Beautiful Wreck by Larissa Brown

it this time—was tied out of the way with a strip of leather, and his temples showed slick with sweat.
    He worked in linen pants and a thigh-length shirt. No, it was two shirts, layered like Jeff’s old t-shirts. They covered him completely from his throat down to a pair of leather gauntlets on his wrists. Not the romanticized version of a horn-helmeted warrior, the chief was big and lean and powerfully built from hard work in the sun. I was lulled by the changing curves of his shoulder blades as he worked. The elegant flow of muscle and bone under linen, so far beyond the reach of any programmer’s skill.
    I shaded my eyes to watch, and the hem of my dress fluttered and caught in the grass. A quiet moment alone with him. It felt natural.
    He stood up, dragging one hand across his forehead and the black strands that stuck there, looking as though he’d half forgotten about me. He had, I think, and he was bewildered and freshly annoyed at the idea of me. I had been soothed by the sun and breeze and his rhythmic work, but now that lurking dread came again.
    I was lost. Stranded in a place where no elegantly curved Viking ship could take me home. At the mercy of a man who held his own family—every woman and child in the house—in fear and awe. What would he do with me? Scenarios flashed through my mind. Wind and rain whipping at me, cast out alone in the wilds of Iceland, or working on the farm, a slave. Bringing him his food, slipping the boots from his feet at night. What else might he want? Whether he threw me away or kept me, I would have little choice.
    Then those gold eyes fixed on me.
    “Heirik Rakknason,” he said of himself, without extending a hand.
    Two boys fluttered around him, picking up his task where he’d left off. Heirik stepped away from the fire, and clearly I was supposed to follow. He crossed his arms over his chest and settled in to stand and talk.
    “I take care of this family, this land.”
    I looked past him and down into a stunning valley, where smoke from small fires climbed the air currents. Cows grazed randomly, like in a children’s book.
    “Hello Heirik,” I said, amazed at how small my voice sounded, The hard A up front, the softly rolled R. “I’m Ginn.”
    I tried out my name. Like my skirts, soft and mysteriously new.
    I was afraid I’d be unable to look away from his birthmark. But I looked at him head-on, and in an instant it was as if the mark dissolved and I saw only him. His face was as sharp and breathtaking as I remembered from the coast.
    He kept his arms folded tight, but he repeated “Ginn,” and a fleeting lightness lifted his voice. My name seemed to turn his eyes to honey, and a smile played at one corner of his mouth. It lit there for only an instant and was gone.
    The forge stood uphill from the house, and he looked into the distance, down into the valley, in a direction I thought was the sea. A chill breeze came up and lifted the loose strands of hair from his face. He was head of a huge household and farm. Probably two dozen people lived in the big house alone. He was young, not much older than me, but still in this time and place he would have a family, a wife and kids already. He no doubt counted farmers, fishermen, hunters and traders among the extended family whose land and huts sprawled in this valley and on the slopes of surrounding hills. He was bound to protect and lead them. What I amounted to was a small irritation. He needed to decide what to do with me, so he could move on to the next challenges of the day.
    He smelled like fire and leather.
    He took a deep breath, as though he knew this would go nowhere but he just had to ask. Looking out over the grassy vista he said, to the air as much as me, “What happened to you, Ginn?” The bracers at his wrists were tied with leather strips, and with his right hand he began loosening the laces of the left. It was as though he cast the question out like a stone in a pond, and then focused his eyes