I did not wish to impose on Linnea and her family. It would put them in the awkward position of either welcoming me to their meager table or turning me away. Her parents were good people. I would save them that mortification.
Besides, the notion of solitude suited me just fine right now.
My boots pounded out an angry rhythm on the well-trod path of mud and snow that cut down the center of town, carrying me past the brown blur of rough, wood-hewn buildings with their spirals of smoke curling from chimneys.
I should have gone to Linnea, though.
Would that I had turned back and knocked on her door insteadof heading into the woods and the fate that awaited me there. I could have relaxed warm and cozy before the welcoming heat of Linnea’s fire and spared myself.
And yet I did not.
I dove into the woods, seeking solace there...and found something else instead.
My dress was made of heavy wool, but it offered no real protection, slapping against my stocking-clad legs, letting the frigid air creep beneath my skirts. Still, I pressed on, running until saliva flooded my mouth and my breath crashed in my ears as I fled into the wild—into cold that sliced sharply at the exposed skin of my face.
I always felt at home in the woods—the bitter cold not so very bitter to me.
My constitution was sturdy. The yeomen who spent so much time in the fields and orchards bore the effects of their time outdoors. Skin weathered, tough as the hard-skinned husk of a nut, chronically pink and chafed from the wind. Not me, though. In the clawing press of naked trees and cutting wind and piles of thick, suffocating snow, I felt only marginally chilled.
My father always remarked on it rather proudly—that I was good northern stock, born to withstand the elements better than others, better than most. A sign in his mind, I supposed, that I was meant to be here. That I was like him. I think that’s secretly what parents wanted—to see themselves in their offspring. The reflection somehow validating, a sign from nature that they were worth something...worth replicating.
Admittedly, his pride in me was something that had always made me feel special—my ability to withstand the chronic winter something that set me apart,abovefrom everyone else. It went to my head. Especially when I overheard Da boasting about me to friends.
Althoughspecialwas not always good.
Not if it meant unusual.
It was one of those blurred lines you had to be careful aboutcrossing. Be different enough to be special, but not so different they called you a freak. My toes most definitely edgedoverthat line. I grimaced.
My eyes only added to my...uniqueness. One a blue, deep as the magistrate’s cobalt cloak he proudly wore about town, and the othernot. My left eye lacked pigment, glittering a silvery-gray, like the icy landscape after a winter storm. Another trait that was remarked upon, but not favorably and not by Da. Indeed, this is where he ceased to boast. He ignored that part of me—a reality he pretended did not exist. As though ignoring it made it not a real thing.
My eyes were a defect. An anomaly. The other children would point and jeer at me and call me ugly names. The snowballs they tossed at me between invectives especially lacked kindness. Meya, the closest thing to a mother I had, explained to me that children were cruel, and I could expect better of them in the future...when they grew into adults and developed a heart. Cold comfort when I was not yet an adult.
Linnea was my only friend in possession of a heart. She told me I was beautiful and that my eyes were beautiful. More than what my own wretched brother did for me. Jens poked fun at me—although less so in recent years. He had matured enough to stop making gagging sounds when he sat across from me at the table. When he was younger, his face would scrunch up in disgust at the sight of me across from him each morning over our bowls of porridge.
My eyes marked me as different, and different was not celebrated.
Different was feared and met with disdain.
Another reason I wanted to leave. I felt, if notunsafe, certainly not in the best position as I went about my life here among people who viewed me with misgiving. At least in someplace bigger, like the Borg, I would not stand out so much. There would be a sea of people—all manner of people. I would not draw much attention, strange eyes or not.
I could believe Meya—that the adults in Isstad were better than the children—except last week, a mother on market day took onelook at me and flinched before gripping the hand of her child and moving hastily on, giving me a wide berth. As though I was a contagion.
It was a difficult thing to be brought up in a place where your neighbors and friends—even some of your family—never fully accepted you and looked at you with a faintly curled lip.
Meya and Henrik told me to just ignore them, that everything would be fine in time. I no longer believed that.
I’d lived here my whole life. Fourteen years. How much more time did my neighbors, my community, need? No. Nothing would ever change here. I was a daughter of the north. The blacksmith’s daughter with the freakish eyes. My role was defined. From the day I was born my duty was to my family, to toil alongside my father in the smithy, to help in our garden, to hunt and fish with my brothers. And I had done all that. I continued to doallthat.
One day my duty would transfer to a husband and the children I would produce. That was the expectation, what I had been taught since birth. I would toil and breed and serve my family until the day I died.
That was the pattern. The standard.
I longed to break free.
Why should rejecting this life be so impossible, so very stigmatizing? There were women who took other paths. I’d seen the sword maidens who served the Lord of the Borderlands once, riding into our village after we suffered a raid.
I had been just a girl, but I recalled those women, so strong and splendid atop their mounts as they dragged the bandits they’d captured on ropes behind them, asking us to identify them. When we confirmed they were the ones who had raided and killed two of our own, justice had been swift. Those fierce women had executed them on the spot.
