Beautiful Wreck (48 page)

Oh.
The words went deep into my body, softening me beyond what the pool had done, what my own hands had done. My smile slackened and my lips opened with desire. I fell back into him.

This couldn’t last, this impossible moment, his body pressing now against my back, a low hum of desire against the place where my raven would have been, a groan of lost resolve. His hands moved, his fingers brushing down both my arms, a million tiny fires sparking in their wakes. The cloak fell, and I stood in my shift, scant fabric between his heavy arousal and the base of my spine. I’d never felt him against me this way, so ready. I tilted my hips and pushed back against him. His fingers found my wrist, and my skin was insufficient, like he might sink into it, into my bloodstream and bones.

I turned in his arms. He bent to press his mouth to mine, a hard demand that turned to a kiss. And I whispered. “Let go, Sváss.” I called him
Love
. And he let himself go, poured himself into me, and I took him, his tongue and scent and heat.

We kissed, and then he drew away, his breath coming hard and fast.

My voice was hoarse but steady. “Take me somewhere,” I rasped. I glanced at the door to his room just a few feet away.

“Nei,” he said. “Not there.”

I didn’t care where. He was impossibly willing, and though it was only a few feet to his bed, I would go where he wanted, would do it anywhere now, anywhere he wanted this to be. I only wanted to know that nothing could stop us this time, no danger, no cries of warning in our hearts. I stood, terrified this moment would crack like newborn ice.

“Put on skið,” he said.

Skis.

I looked at him blankly. He wanted me to put on skið and go outside?

He was pulling away from me already, and he looked down at my shift. “And clothes, já?”

He rummaged in the corner, and I sank down hard on the bench in interrupted bliss. I watched his hips that I’d so lately felt against my body. My lips felt bright, and I placed my fingers on the fullness of the lower one, to press and keep him there. To capture his presence. But I could feel it disappearing like frost flowers in the sun.

When I came to myself, I found him quickly tying bindings around his ankles.

We got ready so fast, a steady stream of socks, woolens tucked inside, boots, bindings, hats and gloves. Signé’s gorgeous coat, the melrakki fur silver and sensual against my skin. More cloaks on top, hood pulled tight at my throat.

Heirik knelt on one knee before me and strapped the ungainly skið to my boots. How could I ski with him? I’d tried only a few times, always flailing. He lifted one of my feet with such restraint and reverence, my foot felt tiny and beloved in his hands. His eyes met mine as if to show my own little foot to me, something shiny he’d discovered. Then he tied it with urgency.

He drew me up and to the door. So fast and thoroughly bound and ready. I noticed my dress, a red puddle on the bench. I bent awkwardly, balled it up and shoved it underneath. And we took off.

I followed him, curious and yet not desiring any explanation. I only felt the thrill of skiing, and I realized I was doing it without thought or awkwardness. I didn’t care about slipping or falling or anything. I didn’t care where he was taking me, only that he wasn’t leaving me behind for two or three or ten days. We were fleeing together this time, into the sparkling, knife’s-edge night.

The thought nagged at me. Something to do with a knife.

As I sped over the snow, I thought of the dark tunnel. There’d been a knife there on the ground. I pictured Heirik’s cold-wrought skin, his empty belt, and clarity came sneaking into my head. Had he been there? Had he seen Betta and Hár ride off together? And then.
Oh
, nei. Had he seen me?

He stood and watched me, I knew it, as I’d once watched him in that bath. He’d heard his name from deep in my throat, seen my ecstatic face, the only thing lit for thousands and thousands of miles.

I smiled into the night wind. He’d been with me then, after all.

Freedom coursed through me, like cold and roaring water clearing my head. I flew down a ghostly, snow-bright slope, everything electric blue and violet, a wintry scene so much more savage and real than my naive skating fantasy.

Perplexed, yes, but I knew Heirik was taking me somewhere. He knew where. I thought, as the wind hit my face and froze my nose and eyelashes, that it was going to be somewhere wonderful. And there, we would be lovers.

