“Who?” Estrid asked.
But Sibba did not have a chance to respond. Before she could even turn to run away, he caught up with them. He leaned his hands on his knees to catch his breath, his pack falling forward to his shoulders as he did. She noticed his patched and ragged clothes. His boots looked to be more beat up than even Sibba's.
“What are you doing?” Sibba asked the top of his head. Other travelers were passing them with hardly a glance, but she still felt far too exposed on the bridge with this stranger. How long before it got back to Thorvald that she had taken an entire retinue with her to Ydurgat? She was supposed to be doing this on her own, proving herself to him.
Evenon straightened. His cheeks and chin were dusted lightly with fine dark hairs, and the gash on his cheek had faded to a light pink scar. “I looked for you at the trader's house,” he said. “The boat builder said you'd already left. I wanted— I need to— I wish to accompany you. You would be remiss not to take me with you.”
“Is that so?” Sibba crossed her arms over her chest. She remembered the way his hands had groped in her pockets, how he had left her sitting in the alley beside her own vomit.
“There is strength and safety in numbers,” he said. “I believe I am the only one present who has ever been past Hallowtide borders.” Eyebrows raised, he looked between the girls. Neither one was able to correct him.
“You're the one who came to get me when she was sick the other night,” Estrid said, snapping her fingers, connecting the dots. So he hadn't abandoned Sibba completely; he had at the very least gotten someone else to take care of her. How thoughtful.
“I don't think so,” Sibba said, ignoring Estrid. She didn't want to think about that night if she didn't have to. “We don't need anyone else.” What she meant was, she didn't need anyone else relying on her.
He seemed to read her mind. “I can take care of myself,” he said, looking down his sharp nose at her as if offended she might think otherwise. But she was so used to looking out for everyone else that the thought of taking someone with her who could actually help had never truly occurred to her. Not that Estrid was completely useless, but fighting certainly wasn't her strong suit. Estrid might be able to sweet-talk them into Ydurgat, but once they got there, it would be up to Sibba alone to get them—and Jary—out. Unless…
“Why us?” Sibba asked. “You'd probably have more luck with a band of raiders. Or finding work guarding one of the trading ships. What's in it for you?”
Evenon shrugged. “The adventure,” he said. “I've been here too long already. I fear that my roots will try to inter themselves in Ottar if I don't leave soon.” It was as if he was trying to make a joke, but the words struck too close to home for Sibba to laugh. She looked to Estrid, who raised her eyebrows and shrugged, the universal sign for whatever you think. Aeris, who had been riding on Sibba's shoulder, ruffled the feathers of her neck, almost in imitation.
“Fine,” Sibba said. “But you'll have to pull your weight. I can't do everything on my own.”
“Certainly,” he said, sweeping into a low, exaggerated bow that once again slung his pack forward over his shoulders. “I am yours to command.”
“And no more bowing,” Estrid added. “She's a chief's daughter, not a princess. I mean, what kind of princess would throw up on your shoes?”
Sibba whipped her head toward her supposed friend but found she couldn't be mad at her when she saw the way the grin cracked open her face. She looked happier now than she had at any point since Sibba's return, and ten times more beautiful if that was even possible.
“That was pretty awful,” he agreed. “But no worse than that knife throw.”
“What knife throw?” Estrid looked from Evenon to Sibba. “I don't think I heard that part.”
“She almost killed a child,” Evenon said in a mock whisper.
“It could have happened to anyone,” Sibba protested.
Evenon shook his head. “Not me. I never miss.” The smile he shot at her threatened to stir one up of her own.
Sibba pushed past them and marched down the bridge, leaving them to deliberate the merits of her knife-throwing or vomiting or anything else they wished to discuss. She had somewhere to be, but there was a small part of her that she struggled to keep hidden that was glad when she heard them behind her, rushing to catch up.
