Brunhilde could not write. She could scribe runes and she was able to copy down the simplest namelocks that Hope showed her, but the more complicated symbols escaped her.

Hope could not teach her to write. She could encourage her to try again after one mistake, but as Brunhilde made mistake after mistake her patience disappeared.

“It’s three circles, it’s obviously three circles! Why have you drawn two and a spiral?”

“That’s what I saw,” Brunhilde said. She threw the ragged quill to the floor. “You draw these tangled things! I thought you needed my help but you’re trying to make an acorn swallow a squirrel.”

“I don’t know either of those things, but I’m sure if it worked hard enough an acorn could swallow a squirrel,” Hope said.

“I’m hungry,” Brunhilde said. She stood and stretched. The piles of ink-stained paper around her fluttered about. Dark had fallen outside. She had worked too long on this.

“We still have work to do.”

“Let’s work with some food in our bellies.” She left the room to find food from the servers downstairs.

Hope sifted through Brunhilde’s mistakes, hoping at least to see some sign of improvements. But there was none. The brute had no finesse, and no learning.

Brunhilde eventually returned with a huge tray carrying bread, cheese, rice, yogurt and a mountain of rice and vegetables. She placed it on the floor and sat beside it.

“Come and eat,” she said. She tore into the meal, scooping rice onto the bread, dipping in the yogurt and chewing down great mouthfuls of it. “This is refreshing fare!”

Hope joined her and took small pieces of bread and cheese.

“A warrior needs to be well fed to fight,” Brunhilde said. She dug her finger into the yogurt. Speckled with green herbs, it had a creamy fresh taste that was completely new to her.

“This is hopeless,” Hope said. She threw her food onto the tray.

“Why don’t you write these namethings down yourself?” Brunhilde said. She held the bowl of yogurt up to Hope, who shook her head. She stretched her legs out and sat against the wall, cradling the bowl in her lap. Her belly was warming now. She could think better with it full.

“Namelocks. They’re the true names of the- ah what’s the point in teaching you?”

Brunhilde considered the scattered map that Hope had created on the floor. She knew the names of many of these stars, but Hope was adamant there was secret knowledge up there. “I know these stars, and their names. Everything comes from the sky.” She thought of her mother’s face in the firelight. In their longhouse her mother had told stories of her life and the mysteries of magic to their family. Her mother was a true storyteller. She could lean quiet into the fire, so entrancing that her face was the only thing to see. And she could stand tall, throw her arms out like an ogre and make you see it, twisting bones and chewing on cattle. Frightening and beautiful. Brunhilde recalled the story of how everything came to be.

“Father Ice was moody and lonely, lost in the black. So, he gave birth to Fox, who was moody like his father, turning white and black as he cared. One day Fox was digging in the ice and snow and he found the earth underneath it all. Father Ice tried to grab him, but Fox was too curious and Father Ice was alone again in the sky. So, Father Ice gave birth to more children, Bear and Reindeer and Whale. But they all left him in the end, and he grew bitter and lonely and hated his children.

So, Mother Snow took them in. She protected them, with her cloak of light, from Father Ice’s disapproving gaze. And she fell in love with the stars, and bore their children, making humans.

And if Father Ice hates his own children, he hates even more the children he did not sire. So, when we die and rise into the sky to rejoin the stars he swallows us whole. But if we live filled with glory, our stories carry us up to the stars, to live with our ancestors. The Moon cannot kill a good tale,” Brunhilde said.

Hope was unimpressed by this tale.

“Father Ice is the Moon, and Mother Snow is the aurora that dances in the sky.” Brunhilde explained.

“What is the Sun then?”

“He’s an animal, he’s the strongest one that came down but went back up to find his father. But Father Ice is prideful and hides away when the Sun comes.

“The Sun is not an animal.”

“He hibernates in the long winter, just like a bear.”

“And did stars give birth to humans or are they spirits of living humans?”

“Both.”

“How can both be true?”

“How can you be a princess and an exile? How can a parent love one child and hate another? How can you know something and not know how to write it? The world is made from different truths.”

“I’ll admit that is certainly true. But these stories don’t help me.”

“What’s your story of the stars?”

She couldn’t explain all the knowledge she had of the heavens. Her jaw tightened as she tried to speak. “I can’t explain. Even if I wanted too. Something is stopping me. I thought I was free. I thought my trainers were teaching me to fight and debate and control the magic of the heavens, so that I could one day rule. But they were also forging me into a secret of my own. I can’t give away the secrets I know, even when I try. Maybe you’re not stupid, maybe I’m flawed.”

