Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Autumn coated the world in gold, then winter dyed it silver. And still no ships came from the Isle to do battle.
Just as it had the previous winter, the cold horrified me, swallowed me, turned me into a warmth-gobbling creature.
There are many lovely stories from this time, endless mornings where I insisted it was too cold for Fell to leave bed, as many snowball fights as you could imagine King Arik’s court holding, the magic of the world glittering around me, Faller fighting a blacksmith on behalf of Rowan, earning Rowan’s begrudging respect…
but one night stands so stark against the rest, I must rush toward it in my tale.
It was in the night, deep into winter, that Fell’s hands woke me up, running along my cheeks.
“Shh,” he said.
“Me shh? You shh. I had just fallen asleep.”
“Sorry,” he said, still whispering. “You made noise, I thought you felt pain.”
I glared at him even though it was too dark for him to truly see, “No,” and then I shut my eyes. But not a moment had passed before I opened them again. I did feel… something.
“I will fetch Ivar,” he said.
I whined. “No, I must make water, but it is cold outside… I do not want to go.”
He laughed. “You may take my furs, here…” He helped me dress because I was huge and needed it, and then he walked with me out onto the docks surrounding the palace to the treeline along the beach.
The wind was dancing violently, and the faintest evening snow flowed in one direction and then another.
I squatted but found I couldn’t release the water easily. When it finally came, it came with pain. I exhaled deeply, my breath tinted with my voice. I knew in my bones—the birth was beginning.
Fell’s eyes stayed on me as we made our way back to the palace. He knew as well.
I did not have an easy birth. Indeed, having done it, I doubt it could ever be easy for anyone.
I wanted to sleep more, which I managed only partially.
I woke several times from a pinching sort of feeling within that reminded me very much of the creaking of an un-oiled door.
Each time I woke, Fell was there watching.
The wind outside was howling. My back was aching as it had the entire time I’d carried my child, but more somehow.
Ivar had come at some point and was sitting on the floor, his back against the far wall.
I could hear the whisper of casting coming from him.
“Shh,” I said.
He silenced instantly.
Fell was awake too, so alert that it was making me awake, and I was terribly irritated by it. I wanted to sleep. My hips, however, wanted me to move.
“I will go up the hall to stretch my legs,” I said, quickly discovering a handful of casters—including King Arik—in the hall outside. Ivar stayed within sight but gave me space as I walked. Fell did not. I was embarrassed to be fussed over, thinking, Leave me be. I am tired and sore and… leaking.
There was the horror of my body doing something entirely without my consent and the humiliation that came from my own waters all over the carpet, where anyone might see.
And then there was the tide of it—the ripping, tearing, ache of it.
Fell became of less and less help, and I understood outside of birth why that would be, but within it, I had no space in my mind for him.
I murmured into the floor on my hands and knees, resting when the tide pulled out, locking eyes with Fell and trying to promise him something with my gaze…
anything that might erase the dread I saw in his face.
I fell into a pit of torment so deep not even my love for Fell could reach me.
I vomited repeatedly, everything in my stomach and then bile; the room filled with the stench of pain and stomach.
Time disappeared, and there was only the sensation of being ripped apart and then a lull that felt like being filled with fog, and then the ripping again.
I remember Fell’s hands shaking in the dim room.
I remember Ivar saying to him, “Hyrold is watching,” and Fell nodding to himself.
How his hands looked after that, gripping the edge of the side table so tightly I could have sworn it groaned.
I remember Ivar rubbing my back with oil and me loving it, but then demanding he stop, but then begging for it again.
I remember Fell asking how much longer it would be, and Ivar not answering, but his face showing he didn’t think it would be over soon.
“Stop talking about me like I am not here,” I begged the pair of them.
Fell said, so softly, “I will go back to being quiet.”
At some point, I determined I was dying. I cried and mumbled in Islish. “I am being torn in half. I will not survive this.”
Come.
It was a whisper and a yell. An echo and the crashing of the sea.
“What?”
Come to me, and I will ease your suffering.
I sat up, my jaw so tight I felt my teeth might crumble.
I didn’t know how much time I had before the tide came again, but I knew I needed to make it count.
Inexplicably, but with complete certainty, I knew where I was being called to.
I took four steps before sinking to the floor, groaning.
Gagging. Spit dripping out of my gritted teeth.
I suffered in eternity, and while Fell’s hands were on me and Ivar was kneading my back, it was the calling that kept me from dying.
Be brave. Come. I am here.
I played this game—this forward, collapse in agony, forward again game, answering the call. I understood what it wasn’t saying, that if only I reached it, all would be well.
“Where are you going?” Fell whispered to me. So softly. He smelled awful; people smell terrible when they’re afraid.
“The sea,” I said. It was the wind that was calling me. Out on the roiling sea.
“It will be too cold for you.”
I pushed him, but there was no true strength in my arms.
His voice pushed back so gently. “There is a storm.”
Ivar came to my side. “I must listen to her,” he said to Fell with no apology in his voice.
He supported me as I walked, as I crawled through the increasing crowd of casters in the hallway.
Outside to where the ground bit my fingers with cold, and the wind froze the sweat coating my body, pushing me along with its force.
I’m coming, I told the wind with my thoughts.
The wind did end my suffering, but not gently.
The child came moments after I stepped onto the nearest ship, tucked into a cave for winter, the sea frozen around it, the whole world outside a flurry of stormy white.
My mind was stretched like the sky by the sensation of it, the pain and surrender and violent depth of it.
I heard the child’s cry, and I cried. “It’s over,” I whispered in Islish to the wind. “Thank you.”
The wind caressed my tear-stained cheeks. The boards beneath my shaking knees groaned. You are welcome.
I knew the wind’s name without needing to be told.
It was Hyrold who had spoken to me.
By obeying, I had given myself to him, opened myself to him. I’d chosen Hyrold in the same way he’d chosen me.
Not the story you were expecting, was it?
A young woman in the throes of labour, feeling the threat of death, crying out and being answered by a foreign deity.
A young woman rescued by a god, becoming a faithful servant.
A woman who is called in the annals by the name Mira the Godless. How funny those annals are.
“A healthy boy.”
Ivar set the gooey, screaming thing inside my dress against my chest and wrapped me in fur after fur until I must have looked like a mountain of fur with a head on top.
The child screeched.
I cried. And laughed. And cried more.
Perfection.
A deep love for all the world, for each and every thing that led me to meeting this child. Life made more sense to me than it ever had before. Then it ever would again.
Halvar, the wind told me.
“Halvar,” I said.
“Halvar?” Fell repeated.
I hadn’t noticed Fell for quite some time. He was drenched in sweat, his eyes wild and manic, his shoulders rising with heavy breaths. Tears he didn’t seem to notice dripped from his lashes.
Ivar gave the child his second name, which parents were not allowed to do in the north, indeed most people there have only one name. He said, “Halvar Fervjnd.”
It meant: Halvar from the Storm.
Yes.
That Halvar.
I’ll wager that’s not written anywhere in your annals. Halvar from the Storm, the one who stole the ships at The Wide Way Fjord, the one who ransacked Rouen. He is the child of Fell Heartsong and Mira the Godless. He’s three-quarters Islish. Go now, spread your gossip. I know how you love it.