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Cleve said whilst they walked along the beach, the water occasionally flowing over their feet, “I can’t let Chessa remain here. She gave herself for Kiri. I must think of some way to get her back.”
“Aye,” Rorik said over his shoulder. “Cease picking at yourself, Cleve. We’ll get her back.”
“I’ll kill that mangy little bastard,” Merrik said, rubbing his hands together. “But I do want a bath first and enough food to fill up all the cracks in my belly.”
Gunleik said, “I told you she is like Mirana. Strong. Aye, and she has guile, just as Mirana does.”
“You used to curse that Mirana gave you your gray hair, Gunleik,” Rorik said.
“Aye, she did. She’ll give you gray hair as well.”
Cleve listened to the men. The emptiness in him grew. He hated it.
That evening the men camped along a rock inlet some miles north along the coast. They were clean, well garbed again, and hadn’t stopped eating.
To Cleve’s astonishment, Kiri refused food. He himself cut up a piece of roasted pheasant. She just shook her head.
“What is this? I’m with you again. I’m safe. I’m here. Eat.”
“Papa isn’t here.”
“What are you talking about, Kiri?”
Rorik moved to sit next to Kiri. He pulled her onto his lap. The fire was warm, the smell of the pheasant sweeter than a virgin’s mouth, Hafter had said, smacking his lips.
“I don’t understand this,” Cleve said. “Kiri looks as well fed as a little stoat. Why did she begin to eat again when she started starving herself the eighth day?”
“The truth of the matter, Cleve,” Rorik said, “is that Kiri now has two papas.”
“What?”
“We couldn’t get her to eat. She was becoming skinny as a pole, wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t do anything. You know her way. We tried everything.”
“Aye,” Gunleik said. “I even whittled a knife for her, but she wouldn’t touch it.”
“Finally Chessa said she’d had enough. She told Kiri that she would be her second papa when you weren’t about. I don’t know everything she told her, but the next morning, Kiri ate an entire bowl of Utta’s porridge. Then the two of them went off together. Chessa carried a huge cloth filled with food. When they returned to the longhouse that afternoon, Kiri was smiling. All the food was gone.”
Rorik sighed then. “By the gods, I let Chessa convince me that Kiri would fade away into a ghost, thus I let the two of them come with us. Aye, she said over and over that Kiri would stop eating again if she didn’t see her first papa very soon, that if they didn’t come, Kiri would believe Chessa had lied to her, and starve herself again. I had no choice, Cleve. By Thor’s axe, I’m sorry.”
Cleve looked into the fire, looked at the hissing and spitting pheasant, two of them still on thin long sticks. One of the sticks was beginning to burn. He didn’t want that pheasant to fall into the flames. He said nothing, merely leaned forward and pulled it off.
“Papa, what are you going to do?”
“Maybe Chessa will decide she wants to marry Ragnor.”
His daughter gave him a disgusted look.
“I agree,” he said, and pulled off a wing only to burn his fingers. He yowled.
Merrik took the pheasant and laid it reverently on a rock to cool. “I would have broken your jaw if you’d dropped it in the dirt,” he said matter-of-factly.
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Cleve said finally, “If I get her back, Kiri, will you promise me you’ll eat right now? Some of that pheasant that your uncle is watching like a vulture?”
The little girl studied his face. She touched his golden beard. Finally, she stretched out two fingers and pulled off some meat. “Papa’s meat tastes good too,” she said when she’d swallowed.
“But I don’t cook—”
