The Girl the Sea Gave Back

by Adrienne Young

  Ahead, two men were stalking toward me with another group of Svell at their backs. I stepped over the fading fire and readied the sword in one hand and the axe in the other as the cold rain began to fall again, washing the blood from my skin.

  My steps slowed, my hands growing heavy at my sides, and the forest seemed to tilt around me. I blinked, trying to focus, pulling in a long breath and watching the width of their strides before I swung, taking both down with one clumsy turn. My hand lifted to throw the axe when a woman appeared behind them. I struck her leg and she stumbled, crashing into a tree as I drove the sword behind me. It sank into the gut of a Svell man and I kicked him from the blade.

  My weight teetered forward, the last of my strength bleeding from my body and I sank to the ground, trying to catch my breath. The treetops spun overhead and I looked down to the linen of my tunic coming out from under my armor vest. It was soaked in fresh blood. My blood.

  I reached beneath the leathers and touched the opened wound, where the skin had been torn back open. My hand went to the wet earth as I plunged the sword into the ground and leaned into it, trying to stand.

  The glimmer of jewels shone ahead but my vision blurred. I shook my head until I could see the amber stone set into the hilt of a sword. The offering of reparation lay beside Vigdis’ body in the distance. I stared at his wide frame, the side of his face pressed to the mud and his dark eyes open.

  “Halvard!”

  On the other side of the fire, Iri stood, watching me. Most of the warriors had pushed farther into the forest, leaving the ground littered with bodies and weapons beneath us. Iri stepped over the last of the flames and held a hand out to me. But as I went to take it, the horn in Hylli blew. The sound echoed up the hill and Iri turned back toward the village.

  I dragged my feet under me, standing as the black pushed in around my mind. From above, Hylli looked empty, the last of our warriors fighting behind us in the trees. Only a few figures stood on the beach below, turned to the fog on the water.

  “What is it?” Iri stopped beside me, speaking between breaths.

  The ridge fell quiet, every eye turning to the sea, and I froze when I saw it, the breath binding up in my chest.

  Boats.

  Marked, white-sailed boats emerged from the fog like spirits, their serpent-head prows floating toward the rocky shore.

  Iri muttered a curse and suddenly, my mind sharpened, my pulse evening as I searched for an explanation. It was the Kyrr. It had to be.

  I took a step toward the edge of the ridge as the boats berthed on the sand one after the other. And then bodies were spilling from the wide, oiled hulls. Silver furs and twisted locks and open-throated screams covered the beach until they swallowed it whole. I watched as they tore through the village, headed for the forest, and I could see the marks. Covering every single one of them.

  The Kyrr ran with their weapons drawn and painted shields lifted. They filled every path, wound around every corner, and there was a silence behind us, the echo of fighting snuffed out before the Svell retreat whistle sounded.

  The painted warriors reached the hill outside the village gate and they didn’t stop. More boats appeared from the wall of mist and more bodies jumped into the gray water. They flew toward us, blades shining, and I lifted my sword, sinking low into my feet to get ready. Iri did the same beside me and the Nādhir fell back to the slope, re-forming what was left of our line.

  I pulled in a breath, tightening my grip on the hilt as they closed in. The Kyrr’s long, twisted manes flew out behind them as they ran and I reared back, ready to catch the first one that reached me.

  But they didn’t.

  The flood of Kyrr parted, moving around us, toward the Svell scrambling back toward the valley. I stood, lowering the sword and watching as they engulfed the forest where bodies covered the ground, as if the storm had rained down the dead. The lightning struck again, the flash blinding me, and I could feel it—the thin veil between worlds thick with spirits in the air. In a matter of seconds, the Kyrr seemed to conjure that space between life and death.

  I thought I was imagining it. The Nādhir looked to me, waiting for an order, but the Kyrr weren’t here for us. I walked into the trees and stopped midstride when I saw them gathering in rings in the distance.

