Epilogue
Torstein lay in the furs beside his sleeping wife and watched her.
Six years, and still the word wife felt both foreign and fitting on his tongue. As a youth he had wondered whether a man could truly love only one woman for the whole of his life. As a grown man he knew that he could. She was the other half of his soul, and together they made a whole.
In the cradle beside the bed their youngest son stirred and settled again. Dawud, named after his grandfather, he was not yet three moons old.
Four children. Two sons and two daughters. And if Morag had spoken true, there were two more sons still to come. Torstein had kept count. He smiled at the thought.
He was about to kiss Samira awake when he heard the telltale thunder of small feet in the hallway.
"Shh," he whispered as the door burst open. "Quiet, little ones. Your umma is sleeping."
They tried. They failed.
Einar reached him first. He was big for his five winters, with his father's long fair hair and his mother's dark, thoughtful eyes.
Zohra came close behind him. She had her mother's dark hair in tight braids and her father's blue eyes, and she was her mother through and through, right down to the scowl when she did not get her way.
Torstein caught her up before she could launch herself onto the bed.
Samira stirred and opened her eyes. She took one look at the tangle of children and husband in the furs and began to laugh.
"Good morn, wife," Torstein said, and kissed her deeply. "Your children could not wait."
"My children?"
"Always, when they wake before dawn."
Down the hallway came the sound of Runa and Hagan in the kitchen, bickering fondly over the bread. Runa and Hagan were staying for the winter. The moment the children heard their grandparents, they were gone, tumbling out the door at the promise of honey cakes.
Samira laughed at how predictable her little brood were. The mention of sweets and they would abandon anyone. Then she leaned against her husband's chest, and neither of them moved for a long while.
***
THAT EVENING THE ORKNEY sunset painted the sky in shades of amber and rose that reminded Samira of home. They sat on the shore below Hrafnaklett with the whole of their family around them, and the sea breeze carried the scent of salt and heather across the sand.
Beside her, Torstein cradled Dawud in the crook of his arm. His large warrior's hands were impossibly gentle as he whispered to the sleeping babe.
Freya, not yet two winters old, sat pressed against her grandmother's side.
Of all their children she was the one who watched the sky, and some nights Samira caught her looking at things that were not there.
She saw a touch of her own mother in the child, and a touch of the sight, just as Morag had foretold.
"Amma, look!" Freya tugged at Runa's sleeve and pointed. "Al-Thurayya!"
"Yes, little one," Runa said, and kissed her head. "The seven sisters. Such a clever lass, to know the stars in two tongues."
A little way down the beach, Hagan had Einar on his shoulders, and Zohra was racing ahead of them along the tideline gathering shells.
"Do you ever regret it?" Torstein asked quietly. "Leaving the desert for these cold shores?"
Samira's hand found his. The rose ring caught the last of the light.
"How can I regret finding the other half of my soul?" she said.
Torstein smiled, and the lines around his dark blue eyes deepened in the fading light. He looked down at the babe in his arms, then at his wife, then out along the shore at the rest of what he had been given.
A horn sounded from the settlement behind them. The village feast was beginning.
They walked home together along the shoreline, a procession of linked generations.
Zohra skipped ahead with her shells. Hagan carried Einar on his shoulders.
Runa walked with Freya on her hip, and Samira walked beside her.
And Torstein came last, with Dawud asleep against his chest and his eyes on his wife.
Four children, he thought. Two still to come.
He could hardly wait.
***
The End