Beautiful Wreck by Larissa Brown Page A

elsewhere while he waited for the ripples.
    “I don’t know.”
    It was the truth. I didn’t know anything about how I’d come.
    He nodded. He looked at me again, looked into my eyes for a moment that was too brief. His half smile returned. “Have you seen the woods?” He raised his chin.
    I turned around to follow his gaze and gasped. I had been staring at him, watching him work, looking down into the grassy slopes of his farm, and all the while behind me was Hvítmörk. A glorious, heart-stopping forest stretching for miles, farther than I could see. From up here, the woods stirred, alive with a thousand whispers and breezes. Mysterious and lush, a place for elves and land spirits to live, for children and lovers to hide. The canopy gleamed, dark and glossy from above, but the slanting light of afternoon reached the interior and lit the woods with a haunting white glow. Oh. I was looking at a million trees, every one of them a silver birch.
    “Oh, Heirik,” I whispered. “Your woods are beautiful.”
    I turned back to him wanting to see his smile again, but found him considering his ax blade. “Go to Hildur,” he told me, the lightness gone. “She will have you work.” He walked away.

SPINNING
    It was to be the last time I’d use his name. Hildur made that clear soon enough.
    We sat atop a grassy wall that was pleasantly heated by the sun. It was a rock and turf circle that enclosed the stables, no more than fifty feet from the back door of the house.
    There were five of us women and Ranka, like birds in a line. We’d helped each other get up to the top, which was just about my chest height. A pretty girl named Svana clasped her hands for me to step on. Her fingers were so slender and white, I was sorry to plant my damp leather boot on them. She just smiled and then climbed up on the next girl’s hands in turn. When she met me up top she was a little breathless, and she laughed and brushed my cheek, sweeping off something, some twig or dirt that clung to my face.
    “Have you never climbed a wall, Woman?”
    Even Hildur, at twice my age and around four foot ten, climbed up in a heartbeat. The whole time, she maintained an air of strict superiority.
    Keeper of the keys. I learned Hildur was mistress of all that happened inside the house and everything women touched and made. Every ounce of spun fiber, every slab of fish and drop of ale were hers to demand or deny. I knew intellectually that this was how it was done, that a woman ran the house and a man the farm, but they were usually married. I guessed Hildur was about fifty. I thought she was much too old for the chief.
    She had not grown tired, though, with decades of work, nor plump or doughy. Not overly kind like a fairytale grandma, either. She was short, slim, and sinewy. Her eyes were quick and dark under a severe arrangement of graying blond braids, and her expression flashed rapidly and frequently from exasperated to resigned to mirthful. It seemed she could be funny as well as fierce. And as far as I could tell, she ran a perfectly functioning, huge and prosperous house. She and Heirik made an oddly matched set of tough strategists with changing eyes. Together with him, Hildur ruled this place.
    She was smart. I was sure she could see me calculating, wondering.
    “You will call him Herra,” she told me. Chief. “No one uses his name.” She nodded to herself, checking that off her list of the many things I needed to learn.
    In a sideways manner, Hildur had welcomed me. She’d watched me put on the new socks and boots I was given. I wrapped and tied the leather with little hitch knots, and Hildur, without breaking her sewing stride, glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. I wondered if this was not an alright way to tie my shoes. Finally she said, “We have enough.” Meaning, I could keep them.
    She’d also made it quite clear that I would work immediately. Today, I would re-learn how to spin, considering that I must have known and lost the