✽ ✽ ✽
The skiff was exactly where she left it, buried beneath the foliage, a thin layer of frost, and several inches of snow that they knocked off with numb fingers. Even the folded square sail was in one piece when they took it out of its wooden crate and shook it out over the field grass.
This sail was exclusively Darcey's handiwork. While usually the pieces she made on the loom were a small part of a greater whole, shipped back to Ottar in exchange for food and goods, this sail was small enough that she had been able to craft it between jobs in under a year. Sibba had dyed the fibers the brightest red she could mix from the plants she collected on Ey while her mother had worked it expertly into her loom.
Evenon proved his worth, helping them rig the boat and push it into the surf. The trio pulled it beyond the breaking waves with the oars. As the sun sank below the horizon, they shot around the northwestern tip of the Fields and turned south, letting the wind catch the sail.
While Estrid and Evenon sat on the rear starboard side to maneuver the rudder, Sibba stepped forward to the bow, her legs still unsteady beneath her with the motions of the rocking boat. Overhead, Aeris rode on top of the mast, her head turned toward the wind, her wings slightly lifted for balance. She looked like their version of a flag.
In the encroaching dark, Sibba could almost trick herself into believing that she was on the open ocean, sailing away from the Fields and into the unknown and the answers that waited for her there. Would she find the truth about her mother? Was there someone out there who could tell her the secrets that her mother had not? The crown was still tucked safely in her cloak, and she reached in now to stroke the cold metal, though she didn't dare remove it from its hiding place. She hadn't told anyone, not even Estrid, about the circlet.
“What's her name?” Evenon asked, coming to stand beside her as the skiff cut through the ocean using only the power of the wind. It had picked up since they had left the shore. Salt spray peppered her face and soaked her hair. The sky had been clear all day, but now there were clouds ahead of them, thick and heavy, almost touching the water. The sinking sun seemed unnaturally bright as its light bounced between the water and the clouds. Aeris and Aegis, sister goddesses of the sky and the sea, would perhaps be causing trouble tonight.
“Whose?” Sibba asked, looking around at him, distracted.
He spread his arms wide as if the answer were obvious. “The ship's.”
“Oh.” It was generous to call the tiny boat a ship, and naming it had never occurred to her. “I guess we never really gave it one.”
“You cannot be a true captain if you sail a nameless ship.”
Was she a true captain? She had certainly not considered herself to be one, not with this rickety skiff and rag-tag crew. It was as if she couldn't escape people trying to put her in charge of things.
“It should be a name that means something,” he said when she did not respond. “Something that reminds you.” All at once, the sun was gone, lost behind the ocean, and the stars winked to life.
“Reminds me of what?” she asked.
“Your reasons. What brings you out here. What brings you back.”
The name came to her without any serious contemplation, as if it had always been on the tip of her tongue. “The Malstrom,” she said. Malstrom bitch. It meant something, she knew it did, if he would kill her for it.
She thought Evenon's neck would snap he turned to her so quickly. “What does it mean?” he asked, but the way he looked at her made her think that he might know more than she did.
“It's something to do with my mother,” she said. “I stayed in the Fields for her. And I will take he
r with me when I leave.” She tapped her chest just over her heart but refrained somehow from gesturing to the crown in her pocket.
The ship rocked wildly—the blood-red sail snapping and billowing behind them—but neither of them sat. He grunted. “My ship would be the Crowheart,” he said.
The name rang a bell in Sibba's memory, just as Malstrom had. It was like something she had heard as a child but couldn't remember now. “Crowheart,” she repeated.
His eyes were on the distant western horizon. “It's the family name of the girl I love. I left home to prove myself to her and her father. She brings me out here, and she brings me back.”
“And have you proved yourself?” Sibba asked. “Are you ready to go back?”
“Almost,” he said, tilting his head up to the stars. Sibba wondered where their little adventure fit into his plans.
“Look!” Estrid called from behind them. Sibba followed her raised finger to the sky where two streaks of light passed overhead, gone as quickly as they had appeared. “Enos and Interis are riding tonight. We cannot fail now!” Estrid laughed, delighted at the sign from the gods.
