Page 59 of The Girl the Sea Gave Back
Wake up, Tova.
I followed the drift of the voice to the fire from the fragments of a memory that always found me in sleep. The glow of it cast across my bare skin as I sat naked on a stool, a pair of hands at work on the stag’s horns on my arm with a glistening needle. The shadow shifted, moving every time it came into focus, and I tried to hold it still long enough to find the pieces that fit together.
Wake up, Tova.
My eyes opened and I gasped, my lungs stiff and frozen,as if they’d been filled with the silver seawater that surrounded me in my dream. But I was no longer sinking in the black emptiness or sitting before the fire. I was curled up beneath a bearskin in my tent with the roll of a storm growling in the distance. I was in the valley.
The repeating call of the nighthawk made me jolt and I sat up, the fur dropping from my shoulders. The camp was silent except for the slide of wind over the corners of canvas tents. Crisp night air blew in from outside and I pulled back the flap carefully until I could see the moon behind a stretch of thin clouds.
Before it, the All Seer circled overhead.
I breathed, listening to the beat of my own heart in lock step with the flap of the nighthawk’s wings. The Spinners had sent him, like they always had.
But this time, he’d come forme.
I pulled my boots on quickly, keeping my eyes on the light casting into the tent. There was no mistaking the runes, but the future wasn’t fixed. It was a thread that changed color with the shifting of the present and the past. A wave that rippled out to the vast, open sea. And if I wanted to be sure it came to pass, I needed to be there. I needed to stand before Hylli and watch the future come.
Halvard’s axe hung heavily at my hip as I pulled the canvas back carefully, peering out to see Gunther at his post. He sat on an overturned crate with his knife in one hand and a whetstone in the other, sliding it down the blade in an arc to sharpen the gleaming iron. His sword was sheathedat his belt, his axe at his back. But the only chance I could take was with Gunther. I had no choice.
I stepped out into the moonlight and he went rigid at the sound, the knife turning in the light. His fingers closed tightly over the stone in his big fist and his eyes studied my bloodstained hands before they lifted to meet mine. “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving,” I answered, my gaze flitting back to the sky, where the All Seer was still circling.
“What?” He stood, hiding me in his shadow, and suddenly, he looked like one of the giants from the old stories of the gods. My heart thumped in my chest, watching the knife at his side and waiting to see if he would raise it against me. But the moments passed, the silence returning, and he didn’t.
“I can end this,” I whispered. “All of it.”
He didn’t move, except for the twitch of his hand on the handle of the knife.
“I’ve seen the future. You should go back to Holkn. Back to your family.”
His eyes narrowed. “I won’t hide in my home while my clansmen fight.”
I knew he wouldn’t. But I didn’t want to see him lying dead on the battlefield. I didn’t want to stand against him or see him fall. He was a good man.
I reached beneath my sleeve and untied the bracelet around my wrist. “Then take this.” I held it out to him, the copper disk heavy in the palm of my hand.
“What is it?” he breathed.
“It’s a talisman. For protection.” I didn’t tell him that there wasn’t a talisman strong enough to hide him from the wrath of the Spinners.
Gunther looked down at me for a long moment before he tucked his knife back into its sheath. He took the bracelet from my hand, turning it over in the light.
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
“What?”
“Why did you come to the beach that day?”
“Because you were a child,” he said, simply.
He wasn’t a warm man. There was no softness to him. But he’d been kind and he’d done what he thought was right even when no one would have agreed with him. He was maybe the only person I could trust on this side of the sea.
“I have no family left.” He looked up, suddenly. “My son Aaro died in the attack on Ljós.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“I didn’t know he was going. I didn’t know what they’d planned. I have no family left,” he said again.
