Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
When I stopped bleeding and all the globs of afterbirth had come, we returned to the palace.
It was midday by the time we were lying in our room, just the three of us, braziers roaring. I wore only an underskirt. Halvar was feeding from me, and I could imagine doing nothing but stare at the little creature for the rest of my life.
Fell was shirtless as well, lying beside us, waiting patiently. He wanted to hold the child; each subtle gesture told me so, but I couldn’t bring myself to release the babe. I never want to stop holding him. But after he’d eaten and fallen asleep, I could ignore Fell’s eagerness no longer.
Halvar was so small in those big hands.
We lay with him between us, running our fingers along his face and hands and tiny feet.
Later, Norsern people would say that Halvar from the Storm was born beneath the constellation Utfirsk, the Caribou. They would also say Hidevir, the planet of gifts and good timing, was located in the part of the sky that had to do with exploration and discovery.
This is not true. The planet of luck was moving backwards in the sign of Yorunn, protector of home and hearth and the boy was born beneath the sign of Utterleg—the Outsider.
I woke many times that night, gripped by a horrendous fear, as if in my sleep I’d forgotten about the child and suddenly remembered he was there. I had to set my fingers in front of his lips to feel his breaths and run the back of my hands along his limbs to feel if he was too hot or cold.
I will now say the thing I am most forbidden to say.
I love my son. I loved him from the first moment.
I would slaughter entire cities for him…
In time, I will tell you some of what I’ve done in his name.
But within nine or ten days of his birth, I knew I did not love being a mother.
Perhaps that was because I was a foreigner in a strange land and every instinct I had was despised by the people around me.
Their looks told me as much. But beyond this, he created a wound in me, a bruise that would always be filling with blackened blood, never to clear.
I will never be free again, I thought repeatedly.
He would always come first, and I would choose it so, but I ached over it all the same, for I had only moons that were truly mine.
They were over just as they were beginning.
From the day of his birth, the rest of my life belonged to men.
Loving them, ruling them, slaughtering them.
Never again would I have a day that was just mine.
Never again would I be so uneasy to harm.
Having a child means having a target, one that if struck would ruin your very soul.
There is more ache to it than I could ever explain to anyone who has not done it.
And those who have… they need no reminder of their suffering.
I feel wretched for sharing my secret.
Nauseous.
I am done writing for the evening.