The First Girl Child

by Harmon, Amy

  The warriors of Dolphys came to the temple not long after sundown, in search of their chieftain. Dagmar had slipped away to pray, and Ivo could only listen to the men with an ever-increasing sense of doom, the keepers gathered around him, Ghost and the Daughters of Freya wan and watchful as the warriors relayed their account of the king’s council.

  “He knows, Master Ivo. The Dolphys knows the truth, and I fear it has broken him,” Dred confessed, his face streaked with worry and wear. The Dolphynians around him shifted in distress, and Ivo did not have to ask of what truth Dred spoke. Their faces held traces of their own shock and disbelief, as if they too had been seared by the knowledge and the mistreatment of their chieftain.

  “The king has banished him,” Dakin said, grim. “But he is the Dolphys, and our allegiance is to him first. We will not let this stand.”

  “We need to find him, Master Ivo,” Dred begged.

  The keepers nodded in agreement, gazes solemn, and Ivo relented, withdrawing his dagger from his robe. He drew a seeker rune, mumbling Bayr’s name as he traced the lines of his palms in blood and cupped them over his eyes, waiting for the web of worlds to find the lost. Within seconds, he located Bayr in the darkness, his head bowed, his back bent as though he were being crushed by the universe around him. Ivo clutched his chest and clawed at his throat, afraid of being pulled too deep.

  Dred cursed in trepidation and someone cried out, startled by Ivo’s violent reaction. The Highest Keeper straightened his hands and steadied himself before covering his eyes once more, this time watching from farther off until his blood dried and his vision cleared.

  “There are trees all around him and water nearby. But it is dark, and I cannot see beyond that.” Ivo paused, gathering his thoughts. He’d felt Bayr’s confusion and anguish, and he did his best to interpret it. “He is not broken, Dred of Dolphys. But his suffering is great. He is . . . undecided . . . about how to go on.”

  Dred nodded, despondent, and Dakin took his arm as if to gird him up. They would all need girding before the night was through. Ivo could feel the icy breath of the Norns kissing his neck and flowing in his veins.

  “What should we do, Highest Keeper?” Dakin asked.

  “Wait for him at the base of the mount near the Temple Wood,” Ivo answered. “He will not go far. His heart is here. His . . . fate . . . is here too.”

  Dagmar picked his way down the east slope, taking the path he’d taken a thousand times before, fording the stream on slippery stones, his blade in his belt, his eyes on the Temple Wood where once, a lifetime ago, he’d lost his sister and gained a son. The sun had set and the keepers had bidden it farewell with their evening prayers, chanting as one voice, their song spilling over the temple mount, causing the games to cease and the people to halt, their hands tracing the star of Saylok on their brows. It had always been his favorite part of the tournament, walking among the people, welcoming them into the sanctum, drawing runes of life and love upon their palms as he heard their troubles and calmed their fears.

  Oddly, he was not afraid. He knew he should be. Saylok was crumbling around them. But Ivo was wrong. He had not failed. Dagmar had failed. He had failed to confess his darkest fears. He had kept a secret that may have condemned a people. And he would keep it again.

  He stumbled in the gathering dusk and caught himself, abrading his hand on the stony ground. In a heartbeat he was back in Dolphys, climbing the peaks of Shinway, scampering after his sister and a fat gray rabbit. Desdemona’s palms had bled too. Dagmar made a fist around his weeping hand and continued walking. It was just as well. He would need blood for his rune.

  It had been a while since he’d prayed beneath Desdemona’s tree. When Bayr had left the mount a decade before, he’d been unable to face it. It hurt to stand beneath the boughs and remember the child, the boy born to a mother who would mark him, a father who would forsake him, and a world that did not welcome him. For all his strength and humility, for all his goodness and grace, Bayr had never once asked for anything. In that too, Dagmar had failed. Dagmar had kept secrets to protect him, and in keeping secrets, he’d allowed a bitter rune, powered by bitter blood, to shape their lives.

  If only he’d known. If only he’d understood. He felt a flash of anger and hurt, mouthing Ghost’s name as his thoughts churned around her beloved face.

