1. A Dark Wood
A Dark Wood
It was a tantrum of epic proportions, childlike and without dignity.
But then I was only fourteen, a girl, even if no one treated me like one.
Even if I didn’t feel like a child as I toiled alongside my father and brothers and Meya, working as hard as any adult, until my body ached and my muscles burned.
Until I was so weary at night that I could scarcely stop myself from nodding off to sleep face-first into my bowl.
This was my life. Grinding drudgery. Tedious monotony to simply ensure we had food in our stomachs, a roof over our heads, and coin enough to pay the tithes due to the crown and whatever bandits menaced our village. Childhood had skipped me. There were no lighthearted, carefree days.
I told myself I was allowed this. For once, in this moment, I was exactly what I was. Someone young and immature swept up in a temper.
My fury boiled over, and I surrendered to all the drama and spectacle allocated to youth. With tears hot and salty on my cheeks, I seized a wooden bowl heavy with the fragrant bread baked this day by my very own hands. Calmer, gentler hands then.
Now I was a storm.
My fingers grasped, quick and wild as a tempest, first the bowl and then the bread, sending them careening one after the other across the room.
Henrik waved his hands in a consoling gesture as though I were a lively horse he was attempting to shoe in the smithy. “Easy there, Arden. It’s not the end of the world. You can visit us.”
“No! I want to go with you.” I looked from my brother to his wife as if they were already lost to me.
I turned to my father, desperation clawing up my throat.
Da looked from the mess I made to stare at me with an empty expression that felt like a punch to the chest, robbing me of breath . . . and hope. I pressed a hand there, at the center where it hurt so much. He was unmoved. There was no bending him.
I’d never asked for anything. Never complained. I worked and endured and did all the things expected of me.
It did not matter.
Da shook his head sternly at me, the lines of his face drawn tight, grooves etched into the ashy skin of his cheeks like deep scores in old leather. “Calm down. You’re being . . . hysterical.”
Hysterical. I flinched at the word. I choked at the unfairness of it. Hysterical because I wanted something for myself? Because I made a demand? For once, for the first time? Because I wanted this? A chance for a life away from here?
My brother added his voice, gentle and soft as lambswool where Da was all hardness and sharp edges.
It fed me hope. If anyone could persuade our father, it would be Henrik.
He was the oldest, the son my father always looked to and treated as an equal, an adult.
“Come, Da. Meya and I would be happy to have Arden with us.” Henrik draped his arm over his wife’s shoulders.
Meya seconded his words with an agreeable nod. “The Borg is a big city and it’s relatively safe.”
“Relatively,” Da echoed with a twist of his lips as he continued to eat his meal. “Lots of trouble to be had in big cities.”
Was he serious? We had more than enough trouble here.
“With the Terror dead and gone, and the Lord of the Borderlands back in power, the Borg is a better place.” Meya looked at her father-in-law as though encouraging him to understand.
I nodded. My brother’s wife was always so sensible.
Of course she was correct. Conflict and war still might riddle the land, but things were better since the Terror was killed a year ago and the Beast of the Borderlands returned to power.
“There will be more opportunities for her there.” Henrik picked up the thread of conversation. “More people her age.”
Da made a sound that was part grunt, part growl . . . but the tone was unmistakable in its disapproval. “She is only fourteen. She belongs with me, her father. When the time comes, she can choose a husband here. There are plenty of men in Isstad for her to choose from.”
I shuddered.
Meya averted her face, but not before I caught her eye roll.
“Plenty?” Jens echoed with a snort. “The rate everyone keeps moving away . . . by the time Arden is eighteen, there won’t be anyone left, just the ancient and infirm.”
Our remote village was not in the direct path of .
. . anywhere. Few people passed through it.
No one came to trade. Isstad offered little.
No unique products or services. The community was dying, and Da refused to face it.
The only thing we seemed to attract was the periodic raid from bandits and the occasional pestilence that diminished our already dwindling population.
We subsisted, fishing in the nearby icy rivers and ponds and hunting game wandering the area.
Jens chuckled at his own remark, but then his humor faded in the face of our father’s scowl.
Henrik sent our brother a warning look, and then pointed out in a mild voice, “There aren’t many suitable men for Arden, Da. Hardly any lads her own age here.”
