Mira was oblivious to the part where she fell in love. Suddenly she was deep within it, intoxicated and delirious.

She’d never felt important before, but she knew she was important to Fell. Not because he said so, but because she could feel it when he looked for her in the crowd at the hearth. When he returned from his day’s work, and though he was tired, he smiled when he saw her. When he laughed at her confusion over something or other. Every time their eyes met, she was certain of her own importance, and she never wanted to go back to being insignificant.

She wanted to write songs about him and wished she could paint so as to capture the way he looked when he first woke in the morning and was sleepy and slow. Or the way he smirked and said nothing but was truly saying everything. Or the way he pulled her close to him in the cold night and slept with his arms around her.

The days passed slowly and sweetly, and Mira found herself with enough Northern words to not just speak but converse—which she did often, whether or not someone had spoken to her first. Not two-word phrases expressing the most basic of thoughts. Want music. The full idea. I want to hear the song with the bells in the middle, the one about Yorunn.

Still, there were words she missed, and she struggled to speak about things that had happened long ago, as all the words were different when speaking of the past versus the present.

Often, Mira would have to make up words. When she wanted to refer to gloves and did not know how, she would say, “How you say… hand-boot?” After some confusion and laughter, people usually understood and told her the word she didn’t know. Fell and Dania and Myret and many others chose the simpler way of saying something when talking with her to make things easier.

Fell asked often what she was feeling and what she was thinking. No one apart from Dayne had ever wondered what was happening inside of her before, and, at first, she didn’t know how to answer him. He kept asking, and eventually, Mira learned to name her feelings and explain them.

When it rained or was particularly misty, she would miss the Isle, and Fell would ask her to tell him stories about her home country. He would tell her the things he heard about the Isle and ask if they were true. Sometimes she would cry, and he would pull her tight against his chest and sing; she could feel the sound coming out his chest against her cheek and was soothed.

Her whole life, Mira had done her best to ignore her feelings, pushing them deep within herself, and so they had grown quiet. But the more she spoke of them, the louder they became, and quickly she lost the ability to separate herself from them.

Once at the hearth, a drunken man asked Fell if the hair between her legs was dark like the hair on her head.

Mira didn’t have to think of the words or put them in the right order in her mind. “What you do not know can cause you no harm!”

Many laughed at this.

“She speaks!”

“Soten has learned to talk!”

That was the day Mira realized she sometimes thought in the language of the North. She began to dream in the Northern tongue, too, though occasionally she would dream of Fell or Myret speaking her first language. She began to hear the subtle differences between the types of laughter Dania taught her about, and when she felt something or thought something, she was compelled to speak of it so as to appear brave like the Northerners.

Mira had never wanted to please a grown person out of anything other than fear before, but she found herself wanting to make Fell happy for no other reason than she thought he deserved it. This was easy enough; the man wanted for almost nothing. He was happy to wander around the woods aimlessly singing to himself and to her. He was happy to lay on the furs in his tent and watch Mira as she played her harp. Sometimes they would do nothing at all but set their foreheads together and watch each other and listen to the sound of their mingled breathing as the wind twirling the wooden chimes just outside.

Other times though, the love Mira felt was horrible to bear because she would think of Fell falling ill or dying or being lost at sea, and a sickly panic would take hold of her, like in one of her fits. Once, when the fear swelled so large within her that she could not keep it in, she vomited. Always in the ballads, those who did wrong things were punished in the most fitting of ways. She felt certain she would have to pay for her happiness, and because her joy was so great, she expected the price of it to be great as well. But then Fell would return, and all worry lifted from the tent, twisting out with the hearth smoke into the sky.

They had one disagreement that Spring, though it was not much of a disagreement. Cat’s eye, who by then Mira knew was named Inga, always seemed unhappy with her, and this no longer pleased Mira in the way it once had.

“The ship on the mountain,” Mira said to her. “You are angry with me.”

“She is not angry with you, Soten,” said Forkbeard when Inga didn’t answer. “She is angry with Fell.”

“Why?”

Mira could not imagine anyone being mad at the man. All he did was laugh and enjoy music. Inga didn’t answer, but she did not need to. Mira could see the truth in her cat-like eyes: shiny and violently clear. The woman wanted to be with Fell in the way Mira was.

And later that evening, when she and Fell were alone, Mira decided to be brave once more. “The woman, Inga….”

Fell laughed the way the Northerners did when they were about to get in trouble. “What about her?”

