Beautiful Wreck (25 page)

My skirts swished around my ankles as I walked up the hill. I watched the swirl of bone-colored linen billow out and return with each of my steps. A house dog nosed at my hem. It walked beside me, oblivious, panting. When the dog and I crested the hill, I saw the field we would cut.

The grass spread out tall and uneven below me, reaching until far away, it ended with a ragged edge defined by a stream. Beyond that sprawled a rocky strip, and then the forest’s edge. It was somewhat sparse, but not embarrassingly thin. Heirik had chosen a loose and natural acre for me and Thora. An acre that would be honorable to cut down, and yet feasible over the next six hours. A thoughtful choice for a man who was so angry and vicious today.

A dark bruise mixed with his birthmark along his jawline, not quite hidden by his beard. He didn’t even speak to me, just pointed with his chin at the field and turned to go somewhere, I had no idea where. He wasn’t going to stay.

And so I cut the grass.

I did what Magnus had shown me, stepped into the field and moved the scythe with my hips. It was awkward, and after a few swipes my shoulders bunched up around my ears. “You’re cutting with your arms, Woman,” Magnus told me. “You’ll tire yourself out. Let your back loose.” Poor Magnus was always trying to get me to lighten up. While I clutched desperately to horses’ backs and scythe handles, he walked beside me and told me over and over to let go. It made me snicker and smile, and my shoulders relaxed just a little. My hips took over more of the job.

Soon the light scythe weighed more than a boulder.

Thoughts drifted by and away, of men and machines, drawing me out of the physical pain. Images of the grass house turned to the white and gleaming lab, the towering buildings that would rise right here where I toiled, and stretch all the way to the sea. I couldn’t shake thoughts of the stark future. I wondered if I’d see that world again, against my will.

I ducked my head to wipe my sticky forehead on the shoulder of my dress.

I breathed in farm smells, the land and plants and dog. So familiar now. I focused on my breathing and after a while a great pressure eased and the rhythm of hard work began to soothe me. The lab vanished, and I saw the heartstone, the emerald hills and birds in the hollow. Memories of the rushing stream. Finally, I let myself go. Once my mind stopped circling so tightly, I felt my body instead. I felt the sense of using the powerful muscles of my legs, felt the ease of fluid motion, and I knew that somewhere up on that hill Magnus could see that I’d gotten it. I had changed.

Sharp blades of grass whispered around my shoulders in some places. In others, the spears gathered child-high around my waist.

I fell into a dreamy, sensual rhythm. The sun climbed higher and kissed the back of my neck, and I found my eyes closing even as my body continued to work. Finally, I thought of nothing but the song of grass and flies and a snuffling behind me. I broke my cadence to turn and look, and the house dog was with me, smelling the newly fallen grass. Behind him, Ranka and her mother followed with rakes. In the stillness of the field even Ranka didn’t speak. I turned to my task.

Maybe an hour later, maybe a lot less, I started to really hurt.

Pain came to press like a palm against the small of my back. A suggestion first, like a lover guiding me from a room. It grew until soon I could think of nothing else. I raised my eyes to the gray and lavender sky, listened for simple sounds, but the fire in my spine got worse. Blisters—or the places they would come to be—seared my hands. Dry, red spots burned where the wood twisted as I swung the handle. I shifted my grip and messed up everything, my rhythm, technique, my will itself. I didn’t know how I would finish.

I would, though. There was no question. So I cried a little and kept on.

The men had done over a week of this, nine long days of muscles howling with pain and only the prospect of more and more and more. Now they were done, and watching us. Many of them sat on the hill with cups of ale, and I could feel their amused and doubting gazes. Screw them, I thought, and laughed at myself.

I came to water.

The sluggish brook stood, almost still, across my path and down the slope of field. It came so suddenly, I stopped and stared at it. Shoots grew tall and thick from its banks and its sludgy bottom.

The soggy roots made cutting difficult, a sopping mess, everything bending and folding and swaying but never coming clean off. I put my back into it harder, and my whole body sang with pain. But I could see the edge of the field now, not far beyond the brook, and I bent in deep and solemn concentration. I would get there. I gathered big bunches of waterbound roots, cradled them in the arc of the blade and pulled, dragging everything out. Clearing out the water. It began to trickle and move, and then flow again. I cut through everything, and when I was done I stepped over to the opposite bank. With one last big swipe, I came through into a vast space.

No grass waved beyond my feet. I’d reached the rocky swath at the other side.

