Sky in the Deep(54)

The sound of the wind blowing whistled around us and I gasped when I finally looked down, stopping mid-stride. I turned in a circle, my eyes going wide. The night sky was reflecting on the ice in crisp shapes and colors, bright strings of stars swirling out around each other and a huge, round, speckled moon staring up at me.

It hung above its reflection, like the sky was folded in on itself. We were standing on it. Like the world was upside down.

I touched my lips with my fingertips, my eyes flitting over the surface. Fiske stopped, one thumb hooked into the strap across his chest, watching me. The light bouncing off the ice lit up the side of his face.

He looked up at the moon. “It only does this for a week or two. The ice starts to cloud as it thins.”

I squatted down and pressed my hand to it, watching it fog around my fingers. When I lifted them, the hazy outline was still there, frozen onto the surface. “When we were little, I almost drowned in the fjord. I fell through the ice.” I looked at myself in the reflection. “Iri and I were trying to see how far out we could make it and when I heard the crack, I looked up and saw his face just before it gave way beneath me.”

He took a step toward me.

“It was so dark. I could hardly see. And then his hands had me, yanking me up and throwing me back onto the ice.” I remembered the way it looked. The water was a darker blue than I’d ever seen. “I don’t know how he didn’t fall in. I was so angry with him for coming to the edge like that.” My words trailed off.

Once, he’d loved me enough to jump into the frozen water for me. But then he left.

“We do things we have to do.” Fiske broke the thin silence between us. “If he hadn’t jumped in, you would have died.” He paused. “If I hadn’t taken you that night in Aurvanger, that Riki would have killed you.”

I stood to face him. “I know.”

“If I hadn’t put the arrow into your shoulder, someone else would have put one in your heart. If I hadn’t taken you as a dyr, you’d be in one of those other burned villages on the mountain.”

“I know,” I said again.

“I would do it again,” he said. “All of it.”

But still, those things singed. Another moment and Fiske’s sword would have been the end of me. And that night, I would have killed him without thinking twice. Now, the thought made me feel like I was trapped under the ice beneath us, sinking into the dark.

I looked at him. “Why did you come with me?”

He let go of the strap on his chest and shifted on his feet.

“Why are you here?”

And when his eyes finally met mine, they were open. They let me in.

I took a step back.

My mouth opened to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. They were stuck in the back of my throat, wrapped tightly around my windpipe. I was suddenly aware of the icy, opaque depths beneath us again, waiting for the smallest crack to pull us down into it. Waiting to feed on us. My heart pulsed in my veins as the fear pressed down on me, making me feel heavier. It was terrifying—that feeling—like there was something tying me to him. Because if one of us fell into the darkness, the other would too.

I stepped around him, walking faster toward the other side. Toward solid ground and safety. The lake grumbled beneath my weight. Growling. Hungry. I closed my eyes, trying not to see it. That depth within me, sealed down under the surface. I kept my eyes ahead, leaving Fiske standing in between the middle of the two night skies, the stars and the moon encircling him. The only hot, living thing on the ice. The only thing I could feel.





THIRTY-FOUR


We didn’t stop. Because I couldn’t.

We walked through the forest in the dead of night as the sky darkened and lightened with the clouds passing overhead. The moon disappeared beyond the valley as the sun pulled up over the mountain behind us.

I stayed ahead of Fiske, each step coming a little quicker as I felt the fjord getting nearer. The trees thinned as we reached the valley, spreading out from one another as the ground pushed up from under the snow. The shadow of treetops gave way to a sun-drenched sea of new green grass so bright I had to blink at the sight. It was the first push against winter that would make its way up the mountain in the coming weeks.

We kept to the forest, out of the exposure of the valley. I could smell the sea. The cool, salty taste of it ran over my tongue and it begged me to forget where I was and what I was doing. To forget about the night I saw Iri and the pain in my shoulder and the raid. To forget the Herja. I walked the trail I’d walked my whole life, through the valley and toward the fjord, and it felt like none of it had ever happened.

But memory crept in again, slithering up the back of my mind as the land lifted up in front of us and led to the bluff that overlooked my village. The grass faded into rock that warmed in the sun and when my feet touched it, they stopped. They held me there as the slice of blue sea came into view. It sat beneath a gray winter sky, calm and clear, and Fiske’s footsteps stopped beside me, waiting.

I looked at my boots, taking a breath, and then I walked straight for the drop-off. I picked up my pace as I came up over the ridge, the view peeling down until I could see the beach. An alarm sounded in my mind. It was too quiet.

Another step and the village came into view. My home. And the wind was snatched from my lungs.

Below, Hylli was nothing but ash. Destruction and slaughter.