Beautiful Wreck (31 page)

What I wanted was something simple, and yet greater and tougher than anything in the world. I wanted his heart and home to be mine, too. I would grow strong, I told myself. Strong enough to handle the chief and anyone else in this yard.

Right then, he looked far up the hill as if to judge the sky. But he was looking for me, and when he found me, he nodded. Just once. Yes.

The men had gone—all of them—on two dozen horses that took off in a great, dusty cloud. With their departure, the women settled into an easy camaraderie that didn’t include me. They lazily straightened things and wandered outside, while thralls began the real work of cleaning. Shouts filled the house, and as they raised the tables, the wood let out a tremendous scraping and groaning, like ships grinding together.

I escaped to the yard.

The fall air was cold, and the light was already falling, cutting a sharp angle across the rocks and grass. The hours of daylight were much fewer now. All the trash had been carried away, and women roamed the yard now for pleasure, taking in the sun and clean air with their children racing around them.

Betta stood lit from the side, her hair almost copper. She lifted a cloak high over her head, and it rippled in the wind.

“The women will go to roundup today,” she told me as I neared.

“Not me,” I said, still feeling my singular strangeness.

“Nei, probably not.” Betta agreed. “Nor me.”

The air moved at a tremendous speed and then slowed alternately, and the shaggy house ruffled and shushed.

“Magnus won’t be going either then, já?” I asked

She laughed. “You are finally understanding a few things,” she told me. “Já, Magnus will probably stay with you.”

I looked off in the direction the men had gone, wishing I could talk with Heirik and find out what that nod had really meant.

Betta went on. “A few of us will stay, not just you. There are more parties to come, and I’m not …” Her voice broke on the truth, that she was not important enough to go to roundup. “I’ll stay and get food ready.”

I gave her a sidelong glance to see if tears stood in her eyes, but I found her watching me with wonder. “I never thought I would see such a thing.” She said it softly, a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

“What?”

“You change everything,” she said. “The whole world.”

She folded a giant cloak over her arm and smoothed it.

“No one thought of him this way before. He had this great house. Power and beautiful things.” She punctuated her words with great swipes of her palm over the wool. “But he was not for marrying. Not Rakknason Longhair.” She tossed this name off, as if to shed all her emotions with it. She stacked the folded cloaks on the ground, picked up another and let the wool unfurl like a sail overhead. It snapped in the wind. “Now he is a man, já?”

I’d never heard the nickname before. I’d never even heard Betta say his name at all. “Why is he called Longhair?”

“Oh,” she said easily, as though everyone knew. “Because he cuts his own, and so he waits too long. Down his back now.” I thought she might kid with me as usual, about how I loved his hair, but she was serious. “The black is beautiful. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Já, of course I had noticed its gorgeous depths. But she had, too? I didn’t think anyone, even Betta, looked at him that way.

I had no time to contemplate it all. We came around the corner and Ageirr and Eiðr laid there, slumped against the grass walls, deep in sleep.

“Uck,” Betta said and jumped back a foot as though she’d stepped in something questionable.

Another woman noticed, and then another, and soon a small flock of us stood around Ageirr and his little brother, watching them slump and snore. Betta stood with her arms crossed, her stack of cloaks resting on the ground, as high as her knees. My bowl rested on my hip. Another woman held a knife in each hand, letting them hang casually by her sides. A child gripped her skirt and hid halfway behind her leg. Svana came too, hesitantly, like a little animal testing for a trap. I had the image of us as a ragged band of Valkyries, come to herald the death of the mens’ dignity. It made me laugh out loud, and Ageirr stirred. The woman next to me was short and twice my width. She cleared her throat and kicked at Ageirr’s foot.

He sputtered awake.

He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the harsh afternoon sun, which did nothing good for his scowl. I could almost hear his thoughts grinding and falling into place as he noticed the angle of the light and the gaggle of women and children, not a man in sight. He elbowed his brother, who groaned and rubbed his eyes.

Ageirr was already standing and brushing off his pants. His voice scratched, “Where are the men?” Suspicion and resignation were threaded through its screechy tones.

A girl of maybe sixteen whispered, loud enough for all to hear. “He had no excess of wits to spare on drink, já?” A scattering of laughter made Ageirr furious. He growled and turned on the girl.

“Where are they?” He towered over her and she shrank back.

“They’re in the hills, Fool,” said the wide woman, placing herself between them.

I saw Ageirr get it, saw him realize that he’d been left behind. And then I saw that he was reaching for his ax. Time seemed to slow and stretch as in one of Jeff’s wrestling sims, and yet I had no time to do anything. No time at all. I watched him draw the ax and turn away from the women. With savage anger, he buried the blade in the house. He wrenched it free and swung again.

“Nei!” I shouted, and with my sharp command time seemed to start again. “Not the house,” I said.

Ageirr stared at me, stunned, his ax swinging at his side. I was just as stunned, my heart racing, face tingling with a rush of adrenalin. He was armed, but some twisted wash of possessiveness made me unafraid. No one hurt my house.