“How have you know her?”

He laughed again and corrected her words.

“How do you know her?” Mira repeated.

“She is a friend; I knew her when we were children, but we became closer… maybe two or three years ago?”

Mira felt him dancing around her question; she felt he knew what she was truly asking but was refusing to answer. And she didn’t like how he said closer.

“You two together?”

Again he laughed. “Were,” he said. “Were you two together.”

Mira was so livid her eyes felt too wide for her face. She did not want a language lesson; she wanted him to answer her. “You understand,” she said, refusing to change her earlier wording. “Answer. You two together?”

He pulled her closer to him, smiling his terrible, beautiful smile. “I understand. We… not truly together, no.”

Truly. Mira hated this word. “Did you have her as you have me?” She felt proud of herself for speaking so boldly. Mira from one year ago would not have chosen such direct words.

Fell thought about his answer for a few moments. “We have shared a bed but only as friends.”

Mira could not comprehend such a thing. A terrible jealousy gnawed in her chest.

“Last winter, we were both without someone. It was cold and lonely, and so we helped each other. Nothing more.”

Mira’s sense of her place in the world shattered, and fear swallowed her. It never occurred to her that Fell might not feel as she did. That he was not as enamoured with her as she was with him. She hadn’t known one-sided love was possible and wanted to cry. Had she been stupid? Was this why the gods in her country forbid such things? To prevent suffering?

“Inga does not think this,” she said.

Again he laughed. “She does; only then she sees you and knows I am not… waiting for her. It is her pride that is hurt, not her heart.”

His smile left his face as Mira fought with her tears.

“You are not only my friend,” he said. “You are lightning, sent by Hyrold himself to strike me. I will never not think of you.”

Mira was taken aback. Fell had never said something so serious. She kissed him, and within moments, their clothing was being pulled away, and they were tangled together.

A few days after that, it was Fell’s turn to become frustrated (for once). He came back from his work early, breathless and laughing. “Come, Mira! Come!”

Mira followed him to the town hearth: there were visitors in Gittenurg. Two men and a woman and they were hanging faded, colourful silks from posts freshly planted in the ground. Their clothing was odd and bright, made of mismatched fabrics with silver threading that caught the light like metal and appeared bright white.

They’d brought two carts with them. One seemed normal enough, but the other was covered with a tattered purple silk, and from inside, there was a frightening noise. A low rumbling sound Mira had never heard before. She didn’t need anyone to tell her it was an animal beneath the silk—her stomach knew.

Many of the villagers stopped their work for the day and watched as a great scene was set up before them. The three who had come called themselves Egil’s children. They were siblings, and the youngest boy chatted as he pounded a post into the dirt, promising that they had come to perform fantastic feats for the townsfolk.

As the crowd gathered to see their show, Mira’s view was blocked by the tall Northerners, so Fell set her upon his shoulders. She watched as the two brothers put their sister into a tiny crate—much too small for a person to fit in—and closed the top. One brother sat upon the crate as it shifted around, the woman inside trying to get free. They asked one of the children watching to blow wind onto the box, and when they opened it, their sister was gone. Everyone looked around in shock and found that the sister was standing among them in the crowd.

The sister pouted and stomped her boots, making it clear she was angry because her brothers locked her in the chest, and as she marched back to her place on the platform, she lifted her hands up into the air, and the crowd laughed.

She had—without her brothers knowing it—bound their ankles and wrists, and now they could not move. She tried to fit them into the crate, even though they were far too big and made silly faces as she forced one in and then the other. The second brother did not let go of her wrist and pulled her into the box as well. The top closing after her. Click. Mira had no sense of how the siblings did what they were doing.

I don’t want it to be over, Mira thought. Her wish was granted as one brother climbed out of the chest, wearing completely different clothing than before he went in. His face was covered in a black mask with little holes cut out for his brilliant blue eyes. The second brother came forth, also wearing different clothes: a crimson cape that flowed as he flourished his arms. And then a third person came out, only it was not the sister. It was another man, even taller than the first two, wearing grey from head to toe with flecks of silver hidden in the fabric, making him seem like a starry morning.

“She has turned into a boy!” one of the children shrieked, laughing.

The man shouted back at the child. “How dare you! I was never a woman; I have always been a man!”

Their sister climbed out, and everyone was in awe.

Was the third man hiding in the chest the whole time? Mira could not figure it. The chest was too small for one grown person, let alone four.

They did many other tricks as well, and, at one point, they asked for a guest.

