Beautiful Wreck (36 page)

The idea of full dark scared me, and when I imagined it I panicked a little. At the same time, I desired it, a dream about to be fulfilled. I would see so many more stars. I’d longed to see them, when I read about them at home and saw images in the arcs. Time lapse shots that streaked the sky with their movement.

I’d stood on the glacier, as far as I could get from the steady artificial lights that stretched to the sea, and searched for them, but only the same five were always visible. I’d seen more in the gray dusk of haying. But I had no way of imagining how many would be revealed in this place, when the winter came.

Heirik took a small group of us to make the last trip to the sea before the frigid months. We would pick up eels and shark from the fishing camp. Women would gather late berries and small pieces of wood, shells and bone for spoons and combs and pins. The boys would catch auks and plovers and puffins, and we’d come home loaded down with everything the horses could bear.

In the back mudroom, by the light of two wall lamps, I found a wool hat and pulled it down over my head. It was a work of art, this everyday item that someone—one of the women I knew?—had made. A wide band of dramatic dark brown fur sat like a wreath across my forehead.

I wondered how it looked on me. I hadn’t seen my own image in months, and I knew I’d been changing here, with this food and work and the elements. I ran my tongue over the backs of my teeth, feeling the space there in the center, a reminder that I was still me. I could see the ends of my white-blond hair, my familiar long ponytails coming out from under the hat and down over my shoulders. My hair was the same as always. But my hands were new. I turned them over in the quivering light and they were stark and strong.

I pulled on my wool cloak, and started looking for a good blanket to go over it.

Heirik came out of his room, throwing massive, moving shadows across the light of the oil lamps. Flames guttered in the breeze he stirred up. Colors were indistinct in the mudroom, in this light, but I could see he was dressed in his dark blue wool. His most formal clothes. A lush, silvery fur rested across his shoulders, seeming to glow with its own light.

I thought of him tenderly in these clothes, knowing they were a symbol of the rare times, the events where everyone was compelled to love him.

I also thought he looked flat-out gorgeous. I let my eyes drift shamelessly from his hair, down along his jawline, where his beard was trimmed neatly, wandering past his throat where Thor’s hammer hung, and on down his body. Past his black leather belt, littered this time with everyday tools and knives as well as the seax across his waist and ax at his side. I devoured the blue fabric brushing his knees. His boots were tied so tight, I could see the curved lines of his calves. He was handsome beyond reckoning.

His voice was hoarse. “You are cold,” he told me.

It was obvious. I shivered, mute.

“Turn,” he commanded, with a thrust of his chin. He took the fur from his own shoulders and placed it on mine and it was warm with his heat. His arms very nearly around me. So close, I felt the pressure of knives and tools against my back.

Luxurious, velvety soft fur brushed my chin, and I pulled the skin close around me. It was pale silver, maybe an arctic fox. While it had been a slight shoulder covering for him, it fell halfway down my back and arms. The warmth from his body was in it, and it made my blood rise to meet it.

The animals were ready to leave, tossing their manes, their breath making great puffs that were lit by thralls’ torches. Freezing air crept up my legs, and I stopped to tuck my wool bloomers into the tops of my rock-solid socks before I climbed onto Drifa.

The coast was less than a half day away, maybe four hours, I thought. In terms of the whole island, we lived virtually on the beach. We walked in the gray mist, our horses mingling and bumping. About a quarter of the way along, a suggestion of sun began to penetrate the gloom, a lightening that I didn’t notice until it was there, faint but steady. Steam lifted and began to vanish, and the sky opened up, brilliant and massive over our upturned faces.

I’d wondered about Heirik himself, in his most beautiful clothes, on a supply run to the beach. It seemed an errand he could entrust to Hár and Hildur.

Now I thought I knew why he’d come. He desired this sky.

The color hovered somewhere between lavender and the edge of an ax. Purple and silver joined and pulled apart and shifted with the serene movement of pewter clouds. The last remnants of mist rose reluctantly to meet them, to be lost in the larger vapor of the enormous atmosphere.

I watched a few of Vakr’s sure steps, and Heirik’s back before me. His clothes were dark, but he wore another pale fur on his shoulders, his hair falling like a midnight tail. It had grown so much since I met him. When I first laid eyes on him, his hair had curled around his shoulders. Months since I’d been lost.

