Chapter 26
I was given a small stone room to rest in, though the guard waiting outside gave it the distinct feeling of a cell. I paced for the first hour or so, alive with frustration but my mind slow with exhaustion. Eventually I must have found my way to the mat in the corner, because I awoke with a headache and a heavy heart.
My village, I thought, as soon as my eyes opened. What’s happening in my village? The question had been haunting me, no matter how hard I tried to push it aside. Worrying would get me nowhere, yet it always managed to spring back, often stronger than before.
Had the Ør come from the sea and bore down on my people yet? Were any of them still alive, still breathing? Had the fever swept through them yet? The last time, it had taken days for the plague to arrive. Mere days.
I moved to the doorway and peered out. The guard shifted uncomfortably, perhaps worried that I’d try to leave and he’d have to stop me. I’d been brought here with little to no explanation other than that the king would summon me when he was ready. Ready to what? To execute me? To set me free? Were we friends or enemies? I didn’t understand these people and they did not seem keen on remedying that fact.
“Are they going to kill me?” I asked suddenly. The guard turned his head my way.
“I don’t know,” he answered, and something in the way he said it told me it was honest. The king seemed to only keep certain guards in his immediate confidence, so this one likely knew very little. But if he couldn’t tell me that, perhaps I could at least glean some other information from him.
“The Goddess,” I said softly, in case my voice bounced off the stone. “You worship Her and guard Her peak, but why? Why not let anyone reach Her?” I sat on the cold floor and hugged my knees, back against the wall.
The guard was silent, and at first I thought he wouldn’t respond, but his soft voice reached me a few moments later.
“We were some of the first to reach these shores,” he said, his voice just barely audible over the hum of sound below us. “This land was nearly empty, untouched.” He fell quiet.
“Nearly,” I repeated, seeking an explanation.
“The jōt were here, and the animals. My ancestors, they saw Her stars, saw the way they never moved in the sky, even when all the other stars did, and they knew it meant something. The mountain, Her temple, all of that was already here, whether forged by Her own hand or peoples far more ancient than us. But we found it, and we protected it, even if … even if it meant killing those who sought entrance.”
My head spun at his words, at the thought of their being here long before my people had crossed over from Löska. All these years, all these generations, we thought we’d been alone. We’d imagined ourselves as the only humans on this island, staking out an existence in a land that was never truly our own.
“But She was here long before you,” I said, resting my head against the wall. “She’s been in existence far longer than any of us. Why” – I chose my words very carefully – “why did you start to guard Her temple? What gave you…” The right. “What gave you that responsibility?”
Another pause, during which I both awaited and feared his reply. I heard him shuffle around, feet sliding against stone. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I wasn’t there.” His voice sounded off in a way I couldn’t quite place. I thought our conversation would die down. I was out of questions that would get me anywhere and he did not strike me as the chatty type, but he surprised me by asking, “Why do you wish to speak to Her?” He said it much more quietly than he’d said anything else.
I closed my eyes and considered my reply. I was here for my people, but why did I wish to speak to Her? There were many reasons, certainly, but which one was he after? “My world is about to be shrouded in darkness,” I told him. “A plague will soon wind its way through our veins, killing some, weakening others. Monsters will come from the sea and try to sever our heads, pull out our teeth.” I hugged myself, and I heard him draw in a long breath. “We never know when it will happen, but every few decades since we arrived, my people have suffered great pain and death and I want it to end. I want to ask Her why. If it can’t be stopped, I want to know. I want to know that, in a few weeks’ time, if many whom I knew were dead, there wasn’t something I could have done to save them. I want answers.”
The guard never replied.
I peered down to the large room below. The king stood before the throne, seemingly lost in conversation with a group of others. They would come for me shortly. Perhaps once they thought I had escaped, I could somehow double back and try to reach the peak and the Goddess on my own.
“May I go down to the market?” I asked the guard in the gentlest voice I could muster. My insides were all worry and rage, but neither of those would get me help. It had to be before dawn, but perhaps this far north the sun rose late, because I heard voices and the gentle clinking of goods below.
He shifted from one foot to the other, face turning towards the king. “I… He didn’t tell me to keep you here, only to stay with you.”
“Then that’s settled,” I said, without giving him time to change his mind. I exited the room and headed for the stairs. “You can stay with me down there.”
I heard a shuffling behind me as he moved to keep up. It was interesting, conversing with someone whose face was covered. Their voice and stature helped to paint a picture in my mind, but I couldn’t know how accurate it was. I couldn’t know the details, like the shape of their nose or the colour of their eyes. It made our conversations feel strangely one-sided, like I was vulnerable and exposed while they remained wary, hidden.
At the bottom of the stairs, I paused to glance at the king. He hadn’t yet noticed me and carried on in his conversation with his guards.
