by Jessica Daw
I’d never put much stock in penance, but if there had been something I could do to make my wrong right I would have done it.
“All I can do is find Kristian. Make Rune’s sacrifice worth it,” I said in a cracked voice. My tears were frozen on my face, cracking in my eyelashes.
I walked on, every step jostling my arm and causing scarlet pain to shoot through me. How long had it been since I’d left the castle? Days? Weeks? Had the month already ended? Was he already married? If he had, why did I go on? It would have been easier to lie in the snow next to Rune and let the coldness steal away all these feelings inside me until all I had left was peace and then nothing. Nothing.
My food was running out. I’d scavenged some, as per Magdalena’s instructions, but not enough. Nothing was enough. I was not enough.
“You should have eaten your horse.” I stopped, spinning around. Where did that voice come from? I knew that voice better than any sound in the world.
“Kristian?”
“Should have eaten it. You’re out of food, aren’t you?”
“I’m not out yet,” I said defensively. “And I couldn’t—I couldn’t—” There he was. Standing beside me.
Except I was walking on a path too narrow to accommodate two. How was he standing . . . ? Oh. I was hallucinating.
“Lack of food,” Kristian said with a nod. “Lack of sleep. You’re feverish, too.”
I stared open-mouthed at him. Even if he was a hallucination, he was here. I took a half-step forward, toward him, and he held his hands out.
“Don’t come closer, Lena. Look at the ground. You’ll fall.” I looked down, saw the edge, and looked back up. He was gone.
I saw him with more and more frequency after that. It lasted maybe two days. At least, that’s what Hallucination Kristian said, since I couldn’t last much longer than two days with next to no food.
Then there was a river in front of me, wide as an ocean. I fell to my knees, my whole arm clutching my broken one to my chest. I couldn’t take another step, how could I cross a river the size of a planet? I’d die before I was a quarter of the way through, from exposure and exhaustion and starvation.
Hallucination Kristian was kneeling next to me. “Lena. You need help.”
“I think I’m going to die,” I whispered back. “I don’t even know if I can stand up again.”
“You can and you will. You must. Or are you going to abandon me after all this?”
“I don’t want to abandon you,” I said, pulling my arms tighter against my chest and bending over because it felt like I was going to come apart at the seams if I didn’t. “Everything hurts.”
“I know.”
“Thinking hurts. Feeling hurts. Walking hurts. Moving hurts. Breathing hurts.” The pain worsened as I spoke.
“You’re starving to death,” he said, the words all the worse for the gentle way he said them. “You haven’t eaten anything other than a small handful of oats for two days, and you weren’t eating enough before then for a long time, not with how far you walk every day and how little you sleep every night. The only way you’ll make it out of this alive is by asking for help.”
“I want you to help me,” I said, bent double now, my head pressed against my knees. “You’re so strong.”
“I can’t help you, Lena. You have to be enough, on your own.”
“I’m not enough, though.” The words came out so quietly that there was no way he would have heard them if he wasn’t a figment of my imagination. “I couldn’t even save Rune. How can I save you?”
“You can. You’re the strongest person I know, and you’re strong enough to find me.”
“Strong enough,” I repeated, and managed to sit up a few inches. Hallucination Kristian was gone. I saw, instead, myself, reflected in the ice that edged the river. I looked insane, my face a skull, my hair a rats’ nest, my clothes filthy and torn.
This was who I was right now. I was like this because I was strong, not because I was weak. And I was strong enough to make it.
If I died, I would die doing what I wanted to do. That was comforting, in a distinctly uncomfortable way.
As I stood, the sun rose. The sight should have been spectacular. The sun was actually shining, glowing rosy gold on the surface of the fast-flowing river. With the light, standing, I could see across the river there was a grove of pine trees, twice as tall and green as they should have been, surrounding a . . . cottage.
That was the cottage. It had to be the cottage belonging to the mythical woman Magdalena had spoken of, the only person who could help me.
