My brother waited on the stone slab of my doorstep, shaded by the thatched roof of the circular house with its moss-and-clay-chinked walls and sprawl of lush garden. His meticulously braided hair was black like our mother’s, thick, prone to curl, and shaved at the sides to reveal knotwork tattoos around each ear. His skin was a shade darker than mine, again taking after our mother’s Eangen blood, where I followed our father’s Algatt.
That was the way of us, my twin and I: his hair black to my blonde; his skin warm and freckled, mine cool and prone to flushing. His body was honed for violence, muscled and lean. My frame was soft, capable and sturdy but without a hard line in sight. The hooded axe at his hip was ever keen, while the knife at my own was dull from digging roots from the earth.
The warm sun cut across my face as I stepped from the trees. I didn’t need to see my brother’s eyes to know his mind was far away from my little house; his posture told me, elbows on his knees, fingers laced, and his gaze on the ground before his booted feet.
My mother’s question drifted back to me. Have you spoken to your brother?
“Berin?” I called.
He looked up, unsurprised. “Where were you?”
I opened the garden gate and passed through, the satchel at my hip traitorously heavy. “The east side of the mountain, then the Halls to speak to Aita,” I explained, patting the satchel as if it contained nothing but the usual array of mushrooms and cuttings I found in the forest.
My brother’s focus sharpened, noting my long skirt and lack of weapons with disapproval. “I hate that you wander like that.”
“Mother was in the Halls, too,” I pointed out.
Mild interest passed over his face, but he’d never been one to think much on the Halls and the Miri. “I was thinking more of the mountain. It’s dangerous to wander alone.”
I gave him a long-suffering smile. “You’ll be grateful for my foraging when Isa’s time comes. Not everything she needs grows in a garden.”
The clouds shifted, throwing me into shadow and Berin into a pool of sunlight. He squinted, dark lashes full of light. His wife Isa was often sickly, and now that she was pregnant with their first child, she’d barely left her bed in weeks. Hence my original visit to Aita—though neither Berin nor the priesthood would know where I found my ingredients.
“How is she? Isa?” I crossed the garden, back into the light, and stopped before him. The garden around us droned with bees and other insects, their wings light-filled blurs amid yarrow and wild rose.
Berin stood and opened the door of my little house, hiding his expression as he preceded me into the single room. “She’s well. Today.”
Narrow windows illuminated my home. The thatch of the conical roof gathered into a chimney above the central hearth. A triangular iron stand stood sentinel over the lifeless fire pit, where a flat iron cooking surface hung in southern, Soulderni style. My bed lay off to one side, neatly stacked with blankets, and the floors were layered with knotted rugs of reed and coarse fibers. The walls were heavy with orderly shelves of jars and dangling pouches, boxes and bundles, and every beam was strung with drying herbs. The air was thick with their smell, changing subtly as I made for one of the tables set beneath the windows—a cloud of sage, a drift of mint, a bitter spike of valerian.
I tucked my satchel behind a stack of folded clothing and turned back to Berin. “I’m glad she’s well. But why are you here?”
Berin stared at the hearth. “Arpa merchants came to the hall a few weeks ago.”
“And?” I paused to eye him, then pulled a basket of kindling from under the table. I set about making a fire, tucking bits of dried moss into a nest of birch bark and twigs. As I struck flint and tinder and he didn’t speak, I prodded, “What of them? They come every year.”
“They brought stories.”
“They always do,” I muttered. The tinder wouldn’t catch, so I gave up and sat back to study my brother more critically. He looked distracted, but I saw uncertainty in the pinch of his lips, and a spark of something more dangerous in his eyes—excitement.
“Berin,” I persisted. “What?”
He scowled but dropped into a crouch on the other side of the fire. “They brought stories from other Arpa merchants, in the east. Stories of people who worship the Great Bear. And stories of a dead tree, so huge it fills the sky. Do you remember Thray’s story about that tree?”
I furrowed my brows. Our Winterborn cousin Thray was the daughter of our mother’s best friend, and she’d been banished when Berin and I were children. She’d spoken once of visions, of a tree in the east, but my memory of that time was vague—strained by the threat of war and my sadness over her imminent departure.
“The Arpa saw the edge of the world and that tree was there. Against the blackness.”
Estavius’s words from the High Halls rang through my mind and my skin chilled, unnatural in the close warmth of the house. The timing of Estavius’s and Berin’s visits seemed an impossible coincidence, but Fate had never been gentle with my bloodline.
Berin went on: “There’re people in the east who worship the Bear, Yske. And they have for centuries.”
The Great Bear was Aegr, a creature of the High Halls who had escaped into the Waking World long before my brother and I were born. Combined with the tale of how he had saved my mother from a demon in her youth, it was the story of the Bear’s healing by the ancient heroine Liv that had drawn first me to healing arts, and Aita.
“Our people must be connected,” Berin said, leaning forward earnestly. “But how?”
I stared at him, my heart suddenly aching. I knew the look in his eyes, the light of curiosity, the urgency and excitement. He’d had the same look when, at fifteen, he’d declared he would be a mercenary and vanished into the Arpa Empire for two years, and last year, when he’d set off to winter in the northern kingdom of Duamel.
“Why does it matter?” I asked quietly.
His smile was easy and cajoling. “Because it’s fascinating, Yske. A whole people live in the east, and we know nothing about them. But they know of our Great Bear?”
“He wanders,” I said, trying to dismiss the topic. “Maybe there’s a door to the High Halls in the east.”
