I was tired of Fell’s constant return to the subject.I didn’t want to be annoyed with him, but he kept asking, and I kept being annoyed.
“Fine,” I huffed.
So Fara and I sat on the beach one sunny day in early summer, watching as Fell and Rowan trained—stopping and explaining themselves many times over.
“See, he keeps his legs apart like this, so it is harder to push him over?”
“See the shield raises too high, leaving the stomach open?”
“Every person has a place where their weight balances.Deep-voiced, life throwers usually hold their balance up high.Where the heart is.High-voiced, life catchers hold their balance lower, where the womb is.”
Fara’s company had become less bothersome to me by then.Rowan was brutally and obviously in love with her, and she had a way of rubbing oil on Halvar’s forehead that relaxed him miraculously.His little eyes would roll back with the pleasure of it, and he would remain more still than at any other time.Fara didn’t seem to mind continuing the action for the entirety of a conversation.
As we watched, I complained about Fell, about the grotesqueness of his interest in me fighting.Of knowing his previous lover was a raider who could probably do the very things he was trying to teach me.
“He is only… sensing, no?”The wind tugged her bright, white hair around her sharp collarbone.“Things are going to change soon.Every decent reader I have spoken to has seen the white elk slick with blood?—”
“I have seen that,” I said, my back straightening.“When I was learning to read stones.”
She laughed.“So then you know.”
I shook my head.“It meant nothing to me?—”
“It comes to my dreams sometimes,” Fara said.“It walks, and its legs are so strong that the world turns beneath its hooves, becoming something new… sort of how a spinning wheel transforms wool into thread.”
I was distracted by a gurgle from Halvar.“Hello,” I said to him.“Are you awake now?”His eyes rolled again as perhaps a smile came onto his face.His expressions were lumpy and half-formed at the time.He smacked his lips.
Fara continued.“I am able to see—you might think I am crazy, or let us not jest, you already think I am crazy.”She laughed.“So I need not soften my accounts.There are currents in the world that twist and pull energy… I do not think Fell sees them with his eyes as I do, but he is sensitive to them.He steps out of their way or follows them to their end.Unhappy people stand in their way and try not to be tugged along.Sometimes the currents speak to me.They were how I knew I was going to love Rowan.I saw a current, and it said that if I entered, I would meet myskaelquickly.It said, to follow it, I must keep my eyes open for someone in pain, that I would be able to alleviate that pain.I walked through the streets, and when I saw Rowan, I knew.That is how the gods work, you see?They never tell you the whole tale.Just the first portion: go here, look for that, listen for this, notice.Only after you have finished the task will you be shown the next.”
I shrugged.It wasn’t the craziest thing I’d heard in the north.
“And deeper breaths, through the nose, they make it easier for the gods to show you?—”
Fell interrupted.“Mira, come, I will show you how to hold the shield.”
I sighed and stood.“You are fine with holding him?”I said to Fara, leaving Halvar with her before properly hearing her answer.
“Of course.”
I approached Fell and Rowan as Fell offered his shield to me.I reached for it, but apparently, even that I did wrong.
“Other hand,” Fell said.
“This is my better one,” I said.
“Yes.So that one will hold your blade.”
I sighed again and reached for the shield with my left hand, sliding my arm into the arm band and gripping the leather inside as I’d seen others do when training.Fell adjusted my fingers, and I must have been glaring at him because Rowan laughed.
“Someone does not like being told what to do,” he said.
“I don’t want to fight anyone,” I said in Islish.
Rowan shrugged, just like a Norser.“Sometimes you don’t get to choose.”
“Here, yes,” Fell said.“Now feet apart, and—” He was standing behind me, his arms gently holding my arms, his legs tucked behind mine.How I loved his smell.
He raised my shield arm slowly, showing me.“The range of it, you feel it?And if your right side is threatened, you turn a little, like this.”He turned the pair of us, so my left shoulder was facing out, and most of my torso was between the shield and him.“Keep yourself small, curled in so more is covered.This is easy for you.You are small—” He waved at Rowan.“Strike.”And then, to me, he said, “This way you can feel the weight of a blow.And pretend to pull out your weapon just before each strike.All the skill does not matter if drawing is not an instinct.”