“A young woman, about this tall…,” the masked brother held up his hand to show the height he wanted. “Ideally, a soten you would not be too heartbroken to lose if this all goes terribly.”

Before Mira could shout “No!” Fell had taken her off his shoulders and pushed her onto the platform.

She was nervous at first because of what the man said, but when he took her hand, he winked at her, and she knew she was safe. Each other child of Egil shook one of her hands, and they moved her to the center of the platform and forced her back straight and began a contest of sorts. Each of them pulled things out of the air and offered them to her, trying to create something better than what had last been revealed. A coin. A flower. A rabbit. Many coins. Many flowers. Many rabbits. The creatures fled the performance, hopping off in every direction as the audience shrieked in awe.

Finally, the tallest man—the one in grey who spoke the least—showed Mira his empty palms with an impish smile. He closed his hands, one on top of the other, and opened them, and within was a tiny bird, grey with white speckles. He set the bird in her hands, but as he did, he slowed. Their eyes met, and he grew strange and still, like a rabbit not wanting to be seen by a hunter, and it felt like the performance stopped for a moment.

Egil’s other children found more flowers in Mira’s sleeves and pockets and in her hair, and she could not fathom where these things had come from, but she was also watching the tallest child of Egil who’s austere expression refused to fade. And then there were half a dozen pale birds that came from nowhere; they fluttered up into the sky and scattered among the stars in a matter of moments. The troupe had Mira bow with them, and when she left the platform, the man who looked at her strangely put a coin in her hand.

The end of the show was the most spectacular. The animal within the cart was a bear in pale blue satin clothing. She stood up on her hind legs and moved forward and backward when the children of Egil spoke. Mira had never seen a bear before and was mesmerized, both terrified and enraptured. The beast’s power could be felt just by standing near her. There was a raw wildness, a strength and simplicity Mira could not have fathomed prior to spying the creature. There was the taste of freedom within her fierceness: no one could convince the animal to do what she did not want. She must be enticed or left alone, and Mira loved the bear for this.

At the end of their show, the Children of Egil said people could come and pet the bear.

“Just be sure to use the fingers you like least,” said the shortest brother with a fiendish smile.

Mira did not want to touch the animal (as she very much liked having all her fingers), but Fell would not allow her to miss out. He pulled her towards the bear and set her hand on its fur, and suddenly she was not scared at all. The bearess was far more gentle than she could have imagined, and its tawny fur was so soft and sleek that Mira could not help but weave her fingers through it. The beast nuzzled its nose into her palm, and Mira pressed her face into the creature’s side, breathing in the sharp, earthy wild smell, feeling inexplicably like the bear was sharing some of her essence, that if Mira only breathed in deeply enough, she could keep some of the bear with her wherever she went.

Egil’s children held out worn hats, and many placed jewelry or coin inside, resulting in a chorus of jingling and jangling. When the hat passed Mira, she had nothing to give besides the coin they had given her. She went to drop it in the hat, but the tallest brother shook his head.

“That is for you to keep. Your fee for holding our secrets.”

Mira did not know what he meant. She didn’t know any of their secrets. But still, she kept the coin. It was the first wealth she had ever earned, and even though she’d done nothing but stand where she was told, she felt a little proud of having made a coin all on her own.

Egil’s children stayed the night in Gittenurg and were given meals and wine. They told fantastic stories of the faraway places they’d been and the pirates they met, though Mira wondered if the tales were fabricated. Many townsfolk questioned Mira about how their tricks were done, but she had no answers.

Even Fell was curious. “Did you feel them put the flowers in your sleeves?”

Mira shook her head.

Fell asked her to play the harp for the guests, and they seemed to enjoy it, though the tallest one’s sombre look had not left his face.

Myret joined them as the hearth raged and reached its firey fingers into the sky. It was clear she knew some of Egil’s children because they stood and took her in their arms with mirthful grins when she arrived. Despite this, she chose to sit next to Mira.

“You know of Egil?” she said.

Mira shook her head. She’d heard the word here and there but didn’t understand it.

“Egil is the god of tricks and illusions, dreams and flights… what is their performance called in your own language?”

Mira’s first tongue felt far away from her, and she needed to think for a moment. “It is called circus,” she said at last.

Myret asked if this word had any other meanings, and Mira shook her head, though she was struck hard by a sudden thought and sat up straight.

A circus!

