He’d forgiven me for abandoning him when I climbed the New World Tree, forgiven me for leaving Freyr the Satisfied and our long family histories, our future together we’d childishly whispered and giggled about for years. He’d forgiven me for becoming a daughter of Odin, and I didn’t want him to.
Now he murmurs, “I thought you were dead, too, and I was all alone.”
“Rag me,” I whisper.
Rathi waits, patient as his parents, patient as the earth. He’s always like a gift when I need it the most.
Sucking breath through my teeth, I take his cold hand and lead him to the top deck of the ferry, where the wind is harshest and I can’t hide anything. I sit him down on one of the rows of metal benches with flaking blue paint. “You’re not alone, Rathi. You won’t ever be as long as I am alive.” My voice is rough and unforgiving even as the skin around his lips pales, even as his hand digs into mine. “And I’m not alone, either.”
“Tell me,” he whispers, eyes unfocused. “Tell me what happened. Please.”
I do.
It’s a poem, but a dark one, a quiet one. This story I spin for the only living Summerling about how his parents died, about how all of them died, resembles the truth not at all. I wonder if Unferth would forgive me for lying.
THIRTEEN
TO KEEP RATHI out of the battlefield that was Jellyfish Cove, to keep him from finding his parents’ bones picked over, I ask him to go with me to the warning tower. I say I can’t face Unferth’s ghost alone.
The walk is muddy and rough, and Rathi slows me down, picking his way around snowmelt ponds and doing his best not to step in slush. With his arms out like a stork for balance, he almost makes me smile. The cuffs of his suit pants soak up plenty of cold water. His shoes slip against the frosty gorse and the splash is followed by a disgusted groan. He glares at nature and then stops bothering to avoid anything.
Except for the front door knocking loose against the frame as the ocean wind blows, the tower appears as it always has: lonely. I steer clear of the holmgang ring and head quickly inside, barreling upstairs to my room. The air is silent, still, and cold. My breath frosts on my lips, is harsh in my ears.
Footsteps downstairs stop my heart, but I remember it’s Rathi. An iron poker scrapes against the hearth, echoing up to me as he begins a fire.
Grabbing my seax, I buckle it at my hip, and take a moment to arrange it so it doesn’t rub against the belt holding Unferth’s sword across my back. I dig into the backpack Unferth packed me weeks ago for the silver rings and cuffs Jesca and Rome gave me at Yule and clasp them over the sleeves of my thermal shirt. Then I stuff in my only other wool Valkyrie dress and swing the pack over my shoulder.
I don’t say goodbye to my room, but I think of the poetry I painted onto the balcony overhead. My mark.
Rathi’s put a pot of water to boil on the fire. I brace myself and go into Unferth’s room. It’s shaped like a slice of pie, with light from the single porthole window facing north. Nothing personalized.
Once I barged in on him shaving in the bathroom. I called, “Unferth? Are you decent?”
He leaned out of the small bathroom in only his sweatpants. “Rarely,” he said with a twisted smile. I pursed my lips to mask my reaction to his near nakedness.
“What do you want, little raven?” he asked, pulling back into the bathroom. I joined him, standing just outside, and watched as he scraped the razor over the last line of shaving cream beside his left ear. Unferth bent over the sink to splash water on his face. The long scattering of scars marred the right side of his back; I only saw because as he stretched they glinted strangely in the yellow bathroom light.
I reached out and touched his shoulder blade. Half-shocked he didn’t jerk away from my touch, I boldly stroked the twist of scars. “Troll?”
He took a second to glare at me in the tarnished mirror, water running off his face like rain. “Troll,” he confirmed. After screwing off the faucet, he did pull away from my hand, patting his face and chest with a thin towel he snatched from a ring in the wall.
I cupped my hands against my chest. “You must have been so young.”
“It was the first troll I ever met.”
He threw the sentence away, but I caught it and held my ground in the bathroom door. Unferth stopped so close I might’ve leaned in and pressed us together. My breath picked up pace and I remained still, curling my hands around the doorjamb.
“I’m not going to tell you more, little raven, not today.”
“Someday?”
“Someday.” Unferth’s voice dropped, as if he was making a wish, not a promise.
I’ll never know now. But, I think, as I take a deep breath and dive into his bathroom, searching for anything of his, at least he died as he lived.
Armed with three thin copper rings he used to wear and a pair of his gloves, I rejoin Rathi. He didn’t make tea but hot chocolate, since that’s all we kept here. Unferth liked it first thing in the morning, but I never had the patience to stir and stir so it heated without burning.
We sit at the worn old table and drink as spring wind rattles the shutters, until Rathi says, very quietly, “I wish they hadn’t been here. I wish we’d never come to Vinland but stayed in Cherokeen.”
“They loved it here. It was everything they wanted from life.”
He nods jerkily, like he doesn’t want to agree but has to. “Ardo will rebuild. I can’t run it, though. We’ll find somebody else.”
“Ardo?”
“Vassing. He heads Bliss Church in Mizizibi. I’m working on my mastership with him this summer. Or was going to be. It was an honor.”
“Jesca told me. She was so excited, and proud.” I reach across the table and touch the back of his hand.
“They’re saying …” Rathi trails off to look out the narrow window toward the sea. “That Vinland was a necessary sacrifice to balance the strands of fate and bring Baldur home. That the trolls came because the sun was lost. The troll mother wished to sow doubt and chaos, and that’s why they left those runemarks for Ragnarok.”
I sigh through my teeth. Chaos. Sacrifice.
“Do you believe it? Did the gods let this happen to our family?”
The idea gnaws at my throat. I remember the bloody runes, the clarity in the troll mother’s eyes. Her fury, and the broken bodies scattered at her feet. “No, I think it was fate. Every choice has consequences, and those consequences cause more consequences. They can become sacrifices in retrospect. Like my parents died and I ended up climbing the Tree. They didn’t know it would happen, but it’s still connected. Their death became the sacrifice that brought me to the Alfather’s attention.
“The same can be said about the troll mother. We were destined to meet; I saw it in her eyes.” I shake my head. Your heart, she said. “She’s the answer to my riddle, and I feel that we’d have come together sooner or later. It was here, because of … choices we all made. Me to spend the winter here, and your parents to move here. Maybe the troll mother chose this time because of Baldur, and so his disappearance and the massacre are connected. Maybe she had no reason at all. Maybe chaos was her reason. Who knows how many choices and consequences brought us all to that moment, when I could see the answer to my riddle. It was Fate.”