Page 211 of The Sun He Buried

“People can be afraid of her and still hold her. Both are allowed.”

He looks at me over the head of the one small creature built to hunt his kind, who’s decided instead to climb his arm.

“A dangerous philosophy,” he says.

He doesn’t put her down.

The tally session starts after the midday meal.

The first strip of blue sky appears while Ketill is explaining why eight bars of vein-silver can’t walk.

I miss the beginning.

The sun has found the high windows.

Real sun.

It cuts through the grey above the pines and lays one bright square across the long table, right over the eastern tally that’s ruined everybody’s week.

Ketill stops talking.

So does everyone else.

The shutters have rattled for so many days that the quiet takes a moment to reach me. Wind still moves around the Hall, but the hard part is gone. Snow falls beyond the glass in slow, thin pieces instead of trying to come through it.

A mine clerk near the window stands.

“The ridge,” he says.

He crosses the room and presses both hands to the sill.

People rise from the benches. A woman near the hearth laughs. Somebody opens one shutter, and cold air pushes through with a smell of pine instead of white nothing.

Ketill looks toward the line of dark trees.

“Watch will have the upper road by morning,” he says. “Lower road a day after, unless the drifts buried the markers.”

Baldr’s hand settles against my back.

“We can travel soon.”

My stomach drops.

That’s not the correct response.

Soon means Sólvik. My room beside his. Salt beyond the windows. Asta complaining about wet sand in the hems of my dresses. The little west dining room and the corner pieces of every honey cake.

Home.

I should be asking how many wagons can make the ridge. I should be smiling.

Instead, I look across the table.

Eirik’s already looking at me.

He breaks eye contact first. His gloved hand moves one tally into the square of sunlight.

“The first wagon goes when the watch clears the markers,” he says.