Gittenurg’s third ship returned just as spring began to take over, filling the land until it was bursting at the seams with green and pink and white. Dania’s Northman Eggun was alive and well. For a time after his return, Dania was nowhere to be seen. The abandonment wounded Mira in layers—she no longer had someone she could speak to with words that came easily, she’d lost the one true friend she’d made in her life, and she’d been tossed aside, deemed less worthy than someone else.

Fell seemed to sense the loneliness that gripped Mira when this happened, for he began spending more time with her, sometimes full days without going to make his living. Sometimes he would ask if she wanted to go fishing with him in the little creaking boat he dragged to the sea most mornings.

Mira caught her first fish in this time, and Fell made sure that Gorn kept it separate from everyone else’s meals, so Mira could eat the one that she caught.

His words grew clearer to her, and she began to understand more of his character. Though Fell was always laughing and jesting and humming, he was also always watching. He knew the land by heart and could describe to her each and every thing that would happen moments before it occurred. The little grey bird will come out and clean her feathers beneath the old tree over there, before going to the grassy spot, just here, to look for her breakfast. Always one and a half worms for herself; the second half of the second worm she would take to her babies.

And then it would happen exactly as he’d predicted. He knew how all the animals acted before a storm and so could tell her when the weather was to change before any hint could be perceived in the sky. He could tell her exactly how the clouds would move at a certain time of day and where each of the creatures liked to hide their nuts and seeds.

It was not only that Mira could better understand him, but Fell grew accustomed to her broken, mispronounced words. He knew what she was meaning even when other people did not, and he knew how to shorten his phrasing to help Mira grasp what he was trying to say. In this way, they could speak about more than just the objects in front of them.

One day it was, “Why give me to witch?”

By this point, Fell had learned that witch was Mira’s word for Myret. It bothered Mira to no end that Fell thought she should be Myret’s slave-guest instead of Speartooth’s.

He laughed. “Many thinkings. She loves song. She ask for me sing all times. You make better song than me, so I think to myself she will like you. Also, she is more alone and more alone, and needing help. Her hands have pain, work hurts her, but she does not like knowing this. So I think I be clever. I think I give her help but dressed as a gift. Most I think, you and her same. Woman alone. People bad to you, people bad to her, I think you understand her; she understand you.”

Another day it was, “I not want be soten.”

“I not want you soten also. But, if not soten, you have trouble. Vreydis and Idra and Inga….” He laughed. “For soten, you have many not-friends. They give you trouble if not soten. Secret, just me, just you, not soten. With people, lie, say soten. Safe.”

Another day it was, “No laugh.”

Spring had grown denser; everything was buzzing and humming. They’d picked sun-coloured fruits that morning—the very first of the season—and eaten in the shade of a great Svenden tree. Mira had just finished playing a song on the harp, and she looked up to him and, suddenly, he was kissing her.

Mira knew she was supposed to push him away and shout at him, but she could not. It was too pleasant to refuse.

When he pulled away, he laughed, and his laughter said, have I ruined everything?

Mira said, “No laugh.”

That was the only time he obeyed her command not to laugh, though it was far from the only time she ever gave it. Maybe he meant to disregard her, only he did not have the time to begin laughing again, for she’d moved to kiss him, and the rest of the day passed with their lips together.

It was only one or two days after that when other things began to happen between them. His hands found their way beneath her clothing and brought her a type of joy she hadn’t known existed. Her heart raced fast, and her voice came out of her mouth all on its own. The feeling took over her mind, and she thought of nothing else for many days.

Waiting for him to return from his day’s work became excruciating. The moment he was back, she would press herself against him, feeling his lips and his breath, guiding his fingers between her legs. They often missed supper at the hearth as they could not bring themselves to part for even a moment. She would sometimes feel that he should be home soon and would wait on the docks for him. The other fishermen laughed and teased him for this, but he did not seem to care.

Mira made a new vow to herself. When she returned home in a little less than a year, she would give everyone the impression that she had been the perfect captive, that she’d prayed constantly and frowned the whole time. She decided that telling this to everyone was enough; she did not actually need to do it. Mira would enjoy her year—taking full advantage of the music and the wilderness and Fell’s hands. Like the stolen moments she savoured in the gallery, this would be her stolen year.

Nine days after they first kissed, Fell pressed himself into her. Slow at first, and then, a little faster when she was more accustomed to it—because it took some time for her to feel accustomed to it—the strangeness of it. His weight and the way her body was not strained by it. The against-the-rules-ness of it; it was something she was not supposed to do, but another was doing it with her, and he was tall and strong, so she was less afraid of getting into trouble.

Each time Mira felt well-adjusted and became able to take in air and move in rhythm with him, it became again something that she needed to grow accustomed to. Even after her body found comfort in the act, her heart remained bewildered.

Fell’s face was close to hers, and as he had her, he did not look away from her eyes. She could see his ecstasy. It was strangely exciting to watch him as he pushed into her. Bliss, that’s what he’s feeling. His stare intensified, his breathing quickened, and the black center of his eyes swelled and swallowed up the blue. Mira could feel his heart pounding in his chest. She had never made someone else feel so much before, and for the first time in her life, Mira felt a little bit powerful.

She tried looking away for a moment, at the little circle cut out of the top of the tent, where the smoke went out, and the moon and the stars came in, but that sight was just as all-encompassing. Everything was too much, and she cried.

Fell slowed, then stopped, pulling a little away when her tears came. “No stop,” she said. She did not have enough words in his language to tell him how she felt; maybe she didn’t have enough words in her own language either. She’d been all-consumed by feeling before, only it had always been terrible—when the witch was burning, or the farmer’s wife was screaming or when she was lost in one of her many fits. This was the first time she was swallowed by something so kind and light. It was not something she liked or did not like; it was something she became for a short time, something that she wanted to continue being, forever.

Afterwards, Mira did not feel defiled or lesser in any way; rather, she felt more whole, as if Fell had given her something she lost long ago. She had not known it was possible to feel so close to another person or to find another being so beautiful. Laying beside Fell with his arms around her, drifting off to sleep was the most comfortable she had ever been, and she slept more soundly than ever before.

In the morning, he had her again. That time, he rolled her atop him and moved her hips with his hands, teaching her how to find that wonderful feeling all on her own.

Mira spent the morning pondering the things she had been told as a child, trying to figure what her mother and the gods would think of what she’d done. She knew they wouldn’t like it, and she thought them wrong for this. What else could they be wrong about? Perhaps because the gods weren’t human, they didn’t understand the beauty of it? If they were to punish her for what she’d done, she didn’t care; Mira felt it a fair exchange.

That was the day Mira stopped praying to the gods of her childhood.

The one drawback of this discovery was the realization that she would need to visit Myret if she was to avoid carrying a child. At first, her fear of the woman left her thinking that she would rather have a child than face the witch, but then a sickly guilt set in. On the Isle, a bastard was one of the worst things a person could be. Would she curse a child to avoid the witch? She could not. Besides, if Mira brought a baby home with her… there’d be no way to keep the year a secret.

And so, after Fell left to fish for the day, Mira went and knocked on Dania’s tent, for she did not wish to face the witch alone.