I want your crown, Gabel had said. How had he known? How had Darcey come to possess such a treasure? What had really happened in Casuin?
Something caused her to turn around then, to look back toward the forest. She couldn't have said what it was—not a sound. More like the absence of sound, a sudden stillness. There, just beyond the trees, was a dark shadow shaped like a woman. Sibba held her breath. The shadow didn't move. Was it a trick of the light?
“Mama?” Sibba asked, her voice barely a whisper. But that was all it took. In the next breath, the shadow was gone, and she was alone again.
CHAPTER SIX
Sibba
The walk back to Gerd was considerably more difficult with the heavy box, and Sibba spent less time looking for ghosts and other unseen threats than she did watching her feet so she didn't fall under the weight. The horse was just where she had left her, munching on the sparse brown grass beside the path. Sibba bound the box to the back of the saddle with a leather strap. Gerd shifted but didn't complain, and soon Sibba was mounted again and turning them away from the village and its shadows and long-kept secrets.
What secrets had her own mother kept buried between the sister trees? However many it was, she had taken them with her to wherever she was now. Sibba wished she had tried harder to learn about her mother’s past, had pushed her to reveal exactly how it was she had ended up in the Fields when it seemed like she was so unhappy. What had she left behind? What had she kept from her and what connection did it have to her death? The thought that any of this could have been prevented struck a spark of anger and desperation in her that caused her to clench her hands tightly around the soft leather reins.
Gerd tossed her head in objection and Sibba loosened her grip but gave a small kick with her heels on the horse's midsection, bringing her into a careful trot. They retreated into the forest, the mysterious crown of branches tucked safely inside the folds of her cloak.
That night, Sibba woke in the utter darkness that preceded a winter dawn, her heart racing and her hand already moving to the ax that she kept on the bench beside her. What had woken her? Had there been a sound? She didn't dare move. Instead, she listened, her eyes straining against the blackness inside the house.
It hit her then, how utterly alone she was.
Or thought she was.
There was a sound like a sigh, the whisper of a closing door. Her hand closed around the ax handle and she sat bolt upright. The door was only five steps from her bench, and she threw aside her furs carelessly, her feet already swinging around to stand. She reached the door just as it bounced against the frame to close. Throwing it open, she dashed outside. The remaining snow lightened the night, but it was still too dark to see very far. She spun on her heel, her eyes scanning the yard and the outbuilding, but there was no sign of anyone. The snow in the yard had melted and the mud frozen overnight again, so there were no tracks, if anyone had been there at all. Even the animals were quiet, Aeris still sleeping on her perch.
Someone had been there, she was sure of it. Or was she losing her mind? In Ottar, there had been a man living in a hunting cabin only a few miles away from town, but he never spoke to anyone. During the worst of her fights with Darcey, Sibba had envied him the quiet solitude, but now she remembered how the clansmen had called him crazy. How his body had been found swinging from one of the giant oaks, his face purple and swollen, his unseeing eyes nearly popping from their sockets.
Back inside, it was impossible for her to find sleep again. Instead, she sat on her bench with the ax across her knees, the stolen longsword beside her. By the time the sun came up and there had been no further disturbances, she knew only one thing for certain—the island didn't want her here anymore. It was time for her to go.
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Leaving Ey Island was harder than Sibba thought it would be. How long before their little cabin became like the stone remnants across the hills? Would her mother's ghost haunt this place? Sibba was leaving a part of her behind, not just her body, but her spirit. In the destroyed loom, in the frozen garden, in the smallest of the sister trees that kept a careful westward eye on the ocean, toward distant Casuin.
Sibba gave one last pass over the house, leaving behind anything she couldn't carry, and then opened the door to the outbuilding. Gerd watched her warily, not eager to venture out into the cold after yesterday’s adventure.
“It's okay,” Sibba said. “You can stay.”
She should have butchered the animals. The hides and meat would bring a hefty price in Ottar, but the work involved would only delay her departure. And besides, her mother would have liked it this way, turning them loose on the otherwise abandoned island. So Sibba saw it as one more way to honor Darcey's memory as she unlatched each stall. Piglets squealed beneath her feet, the goats following close behind, skittish as if they expected her to scold them. Only Gerd stayed, munching on a handful of oats that Sibba produced from a bag on the wall.
“The garden will thaw in the planting season,” Sibba said, brushing a finger over the white starburst on the horse's forehead. “The flowers and vegetables will grow wild. There will be plenty for you to eat.” But Gerd did not seem comforted or particularly distressed. She just looked at Sibba with those mournful brown eyes, her ears flicking back and forth, catching the sounds of Sibba's voice and the snorting pigs and the flapping of Aeris's wings outside all at the same time.
With a final pat on her warm neck, Sibba left, determined not to look back. It was bad luck to look back on a place to which she would never return. She didn't want to remember it this way anyway, empty and lonely with a fresh mound of dirt in the garden. If she had to think of it at all, it would be with Gerd at the fence, plump with summer oats, nickering for a treat. With her mother standing in the yard unfurling a piece of bright red sail that flapped noisily in the warm breeze. Her mother turning, raising a hand to shield her eyes against a sinking sun.
“Sibba!” she would say in greeting, her hair shining and golden and loose around her neck. “I'm so glad you're home.”
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