Beautiful Wreck (16 page)

It was a sharp awakening, realizing that I knew not only his ax, but his lesser ax too. Oh gods, I had it bad.

Carried along by my crush, I floated into the main room and looked through the smoke for him. I sat on the bench outside my bed and listened for his voice, like I had every day, every moment since coming here. Where was he? The wall was hard against my back, and I slumped into it, sleepy and soft. It was at least two in the morning, and my eyes grew heavy with waiting and I crawled in to bed.

Betta’s soft nighttime ponytail lay across the sheepskin in our alcove. As I crawled in next to her, I thought about her wind-driven freedom. Betta had told me herself—she hadn’t let her hair down in public once in the nine years she’d lived at Hvítmörk. And only now, staring at her sleeping back, did I realize that “out riding” was no explanation at all.

It was ten and half days before the chief returned.

He did this sometimes, Betta told me—left for days and didn’t tell anyone but his uncle. And no one knew where he went, not even Hár. Gone on Vakr into the white woods, to another farm? Or to the sea, maybe? The days seemed to stand still, endless. There were moments I felt like I was waiting the way these women waited for Brosa, for a trader long gone on the water, without the comfort of knowing when he would return.

I buried myself in work, barely looking up to the horizon. I applied myself to dyeing and combing fleece until it was fluffy and wispy enough for the other women to spin. I helped with cooking around the mealstone—the small fire that burned in the room used for weaving and feasts. Massive blond wood tables hung suspended over our heads. The giant loom shushed and clacked, and Ranka showed me how she made flat bread. Hildur had, uncharacteristically, given up on teaching me to make good thread. Instead of relief, I only felt worry that I had no useful place here.

The man who told me I did have a place was gone himself.

Reasons circled like crows in my mind. Gone to trade, to talk with men, visit the highlands? To see another woman maybe, outside the reach of this family’s fear. The thought rent my heart, and I turned my head away as if it were a physical blow.

I learned to make socks with a big needle and thick yarn, and I slipped loops over my thumb again and again and again. Binding, it was called. I tried to empty my mind while I did it, sliding into a repetitive stupor. The hum of women’s working voices and the buzz of flies rising around me. A sock, two socks, falling from my fingers. I would not count the days, I swore. It didn’t matter. I would let my new and tenuous feelings go, let them dissolve into the equally ethereal world of dyepot and bath steam.

Ranka and I braided each other’s hair. We crowned the dogs with flowers.

Two washing days passed, and both times I forgot the chief in the bold chatter and splashes of eight women in the little pool. I watched my fingers divide the water, watched it close so completely behind them. Naked, bumping into the slippery bodies of other women, I thanked the gods I didn’t have that tattoo I’d wanted so much. No indelible raven biting at the nape of my neck.

I imagined Heirik looking there with his yellow eyes and desiring me.

Sweet fantasies came then. To be the first woman to touch him, even just his hand, his wrist, with tender intention. I imagined the look on his face when I reached for him, when our fingers first met. Imagined being his, right in front of the whole family. Sitting by an outside fire in the twilight, Heirik behind me, keeping the cold away. I would lean back against his chest and he would surround me, gently holding, mind wandering. I would have someone who was mine. Someone gorgeous, graceful, intelligent, shy. The sparest poetry on his lips. Gods, what would it feel like to kiss? I couldn’t even imagine it.

On the second washing day, the women cut the mens’ hair. It was sweet.

Thralls brought wood up from the far side of the forest. Chopping endlessly, eating away at the enchanting birches. I did count the days, after all.

On the eleventh he came back.

In the stillness of midday, he rode up on Vakr. Only Magnus greeted him, everyone else tensing with his arrival. My pulse quickened, and my heart broke when no one rose, no one ran to him, happy he was home. And I was standing then, leaving my binding in a pile on the ground and walking toward him, where he stood still on his horse.

Suddenly, there were a gaggle of excited voices coming up behind me. A wave of kids and women and dogs swept past on both sides, rushing so fast my hair blew forward in the breeze. Their voices rose in happily panicked tones, with questions, exclamations. Ranka’s stood out—“Is she for me?” Lotta said, “Ansi!”
Pretty
.

I didn’t care. I was a still point, wondering about nothing but Heirik. He was here now, with me, after so many days of wanting him to come. On Vakr, his shoulders far above me against the sky, he was more splendid than I remembered. More gorgeous by far. He saw me and there was his flash of smile, fuller and brighter than ever. He was happy to see me. I felt my own eyes soften with happiness and lust. I let him see. Anything he wanted, my hope, my desire. I pleaded with him silently,
Like me like this. Feel this way, too.
It was that lovely moment when it was still possible that he might. That he did.

His face closed.