Taking one last deep breath—all too aware that it really may be my last breath—I took out my last packet of herbs, saved for emergency. It wasn’t ideal, dried and crushed rhubarb leafs (its poisonous properties was the only reason I still had it, as I wasn’t stupid enough to try to save herbs for magic when I was dying of starvation), but it would help me.
I had done this, once before. It hadn’t been long ago, but it seemed like another lifetime. Kristian had been with me then.
“I am going to walk on the top of this river. I am not going to sink in. These rhubarb leaves are going to serve as a floor for me and stop me from sinking.” I took the first step. My rhubarb was swept away so quickly that I nearly sank in, my balance terrible with my broken arm still pressed to my chest. My breathing came fast and choppy, drowning out the sound of the river. I was standing on a river.
“I’m not going to sink,” I said frantically as I threw rhubarb in front of me with my good arm and started running, though Kristian had told me that slow and steady was the safest when it came to walking across water. I didn’t have time, not with how quickly the river was sweeping away my extremely finite supply of rhubarb. If I ran out in the middle, there would be no escaping. I would not be able to swim even if both my arms were whole. As it were . . .
I had no idea what I said, but words poured from my mouth as I threw and ran. With every step, my feet sank a few inches into the water, probably because I was running. My boots were soaked. If the cottage was not, after all, the cottage of Magdalena’s mystery woman, I would likely lose my toes if I didn’t make a fire and dry my socks. Not that I consciously thought any of that as I ran as if the devil were on my heels.
If the river had been impossibly wide from the bank, now it stretched into eternity in both directions, determined to swallow me whole, doing all it could to make me fall.
I did fall, tripping on a ripple in the water, splashing a good three feet into the water, soaking all my clothes. I would most definitely lose fingers and toes if I didn’t dry off. Assuming I escaped. I began drowning, for interminable seconds, before I flung my arms out, letting the pain in my broken arm propel me onward, screaming out silver bubbles as I commanded the water to support me and let me stand!
The water, gratifyingly, knew better than to refuse me. I stood and ran even faster than before, feeling like I was flying across the glinting gold surface, my feet hardly touching at all. My muscles burned, insisting that I didn’t have the strength to sprint like this. I told them, out loud and shouting, “Stop it! I do too! I can do this and you, stupid muscles, are going to carry me as fast as I want to go!” They didn’t stop complaining, but they carried me across.
Across. I crossed. I slammed into the bank, going down hard with a grunt, barely managing not to land on my broken appendage, which throbbed like it had been rebroken. Likely I had rebroken it. I grunted again, rolling onto my back. Grunting was a bad habit I’d picked up from my isbjørn. I wondered, in the inanity that usually accompanied extreme bodily discomfort, if Kristian made the same grunts and growls when he was a human as he did when he was an isbjørn. I longed to find out.
“Dearie me. You are very wet.” The voice was amused, and suddenly lying on the beach, soaking wet, with some stranger commenting on it, was the most hilarious thing I’d ever experienced ever. I laid on my back, laughing madly, insensible to the world around me. Tears streamed from my eyes, and
much more quickly than I would have thought possible, I was sobbing, hard enough that my stomach would have expelled its contents if there had been any contents to expel. My whole body was reeling from the experience, incapable of handling it normally. Not only had I done something impossible, but I had just run faster than I’d ever run in my life while every inch of me was already exhausted. I had just escaped death by running across a river. That was insane.
I couldn’t wait to tell Kristian.
Because, no matter what, I was going to see him.
My maddened sobs slowed at that thought. It was only then that I realized someone was carrying me, the sky swinging above me, burnished clouds dazzling my eyes. Then we passed through a doorway, my carrier ducking, and I was set down on a straw pallet that felt like heaven’s softest clouds.
I hope no one’s trying to kill me, I thought. There was absolutely no possibility of me staying awake, not on an actual, real-life bed. I fell asleep.