  Tova stood like a statue, her eyes wide as the Kyrr encircled her. She disappeared behind rows of warriors and her name formed silently on my lips, the sword slipping from my fingers. It hit the ground and I didn’t think before I was running after them, disappearing into the mass of Kyrr.

  I called her name again as I got closer and a hand caught hold of me, wrenching me back. I swung my fist, catching the man in the jaw, and he took the hit, stumbling back. But when he looked up at me, I blinked the rain from my eyes, confused. “Kjeld … what…?”

  He wiped the blood from his lip before he looked back over his shoulder toward the sound of a woman’s voice shouting on the slope. I pushed past him, trying to see over the heads in front of me. The Nādhir stood holding their weapons, watching warily as a line of Kyrr marched up the path from the village gate. A woman in a red tunic appeared below it, her wide eyes searching the hill. The black pushed in again, my legs weak as the world spun around us, and I pressed my hand into the bleeding wound beneath my vest until I was groaning against the pain.

  “Don’t speak,” Kjeld warned, meeting my eyes. “I mean it, don’t say a word.”

  He stepped in front of me and raised a hand into the air as the swarm of Kyrr moved up the slope. The woman’s white-painted face was aglow, her eyes pinned on me.

  “Where is she?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  TOVA

  I looked into the faces of the Kyrr around me, trembling. Bone necklaces hung beneath their necks, pale gray furs draped around their shoulders over marked skin. The rain carved lines down their painted faces, making it look as if they were going to dissolve into thin air, right before my eyes. And for a moment, I thought they might. My gaze lifted to the sky and then down to my hands, and I wondered if I was dead. If I’d crossed into the afterlife.

  But the feeling of eyes running over my marks brought me back and I clutched my last arrow to my chest, where my heart was pounding so hard that I could feel it in my entire body.

  A woman’s voice rose above the others and the flash of a red tunic appeared in the distance. She pushed through the warriors until I could see her face and I gulped in a breath, the sight of her making the tremor in my hands erupt. She stood before me, staring, her tunic turned the color of blood in the rain.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the air was trapped in my throat. My fingers wound so tightly around the arrow that I felt the tip of the head cut into the pad of my thumb.

  She looked at me for another moment before she grabbed ahold of my tunic with strong hands, pulling me close as she inspected my face with narrowed, piercing eyes.

  “I…” I whispered, but I couldn’t think, my mind twisting and turning around the sight of her. Because I knew her. Somehow, I knew her.

  She turned me to the side, walking slowly in a circle around me, and her scrutinizing gaze raked from my head to my feet.

  “Who are you?” I dropped the arrow and pulled the sleeves of my tunic down to cover my marks, feeling naked before them.

  She reached up, taking both my hands in hers, her eyes on the yarrow and the henbane. The glint of a smile lit in them as she answered. “I’m your mother, sváss.”

  The wind stopped suddenly, the storm trapped inside my head. I searched her face. But it wasn’t her eyes I recognized. It was her voice. The deep, rasping sound that had been in my visions and haunted my dreams. I sucked in a breath, but before I could speak she turned, pushing back through the crowd.

  “Wait!” I lunged forward, reaching for her, but two men stepped into my path, each taking an arm and holding onto me.

  I recoiled, hissing against the throbbing pain where the sword wounds were cut deep into my flesh. They were
no longer bleeding, but I could see through the torn linen that they needed stitching. The men pulled me forward and my feet slid over the wet grass as we moved down the hill, toward the village.

  Their grips tightened as I tried to pull free, searching the crowd frantically before I even realized what I was looking for. Halvard. But I didn’t catch sight of him until we’d made it out from under the trees. He followed after us, pushing through the warriors gathered to my right. And a face I did recognize followed after him.

  The Kyrr man I’d seen with him in Utan watched me. He didn’t take his eyes from me as the men pulled me down the hill, toward the gate.

  The village was quiet and empty and I struggled to keep up with their quick pace, their boots pounding the gravel faster than mine. Hundreds of Kyrr moved aside as the woman walked ahead, the bones around her neck jingling. She didn’t look back at me as we passed through the open doors of the ritual house. I glanced back over my shoulder to where Halvard still stood beyond the gate, his face lifting above the others to see me before the doors slammed closed.

