Beautiful Wreck (28 page)

I made it to the back door and roughly pulled Svana aside. “Why do they stare?”

She pulled back from me, as though I were deranged. “The chief is home,” she said, as if that were explanation enough. It was clear she was hiding something.

“Nei, what else?” I kept at her.

Demure and pale, she answered. “You rode with him.” She pointed at the flowers in my hand, where I’d forgotten I clutched them. “You looked like his bride.”

I stepped back from her, stunned.

I’d assumed people stared at my wild hair and messy dress, my inappropriate filth. They must have been confused by the ugly, messy stranger who dared to even speak to the chief of this superior house. But his bride?

“A woman carries them at her wedding,” Svana stuttered out. “She rides her horse with snowblooms in her hand. For many babes.” In a second I understood. It was a fertility plant. I blushed in the dark, hoping she couldn’t see how very much that idea moved me. She was moved by the notion, too. The fear of such children—and what had to be done to get them—was plain in her light blue eyes, so pale they were lost in this light.

“Not just for children, Little Girl,” Betta said breezily, approaching from behind Svana. “For passion.” She winked and as always lightened the mood.
Passion
was laced with innuendo, not entirely the same as the future word, and when I got it I put a hand to my forehead and closed my eyes in mortification. The flowers weren’t just fertility plants, they were aphrodisiacs too. Was Heirik more devious and less shy than he seemed? He’d been driven by something today. Agitated and forceful and mad at Hár. And then, oh Gods, he’d taken me out to join him in a bed of white suggestion. I’d dropped to my knees with him there and cut the flowers all around us. I remembered Magnus’s words, then, about the chief’s eagerness for snow.

Betta had warned me to hide my heart, and I had miserably failed.

I was suddenly sick of it all. Of Betta’s pronouncements. Of prying eyes. Sick of every person who knelt before me when I entered this yard at Heirik’s side, and now undoubtedly talked behind my back.

Something transpired in the flowery wood, between him and me. Heirik confessed he was drawn to me, just as much as I was to him. We had felt the flowers’ call, and we’d ridden home in a sex- and hope-infused quiet. We’d stood together sharing thoughts of duty and home, before braving this yard full of honor-feeders. I would never be sorry for going to the woods with him. For coming home looking like his bride. Under the grass and dirt that stained my skin, I glowed with satisfaction. And anticipation for what would come next.

It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected. It was Hildur I heard next, and her voice drove away all sensual notions.

“See that she stays here until she’s dressed properly.”

She. Meaning me.

I entered the weaving room ready to argue, and I was frozen by the sight. Hildur stood in the center of the room, tight lipped and glowing with fierce pride in a house well prepared. Her hands were folded at her waist, and she was the one who looked like a bride, gleaming tables arrayed around her like a gigantic, flowing dress. She turned in the center of it all, turned to look at Heirik’s seat. It was higher than the rest and heaped with sheepskins. And furs! So many lush furs in brown and white and silver.

Benches had been drawn in close, and the big tables taken down from the ceiling. All the seats near to his were laid with furs and skins. Oil lamps lined the tables, casting a surprising amount of flattering light. It was becoming to Hildur, her profile lit with peach-hued satisfaction. Then her eyes found me, and her countenance turned sharp.

She didn’t say hello. She nodded at Ranka, and the little girl dashed up to me and handed me a bundle of clothing. It wasn’t mine. An ice blue dress lay folded together with other undefined things, a froth of linen and something else soft and white. I took the pile of clothes mechanically. This day was too much, and I felt myself starting to slip away. I needed to rest my head and my body.

“The chief will be up from the bath soon enough,” Hildur said.

Ranka nodded with importance and led me to a bench. “We will wait here, Lady.”

Besides us, the room was empty, barred from the guests just yet.

“Okay,” I told her, and I sat heavily and let my mind go blank. She sat next to me and swung her little legs.

While we waited, Ranka took the bundle from me and put it between us on the bench. “Look!” She gave me an orientation to what was included. The dress had a slim waist and long bell sleeves, and the color was unbearably soft, of birds’ eggs and newborn ice. The dye was from somewhere else, Norway or farther. The frothy cloth turned out to be a brand new underdress spun of the very finest wool threads, so fine, like a garment made of mist. It had long sleeves and a low cut neck. A wispy and lusciously clean thing. I held it to my face and cried in it, just a little.

“You don’t like it?” I looked out from the cloud of fabric and Ranka was watching me, her lower lip actually trembling.

“I love this dress,” I told her seriously, with my whole heart. “It’s the best dress in all the world.”

She smiled then, relieved and beaming.

