“I’ve missed you!” Dania threw her arms around Mira and dragged her inside, introducing Eggun as Hald and Layf jumped up and down, pulling on Mira’s arms. Eggun had a stern look about him; hard grey eyes and a grizzled, ashen beard. Mira could not help but think the man was strict and found herself standing up straight with her eyes on the floor like she would have back home. In part, this was because the man was shirtless, but mostly, it was because she didn’t want him to think of her as trouble and forbid Dania from seeing her.

Eggun laughed and said something Mira roughly understood as: “Remember days you new. She soten?” But the man spoke quickly, and Mira was sure there were extra words she missed.

Dania nodded.

“Whose?”

Dania smirked, “Fell.”

“No!” Eggun shouted in disbelief, throwing a giant arm in the air, laughing deep and hearty. His laugh spread to his sons, and they jumped on his shoulders and nuzzled their faces against his hairy chest. The affection was so foreign to Mira that she could not even find it beautiful; it was too confusing and irregular.

Dania could not take her eyes off the man though she spoke to Mira. “How have you been these last few days?”

It had been much longer than a few days since they’d last seen each other, but Mira did not point this out.

“I need to see Myret. Will you come with me?”

Dania’s round eyes shot up to Mira’s. Instantly, she knew Mira had a lot to tell her. She spoke to Eggun before dragging Mira out of the tent to an empty field so they could speak privately. “Tell me everything.”

They spoke of the night before in great detail, giggling. Dania described her first time with a man, Eggun, and how she too was surprised to find it beautiful. “It is as if, when you are together, you make one full person. Each part of you fitting perfectly with each part of him.”

Mira could not agree more.

She was worried that Myret would refuse to give her the veerslhung if she did not complete her reading, but this was not what happened. The woman smiled when Mira entered her tent and poured the thick substance into a small wooden bowl without Mira telling her why she’d come.

Her foresight should have frightened Mira, but it didn’t. If anything, she felt soothed by the interaction. The sharp-eyed woman had not forced her to do something she did not want to and so seemed less evil.

Mira finished the sludge in three big gulps, not because she was uncomfortable being in Myret’s tent, but because the taste was bitter and the strength of the herbs shocked the roof of her mouth and nose. She thanked Myret in the Northern words when she was done and handed the bowl back.

The woman gurgled up harsh-sounding words, and Dania translated. “She says she would like to speak of the ship on the mountain.”

Mira was confused, and Dania laughed. “It is a saying, my lady. I have translated poorly. She means…” Dania thought to herself for a moment. “She would like to talk of the things that have gone unspoken between you.”

Mira’s eyes dipped to the floor where the bones she placed still lay. It felt like they were looking at her, snickering in an evil sort of way. She looked back up quickly, hoping that Myret had not seen, but the woman’s steady, hawkish glare missed nothing.

“She says there is no rush; they will wait for you. She wishes to say there is no reason for you to fear her. She will not harm you. She swears it.”

Mira looked at the woman with care—her shrewd sapphire eyes, her long milky hair with beads and trinkets and baubles woven into the thick strands, the creases in her skin around the eyes and mouth that made it look like she was always smiling, the blue-ink streams starting beneath her eyes and trailing down her cheeks to the corners of her mouth. There was only kindness in her face, and Mira’s heart wanted to trust the woman. Still, she’d tried to tell Mira of her future, and that was an evil thing to do.

“She wonders if you have any questions about the North or any struggles she can help with, even just by listening to you speak of them.”

Mira shook her head at first, but then a question did occur to her. It was one that had tickled the back of her mind since Erlend’s death. “Northmen go to Hyrold’s halls by being brave,” she said. “Where do the women go?”

“She does not understand your question. The women also go to Hyrold’s halls.”

“But women cannot be brave,” Mira said.

Myret’s mouth smiled, but her eyes did not. “She says women can be just as brave as men. Have you ever seen a woman bring a child into the world?”

Mira hadn’t seen this, but she did not think it was the same as being courageous.

“She says there are many types of bravery. There is the bravery of telling the truth when a lie would be easier; the bravery of putting another before yourself, even if you know this means you will go without something you want or need. There is the bravery of facing the truth of yourself or accepting what the gods have given you. She says that the way you are thinking is the easiest path to Hyrold’s Halls, but there are many others, and often, in her experience, women are better at the more complicated acts of courage.”

Myret began crushing her dried leaves as Mira pondered what was said. Dania explained that in the Northern language, there were many words for bravery, not just two like back home. There was a word for every type of situation where courage could be applied.

Mira again looked at the tiny bone pieces and decided to speak a truth aloud, one she was nervous to say for fear of upsetting the witch, but all this talk of women’s bravery made her feel bold. “Can you tell her it is fine if she moves them and reads for another? I do not want to hear what they say.”

“She says there is no escaping skael; you will not be able to help knowing what they say, whether she moves the pieces or not.”

