Beautiful Wreck Page 8

  My heart fluttered. Bits of leaves and twigs clung to my spoon.

  For a moment all was suspended, then Hildur spoke to Betta. “You, Girl, will stay with our guest and sleep at the house now.” Then she walked away to go oversee someone else.

  In the tense aftermath, Betta pressed on the leaves and curbed a small smile. I smiled a little, too. Everyone else watched Hildur’s back, their mouths open.

  Was this one of those times when the chief gave orders and she let him? Hildur seemed bunched and angry over this new arrangement. I couldn’t imagine the housekeeper feeling all that charitable toward me. But somehow, I’d been given Betta.

  My new friend deftly turned the conversation back to something that would draw attention. “It is possible that a child might be normal,” she said, utterly reasonably. She looked at me evenly while she spoke. “A woman might be unaffected by his touch.” Unharmed, I thought, but not unaffected.

  “Well, it is a closed door,” said Thora. And as chief, it was his door to close.

  Magnus would someday become a big man like the rest in his family, like his father Hár and cousin Heirik. And like both of them, he would one day protect and guide a clan of farmers and fishermen and traders more extensive than Betta or I could imagine. At the moment, he seemed completely incapable.

  “The chief teaches Magnus everything,” Thora said, “as though this is a good plan.” She touched a charm that hung at her belt, just like Hildur’s. A ward against Heirik’s ugliness and a blessing for his long life in one complex and brief swipe of the fingers.

  That night, I made room in my little sleeping alcove for Betta. I curled up beside her and felt an unfamiliar pressure, painless, happy, in my heart.

  Each day without fail the women mentioned the chief’s brother. Younger than Heirik, and so wonderful.

  He was called Brosa, but he was a character to me, his face unknown, with no real name on my lips. He was beaming and broad, I was told. Strong and kind and generous. Brosa was capable. Sweet. Each woman added words to the litany of his greatness. Expansive. Funny. Bright like the heart of a flame. Tall as the chief and just as fierce.

  “And handsome to make the girls go mad,” Kit added wryly. She gave Svana an amused glance.

  Svana didn’t mind being exposed as lovesick. She exhaled, “Like the sun.” She let her spindle sink and slow.

  The whole family had a love affair with him, an infatuation just as great as their fear of the chief. He’d taken the boat away on a trading voyage. His return would announce celebration, and he would bring abundant, luxurious goods to the farm. A hero.

  I imagined a vaguely rugged man at sea, his curved wooden ship slicing the waves, his perfect face to the wind.

  The way they offhandedly called it a boat confirmed what I already knew. This house was prominent, rich, and the chief more powerful than I could understand. And no woman for him, no one to carry on the family line. Hildur’s comment—that there would be no real wife of this house until Brosa came home—began to make sense.

  I asked why this wonderful brother hadn’t married already.

  “Já, Child, there was a wife for Brosa,” Hildur told me with that pinched tone she used for half-forbidden, half-delicious subjects. I could hear the fiber slip through the hooks of our spindles. Sometimes I knew nothing about what things meant here. It was an open and honest and bright place, and I kept stumbling into pits of darkness that this lush grass was meant to hide.

  “Esa died.” Kit finally said, matter of factly. “Birthing their son.”

  “Oh.” A stunned answer. What else could I say to those two statements? To the grinding pain and dashed hope those words conjured?

  Betta completed the miserable thought. “The babe died, too.”

  Brosa had married the sister of Ageirr, a young farmer with adjoining land. Ageirr’s father once had a great holding, but he grew old and demented, until finally he sat useless and blank eyed as his farm suffered a quick decline. The marriage of Brosa and Esa was meant to save Ageirr’s remaining family. To dig them out of the mess their father’s illness left behind.

  Their union merged Ageirr’s farm into Hvítmörk. A stroke of generosity and strategy, the marriage added to Heirik’s collection of followers. It was not far, Betta told me, raising her chin toward the horizon, and I wondered what vast distance she considered to be nearby.