Enos was the Father, the god of war and wisdom, and Interis was his wife, the weaver of fate. “Let's just hope they weren't riding ahead of us to warn Isgerd,” Sibba said, wrapping her cloak tighter around her as the winter chill returned with the night.
Estrid laughed, the light sound at odds with the crashing waves. “I don't hope,” Estrid said. “I know.”
Sibba wanted to believe her, but there was an uneasy feeling creeping up on her as the night closed in around them. Evenon seemed to feel it, too. He leaned forward and lit the lantern that hung from the bow, casting an eerie orange glow over the water. Sibba half-expected to see the yellow eyes of a mischievous Nokken staring back at her, waiting to lure them to their deaths. But it was just darkness, a black, bottomless sea. In the distance, the rocky western coast of the Fields was visible only as a jagged line against the darker sky.
Somewhere above them, thunder rumbled and Aeris, named for the goddess of the sky, called out to her crew as her wings briskly beat against the wind, the sound a harsh warning cry over the swelling ocean.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sibba
Lightning illuminated her friends' terrified faces in a flash, and then they were gone again, but the image was burned into her brain. Eyes wide, mouths opened in unheard screams, hands grasping for something, anything to hold onto. She could not—would not—lose them, too. But the rudder was useless, and the oars that had not washed overboard did nothing against the waves that battered the small boat.
She had thought that perhaps they had outrun the storm, and had even taken a turn to sleep when the moon had been directly overhead. But they had been foolish, and the storm had come on fiercely and suddenly in the early morning hours when the sky was at its darkest. They had been able to lower the sail and the mast, but she had lost track of her friends and Aeris in the chaos.
Saltwater slammed into her face, making her sputter. She hugged the collapsed wooden mast tighter—she would not let go. She would get through this. Her mother had survived the wreck of the ship that had brought her to the Fields. Sibba could get through this one storm. But then she was sideways, her legs dangling in the open air. The ocean rushed up to meet her. She held her breath and plunged into the frozen water.
Which way was up? The current spun her in circles but she didn't stop struggling, wondering what could be here with her in the dark. She imagined Gabel's body, the way the tide had dragged him into the ocean's depths. She imagined his fingers around her neck, squeezing, squeezing. Her lungs fought her, begged her to take a breath, but she resisted until her head finally emerged back into the night. The boat was behind her somewhere, with her friends and her bird and everything she owned in the world, but she couldn't see anything past the beating rain. She had to keep moving, keep her heart pumping. Her eyes were heavy with salt, her eyelashes sticking together as the water on them froze.
“Estrid!” she cried. A wooden board drifted by—a piece of The Malstrom—and she threw her arms over it to keep herself afloat. Her teeth chattered and her hair was plastered to her neck. Water weighed down her cloak but she would not remove it, could not lose it and its contents. She would have nothing now, except for the last piece of her mother that she carried in her pocket. She would take it with her, even if it was to a watery grave.
She screamed, calling for Estrid, for Evenon, for her mother, for people who would never come. Waves reared back in front of her, angry beasts looking her in the face. It didn't matter how loud she screamed, the storm roared back louder.
Sibba couldn't say how long she fought against the waves, searching the water for her friends. The cold water sucked the energy from her bones, and she eventually stopped fighting, floating aimlessly on the piece of driftwood. It could have been minutes, or hours, or days.
Once she thought she saw the coastline. A figure standing on a cliff, silhouetted by the glow of a fire behind her, smoke curling up into the sky. A figure with her arms spread wide, her face turned to the storm, as if in challenge to the gods. A girl, beckoning to Sibba, drawing her forward. I see you, the voice rang in her head. Come to me.
And then, Sibba knew no more.
✽ ✽ ✽
“I don't want you to tell them those things!” Thorvald raised his hand to Darcey, but the woman did not flinch.
“Those things are a part of me. A part of who we are!” she retorted.
