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Rostfar couldn’t remember the last time she had woken so peacefully. She sat in her chair by the fire, blinking into the dimness, and wished she could stifle the unease that rose in her chest.
The fire had burned down low, but the embers were still warm enough. Mati and Isha were both in bed – tangled together for warmth, Rostfar’s favoured space by the wall left empty – dead to the world. She couldn’t blame them. They deserved a good night’s rest after the long hours spent sitting up with Arketh, soothing her through countless night terrors.
Isha was dwarfed by Mati’s bulk. He had his back to Rostfar, face pressed to Mati’s broad chest, and his socked feet stuck out from beneath the rumpled blankets. Moonlight shone over his shorn head and caught on the beads woven into Mati’s beard.
(moonlight?)
Rostfar rose and crept toward the bed. She intended to rescue a blanket from Mati’s sleeping grasp and cover Isha properly, but her foot hit something on the floor. One of her telling-stones. It lay half in a thin beam light from Caerost, the second moon.
Moonlight.
The realisation pricked her like a thorn.
Lifting her head to follow that pale, pinkish-red moonbeam seemed to take an age. The door was open. Not by much, just a crack. But it was open, and that meant – it could mean —
Hardly daring to breathe, Rostfar crept to the door and peered out. The snow had stopped falling, and the sky stretched endlessly above the roofs of Erdansten. A line of footprints dotted a path over the thin film of frost like punctures in the earth’s skin. They crossed the circular mootplace that made up Erdansten’s centre and disappeared into an alleyway between the houses on the other side.
Rostfar got dressed and fetched a small bundle of Arketh’s clothes from the storage chest. She didn’t wake Mati and Isha. They’d be upset if they knew she had gone after Arketh alone, but if her instincts were right, she didn’t want them involved. The things they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them – and Rostfar felt she had hurt her lovers enough of late.
With a last glance back at their peaceful forms, Rostfar slid out into the night
The footprints continued on an arrow-straight path towards the southern gate. Halfway there, Rostfar caught sight of Arketh’s worship totem, discarded in the snow. It must have slipped from Arketh’s wrist. The four eyes of the benevolent trickster goddess, Norðunn, gazed up from the carved crags of the wooden oval. Rostfar picked it up and pocketed it, wondering if she ought to say a quick prayer. She didn’t believe, but Arketh did, and maybe . . .
No. Rostfar shook herself. She didn’t have time for foolishness.
The streets narrowed as Rostfar got closer to the settlement’s walls. Houses crowded together here for protection from the winds, and their shadows made it harder to read the footprints. Rostfar wove through the cobbled back-ways until she came to the crumbling archway of Erdansten’s southern exit.
A few strides beyond the arch’s boundary, a rough path parted the deepening snow. Rostfar could picture Arketh wading through the drifts. She touched her fingertips to the wind-worn stones of the arch, hesitating even as every muscle told her to run. If Rostfar took another step, she would break all the rules she had fought so hard to impose.
Don’t go out alone. Don’t go out at night. Don’t leave without telling someone where you’ve gone.
But Arketh was out there. And Arketh took priority.
Rostfar drew in a deep breath and hurried on through the path Arketh had made. The snow came up to her knees out here, where nobody bothered to clear it, forcing her to slow down despite the tut-tut-tut of her heartbeat urging her to go faster, faster. A light wind picked up, laden with the smell of brine from the thawing sea. Her brain kept track of familiar landmarks: there was the stuffy-doll on its wooden pole, spinning to warn travellers of the winds; after that was the white-painted waymark post, warning travellers to turn around; and finally, the fence that stopped children from running out onto the cliffs that marked the end of Ys.
And there, beyond the fence, was Arketh.
Her kneeling figure was a tiny, barely perceptible smudge. Rostfar couldn’t tell how far away the edge of the cliff was, but it wasn’t far enough. She forced herself to approach slowly, tapping the fence post as she passed so as not to startle her daughter too much. Arketh didn’t seem to hear. She had her eyes fixed on something Rostfar couldn’t see.
“Ket?” Rostfar shook out the cloak she had brought and went to put it around Arketh’s shoulders. Arketh flinched. Rostfar moved until she could kneel, looking into Arketh’s face. She spoke softly. “It’s me, Ket. Just me.”
For a beat, Arketh’s eyes were wide and unblinking, no hint of recognition in their brown depths. Then she gasped, and relief washed over Rostfar in a wave.
“Mama?” Arketh sounded groggy, but she was awake. She was well. Her skin was warm under Rostfar’s touch and she looked healthier than she had in weeks. The cold hadn’t touched her at all.
Rostfar fastened up the cloak instead of giving that any more thought. She slid the totem around Arketh’s wrist, and Arketh wrapped her hands around it.
“What are you doing all the way out here, huh?” Rostfar brushed some snow out of Arketh’s reddish-brown hair, but Arketh didn’t let Rostfar fuss for long. She squirmed away from Rostfar’s hold and pointed over the edge of the cliff.
“It’s Uncle Faren,” she said.
Rostfar’s world lurched sideways.
Uncle.
