There was Sibba's strand, golden-brown, and Estrid's, a deep onyx, and Tola's, a fiery red. It was impossible to know what Interis had in store for them, but for a time, the three had been intertwined, one color barely distinguishable from the next. In the end, it hadn't mattered what Sibba had wanted. Interis had known what she needed. And now she needed Jary, and there was his thread, a vibrant yellow. It had been on a different path for so long, but that didn't mean he couldn't come back to her.
And that didn't mean that she couldn't leave again.
✽ ✽ ✽
The chief had conceded the argument shortly after that, waving a hand at them through a coughing fit. The nursemaid had shooed them from the house and Jary returned to his bed, fearing Tola's retribution though he would never admit it. He had promised to recruit men for her, assuring her that they would be volunteers, not people forced into the task. There were many adventurers in Ottar; it wouldn't be hard to find a few willing men.
Sibba was staying with Estrid and Ari but didn't feel like going back there just yet, so instead, she walked, thinking about fate and invisible wounds. She would never forget the weight of Jary's sword against her ax, or the way that Isgerd the Younger had screamed in anguish over her mother's body, or how it had felt for Sibba to be in that same position, though she had kept her grief tucked close inside, where no one could see it.
Then there was Darcey and her secrets. She didn't know what she was supposed to do with the knowledge that Evenon had given her. He was surely back in Casuin by now, delivering the news of Darcey's death. He had promised not to betray her, and she wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that she wouldn't spend the rest of her life fearing an arrow in the neck.
Without realizing it, her walk had taken her to the outskirts of town and to the lake hidden beneath a grove of trees. Snow coated the ground, and would for at least another month, so the lake was frozen solid. The trees were eerily quiet, all the forest’s sounds buffered by the bright white snow, and that was why she heard the footstep behind her. Sibba whipped around, still jumpy from her travels and hiding from the Grimssons, but found no threat. Instead, it was an old man shrouded in a dark cloak. She recognized him instantly.
The sadj reached up and pushed back his hood, revealing a bald pate and dark, empty eye sockets. He smiled at her even though he couldn't see her, and took a step toward her.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She blinked at him. “For what?”
“To ask.”
She remembered then, that he had told her she would need to ask a question before she could leave the Fields. Her mind whirled with the possibilities but then quieted as one question pushed itself to the forefront of her mind. It wasn't about what she would get or if she would succeed. Instead, it was three simple words, and the answer would drive her for the rest of her life: Who am I?
“I don't need to ask,” Sibba said. She would find the answer on her own.
The sadj smiled again and reached a bony hand out. “Then you are ready.”
Before she could think to react, his hand wrapped around her arm and she was sucked into another world. Gone was the white forest, and in its place was a rocky beach. Out of the ocean rose a castle of white stone. Three girls rushed toward her, blond hair flowing behind them as they ran, the ends of their dresses wet and dirty. Without knowing why she did it, she put her arms out to receive them, but they faded into darkness before she could touch them, their laughter still ringing in her head.
Then she was in a bedroom, decorated with finery the likes of which she had never seen—gold-tasseled curtains and pink stone floors, a giant bed with a post at each corner so tall that it nearly touched the ceiling. There was a man on the bed, his skin papery-thin, and he held the hands of a familiar girl. Sibba took a tentative step forward. Neither looked at her.
“Soft hands, soft heart,” the man rasped. She saw the bloody rags around him then and knew that he was dying just as her own father was now. The crown on his head gave him away as a king. The girl—Sibba jerked to a stop. The girl was not just any girl, but her mother, her features round and soft with youth.
Then the man and her mother were gone and she was in a smooth stone courtyard. Rain pelted down around her, falling on a chaotic scene. At the top of the steps, a tall, blond girl and a boy with black curly hair clung to each other, blood rushing down between them, mingling with the rainwater and pooling at the base of the stairs.
“Malstrom bitch!” someone shouted and Sibba turned, ready to fight, but the scene changed again. She was on a ship being tossed about by violent waves, looking down into her mother's pallid face. Beside her, a woman wrung her hands.
Now she was swimming, waves crashing over her, and her mother was there, clinging to a small wooden dinghy, rowing toward the distant shore. She was crawling on the sand, spitting up saltwater, and a handsome, young Thorvald was there, pulling her into his arms.
“The children must be protected,” he was saying. “They cannot know. They belong here. Not on some distant western shore.”
“It is their heritage,” her mother said. “It is where they belong.”
“They will die there!” Thorvald argued.
“Or, they will rule there.”
Soon the rains will fall and the tides will rise, and it will be up to you to decide on which shore you stand.
Sibba fell to her knees, the snow soaking through her leather britches the only evidence that she was back in Ottar and not spinning through a past that wasn't hers to see. Or was it? Just because she hadn’t lived those things didn’t mean that they didn’t define her in some way. Her mother had made her choices, and those choices had pushed Sibba forward into her own life, sent her stumbling onto an unfamiliar path.
When she looked up, the sadj was gone and she was alone again.