The land was dark gray here, scoured by time and weather and strewn with pumice. I looked a mile out, my eyes struggling to adjust to the distance after staring so long at my own hands. There, just beyond the windswept nothing, the white woods began in all their misnamed, colorful splendor. Apricot, bronze and black glowed against white papery peels. Green leaves rustled, and dusty juniper crept underfoot.

I wanted to go to it. I wanted the forest. I dropped my scythe and started to walk away from everything, into the land.

“Woman, where are you going?” Thora’s voice called me back.

Our task was done. I liked the silence and completion of the moment, so I let Thora return ahead of me. I stayed and watched the woods, and I thought for a second that I saw the movement of animals there in the short brush, maybe a tail, a flash of silver. I felt the breathing of fox and bird, but I didn’t see anything. After a minute I turned back, to walk through my cut grass and back up and over the slope toward home.

Sweat turned clammy and cooled between my breasts, and I plucked at my dress. I stood up straight to try to ease my back, and it spasmed instead, stealing my breath. I walked on. Soon I could hear voices rising, men and boys shouting, women’s scattered words higher and brighter, boisterous laughter.

On the rise, Hár stood like an amused mountain god, arms crossed tight, mouth upturned under his bushy gray beard. Away from his uncle, Heirik crouched down on his heels, gravely watching me come up from the field. In the peace and solitude and repetition of the cutting, I’d forgotten both men. I’d forgotten the crimson and blue that bloomed under Hár’s eye and lined his nephew’s jaw. The old man’s words in the night rushed back. Now, both men watched me.

I walked with even strides, the scythe flung carefully over my shoulder like the body of a felled animal.

I won. I owned this field. My skirts dragged behind me, rustling and snagging on the fresh cut stubs of grass that I had made. By the time I reached the family, I felt no exhaustion or pain.

I uncurled my hand from the scythe where it gripped like a claw, and handed it to Hár. I ducked my head, a sarcastic bow to the great man. He took the blade, stared at me for a moment, and then burst out laughing. Uproarious, amused, happy.

I walked away fuming, and suddenly right before me stood Heirik like a turf wall. I couldn’t get away from them. The men of this family were everywhere in my path.

“You did well,” he said, and even his voice didn’t soothe me. Even his praise—the words I thought would feel so good, the words I thought would make vindication well up in me like a warm sea—just washed over me. Grass stained my red hands. I could feel green on my face and in my nose and lungs, mixed with dirt and dried sweat. Blisters rose. Pain flared in my spine. And I was satisfied and strong. Whatever he said didn’t matter.

“I am yours, then.”

Except that, maybe.

He didn’t look inviting or wicked or even kind. But gods, those words! I was like butter over a flame.

“For the rest of the day,” he told me. He raised his hand as if to touch my hair, tuck it behind my ear, but he stopped himself and crossed his arms.

I sighed, a single syllable taken by the breeze. And in a moment all of it—the work of so many hours swinging the scythe and cutting and moving, always forward, always onward through the massing of green on every side, the thoughts of the future, fear of leaving the farm—it all settled in my legs and they went out under me. I sat undaintily in a heap at Heirik’s feet. I looked up at him and shielded my eyes from the sun that came from above and behind him. I saw nothing but the shadowy features of the chieftain, quiet, unknowable. Mine for the rest of the day.

I looked out at my field instead. My acre. Sparse, inexpertly done, but all cut. Women and girls made long rows of grass, their rakes a far off scraping.

“That’s right, Chief,” I told him. “You are mine.”

Drying grass fell from my forehead when I dropped my hand. It was everywhere in my braids. I shook my head to dislodge the greenery and confusion, but thoughts of leaving Hvítmörk wouldn’t stop. I could no more ignore them than I could the burning of my split palms.

FLOWERS & FLAME

“If you want the men to have good breath this winter, you need enough roots.”

Heirik said this with finality, as he piled a saddle and empty baskets on Drifa’s back. He would work for me for the rest of the day, but he had chosen the job and ordered me to come with him to harvest snowblooms, away from prying eyes and joking men. My pure desire and delight at the notion of being alone for the afternoon was tempered by the throbbing pain in my back and his terrible mood. I felt damp and stinky. He hadn’t given me any time to do more than wash from a bowl and loosen my hair. I had on Betta’s clean dress, and it swept the grass, an inch too long on me. My stomach felt like something was slowly listing and sinking inside it.