  Ageirr missed his sister Esa with an unseemly passion. Hildur told me that at night he sometimes walked in goat’s form and came to our house. He’d lean his head and horns against the grassy wall all night, right outside the pantry where Esa and Brosa had made their bed.

  Brosa was sixteen then, the girl fifteen, “so beautiful like a breeze.” They were married only a year when she died. When Brosa returned from trading this fall, he’d be nineteen.

  There were great gaps in the story, whole pieces submerged in sorrow. I was getting only the child’s version.

  I glanced again at Magnus. If Heirik would have no son, couldn’t Brosa still have one?

  As if she read my mind, Betta added. “Brosa wants no other wife.”

  “That will change.” Hildur said with finality, and she cast a glance at her daughter. Svana blushed becomingly. “It’s too much of a waste.”

  “And a man like that,” tisked Kit.

  “Já,” Thora agreed, “light to the chief’s darkness. Da calls them the wolf pups.” Because of their father’s name, Ulf, wolf.

  Heirik’s eyes came to mind, and they were quite wolfish. But similarity to any of a half dozen prophetic and fearsome animals could be found. A wolf’s eyes, a crow’s hair, the mane and elegance of a god’s steed. His black beard, his birthmark were of no consequence. Heirik was not dark. He was entirely lit by sun. What candle could Brosa hold to such a stunning older brother?

  “If you squeeze her so hard, you’ll be at the sea in no time.”

  Magnus, amused, watched me cling to the back of an old mare named Geirdis. The horse wanted to go somewhere, and she pulled her head side to side to loosen the reins. Magnus held them in his hand, up near her chin, and in the sonorous, loving voice these men reserved for horses, he called her Gerdi. I gripped her mane and tried not to clench her sides with my feet.

  “Grab her with your legs only if you want to fly,” he told me.

  “Já,” I told him. “As if I might ever want that.”

  Under all my clothes, I was already sweating. Together with my apron, loose pants and ankle boots, I was a generous bundle of linen and leather. I melted from the effort and embarrassment of hoisting myself up onto the saddle—a primitive arrangement of two wooden boards that hung at Gerdi’s sides, hollowed slightly so my thighs fit into them. Iron stirrups swung like two curved raindrops. My toes reached to just barely grip them. The two boards were held together and slung over her back with leather straps, so there was no actual seat underneath me, just moving bone and muscle.

  Gerdi’s hair felt like silk and straw at once, complex and alive. I pictured her mane flying white and free as she ran off with me clinging to her back, racing away past the edge of the earth, me tumbling behind in a bloom of skirts and elbows. Or maybe she would dash headlong into the white woods. Far enough to maim, if not kill me.

  Magnus raised one eyebrow just like his Da. He snickered almost soundlessly, his chest shaking with it.

  “For slow riding,” he said, “sit straight. Tap her with your heels.”

  I did, and she started walking. I gasped and clenched my teeth instead of my thighs, and we moved, one sleepy, slow footstep, then another. I was riding a horse!

  Lotta could have walked faster. I watched Gerdi’s head bob slowly up and down, and though she was clunky and smudged a nondescript and dirty white, she looked fair and delicate to me. After a minute or two, I lifted my eyes to see what was going by.

  “Let your body move with her steps,” Magnus shouted from across an expanse of grass that had grown between us. I’d ridden farther than I thought.

  A
memory came to me, of pushing my way through a crowd at the very edge of the city. I ducked past people with parasols and bayonets, went too far and got lost, alone inside the multitude. And then I broke through to the ocean. The spasm of fear was brief, and then I was overcome with the water’s immensity and motion—like a moving glacier. Buildings and streets ran right off the edge and into the water, but I could see out over it, and it felt good. Good to look that far. Good to ride Geirdis.

  I looked over at the boy who leaned against the stable wall, his arms crossed over an honest-to-God Viking Age tunic, iron knives and fire striker hanging from his belt, blond hair cropped at his chin. This was farther than I ever expected to go, truly.

  I smiled at him, and just then Gerdi dropped her head to chew at the grass and my smile turned to a gasp. Magnus laughed like his father Har, a bark of amusement. Then he settled on smiling a little sideways just like his cousin, the chief. It was darling on his young face.