  The fire blazed at the altar, lighting the dark room around us so that the white paint on the woman’s face almost glowed. I tried to wrench free of the hands again when I saw a tall man standing before the flames. The arms of his tunic were cut free so that every mark covering his thick, sculpted arms was visible. Runes, animals, symbols I didn’t know. Except for one.

  On the outside of his upper left arm were the antlers of a stag. And they were just like mine, their curves and points identical. I looked down to where the same symbol showed through my torn sleeve of my dress, my eyes wide.

  The woman took the place beside him and the men let me go, pushing back out the doors and leaving us alone in the dark. My hands still shook as I looked up to where the sunlight spilled through the slats of the walls in sharp lines, landing on the face of the man. They both stood on the other side of the fire, staring. Their gazes ran over me, studying, and I squirmed beneath the feeling, my legs feeling too weak to hold me.

  Red hair was pulled into thick, twisted locks over the woman’s shoulder and beneath the marks, I could see pale, freckled skin. I swallowed hard, my eyes flitting down to my own, covered in the same spotted pattern.

  When she finally spoke, I found myself holding my breath. “Tova.” The accent that curled the edges of the words was different from the one I was used to. “Do you remember me?”

  I looked over her face again, trying to find something familiar there. Something I knew. “I don’t know,” I answered, shifting on my feet. “Maybe.”

  But I did. Somehow. They didn’t feel like strangers.

  She smiled, her long fingers tangled into each other before her. “You were so small the last time we saw you. You’re a woman now.”

  The man didn’t speak. He stood a whole head taller than her, silently watching me as the woman pressed a hand to her chest. “I am Svanhild.” The sound of it stung, pulling at the threads of long-dead memories. Stitches on wounds that had never healed. “This is Turonn.” She looked up to the man. “We are so grateful to Naðr.” Her voice broke. “For bringing you back to us.”

  “Do you remember?” When Turonn finally spoke, the depth of his voice filled the entire room around us. It was warm, like the feel of stone sitting in the afternoon sun. It, too, was like an echo of something I knew. “Do you remember what happened?”

  I shook my head, feeling cold despite the altar fire. “I only remember waking. I opened my eyes and I was alone. I didn’t know where I was because the fog was so thick and—”

  “And you drifted across the fjord. Is that how you came to be with the Svell?” He seemed eager for answers, but I didn’t have them. I had no idea how I’d landed on Liera’s shores.

  “Their Tala found me. He said that a Fate Spinner led him to the beach. That she gave me to him.” Jorrund, standing in the rain alone, came back to me. The way his robes clung to him, his eyes empty.

  “Of course.” Svanhild smiled wider. “When Kjeld came to us and said that he’d found you…” She breathed through the tears in her eyes. “I knew they’d kept their promise to us.”

  “Who?” I wrapped my arms around myself, squeezing.

  “The Spinners.”

  The stones pulled heavily around my neck and I reached out for the bench beside me, feeling as if I was going to fall. “But why did you … you sent me away.”

  “Sent you away?” Turonn’s voice rose, the sound of anger on the words.

  Svanhild silenced him with a lifted hand before she answered. “You were born our only daughter. But your fate was written on the Tree of Urðr before I ever carried you,” she said. “I cast the stones to see your future when I first realized you were coming and the cast was clear. The Spinners said that you would be Dagaz. A new dawn. But that death was coming for you.”

  My shaking hand went to the center of my stomach, where the rune of Dagaz was marked into my skin.

  “When you were only six years old, you drowned in the sea.”

  The gray waters. The silence. The string of bubbles racing to the surface as my hands drifted. The pieces all found me again, even clearer and brighter than they had been when I took the henbane. I imagined myself, pale and still in the funeral boat, the flames pulling in the cold wind before it disappeared into the fog. I imagined the two of them standing on the shore of the headlands in the strange light that illuminated the fragments of memory.

