Beautiful Wreck (56 page)

“And Hundr Blacktooth became a great chieftain, a prosperous farmer and consort of a goddess,” Hár finished, and I knew I wasn’t imagining the hitch in his throat, a single note of wistfulness swallowed by the thunder of his voice. “And he gave Lofn many daughters.”

Betta’s back was to me in the pantry. She stood on her toes, drawing something down from a very top shelf, and her shoulders moved with irritation as she shoved boxes around.

“Why won’t you speak to me?”

She stopped moving and settled onto her heels, but didn’t turn around.

I grabbed the biggest bowl I could find and just looked at it, waiting for her answer. Afraid, but needing to know. Wanting her back. It would have been the simplest thing, back in my original time, to buy a hundred bowls this size. Every one the same.

I filled it with dry fish, and I waited some more.

Something sunk in my belly. Would she say she no longer wanted me? We weren’t friends after all? Tears came quick to the corners of my eyes and I felt my whole face crumple.

“What do you mean, Woman?” She finally spoke, and it was so good. I held her raspy words in my mind. Yet it was no answer.

“You know what I mean, já?” My voice was slippery, and I hugged my bowl of fish. Finally she turned to me.

Her answer surprised me. “It is Hár,” she said.

Oh.
Tremendous relief flowed through me.

Hearing it out loud, it seemed stupidly clear. This wasn’t about me. Ever since the first night of the party, Hár had been expansive and desperate. He crashed through the week, breaking things, fighting, drinking until he fell down into the snow and slept there, freezing, while Betta doggedly wrapped bandages and set bones.

“He’s out there shaking the house with his sighs,” I said. “And beating up anyone who looks at him.”

“Well …” Betta started, then, “já …” She squared herself up, then came toward me. She lifted herself up to sit on the high bench—the same one where Heirik had placed me when we kissed. I placed my bowl down and ungracefully made it up to sit beside her and waited until she was ready.

“I told him I am eighteen in summer,” she started. “I am obviously not going to be married to anyone young, and he is a burlugalti and dishonors me.”

I wanted to laugh at her description of the old man, a
clumsy wild boar
. But it worried me, that she’d challenged his honor. That was dangerous.

I felt like I was dipping my toe in icy water when I carefully asked, “And?”

Betta let it out with a short breath. “And,” she said. “If he won’t marry me, then we are done.”

The color rose on her face. “I won’t be hidden like a small fish.” Her description of herself was cutting. A small catch, too embarrassing to bring home.

“You’re right,” I told her, and I took her hand. “He loves you, and he should not use you like that.” And I took her in my arms and she turned to me and shook with quiet crying. Her hair caught in the tears on my own cheeks. I’d once promised myself that we would get the man she pined for. I’d been so naive. But at least now I could hold her through this. My shoulder was all for her. She was heavy, and I bore her up as she cried. She pulled away then, and her strong eyes filled to the limit with tears tore at my heart.

She wiped at them and straightened herself. She trailed her fingertips over the bench between us. “He will sleep here.”

“Here?” I asked. Befuddled, as always. “Sleep on this bench?”

“It is his rightful room.” She said. “It became so, after Heirik grew up.”

I hadn’t thought about the arrangements before I came here, about where Heirik slept when he was a boy, where his uncle did. This was the only other room that locked. Hár would begin to sleep in the pantry to hide from everyone and perhaps beat the walls with his stupid fists.

Winter into spring

It was a long snowmelt.

Everyone talked about how the winter was mild but everlasting, the longest in memory. Outside an eerie white and electric blue permeated everything, refusing to lift into yellow and green.

Inside the muffled bulk of the house, we found the same things to do. Tension electrified everything, even the most mundane task, making it exhausting to sew a seam or repair a sock. Hár grumbled and made char cloth in the corner, and, after each meal, tramped off to the snowy stables or the pantry. Eyes followed him, people wondering without asking what drove him back to sleeping there now, after years of not caring to use that bed.

Heirik hardly ever came out. He passed his time alone, and at many points I was sure he’d left the house altogether and was gone away, probably in the cave.

The snow was no longer high, but instead a relentless slush filled every crack in the ground and made its way in under the mudroom doors. Everyone was miserable and began to talk worriedly about animals and planting the homefield. An unearthly spring, too long in coming. It was a curse, Hildur said, but to no effect. After a long winter, not even the most superstitious among us could hear her pronouncements anymore.

She looked around like a hawk and often her gaze rested on Betta with suspicion, Svana with irritation, or me with open fear and hostility.

The children, dreadfully bored, tried to make frost cups, just like the chief’s rare, clear drinking glasses. It was almost too late in the season, but they desperately hoped they might still freeze. Magnus and Haukur helped the littles ones clear snow away from a spot where there was no underground stream. They dug molds deep in the hard ground and let the children fill them with water.

It might just work. There was enough cold still gripping the earth. I crouched over the little freezing cups in their hole in the ground, with my skirts hiked up out of the slush. I looked at the big, gray sky and laughed hard, a single sharp sound that went into the atmosphere and was lost. I thought I’d surely come to rock bottom—a place and time where the most interesting thing to do was stare at a pit, waiting for water to freeze. I vaguely thought that in spring, when it was dry again, I would have to do something, go somewhere else. But spring seemed like a dream from another life.

