Father led me to the village gathering in the afternoon. The way I followed him, trapped in the village as we were and made to stay indoors all morning, no part of me felt free. A prisoner, that’s what I was. A prisoner in the home I had known all my life. Fear was my captor and the villagers were the bars to my cage. People stared at me as we walked past – but they glanced at one another furtively; quick, sharp looks as if to ensure just by looking that the plague hadn’t yet taken root. A child coughed as we walked by, and even her mother took a step away, eyeing the girl with unease. The death was an easy enough distraction for the moment, and one that had captured the attention of everyone in the village, but it was already wearing off, as all were reminded that, somewhere on this island, sickness was creeping closer.
Ragna hardly waited for us to finish walking before she spoke up, her voice strong and steady, as though lies were as easy for her as the truth. “Last night, this girl was seen wandering around the outskirts of the village alone, and hours later, a man was found dead.”
A few people in the crowd shook their heads, slowly, as if they simply couldn’t believe it. Such evil, their faces said. She deserves to suffer.
“I need not remind you, surely, of the grisly circumstances that have followed this girl around like a shadow. She witnessed the drowning of Finni, the death of the good-hearted Sølvi, and”– she ensured her voice trembled some – “saw to the violent death of my own dear son. There are other matters to which we must soon attend. The plague will be upon us any moment now, and we must be on our guard. And yet, we cannot let such dark times as these distract from evils like murder. Therefore, I propose that this matter be closed with haste and ease. A simple vote should do.” She rested a hand on her hip and looked to the crowd. Confidence dripped from her, chest out and chin high, as though challenging anyone to stand up to her.
“Ragna, perhaps—” my father began, but she silenced him quickly. Her might and wrath were wasted on a village as small as ours. She could command armies if she tried – vile, wicked armies.
“There is nothing to be said for your unfortunate daughter, Sívar. Save your breath before we begin to suspect you, too.” Her eyes sliced into him, sharper than icicles at the mouth of a cave. Then she turned back to the crowd.
“How many among you find this girl guilty of murder?” she asked. Such a simple question it was, but the words cut through the air like a knife through flesh, and they hurt every bit as badly.
Air all but left my lungs.
“A moment, before you vote,” I heard myself saying, although the world danced around me, and the edges of my vision were growing dark. I worked to breathe through it, to maintain my clarity, but the struggle grew more intense by the second.
Ragna began to protest, but Alff waved a hand through the air. “A minute or two won’t hurt anything, Ragna.” She whispered something vicious, but my eyes were still too blurry to see her face.
Everyone stood facing me, ready to hear me speak. I cleared my throat but ended up coughing and spluttering.
“I don’t know most of you except by name,” I began, too quiet at first, but gaining strength. “Most of you know who I am, because most of you knew Sølvi.” My voice broke at his name, but I pushed on. “Sølvi died last year, a loss I, along with his sister and mother, are still recovering from.” Sølvi’s father had died many years ago, slipping on ice and taking a fall from a cliff. Enja had only been two. I tried to find them in the crowd, but the faces all blended together into one mass of anger and distrust. “I was there when Sølvi died, and he died protecting me. He died so that I could keep living, and breathing, and going to sleep and waking up. I sat with him while he took his last breath, and I sat there, alive, my lungs still filled with air, and my heart still beating, while the boy I loved slipped away.”
Something tingled on my face. Tears, perhaps, but I had gone numb.
“I witnessed death in the most intimate way possible, and I would never, ever, wish it upon anyone else. I would never take someone’s life away from them. And if you don’t believe that, then I have nothing left.”
There was only silence from the crowd, but I didn’t know if it was a good, tearful silence, or one of continued unease. Ragna broke it.
“This girl,” she said, sweeping an arm out to me, “was there for the death of the beloved Sølvi. She was there for the death of my own dear son, Orri. And now she was there for the death of Fiak, a well-respected man who met a too-sudden end. How dare you believe each of those to be happenstance? This is her witchery at play, entrancing you with stories of pain and heart to play at your softer sides, while she gets away with murder. Do not play the parts of fools. Now, I ask you again, how many of you here find this girl guilty of murder?”
