Chapter 19
Nineteen
There were a great many things that could have granted me reckless abandon in that wild palace.
Yes, I had tasted things, shared secrets, averted my eyes a little more slowly than was appropriate when a Norsern ran past me partially clothed.
But I had not given myself over to anything.
I was simply myself as I’d always known me, living abroad due to unfortunate circumstances.
But when I had found a place for Loric’s gold in one of many identical storerooms that I was certain would go entirely unnoticed, I found myself without much to do.
I took my lessons and curtailed my frustration at the idea that every word should end differently depending on whether it was wet or dry.
I played my lyre in my chamber for a decadent amount of time.
I enjoyed sweet treats. Arik prompted me a little to return to the reader, but with a teasing ease.
When I asked why he seemed so happy that I refused Jorn, the king said Fell could handle a tussle or two. Did I feel guilt when he said this?
No. I felt nothing. I couldn’t entertain a single thought of Fell.
It wasn’t that I chose not to think of him. I was not able.
We were struck by lightning together—stop. That was how my thoughts of Fell went—hints of an idea ending before it reached its conclusion.
It was the music that got to me first, that changed what went on beneath my skin.
The drums in the north were wild yet steady, free and contained.
I felt the urge to tap my toes each night in the hall as I ate.
I sipped mead—for the warmth, I told myself—and watched the feral dances.
Islish dance is a magical thing, each step part of a greater pattern.
The more people dancing, the more expansive the pattern.
But Norsern dance was mindless, eyeless—bodies moving as they felt.
Shoulders. Hips. Arms swinging and flowing.
Listening to the music and watching courtiers dance resulted in a sense taking over me that I can only explain as staring out a window.
It became clear that there was a world beyond the limits imposed upon me.
A world of feeling and moving. I did not, with the front of my mind, wish for this world, but I watched it carefully.
I knew I was left out of it. People pranced.
They ran jovially. They struck one another when angry.
They rolled around on the ground trying to slam fists into each other’s faces.
They threw things and laughed and laughed and laughed.
I watched.
They ripped their clothes off and shrieked as they ran toward the sea.
I watched.
They flirted.
I watched.
If you were to say to a being, “There is something like a meal that you have not had before, but you have been hungry for it your whole life.” And then you were to show that being a host of people having what it is they hunger for and let them know they could never have it, you would expect them to go mad, wouldn’t you?
I did not go mad. I went quiet and still and empty.
The idea of expression—of taking what was within and pressing it out into the world, marking the world with its colour—it was a foreign thing to me.
And, maybe for a time, I grieved as I watched everyone around me do it: taint the world with their hidden insides.
Their anger and joy and eagerness leaving an impression of them in the lives of all nearby.
I became aware that the halls back home would not feel so different now that I was gone.
Dayne would miss me, but the sound of the halls would be the same.
The feeling when a person walked into them would be the same.
How cold it was to realize I had touched so little of my life that there would be no residue of me left in it.
“Why are you always so glum?” Dania said, flopping into a chair beside me during one of my melancholies. It was perhaps two moons since I’d arrived in the north. Her skin was flushed from dancing near the brazier, damp from the exertion of it.
Because I’m trapped in my life, I thought.
“Truly, I demand an answer.”
I sighed. “I am the odd one out here.”
“You are not. I’m Islish. Kaevn over there with the dark hair is Islish. Jorn is a foreigner too. Some people are dancing, some are sitting like you—”
“No, I’m… I would never be able to be… how people here are being.”
“Says who?”
I looked at her with an expression that said, don’t be foolish now.
“Truly, Mira, says who?”
The conversation was making me feel worse in every way.
There is nothing left inside me for anything to come out.
This is a darker truth I now know with certainty.
There are things that, if silenced in youth, remain silenced for all a person’s life.
Waking even one silenced part can take years, so if too much is buried, it cannot all be unearthed in a single lifetime.
The music soared, and my fingers wanted to soar with it, to tap on the table’s edge.
I held steady.
