I’d watched in awe, feeling no horror at the brutal execution. Those scoundrels had coldly killed a defenseless man and his young son, who had been doing nothing more than tilling theirfield on the outskirts of the village. I had welcomed the bandits’ end, applauding the warriors who possessed the power to mete out such justice.
The sight of those women inspired me. For the first time, I recognized I could be something other than the blacksmith’s daughter.
Something other than a wife to the man chosen for me.
Somethingother.
Vague and amorphous, yes, but I wanted that with a bone-deep certainty. To be something else than what I was here.
I laughed hoarsely into the lashing cold. It shouldn’t be so impossible when I had a way out with Henrik and Meya. If only Da would relent. If only he would give up on the idea of his daughter of good northern stock marrying a man of good northern stock and producing offspring of good northern stock.
I pushed on stubbornly, sinking into snowdrifts that reached my knees as though I could outrun my fate. My future husband would likely be old enough to be my father, with a face carved from wind and cold and time. Body bent and broken from hardship. Hands thick and gnarled as an old oak with roots buried deep into the ground. I would have to submit to those hands, and I felt sick at the thought, bile rising in my throat.
I didn’t remember my mother—my motherwithmy father, together. That,them, was not a page in the book of my memories. They were not an example I could point to and think,There...that is how a proper couple behaves.But I knew. I knew that marriage didn’t have to be a prison. It could be something good if I was given a choice in it. Henrik and Meya were proof of that.
They’d lived with us as husband and wife for over a year now, sleeping in the bedroom across from mine. I’d watched them every day. The exchange of smiles and knowing glances. The subtle, lingering touches. The way they would stop and embrace each other for no reason at all. Or for a reason—the reason simply that they loved each other. Theychoseeach other.
I would have no such choice.
My father would never turn to me and ask whatIwanted,whomI wanted. He would never take my preferences into account. He’d never treated me like Henrik. I was the baby of the family, the youngest, the girl, the one who was supposed to stay, to help Da, to do as bade and never ask anything for myself.
Anger burned like brine in my chest.
I was angry and sad and broken.
Defeated.
I wiped at the frozen nub of my nose, trying to warm it and return it to life. Good northern stock or not, my teeth started clacking hard enough for my jaw to throb. My lungs ached from moving the cold in and out of my body. Even my ears, buffeted by the cold wind, hurt.
The thought of going back, returning to my house, only made me colder.
A dark and clinging loneliness awaited me. Meya and Henrik were leaving. Jens would soon follow. Then it would be just me and my father, the two of us sitting in the thick, suffocating silence like blocks of wordless stone.
I pressed on, tears clogging my throat as the need to put distance between myself and the house where my fate loomed swelled inside me like a rising miasma.
With the village far behind, I collapsed in the snow-swathed woods, sinking into a deep bank, the freezing wet soaking my gown, penetrating my flesh. For once, I felt the pain of this cold like needles on my skin, but I didn’t care.
I buried my face in my stinging hands with a soft moan, envisioning my future stretching out in front of me like beads on a thread, one after another, falling in a monotonous drop of days.
My mind raced, searching, reaching for a possibility, a tether, something to grasp, to cling to, a way to persuade Da to let me go.
I exhaled, my breath fogging in front of me. Da wouldn’t change his mind, and it filled me with rage. I lowered my hands from my face. A poison started to wind through me, the ugly sensation sweeping over me, through me, twisting inside me. It wasa horrible feeling—thisthingtoo awful to name. I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t acknowledge it, even to myself.
I turned my face skyward, gazing up at the dense, low-hanging clouds floating rapidly over the evening. Some days,mostdays, the clouds turned to fog, heavy and thick as potato soup, concealing the mountain range in the distance. Not tonight, though. Tonight, I could see the dark outline of the Crags against the purpling night.
My tears turned to delicate trails of ice on my cheeks. “I wish I could just disappear.” I sniffed.
Then they would regret treating me this way. They’d be sorry. They would live with the remorse, the pain. They would hurt. Maybe not the same way I hurt right now, but close enough. Pain was pain, and I wanted to wound them as they wounded me.
With another sniff, I swiped at the cold tip of my nose. “You hear me!” I shouted out into the ether, addressing whom...I didn’t know. The world. My family. Myself. The unfairness of the life that trapped and held me captive.
No response was forthcoming, of course, but it felt good anyway.
I felt powerful venting my fury, even if directed to no one. “I wish I could just disappear!” My loud, cracking voice fell, withering into a small, hushed whisper as I repeated, “I just want to disappear.”
The wind went flat.
An abrupt stillness came over the air. A preternatural silence descended. Everything calmed: the watchful sky with its drifting clouds, the once howling wind, even the moon seemed to hold its breath as though it were a living thing, an unblinking eye in the sky.
