Jagged cliffs.

A deep green blanket.

The world felt vast again.

As the land came closer, Mira could make out more of its ominous detail: a dense forest so thick and dark it appeared black rather than green clothed the ever-increasing heights of hills and savage, watchful mountains. Indeed, the land was taller than any tower or castle or hill Mira had seen, stretching until its highest points disappeared into the spectral clouds swirling above. Nestled between the rugged shore where sea sprayed foam against craggy blue rock faces and the majestic peaks was a cluster of small, smoking constructions.

The cawing of ravens in the distance mingled with the ghostly whistling of the sea winds and filled Mira with superstitious dread. The vile men around her grew bright-eyed and shrieked with fervour as the ship slowed and glided forward. When it was closer still to the shore, men began to leap overboard, their arms filled with whatever treasures the raid had provided them.

It was at this time that Mira laid eyes on her captor again. He was lugged out of the little room at the ship’s head by two men—one beneath each of his shoulders. The speartoothed man was alive and laughing, though his skin was mottled with purple-black bruises in the shape of his veins. There was something of a struggle as Mira’s captor (who it seemed might have been drunk) fought against the guidance of those meaning to bring him to a smaller boat; he wanted to throw himself over the edge as other men were doing. In the end, all three of them tumbled into the sea, and everyone except Mira laughed.

As the ship emptied, Mira’s feeling split into two. In one sense, she was pleased to be left alone by the beasts. In another, she felt as though she’d been forgotten—and being forgotten, even by one’s enemies, is never a pleasant feeling. She couldn’t swim to land like the others were doing, but the prospect of staying on board and freezing or starving was not pleasant either.

Her fingers had long since stopped burning from the shock of the frigid air; they were stiff and numb, and she’d pulled them into her sleeves and kept the bundle of frozen fingers beneath her chin, as the skin of her throat seemed to be the only place left on her body that was still warm. Her back and jaw had grown sore from all the shivering and teeth chattering, and her knees ached from how she had been crouching. Still, she kept herself curled tightly against the ship’s rails, hoping to hide somewhat from the blast of the wind. This did not work.

It was Pinkbeard who finally realized she’d been abandoned. He climbed on board and laughed when he saw her huddled in a little ball of exhaustion and cold. He shouted to the shore as he pointed at her, leaving Mira feeling like he was saying: found her! She’s here!

Mira thought about being less agreeable as Pinkbeard guided her into a tiny boat (the one that her captor’s supporters had been aiming to use), but she was too cold and tired to think of how she would do it. As Pinkbeard lowered the boat into the foamy sea below, the rope groaned with the weight of the wood, and Mira feared it was to snap. She envisioned plummeting to her death, but the rope held steady, and when Pinkbeard plunged into the water and began pulling the boat to shore, she realized the sea was not so deep where they were.

Watching the few lucky horses swim to land was breathtaking. Mira hadn’t known the creatures could swim, and though she was a prisoner in a foreign land, perhaps to be sacrificed in some horrifying heathen ceremony, the sight filled her chest with such warmth that her senses left her. Unknowingly, she raised a hand to cover her mouth and did not notice for many moments that Pinkbeard was watching her, his head tilted to one side, a child’s curiosity visible on his broad face. When she noticed his gaze, he looked away to the grey-white shore before them.

Women and children ran along the wrack-filled sand, greeting their friends and family, laughing and hugging. A few people were given bad news, and there was also crying. Mira shouldn’t have felt sadness for the weeping women, but she did. She should have hated them; she should have been glad their husbands and fathers were dead, but she wasn’t. Their cries were too full of pain; when the sound came to Mira’s ears, she could not help but suffer a little alongside them.

When they reached the shore, Mira was shivering too intensely to climb out of the little boat, so Pinkbeard lifted her out. She attempted to stand on the pebbly beach but found her legs did not work rightly; they acted as if she was still at sea. He laughed and held Mira steady as he shouted at a nearby woman in a faded red dress with a thick green linen wrapped around her hair. Despite her ragged, loose clothing, the woman was exceptionally beautiful, and Mira wondered at first if the woman was his wife. They did not embrace, so she decided it wasn’t likely.

Pinkbeard motioned to Mira as he prattled on, and she recognized the word soten. The woman shouted at him and struck him many times but laughed while she did before coming closer to inspect Mira. The woman’s eyes were the same glowing greenish-yellow as cat’s eyes, and Mira had to look away as she could not handle the strength of the gaze. The woman held herself in a manner that Mira could not understand—she was constantly in fluid motion, tilting her head one way and then another, letting her eyes wander wherever they wanted to go, moving her lips to reveal a hint of each thought that crossed her mind. It was frightening to see a woman behave so thoughtlessly and so assuredly, as if the ground she stood on belonged to her alone, for no other reason than she was standing on it.

The woman appeared to enjoy Mira’s fear, for a wry smile revealed her white teeth, and the first part of a laugh escaped her lips. Just “heh” without the second part.

She then proceeded to do several things that made no sense to Mira. First, she pulled one of Mira’s arms out straight, pressing their shoulders together (though Mira was shivering so much she found it difficult to keep her arm outstretched as the woman directed). The woman then stood with her back flat against Mira, the back of their heads touching.

