Page 56 of The Girl the Sea Gave Back
The sight of him blurred in the tears springing to her eyes. “But why?”
He took a deep breath, pressing his mouth into a hard line. “I didn’t want to tell you this.” He paused, waiting for her to look up at him. “You didn’t get lost from the headlands,sváss.You were sent away.”
She wrung her hands beneath the table, trying to understand. “What?”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he said again. “But your people… they cast you off.”
“Cast me off.” She repeated the words, as if saying them with her own lips would help make sense of them.
He leaned in closer to her. “Do you know what a sacrifice is?”
She nodded slowly.
“That’s what you are. Your people tried to sacrifice you. To their god.”
A sick, twisted feeling pulled behind Tova’s ribs and she pressed her slick palms to her knees, trying to steady herself.
“You can never go back,” he said. “If you do, they will kill you.”
The tears welled in her eyes and though she swallowed down the cry in her throat, she didn’t try to keep them from falling. Jorrund set the small rune stone back onto the table and slid it toward her. She stared at it.
Mannaz.
Friends. Enemies.
Her eyes flickered up to Jorrund, and she blinked, wondering which he was.
Village of Fela, old Riki Territory
Halvard stared into the pail of water at his feet, where his wavering reflection looked back at him. His eyes were redand swollen, his hair a tangled knot at the nape of his neck. He wiped the tears from his face with both hands before he opened the door, where his mother waited inside.
She looked up from where she sat beside his father’s body, giving him a small smile. He’d woken in the loft to the sound of both his brothers crying, and as soon as he’d opened his eyes he’d known his father was dead. When the sun had set the night before, he’d wondered if he would go to sleep and never see him again and he was right. Having a mother who was a healer had taught him to recognize the look of death.
“Come.” Inge held her hands out for the pail and he took his place at his father’s side as she lifted the hot kettle from where it sat on the coals in the fire pit.
He watched her pour the steaming water into the melted snow and they each took a linen cloth, folding it neatly before they dipped it into the warm water. She dragged it over his father’s shoulder and down his chest, cleaning the skin, and Halvard did the same on the other side, rinsing the cloth as he went. The sweet scent of herbs filled the house and he tried not to look up to his father’s face, keeping his attention on his work. He had been sick for days, and his mother wanted him to go to the funeral fire clean. She had already set out one of his dress tunics and oiled his boots, so he would look his best when he went to the afterlife.
She finished with the washing and sat beside his body on the table, taking her time to braid his beard in elaboratestrands. Halvard dropped the cloth into the pail and listened to her hum a song he’d heard her sing his entire life as she fit silver beads onto the ends of the braids and tied them off with strips of thin leather.
It seemed wrong that his father would die of sickness when he’d survived so many battles. Halvard had sat in the loft for the past three nights, begging Thora to spare his life. And as he woke that morning, he wondered if he’d ever pray to her again.
The door opened and Iri came inside, his hands and arms painted with the same gray mud that stained his tunic. Dark red cuts and scrapes traced up his skin where he’d gathered the wood for the funeral fire. Halvard waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He pulled the dirty tunic over his head, dropping it on the floor, and his blond braids fell down his back as he washed the mud from his arms silently.
Iri had come into their home mostly dead only three years before, an enemy survivor from battle. But now, he was Halvard’s brother. He was Auben’s son. And there was no mistaking the pain that the loss of him had struck Iri with. His shoulders shook with his silent cries as he cupped the water, washing his face.
It was almost midday when Fiske opened the door. They were dressed in their finest linen, their hair combed and braided. Fiske and Iri carried their father on a set of planks and Inge and Halvard followed. His hand fit into hers and she picked up her skirt as they made their way to the ritualhouse in the snow, where the village had gathered to honor Auben. He’d been born in Fela and after forty-six years of life and six fighting seasons, he’d go on to meet his ancestors in the afterlife. There, he’d wait for his wife and his three sons.
Fiske and Iri set their father’s body atop the funeral pyre they’d built that morning, and then they took their places at Inge’s side. Iri set a hand onto Halvard’s shoulder as the Tala dropped the torch and together, they watched their father turn to ash.
When everyone had left, Halvard still stood, staring at the smoldering embers, trying to understand how his father could just be gone. He looked up to the sky, where the smoke was disappearing, imagining it taking him to the next life. But something about the thought didn’t bring him the comfort it seemed to bring the others.
The crunch of boots in the snow made Halvard blink and he looked back to see Fiske coming back up the path. He pulled an axe from his back as he reached him and held it between them, the image of a yew tree engraved in the blade. It was their father’s.
Halvard stared at it.
“It’s yours,” Fiske said, setting it into his hands.
Halvard looked up at him. “You don’t want it?”
