A Shiver of Snow and Sky

by Lisa Lueddecke

  “That isn’t so. You want your father’s forgiveness, but you do not need it. And you know that.”

  Tears streamed from my eyes, turning cold against my skin. I knew my answer before I sang it in a whisper. “I want my mother to forgive me.”

  The Goddess was silent for a moment as a sob erupted from my core, but my view began to change. Light gathered against the sky at the opening of the peak and a face eased into clarity. I didn’t have to ask who it was. A new rush of tears fell from my eyes and on to the altar.

  “Ósa,” the woman said. Golden hair, as I’d imagined. Green eyes. A sweet smile, not unlike Anneka’s, if she ever used it. She reached a gentle hand towards me, and while it didn’t appear to reach me, warmth caressed my cheek.

  “Mother,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I continued to repeat it until another sob choked out my voice.

  “Ósa,” she repeated. I never wanted to stop hearing her voice. So soft and beautiful and full of a kind of love I’d never experienced. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You did nothing wrong. You were only days old, and so much stronger than I. You had the will to fight that I didn’t, and you still do. I can see it in your eyes, behind your tears.”

  “I hurt Father and Anneka so deeply. I want them to forgive me, but I don’t think they ever will.”

  She quietly hushed me, and again I felt that comforting warmth on my cheek. I wanted to hold it there, to never let it leave. “You don’t need their forgiveness, Ósa. Their bitterness cannot command your life. Do not hold on to this guilt. It has plagued you for far too long. Lighten your heart and leave room for good things. You defied the odds and fought to survive as a baby, and you won. You were given a life just as fairly as your father and your sister. Never forget that.”

  The warmth faded, and I instinctively reached out for her.

  “Don’t leave me,” I said in a rush. “Don’t go.”

  “This journey is not about me, Ósa. And it is not yet finished. There is more to be done.”

  “Please,” I whispered.

  “I love you, Ósa. Hold that in your heart.”

  She began to fade away.

  “I love you too, Mother.”

  My heart ached as she disappeared, but it also felt lighter, as though the weight I’d been carrying for seventeen years had suddenly been removed. The stars of the Goddess came back into view, and again Her voice permeated the room.

  “When the time comes, you will know how to save your people. You will know how to defend yourselves. You will have the power to win.”

  With that, the lights and the voice began to fade away. “Wait!” I shouted, nearly rising from the altar. “There’s something I must know.” Some of the lights remained, and I still felt that sense of Her presence nearby. “Why does this happen? The red lights? Will it ever stop?”

  There was a long pause, silence reigning in the room while I waited with bated breath. She certainly didn’t have to answer, and more than likely wouldn’t, but I couldn’t live with myself afterwards if I didn’t at least ask. Try to understand. None of this would matter if the past was doomed to repeat itself over and over again. The children and grandchildren of the people we might save this time would only die the next time the red lights showed. It was a pattern, a cycle of destruction that offered little room for hope.

  “Once,” said the voice, so soft and gentle that the beauty of it could bring a person to tears, “long, long ago, when they were still the only beings to walk the world, a god and a goddess fell out over an island. She saw in it a beauty, a chance for a people and a world all its own. He saw only a chance for dominion, a land to rule. So the two of them did battle, and while her powers were stronger and chased him away, it was not before he cursed the island to a death that would repeat itself irregularly, unable to be stopped by the goddess. Since she could not break the curse, she exiled herself to the sky, where she could watch over the island eternally. The sky and all things in it are at her command, but the island she cannot touch.”

  I gazed at the stars, open-mouthed. Something painful tugged at my heart, and I realized I felt pity for the Goddess. Pity for a darkness that was beyond her control. Pity for the death and destruction she was forced to witness over and over again. One day, either by the hand of an Ør or in my own bed at the age of one hundred, I would die, but she would still be here. She would have to watch it happen again.