  “She should have told me,” he whispered aloud, and his own voice mocked him. Ghost had been protecting her child. Just like he had been protecting Bayr. Dagmar had never believed Banruud was Alba’s father, yet he’d never said a word to Ivo. To Ghost. To Bayr. Desdemona had cursed Saylok’s men, and Dagmar had cursed them all by keeping her secret.

  Dagmar knelt beneath her tree and pressed his forehead to her stone, just like he’d taught Bayr to do so long ago. The night above the trees was void of color. Black branches, white stars, gray sky. With the tips of his fingers Dagmar found the whorls in the earth marking his sister’s rune.

  “I need to understand,” he whispered. “I need to see.” His belly filled with dread, and he swallowed a moan. He did not want to draw the rune. He did not want to see what the Eye might show him. He’d drawn runes for wisdom and runes for sight, but he’d never drawn the Eye again. Not since the day he’d stood in the cave, a child of eleven, silently pleading with the gods for the power of the keepers. It was one thing to see the present, to sharpen the eye, to travel across a distance knowing what one sought. It was something else entirely to be flung into the future and the past, into time and space, to receive what the Eye would reveal without knowing where the journey would lead . . . or end.

  He didn’t carve the rune into the earth but used his blood to trace it upon Desdemona’s stone, hoping her death would guide his query, hoping her life would mark the path. His trepidation grew as he formed each line, but he did not stop. He was desperate, and he did not know what else to do.

  Just like before, he was plucked into the sky like a root pulled from the earth, from darkness and warmth to cold light. And sound ceased.

  He was a bird. He was a moonbeam. He was air and space. He was nothing at all. He sped over the treetops, chasing yesterday . . . or tomorrow . . . he wasn’t certain. The landscape flashed and re-formed, and he knew where he was.

  Dolphys. He was in Dolphys. He’d returned to where it all began.

  Sound returned, growing like the chatter of an approaching flock of gulls. A child laughed and then another. Daughters. There were daughters. Everywhere there were daughters. Fair and dark, short and tall. Infants and mothers whirling in a May Day dance. His consciousness was swept up in their game, darting between their clasped hands as they whirled around and around.

  “The Dolphys,” a little girl shrieked, clapping with glee. “It is the Dolphys. He’s coming.” The daughters ran, racing toward the setting sun. Dagmar tried to shade his eyes, to see within the silhouette of the warrior who walked toward him, but his hand had no shape or substance, and he could not block the light.

  “Bayr?” he whispered, overjoyed. There were daughters, and Bayr was alive and well in Dolphys, still the chieftain of his people. Dagmar wished to be near him and suddenly he was.

  But the man they called the Dolphys was not Bayr. His hair was full of fire, and he swooped the smallest girl into his arms, laughing up at her as he made her fly.

  Dagmar flew with her, but when she fell back into her chieftain’s arms, Dagmar continued upward, tumbling back across the distance to the center of Saylok, but he did not flutter back to the earth. He stayed in the skies, hovering above the temple mount, watching as night became day and day became night.

  The temple crumbled and rose again, stone by stone, season after season, and from his vantage, Dagmar could not discern whether he witnessed what was or what would be.

  Suddenly, he sat on the hillside watching the sheep, Ghost at his side. The sun warmed her white cheeks and turned her hair to drifted snow, untouched and unadorned. Dagmar’s heart swelled and his eyes filled. He had spent seventeen yea
rs sitting beside her, in some way or another, and he’d never admitted he loved her.

  Banruud would destroy her like he’d destroyed Desdemona.

  Dagmar leaned forward, desperate to save her, and he kissed her mouth. It was sweet and pink, the only mouth he’d ever wanted to kiss, the only woman he’d ever longed to touch. Ghost caressed his face and opened her rain-colored eyes.

  “I’ve been waiting so long,” she said, but the voice he heard was not hers, and the kiss was no longer theirs.

  “I’ve been waiting so long,” Alba cried, and the sound of water rushed around him and through him, tumbling over falls that never ended. The falls became unbound tresses streaming past naked limbs and moonlit stone. Bayr and Alba lay intertwined, unaware of the world around them.