“You are utterly ridiculous,” Dania said with genuine malice in her voice. “Come, sit here.” She grasped my shoulder and took me to a table that was low to the floor. Three Norsern were gathered around it, chatting and drinking. Dania sat as well and spoke to them.
“I have a plan,” she said. “They have agreed. You are to play a game with us. It is simple—” The Norsern around the table were speedily clearing their empty plates, and one had gone to fetch new goblets.
They were laughing as well in a way that I found…
suspicious. I felt left out again. More so than before.
“Everyone has an empty cup, see? And a full one. There, you have your two. And there will be a little… well, they call it an egg, but it’s not actually an egg.
One person will throw it into someone else’s cup.
That person can catch it or swipe to send it away.
If it gets in either of your cups, you must drink—a big gulp.
Then you can throw the egg into someone else’s cup.
Understand? When your full cup has emptied, you flip it upside down so everyone knows you’re halfway through.
Then your empty cup gets filled and you keep playing with one cup.
When that one is empty—because you’ve drunk it all—it also flips upside down.
You can keep throwing the egg, mind you, so you’ve lost but you’re not out of the game, and you haven’t really lost as you’ve had your mead. All’s clear?”
“Uhh…” I hadn’t played a game with throwing since I was maybe seven, but I was a little pleased by the idea of being included in something, especially something that didn’t seem to require much talking.
I could manage very few complete phrases in Norsern, so I found attempted conversations extremely draining. “I think so…”
“Good, look. Eydis says you may go first, have a throw.”
A woman with so many gold bracelets on her arms it looked like she had metal sleeves between her wrists and elbows, set a tiny, white ball on the table before me.
“Throw it into someone’s cup.”
Everyone looked at me expectantly.
“How am I to choose?” I said, afraid of offending someone for choosing them if that were bad or not choosing them if it were good.
“Whoever you want.”
“Uhh—”
“Quickly now, Mira. Part of the game is that you go quickly.”
With everyone watching, I played safely, tossing the “egg” toward Dania’s empty cup. She swiped it out of the air and plopped it into my full cup. She smiled. “Draekker. That means drink.”
I picked the egg out of my cup and raised the drink to my lips.
“Ah!” A man whose eyelids were painted black shook his head and growled. He pointed at my drink.
“He says you’ve taken not enough. You must try for a fair-sized drink, or it will seem you’re playing tricky, hoping to drink less for an advantage.
If you start playing tricky, someone else will play tricky too.
And—I’m adding this part, he did not say it—you will stand no chance if you get them playing with tricks.
Keep the game, how you say… hoegin, um… don’t sail your first time in a storm. Draekker.”
I drank, and I attempted Dania’s cup again. She was to my right and I was afraid of all the others at the table. Again, she caught it and dropped it into my cup.
“You cannot always choose me. And also, you’re supposed to try to stop it from landing in your cup.”
I had tried, only I was very slow, and I’d only just begun to lift my arms when a splash of mead let me know the egg had landed.
“Faster, Mira. This is a game. It’s supposed to keep rolling. Like the sea.”
I took my drink and held the egg, looking from person to person at the table, trying to figure out who to throw it to.
The woman to my left—Eydis, I reminded myself—growled and held her palm open.
“She says we will go a few times so you can see. It’s a fast game, Mira. You must act fast.”
I gave the egg over and watched as it was tossed and caught and tossed and caught and slapped away seven or eight times before it landed in a cup.
The drink was quick, and the ball was moving again.
I flinched each time I thought it was coming for me, which was most times—I had a terrible sense for distance and speed back then.
Each flinch brought my hands closer to my cups, until eventually, I had my palms hovering over my cups to protect them.
A sharp pain came from nowhere. One of the men at the table had flicked my knuckles with a growl. Three conversations happened at once.
Eydis shouted at the man who’d flicked me, poking him in the cheek, hard.
The man who’d flicked me was exclaiming something to Dania.
The man with the painted lids laughed and spoke to me.