Like a great door coming down, with a last glimpse of emotion before it shut. There was a second where he was confused, irritated. A moment of regret, maybe. Then his smile was replaced by the unemotional face of the chief. I felt the loss in my chest, constricted and sour. I wouldn’t cry.

“Our guest names her,” he said, and turned his horse to walk away.

I turned to find the family huddled around a darling horse.

She was the color of bittersweet chocolate, with a pure white splash across her back. Her mane was white, too, and hanging free except for a single hank that was twined in a loose braid. Unbound, the strands were coming apart, probably from the wind that must have combed through her hair as she ran. I imagined the formidable chieftain whispering to her and plaiting her hair, just that one bit. A casual, maybe even subconscious gesture as he spoke, telling her stories of her new home.

She leaned heavily into my shoulder and I smiled, thinking of them together that way, the chief and his new horse.

“She likes Ginn, not you,” another of the girls told Ranka.

“Nei,” Ranka said. “She wants me to ride her every day.”

Without warning, the horse let out a tremendous, honking cry that went straight into my ear. I shrieked and jumped back. Then we all laughed, everyone crowding around me.

I glanced at Heirik at the stables, his own messy braid falling down his back. Our guest names her, Heirik had said. As though it was normal, not special, to bring home such a beauty and let me choose her name. Normal to whisper sweet love stories to a horse, but close himself off to a woman. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he gave me this gift to try to tell me something that words couldn’t. I dared to hope that, with no evidence.

He stood at a safe distance, far from me, but I sent a silent thanks to him. I thanked him for bringing the horse, for so many reasons—her loveliness, her obvious spirit. How he used her to make it clear that I was welcome here. With great relief, I handed the horse the mantle of being the newest thing on the farm.

I chose Drifa for her name.
Snowdrift.

She didn’t belong to me, really. Only the men had their own specific horses, Hár and Heirik and Brosa, whose horse Fjoðr went unridden until the boy returned from his voyage. Drifa belonged to everyone, and Ranka rode her with abandon all day the next day. The rest of us hardly got near her.

After evening meal, the adults sat on the stable walls with our cups and watched the children race. Somewhat used to the sour barley ale, I took bigger sips than I had a couple weeks ago, and it made my mind wander in a tipsy fuzz. I leaned back happily on the grass wall and watched the older boys take the fastest horses down the hill. Here in the yard, Ranka rode Drifa, racing one of Hár’s little granddaughters on Gerdi. It was a ridiculous match. The new horse outstripped the old white mare in seconds every time. During the final race, little Drifa stopped running and turned around to wait for Gerdi to catch up, and it was adorable.

The smaller of Hár’s grandchildren batted at a hapless chicken with sticks. They were sweet blond bundles, while Dalla herself was pale and thin, as if she were hollowed out by nurturing such a crowd. Just now her husband was brushing a wisp of hair off her forehead, telling her something soft, and she was listening with big, tired eyes.

It was very late. Time for sleep, but not at all dark. The challenge of summer bedtime. The kids were called in to clean their teeth, and Grandda would tell a story.

Given a helm and shield, Hár could have sprung, imposing and grim, from the pages of any children’s encyclopedia. A classic Viking. His ash blond hair was turning pewter and fell shaggy around his shoulders, framing ice blue eyes. A scruffy, silvering beard and mustache covered half his face, and an assortment of scars littered the rest. His speech was boisterous and strewn with curses, but also laced with humor and affection for the other men. Massive, tall for the time, he filled up every space he moved through, physically terrifying.

But then, looking past the terror, everything about him was familiar—the way he held himself when he sat to sharpen a knife, the way he looked into the distance like his nephew. His face, the high cheekbones, angular jaw, flashing eyes. All his features were cruder, like a first draft of what would become Heirik.

He made sure all the children were settled in various laps and pools of blankets, and then he began.

“You remember that Frigg is the greatest goddess, and she has many handmaidens.”

“Já!” the children all piped up, Ranka the loudest, sitting up on her knees in agreement. Lotta shifted in my lap, and I leaned back into the wall to try to settle us both.

Watching Hár, I was fascinated. “Grandda” was, I guessed, about 40 years old. He’d taken care of the family before Heirik was old enough, and I was told he had over a dozen living children from two wives and at least one lover. Whenever I heard about them, I lost track of the family, the daughters and sons and grandchildren all sliding into a blond heap in my mind. I wished for the clean zipping of a pen across a screen, so I could make a drawing, a family map. Magnus was Hár’s son, I knew that, yes, and I knew several of Hár’s daughters. Even more lived out there in other places, on other farms.

“Frigg sits at the head of the hearth—one just like ours,” he told us. “And twelve maids’ faces shine by the fire.”