Beautiful Wreck (44 page)

While I waited, I reached up and removed the bone pins from my head, and the giant braid fell with a thump on my back.

Heirik looked up at me and froze.

Oh.
Something was off. It was another sinking moment, when I’d done something unexpected, wrong. I dropped my hands to my lap, and my giant braid fell over my shoulder, the ends brushing my breast. He glanced there with a stricken look, then dragged his eyes away and up to my face.

“You would sit with me to do this?”

I lifted the braid, and his eyes shifted again to watch my fingers play with the whitish strands. I could see him struggle to swallow. The moment was awkward and hot. With his irises so pale, his eyes almost disappeared.

“Why not?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if we were talking about hair anymore.

We were, actually.

“Another memory you’ve lost,” he said. “A woman taking her hair down at day’s end is done before her husband.”

He looked past my shoulder and out into the room. “It is not something that would disgrace you, if you did this here, with me.” His voice dropped low on the last two words, holding them preciously on his tongue. He picked up a game piece with slow and deliberate form, still resting on his elbow, studiously casual. “It’s not a formal gesture. Just a quiet moment to end the day.”

I drank in the sound of that. A quiet moment together, an end to the day, the beginning of a shared night. “It would be okay, then?”

Head bent to the game, he looked up from under his black lashes. “I have longed for it.”

The house and all its scents and murmurs seemed to drop away with those words, and we were alone. Arousal rose right to my skin, lighting up my neck and arms, and I couldn’t stop it, no more than I could stop the oil from burning in the lamps.

I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, undoing my big braid, relieving my scalp. When I opened my eyes I found Heirik concentrating on the chieftain, a hunched figure at the center of the board, besieged on all sides by acorns. But I knew he watched me.

Betta watched me, too. I felt her now, like a night bird in the dim room, shifting and settling her feathers, owl eyes open. Seeing me—us, Heirik and I—doing something so intimate. I looked over at her and smiled and she ducked her head.

I undid everything, and brushed my loose hair with my fingers, letting the braids fall open. I looked at the game and made another move. Matter of factly I said, “Now let me do yours.” I flicked my chin toward a dark braid that fell across his cheek.

He made what might have been a light joke, “Everyone in this house would be planning our wedding feast.” But his voice was flat, and out loud it sounded bitter.

We dropped like twin stones into a strained quiet. Heirik had already made a vow to me—a kind that came without ceremony or feast. No swords or ale or catcalls following us to our marriage bed. It was a promise that came without joy.

Into the quiet, Magnus burst into the room, in a swirl of cold and snow so violent, it looked like the blizzard had lifted him and followed him right into the house. He shouted, his breath ragged, “Four sheep are missing.”

Heirik was up and moving before I could take a breath. Every man in the house followed, grabbing at wool cloaks and hats and boots in an orderly madness. Women lifted children and toys out of the way. Food and drink were dropped in an instant, warm rocks tossed into the hearth.

I drifted behind them, following the men to the mudroom, and I hovered there with Betta by my side. I saw Heirik open the door to the storm, and if he hesitated for one second he didn’t show a sign. He walked into pure, blistering white. And every man in the house waded in after him.

NIGHT SKIING

At first we did things like move our plates and sewing around, all of us women pretending nothing was happening. If we didn’t look at each other, we didn’t need to ask with our eyes, how long will it be? Will everyone come back? But after a short time, the tasks ran out and we started to pass glances like hesitant questions. Will your man return? And yours? I wondered, too, about how many sheep would return. Maybe enough. With Heirik. He would bring them home.

We tended to children who were confused by the silence, paced and bounced the littlest ones. I held Lotta and pressed her head to my shoulder. She was heavy, almost too much for me to carry, but I held onto her tight with one arm cradling her under her bum. We sat by the game board, and I showed her the little pieces and murmured silly things about the little men they represented.

Soon, we each sat around the hearth and were still, with no will left to pretend.

Haukur was the first one back, holding a two-hundred-pound sheep in his arms like a bride, Magnus right beside him holding the door. The sheep was let down on the floor by the heartstone. It looked already dead, its eyes obscured and crusted over with snow, blank white as if nothing stirred under the frost. But the animal shifted, moved some more, and let out a weak cry.

Hár soon followed with a big animal in his arms, and the other men stumbled in after him. Two sheep saved, and every man back except one.

The bluster of men and sheep died down into an awful silence. Heirik wouldn’t come back.