“Do not try to lose me,” the guard said from behind. This time, there was a sharpness to his voice. He didn’t want to get into trouble any more than I did.
I wound around the tables, glancing now and then at the king, and eyeing the goods on display. No money seemed to change hands. Instead, their business appeared to be conducted by trading. If there was something an individual or family required, they would gather up what things of theirs they could spare and lay them out on a table, waiting for someone with the required goods to come by. Sometimes there was haggling, which I didn’t need to translate to understand. The gesticulating arms and shaking heads spoke clearly enough for me.
At the end of one long, wooden table, a woman beckoned me over. “Come, come,” she said. Her movements and slightly hunched back told me she was old, older than my father. What business did she intend to conduct with me?
In a basket before her was a pile of bones. They were small, when compared to the giant bones of the throne, but I couldn’t tell what they’d come from. An animal, I hoped, praying that the basket before me wasn’t filled with the remains of a human.
She mimicked picking up the basket and tossing the bones on to the table, then pointed to me. It was an old, pagan ritual done by those who thought they could read your future and your past. Our villages had forbidden us from doing it long ago, saying it invited in things to our world that didn’t belong there. But this woman was out in the open, amongst many others just like her, so perhaps here it was allowed.
Having nothing to lose, and too curious to walk away, I sat in the chair opposite her. Eyeing me for a moment, she drew in a long breath. “You wish for me to read the bones,” she said. It should have been a question, but it wasn’t.
“I do.”
“They may not say good things.”
I stayed silent. She regarded me for another long moment. I wasn’t here to be fed lies and shiny falsehoods. If bones could speak, let it be in honesty.
I laid my arm on the table. She removed her left glove and took my hand. Her skin was covered in wrinkles and lines, and very pale. At her touch, I was reminded of Ymir, reminded of just how old she was, and wondered what sort of things she’d seen. How long had she walked this earth? I burned for an answer, but the question felt out of place in the moment.
“Are you prepared?” she asked.
I nodded. I wasn’t entirely sure how high a stake I was putting into this ordeal, but my stomach twisted with nerves. I shook it off, all ears for whatever she might tell me.
She took the basket of bones, seemed to draw into herself, breathing in deeply, and then scattered them across the table. Broken hand bones, jaws, toes. These were once inside a living thing, I thought, fascinated and repulsed. They were the structure of something that was once alive, just like the bones beneath my own skin. Would they, too, someday end up in the basket of a bone caster? I felt aware of each of them now, the bones running along my arms, my legs, the ribcage protecting my lungs. Each one felt alive, individual.
Though some bones reached the very edge of the table, none fell to the floor. The woman was skilled in this, practised. The moment the last bone stopped moving, she seemed to tense. I stared into her wrapped face, imagining what sort of things she saw as she ran a hand over the fallen bones. Where was I? What was I doing? My hand started to shake, but I couldn’t tell if it was from her or my apprehension at knowing what was to become of me. Will I live? I wanted to know, wanted to scream. Will my family live? Will … will Ivar live?
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I counted while I stared at her, counted the seconds until at last she let go of me.
Thirty. How much of my future could she see in thirty seconds?
I realized, as she sat perfectly still, perhaps recovering, that the voices near us had fallen silent. Everyone was watching her, watching me. Everyone wanted to know what the bones told her. Has the king noticed?
She sang a beautiful note. It was gentle, light, and made me think of the very stars themselves. Then she seemed to soften and turn to me, whatever visions she’d seen passing away.
“I see the sky,” she said, still holding my hand. “I see the stars, but they are fading. Fading until the sky is coloured in darkness, until there’s nothing left but one single, solitary star hanging alone in the sky. I see it moving, still alone, still burning. One star travelling across the sky, travelling through darkness.”
I stared at her, wide-eyed.
“And I see a skull,” she said, softer. “I see a bone-white, unbroken skull resting in darkness.” She raised a finger to me and sang a dark note, one that raised gooseflesh on my arms. “I see death,” she continued in a whisper. “I see death.”
Mine?
“You wished for me to speak the truth.”
As panic rose, I wished she hadn’t. I got up quickly, my chair falling backwards.
The king stood behind me. Jarring my thoughts from the bone casting, I faced him, my head spinning. He nodded to the guards, who moved away, and then held out a hand for me to take. He led me up the stairs and out on to the balcony that overlooked the mountains. Fresh snow had fallen, lying undisturbed at our feet.
Dawn would soon break over the distant horizon. I stared, a gentle pang tugging at my heart. I used to love dawn, to cherish the quiet newness of it, as though all of the heartbreak and exhaustion of the previous day had been wiped away. As though every morning, we could begin again. But what was this dawn bringing to Neska? To the other villages so far away? My mind flooded with images of plague-ridden children, of the fever caves filling with bodies, and of dark sails haunting the horizon, until my eyes stung with tears.
