The pain settled deeply into her eyes was matched by the love that also lived there. She looked up at Iri as they stood together before the Tala and recited the sacred words, with the Riki watching. Fiske stood beside me smiling and when he caught me staring at him, he leaned into me, his hip against mine making my long skirt sway around my ankles. The black dress I’d worn to Adalgildi covered almost all my healing wounds and scars, but it didn’t erase them.
We followed the procession back to the ritual house and feasted, but this time my father and I sat with Inge’s family. Iri’s hand found mine under the table as he leaned over to kiss me softly behind my ear.
I remembered the way he looked, lying with eyes staring into the sky that day I’d left him in the trench in Aurvanger. The broken boy bleeding in the snow beside my brother. I wondered if the gods had a plan then. I’d thought about it almost every moment since it first struck me, standing in the sea after the battle in Hylli. That if Iri and Fiske hadn’t found each other on the battlefield that day five years ago, he would never have been left. He would never have been found or loved by the Riki. He would never have joined them and I would never have seen him that night. I would never have been taken prisoner or been there when the Herja came. The Aska never would have joined with their enemies. We would all be dead or surviving on the fringes of what was once our lives.
And it wasn’t because of me. I wasn’t special. But Iri was.
My throat tightened, watching him hold Runa’s little brother in the ritual house. Her siblings would now be Iri and Runa’s responsibility. And just like Inge had become a mother to Iri, Iri would become a father to them. It was all too much for my heart to hold. It was still finding a home within me, replacing what had once held only hate for the Riki.
And now my heart belonged to them. In so many ways.
*
The water in the fjord transformed into a brilliant blue, like it knew we were coming home. But the image of the gleaming red water in battle was still seared into my mind.
Inge and I each held a side of the door while Fiske set it on its hinges.
When we told her that Fiske was coming with me to Hylli, she laughed and said she’d known long before we did. But the smile on her face was heartbroken and lonely. It was months before she agreed to come with Halvard and live on the fjord with us. The Aska from other villages went back home, leaving Hylli bare and without a healer. Before the next winter fell over Thora’s mountain, one Riki in Hylli became three.
Inge had watched the house grow smaller behind us as we set out on the trail. We traveled down the mountain and I could feel everything still undone between Iri and me. It would take maybe the rest of our lives to understand what had happened. But maybe we had time now.
We built our home on the far south side of the village, overlooking the water on a plot of land where a home once stood. The black outline still stained the earth where it had burned to the ground. I remembered them. An old man named Evander and his son. But they were gone now, their souls in Sólbj?rg with Evander’s wife who’d died years ago.
Myra took my place at home with my father. In a way, she’d always belonged there. He stood back, watching us work. The wound on his leg from battle was slowly healing, but he leaned his weight into a cane that he would likely have for the rest of his days. It didn’t scare me like it would have before the winter because there was no fighting season coming. Not ever again.
Almost every Herja that had come to the valley was slaughtered in Hylli. The few that weren’t were hunted down. We hung their bones from the trees up on the cliffs, but I still dreamed of them in the forest. I dreamed of them in the sea. If there were any left, whatever god they served had pulled them back into the shadows.
I sat out on the bluff that night as the sun went down, my bare feet swinging against the wind that pulled the scent of salt and fish up from the water. The image of bodies floating flashed in my mind, but I pushed it away. I closed my eyes to remember the old Hylli. A small Aska village nestled on the fjord that was home to Sigr’s people and sent them out when the fighting season came.
And that was the way of it. Things belonging where they didn’t. Like two night skies on a frozen lake. One looking down from above and one looking up from the deep. I turned my hand over, tracing the scar that ran down the center of my palm. It was the promise the Tala had made to me and it was a promise she kept.
The door opened and I felt Fiske’s warmth against my back as he sat down behind me, his legs falling to either side of mine and his arms winding around my middle. He pulled me to him in the dimming light and tucked his face into my neck, breathing me in.
We watched Halvard running on the beach below, shouting and throwing stones with the other children.
Aska children.
“It will be different,” Fiske said. “It will be different for him.”
Halvard wouldn’t grow up training for the fighting season. He wouldn’t grow up hating the Aska. Now, he lived among them. He would be strong for different reasons than we were.
I could still see a young Eelyn standing on the beach turned into the wind, a sword in one hand and an axe in the other. I hadn’t lost her. I hadn’t buried her. I’d only let her change into something new. I’d envied Iri my whole life for his open heart, and now mine had been pried open too.
I was the same. But I was different.
I closed my eyes again, laying my head back to rest on Fiske’s shoulder, and wove my fingers into his. Where the people we had once been and the people we were fit together.
Where we were both.