“He killed my mother.”
“Yes, but why?” Tola straightened, a bloody cloth in her hand. Her red hair was loose as it always was, beaded braids visible in the light from the hearth in the middle of the room. “Perhaps there is something to be learned from him. Perhaps killing someone is not always the answer.”
“Tie him up,” Sibba ordered. Her shoulder had begun to throb again, now that her life was no longer in danger. The pain made her grumpy, and when Tola tossed a glare at her over her shoulder, Sibba didn't back down. “He is still my enemy,” she said. “I will talk to him when he is tied up.” When it became clear that Tola would do no such thing, Estrid went forward with a length of rope and bound the boy's hands together and then knotted the end of the rope to the leg of the bench.
Sibba sat only when that was done, perching on the edge of the hearth and closing her eyes. The fire was dwindling but still warm and she let it seep into her skin. She was suddenly acutely aware of the sharp, stabbing pain that shot through her arm at regular intervals with the pounding of her heart.
“Here, hold this,” she heard Tola say to Estrid, and then Tola was standing in front of her, her hands examining the arrow shaft that still stuck out of her shoulder. It had come loose in the ordeal and now hung at an angle. Blood dripped down her arm and chest, a slow, steady trickle.
“This is going to hurt,” Tola said.
Sibba started to respond but couldn't speak anymore because that was when Tola began to twist the arrowhead in her arm, trying to angle it for exit. Her lungs seized and her vision swam, and then it stopped. She dropped her head to her knees before she vomited.
“I'm sorry,” Tola said, pulling Sibba back up to a sitting position. Sibba couldn't catch her breath to reply. She kept her eyes closed, afraid of the spinning world around her. “It had to be done.” She pressed a clean white cloth to Sibba's shoulder. The arrowhead was on the bench beside her in a bloody puddle.
“Just bandage it,” Sibba said. “Don’t use your energy to heal it. I’ll be fine.”
Tola looked like she wanted to argue, but Sibba stopped her with a look. “Can I at least stitch it?”
Sibba nodded. The vala pulled a needle and a fine wire from her pouch and set to work. Each jab of the needle sent her mind reeling again, but she breathed slowly as Tola instructed and tried to think of something else.
“How did you get us out of the forest?” Sibba asked.
“What?” Tola bent low, her hair brushing against Sibba’s face, and cut the wire with her teeth, then knotted it with deft fingers.
“I heard you,” Sibba said. “Or felt you pulling at me.”
Tola abruptly pulled away and turned so that Sibba couldn't see her face. “I didn't—”
“No!” The shout came from across the room and there was a crash. When Sibba looked over, Evenon was on his stomach on the floor, his bound hands twisted awkwardly and Estrid sitting astride his back.
“She needs me,” he grunted.
Estrid took hold of the boy's hair and slammed his head into the ground, sending up a plume of dust. Evenon coughed and grew still, but Sibba thought she saw a tear streak down his dirty face. Forgetting about Sibba, Tola hurried over to them and pulled Estrid to her feet.
“You shouldn't have tried to fight him,” Tola scolded her. “You must think of the baby.”
“The what?” The words escaped Sibba before she could think about it, before she could even really process what she'd heard. Ridiculously, she began to scan the room for a child, and then her eyes landed on Estrid's stomach. The girl's hands were splayed across the flat plane of her stomach and the look of shock on her face betrayed the fact that she had not told the vala of her condition. Had perhaps not even known herself.
“I'm…”
Tola, who was busy pulling Evenon back onto the bench, didn't notice the girls' reactions. “Pregnant, yes. You didn't know?”
The silence must have reached her ears then because she turned around, her eyes darting from Estrid to Sibba and then back again.
“Oh,” she said. “I thought—”
“No,” Estrid said, turning her back to Sibba, refusing to even look at her friend. Estrid's deft fingers were reworking the ties at his hands while Tola began to secure the boy's feet.
Seeing that he was secured and that her friends were otherwise occupied, Sibba slipped back outside. The twisted knot in her chest made her want to shut down, to pull away, to seek solace in solitude, to hide her weaknesses, as she had always done. And though she never thought she would, she missed her island now more than ever.
? ? ?
The soft shuffle of feet through the snow alerted Sibba to Tola's presence. The vala did not even pretend to think that she had sneaked up on Sibba. Without speaking, she lowered herself down beside Sibba on the fence railing and wrapped a fur blanket around both their shoulders.
Neither said anything and the silence seemed to drag on for hours, though it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. Sibba thought of everything she wanted to say, everything she could say. But Sibba kept her lips pinched tightly closed and her eyes turned up to the stars. The distant sparkling dots reminded her of the white diamonds on the Crowheart girl's head.
“I’m sorry,” Tola said, breaking the silence, “about Evenon. About stopping you. But I know what violence and death lead to. More violence. More death. I grew up surrounded by people who didn’t understand the value of life. I was sent away because of it.”
Sibba sighed. “You were right.” There was so much Sibba didn't know, and she thought that Evenon might have the answers. To get them out of him, she would have to talk to him. And to talk to him, he would have to be alive. “He and I have both hurt each other, but I think we can help each other if we gave each other the chance. If we could be honest with each other.”
Tola nodded and the silence returned, more comfortable this time but still charged with unspoken things. Sibba thought about honesty and the secrets her mother had kept and the way that Estrid had turned her down all those years ago. It still hurt, even if she knew now that it had never been love.
“I told Estrid I loved her once,” Sibba said. “She turned me away. She loved—loves—someone else.” She closed her eyes against whatever Tola would say next. Why? or What's wrong with you? or Couldn't you see she wouldn't love you back?
Instead, Tola was quiet for another insufferable stretch of time. Sibba was afraid she would start talking again, disclose some more shameful secrets, but instead, Tola finally whispered, “I cannot fall in love.”