The Girl the Sea Gave Back(68)

I opened my mouth to speak, but the air was trapped in my throat. My fingers wound so tightly around the arrow that I felt the tip of the head cut into the pad of my thumb.

She looked at me for another moment before she grabbed ahold of my tunic with strong hands, pulling me close as she inspected my face with narrowed, piercing eyes.

“I…” I whispered, but I couldn’t think, my mind twisting and turning around the sight of her. Because I knew her. Somehow, I knew her.

She turned me to the side, walking slowly in a circle around me, and her scrutinizing gaze raked from my head to my feet.

“Who are you?” I dropped the arrow and pulled the sleeves of my tunic down to cover my marks, feeling naked before them.

She reached up, taking both my hands in hers, her eyes on the yarrow and the henbane. The glint of a smile lit in them as she answered. “I’m your mother, sváss.”

The wind stopped suddenly, the storm trapped inside my head. I searched her face. But it wasn’t her eyes I recognized. It was her voice. The deep, rasping sound that had been in my visions and haunted my dreams. I sucked in a breath, but before I could speak she turned, pushing back through the crowd.

“Wait!” I lunged forward, reaching for her, but two men stepped into my path, each taking an arm and holding onto me.

I recoiled, hissing against the throbbing pain where the sword wounds were cut deep into my flesh. They were no longer bleeding, but I could see through the torn linen that they needed stitching. The men pulled me forward and my feet slid over the wet grass as we moved down the hill, toward the village.

Their grips tightened as I tried to pull free, searching the crowd frantically before I even realized what I was looking for. Halvard. But I didn’t catch sight of him until we’d made it out from under the trees. He followed after us, pushing through the warriors gathered to my right. And a face I did recognize followed after him.

The Kyrr man I’d seen with him in Utan watched me. He didn’t take his eyes from me as the men pulled me down the hill, toward the gate.

The village was quiet and empty and I struggled to keep up with their quick pace, their boots pounding the gravel faster than mine. Hundreds of Kyrr moved aside as the woman walked ahead, the bones around her neck jingling. She didn’t look back at me as we passed through the open doors of the ritual house. I glanced back over my shoulder to where Halvard still stood beyond the gate, his face lifting above the others to see me before the doors slammed closed.

The fire blazed at the altar, lighting the dark room around us so that the white paint on the woman’s face almost glowed. I tried to wrench free of the hands again when I saw a tall man standing before the flames. The arms of his tunic were cut free so that every mark covering his thick, sculpted arms was visible. Runes, animals, symbols I didn’t know. Except for one.

On the outside of his upper left arm were the antlers of a stag. And they were just like mine, their curves and points identical. I looked down to where the same symbol showed through my torn sleeve of my dress, my eyes wide.

The woman took the place beside him and the men let me go, pushing back out the doors and leaving us alone in the dark. My hands still shook as I looked up to where the sunlight spilled through the slats of the walls in sharp lines, landing on the face of the man. They both stood on the other side of the fire, staring. Their gazes ran over me, studying, and I squirmed beneath the feeling, my legs feeling too weak to hold me.

Red hair was pulled into thick, twisted locks over the woman’s shoulder and beneath the marks, I could see pale, freckled skin. I swallowed hard, my eyes flitting down to my own, covered in the same spotted pattern.

When she finally spoke, I found myself holding my breath. “Tova.” The accent that curled the edges of the words was different from the one I was used to. “Do you remember me?”

I looked over her face again, trying to find something familiar there. Something I knew. “I don’t know,” I answered, shifting on my feet. “Maybe.”

But I did. Somehow. They didn’t feel like strangers.

She smiled, her long fingers tangled into each other before her. “You were so small the last time we saw you. You’re a woman now.”

The man didn’t speak. He stood a whole head taller than her, silently watching me as the woman pressed a hand to her chest. “I am Svanhild.” The sound of it stung, pulling at the threads of long-dead memories. Stitches on wounds that had never healed. “This is Turonn.” She looked up to the man. “We are so grateful to Naer.” Her voice broke. “For bringing you back to us.”

“Do you remember?” When Turonn finally spoke, the depth of his voice filled the entire room around us. It was warm, like the feel of stone sitting in the afternoon sun. It, too, was like an echo of something I knew. “Do you remember what happened?”

I shook my head, feeling cold despite the altar fire. “I only remember waking. I opened my eyes and I was alone. I didn’t know where I was because the fog was so thick and—”

“And you drifted across the fjord. Is that how you came to be with the Svell?” He seemed eager for answers, but I didn’t have them. I had no idea how I’d landed on Liera’s shores.

“Their Tala found me. He said that a Fate Spinner led him to the beach. That she gave me to him.” Jorrund, standing in the rain alone, came back to me. The way his robes clung to him, his eyes empty.