Who was she, really? She was the daughter of the clan chief and a foreign queen. She was a passable hunter and a great warrior. She had nothing to her name except an ax, a stolen sword, and a few loyal friends. She believed in shadows and valas and that there were things in this world that she couldn't explain or control. She was a Fielding and a Malstrom, even though she was still learning what that meant. She loved her mother, was who she was because of her, but they weren’t the same.
“I am Sibba Hallowtide,” she said aloud, speaking the words into the world, deciding where she stood.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Sibba
“Where will you go?” Jary asked. He and Sibba stood side-by-side on the gently rocking dock, not touching, but close to each other. Not smiling, but happy. She hadn't been sure he would be able to come. His recovery had been slow and he had walked from the Chief's house to the waterfront with a smooth wooden cane that Ari had fashioned for him. He wore a cloth around his injured eye, but Tola, who had been at his side almost constantly, said he would fully recover his vision.
“The girls like scars, anyway,” he had said jovially, glad just to be home.
But it seemed to be true. Girls watched him even now, bandaged and beaten as he was, as they went about their morning chores, their gazes lingering longingly on the chief's son. Sibba hoped they didn't see him as broken, though, as someone who needed to be put back together. He was—they both were—a sum of all of their experiences. Just as she would never forget the feel of Gabel's hands around her throat or the sight of her mother's dead body in the garden, he would never be able to escape what had happened to him in the fighting pit. But without those experiences, they would not be here now, together, their eyes cast on the expanding horizon.
“I don't know,” Sibba finally answered. She didn't know where the currents would take her, where her destiny lay.
“Well, don't forget to come back now and then,” he said, clapping a heavy hand on her shoulder.
She had been so mad at him for so long. Why had she wasted so much time? It was foolish, she saw now. Love was not weakness. What she felt toward Tola and Estrid and Jary—that didn'
t make her a coward. Love was the bravest thing of all, beyond even hate or revenge. Love was a risk, and so, so worth it.
Determined not to throw away any more of those moments, Sibba wrapped her arms around her brother and held him tight. He stumbled slightly beneath her grip but then recovered himself and wrapped his free hand around her waist, returning the surprise embrace. His shoulders were solid and broad, and the stubble of his beard pricked her cheek.
“I'm sorry I stole your bow,” she whispered into his ear.
There was a pause before he pulled back to look down at her, mock surprise on his face. “I always wondered where it had gotten off to,” he said with a laugh.
Sibba saw Estrid and Ari then, just over Jary's shoulder. They were a pillar of stillness in the chaos of the dock. Both were wrapped in furs and clinging to each other as they had been since Estrid's return to Ottar. Estrid would not be coming with her, of course. Estrid belonged in her own life, with Ari, who had become fiercely protective since learning of her pregnancy.
Stepping around her brother, Sibba clasped Estrid's hands.
“I wish I could go,” Estrid said but Sibba shook her head. Beneath the furs, Estrid's belly was rounding out, growing a life that had to be protected.
“You have better things to do,” Sibba insisted. “And you,” she said, turning to Ari, “make sure she does them. Take care of her.”
Ari had learned his lesson in Estrid's absence and now held the dark-haired beauty tight to his side. “And you take care of her,” he said, gesturing to the longship moored at the dock beside them.
“I will care for her with my life,” Sibba promised. He had built it for her, and it was the most beautiful thing Sibba had ever seen. Long and narrow, it barely moved in the bouncing wake, the newly-polished oak hull gleaming in the spring sun. At Jary's urging, her father had given her sixteen oarsmen who had volunteered for the trip, and they sat now on the benches, waiting for her, just like the whole, vast world waited for her.
“What will you name her?” Ari asked.
Sibba didn't even have to think about it. “The Hallowtide.”
“Not the Malstrom?” Estrid asked, remembering what she had called the small skiff they had wrecked in Endar.
“No,” Sibba said, shaking her head. “She and I are both Hallowtide down to our bones.” She did not think her mother would protest. Sibba finally felt like a Fielding, like a Hallowtide, and Darcey would not begrudge her that.
Slinging her single pack over her shoulder, she kissed her friends goodbye and stepped into her ship. Her eyes spotted a familiar flash of golden-brown feathers and she lifted her arm, giving a shrill whistle. Aeris appeared over the heads of the gathered crowd, causing some men to duck and the children to giggle happily. The hawk alighted on Sibba's outstretched arm. Sibba deposited her on the deck and she tucked in her wings, settling in for the voyage ahead.
Men heaved the Hallowtide away from the dock and the rowers began to maneuver her down the Rata River, one man at the steering oar shouting orders that Sibba barely heard. There was the rush of wind in her ears, and the splash of water beneath her feet. It was bad luck to look back on a place to which she would never return, so she kept her eyes on Jary and Estrid and Ari. They quickly grew smaller until they were just distant specks against Ottar's main gate.
With one last wave to the figures on shore, Sibba turned and moved to the bow where she would be able to watch her graceful ship slice through the waters on its way to the ocean. There was a tightening in her chest, an ache that she recognized as the pulling tight of strings that connected her to people she loved. With time and distance, she would learn to live with the ache, even forget about it at times, but it would always be there, a reminder of her reason to return. She thought of Evenon then on the Malstrom, and his Crowheart girl, and hoped that he had returned to her. No matter how he had betrayed Sibba, he had also saved her. They had saved each other, and it wasn't unreasonable for her to wish him a happy ending. She was getting hers, after all.
