Chapter 44
Forty-Four
Halvar screeched. He flailed. He spit up and demanded to be held and bounced as Fell and I packed our belongings.
What this meant in actuality was every few moments I’d think of something Halvar might need in the next day or week or moon—because we had no idea how long we’d be gone for—and Fell would look exhausted, nearly sigh, and say something like: “There will not be room on the ship for that.”
“But he might need it.”
“But the captain will not give up so much storage for—”
“Should we just leave and go our own way? Find somewhere—”
“Mira, I would not abandon Arik—”
I think we both wanted to shout or kick and Halvar’s cries continued for hours as we negotiated our belongings down to a single bag with my lyre tied on top, growing endlessly irritated with each other.
“So then, after Halvar pisses or throws up or gets skat on the two furs we have for him. There will be nothing else to put him in while they dry. We are to be washing his furs nine times each day? They will never be able to dry—”
“It is summer. They will have to—”
I had only the dress I was wearing. Fell suggested trousers which everyone, including high-voiced wombed beings, wore on ships.
“I don’t want to dress like a—” In my anger, I’d forgotten the long string of words I needed to say boy in Norsern, so I said it in Islish.
“Ba-oy? What is ba-oy?” Fell’s tone was not adoring when he said that. I think he assumed it was some kind of insult, and since he wore trousers, perhaps it was an insult that encompassed him. “Do not make owl face at me, I am only—”
I set Halvar down onto the bed, and his cries multiplied. I covered my face with my hands, pressing against my eyes because they were strained and sore.
“Mira,” Fell said softly, coming to stand behind me, setting his hands on my shoulders, kissing the top of my head. “I admit we are not having a good day. But no wrong has been done. We simply want to ensure we have everything we need. This is not—”
“We do not want to be doing this at all,” I said, still stern, but a little soothed by how gently Fell was running his hands along my shoulders and upper arms. I leaned back into him, feeling his chest against my back.
Halvar stilled for the first time in hours, his little legs kicking gently.
The calm shattered when Fell shouted, “Ah!”
It happened so quickly, I could only understand what I’d seen moments after.
A bee landed on the bed, just near Halvar’s shoulder. Halvar flailed, his chubby little arm knocking the creature. Halvar’s scream took a moment to come, but it came in full force. A scream I’d never heard from him.
Fell was quick as lightning, his hand shooting out to grab the bee and rip it away from our son. Fell squeezed the creature within his closed fist, killing if it wasn’t dead already, by pressing his own fingers so hard against his palm, dropping the dead creature and pulling a knife from his belt—
In all the actions Fell had taken, I’d only managed to have my mind boiled by the sound of Halvar’s pain-cry.
I hadn’t heard him cry in true, overwhelming pain like that before.
I couldn’t handle it. My child should not be suffering so.
But because he was, my whole world was wrong and inside out. My bones felt like ice in my body.
“Halvar, baby.”
Fell scraped the stinger out of Halvar’s arm in two quick tugs, by the time I’d run my shaking hands along Halvar’s cheeks, trying to soothe him.
“I will be right back!” Fell ran out the door, leaving me to pick up Halvar, who was still crying like I’d never heard a baby cry.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said in Islish.
My lungs were spasming. My ears couldn’t listen to Halvar’s pain.
It felt impossible that my child—my beautiful, perfect son—should be making the noises he was making.
Feeling what those noises meant he was feeling.
I almost vomited. Tears coated my eyes in a sheen that blurred the world.
“Baby, baby, baby.” My voice was coated in tears, cracking in three or four different ways at once. Holding him was doing nothing to help him. Was it helping me? Not truly.
It felt like ages, but I know it was only a few moments before Fell returned with plantain leaves in his hands.
He chewed one quickly, but thoroughly, and when that was done, he spit the green mush onto his fingers, rubbing it on Halvar’s arm where the stinger had come out.
He chewed three more leaves and something else—some kind of bark—and applied them in the same way before Halvar’s cries softened.
“You are so strong,” he said to Halvar.
Calm. His voice was steady. Impressed even.
Halvar settled even more, and my heart finally stopped racing.
Fell spit a final leaf onto his fingers and rubbed that onto Halvar’s arm.
In the quiet, knowing things were sorted, I sank to the floor, holding Halvar tight to my chest. Fell sat as well, across from me, his legs on either side of me, Halvar between our chests.
How quickly Fell had acted. How he’d known exactly… “What would I ever do without you?” I breathed.
Fell’s brows rose. All day I’d been so busy, so annoyed, so frustrated. I hadn’t looked at his face the way I was looking at it now.
“You are tired,” I said. But it was more than that.
He was stretched. Torn. He’d spent the last several days trying to appease me, trying to appease Arik, trying to appease Halvar.
Arguing with the people he loved. I remembered suddenly the reading I’d done for him at King Arik’s behest. Will he ever have rest?
Or just not now, not today? How badly he’d tried to change Arik’s mind.
How badly he wanted me to be as safe as possible: to train with shield and axe, to mark my skin with a Norsern tattoo—even just something small and hidden. The ink was thought to be protective.
“I am sorry I have been so terrible,” I started. “But you are right. I should take a protective mark.”
Fell’s blue eyes lit as he watched me for a moment more. Eager. Wanting to be sure I was serious.
“Before we leave,” I said. I didn’t believe the marks were magical or protective, but Fell believed it.
He nodded. “I will fetch the tools.”
No one had told me how terrible it would feel to have my skin marked.
It was like a sharp blade scraping against my skin again and again.
Until it was raw. Until it was so irritated, I wanted to groan.
I’d chosen the mark of Valla, the goddess of the moon and good luck, daughter of Hyrold.
And I’d chosen to hide it on my ribcage on my left side. Small. Just beneath the breast.
While I’d chosen small, it felt very large as Fell stabbed me repeatedly with the stupid little needle that I hated with a foolish fury.
Though in moments where I softened to the irritation of it, I got to watch Fell’s face as he worked.
So concentrated. So beautiful. My left arm was numb from holding it above my head while he worked, but he was so lovely to look at, it almost didn’t matter.
“It is done, but swollen, so you will not be able to see it as it will be for…”
I lowered my arm slowly, hesitating as I brought it closer and closer to what felt like a raw wound on my ribcage.
“I have one more thought,” Fell said, grinning almost sheepishly.
“What?”
He came to sit behind me, his chest against my back. His arms around me as he pulled me into his lap. He slid his right forearm against my left forearm, both of our palms facing up, our wrists facing up, our smallest fingers touching.
He sketched with charcoal on his wrist first, but very quickly, he was sketching on my wrist as well. A circular mark no bigger than a coin, half on his wrist, half on mine.
“It is the mark of Hanya,” he said softly when he’d finished.
From learning stone casting, I recognized a part of the mark. The word Beloved was hidden inside it.
“She is the goddess of all that is beautiful. She is the feeling of love.”
I nodded slowly, looking at our arms as I pulled mine away a little, leaving a half circle on my wrist and a half circle on his. Only when our arms were together was the image complete.
“I love it,” I said.
“Enough for ink?”
I giggled. “Yes.”
“It does not wash off.”
“I know.”
He kissed my shoulder. And even after both of our wrists were washed and marked and the stinging had passed, we stayed wrapped around each other.
I could feel Fell’s heart beating in his chest as we drifted to sleep.