  “There is no Alba without Bayr. There never has been. There never will be,” Alba said. Bayr moved over her, a supplicant and a savior, kissing her with fervent lips and careful hands.

  “Alba,” Bayr sighed, and Dagmar wanted to look away, to close his eyes on the fated lovers, but he had no head to turn or lids to lower, and his spirit shuddered with the need to escape.

  “There is no Alba without Bayr,” Ghost pled, the sound echoing like a song. No Alba without Bayr, no Alba without Bayr, no Alba without Bayr.

  No Bayr without Alba.

  Then Alba was weeping, bent over Bayr’s motionless form. Bayr was drenched in blood, Desdemona’s rune encircling him in endless ripples. Dagmar’s grief became a gong that split the sky and sent him back from whence he came, back to the woods where Desdemona found her final rest.

  He saw himself, body stretched out just as Bayr’s had been, his eyes fixed on the branches above him. It was not Alba who knelt beside him, but Ghost, her hands on his cheeks, her breath on his mouth.

  “Dagmar,” she mourned. “Dagmar, where have you gone?”

  In an instant, he was no longer watching. He was within. He was aware. His limbs prickled and his heart leaped, and he drew breath. Once. Twice. And again. He felt the soil, cool and moist beneath him, and reveled in the warmth of the woman above him.

  “Dagmar, come back to me,” Ghost pled. And he obeyed, blinking eyes that were his to command once more. He stared up into her frightened face and lifted his hand to touch her luminous skin.

  “What happened to you?” she moaned. “What did you do? I’ve been trying to wake you.”

  He could only shake his head and trace the swell of her parted lips, remembering the kiss from his vision. She covered his hand with hers, her fear becoming confusion at the intimacy of his touch.

  “Dagmar?”

  “Once . . . I found you . . . beneath this tree,” he whispered with a voice that began in his chest and rattled through his throat.

  “Yes. You did.” She tried to smile, but it wobbled around her worried lips.

  “When I saw you that day, I thought you were dead,” he rasped, remembering. Reliving.

  “I was dead,” she whispered. “And you brought me back to life.”

  He closed his eyes, aching for the girl she’d been and for the fool he’d become. Oh, to do it all again! But it was not to be. They were not to be.

  “You were lying exactly where Desdemona died.” He opened his eyes and found her again. “I couldn’t bring her back. She wanted revenge. She wanted her blood curse more than she wanted to live,” he said.

  “Yes. She did. And I wanted my daughter more than I wanted to die. We both chose, your sister and I,” Ghost murmured, and grief and regret lined her face. “In the end, we both chose. We all . . . chose.”

  For a moment they were silent, studying each other, hiding nothing.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Banruud took your child, he took Alba, and we made him king. I . . . made him king. I did not stop him. And now I must. Now I must, or he will destroy her, and he will destroy Bayr.”

  There is no Alba without Bayr.

  The words became a beating drum. Time was growing short, and Dagmar still had so much to say.

  “I love you, Ghost,” he confessed, despairing.

  Her lips trembled, and her gray eyes became mirrors, reflecting his feelings, suddenly so simple. So clear.

  “I have loved you from that very first day when you told me you lived beneath this tree. You were so young and sad, and yet you made me laugh,” he said.

  Her cheeks flushed, and she looked seventeen again, the same age she’d been then, the same age Alba was now.

  There is no Alba without Bayr.

  “Since that day, I have loved you . . . and I have feared you,” he admitted, rushing to confess all.

  “As I have feared you. There is no love without fear. They walk hand in hand,” she said with a small smile. “That is why it hurts so much.”

  He could not speak, so great was his agony, so complete was her understanding. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, as if she petitioned Odin for courage. Dagmar pulled her face to his, awkward and afraid, yet bolder than he had ever been. When her lips touched his, the fear fell away, leaving only wonder, only want. He deepened the kiss, drowning in his own submission, savoring the wet intimacy of her mouth against his.

  She moaned, the sound both tortured and triumphant. Love rushed into longing, and desire grew into a deluge. They sought no shelter but let the torrent take them away, the kiss a skiff in the storm. Their lips clung and clashed, a frantic coupling fraught with both pleasure and pain. When Ghost gasped for air, he buried his face in her throat, suckling her skin like a hungry child.

