Son pulled his sword out with a groan, and his father collapsed onto the driftwood floor.Blood so dark it was almost black pooled around them.Son knelt and wept, and I felt the urge to scream at him, at everyone gathered.What did you think was going to happen?
I tugged again, and the woman who’d guided me to the terrible scene released her hold.I ran, pushing my way through the thick sea dog bodies, out of the courtyard and back to my chamber.I pushed the door closed with my back and sank to the floor, trembling and sobbing, wiping my nose repeatedly on the sleeve of my dress, unable to think of anything other than the dead man’s gentle gaze.
What a terrible place I am in.What a terrible, wretched group of animals.I hate them all.
I didn’t have much time to sulk, for King Arik came to my chamber and knocked on the door.“Gentlewoman?Gentlewoman, I came to see you were well.”
I am not, I thought.I am not well, and I will be worse each moment I stay here.
“Gentlewoman, open the door.”
I huffed—quietly, of course—and stood, smoothing my skirt and wiping my eyes before opening the door.I did clear my expression, but I knew instantly that he could see through it.His face softened.“Gentlewoman, I apologize.I would have warned you, only things were decided so quickly, and I had to be there for Erland...and for Broder.”
“Why did you have me attend at all?”
“Ah, I debated, Gentlewoman, but you are known in the palace.Someone would have noticed you were not present.It is a bad omen for people not to attend.”
I frowned, trying to keep myself from crying.As sad as I was, I was also angry, and the angry part of me didn’t want to appear soft.“It is a bad omen to miss a murder?”
His lips parted with the hint of a smile.“Not so docile as we pretend, hmm?I have been waiting to meet this side of you, Gentlewoman, but tonight is not a good evening for it.”He softened further.“Erland was dying already.Broder simply sped the process.It is probably hard for your mind to untangle, Gentlewoman, but the faith of the northern peoples asks only one thing of them.Bravery.If a person lives and faces what the gods throw at them—looks straight at it, as it is coming—that is what earns a favourable afterlife.There are different afterlives, and the option to come back is always available, but most in my court seek Hyrold’s Ship as the place they go next.It is the fashion of the last hundred years.Hyrold demands a brave death.In this way, he is forgiving.A life of timidity can be overruled by five courageous moments at the end.Erland wanted to run toward his death.He wanted to be sure.He was not guaranteed to live until the next raiding season, so he asked for this.”
It made sense, but it also felt barbaric.To demand bravery.What of the children?What was to happen when they died from fever or whatever else took the lives of children?That was my thinking at the time.Though I knew almost nothing of children then.
“For most people, the more witnesses, the more bravery required.I had you come because I had everyone come, because Erland was a great man who deserved a great death.He should have been scaling a wall with fifty arrows flying at his head at the end, but his liver had other plans.His son faced it with him, likely earning his own place on Hyrold’s Ship.He made his choice, and I didn’t want to stall, to risk his courage leaving him even a little, for the sake of your comfort.I trust you will understand.”King Arik’s gaze hardened in an instant, with a hint of a threat within it.“Now.I have a funeral to arrange and conduct.If you are up to it, I would be glad to have you play something for all my saddened friends.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded.
I attended the funerary gathering.I listened to the moans of those grieving and the steady thrumming of the drums.I felt the heat of bodies and the shock of so much raw emotion on display.
The songs the Nosrern sing when someone has died… they cannot be explained unless if it is an experience you’ve had.The best I can do is to tell you that all people in the north speak three languages.There is the language of the gods—words they use for prayer, for casting, for accounts of death.They call these the Old Words.There is the language of the Day, for speaking and living.Then there is the oldest language of all, that of song.It is more important to teach a child music than to teach them to speak words in the north.But their music is also broader.Things like animal calls can be part of it, the screams of rage can be part of it, as can the sound of crying.And to hear crying captured and placed in song—a song formed by collective, rhythmic crying—I am convinced it would stir even the coldest soul.This was what I witnessed that night.
Higher voices crying high.
Lower voices crying low.
A song of howls, of pain, of wavering breaths.
I felt like a deceitful wench sitting in the hall, surrounded by the people I called sea dogs as they mourned with a depth that made me certain their hearts were a hundred times the strength of my own.I was there in the room with them, flesh like them, blood like them, but I was not what they were.I could have been—maybe—if all my crying hadn’t been done in secret, if I’d seen other people cry at any point in my childhood.But I hadn’t.There was a part of the self they had access to that I had never known.I couldn’t cry alongside them, though my chest begged me to.I couldn’t thrash my arms and toss my head, sending my hair flying around me.It would have been artifice compared to the raw pulse of their song.
The sound of Erland’s son was the most piercing—Erland’s child and his murderer, and, in a way, his priest.Without Broder, maybe Erland wouldn’t have been worthy of the afterlife he sought.
That evening, everyone gathered in the palace were priests and priestesses.Their songs carried Erland’s spirit across the sea, to the edge of the world, where Hyrold’s Ship awaited him.
Spirit moves inside sound.All northern people believe this.
When King Arik bid it my turn, I playedThe Melody of the Moss—a song about the creeping of the earth, slowly, ever onward, growing and dying and growing and dying.It was my first experience with “affliction,” what the Norsern callhreilinger.I played my song, and people who hadn’t heard it before joined the song; they found places to hum or thump a hand against their chest.Those with instruments listened to the tune and learned it in the moment, adding their own sound, transforming the song into something new and singular.
When it became clear some people were leaving for the night, I made my way back to my chamber, knowing that I would never again be able to refer to the northern peoples as sea dogs.
When I saw King Arik the following morning for our lessons, I asked his permission to venture outside the palace for the first time.“To somewhere where the land grows untamed,” I said.“I will not be gone long.It is my way to provide for Broder.”
The king looked as if he hadn’t slept for even a moment that night.He probably hadn’t.He nodded and bid two guides attend me: Jorn and a broad-shouldered guard with a glinting axe, with the northern stains covering his forehead and tongue.At first, I was worried to be close to Jorn, seeing as I hadn’t completed my reading with him.I didn’t want to be perceived as impolite, but I also didn’t want him to offer the rest of the reading.These worries were unfounded.Jorn and the guard chatted to each other as they kept to either side of me.We walked down dock after dock, away from the chaos of Aalt, a city I would see more of, but not for some time still.
And then I stepped onto the Land of the Northernmost Star for the first time.
The wind roared to life, wrapping around me, bending silver-dusted firs to near-breaking.Jorn and the guard hushed as the wind surged; the guard even closed his eyes for several moments, seemingly feeling the wind on his face.
My boots sank into the black, damp sand.Red cliffs rose haphazardly to the east as black waves rushed onto shore from the west.My hair snapped in front of my face, and my dress tangled aggressively in my legs, but I carried on.Jorn and the guard trailed after me along the beach until I found a path where the cliffs broke apart and we wandered into the rocky woodlands beyond.I found what I sought: wild thistle.