When I woke, I was completely disoriented. How long had it been since I’d had a roof over my head? It felt like empires could have risen and fallen in that space of time. Maybe they had. I couldn’t rely on time’s honesty at this point. It had not been very forthright with me.
“Awake? I thought you’d sleep longer.” That amused voice. I blinked. The room was lit only by a fire, which, while it roared quite merrily, left much to the imagination. Still, it was warm.
Wait, how was I warm? I looked down and saw I wore only a shift that I did not recognize as my own. “Where are my clothes?” I asked, feeling the beginnings of panic edge their way into my chest. I couldn’t lose my clothes. That would most definitely signal failure.
“Drying. Look up.”
I did. “Oh.” Dark shapes hung across the ceiling, and those closest to me did resemble my clothes. “Thank you.”
“Couldn’t very well leave you to freeze to death on my doorstep, could I?”
“On your doorstep?”
“Near enough.”
“You own the cottage?”
“That I do.”
I struggled to sit up and quickly discovered that my whole body was aching and stiff. I fell back onto the pallet.
“Don’t try to sit up just yet. You’re still recovering.”
I’d protest that later. Right now I was going to go ahead and obey her words. For she’d stepped far enough forward that I saw she was, in fact, a she, and an old one at that. Her face was as wrinkled as the oldest person I’d ever seen, but her eyes were bright blue and lively as a mischievous child.
“Are you Ruth?” I asked. Magdalena’s mystery woman.
“Ruth Clausen,” she said, smiling. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Do you already know my name, then?”
“I’m guessing that you are Kristian’s chosen maiden. Am I wrong?”
That gave me a pang. “That’s me. Helena Nordskov of Vansland.”
“Yes, a genuine pleasure. I’d heard tell of your beauty, and none exaggerated.”
I snorted. “You should see me when I’m not starving to death.”
She laughed at the statement that I belatedly realized sounded very vain.
“I’m not vain,” I told her. “I just . . . well, I’d have to be stupid not to realize that I’m pretty.”
“Of course, dear. No one is accusing you of vanity. I daresay I’d be a sight more vain if I were lovely as you. Then again, most people who show up at my door are starving and exhausted, so I may have lost my ability to judge.”
Sometime in the middle or her four-sentence speech I remembered why I was here. “Can you help me find Kristian?”
The softness that entered her eyes then nearly killed me. “Oh, Helena. I don’t believe even I could get to Sikuvok alone in time for the wedding.”
My fists clenched. “I have to.”
She sighed. “I thought you’d say something like that. We’ll argue about it later. Now, I must insist you eat something.”
I was sorely tempted to say I wasn’t hungry, but that would be idiocy beyond my usual fare. Instead, I said, “I don’t know if I can sit up.”
“Quite alright. I am shockingly good at spoon-feeding the supine.”
Ruth did not exaggerate her skills. She didn’t so much as spill a drop of the warm broth on me, though I did very little to assist her. I told her that I’d never eaten anything as good as that broth, and she smile and said, “I’m a cook of middling talent at best, but I always receive the best compliments. One of the perks, I suppose, of feeding the starving.” She winked. I decided, despite her never-get-there-in-time comment, that I liked Ruth.
“Now you ought to sleep, Helena. In the morning, I want to hear the whole story.”
My eyebrows rose, even as my eyelids fluttered. “I thought you already knew it.”
“I am knowledgeable, not omniscient.”
“Mmm.” I belatedly, stupidly, realized my arm didn’t pain me, but had no energy to comment on that. I’d thank Ruth later.
She laughed softly. “Sleep.”
I did.
When I opened my eyes, little had changed, though I was now more alert. The cabin was small, with such a tiny window that it scarcely illuminated anything. Most of the light provided came from the fire, still crackling merrily away, casting the world into oranges and yellows.
