Beautiful Wreck (22 page)

She stopped short just before the final rise to the house and tightened her grip. The bones of Betta’s fingers ground into me.

“We have to tell him,” she said.

I hadn’t pictured actually delivering the news.

It would savage Heirik’s heart. Fjoðr had been a sleek runner, his sun-streaked mane gloriously flying. No one was to ride him until Brosa returned. I’d seen Heirik speaking to the animal, walking beside him and talking as though this blond and shining horse and his little brother were one and the same. This would be a portent. Somewhere—at sea?—his beloved brother was dead, too, as swiftly and thoroughly gone as his animal.

“I’ll do it.” I said. Betta’s fear was palpable, and I didn’t blame her. The cruelty was so calculated, so sharp, it wasn’t something I ever wanted to see let alone have to report. But she feared for herself, as messenger. She feared the fallout, the chief’s terrible logic, whatever that might mean. I feared only for Heirik and how his heart would break.

We both looked at the house for a long moment, steadying ourselves.

Betta broke in with a small voice and her thoughts—so far from horse and blood—startled me. “Do you think you had a husband?”

“I didn’t.” I said it so quickly, so confidently, that Betta was roused from her fear and she seemed to become interested.

“Do you remember?” She asked slowly, testing thin ice.

“I just know,” I said. “When I see Heirik, I know that he is my husband and no other.”

“Já,” she said, and it was an eloquent little syllable. It conveyed all the wonder and disbelief that I might feel that way about the chief, and yet, also resonated with understanding. “My mother told me they would say ‘ah hushla mo cray.’”

It took me a moment to work out her pronunciation. A chuisle mo chroí, I thought. It was Gaelic, and one of the most lovely, romantic phrases of all time.
The pulse of my heart.
She never spoke of her mother. It felt good that one of the things she kept was this phrase.

We saw the house now. It stretched out lazily in the expanse of late afternoon, unaware of what we’d witnessed.

“Please.” Betta suddenly grasped my hands. “Tell no one about me. I’m …,” she looked around at her own hips, her hands. “I’m plain. To be odd, too, I’d never be given to him.” Her voice dropped with the last few words.

Her precocious maturity was gone, and in that moment she was a girl, sad that she wasn’t pretty, hoping she wouldn’t be left behind. My heart ached for her. For her simple wish. I didn’t know who it was she pined for, but I silently vowed we would get him for her.

“Of course I won’t tell anyone,” I told her.

And even in the darkness of lingering death, a lightness and happiness rose in me. I held her hands tight and drank in her worried face, her tense braids and eyes, and all my staggering loneliness lifted. My heart soared. I had a friend! I had a person to be close to, to care about. She was mine.

I squeezed her hands in return. “You are my best friend.” I’d never said it to anyone before.

I didn’t know what to call him. I had no permission to call him by his name, but the word “herra” stuck in my throat, a formal stone. The Norse word this family used for chief. It was like calling him Sir or worse,
Lord
. All the wrong things for this moment. So I just waited until he looked up from where he sat on a stump next to the forge, sharpening his ax. The gorgeous one that he seldom used.

When he saw me, he raised an arm to wipe his forehead, smearing dirt and black hair.

“Hello.” It was all I could think of.

He nodded, obviously wondering what I was about.

I hadn’t thought this through. Convinced that my heart would know what to say, I’d just walked up to him. I hadn’t practiced.

Slitasongr
gleamed in his hand, the metal edge like a strip of ice-blue against the iron head. Just now, I realized that telling him this news was dangerous.

My voice sounded rough. “Your father’s ax,” I said.

He nodded to himself and looked deep into the steel edge as he spoke. With his whetstone, he brushed away some imperfection I couldn’t see. “I wanted to care for it today.”

Betta’s words played out in my mind.
You don’t know what he’s capable of.
My throat dried and constricted, and I sounded hoarse when I asked, “May I?” I reached a hand toward the ax.

A cold breeze dried my palm while I waited for Heirik to decide if he’d hand it to me. Did anyone else touch it? Maybe Hár.

He flipped it over easily so that the handle pointed toward me.

It was very heavy. So much weightier than I expected, the weapon dragged me down for a moment before I hefted it up in my two hands. I was amazed at how he swung such a thing so effortlessly by his calf when he walked, the pounds held as though they were nothing. The handle was worn and silky in the places he always gripped, and I matched my palm to a spot where his had been just seconds ago.

The wood felt hot from his hands, but the ax also burned with its own fire. It felt alive and inquisitive, as if searching for who I was. A memory came, of one of my early lessons, placing my fingers on a classmate’s throat and feeling the vibrations of speech.

“It feels like it a has a voice.”

“You feel that?” His inflection gave away surprise. He recovered himself and then stood to show me, careful not to touch my hands. He stood so close, I smelled his scent of sweat and metal, felt his height and size. If he were to lean in to me, just now, he could press his lips to my forehead. We would fit like that.

“It is called the throat of an ax. Here.” He ran his fingers down the long, curved handle with such tenderness. I imagined he was trailing them down the inside of my forearm. I shivered, from his fingers and the life in the ax. “The shoulder,” he said, and rubbed his thumb over the thickest part of the iron. Gods, could he possibly know what he was doing to me?

