This was not about Jens right now. Jens who was old enough to go wherever he wished. It was about me. Henrik was waging a battle on my behalf, and I needed to be the focus. For once, selfishly. My future depended on it.
Jens could go anywhere and do anything he wanted. Farther north. Or south. Or east across the Dark Channel.Anywhere.He could leave now if he wanted. At seventeen, he was nearly a man. Close enough. Da would not stop him.
Henrik continued, “Life here...” He gestured around them. “It is hard and only getting harder. The winters keep getting longer and colder. The brigands grow bolder. The battle fires grow closer. We are vulnerable to the Beast’s army in the north, to the king’s soldiers encroaching from the south. It doesn’t matter what side we’re on. They don’t ask our allegiance when infantry and cavalry charge through our village, when deserters from their armies harass and thieve from us.”
Da consumed another spoonful, digesting Henrik’s words along with his meal before he answered, wiping his lips with the back of his hand and nodding slowly. “Life is dangerous here. As it is everywhere.”
I blew out a disgusted breath. There was all manner of danger in the world. If I could choose, I’d much rather face the dangers in the Borg.
“If you want any kind of life for Arden, let her come with us,” Meya spoke up, and I nodded encouragingly, hopefully, willing my father to be persuaded.
He wasn’t budging. “I was born here. Your mother was born here. Your grandparents.” He stood up and moved in his stiff gait toward the bread I’d tossed.
He moved slower lately, his right leg dragging behind him. I didn’t know if it was his hip or his knee that afflicted him. I didn’t know if it was age or the cold or one of the numerous times he’d been kicked by a horse while working in the smithy, but his body was failing him bit by slow bit. He never voiced a complaint, but the evidence was clear to observe.
Bending, he picked up the loaf, dusted it off, and returned to his seat. That was so like him. Prudent. Parsimonious. He was not a man given to waste or squander. Taking a hearty bite, he looked us over resolutely. “Arden stays with me. That is right. I’m her father. Your mother would have wanted that.” He jutted his chin toward Henrik and Meya. “You can go. That is your right. But she stays.”
“No!” I burst out in uncustomary rebellion.
Today continued to be a day of firsts for me. I might not have remembered my mother, but I could not believe she would sentence me to this narrow and fraught existence. A mother would want only the best for her children. And Isstad was not the best for me.
“You’re wrong,” I added on a hot gust of breath. “My mother would not have wanted me to stay here.” I raged on the inside while I trembled like the last leaf of autumn on the outside. “She would want me to go where I have a chance at life. Where I can feel the sun on my skin and be more than some old man’s wife.”
The craggy lines of my father’s face deepened, settling like ruts in a road, hard as stone, and I knew what I must look like to him. A child. A temperamental child throwing a tantrum, not to be taken seriously or indulged.
Henrik and Meya were leaving. Soon Jens would leave, too. I would be left here all alone with Da.
“Now, Arden,” he said, his voice flat, unmoved in the face of my emotion, and that only made the emotion rush hotter to my face. “You like it here. We can go ice fishing—”
“No!” I shook my head. I didn’t want his comfort or bribes to go ice fishing—something I once viewed as a treat to break up the drudgery of my days. There was only one thing I wanted from him, and he wasn’t giving it to me.
“No! No, I don’t like it here! If you really loved me, you would let me go with Henrik and Meya.”
“Enough.” His ruddy features flushed like he had just come in from the cold. I recognized the implacable look to him. There would be no changing his mind. “You’re my daughter. You stay with me. That is right.” He looked to my brother, his dark eyes glittering, ready to battle, but it would not come to that. Henrik was a good, obedient son—my father’s favorite. Henrik would not steal me away, even if I begged it of him. “You need to make your own path in this life with Meya andwithoutthe burden of another. A fresh start is what every husband and wife deserves. That is fair.”
Fair.
The word choked me alongside that other most hated word—burden.
I was aburden.
The burden my father would spare my brother and Meya from assuming. I’d never felt so unwanted...so unloved. Da was concerned about fairness. Fairness to Henrik and Meya. But no thought was given to me and what might be fair for me.
Meya stared at me, mouthing the words,I’m sorry.
It was too much. I didn’t want her apology. I wanted to go with her. I wanted my freedom—to leave this cursed village behind. There was no future for me here. Why could Da not see that?
With a strangled cry, I flung open the heavy wood door of our cottage and rushed out into the bitter night, sucking in a shocked breath at the sudden change in temperature.
The last few days had been the coldest of the season—today the coldest yet. Everybody said so. The old ones belabored how they’d never felt a cold like this.
My body felt it, too. My breathing fell shallow, skin instantly contracting, blood thickening, moving sluggishly through my veins like syrup. It was the kind of cold that had people covering every inch of their skin, leaving no extremity bare before braving the elements. Except me.
I foolishly left my heavy coat behind as I fled into the clawing wind. And yet not even this freezing night prompted me to turn back.
Briefly, I considered going to see Linnea. At this hour, her family would be sitting down to dinner. They were simple people, eking out a bare-bones existence. Her father was a potter. He crafted pitchers, bowls, plates, jugs. As skilled as he was in his trade, he was required to travel, venturing far out to other villages and towns to sell and barter his goods, leaving Linnea and her brother and mother home alone to manage their meager farm.
Here, everyone devoted long hours preparing for the winter and then surviving it when it struck, holding us clamped in its teeth for the better part of a year. Such was life in the north. Our growing season was short-lived, but we made the best of it, harvesting and preserving our food: drying and pickling vegetables and berries, salting and smoking fish and venison and boar.