Eiðr was staggering to his feet, grabbing at his brother’s ax handle, but Ageirr had already given up on me. He held my gaze, but not in anger. He just couldn’t let go. I felt his sadness like a physical force. I felt how lost he was, how alone, mortified and left behind.

Finally, he broke my gaze, shouldered his ax in a final threatening gesture and shoved past us all.

The two men retrieved their horses and in moments they were ready to leave. Just before they left the farm to ride to the highlands, Ageirr spent a moment talking with Hildur, too far away for me to hear. She handed him up a bundle of food and a cup, which he drained and handed back to her. Then he nodded and took off, his brother trailing along in his dust.

The farm was left in a serene silence, broken only by the snuffling of a dog around the ground where Ageirr had slept. The diversion ended and the women wandered away, but I stayed frozen in place, trembling now that it was over. Betta put a hand to my back and said “Shhh” and “let your heart calm, Woman.”

Calm, yes. On the first day I resolved to take this house as my home, someone buried an ax in it.

Heirik knew down to a man exactly who was with him and who was not. He’d nodded to me, and left me here, trusted me with Ageirr.
Brave little thing.
I’d passed the test.

Betta must, like me, be thinking of Fjoðr dead in the grass. That day at the forge, Heirik’s words were clear, and if Ageirr thought he’d been forgotten, he was wrong. This moment of quiet surrounding the house was like a fog made of ale and hay and dwindling daylight that would lift when roundup and shearing were done. I recalled looking straight into the edge of Heirik’s ax, expertly sharpened. I remembered what he’d said about Ageirr—
He only feeds my power
—and I knew Heirik hadn’t forgotten a thing.

INTENTIONS

I was right. Magnus and I both stayed home from roundup.

He lurked around the house, an unobtrusive but always present guard. Every hour or so, his eyes would brush over me respectfully, diligently, making sure I was still here. He seemed both capable of protecting me, as if such a wild thing would really be necessary, and also very worried. He tapped on his knee all the time, sharpened things. Everything in the house gleamed with a fine edge.

Now I watched out of the corner of my eye, lulled by the gentle scraping of his whetstone on some little pieces of iron, dainty, almost disappearing in his big hands. I didn’t get the impression he was bitter exactly, for being left behind, and now I finally placed his emotion. It was fear. He was anxious for his life, or something just short of it anyway, if Heirik returned and found me hurt in the slightest way.

He came to me and dropped three sharp sewing needles in my lap. I picked one up and took extra care not to prick myself.

On the third morning, Magnus sat on an upturned log in the yard, just a few feet from where I sat and sewed on the stable wall. An already-sharp knife hung from his tired fingers. Suddenly he slapped his thighs and stood. “Woman,” he declared. “Come down from that wall and ride with me.”

We didn’t go far, just a slow ride around the homefield. It laid under the cold sun, a lonely stretch of cut stalks. Its brilliant emerald had turned to remnants of hay and dust. Still, it was full of promise.

“My grandfather was Magnus Heirikson,” he said with shy pride. “He carved out this field from the cold ground. Built this farm.” He took a deep breath, and I could see how good it all felt to him—the homefield and walls, the fresh air, his home. I saw the roots and tendrils of ownership taking hold, a chief’s view of the farm growing in him, and I liked him even more.

His grandfather was Magnus. And his great-grandfather had been Heirik! Names were passed down like that, in this time and place.

Heirik Rakknason. The chief used his name so infrequently, it didn’t often come up, but when it did, something nagged at my thoughts. Suddenly it came clear.

“What is your full name?”

“Magnus Hárson,” he said. “Of course.”

I’d become used to the wary looks I received when I asked dumb questions. “But the chief is Rakknason.” I said. He should have been called after his father, Ulf.

“Oh!” Magnus seemed relieved, as if my question was sane and easy. “Rakknason is for his mother, já?”

“Signé?”

“She was called Melrakki.” The Norse word for arctic fox. “They say he was so much hers.”

Gods, he was named for his mother, the one whose curses and blessings ruled over the spiritual life in this house. It was a byname. A Viking way of recognizing someone who was well known, to give them a nickname.

I pictured a woman whose face was vague to me, looking regal in the ice blue dress, silver haired like a rare, “blue” fox. She must have ridden these walls, just as we did now. Must have held little Heirik before her on her horse. I stared out at the dry stalks in the field and imagined it.

Heirik wasn’t a wolf pup after all.

A little voice shouted from up near the house, then another. Children were calling out, “Sheep!”

Magnus and I turned our horses, and as we rode back to the house, I saw them come spilling down from the high ground. When we got closer, we heard them, so many cattle and sheep that their voices melded into a great moaning that rolled off the hills and down to the house.

People from all over Hvítmörk came for shearing. Dozens of animals spilled down the hill like dirty ocean froth. They moved ever onward. Confused and vaguely restless and yet compliant, walking almost in a dream, each cow or sheep followed the ones in front of it. The smell of so many animals came smothering and heavy down the hill to where I stood. Dogs barked and ran at them, but the cows fanned out to chew, mildly interested in the new tastes of home.