All the young men—and even many of the young women—were leaving, joining the army or going elsewhere to seek their fortunes in the world beyond Isstad.
Deeper north to serve in the Lord of the Borderland’s army or south to answer the call of the king—depending on where one’s loyalties rested.
Here in the north, most everyone sided with Lord Dryhten, king of the north, the Beast of the Borderlands, Lord Beast. He had no shortage of titles.
Civil war simmered and frothed like a bubbling stew, and instead of avoiding it by remaining in this dying village, our youth chose to join the seething conflict and risk the battlefield. It said a great deal of what this village had to offer.
There were few boys my age, but the most appealing one of the lot, Isak, spent all his time in his father’s tannery, so he reeked of decaying flesh and urine and blood.
“There are men enough,” Da insisted, slurping a spoonful of stew and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in lieu of a napkin.
Indeed. Older men. Too old for me.
“The population is declining, Da. Even the girls my age are leaving.” My seventeen-year-old brother stabbed his spoon into his bowl reproachfully, clanking it against the ceramic.
Meya reached out a hand and placed it on Jens’s arm, and I appreciated that.
This was not about Jens right now. Jens who was old enough to go wherever he wished. It was about me. Henrik was waging a battle on my behalf, and I needed to be the focus. For once, selfishly. My future depended on it.
Jens could go anywhere and do anything he wanted. Farther north. Or south. Or east across the Dark Channel. Anywhere. He could leave now if he wanted. At seventeen, he was nearly a man. Close enough. Da would not stop him.
Henrik continued, “Life here . . .” He gestured around them.
“It is hard and only getting harder. The winters keep getting longer and colder. The brigands grow bolder. The battle fires grow closer. We are vulnerable to the Beast’s army in the north, to the king’s soldiers encroaching from the south.
It doesn’t matter what side we’re on. They don’t ask our allegiance when infantry and cavalry charge through our village, when deserters from their armies harass and thieve from us. ”
Da consumed another spoonful, digesting Henrik’s words along with his meal before he answered, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and nodding slowly. “Life is dangerous here. As it is everywhere.”
I blew out a disgusted breath. There was all manner of danger in the world. If I could choose, I’d much rather face the dangers in the Borg.
“If you want any kind of life for Arden, let her come with us,” Meya spoke up, and I nodded encouragingly, hopefully, willing my father to be persuaded.
He wasn’t budging. “I was born here. Your mother was born here. Your grandparents.” He stood up and moved in his stiff gait toward the bread I’d tossed.
He moved slower lately, his right leg dragging behind him.
I didn’t know if it was his hip or his knee that afflicted him.
I didn’t know if it was age or the cold or one of the numerous times he’d been kicked by a horse while working in the smithy, but his body was failing him bit by slow bit.
He never voiced a complaint, but the evidence was clear to observe.
Bending, he picked up the loaf, dusted it off, and returned to his seat.
That was so like him. Prudent. Parsimonious.
He was not a man given to waste or squander.
Taking a hearty bite, he looked us over resolutely.
“Arden stays with me. That is right. I’m her father.
Your mother would have wanted that.” He jutted his chin toward Henrik and Meya.
“You can go. That is your right. But she stays.”
“No!” I burst out in uncustomary rebellion.
Today continued to be a day of firsts for me. I might not have remembered my mother, but I could not believe she would sentence me to this narrow and fraught existence. A mother would want only the best for her children. And Isstad was not the best for me.
“You’re wrong,” I added on a hot gust of breath.
“My mother would not have wanted me to stay here.” I raged on the inside while I trembled like the last leaf of autumn on the outside.
“She would want me to go where I have a chance at life. Where I can feel the sun on my skin and be more than some old man’s wife. ”
The craggy lines of my father’s face deepened, settling like ruts in a road, hard as stone, and I knew what I must look like to him. A child. A temperamental child throwing a tantrum, not to be taken seriously or indulged.
Henrik and Meya were leaving. Soon Jens would leave, too. I would be left here all alone with Da.
“Now, Arden,” he said, his voice flat, unmoved in the face of my emotion, and that only made the emotion rush hotter to my face. “You like it here. We can go ice fishing—”