Chapter 9
I packed that evening. Anneka sat malevolently in the corner of the room, her words dripping with poison.
“You know the mountains are haunted,” she’d told me, instilling her voice with an eerie chill that made me shiver. Then, in a low tone that sounded almost like a chant, she recited a familiar poem we’d all learned as children.
“In mountains tall
Where snow falls deep
The shadows crawl
The demons sleep.
The giants stalk
The misty ways,
Where darkness walks
Through night and day.
Beware the hills,
Beware the peaks,
Where night-time kills,
And mountains speak.
“I know you’ve heard the stories.”
I’d nodded, stoking the fire and willing away the chill of her words. “We all have.”
“Then what sort of foolhardy hero’s mission is this? Why would you, of all people, choose to go?”
I couldn’t tell if her words stemmed from genuine concern or a desire to make me miserable. It could have been either, and I was too exhausted to convince myself that she was capable of sympathy. Anneka didn’t do things for me, and certainly not out of kindness. It had always been that way. As I sat, staring into the fire, I remembered a time many years ago, when I’d learned just how deep her hatred of me went.
I couldn’t have been much older than eleven. Father was out at sea with some others, and the clear skies spoke of good weather, so we knew he wouldn’t be back until late. While Father was gone, the leadership of the house fell to Anneka, as the elder sister. Those were the worst days. Often I could get away, spend my days with Ivar or traipsing through the woods, sitting in the pen with the sheep or climbing up to the rooftop to stare at the sky.
No matter where I went or how long I was out, I always had to return home. Eventually, hunger and sleep would pull at me and I’d be drawn back to the house, my feet hesitating and complaining all the way. It was a clear but frigid night. I’d been lying in a pen with some new lambs, watching and laughing as they unsteadily learned to walk, and now and then looking at a scroll I’d stolen from Ivar, pretending I knew how to read it. Sometimes I thought that if I stared at the markings for long enough, my mind would begin to make sense of them. It never worked, but my unwavering insistence on trying remained strong throughout the years to follow.
I made my way through the streets, stopping to kick stones or glance up at the blossoming stars, or just to stand and hold myself and take in the night. Night held a charm, a power that I often fell victim to, feeling its draw and pull and bidding me stay out for far longer than I should. On this particular night, I longed to stay in the cold embrace of the outdoors until the sun rose once again, but the bite in the air whispered that it would be foolish. On nights like tonight, even my soul could freeze.
The door to my home was locked. I tried again, just to be sure it wasn’t the cold making me weak, but it wouldn’t budge. I knocked a few times and called out Anneka’s name. When there was no reply, I knocked again. A moment later, the door cracked open.
“Yes?” she asked, barely opening the door wide enough for me to see her face.
I blinked a few times. “Let me in.”
She made a show of thinking for a moment and then shook her head. “No. I don’t exist to play host to you at your beck and call, Ósa,” she said. “I made dinner earlier and you weren’t here. I’m settling in for the night and waiting for Father. When he returns, then you may come in. But, not before.” And she pushed the door shut.
I stood staring at it for a long moment, keenly aware of the deepening cold. She’d never done this before. She’d never been motherly, but this was something else entirely. For a few seconds, I hoped that maybe it was some wildly unfunny joke, that in a moment, she would open the door with a wicked gleam in her eye and warn me not to be so late again. But the door remained closed.
Slowly, I turned away and looked around the village. I could go to Ivar’s, certainly, but then I’d have to explain what had happened, why I couldn’t go home, and shame was already settling into my being. I didn’t want to tell anyone. Didn’t want to share the news that my own sister had locked me out of the house on a night as cold as this one.
So I walked and I walked and I walked until I found a cave out of the breeze. I piled some sticks atop one another and lit them using a flint I kept in my cloak at all times – just in case. I’d rarely ever had need for it, but in that moment, I thanked the Goddess it was with me. When the sticks were crackling nicely, I sat cross-legged before them and held my hands over the growing warmth. Father would be back soon, surely. I could wait an hour or two and then return and tell him what had happened. Although I doubted he would reprimand my sister. He would either tell us to sort out our differences amongst ourselves, or take her side and say that I should have been home earlier.
At some point, my father probably went home and slept in a warm bed by a large fire that had roared for most of the day. But I didn’t. I piled more and more sticks on to my little fire, and spent a cold, disturbed night in the cave. He didn’t come searching for me and the pain of his indifference stung me sharply.
The intensity of the memory had me on my feet and out of the door. I couldn’t bear to be around Anneka’s sneering and contempt for a second more.
Very little light penetrated the towering fir trees, yet somehow the snow seemed to glow, illuminating the woods around me in ethereal light. My footprints trailed away, disappearing somewhere far ahead, ghosts of my presence that would vanish with the lightly falling snow.
The village seemed an eternity away from where I stood in the frozen woods, as night crept towards dawn. Out here, there were just trees and snow and quiet, and the white breaths I released into the air. All was still and peaceful, a world of its own on an island consumed by fear. Out here, my sister couldn’t talk to me and I didn’t have to avoid my father’s gaze. There was a solace in a snow-laden forest wrapped in night found nowhere else, a loneliness that made me better acquainted with myself. After all, when it was just me and a hundred thousand trees that could neither speak nor think, I was the only company I had.
“Uxi,” I said softly, though it rang loud in the quiet. A pause, then again, “Uxi.”
Faint movement fluttered to my right. A white owl landed silently on a low branch. From a pocket in my cloak, I withdrew some paper, inside of which I’d wrapped a small bit of meat, not enough to be missed by a soul. Winter was harsh and hunting could be scarce, even for the animals.
I needed this little one to make it through. I’d found in him a friend the likes of which I’d never find in the human world. He couldn’t talk, and there was something about that fact that made him dearer to me than almost anyone else – almost. Our friendship hadn’t been built on conversation, on exchanging our ideas and views. It had been built on the utterly basic grounds of me having saved his life as a tiny owlet. It was months ago now that I’d found him lying in the snow, expelled from the nest at too young an age to survive, but with some gentle care and attention, he’d recuperated beautifully. In a very different yet hauntingly similar way, I could relate to him. I, too, had been raised without a mother.
Uxi’s round, yellowish eyes watched me like circles of candlelight set against his snow white feathers.
“The sky has turned red again,” I said as the meat disappeared down his gullet. “I wonder if you noticed it. I wonder if you know what it means.” I crossed my arms against the cold and leaned against the trunk of a fir tree.
He shook out his feathers, round eyes fixed on me.
“Perhaps you do know,” I went on. “Perhaps you can sense the danger.” Maybe those red lights meant something to the animals, too. Did it set them on edge, make them wary, even if they didn’t know why?
His eyes moved away from me, staring off into the forest with that sharp intensity. I turned too, imagining I could see through the endless fir trunks and all the way to the Kall Mountains, away in the far northwest. Even from here I could feel them, feel their frozen forms looming over us, harbouring countless dangers that never crept beyond the ice and stone of the peaks, that let us exist in safety far below. A handful of my people had ventured in their direction over the years, but most got as far as the snowbound foothills before turning back, the menace of the mountains outweighing any curiosity or bravery they’d felt. But some had powered on, and that was the last we saw of them.
A cold breeze hit my face, and I turned away, shuddering. Perhaps my sister was right. Perhaps this was a fool’s errand. Those mountains meant death and everyone knew it. Yet they called to me. They beckoned me in a way I couldn’t resist, because some small part of me would never be able to live with itself if I didn’t try. I had to go, even if the mountains were haunted. Even if all of the stories were true.
If they were, then may the Goddess rest my soul.