Nei, Heirik did not flirt. He had no idea how. And if he felt anything right now it wasn’t detectable—no rapid breathing, no blush of skin to match mine. He was just talking about his ax.

I let the handle slide through my fingers until the iron head rested on the ground by my feet. It was comfortable, its throat under my thumb.

A horse whinnied down in the valley and I came awake and remembered why I was here. I promised myself I’d be brave. I wouldn’t cry. I choked the ax in my fist.

“I have to tell you something awful.” There wasn’t a good way. “Fjoðr is dead.”

There was a great sigh from the land all around us, and all the grass lay down as one—a flattening that stretched from our feet across the yard, to the house, the highlands and the valleys that led to the sea.

Heirik sat slowly, elbows on his knees, and hung his head. I sank down onto the ground in front of him, in a rude clanking of needle case, shears and beads. I pulled
Slitasongr
into my lap as though the ax was a child and looked at it until Heirik was ready to speak.

“When he was nine, my brother followed me always.” He talked without seeing me. “He wanted to do what I did, eat what I ate, say what I said.”

I had no picture of Brosa in my head, and none of Heirik as a boy either. They were part of a vague scene—a dark haired boy and a smaller, golden one here in this yard. I imagined Vakr turning back to bite with irritation at Fjoðr, as if to say leave me alone.

“I was exhausted from it,” Heirik continued. “I told him that to be like me, he was too pretty. He would need to be ugly.” He shook his head and half smiled. “He took a knife to his own face.”

I blanched, felt my mouth open. “You couldn’t have known,” I murmured. “That he would do such a thing.”

Heirik looked at me as though I was daft. “Of course I did,” he said. “My brother would do anything I asked.” He spoke with rueful pride, and with sadness, just beginning to believe that his brother had died. Had passed him, and was gone like a morning mist.

I tried to adjust to the idea of a boy who would do such a thing, cause himself such pain and risk so he could be like Heirik.

“Brosa will come back,” I said gently. “Fjoðr was a good horse. But he was not your brother.”

“Já?” Heirik looked to me, desperately hopeful. “Well …” He seemed too bewildered to finish.

His hair was a mess. I realized I’d never seen anyone cut it shorter. The women cut the mens’ hair, most of them keeping it around chin length. Heirik’s was long now, pulled back on top with a leather tie, the rest trailing everywhere down his shoulders, down his back.

Right. No woman would cut his hair. Probably Betta’s Da would. But what man would want to ask Bjarni to groom him when everyone else was tended by pretty maids and wives?

“They told you that you’re ugly.” I said it before I’d even thought the words.

His eyes flashed anger at me, a warning, but he didn’t get up or leave or say a word.

And I told him, “Nei.” It sounded so tender, the word almost lost in my breath.

I shook my head slightly, and I smiled and let him see that he was beautiful to my eye. I hadn’t told him how I felt in so many words, but now I’d said something out loud, and it hung between us for a moment. I looked up at him like he was the most divine thing—everything good and lovely in this world. I was confident and sure.

I watched, but he was unreadable. He’d closed down—something he’d practiced his whole life. A sudden realization broke through his wall, though, and he stood in a burst of intensity, towering above me. He snapped, “You saw Fjoðr.”

“Já,” I said, standing too,
Slitasongr
’s blade narrowly missing my ankle and then settling on the ground there. My thumb found its throat again, and it was solid and warm, and in my hand, not his. “Betta and I found him. In the grass on the way back from the woods.”

Heirik was focused, grave. “How was he done?”

Courage, I told myself. Just say the truth. “His throat was cut.”

The ground looked foreign and hard, and I concentrated on it, unsure if I should walk away, if I was dismissed, or if it was the opposite, that I was needed. Needed fiercely. I wavered, choked the ax.

“You came to me,” he said, incredulous, and then his voice melted into warmest evening. “Brave thing,” he said. I didn’t know if he meant it was a brave thing I’d done, to come and tell him, or if it was a sort of name for me—
you brave little thing.
Gods, I wanted him to call me something sweet like that.

He crossed his arms, and ducked his head to look under my hair, to find me in here. If he were willing to touch me, he would’ve lifted my chin. “You are alright?”

“Já,” I said. My dress caught on my calluses where I smoothed it, down my knee. My other hand gripped the ax. “I’m alright,” I said again. And then I started to cry.

His hand clenched nothing, and I thought he wanted to reach out to me, to wipe my cheek, hold me and rock me in his arms. Instead he moved with swift and terrifying grace. He took the ax from my hand and flipped it so that he choked it just below the head. In an unguarded second, I’d given him
Slitasongr
after all. I’d lost it.

I watched him closely and didn’t flinch. I thought, or maybe dreamed, that underneath the quiet fury I saw something good, some protectiveness and concern.

“Look,” he said smoothly, his voice dark like black sand. “Look at the blade, here. Put the sun behind you.”

He came around to stand beside me and hold the ax up, so we were looking into its cutting edge. “A sharp blade reflects no light.”

In the quiet, I felt the brush of his breath on my temple. It stirred my hair, and I wished he would press his lips there, smooth my hair back with his fingers, tell me to hush, that it would be alright. But instead of these impossible gestures, he showed me his ax. The blade was dark, not sparked with light. It was perfectly honed.

“Ageirr thinks he goads me,” Heirik said evenly. “He only feeds my power.”