The red-dressed woman then spoke to Pinkbeard, the Northern words sounding even more like choking sounds when they came out of a woman’s lips. Pinkbeard followed her, and Mira stood shaking and confused as to whether she was meant to follow as well.

The Northman turned back and waved her after him, but Mira trembled too violently, and her legs still refused to work rightly on land. Pinkbeard and the red-dressed woman laughed at her clumsy attempt to move, and the way the woman laughed stung like a slap from the sea. There was no way to explain it, but Mira was certain the woman knew she was having this effect and chose to continue laughing anyways.

Pinkbeard cut the struggle short by lifting Mira up into his arms, not over his shoulder the way Spear-tooth had carried her, but pressed against his chest, one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees.

Everywhere she looked, there was smoke and animal skins. It was a village—unrefined in every way—with short, squat rooms built out of sticks and hides and ashy smoke snaking out of the pointed roofs. What do they do when it rains? Mira thought. Are they wet all the time?

As they moved deeper into the village, the air took on a sharp taste, like leather and dried blood. The constant wind pushed the scent of goat’s fur, charcoal, and sweat into Mira’s face, and she couldn’t decide whether the taste or smell was worse, so she couldn’t decide whether she should breathe through her nose or her mouth. Each time she made a choice, she regretted it and changed her mind.

There were thick-necked men whose shoulders swung with each step they took, spry women with no visible hint of humility, and dirty, leaping children that shouted out of turn and shrieked as they ran about and climbed atop the newly arrived men. Everyone wore simple linen clothing, with furs and leather boots. They were drinking, eating, gargling their gross words in the back of their throats, laughing, and kissing—some of those who’d freshly arrived were doing all of these things at once in a sloppy mishmash. Mira had to look away as her shame couldn’t bear the sight of such ardent kissing.

The red-dressed woman led them into a hut of sorts and began rummaging through a basket whilst Pinkbeard wandered away. The woman pulled out a poorly-stitched dress made of pale green linen, underclothes, thick boots, and a cloak with fur lining the hood. She shoved the bundle into Mira’s arms before making move to leave as well. Mira was shaking so badly from the cold that she couldn’t pull apart the layers of cloth in her hands, the scratchy fabric evaded her stiff fingers, and she dropped one of the boots.

The woman sighed and ripped the items from Mira’s grip, quickly moving to Mira’s back to untie her corset. The woman struggled something terrible, whispering angrily to herself and finally shouting. Pinkbeard popped his head back into the animal-skin tent and giggled as the woman ranted and gestured to the corset. The giant took a turn, trying to loosen the knot at the base of Mira’s spine. When the two of them together couldn’t get the thing off (almost certainly seawater had swelled the cord), he cut the lacing and ripped it away.

Mira took her first corset-free breath in many days. Air flooded her lungs with such a force that she felt dizzy and black speckles appeared in the corners of her vision. Pinkbeard and the red-dressed woman watched with great confusion upon their faces as Mira stumbled and grasped onto the singular raw wood support beam to keep herself upright. As her breathing steadied and the fog in her mind lifted, they murmured to each other, turning the corset around in their hands. When they could make no sense of it, the man shrugged and once again wandered outside.

The woman helped Mira peel off her wet clothes and put dry things on. The pieces were thick and warm but so uninhibiting that Mira felt naked and guilty as if she were wearing her nightdress in front of a stranger. She kept her arms crossed so as to cover her chest, but this didn’t lift any of her shame.

With a thick cloth, the woman began roughly pressing Mira’s hair to soak up the water, but suddenly she stopped, grabbing ahold of Mira’s wrist and jerking her arm forward to examine her hand. Mira looked down and found the woman’s shock easy to explain; her fingertips were the wrong colour: a sickening bluish-grey.

Mira knew nothing of medicine; still, she was certain that fingers were not supposed to be blue.

The woman in the red dress dragged her by the arm (quite roughly) out of the tent, grumbling. Pinkbeard was not far, and the woman pulled Mira’s hand forward to show him the blueness.

The man wasn’t as worried as Mira or the woman were. Indeed, he did not seem worried in the least. He rubbed the blue fingers between his hands and brought them up to his mouth, blowing hot breath on them as the woman in the red dress shouted at him. Mira had never seen a woman tell a man off and found herself impressed.

I will call her Cat’s eye, she thought.

Such a powerful woman deserved a lovely name.

Pinkbeard kept Mira’s hand in his as he led her to another, much larger tent. Dried flowers, feathers, and bones dangled from the sloping leather ceiling, twisting and rattling as Cat’s eye opened the tent. Smoke and the aroma of stewing herbs blended together, making the air thick.

There was a woman, of age with Mira’s mother, crouched by the hearth inside. She curled around the flame like a hawk guardian its meal with her back and neck hunched forward. There were faint blue patterns on her cheeks composed of many sharp interwoven lines that began just beneath her eyes and ran down to the corners of her mouth. The marks were both beautiful and terrifying as if the sapphire colour in the woman’s eyes had leaked out and dripped down her face.

