by Jae Waller
Tiernan cleared a table for me. I sat on a stool with my broken leg stretched out, tinkering with scraps of wood and wire while he asked me things I’d never given much thought. If I could extract pure water from tea or broth, if steam and ice were harder to control than liquid, if I could control salt water. The answers turned out to be yes. After I forgot about an orb of water and left it hovering in midair, he told me off for being irresponsible — then had me demonstrate how I did it.
•
“I can’t believe you light fires by hand,” I said, huddled up with my cottonspun blanket. The embroidered fir branches curved around me like an embrace.
“Call me old-fashioned,” Tiernan said as he turned the logs. “Will that be too warm?”
I shook my head. Cold wind pierced the cracks in the cabin, driving rain and snow into the kitchen. At night it sounded like spirits trying to break in. My dreams were haunted by spectres that whispered in unknown languages. I hadn’t slept through the night once in this room.
He set down the poker. “Goodnight, then.”
“Tiernan.” I wasn’t sure what prompted me to speak. Maybe that the wind was louder than normal. Maybe that we wouldn’t have many nights left together. “How long were you a mercenary?”
“Ten years.”
My voice was nearly drowned out by the crackling fire. “Did you ever kill anyone?”
Tiernan sighed. He pulled up a chair, rubbing the dark stubble along his jaw. “More than you would like to know.”
“Who were they?”
“Soldiers. Criminals. I would not trouble you with the stories of an old swordsman.”
I studied him as he stared into the fire. There were lines at the corners of his mouth and a scar across his fine, straight nose. He wasn’t old, but he looked worn, like a rag wrung out too many times. “How do you deal with it?”
“I distance myself from their memory.”
I rubbed the scar on my arm. “I keep thinking about that soldier. Wondering if he had a family. But why should I care? He didn’t care about us. We were just some wood witches no one would miss.”
Tiernan stopped midway through stoking the fire again. “Did he call you that?”
“Yeah. What does it mean? Is that why you told me not to call water in front of people?”
“No.” His knuckles were white around the poker. “It refers to your ability to shift forms. Some people think that means viirelei are . . . less than human. It is a disgusting term.”
I was too confused to be offended. “Then they know nothing about us.”
“Clearly not.” He spoke in a low voice. “I am sorry, Kateiko. I should not have blamed you for provoking them.”
“So it’s okay they tried to kill us, but not that they insulted us?”
“That is not what I meant.” Tiernan pinched the bridge of his nose. “I do my best to go unnoticed. I forget that for some people there is no escaping it.”
I tugged at a stray thread on my blanket. “I can’t forget about him. I left home because everything there reminded me of the dead. Yet here I am.”
“You will not forget. You must accept what has come to pass.” Tiernan rose to his feet. “Where is the blade?”
I pointed to where my belt hung by the door. “It’s the double-edged one.”
Tiernan unsheathed my dagger, a simple steel blade. He flipped it into the air and caught it. “This is Sverbian work.”
“It was my father’s. He traded for it in Vunfjel.”
“In my culture, we name a weapon after it takes a life.” Tiernan held the hilt out to me.
I took it reluctantly. “Is that supposed to help?”
“Weapons are tools. They have power, but you must not let them have power over you. To name it is to be in control.”
“Did you name your sword?”
He nodded. “Hafelús. From an old Sverbian myth. It is the torch on the boat that ferries spirits to the land of the dead.”
The light from the fire reflected off the blade, just like that night in the rain. I closed my eyes and imagined the shimmer of sunset on a lake. “Nurivel.”
•
Marijka bunched my bandages into a ball. “All right. Try walking.”
Slowly, I paced up and down the kitchen, uneasy without the crutches. I’d grown used to them in the month and a half since breaking my leg. The skin on my calf was tender and the muscles had shrunk to nothing. “I think it’s healed.”
“Good.” She began cleaning up her supplies. “I’d tell you not to rush it, but from what Tiernan tells me, that’ll make you start racing deer.”
