, too. “Yes,” she said, stepping back from the cliff’s edge.

  Her eyes fell to the knife in my hand. The braids that fell over her shoulder were almost completely unraveled, the pieces falling into her face and dripping with rain. I tried not to watch the way it ran in rivulets over her skin.

  The length of her dress snapped in the wind, her fingers twisting into the ends of her hair at her waist. I lifted a hand between us slowly and her lips parted on a breath as I caught her wrist and pulled her toward me. And she was real. Not like the spirit I’d seen in the forest. The back of her hand was cut through the middle of the mark of the yarrow inked there and her skin was ice cold, but she was flesh and bone before me. And still, there was something haunting about her. Something more shadow than light.

  “You’re really here,” I said, letting go of her.

  She closed her hand into a fist, covering the mark where I’d touched her with her fingers as she took a step back.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, moving forward to close the space she’d put between us.

  “I came to tell you…” But she didn’t finish, her feet shifting nervously as she tucked the unwoven hair behind her ear. She pulled my axe from her belt and held it out to me. Its blade was almost completely covered in mud.

  I took it, rubbing at the iron with my thumb until the engraving of the yew tree glinted.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “The Svell are coming to Hylli.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” My voice rose over the sound of the waves crashing below and she bristled.

  She turned back to face the water, hooking her hands onto the bow over her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” Her lips formed the words but I couldn’t hear them. She looked suddenly small. Delicate.

  I sighed, letting the weight of the axe fall to my side. “Why did you help me?” I asked, my voice softening.

  She looked surprised at the question, studying my face before she answered. “Because you’re not supposed to die.”

  “If I’m not supposed to die, then I won’t.”

  She searched my eyes, making me feel unsteady on my feet again. “That’s not how fate works.”

  The moonlight broke through the clouds overhead, catching the eye on her chest. It stared up at me, unblinking. “Then how does it work?”

  “It’s always changing. Every moment. I’m trying to undo what’s happened. I didn’t know when I cast the stones that they would—”

  “So, it was you?” I ran a hand through my wet hair, realizing that Kjeld had been right.

  She said nothing, but the answer was in the way her gaze flitted back to the ground. “I didn’t know.”

  But that wasn’t good enough. An entire village was dead. Aghi was dead. “What are you doing with the Svell?”

  “I’m not with them. Not anymore.” Her voice faded. “I want to help you.”

  I tried to read the look that lit on her face. She was afraid, and even if I’d never seen war, I knew people. I didn’t trust her, but the fair skin at her throat was still bruised, the welts from where I’d had my hands around her neck visible even in the darkness. She’d come here, even though I’d almost killed her only days ago.

  “And I have nowhere else to go.” She swallowed hard, the shame of it heavy on each word.

  I blinked, the picture of her becoming instantly c
learer. I could see it. There was something hollow about her. Something worn thin.

  “I can help you. I can try to keep you alive.”

  “You can’t help us.” I slid my knife back into my belt and turned, starting back up the path, but she followed.

  “Please.” She took hold of my sleeve, stopping me, and I flinched at the feeling of her cold skin through my tunic. Her fingers wrapped around my arm and I swallowed hard, looking down into her face. The marks painted every inch of skin showing in the opening of her dress and I followed them with my eyes until they disappeared. “I want to help you.” Her grip on me tightened.

  “If I die fighting for my people, it will be a good death. The gods will honor it. I’ll go to the afterlife with my father.”

  Her head tilted, her eyes glinting, as if she could see something in mine.

  “I’m not afraid,” I said, my voice deepening.

  She stepped closer to me, her hand sliding down my arm to my wrist. “Halvard…” she whispered.

  The sound of my name spoken in her voice made me pull free of her, my fingers twitching to go back for my knife. I didn’t like the feeling it sent running through me. It sounded like an incantation on her lips.

  “What’s your name?”

  She smiled, and a feeling like thread being pulled between my ribs made it hard to breathe. “Tova.”

  “Why do you care what happens to us, Tova?”

  “Because our fates are bound. They’re tied together,” she whispered.

  I’d begun to think the same thing. I didn’t know why, but there was a pull between us. A draw that kept bringing me back to that moment in the glade. “What does that mean?”

  She looked at me for a long moment, thinking. “I don’t know. But you’re not supposed to die tomorrow. I’ve seen it.” She dropped her hand, leaving only the sting of her touch behind on my skin.

  “In the stones?”

  She nodded. “Yes, in the stones.”