  “You are riding her now.” He walked toward me. “But not telling her where you want to go.” He began talking about using the reins gently to draw her to look in the direction I chose. To go right, I pulled in a little of the rein on the right and let a little go on the left.

  I closed my eyes and listened to Magnus’s voice shift and lurch, sometimes break, then unexpectedly dip into deep water. Just fourteen. The hint of a smooth voice like the chief’s underneath. I thought about how melting and fluid Heirik’s was, and how it too would continue to change as he got older. It would acquire the sandpaper of age like Har’s.

  All three men sounded unlike anyone I knew in the future. Their very thoughts were formed of a different ether. Their minds and tongues and bodies used words that were built entirely differently. A mix of Norse and emerging Icelandic. It seemed, suddenly, like a system of sounds custom made for this family, this moment in time.

  “Thank you,” I told Magnus. “This is …” I searched for a word for fun and didn’t find one. “Sæll,” I said. Something like happy-making.

  That was it. There was a summer stillness. The only things to hear were Gerdi’s sniffles and Magnus’s instruction. I liked the animal scent of the horse’s hair and the frank green of the midday grass. I felt something very simple and unhurried. Plain happiness.

  FALLS

  It was possible that Geirdis was the oldest horse in Iceland. Reserved for children, or amnesiacs like me, she was steady and slow and placidly disinterested in anything but grass and blossoms to chew. Indifferent to the world beyond her pink, flaring nostrils and square teeth.

  But she would be like a winged dream to me, if I could just ride her without fear.

  I planned to practice a little every day. The morning after Magnus taught me, I got up early and tiptoed to the mudroom. My head no longer ached every morning without coffee, but I was still fuzzy from sleep and I knocked a great weight of cloaks off their hooks and into a heap. I picked each one up, shook it and folded it again and again and again into a rectangle, a perfect envelope. I folded a half dozen cloaks and laid them on top of one another. It was a blessed relief to do something well. I pressed down on the top of the pile, and it was springy. Something palpably good I’d done, a neat stack on a bench.

  I glanced around for something more to straighten before I faced the horse, and beside me stood the door to the chief’s room. I’d forgotten he slept so close. I wondered if he heard me out here crashing around and folding. Wondered if I’d woken him from his bed.

  If indeed a mythic creature like he would climb into a normal bed each night and sleep, instead of crossing a dark wing over his eyes or curling his wolf’s tail around his body. I thought of Hildur with a stab of anger.

  I did wonder about his bed, though—whether he had a real one that was more comfortable than the benches where we slept. Did he have pillows? I salivated, thinking of mine from before. Covers fresh from the dryer, their forms like great marshmallows, clean and bright. He wouldn’t have those, nei, but maybe something like them. I pictured Heirik lying on his bed, fallen down tired from the endless chopping and moving of wood. Too exhausted to even take off his boots. Maybe just his gauntlets untied, his belt and clutter of knives loose on the floor. His hair was splayed black and wild across a creamy white sheepskin. His features would be loose in slumber, not contained by the demands of being the chief. Just a boy sleeping.

  The wood of his door was warm to the touch, the latch cool and complex under my fingertips. A kind of keyless lock that only he could open.

  I shook the drowsiness from my head and pulled away from his door. I found a dark green cloak to secure over my shoulders, and I stepped out into the misty pleasure of morning.

  The stables smelled ripe and ugly, and my breath frosted the air. The light was still there in the sky, always in summer, but for a few hours it dimmed on either side of midnight. The lower temperature and dip into gray marked the passing of each day into night into morning.

  I called quietly for the horse and waited a long moment. Just looking, breathing in the farm.

  Lavender crept into the sky, as if pushing its nose under the big, gray quilt of nighttime. A breeze moved across my face, and with it I felt the stirring of every kind of animal as it woke. I felt the goats’ and cows’ and foxes’ hearts beat. I imagined a chicken opening one eye, the yawns of house dogs. I knew the baby would be struggling in his half-sleep to find Dalla’s breast, Lotta turning over next to them and thinking, I am awake. In an hour it would be warmer and the flies would stir, too, and start to buzz.