Sibba was nine, Jary ten, and they were in the hall, the Hnefatafl board between them, the pieces scattered nonsensically. Nothing about this game made sense to her, but the pieces were beautifully carved, a gift for her father from a craftsman, and she and her brother liked to move them around on the checkered game board. Playing at war, their father said proudly.
“Don't cry, Sib,” Jary said, reaching over and thumbing a tear off of her cheek. She had not even known she was doing it. She hated when her father yelled. All she had done was ask their mother to tell her a story about the three sisters from across the sea. She loved how they were always getting into trouble, and begged her mother for two sisters of her own.
“The Malstrom family is nothing to me,” Thorvald was saying.
“Then I am nothing to you.” Sibba knew that wasn't true. The way her father looked at her mother—she could tell that Darcey meant the world to him. But when they were angry, it was like looking at different people. Her parents were able to bring out the worst in each other. Was that what it meant to love someone?
“You are a Hallowtide now,” Thorvald retorted. “You made your choice. You came here for sanctuary, and I gave it to you.”
“You killed my mother—”
“She was ill!”
“And made me pay for my safety with my future.”
There was the sound of something breaking, maybe one of Mama's figurines. “Then leave!” Thorvald shouted. “Let me never see your face in Ottar again.”
“So be it unto Enos,” Mama growled the familiar words that usually ended one of her prayers. When she stormed by where her children sat, Sibba caught a whiff of her familiar scent, like mint and lavender, like the wild field flowers that grew beyond the city.
✽ ✽ ✽
When Sibba woke, she found herself staring into sharp green eyes. She smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tried to remember the dream that had felt more like a memory, and to understand why her mouth tasted like a bouquet of flowers. Beneath her, the sand was hard-packed and cold.
“Who're you?” she asked. The words came out rough, her throat rusty and dry.
The girl who had been looming over her leaned back, sweeping her matted red hair away from her face. Everything about her face was pointed, from her narrowed eyebrows to her stick-straight nose and her stern mouth. There was a smattering of freckles on her cheeks, and black kohl smeared across her eyes from one temple to the other. On her shoulder, a hawk sat preening its fe
athers.
“Aeris, you traitorous beast,” Sibba said. How had the bird survived the storm? How had she survived the storm? She pressed her fingers to her eyes, her head throbbing behind them, voices from her nightmares ringing in her ears. “What happened? Where am I?” The questions were coming fast and furious as her head cleared.
“My name is Tola,” the girl said finally. When she spoke, she pronounced every word as if she were worried Sibba would not be able to understand her. “You are on the coast of Endar.” Endar. The name was familiar. It was a small town just on Grimsson side of its Hallowtide border. It had been the site of numerous raids for years until Chief Grimsson increased her warrior presence there to deter Chief Hallowtide’s incursions. So they had made it, just not far enough.
The flame-haired girl was still talking. “You and your friends washed up on the night before my gifting. I cannot help but think—”
“My friends?” Sibba interrupted. She sat bolt upright in spite of the pounding pain, her eyes searching the rocky beach.
“They are farther down the beach, beyond the cliff,” Tola said, raising an arm and pointing to the south. “They washed up with the boat.” Tola held something between her fingers, and she lifted it to Aeris's beak. The bird snapped up what must have been a strip of meat and hopped to the sand, where she tore at it with her beak and talons.
Scrambling to her feet, Sibba left the girl behind and raced for the cliff on wobbly legs. It was a rocky outcropping, a solid wall against which the ocean waves beat. She ran back and forth like a dog searching for a scrap. The stone was cold against her hand, and solid. There was no way to the other side.
“You have to go up to go around.”
Sibba had nearly forgotten Tola was there. She turned to see her coming up the beach slowly as if she had no cares in the world. The girl wore a fine black cloak lined with fur and carried a strange stick wrapped in a dark brown metal that she dug into the sand with each step. The sight gave Sibba pause, even in her frantic searching.
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