“I sewed the hems,” she said, with a hint of Hildur’s satisfaction and pride, and she turned up the edge of the billowing underdress and pointed at her jagged little stitches. “Ma made the blue one longer for you, here.”

“It’s wonderful,” I told her. “I’m just so, so very tired. So confused.” I let the fabric run through my fingers.

“Já, well, you are tall, Lady.” To her mind, this explained and encompassed everything in the world. To me, it led only to more questions. Were these clothes made just for me? Why?

Then Ranka showed me a piece of fabric like none I’d seen here, made of something other than flax or wool. I ran my fingers down it, wondering if it might actually be cotton. “It’s made just to dry yourself, after your bath,” she informed me. A towel! Thin and too small, but the only one I’d seen, after months of drying off using my dress itself. Feather-soft and welcoming, it seemed to pull at me, invite me to wrap up in it. It could hide me, like a nest surrounding my new eggshell dress.

When it was safe—that is, the chief was through—we went to the bath. Once I was in the water, Ranka made sure I had the soap and then ran off, leaving me finally, blessedly alone.

The bewildering, back-breaking day had become gray night. I could see more than five stars! Even without full dark, I could make out so many more than that! They massed in the sky, a long held dream. I wanted to rest in the water all night and bask in their sparkling indifference. I wanted to spend luxurious time reliving Heirik calling me small, his words so dark and sweet, his boot brushing against mine. His urgent question—would I stay?

The hot water held me close, and I tried to avoid understanding anything. I tried to just absorb it all and let it go. Hár’s frustration, their fight, my triumph cutting the field, Heirik turning comfortable and free in the blooms, flowers of sex and snow all around us. And then the press of people, kneeling before us. I let each thought pass and discarded or savored it in turn.

“Skyndi, Kona!” Ranka startled me. She’d come back from the house.

Her scolding sounded just like Betta, telling me to hurry up. Her hair fell loose, and a little crown of flowers wreathed her head. She held a small torch, and in her other hand she cupped something precious. Her fingers were chubby and tight around whatever it was.

I stepped out of the bath into whipping cold and snatched up the towel. My new shift went first over my head, and for a moment I felt even colder, clammy and miserable. I pulled on the new underdress and then the frost-blue wool. I shivered and counted the seconds until the clothes started to warm me.

With a shaking voice I asked her, “What do you have here?”

She opened her tight hand and in her palm sat dark little shapes, three long ones like tiny spears and a few rolled up, indistinct balls. I ducked to look close and smelled pure summer. The aggressive scent of rosemary and the overwhelming powder of lavender flew up from her palm. It was shocking. I’d come to love the reedy, dirty fragrance of the farm, and this floral blast was like candy.

“You rub it in your hands,” she instructed, “and then you put it here.” She touched her own temple to show me, and the precious needles and dried up blossoms fell to the stones.

“Nei!” She burst out crying and went to her knees, immediately searching. The little torch wobbled, and I knelt and took it from her.

The poor child was as overstimulated as I was, emotions hanging by a thread.

“Ranka, listen.” I lifted her chin. “Shhhh, listen.”

She gulped and sniffled. A tear traveled down her cheek.

“We’ll find it.”

I brought the torch close to the ground and searched while she talked miserably. “They said I could bring it to you if I didn’t lose it.” Her voice hitched. “Only the ladies can wear it. Only a few pieces. We don’t have so much and we don’t know when we’ll get it again and …” She started to warm to her subject, and soon her tears were almost forgotten. “It’s from Alba,” she said offhandedly, as though this were the supermarket downstairs from her apartment, not a kingdom so far across the sea that men gave their lives to bring home things like these herbs.

Brosa, the chief’s brother came to mind. The indistinct image of a man on the sea, alive and well and heading home.

I saw all three rosemary needles in an instant, slightly darker spears against the night stone.

Ranka combed and settled my hair into two long ponytails that she drew to the front, falling over my breasts and beads. The ends of my hair looked stark white and longer than I remembered, the color almost ethereal against such pale blue. I tried to remember my own icy gray eyes and imagine them reflecting the color of the dress. Strange, I hadn’t seen them in so long.

Ranka drew something—a ribbon?—from her belt. It was a fillet for my forehead. Dark blue like the night itself, it shimmered slightly with a single starry thread of silver. She secured it around my forehead just like her own crown, and then she pinched my cheeks hard.

“Ow! What are you doing, Girl?”

“It makes you pretty,” she said, and did her own cheeks too.

She headed back into the tunnel and begged me to follow. I told her I’d be right there. I wanted one more moment. I held my hand up to the sky, just to look at myself. The impractical, flowing wrists of the underdress foamed from beneath the woolen sleeve, and wisps of steam rose from my skin, still warm from bathing. I felt like a princess.