Beautiful Wreck (29 page)

It was loud and wild in the yard by now, and I picked my way through the grass, anonymous in the chaos. Focused on holding up the silvery blue and ivory dresses, I tried to forget about stares and questions. I trembled with the effort to not stumble, not dirty the hems. The little lamps with their twisted handles were stuck into the walls on the outside of the house tonight, and I came around the corner and almost ran into one.

“Easy, Ginn.” Heirik’s voice was sudden and dark, almost inaudible under the shouts and songs of the yard.

I looked up and was stunned.

He was Hildur’s nightmare come to life. His clothes were the dark blue of ink and wings, with black pants tucked into even blacker boots. His wool tunic swept his knees, long like a kilt. Against the depths of his hair and clothes, his face looked like blood and moonlight, framed by a fur he wore thrown over one shoulder. The lamp highlighted threads that wound through the wool trim around his neckline, where a snow white shirt stood open over a priceless silver torc. Two raven heads met at his throat. Their eyes were of silvery stone like mercury, their beaks open, one biting blood.

A deep black leather belt held a single knife—a short sword that hung across his waist, with bits of silver worked into its black leather scabbard. Not one tool or cup or carving knife hung there. The blade of
Slitasongr
nestled comfortably against his side, the handle hanging past his knee. It brushed against his knee-high boots, crossed and tied with leather bands.

“I …” I couldn’t speak.

I retreated a step, the house at my back. “I …” I said again, and then finally forced out a single word. “Hi.”

He watched me without speaking, waiting for something, and so I stuttered on. “I don’t know where this dress came from.” I looked down at myself, touched my bare neckline, and his eyes followed.

“The women of my family,” he said.
Oh.
His mother wore this dress. He tossed the words off, trying to sound as if he brought it out for girls to borrow all the time, but his eyes were full of emotion—loss, hope, things I couldn’t see or make out in the bonfire. He looked strange and uncomfortable without a knife or ax in his hands. He rested his palm on the hilt of the short sword.

“It is good to see it again,” he said, and then added shyly. “On you.”

On me.

I was dreaming his words, I had to be. I swayed and fell back against the house.

“Ginn?” He took a step toward me, as though he might reach for me, but he didn’t. He reached for the fur instead, the one on his shoulder. He held it out to me, and I took it and wrapped it around my shoulders, pulling it tight. A few hairs moved with my breath and tickled my nose. It had an earthy smell, so different from synthetic flur.

“I’m just so tired,” I said. “All these people. I just want to sleep instead.”

His brows drew together and his voice became strained. “You will be here,” he ordered me. “At this party.” Stiff and turning cold. What had I done?

Stupid, stupid, I thought, and I literally put my face in my hands.

He’d dressed me tenderly and lovingly for this celebration, one of the most important nights of the chieftain’s year. A party for hay, for fall, for sustenance and plenty. He’d dressed me. Made me pretty. Told me he wanted me to be seen in the clothes of his beloved, lost family. And I’d asked like a child, Do I have to go?

Like a rush of wind, understanding blew in. I saw him honorable and tall in his beautiful clothes, his rich silver neck ring, no need to carry his own cup or tools. He would be served completely, and only needed to adorn himself with his most gorgeous weapons. In a life full of loneliness, this formality was a blessed relief, a pleasure. At every other moment, the family didn’t love him. This kind of night was how and when he was adored. And he wanted me to see it, to be part of it. He was shyly proud. Gods, it was charming.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and it felt tender and raw. “I am so glad you want me to wear these clothes.” I told him clearly, so he would never mistake my meaning. “I feel beautiful in them.”

He looked. At the fillet across my forehead, the neckline of my dress, now framed in fur, my arms, the sleeves at my wrists, and down to the puff of underdress peeking from beneath the blue hem at my ankles.

“Já,” he said, a faint brush of a word, almost lost in the shouting of men and boys.

He had really looked. I wondered if he knew what he’d done, eying me that way, wondered if he’d ever devoured a woman that way before. It drew me, away from the house and toward him. We were close together, now, so painfully near I thought I could feel his heart beating. His eyes were unreal, the color almost disappearing in the burning of the yard, everything on fire, all around us.

He shook himself.

“Toasts and blessings,” he said, and he raised his chin to indicate the house and people.

The party was long.

There were more people than I could fathom fitting into the back room, so many honored guests, all touching shoulders. I sat close to the high seat, crushed between a man who stunk powerfully of sweat and a sturdy woman who’d rubbed a handful of rosemary all over her throat. I was introduced to so many men and women, the most important ones from among Heirik’s followers, and more, from beyond Hvítmörk altogether. Farmers on their own land, with their own generations of young men and children, their own families and much smaller tribes in tow.

