Sky in the Deep(37)

I pulled at the rope, my teeth clenching, but I could barely move, scraping against the trunk of the tree.

“You’re going to freeze to death. Slowly.” I couldn’t see his face in the moonlight as he stepped back and looked at me. He stood there, silent, his breath slowing. “You’re going to close your eyes and never wake up. If you do, it will only be to wish you were dead.” He dropped the end of the rope onto the ground and walked back down the path, into the dark.

I pulled at the ropes harder, trying to wiggle my legs free, but it only bit against me. It wouldn’t budge. I grunted and spit, fighting against the knots until something moved in the trees and I froze, trying to make it out. I waited for my eyes to adjust, my breath puffing out around me in white bursts. A woman. She twisted her fingers into her necklace, looking at me.

The Tala.

She stood, motionless, in the dark.

I waited for her to say something. To do something. But she only looked me in the eye, so still that she could have been carved out of ice. I gave up struggling, leaning into the tree, and looked back at her. A drip of blood trailed down my cheek. And then she blinked. The look on her face didn’t change as she turned and started down the path. Leaving me tied to the tree in the falling snow.





TWENTY-FOUR


I was in the fjord.

I could see the ice-blue water. The clouds moving in its reflection. My feet pressing into the smooth black pebbles. My arms wrapping around myself against the wind. The vision came over me like a cold wave. The cliff face jutting up from the water like a wall. Green moss climbing down it in long, bright strands. I could see it.

I let my weight fall against the tree, trying to hold the sight of Hylli in my mind. The edge of the forest beside the village. A shadow moving in the trees. I squinted, trying to focus my blurred vision.

The figure stalked in the distance, watching. Thick furs and the shine of silver. The white, empty eyes of a Herja. I blinked.

“Eelyn.”

He was there, in the trees. He was watching me. The Herja had come for my mother and now they’d come for me.

“Eelyn?” Something stung across my cheek. “Eelyn!”

The sunlight was suddenly gone. Black moved on black and hands pulled at me. My skin was numbed against the snow on the ground. I closed my eyes again, trying to leave it. Trying to get back to the fjord.

Fiske’s face was looking down into mine, his hands on me. But I couldn’t feel them.

“Herja,” I croaked, looking back to the trees. But there was no one.

Above his head, the moon blinked through the branches overhead. “What?”

“I want to go home, Fiske.” My words ran into each other and I could hear the weakness in them. The brittle sadness breaking on each one.

And then I was falling. The world bumped and swayed around me as he lifted me up off the ground. I could hear his breath. I could feel his skin. His arms wrapped around my limp body, holding me together.

I opened my eyes again and the trees floated past above. The sound of crunching snow filled my pounding head. I curled into Fiske and pinched my eyes closed until I could see the fjord again. Fog touching the cliffs. The smell of seawater. But the Herja was gone.

A door opened and suddenly we were inside. The familiar firelight of the house swallowed me, but I couldn’t feel its warmth.

“What happened?” Halvard ran to us.

“Get the water on.” Fiske was setting me down and surveying me in the dim light.

I was wrapped in his cloak. “Where’s Iri?” I whispered.

“Looking for you.” He pulled a blanket from the trunk and moved me closer to the fire. “Find him.” Fiske pushed Halvard toward the door and shoved him out. When he came back, he crouched down in front of me. “Who did this?”

I pulled the blanket tighter around me, searching his face. He looked different. There was something shining in his eyes that wasn’t there before. Or maybe it was. I had never seen them so closely.

“Who?” he asked again.

But all I could think was that he was still too close to me. That I wanted him to move away. “It was the man from Adalgildi,” I whispered.

“What did he do?”

I closed my eyes. I tried to disappear.

“Did he…?” The question broke off and his eyes dropped from mine.

I shook my head in answer, coiling my arms around my bare body.

Fiske stood, his boots pounding against the stone as he walked to the wall. He lifted an axe from the hook and opened the door. “Don’t tell them where I’m going.” And then he was gone.

*

I opened my eyes when the door opened and the weight of more blankets pressed down on top of me. Iri was asleep next to the fire, his head propped up on his saddlebags.

Fiske came through the door quietly, and I opened my eyes enough to watch him hang the axe back on the wall. He pulled his armor vest and tunic off and went to the basin of water to wash his face, raking his fingers through his hair. The cuts and bruises from the fighting season were healing, leaving smooth skin over the form of him, broad on top and narrow in the middle, like Iri. He set his hands on the table and leaned into it, looking into the basin as a single drop of water trailed to the end of his nose and fell into the water.

I stared at the blood-spotted tunic crumpled on the floor.

“Fiske?” Inge came down the ladder with her hair long and unbraided over her shoulders. “Where have you been?” she whispered.