“Ginn,” the chief called. “Ride with me.”

I came up even with him, and could see that black wavy strands had come free around his face. I wanted to reach and tuck one back, care for him in that small way. His short beard would feel rough under my fingertips. Under my lips. I opened them slightly, involuntarily, and he noticed. It wasn’t quite a smile he gave me, but his features were open and calm, his breathing slow and satisfied.

“Don’t be afraid,” he told me, and I wondered why. I thought that there wasn’t a single part of me that feared this. Never.

And then we crested a rise, and the heads of three haunting giants rose up before us.

I sat, struck viscerally by the crude figures, fear pooling in my gut. Made of stone, they stood at least twice the height of the house. Their bases sat far below us, and I peered down to see that someone had built on top of natural rock formations, with tremendous blocks and boulders. On top of each towering pile sat an oval stone that looked like a head.

They stood in a line, leaning toward us, as if they walked toward our home. We passed them on our right, from largest to smallest. Crude but so real, the two-story-tall bodies were hunched and frozen along their eternal path. They seemed far more ancient than possible, as though they’d been bent into the wind for millenia, always making their way to Hvítmörk.

“The stone sisters,” Heirik said. “They show the byway.”

Then Drifa canted forward and the world dropped away from under me. I grabbed frantically for her mane with both hands and clutched hard, and she shook her head to push me off. I looked, and a cry stuck in my throat. We were riding straight down a cliff. Every part of my insides battled to get out, any way possible. Acid burned my throat and my intestines felt liquid and weak. I closed my eyes, which was much worse. I opened them again and looked out across the vast open space before me.

The rock face went straight down at a heart-stopping angle, the surface jagged and tricky. The cliff was threaded with the barest hints of path here and there, slippery patches of slate, grainy with dirt. The places where for decades horses had chosen the same footholds.

Now, Drifa followed right behind Vakr, picking out places to step with complete ease. I watched her feet. She was impatient with me, twitching to remind me to let go of her mane, but my hands tangled there like claws. I clenched her sides, and she took great big breaths to try to throw my legs off.

A few miniature plateaus, here and there along the path, gave me a chance to breathe and look out, briefly, toward the ocean. It stretched like a blue thread, visible here and there beyond rows of far hills.

It could have been a thousand miles away or closer than I dreamed. The vast distance seized me, like it did any time the land opened up around me and I could see out. See distances that weren’t possible in my original time. Far off, the water waited patiently, dark green and iron under an endless lavender sky. Sun came—a brief, straight ray—and kissed the surface, lighting it up a deep aqua before quickly turning blackish again under a shadow of clouds. For a moment the voices and language I loved so dearly had no meaning. They yielded completely to something big and wordless.

Tiny rocks and gravel spilled away as Drifa skirted an outcropping, and I gasped. I fixed my eyes on Heirik’s back and watched as harsh breezes that verged on wind struck and riffled his fur. I trusted him in my bones, entirely, always, with my life. He would not lead me onto a dangerous path.

More than that. We were born to stand next to each other, protecting each other until our last breaths. I would be patient, and one day we would share the passion and everyday beauty, face together the exigencies of farm life and grave decisions he had to make. I would be beside him for those things. I was no longer scared of the steepness.

A while later—a very long while, or perhaps a scant handful of minutes—we stepped off rock and onto flat ground. The floor of a gold and lovely valley opened at our feet, flanked by thick birch forests on either side.

Drifa’s feet hit the valley floor, and in a second, we flew. She picked up speed in an instant and was running free across the flat ground. I almost shrieked, it was so sudden and violent. But in a second I was there with her, riding with a complete and contagious joy, at the edge of terror. I leaned into her muscular body, and the wind took the tears from my eyes.

The men rode even faster, their horses’ feet a grassy explosion. Heirik took off after his uncle, until they both flew. Magnus and Haukur went by in a hopeful blur, wanting to catch up with them. Soon Drifa’s thirst to run was slaked, and she slowed down and down until we finally walked at an easy pace. The men were small flecks of pepper in the distance, already near the sea. The oppressively vast distance between us, the smallness of their lives against such a big place, made my heart flutter. I looked down frequently at Drifa’s twitching ears and bent to pet her strong neck.