The aftermath of the equinox was visible on every Norsern face the following morning as Mira wandered around looking for Fell, a little frustrated that he had not come home before daybreak. Chairs and goblets lay overturned in the browning grass. The hot pools were tinted red with goats’ blood. Half-naked people were scattered everywhere, many having lain together the night before and taken enough wine to dull the crisp morning air. Everyone stumbled around, walking slowly, and rubbing their heads.

Dania had likely been up for hours, as her little ones usually woke before the sun. She looked exhausted but happy, humming as she fed the boys and grinning when Mira came to sit with her by the fire.

“How did you find the equinox?” said Dania with a knowing smile.

Mira struggled to find the right words. Finally, she decided to say, “I have not seen something like it before.”

Dania laughed, and they braided each other’s hair once the children were fed and sleepily playing with kindling. Mira kept her eyes open for Fell, but she did not see him all morning.

He must be fishing already, she thought.

She saw Rowan stumbling out of the woods, seeming very confused about everything, causing another round of laughter amongst the Northerners. Instead of looking sour about it, he joined them. The boy’s face was still covered in goat’s blood, though it was smudged and crumbling in many places and as he laughed, even more flaked away. He found Mira and Dania by the fire and collapsed beside them, taking Mira’s waterskin without asking and chugging as much of it as he could in one breath.

Dania smirked at him. “And how was your evening?”

Rowan furrowed his brows and laughed. “It was the strangest night of my life. I cannot begin to explain it.”

Dania said, “I have had the mushrooms before. It is different for everyone, but I know some of what you saw.”

And some of what you did. Mira thought back to the blond girl she saw with him in the woods and Myret’s secret words to him.

The blond he’d lain with the night before came and found him sitting by the fire. She took him by the hand and led him away, and Mira’s earlier frustration reappeared with a vengeance.

“Do you know that girl?” Mira asked Dania, trying not to give her feelings about the woman away.

“Yes. Fyrrah. She’s the daughter of Cnaeet, the horse-tamer.” Dania raised her eyebrows. “You are jealous of her?”

“No.”

She giggled. “Yes, you are. Even a blind woman would see that.”

Am I? Mira wondered. Does it matter? No, it didn’t. She was with Fell there in the North and happy about it, and if she were back home in the south, she would be with Loric. She and Rowan would never be, could never have been. Mira knew this in her bones, but it still made her sad to admit it. Rowan was the first boy she had ever wanted, though, at the time, she hadn’t understood what it was she wanted from him.

Mira told Dania of the time Rowan saved the farm child, and of the many days they played together as children, and how she would daydream of him when she was young. His dark black hair, his green eyes, his arms thick from hammering steel. Rowan’s reaction when Loric kissed her—when Fell spoke about their child.

It felt good to speak the truth to someone, to let it all out. Mira was crying by the end of it, and Dania took both of Mira’s hands in her own. “Your secrets are safe with me, my sister.”

The groggy quiet that came right after the children ate ended quickly, and they became tired of sitting in one place, so Mira and Dania followed them around, petting the goats and throwing pebbles into the sea. By nightfall, Fell had still not returned, and Mira fell asleep early and alone in their furs. If she had not been so tired from growing a life within herself, she likely would have stayed the night awake and trembling, terrified that something awful had befallen Fell.

She dreamt of him. He swam with the whales without her. He was laughing, and when he spoke, the whales understood him. Mira dreamt that the sea itself did as he commanded. In the dream, he knew this, but he did not ask it to do anything, preferring to let it be as it wanted to be.

***

Mira did not see Fell for three days.

She grew ill with worry and went to where he tied his fishing boat. It was there, empty. She wandered through the village, asking after him. Dania had not seen him. Because Gorn worked at the hearth in the center of town, he usually knew the gossip. When Mira asked, he’d heard nothing.

Bjinn’s response was hard to hear.

“Calm down,” he said. “What will you do when he’s gone raiding for two, maybe three, moons?”

Sigyn laughed. “He is probably on a mushroom quest.”

Mira was utterly unimpressed with the man’s answer. “A what?”