By accident, she had seen something she had always dreamt about. Lightning struck, and a wave of realizations washed over her. She was living by the sea, in a big town with lots of people and girls her own age. There were dances every night. And now, there was a circus.

Everything I wanted.

Only it was better than she ever hoped because she was in love, and she was allowed to speak her mind and feel as she wished and wander wherever she wanted.

A cool breeze rustled through the trees, and Mira was overwhelmed by the beauty of the life she was living.

I do not want to return home, she realized.

“This one’s skael screams at me,” Egil’s tallest child said, nodding to Mira as he fetched another skin of wine.

Myret laughed. “I hear this too.”

Mira was too bewildered with her own discovery to attempt to figure out their meaning.

“How many years is she?”

Everyone looked to Mira. She could not do numbers well in the Northern language; she didn’t even know how to say ten. “Six and eight and two,” she said.

“She is your soten?” He turned to Fell.

Fell nodded.

“What is her price?”

Fell shook his head.

“Shame. She would be good at our work, I think… Have her stones been read?”

Myret cackled with glee. “I have tried, but she will not allow it. And then the gods tried, she spilled the bones when visiting with me, but still, she refused.”

“May I see your hand again?” the tall man asked, pulling Mira further away from her revelation.

She offered her hand, and the man examined her palm, frowning a little as he turned her wrist to see better by the firelight.

“You have seen this?” he asked Myret.

“I have.”

“Why are there so many men? They cannot all be lovers. No woman could manage it, I think.” He turned her hand again and traced one of the lines, looking up suddenly with great pity in his eyes. His stare was so foreboding that Mira grew frightened and jerked her wrist away.

“Within a year, two men will come to you,” he said. “The first will come during a great storm, the other when the world is calm. Both will cause you terrible pain.”

Mira’s mind did not believe the man, but his steady tone held the ring of truth and her heart began to wonder.

“Her first stone was fyret vilden,” Myret said. “When I asked her what she thought of it, she said it meant not getting the things she wanted.”

The tall child of Egil laughed, loud and fiendish.

Mira shook her head. “I have this day—” She didn’t know how to say realized. “—Come to know? Come to know this is wrong.”

“How so?”

“Always I have a… how you say… when you have many things together, one after another to be done or wanting to be done?”

“Collection?” Fell offered.

The word was not quite right, but it would do. “Collection. I have this. The things I hope for my life, but… secret, I tell no one because I think they will not happen for me. I hope to live by the sea. In a big town. With girls my own age. With dances and circuses. It has all come true. Only not as I had been thinking it would.”

Still, the man’s pity was not gone from his face; if anything, it had deepened. “If you forget everything else from this time in your life, you must remember one thing—it will all make sense by the end. Nothing happens without a purpose.”

Mira wanted to hear no more. She wanted to leave, and when she looked to Fell, she saw he felt as she did.

As they stood, the tall child of Egil said one more thing. “If the time should come when you are free and without direction, go to Ornen, find a woman there named Fynna. She will tell you how to find us. There are many great performances in your future….” He laughed. “And I would like to be one of the men in your palm.”

The night air was growing cold, and the moment they reached his tent, Fell knelt to kindle the fire, laughing to himself.

“What is funny?”

“I am angry,” he said. “Foolishly angry, but angry still.”

Mira turned to look at him. He was smiling and did not look frustrated in the least.

“Why?”

“I would like to be one of the men in your palm.” When Fell quoted the tall man, he used a mocking voice. “What man speaks like this? He uses his tricks to make you like him.”

“I do not like him,” Mira lied.

“When he looks at you, you look back, and you do not look to me,” Fell said, lying down and covering his face with his forearm, laughing at his own misery.

If Mira was being honest, she loved the feeling of his jealousy—a rare admission of the depth of his feeling. Still, she could not bear his misery for long.

She knelt atop him and lifted his arm away to look upon his face—his sharp, angled cheeks, his broad, flat brow, the clear blue of his eyes. “You are right,” she said. “This is foolish. I only see you. The trees, the sea, the mountains, the fire… all the people and all the stars… everything I look at, I think of you.”

It was still difficult to express deeper sentiments in her new language, but Mira hoped Fell understood because they were perhaps the truest words she’d ever spoken.

He sighed and began to pick at a thick callus on his palm. “It is not only that. Many things are wrong this night. I do not like becoming a liar. I—”

“You are not a liar.”

