Sky in the Deep(29)

I went back to work. I didn’t want to know what Iri planned to do. He’d left. He’d taken a new family, and he didn’t owe me anything anymore.





EIGHTEEN


A piece of sacred wood and a small, dull carving tool sat together beside my bed the next morning. Inge must have seen me try to take it and put them there. It wasn’t the first time I realized that she saw more than she seemed to.

I sat beside the garden with my legs crossed, watching thin curling strips of wood peel up off the crude block as I dragged the carving tool over it. The shavings fell down onto the ground in front of me, scattered on top of the snow. Fiske stood with Halvard on the side of the house, watching him practice his axe throw. He’d kept to himself since Adalgildi, tending to his duties in a manner that I was beginning to recognize as his. He hung in the shadows, like he wasn’t really there, save for the presence that followed him. It was thick and heavy, silent but alive. And it seemed to be everywhere. All the time.

Fiske stood back, watching Halvard closely as he stepped forward, letting the axe in his hand sink down behind his head and then snapping his arm forward and letting it fly.

It hit the trunk of a pine tree with a loud pop. The sound was so familiar that it tugged at the tangled knot of memories inside of me. I bit down on my lip, watching him as he repeated the throw over and over, Fiske quietly instructing him until he moved to the other hand. I could tell by the way he gripped it that it wasn’t as strong.

Halvard sighed, hanging his head back as the axe’s handle hit the tree with a ping, falling to the ground.

“Again,” Fiske ordered, walking out to the tree and retrieving it.

Again.

Iri’s voice echoed in my mind.

Again, Eelyn.

Halvard shook out his arms before he lifted it again, but he didn’t argue. His elbow sunk forward, sending the axe out. It missed, this time the blade hitting at an angle and sliding to the left.

Fiske walked back to him with the axe in his hand, his eyes looking over my head to something behind me. I turned to see Gyda standing across the path. Her long black hair was braided over each shoulder, the ends trailing down to where her hands wrapped around her swollen belly. She stared at me, her eyes narrowing with the same hatred they’d held the day before.

I brushed the wood shavings from my lap, taking the hooked metal over the top of the wood to round it out. The idol my father had of my mother was so worn that the wood had turned a dark, slick gray. He held it in his calloused hands every night, whispering prayers for my mother’s soul, and I’d do the same for Iri. Then we’d switch, kneeling in the fire-lit dark of our home on the fjord. I lifted the wood to my nose and breathed in the crisp, raw scent of it. I’d always believed my mother’s soul made it to Sólbj?rg. That she and Iri were together there.

Fiske made Halvard throw the axe until he hit his mark three times in a row and when he finally dismissed him, Halvard ran to me, sliding on the snow and landing on the ground beside me. His knees touched mine as he leaned forward, inspecting the idol.

“Is it your brother? The one who died?” His thick eyelashes flickered as he looked up at me. His eyes were as blue as Fiske’s, but different. Dark. Like a storm.

“My mother.” I handed it to him and watched him turn it over in his hands gently.

He smiled.

“What?”

He shrugged, handing it back to me. “I like it.”

“Don’t you have one for your father?”

He shook his head, pulling his mouth to the side of his face.

“Why not?”

“It’s not our way,” Fiske interrupted, coming to stand over us.

My eyes dropped back down to the half-finished idol. I had the head and shoulders done but the rest was still just a block of wood. Halvard reached into his vest and pulled something into his hand. When he opened it, a round, flat stone sat in the center of his palm. It was etched with words I couldn’t read, the same as the one I’d seen Iri tuck into his vest before Adalgildi.

“What does it say?”

“Ala sál. Soul bearer,” he said, proudly. “It’s my taufr.”

I picked it up and turned it over in my hand. “What is it?”

“It protects me.”

“How?”

“You give it to someone you want to protect. It tells the gods that you bear another’s soul. My mother made it for me.”

Fiske’s shadow slipped over me as he headed toward the house. He took the net from where it hung on an iron hook. He was going to the river.

“I—” It slipped out just as he stepped onto the path and I clamped my mouth closed, clenching my fist around the idol in my hand.

But he was already looking at me, turned with the net swinging beside his leg. “What is it?” The words were missing the anger they usually held.

I bit my lip again. “I can help you with the fish.”

He looked surprised and for a moment, I thought maybe he could see through me. That maybe he knew what I was up to. His weight shifted back and he looked at the ground before his gaze rose to the trees. His hands twisted in the net. “Alright.”

Halvard groaned, falling back from where he sat and landing backward in the snow with his arms out wide around him.

“Come with us.” I stood up off the ground and tucked the idol into my vest.