Beautiful Wreck (23 page)

A sense of impending violence curled like a cat in the corners of the house. It seemed to stretch itself, then settle down again and fail to stir for hours. On the day Heirik went with Hár to bury Fjoðr, the tension rose, unspoken, around all of us. I was relieved we didn’t eat the horse.

AN ACRE

Harvest

Something shifted, and the air turned to fall without saying so. It was simply here one day, a cold undercurrent, a shortening of the horizon. Our lazy afternoons picked up a hint of urgency. The dry, warm days would end soon, and when they did, we needed to have as much thread as possible ready for weaving, the most possible fish and roots and berries dried and stored. The pantry full of butter and cheese and skyr.

Fjoðr’s death was curiously set aside.

But at times I saw a wild anger in Heirik, barely contained. A hidden desire to kill something.

We worked at putting things away. And as we worked, Betta told me things that weren’t entirely useful. She said that Hildur had some beliefs about the chief, and the idea that his brother would be more of a man. Betta also said that vengeance was more satisfying the longer it was drawn out. She looked around, nervous and furtive, when she talked about the chief. At the same time she told me not to pay attention to anyone’s fears.

“They’re little girls,” she stated simply, “Svana especially.” Then she added with disdain, “And Hársdottirs.”

They were, by my 22nd century standards. Svana and Thora were around fifteen years old. At seventeen, Betta was more mature, by far, even than Dalla Hársdottir who was already a mother four times over. Betta could be more mature than me at times, even though I had so many years on her I would never tell. Not only the thousand and two hundred, but my own twenty-four that I’d actually lived.

“They talk stupid to soothe themselves,” she said, “when none of the adults are around.”

I laughed brightly at that. Heirik was just over twenty years old himself, and Betta seventeen, but they were truly adults, and Svana was a toddler in comparison.

“What is Svana afraid of?” I asked.

“Her own fascination, maybe,” Betta said. “I’ve seen her wonder about him.”

I didn’t like that, and I said so.

“Don’t worry, Woman. She fears him completely. She’s just vain enough to worry that he might break his vow and take her as wife.”

She placed a hand over her heart, dramatically, and one between her legs, looking around as though the chief were coming for her. I cracked up—actually rolled on the ground. But something nagged me every time she spoke of Svana. I pictured the girl’s tiny teeth at every mention of her name. In a tidy row, pure and dangerous.

The ancestral ax, and the sense of doom, were put away when haying began.

Men gathered in the misty glow of pre-dawn, standing or sitting on logs and rocks, honing blades and breathing the cold breath of morning. A cheerful shink-shinking song of a half dozen whetstones on steel surrounded the back door.

Every man on the farm, from the lowest thrall to Heirik and Hár, had been working every morning from just before sunrise, dropping from exhaustion, getting up and doing it again. They stank. They ate. More than I imagined human beings could eat. They couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer than it took to devour what food and ale we gave them.

The women worked too, and any children who were big enough to rake. Dalla and Kit took the tiniest babies tied on their backs. They followed behind the men to sweep the grass into windrows, back and forth each day, turning it until it dried in the sun and could be piled onto horses’ backs.

Or so I was told. Betta and I had been left behind, with the little children. For days, she and I didn’t work in the fields, and our lives became a continual process of exchanging clothes and turning fish and butter into men. Thralls did laundry, and Betta and I kept the house. We sat outside and made socks in the chilly sun.

Today was the ninth day, and possibly the last.

The stone foundation of the house pressed hard against my back, but the sun was gorgeous and I wasn’t going to move. Some part of me felt the light changing, the angle and approach of it, felt the narrowing window of daytime, and instinctively I wanted to keep it. To soak it up and store it like an animal before winter.

Today, the shush of grass moving overhead, and the clack of dry fish like wind chimes made me drowsy. The needle binding in my hands seemed far away. My hands themselves a hundred miles from my mind. Everyone was far down in the valley, the men cutting down fields of grass, the women and bigger children cutting barley or raking, always raking, making hay.

A single wooden pitchfork stood against the wall beside me, a silent companion, left behind while everyone else worked. Perhaps just as grateful for this sleepy moment. I smiled with the irony of traveling to a hard-working farm in order to really take this deep, sun-soaked rest. Outside, amidst the varied sounds of yard and house, not the hum of a refrigerator or bleep of some small technology that spoke up when I was just on the cusp of sleep. I thought of the chill of climate controlled naps. Remembered the sounds of small engines. My mind drifted to a memory, a fight in the tank. The thick, dark ocean in 1900s Atlantic City. Ladies’ long dresses whipping the wind. A sharp jolt shot through me, followed by endless falling. I cried out, scrabbled at walls, something to hold. But there was nothing. Only a rending and tearing of something fragile. Sharp steel slicing in my head.

I was returning.

I heard the sizzle of the tank’s effort to take me, felt it prying in my brain. Felt the opening of a single moment like an unfathomable flower. I heard someone calling me. Morgan? I heard in my mind, “I’m going home,” and the whole idea of home stretched over a thousand years, brilliant and meaningless. I longed for Betta, for Heirik, but they were beyond my reach. I saw the lab, the blinding white of artificial lights in my eyes.