I ducked my head and smiled. “Thank you. Not just for helping me, but Nili . . .”
“You girls have been through so much.” Marijka kissed my cheek. “Come visit me when you feel up to the trip. I’m just down the creek.”
I waved from the doorway as she crossed the field, a brimless white bonnet over her hair and a white shawl on her shoulders, like a ghostblossom among the yellow leaves. Then it was just Tiernan and me. My legs felt too bare in my cropped leggings. I’d been stuck huddling in my cloak, unable to wear my full-length woolen leggings over the bandages.
“What are you going to do now?” Tiernan asked, filling the kettle from the well bucket.
I’d played this conversation over in my head too many times to count. I just shrugged.
He set the kettle over the fire. “You planned to visit your cousin, correct?”
“Something like that.”
“You should, if that is what you want.” He stood with his hand on the kettle, ignoring the heat that must be seeping into his skin.
What I wanted didn’t seem possible anymore. I ached knowing Toel Ginu was so close, but Fendul’s warning about the Iyo had worked its way into my mind. Maybe Dunehein didn’t want to see me. He never came looking for me. Without him, I wouldn’t be allowed into the settlement long enough to meet someone to marry. Then I’d be stuck in the south alone until spring, at the mercy of any itheran soldier who found me.
Abruptly, I opened my purse and pulled out the silk packet I’d brought from my plank house in Aeti Ginu. I unfolded it on the table to reveal the bone needle. “That belonged to my parents. It was the ceremonial needle for their wedding marks.”
Tiernan’s eyes flickered to my tattoos. Aside from the kinaru and fireweed on my arm, a fan-shaped pattern below my collarbones marked me as an antayul. A Rin tattooist gave them to me at my initiation the autumn after I first attuned.
“Nili and I hoped to marry into the Iyo-jouyen. We don’t have the approval of our okorebai or okoreni though. It was only a faint hope.”
“You are quite young for marriage.” He folded the silk back over the needle.
I rested my elbows on the windowsill and gazed outside. “It’s the only way to get out.”
Tiernan was silent. The kettle whistled. Finally, he said, “You are welcome to stay here.”
“What?” I turned, knocking a tin off the sill. It clattered to the floor and rolled away.
“You will need to build up strength before travelling.” He seemed focused on pouring water into the teapot. “I cleaned the loft out for you. Now that you can climb the ladder.”
“I thought you expected me to leave.”
Tiernan set two mugs on the table. “It gets lonely in these woods.”
And so autumn passed, and winter began.
7.
WINTER
The loft was cozy with a peaked roof and a glass window. It wasn’t high enough to stand in, but it was deep enough that I wasn’t afraid of rolling over the edge in my sleep. Heat rose from the kitchen to warm it. I hung my kinaru shawl from the rafters so I saw it every morning.
I relished being able to move again. I carried a ladder around and stuffed moss between the logs to insulate the cabin. Marijka show
ed me the glass building where she grew herbs. The cloudy panes set in a wood grid warped the view of the trees. I ran around the clearing to see my footprints in the snow, but even that exhausted me.
Fendul was right about one thing. Winters were getting worse. I spent days tanning furs — scraping the flesh clean, rubbing in a slurry of animal brain, then stretching, drying, and smoking the hides — so they were supple but wouldn’t rot. The smell made me want to vomit. I sewed rabbit-skin gloves and a mantle from the black fur of chubby marsh rats, set aside the best pelts for trading, and stitched the rest into blankets. Technically, I was only allowed to trap on Iyo land for food, but I figured if I ate whatever wound up in my snares, it wasn’t breaking any laws.
“What did you eat last winter?” I asked Tiernan one day. Salmon and duck potato were Rin staples, but I hadn’t gathered enough to last until spring, and the vegetable bins in his cellar were down to rutabaga and wild onion.