After more days of this than anyone could bear, I thought I saw daytime starting to return, the grayish play of noon light becoming stronger, the landscape’s waking hours longer.

I thought I might be delirious, but then it was there again, the sun, and I realized it must have been happening gradually over a long time. Opening like a flower, so that even as I watched, I could never see the exact moment it changed. The smoke vents in the roof started to turn a paler blue, like an eggshell seen in an arc. For hours at a time it became easier to see.

And with this weak and newborn sun, our spirits started lifting, sluggishly as though we’d been sleeping off an epic ale feast. We talked about how everywhere else in the world, everywhere outside Hvítmörk, it must be spring by now. The woods and waves would be passable. Farmers in other parts of the island and as far as Norway must be planting their homefields, letting their animals free. It wouldn’t be long until we did those things, until we saw grass again and smelled dry dirt.

The days became bright with promise, as if the oddest things might be possible.

Even so, it was shocking when we heard that Brosa’s boat had been spotted.

The chief and Hár were on their horses in seconds, a spray of gray slush thrown up in their wake. I watched Heirik go, and I pressed my fingers to my lips and then the wind, hoping so hard. Hoping that when he got to the water he would find what he’d sought in his heart all this long and dreary winter. Not the blades and berries and honey from Norway, or cloth and silver from the east. But his brother.

Our hearts that had been tentatively lifting, suddenly soared. Everyone woke all the way up and beamed with energy. The house itself seemed to wake too, shaking winter and stretching like a giant dog. We knew somehow that Brosa still lived.

It took a long time for Betta and I to put away the honey, nuts, dried fruit, spices, casks of mead, all the while an unease gathering in my stomach.

I’d peeked at Brosa, já. He was a large bundle of furs silhouetted against the heartstone. I heard his voice calling out names and greeting family. It sounded less dark and forest-like than his brother’s, more a medium, earth-colored brown. Something in me didn’t want to get close enough to really see him.

A dozen men had returned with Brosa, all of them gathered here in the heady triumph of making it home, everyone drinking and boasting and laughing at once. When Betta and I emerged from our dim and cozy cave of provisions, I didn’t go to join them. Instead, I went to the back door and stepped outside. I scooped up wet snow to wash my face and adjust my fluttering heart.

I’d put it off by working in the pantry, but now the little strange feeling inside me uncurled and unnerved me. I rubbed my face hard with cold, slushy crystals. I felt relief and joy for Heirik. He had his greatest love back, his little brother, and the punishing ache could end, the months believing Brosa was dead and yet holding out just enough hope to twist his heart. Those months were over. So why did I hesitate?

I looked at my wet hands, and an answer did come.

Oh.

I stopped still, snow sparkling in my palms. “So selfish,” I growled out loud at myself. He was a brother. He would never change anything between me and Heirik. It was the notion, though, that struck me. The idea, however vague, that Heirik could love anyone else, anyone at all.

I recalled playing games with him, and smiled privately at his wicked humor. I luxuriated in the memory of his skin, the feeling of him against me, inside me. I remembered singing to him as he slept, and it was even more tender, somehow, than making love. Some of the rare future words that had passed my lips in months—they were for Heirik.

I shook out my hands, wiped the last wet bits on my apron, and made my way inside.

Everyone was gathered around the heartstone, and a big fire had been built in the hearth. The ceiling was open wide. After such a depressing winter, and now with Brosa’s return, the frigid outdoor air, sweeping down off the North Pole, felt like a fresh spring breeze.

I lingered outside the circle of light, until Dalla made room for me to come close. My cheeks were damp, and when I lowered my eyelashes I felt every one as a miniature icicle, melting into dew around my eyes. I looked up to the flames, and there he was.

Brosa was wrapped in wool and lit by flickering orange and blue. Everything about him was broad—the bulk of his body amplified by layers of cloaks. His hair was spun gold and brown, unbraided and tangled from riding, with strands strewn across his forehead.

He looked so much like his brother. But where Heirik was dark, Brosa was sunlight. And where Heirik was colored with shades of berries and blood on his face, Brosa had a white scar, a jagged line that followed the path of his brother’s birthmark. I watched this living expression of Heirik with fascination and a sense of danger in my gut. Oh, so much alike.

And yet a wholly different man. I could see that at once. Telling stories of their travels, he seemed able to talk and joke and listen to everyone at once. When he laughed it was easy and washed his face in light. An overall radiance warmed the room around him. He didn’t look away from anyone, didn’t calculate or consider the air over their shoulders, just looked straight at them with a frank friendliness.

He looked up and noticed me staring. Inquisitive and confident, he stared back at me for what felt like a long time. He looked at my hair, my face, lingered over my scarred cheek, took in my dress and hands. Even in the erratic, insufficient light, I could still detect the color of the sea in his eyes. They must be staggering in daylight, the blue-green of waves and far horizons.