When Sibba woke, she found herself staring into sharp green eyes. She smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tried to remember the dream that had felt more like a memory, and to understand why her mouth tasted like a bouquet of flowers. Beneath her, the sand was hard-packed and cold.
“Who're you?” she asked. The words came out rough, her throat rusty and dry.
The girl who had been looming over her leaned back, sweeping her matted red hair away from her face. Everything about her face was pointed, from her narrowed eyebrows to her stick-straight nose and her stern mouth. There was a smattering of freckles on her cheeks, and black kohl smeared across her eyes from one temple to the other. On her shoulder, a hawk sat preening its feathers.
“Aeris, you traitorous beast,” Sibba said. How had the bird survived the storm? How had she survived the storm? She pressed her fingers to her eyes, her head throbbing behind them, voices from her nightmares ringing in her ears. “What happened? Where am I?” The questions were coming fast and furious as her head cleared.
“My name is Tola,” the girl said finally. When she spoke, she pronounced every word as if she were worried Sibba would not be able to understand her. “You are on the coast of Endar.” Endar. The name was familiar. It was a small town just on Grimsson side of its Hallowtide border. It had been the site of numerous raids for years until Chief Grimsson increased her warrior presence there to deter Chief Hallowtide’s incursions. So they had made it, just not far enough.
The flame-haired girl was still talking. “You and your friends washed up on the night before my gifting. I cannot help but think—”
“My friends?” Sibba interrupted. She sat bolt upright in spite of the pounding pain, her eyes searching the rocky beach.
“They are farther down the beach, beyond the cliff,” Tola said, raising an arm and pointing to the south. “They washed up with the boat.” Tola held something between her fingers, and she lifted it to Aeris's beak. The bird snapped up what must have been a strip of meat and hopped to the sand, where she tore at it with her beak and talons.
Scrambling to her feet, Sibba left the girl behind and raced for the cliff on wobbly legs. It was a rocky outcropping, a solid wall against which the ocean waves beat. She ran back and forth like a dog searching for a scrap. The stone was cold against her hand, and solid. There was no way to the other side.
“You have to go up to go around.”
Sibba had nearly forgotten Tola was there. She turned to see her coming up the beach slowly as if she had no cares in the world. The girl wore a fine black cloak lined with fur and carried a strange stick wrapped in a dark brown metal that she dug into the sand with each step. The sight gave Sibba pause, even in her frantic searching.
She had never seen a vala before. A mythical wand-woman. But the image she had of one in her mind—an old, weathered woman with gnarled fingers and a stooped back—didn’t match the figure in front of her.
“Women are not touched by Enos,” her mother had told her, dismissing Sibba’s questions about valas whenever they arose. “They have no access to magic.” It was another of her beliefs that she had brought with her from Casuin.
She’d had no reason to believe otherwise before. But now Sibba remembered the voice in the dark, louder and more powerful than the waves. I see you. She remembered the vision she’d had of a woman on a cliff, arms raised against the storm. Come to me.
A vala was more powerful than a sadj. This girl didn't just see things; she could make things happen. But in spite of that power, in spite of the way people spoke of them with respect and deferred to them with reverence, she was as good as a servant. Her own father didn’t keep valas, but some of the lesser jarls did, and Chief Grimsson was known for her congregation of violent wand-women that reinforced her army. It was this association that caused people to fear valas now. The chiefs and jarls kept that power in check by enforcing strict rules. No vala could live in society without a patron, and that patron had the right to command the vala as he saw fit in exchange for keeping the vala safe and relatively comfortable. They were somehow both possessions and honored members of the community. They were like field cats locked in flimsy wooden cages.
Sibba stared as Tola approached, the sun glinting off the metal of her staff, and wondered why someone who could control a storm would let a man control her. If today was her gifting, that meant that her family was giving her away, transferring her care and her power to some patron as a reward or in exchange for something. She wasn’t a human, but a bargaining chip. Sibba could not imagine being bound to a fate so early in life, to know that there were no other options. It had all been laid out for Tola from the moment she took her first breath.
“How do I go up?” Sibba asked instead of the million other questions that flooded her brain.
“I will show you.”
Tola turned and began to climb the dunes to the east, heading into the sun. She dug her staff into the ground with each step and pulled herself up the steep incline. Sibba squinted and followed with a sigh. Her muscles ached, and her throat was still parched. When she caught up with her, Tola unclipped a water pouch from her belt—one of many leather pouches hanging there—and offered it to her. Sibba drank only a couple swallows and handed it back, hoping that it had not been laced with any type of drug. From what she remembered about valas, they liked to use hallucinogens to bring themselves closer to Malos, the Realm of Shadows, where they drew their power from.
“I see your hesitation,” Tola said, not turning around.
“No, I—”
“Don't worry. I am a very good wand-woman, but I am also very kind. I would not drug you or harm you.”
They finally reached a path that appeared to wind up the side of the mountain through the short beach grass and Sibba fell into step beside Tola. It had not escaped her notice that Tola was beautiful, but she was also unexpectedly young, perhaps no older than Sibba.
But she didn’t look particularly intimidating, not any more than any other beautiful girl might. Her eyes wandered over the staff and down to the pouches, and finally back up to the girl’s face.
“You are curious,” Tola said, looking at Sibba sideways, a sly smile on her thin lips. “You may ask me a question to test me if you like.”
“Okay,” Sibba said, reminded of her last strange meeting with the sadj and trying to think of something harmless, afraid of being turned down again. “Are my friends well?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately, “but I did not need my seithr to tell me that. I saw them come ashore just before you. You were much worse off than they were, and alone, so I came to you first.”
The relief was instant. Estrid and Evenon were okay. She wouldn't have to go back to Ottar and tell Ari that she had lost his future wife. She wouldn't have to hunt down the Crowheart family to tell them that the girl's suitor had perished in the ocean. After so many adventures, what an awful way that would have been for him to go.