  Gerdi’s nose came cool and inquisitive, tickling my cheek, and I laughed out loud before shushing myself. I didn’t want to wake anyone, to call attention to us. I needed to ride Gerdi by myself, needed to do something bigger than expertly folding a pile of blankets.

  I got the simple saddle onto her and then the more complex reins. It felt good to do something with quiet determination, just me and Gerdi breathing and waiting for me to get everything right.

  It was so easy to climb up on her. One boot on the teardrop stirrup, the other leg over her back, my skirt like a giant red wing opening, and it was done. When her bones shifted, I did too, naturally as floating in the bath. And then she took off. With an uncharacteristic surge of direction, Gerdi whisked me away down the rocky lawn that sloped away from the stables. I held on tight, quietly grinding the word “Ho!” through my teeth until finally she slowed.

  By then, we were gone.

  As soon as we were away from the yard, she began to amble. I untangled my clenched hands from her mane, and tried to give in to her sleepy and sensual gait. My breath slowed, and I became peacefully thrilled that I’d gotten on her and rode away, alone. I was happy now to let her pick her own slow way over the uneven ground.

  This volcanic rock had been battered and bashed by time until it came to sit here in a variety of sizes from giant boulders towering over my head to dark black pebbles and sand. Every surface, everywhere, was grown over with pale moss and frilly white lichens that opened like bouquets of oak leaves. Wildflowers in every shade of yellow were sprinkled throughout it all. Gerdi nosed at them and chewed, and it was as familiar as breathing to just let my body yield and balance when she dipped her head low to eat.

  We followed a dusty path that was worn through the moss. It disappeared into a stand of twisty birch trees, their branches so gnarled and low they stuck in my hair. Then in a second, we were through the trees and out the other side. In paradise.

  It was a place of unapologetic prettiness. A ravine that opened before us, just under our feet.

  Steep, rough masses of rock plunged down from where we stood, down into a storybook world a long way below. Gerdi and I looked out across a chasm to where twin waterfalls cascaded down a black rock face. They joined and finished falling together into a clear, round pool at least twenty times the size of our bath. It was rimmed with a kind of beach made of blue slate that had been sheared off in a thousand overlapping layers.

  The water left the pool t
o travel a complex course, feeling its way around plants and boulders and islands no bigger than the heartstone. A striking blue, like sky and navy and silver flashing and flowing together. The waterway turned to skirt the corners of the crags we stood on. The rock walls of the ravine were carved out with child-sized caves, cut by time to inspire bedtime stories and legends.

  The whole scene was surrounded by little birches like the stand we’d just passed through. A giant ring of trees enclosed the entire grotto, and we were inside it. Gerdi had taken me to a secret garden. A place for lovers. For people like Ranka’s parents, who could tumble breathlessly together on the shale beach or hide in a million intimate places where no one—not even their intrepid little daughter—would find them. The sound of rushing water hiding even their sighs.

  I would sit right here every second I could. For the rest of my life.

  “Are you leaving?”

  The chief startled me, his voice harsh, his question so at odds with my peace.

  Behind me on the ridge, he and his dark horse emerged from the little forest, as silent as the mist until he asked his jarring question. With his long straight nose and high cheekbones, he looked stark and angry. Or in pain. He stopped a safe distance from me and regarded me.

  “I saw you going …” He waited a moment, I could see him consider his words and decide to stop there. Then he started again. “You remember how.” He nodded to indicate Gerdi.

  That seemed right, yes. My body seemed to know something that my head had forgotten, about moving in harmony with a horse.

  “I just tried,” I said, “to see if I could do something by myself.”

  Then it occurred to me. Oh.

  “I wasn’t leaving you,” I blurted. “Leaving with your horse.”

  His face closed. I thought maybe he didn’t believe me. But he smiled, then, and was transformed. “You would get far with her,” he said. “But it would take the rest of your life.”