The Girl the Sea Gave Back(9)

I swallowed hard, pushing that glimmer of gray light from my mind. Sometimes I felt as if the sting of it still lingered on my skin. The pounding of the drums still sounded in my dreams. I’d left the headlands, but the headlands hadn’t left me. What and who I was was marked into my skin in the sacred staves and motifs with meanings that even I didn’t know. It would never leave me. And because of that, I’d never had a place in Liera except for the one Jorrund had given me.

My hand went to the bracelet around my wrist and I pressed the copper disk between my fingers, trying to conjure the talisman’s protection.

“Hagalaz, Jorrund,” I said. “The cast was clear.”

“The hailstone can mean many things,” he said, but we both knew I was right.

“Only when there are other runes present. It sat in the center. Alone.”

His hands fidgeted nervously. “I believe the time has come for Eydis to use you. Sometimes, it’s the most destructive storm that brings life, Tova. Hagalaz is coming. But I think we will survive it. I think it will make us stronger.”

That was just like Jorrund, thinking he was wiser than the gods and Spinners together. Thinking he could outwit fate. But there was a deep line across his forehead that wasn’t usually there and I wondered if he truly believed what he was saying.

“A spider. Walking the web of fate.” His voice softened. “That’s what the Spinners carved into the Tree of Urer the moment you were born.”

What little I understood of my marks said as much. Across my left side, a spider stretched over my ribs. But what was carved into the Tree of Urer could be changed. It could be rewritten. The Kyrr had cast me off as a sacrifice to their god, and it didn’t matter who’d spared my life, gods or Spinners. I was here. There had to be a reason for it and that was what plagued me.

“Will Vigdis betray his brother?” I asked the question that had been on both of our minds since we’d left the ritual house.

“He’s already betrayed him.”

“You know what I mean. Will he try to take his place as chieftain?”

“No.” But Jorrund had given his answer too quickly. He wasn’t sure. He’d dedicated his life to making Bekan the greatest leader in the Svell’s history and he’d used me to do it. But one envious look from Vigdis could threaten it all. And it wasn’t only Bekan’s life at stake. It was mine. It was Jorrund’s. If Vigdis became chieftain of the Svell, the broken ground beneath me would give way to the frozen depths. I knew exactly what the Tree of Urer would say of my fate then.

“When do we leave?” I asked, knowing I didn’t really have a choice.

He smiled widely, a gleam of pride in his eyes. “Tomorrow. Sundown.”

His robes brushed the ground as he opened the door and when it closed, I went to the window and watched him on the path. The Svell had wanted to cut my throat when their Tala brought me into their village. For years, there was a guard outside my door to be sure no one carried out their god’s wrath upon me. But Jorrund had been sure, and he’d convinced Bekan, speaking on behalf of Eydis.

He disappeared into the trees, leaving me alone in the forest. The little house he’d given me was the only home I remembered. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t summon the faces of my Kyrr family or our home to me. They were like snowflakes, melting before they touched the ground.

I opened the pouch and let the stones fall onto the table, finding Hagalaz and holding it out before me. The rune was a dark one, the wrath of nature and uncontrolled forces. The hailstorm never left the earth unbruised even if it did bring water to a thirsty land.

I turned the stone over in my fingers, watching the sunlight slide over the shining black surface. There was only one way to know for sure what fate was coming, and that was to wait. Because no matter what Jorrund had planned, the Spinners were weaving. They were folding time and every one of us within it.

I pulled the sleeve of my tunic up, tracing the marks on my arm with the tip of my finger. They stretched across my skin from my ankles to my throat. I couldn’t remember getting them, but whoever had pricked them into my skin had done it with precision. The winding, curling fins of a sea serpent, the unfurled wings of a raven. A wolf, teeth bared. The black stains crept over my shoulders, down my back and breasts in intricate, knotted patterns that honored Naer, the god who’d once abandoned me. They were riddles. A patchwork of secrets. Only a Kyrr could translate them for me, and my people never left the headlands. They were born and buried in the frozen north. But if I never unraveled the marks, I’d never know my story. I’d never truly know myself. And I wondered if that was the punishment the Spinners or the gods had bestowed on me for whatever sins I’d committed on the headlands.

I opened the neck of my tunic, studying the open eye encircled by a garland of oak leaves. It was the only symbol I knew and it was the one that had told Jorrund who I was the day he found me. What I was.

A Truthtongue.

I wondered what he would have done if he hadn’t seen it. Would he have drowned me in the cold water of the fjord? Was this mark the reason my own people had sent me out as a gift to the sea? Maybe it was a penalty for bringing a fate down upon them too dark to survive. Like Vera.

I blew out the candle, taking my satchel from beneath the table. I would never be one of the Svell. I’d known that for a long time. But after all these years, I could still taste death on my tongue. I could still hear the echoes of its whisper and I recognized the shape of its shadow cast around me.