“Everything has flaws.” Brunhilde licked food from her fingers and stood to consider the drawings across the floor. “Why are you drawing this map?”

“I want to find a place in the sky.”

“Your home?”

“I don’t come from the sky.” Hope cursed and slammed her fist into the floor. “I do come from the sky. I come from the sky!” At the admission her face brightened and she laughed, a sound of pure joy. A heavy weight had been lifted from her. “I come from the sky, I come from the sky.” She fell onto her back and kicked her feet. Her laughter spasmed into manic peals. Eventually she stopped, and lay exhausted.

Brunhilde was mystified by the strange behaviour, but she was a hunter and understood maps.

“The stars are marks to guide you, this I understand. What are these lock things you want me to write?” she asked.

“Stars have lives, and seasons, and moods. Our cities travel to avoid the anger of certain stars and capture the right energies for rituals from others.”

“What’s this nose-hole thing I’ve been drawing?”

“The Nostril of Yamu, it’s a star that gifts you his powers of insight. Let me show you.”

Hope created the full sign in the air. Intricate blue lines whirled and circled like a burl of a tree. Fresh air that hinted at falling mist wafted into the room. This time she let the full power of the sign flow through.

Yamu was generous with his intelligence, he gifted seekers of any kind. Brunhilde’s curiosity drew the power like lightning to the earth. She breathed in the air. She saw so many new things. The adobe buildings here were perfect for hot climates that could dry the bricks. Her family’s longhouse was wood, because they lived in a cold climate filled with plentiful forests. Of course, a culture would develop around locally available materials. The lack of a local power structure was an advantage for a city on a trade cross-roads, it provided neutrality to all travellers passing through. Hope’s cloak was many coloured because her cities harnessed light as magic. It was a signifier that her culture valued the power of light, and of her station.

Brunhilde fell back against a wall. The brain was not made for so many thoughts at once.

“What is this?”

“You’re thinking about things. Things that were obvious but you never had words for. That is the power that comes from Yamu.” Hope said.

The maps drew Brunhilde’s attention. She understood what Hope was doing now. It was a map for predicting tides in the sky. Like fisherman watched the tides and the habits of the small fish so they knew where the big fish would go. Hope was looking for a big fat fish. Hope thought she was better than everybody else, and her tight manner came from strict schooling. She must come from a city that thought itself superior to all others. A city that guarded its powers from outsiders, and was always vying to be the most powerful.

Brunhilde was a hunter and she understood her stories of the stars. She walked over the map, ignoring Hope’s cries. In her youth she had watched the sea crashing into the shores. Waves tumbled and fell back, creating net-like patterns on the water. And you could see the breeze before it hit in the ripples that rushed across the surface. She saw those patterns now, revealed to her by the strange power of Hope’s god.

There was a space, equidistant between two angry stars, the Twins. A city obsessed with power and rulership would chase those stars when they were burning bright. And they had been burning bright in the sky recently.

“It’s here then,” she said. She slammed her finger onto a page, on a line between the two capricious and powerful stars.

She grabbed the dials of the telescope and turned them. Two axes, circular, easy to understand. She saw only darkness of the sky.

“Ah, nothing!” she cried. She slumped onto the floor. Her braincase ached; too many ideas were spinning around. She was sure she had found something.

Hope peered through the telescope. Hair prickled on her neck. She saw perfect darkness, too perfect. With her magic she peered through the magical shield of her home. Faintly she saw the crystal spires and the cluttered rocky base of her home. Brunhilde had found it.

“It’s there. How did you find it?”

“It was the stars. The Twins. They…” Brunhilde closed her eyes. It was going now. She had hundreds of frayed threads in her mind, the ends of ideas. She couldn’t tell which ones she should remember. Something about fish and ships.

Brunhilde opened her eyes and saw Hope looking down at her, with respect, and also fear. Hope was afraid of her. Not of her exactly, but something else. It was fading, the power of the star. Afraid, but of what? It was gone. She just saw that Hope was impressed.

“I found it then?” Her mood perked up. She was a formidable hunter. “I’m a hunter, not a scribe. Show me it.”

“You can’t see it,” Hope said. She let Brunhilde peer through the telescope again.

The barbarian cursed; all she could see was night sky. Magical secrets, she hated them. “One day I’ll see this magical flying city,” she said. “If this little toy lets me.” She fiddled with the dials and the scope swung slowly and randomly.

“Don’t do that!” Hope snapped. But it hardly mattered. She knew where her home was now. She felt like her mother was peering back through the telescope. Even now she feared the idea. And hated that she feared. It was time to think of returning home, she was tired of running.