Sky in the Deep(22)
When she stopped moving, I looked back at her. She was staring at the strip of hair along the right side of my head that was shorn over my ear. “Is that how Aska women wear their hair?” she asked.
I reached up to rub my hand over it out of habit.
She mussed the strands until it was thick and wild on top and then she braided behind my left ear, taking it around the back of my head and then over my right shoulder. She was slow and precise, taking care to braid it correctly with thin, intricate strands. When she was finished, she tied the end and stood back to look at me.
She picked up the jar of kol from the table and opened it. “The Aska wear this, don’t they?”
I looked from the jar up to her, trying to figure out what she was doing. Why she was being kind. But her face didn’t betray her thoughts. She dipped her fingers into the jar and then ran them around my eyes, darkening the skin and then dragging her thumbs down the center of my cheeks in a line. Something about it made the twisting in my muscles let go a little. It felt familiar. I closed my eyes, remembering Myra in the dark of our tent, painting the kol onto my face. And then I opened them, the vision stinging too badly to hold in my mind.
Runa went back to her work on the garlands and I came to stand beside her, taking one into my hands and winding it up the way she had. Halvard shoved the door open, running in and then stopping short, his mouth falling open.
Inge came down the ladder, dressed in a dark purple dress.
“Look at her, Mama.” Halvard was still staring at me.
Behind him, Fiske and Iri came through the door and they, too, stopped to look at me, stiffening. I kept my eyes down, working at the garlands and trying to cool the red blooming over my face. Letting them dress me up for their feast was humiliating. And seeing them look at me like they liked it made me want to cut my own hands off.
Inge handed Fiske and Halvard baskets, pushing them out the door. Then she pointed to the others on the table. “Bring them up.”
Iri picked up a basket and handed it to me. “You look pretty.” The smile on his face made him look like a little boy.
I looked him up and down before my eyes met his, the anger inside of me coming back to life. “You look like a Riki.”
FOURTEEN
I stood at the entrance of the ritual house in the falling snow, holding the basket piled high with yarrow. The huge archway was a detailed carving of the mountain, the trees etched into it in slanted patterns and the face of Thora, mouth full of fire. Her wide, piercing eyes stared down at me, her teeth bared. In each outstretched hand, she held the head of a bear.
The walls were constructed of huge tree trunks, much bigger than the trees that surrounded the village. Through the doorway, a blazing fire burned in the center of the chamber and elk antlers holding candlesticks hung down from the ceiling. The heat poured out the door, warming the back of me as clusters of snowflakes clung to my dress. Out in the distance, a storm moved toward Fela, carrying a heavier snowfall within its dark clouds. One that would seal me into the village for the winter.
Another dyr held a basket of yarrow on the other side of the archway. Her eyes stayed on the ground, her body perfectly still. She wore a gray wool dress similar to mine, her hair braided back tightly. The collar around her neck was smoothed from years of wear and her blank, empty face said the same thing.
The Riki made their way up the incline in the snow, and my gaze flitted to the forest. A horde of my enemies was moving toward me, weapons strapped to their bodies and I stood there holding a basket of flowers. What was to stop one of them from throwing me on the fire?
My shoulder ached under the weight of the basket, the weak muscles straining under the skin, and I shifted, trying to adjust it to the other side.
They arrived by families, men and women walking with their children or the elderly. The first group stopped before entering, each taking a yarrow bloom into their hands and cupping it gently before them. I tried not to look up into the angry eyes cast down on me, the hatred burning through their stares. But it was quickly followed by something that looked like satisfaction—justice—as their attention fell to the collar around my neck.
They hated me like I hated them. But they’d won. And they knew it.
“Gudrick,” a soft voice called from behind us and the man before me looked up, a smile breaking onto his toughened face.
I turned to see an older woman in an amber dress standing behind me, holding a braided reed cage. A white snow owl with large yellow eyes peered out at me from inside. The long strands of wood-beaded necklaces hung around her neck meant that she was the Tala, the clan’s interpreter of Thora’s will.
The children ran to her, sticking their fingers into the cage, and she ushered them into the warm ritual house. They went inside, one family at a time, and walked down an open aisle to the fire, where they stood together for a silent moment before dropping the yarrow into the flames. The smell of the offerings burning filled the air with a floral, charred scent. It pushed out the doors and wound around me.
Dyrs moved about, refilling my basket when the yarrow was gone and helping to carry things inside for the arriving Riki until the path was clear. The village below looked empty, except for the house across the path from Fiske’s, where fire smoke still rose from the roof and light glowed in the window.
Inge appeared and took the basket from my arms, nodding toward the doors. I hesitated, looking up at it again. Going into their ritual house felt like a grave betrayal.