Chapter 3
Istring twine around my small pile of journals.
There are five. All encased in smooth hide etched with my name. Gifts from my mother when she sensed my growing frustration with my unchanging body at age thirteen. Her mother had done the same for her, given her a safe place to let her thoughts land and run free.
Although she often watches me write, never once has she tried to glimpse the swoops of my ink pen. Nor has she ever rummaged through the trunk at the foot of my bed.
As I slide the repositories of my adolescence into a satchel, the quiet patter of paws crunching through ice has me turning toward our door. A moment later, the handle dips, and my mother appears, cheeks flushed from her run.
“Triplets.” The gold flecks in her irises outshine the green ones. “Two boys and one girl. All in perfect health.”
The scent of new life—blood, sweat, and fur—clings to her skin as she sweeps across our abode. She submerges her hands in the bucket of water I replenished at the well this afternoon, which I’ve kept warm over the hearth.
“The first two pups slipped right out.” She grips the bar of pine and lavender soap and builds a creamy lather, which she smooths over her arms, sleeves and all. “I was expecting the placenta to come out next when a third little head poked out.”
I hunt the soft crinkles of fatigue around her eyes for something other than happiness. Though Mor insists delivering other females’ babes brings her only joy, I worry she hurts. How could she not when Fenrir never granted her a true mate with whom to make pups of her own?
“Their daughter is so much slighter than her brothers, but perfect.” She kisses her wet fingertips and presses them to the etching of our God in silent gratitude for blessing our pack with new life.
Yes, ours. I might descend from Freyja, but it’s Fenrir who watched over me, not the valkyries’ Goddess.
“Astrid named her Júlia,” she says, as she splashes her face, neck, and the skin above her chest before peeling off her damp overdress and submerging it inside the suds-filled bucket to boil overnight, along with her midwifing tools.
I smile. “Fitting for this time of year.”
As Mor unfolds a towel and pats her skin dry, she asks me to fetch her good dress, the one she wears to every high gathering. I stand and pop open my trunk instead of hers.
“Merry Júl, Mor.” I hand her a package wrapped in brown paper and twine.
She blinks at me, then at my present, then hangs the towel on the peg nailed to the wall and carefully takes my offering.
As she unwraps it, I tell her, “My choker caught the eye of Elka Krosson when I went to the Fjords’ fish market with Saga.”
The Fjord Jarl’s wife, who’d come to inspect her people’s sea bounty, had stopped me by the herring stand, her eyes gleaming like the silvery scales of the morning’s haul. I wasn’t sure how to handle her steady scrutiny, whether to bask in it or brace for her to tear it from me.
Even as a Jarl’s niece, she outranked me as a Jarl’s wife. If she demanded I give her my necklace, refusing could ignite friction between Ulf and Klovir Krosson.
To my surprise, she didn’t command me to surrender my jewel. Instead, she asked where she could come by such a necklace. The surprise that had crinkled the corners of Elka’s eyes when Saga declared—with immense pride—that I’d made it myself is a memory that will never fade.
It had made me feel seen in a world where fur and the hue of clan stripes dictated worth.
As Saga loaded the crate of herrings on our sledge, Elka had asked me what price I was willing to accept to make three necklaces—one for herself and one for each of her daughters. Without hesitation, I asked for a Fjord-made gown, for no other clan weaved finer fabrics than the Fjords.
“Oh, darling,” Mor croaks as she unravels what I traded against the chokers. “This is… It’s…” Her irises glisten with the patina of the auroras that will light up our sky next month. “…too much.”
Nothing would ever be too much for the woman who loved me like her own. She brushes the tears off her cheeks with the heel of her palm before enfolding me in a tight embrace.
“What did I do to deserve a daughter like you?” Her already raspy voice has grown husky with emotion. After she pulls away, she again kisses her fingertips and presses them to Fenrir’s likeness. “Thank you.”
“Saga used one of your other dresses to adjust the fit,” I tell Mor as she pours the indigo wool over her head.
The dress molds around her like water. My cousin is as deft with a needle as the Norns at weaving fate.
As Mor inspects her reflection in the disk of silvered glass on the wall, my mind drifts to the Norns—Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld—three ancient sisters who sit beside the Well of Fate, threading the destiny of every living soul. Have they already shaped mine? Oh, to know what the future holds…
“Oh, Zaskjalill…” My mother adds nothing more as she smooths trembling hands down the long skirt that flares out from a waist as narrow as my own.
Where our faces are vastly different—hers squarer, darker; mine sharper, paler—our hourglass forms seem to have been wrought from the same mold.
I nest my pointy chin in the crook of her shoulder and tie my arms around her middle. “You look beautiful, Mor.”
The timbered building the pack uses for all gatherings—be they around food, the Council, or the holy Gothi—mushrooms from the land.
Some say the curved beams that support the long oval structure were shaped to resemble the ribs of the whale that kept Fenrir fed during his first brutal winter in Isrike.
Others maintain the longhouse is shaped after the drakkar that transported our God from Asgard down to Midgard and then up the continent, to the northernmost tip of Isrike.
Mor’s dress swishes as she walks, folding around her long legs like moonlit waves. It wins her many stares—some laced with covetousness, some laced with wonder. Wolves might descend from a divinity, but they aren’t immune to human instincts.
Saga finally spots us from where she stands beside the wide firepit. She squeezes the hand of her newest bedmate, a girl who loathes me.
Even though Saga insists Yrsain’s antipathy is in my head, it’s not. Her girlfriend is jealous of our bond. I’m hopeful that her view of me will improve once I win over Nordin with my journals, not because I care to become her friend, but because I dislike being her enemy.
Then again, knowing Saga, Yrsain will be replaced soon. My cousin falls in lust fast and hard, but never in love and never for long. Like most wolves, she awaits her true mate.
“Aunt Eira, is that you?” Saga asks around a grin that usurps her entire face, navy eyes and all. She grips Mor’s hand to twirl her. “My, my… Am I good at my craft, or am I good at my craft?”
I roll my eyes at her unshakable confidence.
“Thank you, Saga.” Mor presses a kiss to her niece’s brow. “It’s perfect.”
“What do you think of the improvements I made to Zas’s dress?” My cousin waggles her eyebrows, which are as dark as her hair is white.
Mor turns toward me and squints as though pleating her eyes might help her see through the fur cloak I’ve yet to remove. “I haven’t yet seen the improvements.”
Saga laughs. “No need for such alarm. I didn’t remove so much fabric.”
“Removed fabric?” Mor’s nose scrunches in concern. “How much are we talking?”
Saga snatches my satchel. I realize she does so to encourage me to shed my cloak, but I yank it back.
She frowns. “Are you carrying rocks in here?”
“No.”
She tips her head, waiting for a clearer explanation.
I indulge her. “Gifts.”
I set the satchel down between my feet and unhook my furs to reveal the bodice, which Saga reshaped by snipping a V at the front that shows off my breasts.
Mor knows my body yet regards it as though she missed it transforming from girl to woman. Sure enough, she sighs. “Where did time go?”
She often muses about the too-brisk passage of it—ironic for an immortal—while I complain about how interminable each day is.
As I sling my satchel over my shoulder, I feel eyes press against my skin. I hunt the shadows of the longhouse until I find my admirer.
No, not admirer.
The scowl that creases Nordin’s face is one of utter distaste.