“Not much, to be honest.” Tiernan scratched his jaw. He did that a lot, whenever his face grew dark with stubble. “Maika gave me preserves, but mainly I bought supplies in Crieknaast. I planned to go soon.”
“Can I come? I’ve never been to a town that big.”
“It is several hours on horseback. Can you ride?”
“On a horse? Nei. I don’t have one anyway.”
He raised an eyebrow. “There is a mare in the stable.”
I stared at him. “You can’t expect me to ride that dead archer’s horse.”
“You can never overcome your fears if you avoid them, Kateiko.”
That’s how I wound up in the paddock staring at a horse whose head was as big as my torso. I jumped back as the giant creature snuffled at me. “I don’t trust intelligent things.”
“You have to trust her before she will trust you,” Tiernan said. “Do not think about her previous rider. Horses have histories of their own.”
“What’ve you been calling it?”
“Cefal. It is just Sverbian for ‘horse.’” He had a slight smile. “She is yours to name.”
“What did you name yours?”
“Gwmniwyr.”
“Goomni—” I shook my head. “Do Sverbians spit and decide it’s a name?”
I looked into the mare’s huge brown eyes and remembered what Tiernan had said about the power of names. I wondered how many battles the horse had survived. She deserved a name to carry her away from that.
“How do you feel about Anwea?” I asked. Anwen Bel was the calmest place I knew.
The horse nuzzled my face. Her whiskers tickled.
Tiernan led us around the paddock while I got used to the reins and saddle. After the first day, I was sore. After the third, I could barely walk. Just when I got Anwea to follow Gwmniwyr through the woods, fat snowflakes began to fall.
•
I stared at the roof late into the night listening to windowpanes rattle and branches creak. The wind whistled a single word. Look. My cousin Emehein always said that in antayul lessons, when he was helping me find water with my mind. He’d make me close my eyes. Look, Kako.
A gust slammed into the cabin. Icy air burst in. I scrambled up and felt my way to the loft edge—
Warm light flooded the kitchen. The outer door swung on its hinges. Tiernan dashed out from the bedroom below me and shouldered it shut. An orb of fire followed. Eddies of snow settled around him.
“I knew it,” I said.
Tiernan jerked. The orb flickered. “Gods’ sakes, Kateiko.” He shook snow out of his dark hair. He was in trousers and a thin shirt, still half-asleep. “Knew what?”
“You don’t always use old-fashioned fire.” I lay on my stomach with my arms over the edge and grinned at him.
“Have you ever tried to light a candle in a hurry?” he grumbled.
I waved my hand back and forth, evaporating the snow. “Come up here. Bring your fire.”
At first I thought he’d refuse, but then he set his foot on the ladder. The orb bobbed up after him. He sat with his back to the wall, elbows resting on his knees.
I rolled onto my side. “I can never sleep through snowstorms. It feels like the world is awake and wants me to be awake too.”
Tiernan glanced at the window webbed with frost. “Is it warm enough up here?”
“It’s fine. I just . . . can’t stop thinking.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Do you want to tell me about it?”
I fiddled with a lock of my hair draped across the floor. “What do you think . . . happens to people after they die?”
“Most of my people believe spirits sail across the ocean to a land of abundance.”
“Wait. You came here over the ocean.”
“I assure you I am not dead.” Tiernan reached toward me. I stilled as his hand went near my hair, but he just touched his fingers to my wrist. He was surprisingly warm. I felt a twinge of disappointment when he pulled away.
“What do you believe?” I pressed.
“Honestly, I am not sure. I would like to believe Thaerijmur exists. But then so might Bøkkhem.”
“Isn’t bøkkhem a curse word in Sverbian?”
“It is a barren flatland inhabited by spirits the god Bøkkai has stolen. It is also a curse word, yes.”
I crinkled my nose. “Getting stuck there forever does sound like a curse.”
Tiernan shrugged. “Ferish priests say some spirits live in the sky and some underground. I have heard many beliefs. None seem more or less plausible.”