Berin shook his head. “No, no. Mother said there’s no door. The eastern High Halls are inaccessible. They end just past their equivalent of the Headwaters of the Pasidon.”
Gooseflesh crept up my arms. “The Miri never speak of that,” I murmured.
Berin shrugged. “Speaking of it would mean admitting there’s a place they can’t go. Somewhere they don’t have power.”
I eyed him. “That’s insightful, for you.”
“I have my moments,” he preened.
I bit the inside of my lip. Just because my mother said the eastern High Halls were inaccessible didn’t mean it was true—I could name half a dozen world-changing secrets she kept and used daily. But Berin didn’t know about those. And suggesting to him that our mother didn’t always prioritize the truth had never gone well before.
I studied Berin’s face. “You’re not thinking of… going east, are you?”
“Of course I am,” he replied. “The Arpa have, why shouldn’t the Eangen?”
“Berin.” I dropped my flint and tinder and stood so sharply I almost lost my balance. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t—”
“I can do as I please,” he cut me off, unfolding to his full height. There was only one respect where he took after our father, and I our mother. He stood a head taller than her and me, and though he wasn’t the tallest man in our village, it was enough to look down at me. “I’m not going alone, either. I’ve been gathering others who feel the same way. You know there are more than a few restless warriors in Eangen, and what are we to do? The Iskiri Devoted are all but whispers now. There’s peace in the north and the south. I want to live, Yske, not farm and stare at the clouds to the end of my days. Peace is an opportunity to expand, to prove we’re more than barbarians in the north. I want to see this great tree. I want to meet the people in its shadow.”
“Merchants would hire you again,” I protested, though I hated the idea of him leaving again in any capacity. “You could travel the Empire more. You could go back to Duamel.”
“I’ve done that and I hated it,” he retorted. “I’m no one’s watchdog. My axe can’t be bought.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Then volunteer.”
He opened his mouth to say something scathing, but cut himself off. A moment of silence stretched between us, then he gathered himself and said, “I came to ask you to come with me.”
I gaped. My eyes darted around my house, so orderly and familiar, so full of security and everything I could possibly need. I couldn’t leave—panic flooded me at the very thought.
Berin carried on, “The journey will be long. Months. Longer. We have no way of knowing, except that the Arpa took four months from Nivarium, by boat and on foot—the forests are too thick for horses. We’ll need a healer, and you’re the best.”
“You’d leave Isa?” I stuttered, horrified by the suggestion. No wonder my mother had asked me to talk sense into him. “You’d ask me to? She’s ill, and pregnant. What about your child?”
A flicker of something, guilt or sadness, tugged at Berin’s eyes, but he brushed past it. “She told me to go. She’ll stay with her family, and Mother will be there to watch over her.”
“Mother isn’t a god, Berin,” I hissed in frustration and started to pace, unable to keep still. “You should be there for your wife. I should, at the very least. You just said I’m the best healer in Albor.”
“Isa will be fine,” Berin said without a hint of emotion, and I turned to stare at him again, aghast at his denial. After spending the night with Isik, his thoughts always plain and his words genuine, Berin seemed particularly false. “We’ll need you more than she will.”
“She’s not fine,” I said, low and grim. “Your child wouldn’t have survived the first weeks without my care.”
Berin crooked a dry, amused smile. “They say I’m the arrogant one, you know.”
I threw up my hands. “No. You’re not going anywhere, and neither am I. If you wanted to throw your life away on a foolish journey, you should have done that before you married.”
“She told me to go,” Berin threw back.
“You’re being—”
Berin stalked around the fire and glared at me. But the longer our eyes met, the more his façade began to crack. I saw something behind his anger, something raw and wounded. “She told me to go, Yske.”
The meaning of his words sank in, so deep and so quickly that I lost my breath. “You mean…”
“She wants nothing to do with me.” He smoothed his already perfect beard, trying to gather himself. “It’s not… It’s not over, but she needs time. Just time.”
For a long moment, I couldn’t find anything to say. I knew Berin wasn’t an easy man to live with—he had his charms, but his temper and restlessness had always bothered Isa and led to unnecessary conflict and anxiety for the young woman. I didn’t blame her for taking a stand now that their child was coming, but I also knew that beneath Berin’s stalwart exterior, he hid as much emotion as I did. We’d just learned to manage it in different ways.
I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
He brushed my words aside and looked around my little house. “I always thought you were mad, living out here alone, pushing away all the men who showed an interest in you. But maybe I understand it, now.”
I almost managed a smile, but it immediately faltered into a sympathetic frown. “I understand why you want to leave, then. But why not go visit Father? You don’t have to run to the edge of the world. And… I still can’t leave. If you won’t—can’t—be there for her, I can.”
He shook his head, jaw tight. “I’ve made up my mind. Come or not, I’m leaving. Soon. It would be best to find Aegr’s worshipers before winter. We’ll return next summer.”
The blind simplicity in his plan chilled me. He had no way of knowing how long the journey would take, and it was already late summer. Did he expect to winter with strangers? How would he survive?
I knew my brother well enough, however, to realize I could not talk him out of this.
“I won’t go,” I repeated. I felt a tug of regret with the words, but walled it out. I’d no desire to leave, but the thought of being without Berin for so long made my chest ache. “I love you, but I can’t.”
Hurt sunk into his eyes. He let me see it for once, let me feel the weight of it, before he made for the door. “If you change your mind… I’ll be in Albor.”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even nod as he went to the open door. He hovered there for an instant, as if debating whether to say something else, then passed though the shadow and sunlight of the garden and vanished beneath the summer trees.