We skiied to the far edge of the woods. Not so far from home, but far enough to be utterly gone, so free in the snow, that my mind felt cleansed of everything pinched and tense. We left everything behind us in the smoky house, and Heirik and I stood alone in our beloved and immense landscape.

We took off our skið and waded in to the woods, knee deep in untouched snow. It became less deep a few feet in to the tangle of birches, but still as we pushed through, the slush and wet underbrush froze me up to my thighs. My whole legs—calves, knees, everywhere—burned with a searing pain, and then went blessedly numb.

Nei matter. I was a graceful creature, a beautiful thing, made for this wood, this night. My breath gathered and hung in the air, always a step before me.

Despite the moon, it was ink dark inside the birches, as if the trees had all burned and now stood as charcoal remains of a great fire. Heirik dissolved into it, and more than once my heart and lungs spasmed with the fear that I’d lost him. But I always found him, a steady, denser shape against the black.

Long moments of walking passed, and my eyes adjusted. The branches and leaves and shapes of underbrush became clearer. I could see him, then. I watched him inside Hvítmörk, moving through it, and though he was bundled in twenty pounds of animal skins, I remembered his summer body—hot from haying, shirts open at the throat, linen sticking to the curves and hollows of his arms and back. He’d been so exhausted then. Gorgeous, but falling down tired. Tonight he was suffused with a quiet energy. In his place and time. And I in mine.

Heirik stopped and turned back toward me, drawing aside the low branches of a tree and welcoming me to come to him. I could see his smile now. And just beyond him, I could make out an even blacker place in the dark, an opening. The mouth of a small cave.

I could see he’d been here many times before. Heirik knelt to strike up a tiny fire on a flat rock at the cave entrance, using dry tinder he had stashed here. I could just make out a great roll of blankets and furs against the cave wall, and the spot where he bent to light the little fire was marked with the soot of flames past.

He blew gently on the tiny orange light, coaxing it out, and my realization grew with the same soft glow. This was where he disappeared to sometimes. When he was gone for days, he was here.

This stark and rocky place broke my heart. But I knew the relief of being away from people, especially at my most desolate moments.

The cave wasn’t quite high enough for him to stand inside, but it was wide, and big enough to call a room. Deep enough that I could just barely make out its contours and limits. And toasty! I thought I was dreaming, hallucinating that the little fire was making more heat than possible, but as I stepped deeper into the cave, the glimmer of heat grew. I wasn’t imagining it.

He said, “Go all the way in. Get warm.”

As I moved into the dark, I heard a delicate trickling—not quite strong enough to call a rushing—of water. I squinted to find it, and I knelt beside a tiny, steaming-hot stream. It was no bigger than two hands across. I couldn’t tell if it was boiling.

“Is it too hot to touch?” My voice echoed strangely in the misshapen room, coming back at me from odd angles, some of it lost in unexpected eddies.

“Nei, not enough to scald.”

I touched the water lightly, and it was on the absolute edge of skin-burning temperature. I dipped my fingers in, and they sang with pain as they awoke.

The stream changed everything about this place, and the notion of loneliness flew. It wasn’t severe here. It was snug, and there was life. It felt blessed and calm. I let my fingers trail in the water, let it move over my skin, unhurried, but with purpose, until I couldn’t stand it anymore and had to draw away.

I turned back to Heirik and he was unrolling the big clump of sheepskins and furs.

He took off his bracers and dropped them on the floor of the cave, then stooped over the fire, drying the edges of his sleeves. I dropped my wool cloaks and hat into the pile of furs, deepening the nest. But I kept my coat on. Underneath there was only my shift, and I was still cold.

I leaned back against the pleasantly warmed cave wall. Taken by a sudden calm, a sense of unhurried freedom, Heirik and I just sat together on a bed of furs. I savored the moment, my fingers brushing through fur, my knee brushing his.