Sky in the Deep(35)

When Halvard was asleep, I sat beside the smoldering fire with the sacred wood, pulling the carving tool toward me slowly to shape the feet.

“Who are you making it for?” Inge asked quietly from across the fire.

I blew the dust from my hands. “My mother.”

The thing I remembered most about my mother was her hair. I remember it catching the sun and thinking that it looked like it was moving even when it wasn’t.

“When did she die?” Inge leaned forward, propping her chin up onto her hands as she watched the tool cut into the wood.

For a moment, I thought I should lie. I didn’t know what Iri had told her about our mother. But it wasn’t right to lie about her. I wanted Inge to know about the woman she’d replaced.

“I was six. My mother wasn’t a warrior.” I answered the question I knew she was asking in her mind. “She was killed during a Herja raid.”

Her eyes widened and she stiffened. “The Herja?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve heard the stories. I thought … people think they’re a myth.”

I dragged the tip of the metal across the bottom of the block slowly. “They aren’t stories.”

The night the Herja came was the first night I saw my father break. Iri and I ran, because that’s what he told us to do. He shoved us to the door and pushed us out into the dark. We ran up the hill and into the forest. We didn’t stop running until morning broke and when we returned, hobbling back on bleeding, bare feet, we found him holding her on the beach. His hands tangled in her hair. I would never forget that sound—the primal roar that tore from his throat and echoed through our village.

“I’m sorry,” Inge said, watching my face.

“I don’t remember her well.” I shrugged. But I could still hear the sounds of screaming in the dark. The smell when we burned the bodies. I could still feel the chill on my skin from when I first saw the Herja.

“You do.” She sat up. “Even if you can’t see her when you close your eyes, our bodies and our minds remember things that we can’t. They hold onto things. And you’ll see her again. When you reach Sólbj?rg.”

I stopped carving, surprised.

She smiled. “That’s where your people go after death, isn’t it?”

I looked into her eyes, wondering what she was thinking. What she wanted from me. “I’m not sure I’ll make it to Sólbj?rg.” Saying it out loud made the fear inside me wake up again and I wished I’d held my tongue.

Her head tilted, resting on her shoulder. “Why is that?”

“Because I’m a dyr.” I dropped my gaze back down to the idol. I didn’t want to see whether she felt sorry for me or not. “I’ve lost my honor.”

She was quiet a long time, watching me carve. I listened to the pop and hiss of the fire and tried to forget she was there. I imagined my mother’s face. Her dark, deep-set eyes. Her straight, square teeth.

“We find things, just as we lose things, Eelyn.” Inge stood. “If you’ve lost your honor, you’ll find it again.”

I kept my back to her as she went to the ladder and climbed up into the loft. I couldn’t try and explain it to her. I couldn’t tell her that I’d abandoned my clansmen on the battlefield to chase after the brother who didn’t even want me. Or that it was me who left Iri in that trench.

I held the idol up in front of me. The crude shape was simple. My father was the one who could carve. But it was still her. It was still something.

I looked back up to the dark loft where Inge and Halvard slept. If my father were here, he would tell me to take the carving tool, climb the ladder, and kill them both. I lifted the small iron hook, turning it around in the firelight before I set it down, and touched the face of the idol with my fingers.

“Sigr, keep the soul of my mother safe in Sólbj?rg. Protect my father. Do not take your favor from me.” The words bent and turned around each other. I sniffed them back. “Don’t forget me.”





TWENTY-THREE


Inge filled her basket and put on her cloak as Halvard settled down to sleep. “I want you to go to the mountainside cellar. We need to store the sage and I need you to get some vinegar from the barrel.” She took my cloak from the hook on the wall and handed me an empty jar.

“You’re not going with me?” My brow lifted.

“I have patients to tend to. The cellar is below the ritual house. You’ll see the door in the rock face.” Inge took up a small torch from beside the door and lit it in the fire before opening the door. But she paused, looking back at me. Her lips pressed together as thoughts flitted behind her eyes. “Good-bye, Eelyn.” She turned before she’d even said my name, stepping out into the darkening village.

I stood, staring at the door, my mind jumping from one thought to the next. She was letting me go. She was giving me my chance. My heart raced past my mind and I ran for my boots. I fit them on clumsily before pulling my cloak around me.

The door creaked open and I looked down the empty path, turning the jar over in my hand as my pulse picked up. I could take some food from the cellar and slip into the forest. There was still some sunlight left and if I hurried, I could make it to the river. No one would notice I was gone until morning.

I loaded up my arms with the bundles of sage and watched. The village was quiet, but the Riki were still awake, behind closed doors. I lit the other torch and stepped out the door, walking quickly. Inge stood in the candlelit doorway of Gyda’s house.