Page 30 of Sky in the Deep
I stopped trying to hold back the tears that were waiting to fall. Because I knew exactly what she was talking about. It was what I had with Mýra. A tether born of tears.
Iri and Inge didn’t share blood, but Iri looked at Inge as if she were his mother. She felt like he was her son. And I didn’t need to ask her how she’d been able to love him. Iri was pure of heart in a way that I had never been. And he was brave. Not afraid to love or give of himself. People had always been drawn to him and I had been proud to be his sister. For the same reasons that Inge loved him.
A shadow came through the door and I looked up to see Runa coming in with a cloak pulled up over her head. She looked at me a little warily as she set a small bundle of woodonto the table. I recognized it immediately—sacred wood. My hands stilled on the mortar before I dropped my eyes back down to the garlic, remembering the way she touched Iri atAdalgildi.The way she looked up into his face, her cheeks pink and her eyes warm.
She took a basket of sage from the table and washed the branches in a bowl of water. When she was through, she dried them with a cloth carefully and tied bunches of them together, hanging them on the wall beside the fire.
“What’s all of this for?” I asked.
“Healing,” Runa answered. “The garlic is for illness, wounds—that sort of thing. The sage is used for skin, teeth, stomach…”
“And those?” I nodded to the bundle of raspberry vines. All the berries were gone.
“They’re for Gyda. We’ll use it when the baby comes.” She tightened the twine on another bundle of sage and hung it. “Do you have a healer in Hylli?”
I nodded, not meeting her eyes.
“I’ve been apprenticing with Inge for almost four years.”
“She’s ready to be on her own.” Inge smiled proudly.
Runa blushed. When she turned toward the fire, I reached up slowly to take a piece of the sacred wood from the table.
“We need more jars.” Inge sighed.
I dropped my hand back into my lap.
“I’ll be right back.”
I went back to grinding the garlic, still keeping my arm pulled into my side so I didn’t have to use the joint.
“So, you and Iri are…” I wasn’t sure what word to use.
“Yes.” But the sweetness was missing from her voice. She was ready to defend herself.
“And that’s why he…”
“Maybe it was part of it. I don’t know.”
I leaned onto the table, looking at her. “Then why aren’t you married?”
“We will be. My father wanted to wait until he was back from Aurvanger.” Her voice changed, the words finding a softer tone. “He was going to tell you.”
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
Apiece 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 sinceAdalgildi,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 steppedforward, 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.