  “I fear you are saying goodbye,” she cried.

  Dagmar’s heart broke even as his body wailed, railing against the injustice of denial and the inequity of time.

  “You have to take the clan daughters and go, Ghost. You have to leave the temple mount,” he pled, forcing her eyes to his and his mouth from her skin. “You have to leave now.”

  She cradled his face, dazed, desperate, and he pressed his lips to hers once more, hungry for a final taste, for a precious moment more.

  “I will not leave you,” she panted, adamant. “I will not leave Alba.”

  “She must go with you. Take her and the clan daughters and go to Dolphys.”

  “The king will come after us.”

  “Bayr and I will stop him,” he promised. “The keepers will stop him.”

  “Bayr is gone, Dagmar,” she moaned. “He knows the king is his father. That is why I came to find you.”

  Alba had fallen asleep. She’d been sent from the feast, from the presence of the Northmen and the antics of Gudrun. The chieftains were a bristling pack of dogs, eyeing each other with distrust, snarling at the king, yet united in their horror at the presence of the Northmen on the temple mount.

  She’d kept her eyes averted from Bayr from the moment her father returned. To look at him would be to give herself away. To look at him would break her control and dash her hopes. His tension quivered beneath her skin and stole her breath.

  She was exhausted, and she’d removed her gown and crawled beneath the coverlet, closing her eyes to sleep until she could see him again. When she awoke, her chamber was cloaked in shadow and the sky beyond her windows was dark. She sat up abruptly, then stumbled from the bed to draw back the curtains whispering softly in the night air. She didn’t know what time it was, but the moon was high and the hour was late.

  Bayr would be waiting on the moor beside the hidden door. He would be waiting and worrying. She pulled her dress over her thin sheath and shoved her feet into the leather slippers she’d abandoned hours before. The coiled sections of her hair were coming undone, and she pulled out her pins and ran hurried fingers through her tresses, leaving them loose around her shoulders.

  She cleaned her teeth, dabbed herself in rose oil, and pricked her finger, squeezing out just enough blood to pinken her pale lips and cheeks and draw her rune. Then she pulled a deep-blue cloak around her shoulders and left her bedroom. She flew down the tower stairs and into the body of the palace, past g
uards and lounging Northmen stretched out in the great room as though they intended to stay indefinitely. She wasn’t worried about them staying. She was worried about them leaving and taking her with them as Gudrun’s bride.

  He wasn’t waiting. The hillside behind the temple was hushed and haunted with the revelry from earlier in the day. The tournament brought all manner of tents and temporary shelters, but most of the visitors stayed on the mount itself and spilled down into the village on the north side of Temple Hill. The south side was pocked with ravines and rocks, the rolling meadows that stepped off into forests and foliage not as desirable for making camp. All week, she and Bayr had avoided company by trekking to the falls or hiding away in the old shepherd’s hovel Ghost had long abandoned. They’d walked in the woods and lain in the long grass, and Alba had been so careful to keep the rune around them, terrified that someone would see, that someone would tell, and that Bayr would pay the price.

  She sat in the grassy gully where the tunnel opened up onto the slope and bit down on her dread, willing herself to wait. The chieftains had called the king into council. She’d heard the talk among the guard and the castle staff as she’d tiptoed beneath their noses.

  Time trickled on, the moon lifted and lowered, and still he did not come. She was cold and the damp of the grass had seeped into her clothes and frozen the tips of her fingers and toes. Fall was coming, but she knew Bayr was not.

  Panic swelled in her stomach once more. Where was he? Had he come and gone before she’d arrived, assuming she’d been unable to meet? Had he made his bid for her hand like they’d planned? Had he made his pledge and petitioned the king?

  Memory flickered behind her eyes, her father pummeling Bayr with his fists and feet as Bayr refused to protect himself at all. She flinched and gritted her teeth against the recollection, but she did not seek to suppress it. She never had. Her memories were clear and stark, crystalline against the dark backdrop of long loneliness. She remembered everything.