“Truly, Mira,says who?”
The conversation was making me feel worse in every way.There is nothing left inside me for anything to come out.This is a darker truth I now know with certainty.There are things that, if silenced in youth, remain silenced for all a person’s life.Waking even one silenced part can take years, so if too much is buried, it cannot all be unearthed in a single lifetime.
The music soared, and my fingers wanted to soar with it, to tap on the table’s edge.
I held steady.
“You are utterly ridiculous,” Dania said with genuine malice in her voice.“Come, sit here.”She grasped my shoulder and took me to a table that was low to the floor.Three Norsern were gathered around it, chatting and drinking.Dania sat as well and spoke to them.
“I have a plan,” she said.“They have agreed.You are to play a game with us.It is simple—” The Norsern around the table were speedily clearing their empty plates, and one had gone to fetch new goblets.They were laughing as well in a way that I found… suspicious.I felt left out again.More so than before.
“Everyone has an empty cup, see?And a full one.There, you have your two.And there will be a little… well, they call it anegg, but it’s not actually an egg.One person will throw it into someone else’s cup.That person can catch it or swipe to send it away.If it gets in either of your cups, you must drink—a big gulp.Then you can throw the egg into someone else’s cup.Understand?When your full cup has emptied, you flip it upside down so everyone knows you’re halfway through.Then your empty cup gets filled and you keep playing with one cup.When that one is empty—because you’ve drunk it all—it also flips upside down.You can keep throwing the egg, mind you, so you’ve lost but you’re not out of the game, and you haven’t really lost as you’ve had your mead.All’s clear?”
“Uhh…” I hadn’t played a game with throwing since I was maybe seven, but I was a little pleased by the idea of being included in something, especially something that didn’t seem to require much talking.I could manage very few complete phrases in Norsern, so I found attempted conversations extremely draining.“I think so…”
“Good, look.Eydis says you may go first, have a throw.”
A woman with so many gold bracelets on her arms it looked like she had metal sleeves between her wrists and elbows, set a tiny, white ball on the table before me.
“Throw it into someone’s cup.”
Everyone looked at me expectantly.
“How am I to choose?”I said, afraid of offending someone for choosing them if that were bad or not choosing them if it were good.
“Whoever you want.”
“Uhh—”
“Quickly now, Mira.Part of the game is that you go quickly.”
With everyone watching, I played safely, tossing the “egg” toward Dania’s empty cup.She swiped it out of the air and plopped it into my full cup.She smiled.“Drækker.That means drink.”
I picked the egg out of my cup and raised the drink to my lips.
“Ah!”A man whose eyelids were painted black shook his head and growled.He pointed at my drink.
“He says you’ve taken not enough.You must try for a fair-sized drink, or it will seem you’re playing tricky, hoping to drink less for an advantage.If you start playing tricky, someone else will play tricky too.And—I’m adding this part, he did not say it—you will stand no chance if you get them playing with tricks.Keep the game, how you say…höegin,um… don’t sail your first time in a storm.Drækker.”
I drank, and I attempted Dania’s cup again.She was to my right and I was afraid of all the others at the table.Again, she caught it and dropped it into my cup.
“You cannot always choose me.And also, you’re supposed to try to stop it from landing in your cup.”
I had tried, only I was very slow, and I’d only just begun to lift my arms when a splash of mead let me know the egg had landed.
“Faster, Mira.This is a game.It’s supposed to keep rolling.Like the sea.”
I took my drink and held the egg, looking from person to person at the table, trying to figure out who to throw it to.
The woman to my left—Eydis, I reminded myself—growled and held her palm open.
“She says we will go a few times so you can see.It’s a fast game, Mira.You must act fast.”
I gave the egg over and watched as it was tossed and caught and tossed and caught and slapped away seven or eight times before it landed in a cup.The drink was quick, and the ball was moving again.I flinched each time I thought it was coming for me, which was most times—I had a terrible sense for distance and speed back then.Each flinch brought my hands closer to my cups, until eventually, I had my palms hovering over my cups to protect them.
A sharp pain came from nowhere.One of the men at the table had flicked my knuckles with a growl.Three conversations happened at once.
Eydis shouted at the man who’d flicked me, poking him in the cheek, hard.