It happened slowly at first; a single hand here, a few fingertips peeking over someone’s head there, and then, in the time it took for me to draw in a long breath and release it, the village centre was a sea of raised hands, all condemning me for something I hadn’t done. I forgot how to breathe, briefly. Forgot how to balance myself enough to remain standing. A hand grabbed my shoulder and kept me upright – my father, probably, but my vision had grown dark and the shadowed world swayed around me.
This was fear, alive and writhing and black as soot, villagers fighting for control at a moment in time when they had none, when death was imminent for many and the most they could do was point their fingers at me and damn a life that at least wasn’t theirs. So twisted. So wrong. And yet I was powerless, a dead leaf caught in a windstorm.
Satisfied, Ragna turned back to my father. “You know what must happen now, Sívar,” she said, her voice colder than the air biting my cheeks. “You know what happens to murderers.”
“You will do nothing to her,” said my father, and he stood up taller than ever before. He cut a respectable figure, tall and lean but with a frame that had seen hard work. His grown-out hair was tied behind his head, that dear but hardened face painted with anger and heartbreak. Even through my wrenching fear and the sickness rising within me, I was proud to call him my father. “She is still my daughter.”
A murderer. The word was shards of frozen spray from the winter sea. That’s what they were calling me. A murderer. Only a day ago I had tried to save a wolf from Eri’s arrow. I had helped Enja save the fox that now shadowed her every step. I had spent the past year in agony after the death of the one I loved. And yet they could call me a murderer.
Fear is a wicked beast.
I had never known a murderer in my lifetime. Respect for the island and our desire to push onwards and make the most of our lives after Löska kept violence and retaliation largely at bay.
“You would protect a killer, Sívar? Perhaps you should say as much to Fiak’s wife, if she were present and not mourning the death of her husband. Because – need I remind you? – her husband is dead. All our prayers to the Goddess will not repair his broken neck.”
“She is not a killer. You know as much, Ragna. Janna could not kill a spider if you held a knife to her throat.”
The icy calm of Ragna’s angled face was unmoved by anything my father said. My vision began to grow clear again, and I could see the faces staring back at me, see the faces damning me. They didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them. As hard as I tried, I could barely recall any of their names – that woman there, was it Elspa? Her son Anarr? In many ways, I had brought this on myself. I hadn’t given them a reason to trust me, but then again, I had never imagined they’d be trying me for a murder I did not commit.
So eager, they all were. So ready to see me ruined, as though it would save their necks in the coming days. Even if they burned me now, I wouldn’t live to feel my body catch fire from within, to cough blood from my lungs until it drowned me. I wouldn’t watch those few souls I loved suffer in unimaginable ways until it took them and moved on to the next. Fiak’s death was wretched and unforgivable, but far more deaths were creeping towards the horizon with every frigid breath they pulled into their lungs.
“She must be burned,” Ragna announced, raising both hands up to the sky. “Punishments cannot be withheld for family. All must pay the price. And that other wretched girl, if she was complicit in this, she will burn as well. This is the price of evil.”
I heard a cry from the crowd, but it took me a moment to single out Enja’s mother. They would do it, and without thinking. They would take away the daughter of a woman who had only just lost her son. In her face filled with sorrow, I could see him, and I could see how desperately he would try to comfort her if he could. My heart nearly cracked in two at the sight, and I wanted nothing more than to embrace her, to tell her that I would not let it happen. I reached out towards her as tears stung my eyes.
But I was powerless. My words would fall on apathetic ears, and her tears would be brushed away and ignored.
Already people were closing in, and the protection of my father would not last long. I shook at the helplessness, the frenzied pain in her eyes that I couldn’t extinguish.
“Tonight,” Ragna said with a sense of finality that settled into my bones. “Prepare a stake.”
It was too much. Too much. My knees gave out and I fell to the ground, but even before I was done falling, hands were pulling me up, roughly, yanking me through the village at a pace my weakened legs could not keep up with. Then it was dark, and I was in a room I didn’t recognize. A lock clicked. Voices sounded outside, and then footsteps faded away.
And I was alone.