He laughed. “But I am. I tell people… always I say to them: anger is a trick of Egil; it is not real. It is a shield, hiding a feeling that it believes you are not strong enough to bear. Do not fuel the anger but dive beneath it. Feel what current is below the surface and then thank the anger, for it protected you until you were ready to face the true pain. But this night... I would rather stay angry than taste what is behind the shield.”

“Which Northern god says this?”

“None of the gods say it. It is my thinking.”

Mira was impressed. Who would sit and wonder what anger was made of? She tried to think of a single instance where she’d felt angry, and it was not actually her avoiding feeling pain or loss or helplessness. There was not one she could think of.

Fell’s laughter found a portion of its usual warmth. “I say many things to myself before I see you. I say, I will never take soten. I say I will never love a woman. I will never share my home with a woman. I will never care where another person sets their eyes. But I see you, and you make me a liar. The gods have not stopped laughing at me since they put you in my path. They say: See? You are not so clever as you think.”

It was not humble, but Mira liked that he said this. She liked the idea of being so significant to him that he would break the promises he’d made for her. She also liked how talkative he was that evening. With only a few words from her to encourage him, Fell spoke at length, more words than she’d maybe ever received from him.

She said, “What made you change your mind? Why take soten?”

“Myret. You know this. She tells me to.”

“But you did not have to listen to her.”

Fell thought for a few moments. “She says the gods took me to you. That I refused to do what they asked, and so they found another way. The gods always get what they want.”

“The gods asked you to make me soten?”

He shook his head. “I see a girl, locked away, high up in a dark place, hidden with all the treasures. I see you love valniet—”

“Valn-eet?”

“Yes… how to word… weapons of music? Tools of music?”

Mira nodded, hoping he meant instrument.

“I, too, love this. I tell myself I will stay with you until the fight is over to make sure no harm comes to you. I say, I will leave, and the door will be open behind me, and this girl will be free, and that is why the gods strike me this way. They want me to leave the door open for you. I am sad; I know I will think of you for many moons. But then you play, and of all the songs in all the world, you choose the one….”

Fell’s eyes wandered away for a moment, and Mira knew he was not seeing what was before him. He was lost in a memory. She hadn’t seen this look on his face before and drank it in, feeling no impatience to hear the end of his story; he looked so beautiful while lost in his head.

“And I see skael, and I know. But I pretend I do not know. I leave you, but it did not matter. You were still soten. And I am the one who keeps you.”

Mira still did not fully understand skael. She opened her mouth to ask him about Tears of the Mander and where he first heard it, but he spoke first.

“Soten is another part of my anger tonight. He asks your price, and I hate this. I hate soten, and I hate myself for letting people call you this. I want you to be called free, to be called Norsen.”

Mira’s heart skipped a beat. “Is it not dangerous? Will I have trouble from people?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Probably. Who is to say?”

Mira was afraid of having to settle disagreements in the Northern way, but mostly, she was afraid that being named free would make her obligated to go home next raiding season. Being called soten was a spectacular excuse to not do what she felt she ought to.

“And now we come to the last piece of my anger,” he said. “It is the worst part.”

When Mira looked at him, it was not anger she saw—it was mourning.

“I have a hard thought,” he said. “But it must be said this night, or the chance will be gone.” He took a long, steady breath. “We never speak of you going back to your country….”

Mira wanted him to stop speaking.

“I said I would take you, and I will. But I see the coin that was made by Egil’s children this night, and I know that in other places, they will make more. They have invited you. If you wanted to go with them in the morning, you would have the wealth to return home before winter. You would have to be clever, taking one ship and then another, but I think it could be done.”

Tears pressed against the back of Mira’s eyes. “You wish for me to leave?”

“No,” he said. “I wish you would not go at all, not even next year. But it rains, and you cry, and you miss your home. In your sleep, you say the name of your brother. I know I cannot keep you. I must find a way to be happy with the time you have given me and not be greedy and ask for more.”

“I hate you for saying this.”

Fell laughed. “I also hate me for saying this.”

“Then let us pretend you did not.”

Fell shook his head. “This may be your only chance to go home early.”

He spoke the truth, but Mira did not contemplate acting on it for even a moment. “I do not want to go now.”

I do not want to go at all.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, their bodies entangled and moved together, and all thought of Egil’s tallest son was gone. Afterwards, they lay together watching the firelight frolic across the sorrel leather of the tent, listening to the hushed wind and the distant laughter of those still at the hearth. There was a weight to the hour that Mira could not explain at the time, but later on, she would wonder if that was the night the child was made.