Pinkbeard and Cat’s eye spoke at the same time, growing louder to be heard over each other. The woman cackled at the chaos, but when she spoke, they both swallowed their words, growing still and quiet. Finally, Pinkbeard answered in a hushed voice.

The older woman came to Mira and inspected her hand. She didn’t seem interested in the blue, but rather in the creases of Mira’s palm, tracing each of the deeper lines with a bony finger, carefully angling it to ensure her long pointy nail—the tip of which was dyed blue somehow—didn’t scratch Mira’s palm. The woman spoke softly, and Cat’s eye got to work, setting a large metal bowl above the fire and pouring things into it.

The woman moved slowly and with gentleness, leading Mira closer to the hearth, guiding her to sit and wrapping a large fur around her shoulders. She gave Mira a tall flagon of warm milk and, not long after that, a pungent herb soup. Mira waited, expecting to be given a spoon, only one did not come. The woman pushed the bowl towards Mira’s lips, and so she drank her soup without cutlery straight from the bowl like a feral animal. As Mira sipped, the woman sat behind her, rubbing her thin hands quickly along Mira’s back and arms. Mira hated having the woman’s hands on her (indeed, it may have been the most she’d ever been touched), but the movement was so warming she couldn’t bring herself to pull away.

While this was happening, Pinkbeard took a seat in between Cat’s eye’s legs as she unwove and then re-weaved his hair. Unravelled, his hair was nearly as long as Mira’s, but only on the top and back of his head. There was short fuzzy hair on the sides, which Mira found grotesque; she’d never been able to glimpse someone’s bare scalp before seeing the Northmen, and she especially didn’t like looking at it while she was eating.

When the weaving was done, Cat’s eye took a blade to his head to shear off the fuzz, leaving nothing but raw white-pinkish skin. As this occurred, the older woman spoke, and Pinkbeard answered, and Mira knew by the frequency with which they looked at her that they were talking about her.

Having found a little warmth and felt a full stomach, Mira determined to infer which of the three seemed to be the most merciful and plead with them somehow. She ruled out the older woman immediately, as grown women, in Mira’s experience, tended to be the harshest. She wanted it to be Cat’s eye, but the woman had laughed at her in a cruel way and seemed more annoyed with each moment that passed. Surely the man who was, at one point, covered in the blood of her countrymen and who’d stolen her harp could not be considered merciful? Still, he seemed to be Mira’s best chance.

It took many moments for her to build up the courage to try speaking to the man, but when she thought she was ready, she decided it would be wise to finish her soup first as it might be taken away as a punishment for speaking out of turn.

She tried to envision a way she could express that her father would pay gold for her return. Mira recalled several stories of captive ladies who were paid for and returned home safely. She could also remember the account of one who wasn’t, but she didn’t want to think of the drowned Lady Danton. Of course, it was too late; Mira had thought of Lady Danton and then the farmer’s wife who’d gutters herself to avoid some sort of terrible violence.

It would be wiser to stay quiet.

When Mira finished her soup, the bowl was plucked from her fingers and refilled by Cat’s eye. Mira wasn’t hungry anymore, but the heat of it was too precious to reject. As the older woman collected tufts of shaved hair off the floor, Cat’s eye ground dried leaves with a black stone. She packed the grains into something Mira could only understand as a flute. But unlike other flutes, this one was lit on fire and passed around. All three of them breathed in the smoke. They coughed, and Mira was further confused. She had been told as a child not to breathe in the smoke from a fire as it would kill her. Are the lungs of the Northmen stronger than those of people back home?

Mira was afraid to fall asleep, and so she fought the wave of tiredness that crashed into her. Of course, it didn’t help that she was dizzy from the smoggy air or that these were her first moments with respite from the wind in days.

She watched as the older woman tossed tiny bone chips onto the floor, and the three of them crept forward on their hands and knees to look at the pieces. The chips were smooth and shiny and as white as clouds. Mira felt the urge to pick one up and hold it. They looked so sleek she imagined they would feel like water slipping through her fingers.

When the older woman tossed more bones to the furs, Mira noticed their movement was somewhat wrong. They were more bouncy than they should have been, moving just a little further along the floor than one would expect given the force she tossed them with. It seemed almost like they were rolling themselves closer to Mira. Giggling. Begging her to pick them up. They appeared to be living things, with character—childish and curious, they wanted to take a look at the foreign girl.

I am tired, Mira told herself. Bones didn’t want to look at anything; they had no eyes. Mira decided her senses had been dulled by the strength of the incense in the air and the extreme exhaustion that sunk into her bones. She tried not to focus on the polished chips, looking up at the three Northerners instead.

They were all watching her—the older woman especially. Her brow was furrowed, and her sharp, clear eyes narrowed. Without realizing it, Mira had crept closer to the bones. When she shifted back to her earlier position, their attention returned to the bones and their conversation.

Mira began yet another prayer as the watched the smoke twisting from the fire. She didn’t get more than a few words out before she fell asleep. Warm at last. She dreamt, but not of the sea, of Rowan working in his shop. When he saw her watching him, he laughed—not his own laugh—the deep, wild laugh of a Northman.