Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
The following moons felt like one long day.
Halvar was awake or sleeping. He was feeding or crying.
Everything blurred into an endless dream where I was always exhausted and surprised by what time of day it was or by how many days had passed since his birth.
My body ached, making water burned between my legs, my nipples bled, and people came to see us.
They gave us old things of theirs. They rubbed Fell’s shoulders in the same way they tried to rub mine, but I stared at them with disgust until they stopped.
Almost every part of that long day felt horrible, but when I looked at the little squirming thing: pathetic and helpless and so utterly beautiful it made me sick, I’d feel so happy I could cry.
Black hair like me. Blue eyes like his father.
Lungs that could wail and wail and wail—perhaps the king had fed me so much fish that the child adopted his loudness.
Maybe all children were loud. Maybe Halvar was especially loud.
Slowly, I healed. Slowly, I excursioned from our room into the halls.
From the smaller halls into the larger ones.
From within the palace to without. Dania visited, and we slept piled all together: her and me and her boys and my boy.
Fell had so much less fear than I did during this time.
He’d take Halvar anywhere—it could be dirty or smelly or loud or gross or full of dangers for a small, soft being.
Fell laughed at things I found abhorrent.
Like when Farwatcher came into the hall to see Halvar asleep on Fell’s arm and said, “And how fares this floppy little fellow?”
I glared at the man. “Stop it. He is not floppy.”
Farwatcher tilted his forehead toward me, raising his brows slightly, almost grinning in a taunting way.
Halvar did nothing to aid me in the argument. His chubby little cheek was smooshed against one of his father’s shoulders. His arms hung limp over the edge of Fell’s much larger arm.
“He flops just the right amount,” I said, rushing forward and scooping the child up.
When I turned to Fell, demanding with my expression that he argue with Farwatcher or pound the man’s face in or at least threaten to, Fell said, “Yes, he may be a little floppy now, but he will grow out of it. How many floppy adults do you know of?”
If eyes could cut flesh, mine would have.
Farwatcher laughed. Fell laughed, too, and I took Halvar away from the two mean men who would call him floppy right to his face as they pretended they were sorry and begged to be permitted to be near “the very rigid, entirely-flop-less child.”
Days passed. Halvar grew. And no ships came from the Isle to do battle with the Norsern.
For a period of ten days, he would look like a new child to me each morning—expression and shape and size something I had not anticipated the evening before.
Sometimes I would look away for a quarter of an hour, and when I looked back, he would seem changed—a hint of the boy he was to be revealing himself or tucking himself away.
I saw my brothers when I looked at him—Dayne mostly, but the little boys Hamon and Emory, too.
I saw my sister Elfrith, but never my sister Dinah, even though she was only a baby when I’d been paired with Loric, so she should have been the easiest to see similarities with.
Some days Halvar looked Islish, some days Norsern, and some days he seemed to be something else entirely.
A howling creature with the power of the sea in his cries.
Everyone but Ivar urged me to leave him for a moment, to remember what it felt like to walk without weight in my arms, without my neck bent forward so I could see the little being.
I could not do it for the longest time, and when I did, it made me wild and sick—truly sick, nauseous with a fever and a running nose and an earache.
The first time I properly left him, Dania had insisted I come with her to the bathing hall. She dragged me, and I couldn’t truly resist her with all my strength as she was vaneruigk, so I feared any harm coming to her.
Fell pretended for a moment to be terrified as she pulled me away, but when I nearly threw up, he laughed. “Go! Just do not be gone too long—I am jesting! Go. We will fare cryptically.”
Cryptic had begun to mean something entirely different between the two of us. It referred to secret joys.
“What if he needs me?” I said, trying to wrench my arm out of Dania’s grasp without jerking her at all, which, of course, was impossible.
“Then Fell will bring him to us. He knows where we are going,” Dania’s hair seemed to have grown triple the length since she’d become vaneurigk. It swished as she tugged me.
“You will?” I turned to Fell.
“I choke on it,” he said, his eyes clear with promise. He was truly promising now, comforting me, building a wall around me with his expression alone.
I left, and I was on the verge of tears the whole time I was gone. Dania washed my hair and made me wait for her to wash hers before she sighed, “Fine. You can go.”
I dressed as quickly as I could and raced back to our room to hear Fell from just outside the door, humming to Halvar.
The knots of who I was, the inner wounds that life had given me, the roughness of the world—everything faded and healed for one wondrous moment.
