“It is,” he said.
For good measure, I drank a little more.
Dania arrived with her boys.Hald was crying.
“What has happened?”Inga said to him in a tone that implied she was taking his misery just as seriously as she would take adult misery, and not as if he was a small child who cried about fifteen foolish things each day.I’d seen him cry because he pushed grass between the floorboards in the palace and it was lost forever to the sea.I’d seen him cry because he wanted a broken eggshell put back together, good as new.I’d seen him cry because he wanted Dania to stop singing.
“I want to see a bear,” Hald said.
“We can surely find a bear,” Inga said.
Layf picked his nose and then offered what he acquired on the tip of his finger to Dania.She pulled a cloth from her pocket and took the booger from him no questions asked.
I felt like I might throw up, and my face must have shown that because she scowled at me.“Mira, I am having one of those days where I hate Eggun for leaving me with all of this, and I cannot deal with one more sour thing, so you must fix your face.”
“More mead for Owl Face and a bear hunt for the rest of us!”said Sigyn.
I felt certain the day was going to drag with the crying children, and glaring Dania, and Catseye and Fell looking at each other, but I was entirely wrong.Hald cried only a little longer as everyone pointed out cloth bears and carved bears and bear teeth for sale.He explained he wanted to see a real bear, and Dania reminded him that bears lived in the forest, not in the city, but the child insisted he’d heard one earlier.
It was Fell who stopped us all with a loud, “Ah!This will be worth our attention!”
We all shuffled through the crowd to see what he was pointing at.Two men and a woman were hanging rich, colourful silks from posts freshly planted in the ground.Their clothing was odd and bright, made of mismatched fabrics.
They’d brought two carts with them.One seemed normal enough, but the other was covered with purple silk, and from inside, there was a frightening noise.A low rumbling sound I’d never heard before.I didn’t need anyone to tell me it was an animal beneath the silk—my stomach told me.
Fell said, “I will fetch more drinks.What do we think?Three skins?Four?”
“Five, in case they run out later.”
“Ah!Very well.I shall return.”And he was gone through the crowd.Sigyn, Daal, and Inga huddled in a little circle, smoking from what looked like a flute, offering some to Dania and myself.
“I think you may not like it?”Dania said.“It is stronger than mead.”
So I stood, holding each of the children with one hand, worried to lose them in the crowd that flowed around us as Dania joined their little flute circle.
“You are breathing without me?”Fell said as he returned with his arms full of leather skins.
Before our companions could do anything more than giggle, one of the men setting up silks shouted, “We are Egil’s children!”
Quickly, those who’d gathered to watch formed a circle around the three performers and the little platform they had built.The Norsern were much taller than the Islish on average, and I struggled to see beyond the shoulders that pressed into us from all sides.Fell and Sigyn pushed our group a little forward, so the boys and myself could see.
Egil’s sons were placing their sister into a tiny crate by the time I could see them again; the crate was much too small for a person to fit inside, but somehow she did.They closed the top, and one brother sat upon the crate as it shifted around, the woman inside trying to get free.The other brother asked a young girl from the crowd to come forward and blow wind onto the box, and when they opened it, their sister was gone.
Everyone looked around in shock and found the sister was standing among them in the crowd.She looked angry as she hurried to her place on the platform, raising her hands in the air, earning a chorus of laughter.She had—without her brothers knowing it—bound their ankles and wrists, and now they couldn’t move.She tried to fit them into the crate, even though they were far too big.She made silly faces as she forced one in and then the other.The second brother did not let go of her wrist and pulled her into the box as well.The top closed after them.Click.
I had no sense of how the siblings did what they were doing, but quickly lost my sour mood from earlier in the wonder of it.
I don’t want it to be over, I thought.
My wish was granted as one brother climbed out of the chest wearing completely different clothing than before he went in.His face was covered in a black mask with holes cut for his eyes.The second brother came forth, also wearing different clothes.And then a third person came out, only it wasn’t their sister.It was another man, even taller than the first two.
“She has changed into a life thrower!”shrieked one of the children in the crowd.
The man shouted back at the child.“Nay!I have always been a life thrower!I was never a wombed being.”
Their sister climbed out, and everyone was in awe.
Was the third man hiding in the chest the whole time?I wondered.My goldkeeper’s mind was spinning.How much gold could be hidden with such a trick?With such a chest?The chest looked too small for one grown person, let alone four.