  “We do not always understand the ways of the gods, Tova. But Naðr brought you back to us. She had a great destiny for you.” Svanhild came around the fire to stand before me and her hands lifted, touching my face. “Here you are.”

  I looked into her dark eyes, where I could see myself. Not just my reflection. I could see parts of me there that weren’t mortal. I leaned into the warmth of her, hot tears falling, and tried to swallow down the sob in my chest. I didn’t remember her but maybe I did in some way. Maybe I’d only not remembered her because if I did, I’d have to feel the hole of her inside me.

  This was Othala. The rune cast that had broken my trust in Jorrund and the last thread that tied me to the Svell. It had brought me here. To this moment.

  They hadn’t cast me off. Naðr hadn’t forgotten me. She’d spared my life.

  “They led me here, to Hylli,” I whispered, my voice small. “The stones. They led me to the Nādhir. To you.”

  To Halvard.

  She pulled me into her arms and wrapped them tightly around me. I buried my face into the thick linen of her wet tunic and cried. I let every memory come back to me. Every bit of light. Every bit of darkness. I let them pull at me like the river to the sea.

  I let them take me home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  HALVARD

  I pushed the door open with my heart in my throat.

  “They’re alright.” Fiske stopped me before I’d even made it inside, one hand catching me in the chest.

  Behind him, Eelyn lay on the table, my mother working slowly at the wound carved from her shoulder into her chest. The open skin was spread wide, the white bone showing through the muscle, and she panted through bared teeth, kicking as Mýra leaned all her weight on top of her to pin her down.

  “Shh…” She pressed her mouth to Eelyn’s ear, one tear sliding down her nose.

  Iri sat on the stone ledge of the fire pit, sewing up his own arm with the end of the thread between his teeth, the skin puckering with the haphazard, careless stitches. Blood covered every inch of his skin, but he was breathing. Somehow, we were all still breathing.

  “I need you,” my mother called over her shoulder and Fiske went to her, coming to the other side of the table. “Hold here.”

  He took one side of the wound into his hands and he let Eelyn gulp in a breath before he leaned into her, holding the tissue open so that my mother could clean it.

  Eelyn groaned beneath his hands and I went to her, sinking down beside the table to meet her eyes.

  “She’s alri
ght?” I looked up to my mother, afraid of what I may see on her face.

  But she gave me a sideways smile. “Need more than a sword to take this one down, Halvard. You know that.”

  Fiske laughed, kissing Eelyn’s forehead, but the sight of her writhing on the table turned my stomach. I didn’t know how many we’d lost and I still hadn’t found Latham, but my family was here, together. And I was ashamed of the relief it brought me.

  “Have you seen Asmund?” I looked back to Iri.

  He tied off the stitches, dropping the last bit of bloody thread into the fire. “He’s alright.”

  I let out a long breath, pressing my forehead into my hands.

  “Get the kettle.” My mother kicked my boot with hers and I stood, taking the hook from the wall and fetching it from the flames. I set it onto the stool beside her where she could reach it.

  “Are you going to tell us what this is with the Kyrr, Halvard?” Iri asked, coming to stand beside me. They were gathered around the ritual house in a horde, where they’d taken Tova. Every warrior waited silently, watching the village with their weapons sheathed. They didn’t look like they wanted a fight, but there was no denying that from where they stood, it was a good time for one.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  The Kyrr leaders had disappeared into the ritual house as soon as the Svell were gone and hadn’t come out. Their boats filled the shallows, their warriors covering the beach, and a sinking feeling had pulled in my gut as I walked through the village gates. The Nādhir watched from the path and the hill, waiting their turns with the healers, and their faces betrayed the same thought that was resounding in my mind.

  The Kyrr had saved us. But there was no way to know why. Or what they’d do next. They were a clan of warriors descended upon a bleeding people and if they wanted to, they could take everything from us.

  “Do you think it’s to do with the girl?” I didn’t miss the way Fiske’s gaze met my mother’s.