Sky in the Deep(30)
“I have to stay for Gyda. In case she has the baby.” His eyes moved to her house, but she was gone.
I gave his leg a soft kick with my boot and when he looked at me, I grinned. I pulled the hood up on my cloak and followed after Fiske, trying to catch up to him.
He didn’t slow for me. I shortened my strides as I reached him, staying on his heels as the path pulled up out of the village and the trees multiplied. The pines were so tall that I couldn’t see the tops. They moved in the wind, the branches of each tree bleeding into one another as the trunks creaked. I kept my eyes up instead of down, tracing the shape of the trees and marking a path in my mind that I would recognize even in deep snow.
The path snaked through the forest until I could hear the river. We came up over the ridge to see it carved into the ground like a vein under the skin. It rushed past, the spray of it rising up into the air around us, and I let my hood fall back, studying it. It wound down the slope, crossing in front of us and disappearing. The water had to make it to the sea eventually. If I followed it, it would take me down the mountain and into the valley.
“It’s not the way down,” Fiske said beside me and my eyes snapped up. “Try if you want to, but you won’t make it.”
I looked back to the water. He had to be lying. The river had to lead down the mountain.
He walked down the bank until he reached two large flat stones in the water and he made his way across. I picked up my cloak and stepped carefully as the water roared past. When I made it to the second stone, he reached for me and I took his hand as I jumped, landing in the deeper snow on the other side.
We walked farther down to where a large wooden post was buried in the ground with a length of rope tied around it and disappearing into the frozen surface of the water. He pulled his axe free and broke up the ice, then crouched down and untied it, his fingers prying the wet rope from the knot.
We used nets in the fjord all the time, but never like this. It was standing up on its side, tied across the width of the river like a hide stretched in the sun. “It’s a net?”
“Yes.” He grunted, freeing the rope and winding it tightly around his hand as he lifted it slowly against the weight of the current. His face tensed, the muscles in his neck pulling and his shoulders tightening as he hoisted it up, but it was caught. The bottom of the rope was snagged on the branches of a fallen tree.
“It’s stuck.”
He looked down, still holding the net against the rush of the water. “Can you reach it?”
I unclasped my cloak, tossing it onto the snow, and came around his legs to squat down between him and the trunk of the tree disappearing under the surface.
I took a deep breath and plunged my arm in, following the rope down so far that the water came up to my shoulder. I found the end and yanked at it, gritting my teeth.
The rope went slack and Fiske shifted his weight until the net full of silver fish rose up out of the water. I took the other end of the net and we pulled it onto the bank, setting the fish into the snow.
They laid on their sides, wide eyes looking up at me and mouths gulping air as Fiske got down onto his knees to replace the net with the one we’d brought with us.
“It means fish.”
He looked up at me, his brow furrowing as he stood.
“Your name. It means fish, doesn’t it?”
A sharp snap sounded behind us and I turned, my heart coming up into my throat as I stepped back, toward the water. In the trees ahead, an enormous brown bear stood on his hind legs, looking at us. My hand found Fiske’s arm and clamped down hard onto it, my fingernails digging into his tunic. He looked over his shoulder and dropped the ends of the net, sending the fish sliding over the snow.
The hollow pump of the bear’s breaths echoed, sending white puffs fogging the air around his snout. He came down onto his front feet and took a step toward us, his nose in the air. Fiske’s whole body went rigid, his eyes lighting up with something I knew well. It was the same thing pulsing through every inch of my body—death coming close. Whispering in my ear. I’d known that feeling since I was a child, watching the Herja slither out of the forest toward Hylli.
Fiske’s hand wrapped around my arm and pulled at me slowly as the bear moved closer. “Don’t run.” He said it so softly I barely heard him over the sound of my heartbeat in my ears.
There was nowhere to run anyway. The ice-crusted river ran behind us and the bear stood before us, coming closer. Fiske moved me behind him and my heels sank into the water as he shifted in front of me. I leaned to the side to look around him and held my breath. The bear was so close to us that Fiske could reach out and touch him. The sunlight turned his brown fur golden at the tips and it fanned out around his heart-shaped face, his shining nose wet at the end of his snout. He leaned in, sniffing Fiske’s chest, and I tightened my grip on his armor vest, my fingertips numb against the woven leather. I peered over his shoulder and my heart stopped altogether.
Because the bear’s eyes were set on me. Wide and deep and open. Looking right at me.
He stepped closer, nosing around Fiske. I gulped down a breath as the bear stilled, his huge paws sunken into the snow and Fiske’s back pressed into me. I set my mouth against the back of his shoulder and stared back at the creature. It was as if he was going to speak. As if he had something to tell me. His black eyes glistened, boring into mine, and the chill of it ran down my spine, tingling in my fingertips.