The Girl the Sea Gave Back(69)

“Of course.” Svanhild smiled wider. “When Kjeld came to us and said that he’d found you…” She breathed through the tears in her eyes. “I knew they’d kept their promise to us.”

“Who?” I wrapped my arms around myself, squeezing.

“The Spinners.”

The stones pulled heavily around my neck and I reached out for the bench beside me, feeling as if I was going to fall. “But why did you … you sent me away.”

“Sent you away?” Turonn’s voice rose, the sound of anger on the words.

Svanhild silenced him with a lifted hand before she answered. “You were born our only daughter. But your fate was written on the Tree of Urer before I ever carried you,” she said. “I cast the stones to see your future when I first realized you were coming and the cast was clear. The Spinners said that you would be Dagaz. A new dawn. But that death was coming for you.”

My shaking hand went to the center of my stomach, where the rune of Dagaz was marked into my skin.

“When you were only six years old, you drowned in the sea.”

The gray waters. The silence. The string of bubbles racing to the surface as my hands drifted. The pieces all found me again, even clearer and brighter than they had been when I took the henbane. I imagined myself, pale and still in the funeral boat, the flames pulling in the cold wind before it disappeared into the fog. I imagined the two of them standing on the shore of the headlands in the strange light that illuminated the fragments of memory.

“We do not always understand the ways of the gods, Tova. But Naer brought you back to us. She had a great destiny for you.” Svanhild came around the fire to stand before me and her hands lifted, touching my face. “Here you are.”

I looked into her dark eyes, where I could see myself. Not just my reflection. I could see parts of me there that weren’t mortal. I leaned into the warmth of her, hot tears falling, and tried to swallow down the sob in my chest. I didn’t remember her but maybe I did in some way. Maybe I’d only not remembered her because if I did, I’d have to feel the hole of her inside me.

This was Othala. The rune cast that had broken my trust in Jorrund and the last thread that tied me to the Svell. It had brought me here. To this moment.

They hadn’t cast me off. Naer hadn’t forgotten me. She’d spared my life.

“They led me here, to Hylli,” I whispered, my voice small. “The stones. They led me to the Nādhir. To you.”

To Halvard.

She pulled me into her arms and wrapped them tightly around me. I buried my face into the thick linen of her wet tunic and cried. I let every memory come back to me. Every bit of light. Every bit of darkness. I let them pull at me like the river to the sea.

I let them take me home.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


HALVARD


I pushed the door open with my heart in my throat.

“They’re alright.” Fiske stopped me before I’d even made it inside, one hand catching me in the chest.

Behind him, Eelyn lay on the table, my mother working slowly at the wound carved from her shoulder into her chest. The open skin was spread wide, the white bone showing through the muscle, and she panted through bared teeth, kicking as Myra leaned all her weight on top of her to pin her down.

“Shh…” She pressed her mouth to Eelyn’s ear, one tear sliding down her nose.

Iri sat on the stone ledge of the fire pit, sewing up his own arm with the end of the thread between his teeth, the skin puckering with the haphazard, careless stitches. Blood covered every inch of his skin, but he was breathing. Somehow, we were all still breathing.

“I need you,” my mother called over her shoulder and Fiske went to her, coming to the other side of the table. “Hold here.”

He took one side of the wound into his hands and he let Eelyn gulp in a breath before he leaned into her, holding the tissue open so that my mother could clean it.

Eelyn groaned beneath his hands and I went to her, sinking down beside the table to meet her eyes.

“She’s alright?” I looked up to my mother, afraid of what I may see on her face.

But she gave me a sideways smile. “Need more than a sword to take this one down, Halvard. You know that.”

Fiske laughed, kissing Eelyn’s forehead, but the sight of her writhing on the table turned my stomach. I didn’t know how many we’d lost and I still hadn’t found Latham, but my family was here, together. And I was ashamed of the relief it brought me.

“Have you seen Asmund?” I looked back to Iri.

He tied off the stitches, dropping the last bit of bloody thread into the fire. “He’s alright.”

I let out a long breath, pressing my forehead into my hands.

“Get the kettle.” My mother kicked my boot with hers and I stood, taking the hook from the wall and fetching it from the flames. I set it onto the stool beside her where she could reach it.

“Are you going to tell us what this is with the Kyrr, Halvard?” Iri asked, coming to stand beside me. They were gathered around the ritual house in a horde, where they’d taken Tova. Every warrior waited silently, watching the village with their weapons sheathed. They didn’t look like they wanted a fight, but there was no denying that from where they stood, it was a good time for one.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.