  “The plague,” I said. “I came to ask for help. To ask you to keep it away. We could not handle the fever and a fight with the Ør. But … you said that you are unable to stop it.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “The Ør are a battle you must face, for they are even now massing at the shoreline, but I can help you fight. Meet them head-on and you will see what I can do. But fight you must, and I cannot guarantee the outcome. The plague … the plague is different. It is something I have no power to destroy.”

  A long silence slipped by, and then her voice, soft, as though she wasn’t really saying it to me, said, “The curse now placed upon the land, undone by no immortal hand, steeped in blood it now shall be, once or twice a century.”

  Though the words were quiet, they resounded in the room like a song. I didn’t know who’d written them or where they’d come from, but they meant something more than our simple poems and songs back home. These words were tied to something ancient, a curse rooted in the very beginnings of Skane.

  “The power of the curse is strong, but the power of the stars will always be stronger,” She said, and again I wasn’t sure whom She was addressing. “My immortality prevents me from bringing that power to the land, but you are different. If you can command it, if it can touch these shores, it can push aside any curse or any power lurking beneath the snow. Harness that power, bring it to life, that it may chase away the darkness haunting these lands.”

  The words spiralled around, jumbling together until I didn’t know one from the next. None of this made sense, and even less so the more I thought about it. If you can command it. Bring it to life. Chase away the darkness.

  She paused again, then said, “Hurry, Ósa. Time is against you. When the moment comes, you will know what to do.” I waited, hoping that She would speak once more, but then all sound vanished from the room. The lights that had clung to my body began to fade, yet I felt nothing. My ears rang with the sudden quiet, and drying tears stung my eyes. She would help us! I sat up, slowly, shaking. All the lights had disappeared.

  I stared at the stone floor, thinking of everything and nothing. The past few minutes, they might have been a dream, might have never truly happened, and I worried that if I stood up, it would undo everything. I might find myself back home, rising from my cot in the corner, beneath a sky bleeding red, helpless and small. But there wasn’t room for fear. My body flooded with a hope so intense it nearly pulled my mouth into a smile. I focused on my senses, on ensuring I was here, in this room, on this stone, feeling its coolness beneath me.

  Glancing up to the sky and drawing in a deep breath, I tensed.

  Something was changing overhead.

  The stars of the Goddess shone brighter than I had ever seen them. They fairly near pulsed: pulsed like the rhythm of my heart, an optimistic voice in my head making itself known for the first time. I ran to the door. Something inside me knew that when I stepped on to the ridge, back into the clear, cold night, things would be very different.

  I passed through the doorway and took in lungfuls of the chill air. Above, the universe was changing. The stars that formed the Goddess were moving, gliding through the night sky further towards the south. Within moments, none of them any longer remained directly overhead, directly over the peak in the part of the sky where they’d sat since eternity began. Now, in the spot where I’d always looked up to see Her, to where I’d always turned my head when I needed that drop of comfort from above, there was only darkness. But not entirely, I realized with a start. Where they’d previously been close to invisible in contrast to the Goddess’s bri
ghtly shining stars, there were new stars.

  Faint, small stars that I didn’t recognize, but something within me seemed to understand. There were small empty spots in other constellations, insignificant, easy to miss stars that only someone like myself or Ymir were likely to notice. And there they sat, in the wake of the Goddess’s sudden move. Around us, other constellations were changing, moving, shifting. The entire sky seemed to be transitioning. In the west, the Warrior and the Immortal slid towards the northern edge of the sky, yet a single star from each was travelling away much faster. They streamed across the sky towards our mountain, and within moments had joined the fainter stars in the newly-made emptiness. To our left in the northwestern sky, the Giant was changing as well. He was moving, further towards the west, but only subtly. Something else about him changed, which was far more apparent. The stars within the constellation were moving, and as with the Warrior and the Immortal, individual stars moved to join the space overhead. I realized, after a few more thundering beats of my heart, that he was kneeling.

