by Philip Reeve
“Yes,” she whispered, and smiled at how un-alike they were, because when she thought of the deaths of Masgard and his Huntsmen she felt no guilt at all, just a sort of satisfaction, and a glad amazement that she had got away with it. She lay down on the bed beside him and she held him, thinking of all the things that had happened since they first came to Anchorage. “I’m Valentine’s daughter,” she said softly, when she was sure he was asleep, and it seemed a good thing to be, as she lay there with Tom in her arms, and Tom’s child inside her.
Freya woke to find a sliver of grey daylight showing between the curtains. Voices were calling out, down in the street outside her palace. “Land ho! Land ho!” It was hardly news, since Anchorage had been close to land for days now, nosing cautiously down a long, narrow inlet towards the place which Snori Ulvaeusson had called Vineland. But the shouting went on. Freya climbed out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown, opened the curtain, opened the long window, stepped out into the cold on the balcony. Dawn was breaking, clear as ice. On either side of the city black mountains squatted over their reflections, striped with snow, and among the crags and scree slopes small starveling pines showed like the first growth of hair on a shaven head. And there…
She gripped the balcony rail with both hands, glad of the bite of the frosty metal which proved she was not dreaming. Ahead, the outline of an island was hardening out of the mist which hung above the still water. She saw pine trees on the heights, and birches still holding up handfuls of last summer’s leaves like pale gold coins. She saw steeps green with heather and rusty with dead bracken. She saw a lacework of snow on dark stands of rowan, blackthorn, oak; and beyond, across a shining strait, another island and another. And she laughed aloud and felt her city tremble beneath her for the last time as it yawed and slowed, bearing her safely into the secret anchorages of the west.
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