Fell’s voice softened for our child. I listened for a moment more outside before entering quietly, my heart fluttering as I saw Halvar’s sleepy wellness.
Had I believed he wouldn’t be well without me? I had. I don’t know why.
“What happened while I was gone?” I said, coming close, letting my wet hair drip on the bed. One of my fingers brushed against Halvar’s teeny elbow.
Fell shook his head. “Nothing. You left. I leaned back like this. You returned. Truly nothing.”
“Surely not. I was gone so long.”
That wretched, perfect smile. “No. You were a quarter of an hour, maybe. Probably less.”
I shook my head. “That is impossible.”
“I swear it is the truth.” He set Halvar on the bed between us before taking my face in his hands. “It is time to come out of the cloud,” he said. “At least a little. I miss you.”
“I do not know what you mean.”
His brows furrowed slightly. His voice quieted. “You have been gone from your own body. You have been only Halvar, Halvar’s doorway, Halvar’s mother—for three moons.”
“I have only been—”
Fell raised his brows. “When was the last time our lips touched?”
“I—”
“Do you think it was before Halvar came or after? I know the answer.”
I couldn’t remember.
“It was before he came.”
I was tired—so tired my eyes itched and burned—so I cried. “I will never be able to do anything else but think of him.” I believed this with my whole heart. I will never do anything again but wish over him and hope over him and fret over him.
I was wrong, of course. But it felt true at the time. It seemed impossible to me that I would ever be able to look away from him long enough to have a conversation, to have sex again, to think or read or play music.
“I miss you,” Fell said again, even quieter.
And I saw what he was saying in his face, how lonely he’d been. How I’d almost forgotten he existed while I fawned and stressed over the little limbs that stretched and the little voice that squawked. “I am sorry,” I whispered. “It is very overwhelming. I love him so much.”
“I know,” Fell said, stroking my cheeks.
I closed my eyes, trying to let the feel of his hands take over my whole mind.
The places his palms were rough, the places they were soft.
Feeling his strength. The hundred promises he’d made me with his eyes and hands and presence.
When I opened my eyes, we kissed, and then a war erupted within me.
The parts of my body that were still mine and the parts that were Halvar’s collided.
I relished Fell’s hold, his chest, the flatness of his stomach, but my breasts felt wrong between us—swollen and so full they itched—water quickened between my legs, but so did pain.
I wanted Fell entirely, desperately, tragically, but my flesh wasn’t ready for him, and I had to stop us.
He understood, but I felt our night ruined and spent some time weeping over how lost I felt in my body, in my own mind.
I took better care of myself. I heeded Ivar’s advice.
Dania’s and Arik’s, too. I understood there was a rhythm in people’s offerings: someone would offer to hold Halvar so I could learn to eat on my own again—because I had forgotten, you see?
One hand on my bowl and the other on my spoon.
Someone would offer to rock him, so I might play a tune on the lyre and feel the flow of music in my own hands separate from Halvar.
And then there came the day that all of us were in the hall together and Arik asked Fell if there was anything he needed now that Halvar’s neck had grown so strong he could look any which way he wanted and not a moment could pass without someone exclaiming, “Look how strong he is!”
Fell said, “Well… there is one thing, but it is not the thing you are thinking.”
“I am thinking money,” Arik said, earning many laughs.
“I am thinking… I have not been alone with Mira since Halvar arrived.”
Arik spit out a portion of his drink as he laughed. “You ask the king to mind your child?”
“I do,” Fell grinned.
We ran outside together, along the beach, knowing we would have to hurry as I wouldn’t bear being apart from Halvar for too long.
I thought we would go to Odae, but Fell wanted us to rush into the sea.
It was the first day warm enough to do it.
And once within, his hands ran up my skirt. “Someone will see!” I shouted at him.
“No, we will go quickly.”
“No!” I laughed and swatted his hands back. “Anyone from the palace may come upon us at any moment.”
“Just think, one day we will be old, and we will remember this day. We will say, ah, we were so young and crazy then.” And there was nothing to do in response to that but cry or have sex with him, so I did both.
And that evening, when we were lying by the fire, listening to Reedman play an absolutely gorgeous melody, Halvar tucked into the crook of my arm and me tucked into Fell, Fell leaned in to kiss the top of my head.
“Too many stars,” he whispered into my hair. “Far too many stars.”