“And have you proved yourself?” Sibba asked. “Are you ready to go back?”
“Almost,” he said, tilting his head up to the stars. Sibba wondered where their little adventure fit into his plans.
“Look!” Estrid called from behind them. Sibba followed her raised finger to the sky where two streaks of light passed overhead, gone as quickly as they had appeared. “Enos and Interis are riding tonight. We cannot fail now!” Estrid laughed, delighted at the sign from the gods.
Enos was the Father, the god of war and wisdom, and Interis was his wife, the weaver of fate. “Let's just hope they weren't riding ahead of us to warn Isgerd,” Sibba said, wrapping her cloak tighter around her as the winter chill returned with the night.
Estrid laughed, the light sound at odds with the crashing waves. “I don't hope,” Estrid said. “I know.”
Sibba wanted to believe her, but there was an uneasy feeling creeping up on her as the night closed in around them. Evenon seemed to feel it, too. He leaned forward and lit the lantern that hung from the bow, casting an eerie orange glow over the water. Sibba half-expected to see the yellow eyes of a mischievous Nokken staring back at her, waiting to lure them to their deaths. But it was just darkness, a black, bottomless sea. In the distance, the rocky western coast of the Fields was visible only as a jagged line against the darker sky.
Somewhere above them, thunder rumbled and Aeris, named for the goddess of the sky, called out to her crew as her wings briskly beat against the wind, the sound a harsh warning cry over the swelling ocean.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sibba
Lightning illuminated her friends' terrified faces in a flash, and then they were gone again, but the image was burned into her brain. Eyes wide, mouths opened in unheard screams, hands grasping for something, anything to hold onto. She could not—would not—lose them, too. But the rudder was useless, and the oars that had not washed overboard did nothing against the waves that battered the small boat.
She had thought that perhaps they had outrun the storm, and had even taken a turn to sleep when the moon had been directly overhead. But they had been foolish, and the storm had come on fiercely and suddenly in the early morning hours when the sky was at its darkest. They had been able to lower the sail and the mast, but she had lost track of her friends and Aeris in the chaos.
Saltwater slammed into her face, making her sputter. She hugged the collapsed wooden mast tighter—she would not let go. She would get through this. Her mother had survived the wreck of the ship that had brought her to the Fields. Sibba could get through this one storm. But then she was sideways, her legs dangling in the open air. The ocean rushed up to meet her. She held her breath and plunged into the frozen water.
Which way was up? The current spun her in circles but she didn't stop struggling, wondering what could be here with her in the dark. She imagined Gabel's body, the way the tide had dragged him into the ocean's depths. She imagined his fingers around her neck, squeezing, squeezing. Her lungs fought her, begged her to take a breath, but she resisted until her head finally emerged back into the night. The boat was behind her somewhere, with her friends and her bird and everything she owned in the world, but she couldn't see anything past the beating rain. She had to keep moving, keep her heart pumping. Her eyes were heavy with salt, her eyelashes sticking together as the water on them froze.
“Estrid!” she cried. A wooden board drifted by—a piece of The Malstrom—and she threw her arms over it to keep herself afloat. Her teeth chattered and her hair was plastered to her neck. Water weighed down her cloak but she would not remove it, could not lose it and its contents. She would have nothing now, except for the last piece of her mother that she carried in her pocket. She would take it with her, even if it was to a watery grave.
She screamed, calling for Estrid, for Evenon, for her mother, for people who would never come. Waves reared back in front of her, angry beasts looking her in the face. It didn't matter how loud she screamed, the storm roared back louder.
Sibba couldn't say how long she fought against the waves, searching the water for her friends. The cold water sucked the energy from her bones, and she eventually stopped fighting, floating aimlessly on the piece of driftwood. It could have been minutes, or hours, or days.
Once she thought she saw the coastline. A figure standing on a cliff, silhouetted by the glow of a fire behind her, smoke curling up into the sky. A figure with her arms spread wide, her face turned to the storm, as if in challenge to the gods. A girl, beckoning to Sibba, drawing her forward. I see you, the voice rang in her head. Come to me.
And then, Sibba knew no more.
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“I don't want you to tell them those things!” Thorvald raised his hand to Darcey, but the woman did not flinch.
“Those things are a part of me. A part of who we are!” she retorted.
Sibba was nine, Jary ten, and they were in the hall, the Hnefatafl board between them, the pieces scattered nonsensically. Nothing about this game made sense to her, but the pieces were beautifully carved, a gift for her father from a craftsman, and she and her brother liked to move them around on the checkered game board. Playing at war, their father said proudly.
“Don't cry, Sib,” Jary said, reaching over and thumbing a tear off of her cheek. She had not even known she was doing it. She hated when her father yelled. All she had done was ask their mother to tell her a story about the three sisters from across the sea. She loved how they were always getting into trouble, and begged her mother for two sisters of her own.
“The Malstrom family is nothing to me,” Thorvald was saying.
“Then I am nothing to you.” Sibba knew that wasn't true. The way her father looked at her mother—she could tell that Darcey meant the world to him. But when they were angry, it was like looking at different people. Her parents were able to bring out the worst in each other. Was that what it meant to love someone?
“You are a Hallowtide now,” Thorvald retorted. “You made your choice. You came here for sanctuary, and I gave it to you.”
“You killed my mother—”
“She was ill!”
“And made me pay for my safety with my future.”
There was the sound of something breaking, maybe one of Mama's figurines. “Then leave!” Thorvald shouted. “Let me never see your face in Ottar again.”
“So be it unto Enos,” Mama growled the familiar words that usually ended one of her prayers. When she stormed by where her children sat, Sibba caught a whiff of her familiar scent, like mint and lavender, like the wild field flowers that grew beyond the city.
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