The current was with them, and they reached the mouth of the river quickly. As the Hallowtide poured into the narrow strait that would take them to the sea, she caught sight of Ey Island. She hadn't thought about it much since leaving except to either miss it or curse its existence. It seemed so small, its greenery encroaching on narrow white beaches, the barest glimpse of a wooden wall through the trees. Her world was so much larger now, but that would always be the place where everything had changed.
Small fingers grasped her own, coaxing her gently out of her reverie. She looked over into Tola's sharp face, the wind whipping her red hair into a frenzy. Tola used her free hand to pull the strands out of her mouth.
“Is everything okay?” Sibba asked. Tola, who had never been on a boat in her life, had been hiding in the belly of the ship in an attempt to outsmart seasickness.
Tola shrugged in response. “It will be.” Sibba didn't know if she would ever get used to the vala's way of proclaiming things she couldn't possibly know as truths. How did she know everything would be okay? Anything could go wrong, anything at all, but Tola trusted in herself enough to believe that it wouldn't. And not just in herself, but in Sibba, too. That should have scared Sibba, but it was different with Tola. There was a connection between them, a spark that no amount of vala magic could extinguish. She didn't feel ashamed or scared of her feelings like she had with Estrid. Just like Tola, she accepted them and welcomed them and kept a secret seed of hope and fear that someday, the spark would burst into flames and consume them both.
The ship raced past Ey Island and Sibba was about to turn away when she saw movement, a rustle in the trees, a shifting of shadows in the midday light. She kept her eyes on the island until finally, a figure burst forth onto the beach.
“Look!” Tola called, squeezing Sibba's fingers and lifting one hand to point at the island.
A brown mare raced along the beach, her hooves kicking up puffs of fine sand as the boat glided along beside her in the distance. Sibba had thought that by abandoning the horse, she was leaving it to its death, but no. Gerd was plump and happy and free, her sides heaving beneath her shining coat. Sibba laughed, moving back along the starboard side to keep the horse in her sights for as long as she could. She climbed over rowers until she reached the back where she stood beside the man at the steering oar. He looked at her as if she had lost her mind as she hoisted herself up to stand on the railing, a hand shielding her eyes and her other hand gripping the rigging.
Gerd reached the end of the beach and threw back her head. The shrill sound of her whinny reached Sibba across the sea. For a second, it looked like there was someone on her back. Sibba caught a flash of yellow hair, a white hand raised in salutations. Her breath caught in her throat, and she opened her mouth to shout. Then she blinked and the illusion was gone.
The boat rounded the corner of the mainland and left Ey Island behind as it sliced through the waves, headed toward the Impassable Strait.
“Where to?” the steering oarsman asked. The other rowers looked at her expectantly, and even Tola watched from her spot at the bow.
Sibba's hand went to her hip and rested on the hilt of the crow sword, her half-cloak flapping around her shoulders in the salty breeze. In her mind, she saw the golden circlet and a distant land, a history and a family waiting to be discovered, and she smiled, turning her face toward the raging sea and lifting her hand to point westward.
ALSO BY CASSIDY TAYLOR
Get THE DRY SEASON, a Lost Fields prequel, free for a limited time: https://instafreebie.com/free/4Kk5X
Read THE LIFE & DEATH OF CORA SVANROS, a Lost Fields companion short story, available exclusively in Mirrors & Thorns, an anthology of dark fairy tales: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076HFL17F
Book 2 in the Lost Fields series, coming soon!
Thank you for reading When Rains Fall. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Won’t you please consider leaving a review? Even just a few words would help
others decide if the book is right for them.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FIRST, A HUGE THANKS to Megan and Ella, the most extraordinary writing coaches, and to my fellow writers in the All Writers Welcome Academy, for reassuring me and pushing me when I needed it the most. Without Megan and Ella, this book would still just be a half-finished Word document on my computer. I hope you guys are proud of what you helped me create.
Thanks to Jack, Anna, and Stephanie, who took the time to read WRF before anyone else and give me invaluable feedback even in the face of my copious comma usage. Thank you to my ARC readers for taking a chance on an unknown author, and Cassie J., for her incredible enthusiasm when I needed it the most.
Thank you to my husband for never making me feel silly for following my dreams, and to my children, who were always impressed, no matter how many words I’d written that day. Thank you to my dear friends who believed in me even when I didn’t—Claudia, Lisa, Kensy, and Bridget. Hopefully you’ll read this someday!
Finally, thank you to my parents for their endless encouragement. My mom always knew I would be a writer; I should have listened to her from the beginning.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE OF CASSIDY TAYLOR’S earliest memories is flipping through a Peter Pan picture book and making up her own stories to go with the illustrations since she couldn’t read yet. It wasn’t long before she was writing her own stories, the first of which was called The Last Unicorn (not to be confused with the fabulous classic novel of the same name). As you might have guessed, it didn’t have a happy ending, and she’s been trying to make people cry ever since.
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