“Rin elders say the land of the dead is right here. Everyone whose blood flows into the ground winds up in Aeldu-yan. We can’t see it, but the barrier is weaker in winter.” I waved my hand through the air. “There. I just hit someone’s great-great-grandparent.”
“Parallel worlds do not work that way.”
“You just said you don’t believe in that stuff.”
“There is . . . a theory.” He laid my embroidered blanket on his arm and pinched it against his sleeve. “Imagine worlds are fabric. Two pieces next to each other, made from different cloth. They fold around each other, but never join.”
“What if you unravelled them and wove them together?”
Tiernan gave me an amused look. “I do not recommend that.”
I gazed at the crackling fire orb. “So there could be another world we can’t get to.”
“Maybe several. Theological scholars call them shoirdrygen, or splintered worlds. I doubt any are filled with the spirits of the dead. They are probably more like our own.”
“I think . . . I might’ve . . . seen one.”
He leaned forward. “Where?”
I recounted the incidents at Kotula Huin’s shore, the shrine, and the wasteland. “I saw you the third time. Before I knew who you were.”
Tiernan gave me a long look, like the first time he saw me call water. He seemed about to ask something, then shook his head. “Perhaps your ancestors were warning you.”
“It’s not funny.”
“You passed out, Kateiko. You probably hallucinated and your mind forged a connection to the memory when you met me.”
“That’s what I figured.” I sighed. The wind howled, scraping branches against the cabin. “But I don’t know what to believe.”
•
Just before sunrise, I carefully opened the door. Snow formed a wall as high as my knees, packed into the porch. I stepped onto the drift, walked across the stiff crust, and stuck a tallow-soaked torch into the snow. Silence weighed down. Even the horses were quiet in the stable.
When I left home, there were only two explanations for what I had seen. One, I was losing my mind. Two, I really had seen Aeldu-yan. The second scared me more. Years after my parents’ blood flowed into the ground, I’d accepted that all I could do was focus on living. Rivers keep flowing. I couldn’t get lost
among the spectres and shadows again.
I hadn’t considered a third possibility. A world the Rin had no stories about.
Sunlight burst over the hills. The torch ignited at a spark from my flint, blazing like a tiger lily among the whiteness. I undid my cloak and let it fall. Underneath, I wore my kinaru shawl with the laces knotted around my wrists.
I repeated the chant from the Kotula Huin ceremony, my voice building as I tried to recall the pounding of drums in a distant valley. I spread my arms and called on the snow, lifting waves that swirled around me in wide circles. Light reflected off the white inner layer of my shawl and refracted through thousands of snowflakes.
Icy wind gusted across the clearing, tearing at my shawl. Tongues of flame licked up snowflakes and spat them out as steam. The wind stung my eyes, burned my lungs, clawed at my skin, but I clung to the driving snow. Then I looked to the hills and the pink sky.
Nothing. No visions. No rifts. If there was another world, I was cut off from it.
I slumped to my knees. The torch hissed out. The wind stilled. Arcs of snow settled around me and melted on my skin.
•
Tiernan entered the kitchen not long after sunrise. I was curled by the fireplace with my embroidered fir blanket, fingertips pressed to my mouth, skin flushed with cold. “You must be freezing,” he said.
“Mmm.” I stared at ashes banked over the coals. I heard him pull on his boots, go outside, and come back in.
He tossed a split log in the fireplace and raked back the ashes. “That was quite the storm. We will have to hold off going to Crieknaast for a few days.”
“Mmm.”
Tiernan crouched by the fireplace, blocking my view. Flames began to crackle. He turned to face me. “Kateiko.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep.”
“Did the wind keep you awake?”
“You could say that.” I held out my hands to soak up the warmth. “I kept thinking about what we talked about last night.”
“It confounds dedicated scholars. My explanation was not nearly sufficient.” He pulled a book from the shelf and flipped through it. “There may be something of interest to you in these.”