  From far and wide, stars were moving, coming closer and joining the new set that was growing, while the ones left behind spiralled north, then west, then south to get out of the way. I was reminded, though on a much grander level, of the eddying pools of the tide along the coast. I pulled my attention away from the other constellations and watched as an image began to form. They spun and shifted, taking a shape my eyes fought to understand. Words began to rise in my chest, but they weren’t mine. They were unbidden, yet dying to come out. I couldn’t contain them. Couldn’t stop them. They erupted in song.

  “You have come to me selflessly, with the hope of saving those whom you love, and for that, you are blessed. You carry within yourself the power of the stars, the power of the sky. Go and fight your battle, and the power will go with you. The mountains and all within them are at your command. Speak, and they will listen.”

  When the voice left me, I fell to my knees gasping for breath. A wave of unnatural warmth crashed against me on the open ridge, despite the bitter cold of such a height, of the dead of night. It wrapped and curled around me, a blanket of comfort that renewed my soul. A light sparked in my mind. I could see it inside me, like a candle behind my eyes. There was such an intense energy within me I could have run all the way back to Neska.

  When I stood, I wasn’t the same girl. I wasn’t the Ósa who’d entered that room such a short time ago. Everything was new, fresh. Ready. I looked to the sky once more, where the stars had stopped moving. Where the Goddess had been only minutes before, sat the new form of a girl. She was smaller than the Goddess, but every bit as bright, and twice as fierce. Like the sky was a mirror, I knew who it was.

  It’s you, said a voice from within.

  Chapter 32

  The sails remained at sea, lurking, waiting, watching. Ivar stayed at the coast as much as possible, observing with a group of others until well into the night, when his eyes refused to remain open any longer and he would soon fall asleep on his feet.

  “Go home,” one of the men instructed him, with a friendly pat on the shoulder. “They’ll be coming whether you’re standing here or not.”

  “I want to know when it happens,” Ivar replied, his voice breaking. “I want to see it for myself.” A yawn interrupted their conversation and the stars began to blur into one hazy point of light. “But you’re right. I’ll be of no use without rest.” If they did come just then, he’d likely pass out from exhaustion before he could remove a knife from his belt.

  Excusing himself, Ivar fought to stay awake long enough to get home, where he collapsed by the fire and slept until a couple of hours before dawn. His sleep was dreamless, a single expanse of darkness unbroken by anything, until a knock on his door jarred him to reality. Still shirtless, hair prickling his eyes, he opened the door.

  Damn it. Anneka. He considered closing it again, but she spoke.

  “Ivar,” she said softly. “I don’t know where else to go. I can’t speak to my father and Ósa’s … gone.”

  She was lying, or at least mostly. Ósa’s absence almost certainly had little to no bearing on Anneka whatsoever. She was playing to his emotions, saying what she knew he would want to hear, and that bothered him more than anything. He said nothing, just stared at her, waiting.

  Her eyes darted up and down his body before she went on. “I’m terrified,” she said, and her jaw quivered slightly. Ivar couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not. “I don’t know what to do.”

  He closed his eyes and tilted his head up to the roof. What was it going to take for her to understand?

  “Are we all going to die?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That means yes.” Despair washed over her face, lines of worry pulling this way and that.

  “That means I don’t know.”

  “Can I come in for a bit? I’ve been alone for days on end. I can’t bear it.”

  He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, then opened his door wider. She smiled and brushed past him as she entered the house. Anneka didn’t strongly resemble Ósa, something Ivar found mildly relieving, only for the fact that he’d never got on well with her. Where Ósa’s face bore angles well and had a sort of well-balanced construction that gave her an air of dignified grace, Anneka still resembled a girl. Round features. Close-set eyes. It was a wonder they were related at all. He’d never known their mother, was only three when she’d died, but he liked to think she’d resembled Ósa more than Anneka.