The sadness was brutal, and the acceptance, pining for something already gone.

Nei, I wouldn’t accept it. I struggled against the pull of the tank. I thought only of my gorgeous farm, my streams and elf hollows and hay. I reached for them desperately with my thoughts. I didn’t want home. I wanted here. This house I sat against.

This house.

An insistent stone stung my spine.

I opened my eyes, and a chicken regarded me, black and yellow and curious, its head jerking around worriedly. Another came, as if to confer on my case. Panting and whimpering, I put a palm to my chest. I felt the hard beat of terror.

Betta rounded the far corner of the house at a run, shouting my name. Her skirts swung out, and dried fish spilled from a basket. Lotta came, falling far behind, little braids swinging. Betta fell to her knees beside me and took my face in her bony hands. Her eyes searched. “Are you alright?”

I wanted to say it was just a bad dream. Já, that’s what it was. But knowing where I’d come from, and how I’d gotten here, it would always be more. The missed step I felt upon falling into slumber used to taunt me. When I first came, I wished it was the tank. There were days I’d woken and tapped out over and over to nothing. Now, the falling would feel like an alarm. Every nightmare would be, just possibly, the real thing. My greatest fear, to see the faces of my friends and colleagues, triumphant, the tank come to claim me. I threw my arms around Betta and cried.

“I don’t want to go.”

“Nei, Ginn.” She shushed me and told me, “No one will make you go. Shhhh. Shhhh.” She pulled back to look at me with her water-colored eyes. “The chief would not allow it.”

“But I’m not even useful.” I sniffled. I was fairly bad at every kind of work except the most basic, carrying or scraping things, picking up leaves. “They don’t even want me to help rake.” The word for
rake
was a howl, bitter and babyish.

Betta sat back on her heels and looked at me frankly. “Honestly, Woman.”

I sniffled some more.

“You don’t know why we’ve been left here these nine days?”

Já, I was unfit for real work. Betta must have been assigned here to be with me, to keep me company, take care of toddlers and prepare food for the family, who returned sweaty and filthy from haying. In other words, the work for weak girls who couldn’t rake. I wasn’t strong and solid like Hár’s daughters, not sinewy and tough like Hildur.

Betta shook her head at me. “The chief ordered Hildur that you must stay at the house. You’re not to be made to do field work.”

Oh.

I looked at her blankly, and so many thoughts reeled and circled. I wanted to live here forever, to live my life with these people, die here someday. And though my heart had known this for a long time, my mind was working to fit this new knowledge in like a boulder through the front door. Heirik had commanded that I not work in the fields. Was he favoring me because he felt close to me, wanted to protect and honor me? The idea of his concern and affection grew warm in my chest. But I could easily be wrong. Maybe he saw me as a guest, living not in our shared home, but in his. Or maybe he just thought I was weak.

That idea made me feel truly worthless. Heirik didn’t think I could do it. Didn’t he know me? Know that I could be strong? Suddenly I wondered. Could I?

The buzz of flies at the stable came to me, ominous and angry. I could do the work, no doubt better than delicate Svana or wan Dalla. To keep me from proving it, to keep me here at the house, was unfair. I wasn’t a princess or … something weak … a kitten. I rubbed hard against my eyes and nose, and it stung. My face was sore from crying and must’ve looked raw. Flushed with indignance. I stood and brushed off my clean skirt for no reason.

All three of us—Betta, Lotta and I—looked up at the sudden sound of hoofbeats. Heirik and Hár came flying so fast on Vakr and Byr, we hadn’t even noticed them coming from the field. They skidded to a halt dangerously close to us, full of the pleasure of wind on their sweat-soaked faces and in their hair. The horses’ breath came in great snorts, and the animals tossed their heads, the ecstasy of running still upon them. The men dismounted, so deflty and beautifully for such large, and in Hár’s case gruff, creatures. They were hot from working with scythes for eight or more hours, clothes sticking to their shoulders, arms, everywhere. They walked toward us, smiling, and I could see a change come over them when they noticed my crying face.

I met Heirik halfway and looked up to meet his gaze. I almost lost my will in the heat of him. He gave it off like a big, radiant heartstone.

“How big is an acre?” I demanded.

His eyebrows drew together, and I steeled myself to ignore their charm.

“Show me here.” I gestured toward the valley. Then I saw the coldness begin to settle in his eyes, and I softened and added, “Please, Herra.”
Sir
, I called him.
Chief.

Too late, I realized that was worse. His face closed completely. He was wet and alive and smelled like grass and perspiration and sun, but his face went dead like a stone. A single fly buzzed now, far from the house. Heirik turned and looked in the direction of the homefield and without looking at me, he said “Half the barley.” That was an acre. Stiff and formal, he spoke no more words than necessary to answer my question.

It was a vast piece of land to my eye, stretching green and solid and subtly grand. But it was definable. Not entirely too big.