She stood, motionless, in the dark.
I waited for her to say something. To do something. But she only looked me in the eye, so still that she could have been carved out of ice. I gave up struggling, leaning into the tree, and looked back at her. A drip of blood trailed down my cheek. And then she blinked. The look on her face didn’t change as she turned and started down the path. Leaving me tied to the tree in the falling snow.
TWENTY-FOUR
I was in the fjord.
I could see the ice-blue water. The clouds moving in its reflection. My feet pressing into the smooth black pebbles. My arms wrapping around myself against the wind. The vision came over me like a cold wave. The cliff face jutting up from the water like a wall. Green moss climbing down it in long, bright strands. I could see it.
I let my weight fall against the tree, trying to hold the sight of Hylli in my mind. The edge of the forest beside the village. A shadow moving in the trees. I squinted, trying to focus my blurred vision.
The figure stalked in the distance, watching. Thick furs and the shine of silver. The white, empty eyes of a Herja. I blinked.
“Eelyn.”
He was there, in the trees. He was watching me. The Herja had come for my mother and now they’d come for me.
“Eelyn?” Something stung across my cheek. “Eelyn!”
The sunlight was suddenly gone. Black moved on black and hands pulled at me. My skin was numbed against the snow on the ground. I closed my eyes again, trying to leave it. Trying to get back to the fjord.
Fiske’s face was looking down into mine, his hands on me. But I couldn’t feel them.
“Herja,” I croaked, looking back to the trees. But there was no one.
Above his head, the moon blinked through the branches overhead. “What?”
“I want to go home, Fiske.” My words ran into each other and I could hear the weakness in them. The brittle sadness breaking on each one.
And then I was falling. The world bumped and swayed around me as he lifted me up off the ground. I could hear his breath. I could feel his skin. His arms wrapped around my limp body, holding me together.
I opened my eyes again and the trees floated past above. The sound of crunching snow filled my pounding head. I curled into Fiske and pinched my eyes closed until I could see the fjord again. Fog touching the cliffs. The smell of seawater. But the Herja was gone.
A door opened and suddenly we were inside. The familiar firelight of the house swallowed me, but I couldn’t feel its warmth.
“What happened?” Halvard ran to us.
“Get the water on.” Fiske was setting me down and surveying me in the dim light.
I was wrapped in his cloak. “Where’s Iri?” I whispered.
“Looking for you.” He pulled a blanket from the trunk and moved me closer to the fire. “Find him.” Fiske pushed Halvard toward the door and shoved him out. When he came back, he crouched down in front of me. “Who did this?”
I pulled the blanket tighter around me, searching his face. He looked different. There was something shining in his eyes that wasn’t there before. Or maybe it was. I had never seen them so closely.
“Who?” he asked again.
But all I could think was that he was still too close to me. That I wanted him to move away. “It was the man from Adalgildi,” I whispered.
“What did he do?”
I closed my eyes. I tried to disappear.
“Did he…?” The question broke off and his eyes dropped from mine.
I shook my head in answer, coiling my arms around my bare body.
Fiske stood, his boots pounding against the stone as he walked to the wall. He lifted an axe from the hook and opened the door. “Don’t tell them where I’m going.” And then he was gone.
*
I opened my eyes when the door opened and the weight of more blankets pressed down on top of me. Iri was asleep next to the fire, his head propped up on his saddlebags.
Fiske came through the door quietly, and I opened my eyes enough to watch him hang the axe back on the wall. He pulled his armor vest and tunic off and went to the basin of water to wash his face, raking his fingers through his hair. The cuts and bruises from the fighting season were healing, leaving smooth skin over the form of him, broad on top and narrow in the middle, like Iri. He set his hands on the table and leaned into it, looking into the basin as a single drop of water trailed to the end of his nose and fell into the water.
I stared at the blood-spotted tunic crumpled on the floor.
“Fiske?” Inge came down the ladder with her hair long and unbraided over her shoulders. “Where have you been?” she whispered.
When he didn’t answer, she took his arm and pulled him to face her.
“Thorpe.” He didn’t look at her.
Her voice dropped lower. “What did you do?”
He tied his hair back, coming to the fire and sitting to take off his boots. “Reminded him not to touch what doesn’t belong to him.”
Inge watched him for a moment before she gave a small nod, but worry hung heavy on her face. “I’ll speak to the Tala tomorrow.”
“I’ll speak to the Tala.” The room fell silent.
“Fiske…”
He stilled, looking up at her.
But she didn’t speak. She only looked at him, her eyes falling from his head down to his feet and meeting his eyes again. Like she was trying to uncover something.
He stood, walking past her to the ladder. She watched him until he was out of sight and then turned back toward the fire. She didn’t move for a long time and when she finally closed her eyes, her mouth was moving, a silent prayer on her lips.
I sunk lower into the blankets. Because Inge didn’t know that I was the past Iri had left behind. I was what she should be praying against.
And it was only a matter of time before she did.
*
I lay in the loft as the others went about their day.
No one talked to me.
No one asked me to do anything.
I pulled my legs up and hugged them into my chest, still trying to feel the warmth down in the center of my frozen bones. Where I felt empty.
When the sun grew brighter, I pulled the blankets up over my head and listened to my heartbeat. Iri climbed up the ladder and stood over me, his worry filling the room. I pretended to be asleep and when he climbed back down, I let myself breathe again. I stared into the dark of the blankets, trying to remember what that feeling was—the feeling chewing at the edges of me while I stood in the dark of the forest tied naked to the tree.
I had never been so vulnerable. So full of fear.
And I had never hated myself until that moment.
I remembered the light reflecting off the snow. The sound of my quick breath in the silence. Thinking that if I died, I wouldn’t reach Sólbj?rg. Then, the all-consuming shame of being afraid to die for the very first time in my life.
I could see the reds and oranges and yellows of the battlefield. The heat and the sting of pain. The burn of a war cry in my throat. I could see myself, alive. Strong.
I blinked.
And there was only the white and cold and quiet of that forest. There was only loneliness. There was only the very barest part of me, waiting for the end to come. It crept toward me in the dark. It came for me. And when it overtook me, my last thought was I don’t want to die.
I had never known real fear until the moment I saw Iri in Aurvanger. I had never considered there was more to life than the most basic explanation—that the gods were willing over us. That they were giving and taking their favor.
But I was without my clan.
I was alone in that forest.
Sigr had turned his eyes from me. I could feel it. And I could only think of Iri, just a boy, dying slowly in the cold. Of my mother, the life drained from her flesh. All her fight gone.
And the Herja, floating in the dark like a harbinger, watching me.
There was a knock at the door below and my eyes refocused.