“A mushroom quest. Sometimes when you eat them, you suddenly know there is something you must do, sometimes you have to look for something, or there is something that is not real… I once followed a fawn for two days only to find….”

Mira stopped listening as she could tell Sigyn’s answer was not going to be of any help. Though, her ears focused on the last few words: “It was a child of Egil.”

“What was?”

“The fawn.”

“I think I do not understand the meaning of this: child of Egil.”

“It is something that is an illusion. Something you see but cannot feel, or feel but cannot hold, or hold but not keep.” Sigyn was not good with words.

Mira went to Myret in a panic. “I cannot find Fell; he has been gone for too long; something is wrong. He is hurt or lost or—”

Myret said, “When did you see him last?”

“When he was with you at the equinox.”

“I would not worry. He is strong and more clever than he lets people see. He is fine.” Myret could tell that her words were not soothing. “You could ask the stones if you do not believe me.”

For two days, Mira was either having a fit or recovering from one. She walked the routes in the woods she knew Fell liked and grew frustrated by how calm everyone was when she told them Fell had not come home. Inga said, “Sometimes men need air. When he’s had his fill, he will be back. Do you not trust him?”

Inga spoke gently and earnestly, but Mira wanted to slap her.

In her desperation, Mira took out the casting stones. This confused her as she did not believe they could reveal truth—how could rocks know something that she did not? They couldn’t. It was nonsense. Still, she pulled a handful out and looked at the little green pieces in her palm. They appeared a little cross. Oh sure. Now that you need us, you give us attention.

Tell me where Fell is, and maybe I’ll take you seriously, Mira promised as she rattled them around in her hand and tossed them to the floor.

He is fighting.

That is all. There was no one else in the reading, no one he was fighting with, no place where the fight was taking place; there was just fighting. Mira went to where the warriors trained. Fell was not there.

On the third day, late in the evening, when Mira was trying desperately to find sleep but was being peeled apart by the idea that maybe he would never come back, Fell returned. He tore his clothes off immediately and moved to have her, kissing her.

“Where were you?” she said, with a vicious amount of fury in her voice.

He laughed at her and pressed his hardness against her thigh.

“It’s not funny!” Mira pushed him away.

“Maybe to you, it is not.”

“No! You left for days. You didn’t tell me anything—”

“You were sleeping when I left. It is bad to wake vaneurigk. All Norsern know this.” Fell’s voice softened, and he took her face in his hands. “You are right. I did not think it all the way to the end. I am sorry. Can you forgive me?” There was a hint of a smirk as he said this and a slight lift in his eyebrows.

Mira wanted to stay angry, but she couldn’t. His smile was too contagious. “Where did you go?”

Fell took his time choosing his next words. “Hyrold only takes the brave into his great halls. When a Norser feels fear, he must find a way to take it out of himself... he must walk with the fear and hear what it has to say. I felt fear, so I knew I must go… to remove it.”

Mira took his face into her hands. “What were you afraid of?”

He smiled, and she knew he did not want to tell her. “Many things. I feared the birth of this child.” He touched her stomach. “Your pain, the things that I have seen happen to vaneurigk as they give birth. I feared being a bad father. I feared…” He laughed in embarrassment, looking down at his hands. Mira gently turned his face back to her own, prompting him to continue. “I feared that still, after everything, spring will come, and you will say to me: I want to go back to my country.”

“And you are not afraid of these things anymore?”

“Almost.” He rubbed her stomach, which was just beginning to swell. “In time, I will face them all.”

“I’m not afraid of any of these things.”

He laughed his beautiful, treacherous laugh. “Of course you are not.”

Mira noticed a new blue-green stain on his ribcage, an intricate pattern. The skin looked tender around it. “You will be a good father,” she said.

“I won’t know whether I am good or not. Fathers cannot tell these things.”

“But I will know.” Mira kissed him. “And I will tell you.”

“I am sorry,” he said again.

Something tickled the back of Mira’s mind as she nuzzled in closer to him, breathing in the smell that had been absent for days. “Did you fight anyone while you were gone?”

Fell frowned. “No.”

As I expected, Mira thought. The casting stones are nonsense.

These were thoughts Mira would come to curse.