Rostfar knew Isha had a brother who lived in Myrardaen, a town on the neighbouring isle of Ysaïn, but he never spoke about his family. She wasn’t even certain she had heard Isha mention his brother by name.
Fighting vertigo, Rostfar crept to the edge and peered down. The tidal marshes, thick with sagebrush and tough winter grasses, ran uninterrupted to the sea. She couldn’t see any sign of human life.
Arketh tugged on her sleeve. “He’s in trouble. We have to go!”
“I don’t . . .” Rostfar squinted.
“There!” Arketh jabbed her finger out to sea. Rostfar lifted her gaze from the marshes to the strip of shingle that marked the low tide, and from there further out onto the calm waters. Huge pieces of ice floated on the surface, coming from further north, or breaking away from the shore. “By Old Humpback,” Arketh added, her tone humming with frustration.
And then Rostfar saw it. A small figure lurched out from the shadows of the whale-shaped rock, covering a handful of strides across the ice and then stopping again. They appeared to be dragging something behind them.
Fear crept up Rostfar’s throat.
“Arketh—” She grabbed Arketh’s sleeve. “It might not be him. It . . . it might not be human at all.” Thoughts of kowlings and piskies and other, more dangerous, creatures raced through her head. Lure a child onto the ice, that seemed like something a wreather would do. They could be savage, unpredictable. Vindictive. They were the reason for the walls; the reason nobody was supposed to leave at night.
Oh stars, nobody knew where Rostfar had gone.
Arketh clasped both her hands around Rostfar’s. Her eyes were wide and earnest, and far too old for a child of six winters.
“I heard him through the wyrdness,” Arketh said and held on tighter. “I know it’s him. I do! Come on.” Her fingertips dug into Rostfar’s wrist.
Rostfar was reeling. She couldn’t catch her breath.
The wyrdness and its magic had chosen her when she was a child, and now it was taking her daughter. This was Arketh’s first time sleepwalking, but Rostfar doubted it would be the last. Dreams and murky, half-remembered night terrors were how it started – but sleepwalking was how the magic caught them. Rostfar wanted to scoop Arketh up in her arms and go home, damn all the rest.
Arketh looked so scared, and Rostfar knew what it was like to be dismissed; to know things and have to hold her tongue for fear of revealing her secret. If Arketh couldn’t trust her mother, what hope was there for her in this world?
“There’s no path . . .” Rostfar heard herself say, the last protest her brain could muster. Arketh frowned.
“I know a place,” she said.
Rostfar looked at the figure again. They staggered forwards, swayed, and collapsed. As Rostfar stared, her stomach roiling with uncertainty, the ice surrounding the figure gave way.
Rostfar clenched her fists and made up her mind.
“Show me the way,” she said.
Arketh led Rostfar along the clifftop to a narrow path of the sort used by goatherds. A fraying length of rope served as a handrail; it was stiff with frost and salt, and slippery to the touch. Rostfar doubted the rail would be much help if one of them tripped on the uneven ground, but she couldn’t turn back now. She was the Dannaskeld of this settlement – their shield against the world outside – and she had a duty, no matter how much she resented her current circumstances.
“Go back, Ket,” Rostfar said, trying to balance the softness and authority in her voice. Arketh stared at her. “Go and get help. You know where my horn is, yes? Blow it.”
“But Mama—”
“I’ve got to do this bit alone.” Rostfar gave Arketh a gentle nudge in the direction of Erdansten. Her panic at the thought of Arketh falling or getting hurt by the thing on the ice was far greater than her reluctance to approach alone.
Slowly, reluctantly, Arketh’s fingers fell away from Rostfar’s. Arketh nodded. Rostfar watched her run back up the beach, as nimble and urgent as she had been on their way down, her hood and hair streaming behind her. Only when her figure had disappeared into shadows did Rostfar turn and continue her descent onto the beach.
Rostfar was near enough now she could pick Faren out of the shadows. He sat inside the boat she’d seen him dragging, bundled up against the cold. Not moving. His body sagged to one side and an oar bobbed on the waves a few feet away.
“Hey!” Rostfar yelled. The shape in the boat jerked but made no further response.
She studied the distance between the shore and the boat and chewed the inside of her cheek. It wasn’t far, and she was a strong swimmer. The cold didn’t get to her like everyone else. So maybe —
She gritted her teeth.
Something about the thought of approaching Faren made her skin crawl, but Rostfar dismissed it as nerves and waded into the sea. The water hit her with a shock. She forced herself to wade in at a gradual pace. Enter too fast, and her body would shut down. She’d seen it happen too many times before.
The distant keen of the horn broke Rostfar’s concentration. She turned to look over her shoulder on impulse – and the sand vanished from beneath her feet.
Rostfar inhaled. Her chest ached from the force of cold water rushing into her lungs, but even as she realised what was happening, her traitorous body was trying to get more air. The water was too murky, too cold, and the current too strong. Silt rushed into her mouth and she couldn’t spit it out, couldn’t cough or breathe or think.
So, Rostfar did the only thing she could; the thing she was always telling Arketh not to do. She reached out to the wyrdness.