Blond and ruddy and strong, the men wore close-cropped beards and chin-length hair. Their wives wore braids piled in coils. The littlest children were stuffed in the crannies between their parents and grandparents, pieces of bread clutched in their hands or disintegrating in their sleepy mouths. Small girls had braids like Ranka’s, falling long over their aprons, the ends rolled up into adorable O-shapes that bounced when they squirmed on their mothers’ laps.

And there was Heirik, utterly changed.

I’d never seen the high seat used before. It usually lurked against the wall in the back room, near the big loom, but tonight it had been drawn out and placed at the head of the long tables.

A big wooden bench, its magnificent, high back rolled like an ocean wave, its two armrests carved into polished swells like prows of twin Viking ships. They ended in snarling wolves’ heads—the animals most loved by his father’s father. The bench was piled with cloud-like, precious furs. The seat was big enough for two people to sit side by side, but Heirik sat alone and literally above us. He scanned the crowd with benevolent arrogance. One of his hands rested absently on a wolf’s head.

Even more separate than ever, he was also more assured than I’d ever seen him. Not a hint of shyness remained. It wasn’t cold. Not like his usual lock-down of features and heart. He was simply in his rightful place, accepting the adoration and obeisance of everyone around him.

Those who sat very close were the chosen few he spoke with, and he talked easily, without the hesitance I knew. Beyond them, he watched.

The room grew silent.

Dalla carried Heirik the first official drink of the night. She set a glass in front of him on the table, the light wobbling and reflecting in its thick sides. Svana had shown them to me, when her Ma had her clean them—the hrimkaldar.
Frost cups.

Dalla poured ale from a dark metal pitcher. “Drink of this cup, my chieftain, breaker of rings.” She sounded lovely and assured in a way I never could have imagined—an elevated and proud hostess. Though she continued to speak to Heirik, she glanced with terrific grace to include the stifling crowd. “For the good of us gathered here, be generous and mindful with these gifts. Show us strength and desire.” The word for desire meant something like
motivation
and
hope
.

He nodded and lifted the cup.

“Herra,” she said simply, and with a ripple of watery dress she moved on.

Heirik was already looking elsewhere, listening to the man next to him. He absently made a mark with his thumb against the rim of the glass, like a letter T, and then sipped the ale. I noticed Hildur in the shadows. She nodded firmly to herself, just once, and smiled with satisfaction and pride. Complete indifference from the chief must have meant that the ale was good. He was a contradiction so intense and complex, my head felt full and heavy.

I drew a shawl around me and watched Dalla pour a drink for Hár, and then she and her sisters worked the crowd in some complex descending order until a dozen men had been served, before everyone else broke into a party and started dipping into buckets of ale with their own cups.

Heirik made toasts and thanks to gods, and people sat enthralled, every man, woman and child lulled or shocked into silence by his voice. And I would have watched and listened to Heirik all night, but like a child struggling to stay up too late, my eyes kept closing. Then others toasted too and made speeches until I nodded with tiredness—so, so many things men had to say. Halfway asleep before the party really began, I heard the chief’s words again, just their tone and cadence. The answer of cheers, the rise and fall of dozens of voices in a crowded room, raucous, cramped. Words floated free—
fox
and horse and
baby boy
. A sea of language rocked me, and I was held as in the curve of a boat.

I opened my eyes.

There was meat, and I didn’t know what it was, but I ate it with vicious appetite. My hunger roused me for long enough to eat chicken and flat bread and dried berries and goat cheese. I drank ale and smiled drowsily at people. I thought maybe I would get up and slowly make my way to my sleeping alcove, crawl in on all fours, press my face gratefully to a sheepskin.

As if I’d called him, Heirik turned to me right then. His gaze was like a hand to my chest, pressing me back into my seat.
You will be here.
I knew this man, and yet Betta was right. I hadn’t met him before. He basked in a required kind of love, and took it. Smoothly and gracefully. His fingers brushing against a wolf’s teeth.

Between naps, I’d jolt awake and remember to watch Betta. This was my chance to find out who she pined over. Somewhere at this party, there was a young man she wanted. With so little time together, she would have to be with him, smiling with her big teeth, tender and near. But I never caught her talking to anyone special. Not anyone unusual at all.

Ageirr was there. He sat at a fairly prominent place, but I never noticed Heirik look at him. Despite the chief’s outgoing and generous expansion, he never included Ageirr or his brother Eiðr in any of his talk of land and laws and far away places, of animals and gods and the coming blanket of snow. The two men ate like all of us did, and they sat in Heirik’s circle. Nothing was denied them except for the chief’s own gaze. The goat and his ugly little brother closed in on themselves, alone in the midst of everyone else’s camaraderie.