Page 37 of Sky in the Deep
“What did you do?” Gyda stood behind me with a stack of wood gathered in her arms. “What did you do to get them to keep you alive?”
I turned back to the goats and filled the pail. I didn’t want to make up an excuse. I didn’t want to lie. I felt sorry for her and Kerling, and I hated myself for it.
“Thora will bring her vengeance on you,” she uttered. “For all of us.”
She walked away with her skirt clenched in her fists and I looked into the dirt, feeling the weight of the collar and thinking that maybe she already had. Maybe it was Thora who’d brought me to Fela, like Iri said. Maybe it was Thora who’d fit the iron around my neck.
I looked to the tree line. If I made it to the river and had Riki chasing me in a forest I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have time to get down the mountain before they caught me. I’d have to wait until I wouldn’t be noticed. Then I’d leave this place behind.
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 reachSólbjorg.”
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 toSólbjorg.” 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 adýr.” 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.