I didn’t know what he wanted to say, but I spoke first. “The red lights,” I said, clearing my throat, “they don’t bring only the sickness this time. There is something else coming too.”
He tilted his head to the side, curious.
“Monsters from the distant isles,” I told him, turning away from the view to face him. “The Ør. They chased my people away from our homeland, and now their greed is bringing them here, to our sanctuary.”
“The Ør,” he said, and while I’d thought he wouldn’t know the name, it seemed to mean something to him. “How do you know this?”
“I encountered two of them in the woods, near my home. Scouts. More are coming.” I rubbed my palms against my eyes, exhausted beyond reason despite my rest. “This is why I need to speak to Her.”
He stiffened, a king once more. “The Ør are a fierce foe,” he said, “but I have faith in you. You may overcome them with your will alone.”
I looked up to his face, heart sinking.
“We will send you back to your village, unharmed. Three of my guards will escort you to the foothills, where you must set off on your own. We are being gentle with you, but I will leave you with a warning to never again return to the mountains. Her mountains.”
“But—”
He held up a hand. “Others like you have come this way before and made the perfect sacrifice for our beloved Goddess. I could easily do the same with you.”
I shrank away, limbs turning to ice.
“So you will return to your people and fight your own battles, or we will drain you of your blood and present it to Her on an altar. You have perhaps noticed from the sky, she has a taste for red.”
My back hit a stone wall and I was forced to stop retreating. The king slowly closed the distance between us until he towered over me, horned crown making him seem even more of a giant than he was. This was it, this was my choice: leave the mountains alive and return home a failure, or stay and die at the hands of this king.
I wanted to scream, I wanted to beat my fists against his chest and see the bruises that formed. I wanted to sever the wraps around his head and make him face me the way I faced him.
Time was heavily against me, though perhaps I could part with his guards in the foothills and sneak back a different way. It would cost me more time than I likely had, but it was better than nothing. It was better than returning empty-handed, worn out and with nothing to offer. It was something.
“Gather whatever things you brought to my mountain,” the king said finally. “You will leave immediately.”
The guard who had followed me earlier was sent to retrieve me. He found me crouched in a corner, crying. She’s my Goddess too, I spat in my mind. She would hear me out, somehow I knew it. She would hear me before she would hear a crazed mountain cult who worshipped Her to the point of delirium.
“We must go,” said the guard, his voice gentle. Even with a soft voice, he was just as guilty as the rest of them.
I stood and wiped my eyes, muscles aching from the cold.
From the mountains below us, a roar burst into the quiet dawn air. In unison, we ran to the edge of the balcony and peered through the darkness. In the distance, I could just make out the form of a giant, writhing and spinning around as if trying to shake something from his body. Below him were a handful of white forms, deftly avoiding his thundering body and shooting what looked like silk from large bows. The spiders I’d seen. The webs. That’s what it was used for.
They continued to shoot it at him, over and over again until he crashed to the ground, unable to fight back any longer. Even from so far, the force of his body hitting the ground rumbled the stone beneath my feet.
“What’s happening?” I asked. “Why are they doing that?”
The guard looked at me for a moment, then returned his gaze to the fight. “We have borders, lands we call our own. When they cross the line, we kill them, just as they would do with us.”
The jōt were forbidden from entering their mountain. The one in the distance was small, by giant standards, so maybe he was foolish or didn’t know the rules. I stood and watched as a handful of other jōt came to stand by, watching as two of the snow people readied a large blade. Something in my mind snapped at the sight of it. They could pluck my dream like a weed and burn it to ash, but I wouldn’t watch them be so cruel to something else.
“Stop!” I shouted, then, frustrated, flexed my fists. “Don’t let them kill him,” I said pleadingly. “There are monsters coming, and when they arrive, these mountains will need to defend themselves. You will need all of the strength you can muster.”
He stared at me for a moment, no doubt alive with questions, and then jumped into action, cupping his hands around his mouth and singing out a series of powerful, emphatic notes that carried all the way across the distance between us. When he’d finished, he paused, and those we watched seemed to hesitate, looking around as if to find out where the song came from. The snow people realized it first. Their tiny forms turned in our direction, and as they did so, the guard repeated the same notes.
The blade was placed on the ground in a show of consent, and a moment later, the giant rose and stumbled backwards. As soon as he was far enough away, he turned and disappeared down the mountain. The other jōt who had gathered, to my immense surprise, bowed low to the snow people who’d just released him. It was fascinating, I thought as I watched, how while we feared the jōt for their enormity, the jōt feared the snow people for their power. There was a hierarchy in the mountains and not one that was easily defined.
“Thank you,” I said to the guard, touching my hands together in a show of gratitude.
He said nothing, merely eyed me for a long moment. In the silence, something seemed to change. The air around us became softer, and in a way too subtle to be clearly understood, I had the impression that I was no longer standing on the balcony with an enemy, but with a friend.