No one would say such a thing, but it had been too long. Too stunned to speak, the family started going about business now. Dalla fussed over her husband and Thora over her brother and Da, the men trying to shrug them off. The family immersed themselves in cleaning up and herding children and sheep. Hildur secured the animals at the end of the main room, and the children were drawn to them. Lotta poked a handful of something at their faces, trying to feed them, and I watched her fondly, trying to ignore the growing panic in my gut. I counted the twists in her little braids. Started again.

People glanced at me and then down, an unexpected, half-hearted acknowledgment of what Heirik meant to me. Too little, too late, I thought.

Betta watched Hár blatantly, clenching her hands in her dress, unable to go to him and wipe the cold water and worry from his face. Instead, she took my hand and looked down at our twined fingers. I couldn’t stand the kindness. I pulled away and picked up a game piece, so compact and contained. My palm closed around it completely.

“He plays with you,” she said.

My panicky sickness was disturbed by her voice. “Hmm?”

“The chief. He plays with you.”

“Já,” I answered, as if she were dense, and I showed her the game piece. “We were just playing now.”

“Nei,” Betta said, “I mean he is …” She searched for a word she didn’t find. “Is like a small dog with you.”

I thought of the littlest house dog, how it wagged and snapped and rolled over. She meant playful. She meant that Heirik laughed and batted game pieces at me. I thought of him splashing me in the ravine, racing on our horses.

Though my heart clenched, I tried to sound light. “Já, he is like that sometimes.”

“Nei,” Betta said. “Nei, he is not. I’ve never seen it in my life.”

“I hope you will see it again,” I stated, so cold now, not even warmed by her words.

It was a long time, or maybe a few seconds, before I dropped the game piece and stood up, drawn to go wait. Hár stood at the exact same time, and the two of us walked to the back mudroom in unspoken agreement. Hildur and Betta were drawn too.

Hár opened the back door and stood like an expectant dog waiting for its master. Wind and snow whipped into the room, and the biting cold stole every wisp of warmth.

“Shut it, Fool,” Hildur crabbed at him, but Hár held up a hand and silenced her. He stared into the blizzard, a white and silver wasteland. And Heirik came. He lurched into the mudroom, four hundred pounds of sheep under his two arms. My heart soared for a second and then crashed in a bedraggled heap of relief. He was alive.

He dropped the animals, as if both irritated and satisfied, and stumbled past us all to his room. He was barely able to work the latch with his frozen fingers, and then he was through the door, leaving Hildur and Hár to tend to the giant, frozen sheep that filled the room. Leaving me wide-eyed and without a purpose. Betta put her hand to my back, and I felt her soft pressure of reassurance, but it hurt as if every nerve was on the surface, raw. I shrugged away and started cleaning up the room.

Dozens of wet cloaks and boots littered the floor, puddles forming all around, and I picked them up and felt the unpleasant, icy drips start to seep into my sleeves. Thoughts and questions gathered. Was he okay? How had he ever found the sheep? How did he make it back? I knew the answer. He simply had to. He made it by sheer force of responsibility, his honor like an ax over his head. And a deep desire to be good, to be needed, even by fools. He was behind his bedroom door now, safe.

The two additional sheep had been herded into the house, and the mudroom rang with that special kind of silence that comes after chaos. Then Hildur’s voice stung the air.

“It is Signé’s blessing,” she said, efficiently wrapping up the episode.

“Nei.” My voice split the air like a crow’s call. “It is not.”

It startled us all, the words out of my mouth without thought, my skirts flying out as I whirled to challenge her. My anger was greeted with an echoing blankness, Hildur shocked beyond reckoning. I went on, my voice even and cold. “It is Heirik’s doing. He stayed out there until he found them, and he carried them home with his last strength, while you stood here griping at Hár to shut the door.” It felt so good, I couldn’t stop. “Beiskaldi,” I spat out. An elegant and compact word for
bitter-cold-griping-bitch
.

Hildur’s face closed, and so did her fist, around the charm at her waist.

She looked like an animal, cornered and aggressive, thin lips pressed together ready to hiss. My breathing rasped unbearably loud in my head, and I hoped and wished she would leave the room before I cried. I was on the edge of it. Just seconds away.

And then she did go, with an abrupt turn of her heel.

Hár had been watching me, stunned, and once she was gone he raised an eyebrow.

I asked him, my words blunt, my chin thrust toward Heirik’s latched door. “Can you open that?”

Hár’s giant sigh filled the room. “Já,” he said with great resignation. He went to the door and unlocked it—something no one else knew how to do—and then he stepped aside. “Já, I can.” He let the door handle go and walked away.

I pushed the door open a crack.

“I’m fine, Uncle,” Heirik said from the shadows.