As far as I could tell, the only furniture was a rocking chair by the fireplace, two tables, one large and one small, two chairs, and a trunk. Scattered over everything was a thick layer of clutter. I identified papers, books, scrolls, eagle-feathered pens, vials, bowls, jars, a stuffed cat, and a vase of dead flowers.
Ignoring my body’s violent protests, I stood to look at the flowers. It made me sad that they were dead, in the simplistic way I felt emotions when I was more asleep than awake.
“Wake up,” I whispered, touching them, imagining them vibrant and full of life. It took a few minutes, concentration, and a tiny bit of purple fire, but I did it. I wasn’t supposed to work magic that way, without spells or guides or anything, it was risky, but I had almost died too many times to care. Smiling and satisfied, I laid back down and stared at them until I fell back to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kristian
It was late in the evening when I answered Eirik’s scrying request. He answered nonetheless. “Kristian, it is a relief to see you alive and well.”
I had seen my face. I knew I looked pale and that the circles under my eyes were deep. “What do you want, Eirik?” It wasn’t fair to blame him, I knew that. He had done everything he could to get me out of this situation.
“I want to know how you’re doing.”
“Does it matter enough to waste the energy to scry all the way to Sikuvok?”
His jaw twitched. “You’re my younger brother and my closest friend. Yes, it matters.”
I deflated at that, though I didn’t let myself deflate entirely, keeping enough anger to hide the other things I couldn’t feel. “Princess Niviaq is not so bad.”
My brother’s face was impassive, hiding something.
“She seems eager about the wedding. I . . . I’m trying to reciprocate.” I winced at the sound of my own voice. Efforts to not remember Lena saying she loved me weren’t going too well.
“Where did my rebel little brother go?” Eirik asked with a hint of sadness.
Eyes narrowed, I asked, “Isn’t this what you want?”
“No. You know it’s not.”
That was the second time I tried to pick a fight. We’d been talking for maybe a minute. “I’m fine. I’m sure I’ll be madly in love with Niviaq in no time.” Flat. “Don’t worry about me.” I slid my fingers across the mirror, ending the conversation.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lena
I spent three days with Ruth.
It was not my decision. “I should have left on the first day,” I told Ruth.
She smiled placidly. “You slept through the first day.”
&nb
sp; “Then the second day. You’re the one who told me I’ll get there late if I get there at all.”
“I did say that, didn’t I? But you couldn’t even walk ten steps the second day. And now you’re going to say that you should’ve left today. If you had, you would’ve been running off hare-brained like you did when you first lost the prince. Tell me honestly you had a plan when you left and I’ll admit I was wrong to keep you.”
It was true. I was so stupid. The entirety of my plan had been to find a mysterious lady Magdalena thought she may have heard rumors about once or twice. Still, what plan could I have had? I had to do the impossible, and how do you plan to do something that’s impossible? Besides, I had succeeded in finding Ruth, so didn’t I get any credit for that?
“I had no plan,” I admitted, my mouth tight. Had all the pain I’d gone through getting this far been self-inflicted? Could I have avoided it? Could I have saved Rune if I’d just planned ahead?
“No plan you could’ve made would have taken you there. Your best chance was finding me,” Ruth said. I pushed poor Rune from my mind, grasping Ruth’s words. “Now try again.”
“I should be packing,” I growled. “I have to leave at first light tomorrow.”
“I’m well aware of when you have to leave, dear. Try again.”
I was worn out, emotionally and physically, but I obeyed. Ruth was right. This was my only chance. Concentrating, I drew on emotions, like she’d taught me, and took a deep breath. Then, with my hands, I shaped the wind, exercising more control over it than I had the two times I’d flown with Kristian. A breeze gusted through the cabin, and despite my exhaustion, I laughed when it blew Ruth’s braid straight up in the air, the loose strands tangling wildly, looking like snakes. It wasn’t the first time I’d done something childish with the wind Ruth had taught me to call upon, but Ruth only laughed. “Very good, Helena.”