“Skael?”

“Yes, my lady, it is one of those words that we don’t have back home. I guess you can say… it is the things that are planned for you, but it is also much more than that.”

As Myret lifted her flute to her lips, a gust of wind blew through the tent and rustled the hanging trinkets. Bone and iron jangled together, drying herbs rustled, and Myret closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, enjoying the breeze and clanky melody. Mira did not need her next word translated.

“Hyrold,” the woman whispered. She laughed, deep and beautiful, and a lovely conversation began. Dania and Myret taught Mira many things about the Northern language that day, especially the parts of it that did not translate so well.

Dania explained that in the North, there was no word for privacy, and so there was no such concept. This had been a source of great frustration between Dania and Eggun when the strawberry time of their love had ended. (The strawberry time, she said, was when you first fall in love and nothing the person does annoys you, no matter what it is.)

She explained that in the Northern language, there were many phrases that made no sense when translated word for word. When Northerners said there are too many stars in the sky, they meant that they felt such happiness they were sad, as they knew that such a good moment could not last forever. When they said they were licking the dew off a thorny branch, they meant that they were enjoying the pleasure of being sad. They had a phrase about sitting upon a very tall horse, referring to a person who held themselves above others in their mind, but this one was the same as back on the Isle.

Dania explained that there was an endless amount of these phrases, and she was still learning new ones all the time. She and Myret taught Mira that there were countless different words for laughter in the North, each one having to do with a different kind of laugh.

There was a word for the laugh you try to hide when you are getting in trouble. The laugh you make when something is too adorable for you to handle. The laugh you make when you win a hard contest. The laugh you make when you are so angry it becomes funny. The laugh you make when you hurt yourself. The laugh you make when you are in love. The laugh you make when lost or confused or you have failed at something. The laugh you make when someone else gets hurt. The laugh you make when you are so sleepy you find normal things funny. The laugh you make when you do everything right, but still, the ending is wrong… the list went on and on, and Mira knew there was no way she would be able to remember them all.

Myret collected the little bone pieces as they spoke and dropped them back into the vessel, one by one. Mira could have sworn they felt a little disappointed… but that was silly because bones didn’t have feelings.

“That’s it? After she has made such a point of keeping the stones laid out? After the trouble she has caused for me, and Fell?” It seemed to Mira the woman had created a problem for no reason.

“She says she does not trust hearsay. Others had told her you were done with the stones, but she could not know if this was truth without your confirmation. Perhaps they were only trying to get their own way. She does not hear anything one person says about another. Only what people say about themselves. Even then, it is not so much the words that she hears, but what is done and what is not said. This is the way you can come to understand a person.”

Mira felt deep in her heart that this was true. She could not understand most of Fell’s words, but she had a better sense of him than maybe anyone else, except for Dayne, of course.

Dania took a turn breathing from Myret’s flute and giggled a little, and the two of them spoke for some time in the Northern language far too quickly for Mira to have any chance of following along. While they chatted, Mira listened to the bones sitting in their vessel.

I dare you, they seemed to be saying. What is the worst that could happen? Don’t you want to be our friend? Mira was terrified and chose a random word in Dania’s sentence to ask about.

Dania translated some of the conversation. “I have been asking Myret’s advice. I would like to have another child, but I am frightened three will be too many for me to handle with patience, and I will not be able to spend as much time with Hald or Layf or Eggun.”

Dania explained that Eggun sometimes took one boy to work with him in the day so that Dania could have time alone with the other, and once every five or six days, he would take them both with him so that Dania could have a day to herself.

“He is learning about privacy, but very slowly.” She laughed. “This would not work so well with three.”

Myret smirked and spoke in a taunting voice. Though Dania did not translate the old woman’s advice, Mira could sense that whatever was said soothed Dania’s worries greatly, and they moved on to another subject.

Myret wanted to know about Mira’s homeland, about the differences between the highborn and the lowborn on the Isle, as she could not grasp the concept. Mira learned many things that day about the suffering of the common people—how they were born to a plot of land and weren’t allowed to leave for their whole lives—about how easy her own life had been in comparison. But there were moments where Dania, too, was surprised. Being a lady was not only pretty dresses and handsome princes. Myret offered to speak of Mira’s fits, which came up amid the conversation, but Mira declined.

Though it was a lovely way to spend the day, the hour began to pull at Mira. Fell could be back from his work, and no matter how interesting the conversation was, she knew being in bed with him would be more enjoyable. When she found her opening to leave, she said her goodbyes and stood—a little too quickly in her eagerness—knocking over Myret’s cup of bones. A single cloud-coloured piece slid out onto the floor.

The crossed-out diamond.

If a piece of bone could be smirking… that’s what it was doing. Myret laughed for many moments straight.

“She says now you must see. The gods wish to prepare you for something. It is to come whether you ready yourself or not.”