It was midday by the time we were lying in our room, just the three of us, braziers roaring.I wore only an underskirt.Halvar was feeding from me, and I could imagine doing nothing but stare at the little creature for the rest of my life.
Fell was shirtless as well, lying beside us, waiting patiently.He wanted to hold the child; each subtle gesture told me so, but I couldn’t bring myself to release the babe.I never want to stop holding him.But after he’d eaten and fallen asleep, I could ignore Fell’s eagerness no longer.
Halvar was so small in those big hands.
We lay with him between us, running our fingers along his face and hands and tiny feet.
Later, Norsern people would say that Halvar from the Storm was born beneath the constellation Utfirsk, the Caribou.They would also say Hidevir, the planet of gifts and good timing, was located in the part of the sky that had to do with exploration and discovery.
This is not true.The planet of luck was moving backwards in the sign of Yorunn, protector of home and hearth and the boy was born beneath the sign of Utterleg—the Outsider.
I woke many times that night, gripped by a horrendous fear, as if in my sleep I’d forgotten about the child and suddenly remembered he was there.I had to set my fingers in front of his lips to feel his breaths and run the back of my hands along his limbs to feel if he was too hot or cold.
I will now say the thing I am most forbidden to say.I love my son.I loved him from the first moment.I would slaughter entire cities for him… In time, I will tell you some of what I’ve done in his name.But within nine or ten days of his birth, I knew I did not love being a mother.Perhaps that was because I was a foreigner in a strange land and every instinct I had was despised by the people around me.Their looks told me as much.But beyond this, he created a wound in me, a bruise that would always be filling with blackened blood, never to clear.
I will never be free again, I thought repeatedly.He would always come first, and I would choose it so, but I ached over it all the same, for I had only moons that were truly mine.They were over just as they were beginning.From the day of his birth, the rest of my life belonged to men.Loving them, ruling them, slaughtering them.Never again would I have a day that was just mine.Never again would I be so uneasy to harm.Having a child means having a target, one that if struck would ruin your very soul.There is more ache to it than I could ever explain to anyone who has not done it.And those who have… they need no reminder of their suffering.
I feel wretched for sharing my secret.
Nauseous.
I am done writing for the evening.
Thirty-Nine
The following moons felt like one long day.
Halvar was awake or sleeping.He was feeding or crying.Everything blurred into an endless dream where I was always exhausted and surprised by what time of day it was or by how many days had passed since his birth.My body ached, making water burned between my legs, my nipples bled, and people came to see us.They gave us old things of theirs.They rubbed Fell’s shoulders in the same way they tried to rub mine, but I stared at them with disgust until they stopped.
Almost every part of that long day felt horrible, but when I looked at the little squirming thing: pathetic and helpless and so utterly beautiful it made me sick, I’d feel so happy I could cry.Black hair like me.Blue eyes like his father.Lungs that could wail and wail and wail—perhaps the king had fed me so much fish that the child adopted his loudness.Maybe all children were loud.Maybe Halvar was especially loud.
Slowly, I healed.Slowly, I excursioned from our room into the halls.From the smaller halls into the larger ones.From within the palace to without.Dania visited, and we slept piled all together: her and me and her boys and my boy.Fell had so much less fear than I did during this time.He’d take Halvar anywhere—it could be dirty or smelly or loud or gross or full of dangers for a small, soft being.Fell laughed at things I found abhorrent.Like when Farwatcher came into the hall to see Halvar asleep on Fell’s arm and said, “And how fares this floppy little fellow?”
I glared at the man.“Stop it.He is not floppy.”
Farwatcher tilted his forehead toward me, raising his brows slightly, almost grinning in a taunting way.
Halvar did nothing to aid me in the argument.His chubby little cheek was smooshed against one of his father’s shoulders.His arms hung limp over the edge of Fell’s much larger arm.
“He flops just the right amount,” I said, rushing forward and scooping the child up.
When I turned to Fell, demanding with my expression that he argue with Farwatcher or pound the man’s face in or at least threaten to, Fell said, “Yes, he may be alittlefloppy now, but he will grow out of it.How many floppy adults do you know of?”
If eyes could cut flesh, mine would have.
Farwatcher laughed.Fell laughed, too, and I took Halvar away from the two mean men who would call him floppy right to his face as they pretended they were sorry and begged to be permitted to be near “the very rigid, entirely-flop-less child.”
Days passed.Halvar grew.And no ships came from the Isle to do battle with the Norsern.
For a period of ten days, he would look like a new child to me each morning—expression and shape and size something I had not anticipated the evening before.Sometimes I would look away for a quarter of an hour, and when I looked back, he would seem changed—a hint of the boy he was to be revealing himself or tucking himself away.I saw my brothers when I looked at him—Dayne mostly, but the little boys Hamon and Emory, too.I saw my sister Elfrith, but never my sister Dinah, even though she was only a baby when I’d been paired with Loric, so she should have been the easiest to see similarities with.Some days Halvar looked Islish, some days Norsern, and some days he seemed to be something else entirely.A howling creature with the power of the sea in his cries.
Everyone but Ivar urged me to leave him for a moment, to remember what it felt like to walk without weight in my arms, without my neck bent forward so I could see the little being.I could not do it for the longest time, and when I did, it made me wild and sick—truly sick, nauseous with a fever and a running nose and an earache.
The first time I properly left him, Dania had insisted I come with her to the bathing hall.She dragged me, and I couldn’t truly resist her with all my strength as she wasvaneruigk,so I feared any harm coming to her.
Fell pretended for a moment to be terrified as she pulled me away, but when I nearly threw up, he laughed.“Go!Just do not be gone too long—I am jesting!Go.We will fare cryptically.”
Cryptic had begun to mean something entirely different between the two of us.It referred to secret joys.