  “Make yourself at home,” he said as he pulled on a shirt. She watched intently, and then looked away. “But you’ll be alone here as well.”

  Her mouth opened quickly. “Where are you going?”

  “Back to the coast.”

  “Can’t you stay, just a few minutes longer? Please, Ivar, I need someone. We all need someone, right now.” She crossed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m lonely. I think I’ve been lonely for years without realizing it. Father is always out at sea or with the village leaders, and Ósa… Well, you know. She’s always gone somewhere, with you, or alone in the woods or at the beach or the Goddess knows where. I was only a child myself when Mother died, but I believe she was my last true friend. I know much of your time is spent with my sister, but I like to think that in some small way you care for me too. Your presence has been such a warm and welcome one in our family for as long as I can remember. When I see you, I feel at home.”

  Somehow, her words managed to chip away some of the ice that had been building up on his heart since she’d arrived at his door. It felt like a time to let go of the past, to let go of all the wrong she’d done Ósa and to simply comfort another frightened human being. Slowly, he pulled her arms from around his waist and held them gently but firmly. There was an unmistakable spark of light, of hope and expectation in her eyes when she looked up at him. His resolve to say something kind and reassuring began to disappear. The way she looked at him – the way she had always looked at him – meant something. Something that would never happen.

  She smiled, a small, shaky smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “These days, the thought of you is the only thing that gives me any hope. I don’t feel so scared when I’m with you.” She took his hand gently, tenderly, moving closer while her gaze darted from his mouth to his eyes. “I might not make it out of this alive, so I think you should know how I feel. How I’ve felt for a while.”

  “I’m in love with your sister.”

  The words erupted from his mouth with certainty and force, permeating the air and repeating over and over again in his mind. It was surprising, even for him, yet never before had he been more sure of anything in the world. He hadn’t planned to say it, yet she’d driven it out of him with her words and looks. If he didn’t say it now, he might never get another chance.

  Anneka’s mouth fell open, and she took a step backwards, dropping his hand. He crossed his arms and held his elbows as the silence closed in around them. She looked everywhe
re but at him. She cleared her throat, and tried to smile, but it faded away almost instantly.

  “That’s…” she started, but stopped. “I thought you viewed her as a sister. I’m sure she thinks of you as a brother.” Another pause. “I should go.”

  Without waiting for a response, she left.

  Ivar stared at the door. What had he just said? It was the truth, there was no doubt about that, but he’d been so careful, so cautious in what he said and did. Ósa wasn’t a romantic. Those kinds of feelings just weren’t in her nature, or if they were, she chose to conceal them, and he’d always tried to respect that. Despite their being close, she’d always managed to keep enough distance between them to keep her comfortable. Except for that one time…

  Everything with Ósa’s family, with what happened to her mother, were things that she still had to face. Still had to deal with. There was no place in her life for him – not in that way. Not right now. But—

  Shouting reached his ears. He jolted back to the present and yanked on his boots before stumbling out the door.

  “What’s happened?” he yelled to the nearest person to him, a woman hurrying from house to house. A baby’s cries from within the last house followed her out through the open doorway.

  “They’re in boats!” the woman shouted back, terror running rampant on her face. “They’re coming ashore!”

  A lump formed in his throat, cutting off his air.

  No.

  The wait was over. They’d had almost no time at all to prepare, yet it had felt like for ever since they’d begun to watch the waters, waiting for the day that the Ør would come. Waiting for the inevitable. Yet it had always been something that would happen. Something that would eventually come. It had never been so immediate, so present. Like how in the winter, they knew one day it would be warm again. One day, the air wouldn’t bite the skin from their bones. One day. Now that day was here, and all he wanted was just a bit more time.

  “Grab a bow and get to the water!” Eldór shouted at him as he ran past him in the street. Spinning on his heel, Ivar ran into the house and grabbed his bow. In a repurposed fishing net, a makeshift quiver, he retrieved the fire arrows that had been prepared.