Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
The world emptied, leaving only bare trees, soft light, and long shadows.
Dania began to open a door of her own.
Rowan began having sex with Fara and proceeded much more quickly than I had along the path Fell had outlined for foreigners: Norsern tattoos appeared on his fingers long before I considered my first marks.
He also learned Norsern words with remarkable ease—enough that people regularly commented on how quickly he was improving.
People asked if he’d been a poet back home or a scribe.
King Arik drove me mad with his particulars—the stretches he wanted me to do, the way I should eat and breathe and imagine.
And no Islish fleet arrived to war against the Norsern.
Fell and I shared more of ourselves with each other, becoming less two people and more one thing.
I told him of my order and the pains of my youth.
He told me of his history slowly. His mother had been unhappy with her life.
His father had been a fisherman. Fell believed he owed all of who he was to Arik.
There was even a night when he proved his affection: someone had come for Arik, thinking to make herself king.
Fell heard the shouts and ran from our bed naked, several of Arik’s raiders rushing past in the hall.
The woman had marks from nine different weapons when she died.
Fell’s axe was dripping when he came back to bed.
And then, Fell told me the rest of his history very quickly, on the evening he ate Fara’s mushroom gift.
He’d been having a lovely time it seemed, and then he and Fara went for a walk together, far away from the pyre we had started on the beach.
I could see them sitting in the grasses faded by autumn’s touch, smoking a flute together.
I knew by his posture then—he was having a serious conversation.
I didn’t bother him but fell asleep at the fireside.
Dania’s youngest, Layf, was curled up against me until his mother took him home.
I woke when Fell returned to the pyre and lay beside me.
His cold hands found their way into my tunic, resting on my waist, and I yelped from the shock of it, before closing my arms tight against my sides to help warm him and wiggling to get even closer to him, pressing the chill tip of my nose into his chest.
“What kept you?” I said, my eyes still closed. “I am terribly cold and have had no one to hold for at least an hour.” When I opened my eyes, his face was so solemn it hurt to see. “What has happened?”
He shrugged. “I told Fara of meeting King Arik, and she has put the last stitch in my wounds. I am a little sore, but she is a powerful healer. I wanted to be ready for the child…”
My voice was the murmuring of someone half asleep. “You tell Fara before you tell me?”
He smiled so beautifully. “Once I tell you, you will love Arik as much as I do. And you will be trapped, forever beholden to him as I am.”
“You forget I am a cold foreigner,” I said.
He snorted. “It might make you sad, as well.”
I brushed his cheeks with my hands. “I want to know everything about you,” I said.
He turned to kiss one of my palms and spoke into my hand. “Ah… well… when I was maybe twelve? I do not know my true age, as you know, but this is Arik’s guess, and he is good at guessing ages—”
“You are meandering,” I said, pulling my hands away from his face, back into the furs where they could hide from the chill. “You do not want to tell me.”
“No, I do… or I would like you to know, but maybe I would not like to tell you myself.”
I smirked. “Should I ask Arik?”
“No. He will tell it too grand and colourful.”
I huffed, and Fell laughed.
“Fine. But it is not happy until the end, hmm?”
I nodded. I’d certainly told Fell enough sad stories.
“Arik’s first order as king was about me.
When you become king of the Norsern, you travel from village to village to introduce yourself and battle with anyone who wishes to challenge you, and Arik is special because he does the tour every few years.
But the first year he did it, he came to my village—Gittenurg, in the mountains—I will take you one day, if you would like.
It was my skael that I was to be put to death on the day Arik came—”
“What?”
He laughed. “You are so impatient. I promise, I am telling the full tale. I had committed a very serious crime—”
“But there are almost no crimes in the north—”
“Yes, but there are some. I had killed a man—”
“This is not a crime here.”
“Ah, not if the killing came about during a fair fight. This was not fair. I had killed him while he slept—”
My heart started to race. I sat up. “What are you saying?”
“Mira, let me finish some—”
“You are a murderer?”
“Yes.” His face was solid. No wince. No shame. Just acceptance.
“Why?” My voice cracked. “Why would you do something like that?” And why would you wait until I was vaneurigk to tell me about it?
“Mira, I will get to that if you just… come back.”
I remained sitting rigidly, so after a moment, Fell sat up too, beginning to wrap me in the furs we had abandoned. I raised my hand to stop him.
He started smiling because he always smiled when I was cross with him. “My mother was soten, like you were, from the same country even. My father was Norsern like me. I have told you he was not a good father.”
He hadn’t told me that. Not so directly at least.
“He was not a good guardian to her. He hurt her often. He forced her to do labour. He told her many times he would never name her Norsen. I think she knew what she was going to do for a long time. I think she waited until I was big enough to live without her. But the day she chose to leave life… it had been an especially bad day. He… well, it does not matter what he did—”
“It does,” I said.
Fell’s eyes wandered to the clouds in the distance as he said the next part, his voice getting quieter with each word.
“He poured boiling water on her. On her face and one shoulder… There were many burns, and her hair was stuck in the burns, I remember. That was the day she chose to die—I am not angry with her for it. I worry she might think I would be angry, but I understand. Still, I hated that her life had been how it had been. There are many stories I could tell about her suffering, but after she died, I was less confused about my father. He was how he was, but he also taught me to fish; he loved watching me spar with other children. He would cheer for me. He left seeds out for all the squirrels… I always felt like I was betraying my mother whenever I accepted his kindness. But like I said… I was less confused after she died. I knew I could not kill my father in a fair fight. I waited until he slept.”
I felt like gagging, like I might open my mouth and the cry of a gull, or some other scratchy, screechy sound might come out. Our child kicked me so hard I felt nauseous.
“Of course, I was not clever about it and did not hide the proof of it well. I was to be put to death, but Arik came by, perfectly timed, moments before my end. He asked what crime a child could possibly have committed, and when he was told, he pardoned me. Took me with him. Tried to teach me things. Corrected a lot that had gone wrong in me.” Fell laughed softly.
“I did not make it easy for him. I remember screaming at him, ‘You are not my father!’ and him saying, ‘I would not want to be!’ When I was grown, he brought me back to Gittenurg, to the spot we first met and left me there.”
He shrugged again, but I could tell he didn’t feel like shrugging.
Any anger that had been building within me washed away with the sound of the waves nearby.
I knew what the Norsern said when someone told stories from their childhood—especially sad stories.
“Yorunn listens to all that happens inside homes.” I did not believe in the Norsern goddess of hearth and home, witness to those who suffer at the hands of family members or hunger or illness, witness to the secret beauties of familial kindness and love, but I knew Fell did. “You must be so angry,” I said.
He pushed his lips to the side. “I have been angry about it enough. In truth, I do not think on it much, but I have been thinking of being a father, so I have been thinking of fathers—”
I crept closer to him, shifting my swelling stomach as I straddled him, bending my neck so our faces could be close together, even though our child kept our chests apart. “You will be a good father.”
“But how would I know if I was not? My father… I do not think he considered himself terrible. We are different men, but part of him is in me…”
“I will tell you if you are doing poorly. Arik definitely will tell you—”
He laughed and then grew solemn again, wrapping his arms around me, adding to the awful squishing I felt internally from the opening door pushing everything inside up, cramping my lungs.
“I know skael is skael, but I would like my child to be happy,” Fell whispered.
“He will be,” I said.
“You keep saying he, but you cannot know—”
“Well, this will tell us if he is obedient or not right from the first,” I said. “If he listens to me, he will be a boy.”
Fell’s laugh was so deep, I felt the buzz in my body.