While Mira was adjusting to being Norsen and Sigyn was figuring out how to live without gaining any new memories, something else was happening. Mira’s blissful realization that came with Egil’s children lasted for only a few days. Knowing that she did not want to return home made it impossible to ignore the things that had floated out of her mind when the strawberry time of her love began.

She missed Dayne with fervour and could not imagine not seeing him again. But she also could not part with Fell or Dania. There would be no way for her to remain happy, torn up as she was, and so Mira developed a plan. It was a common enough solution among women, though at the time, Mira felt herself very original. She stopped taking veerslhung.

A foolish solution, as any parent would know—children cannot fix the problems of their mothers or fathers—but Mira was proud of her reasoning. If she was still to be rescued, having a child would mean that her parents would insist upon her marrying Fell and in this way, he could come with her to the Isle if she wanted to visit her family or was forced to move there. Or they would allow her to stay living in the North. Yes, she was this naive.

The only person Mira felt this didn’t appease was poor Loric. Guilt swelled in her stomach when she thought of him, as she’d accepted the man’s offer, and so it was implied that she promised to be with him alone. This was the only true vow she’d ever made, and it was long broken. To ease her suffering, Mira buried Loric’s handkerchief deep beneath the furs in Fell’s tent. This way, it couldn’t look at her anymore.

She was proud of this solution as well and began to develop a maxim by which she told herself she would live the rest of her days. The secret, she thought, is to live in a way that protects you from as much pain as possible and also welcomes as much pleasure and love as you can have. Loric’s handkerchief, and the weight of having to choose whether or not to return to her family in the spring, caused her pain. So she hid the handkerchief and created a situation where she did not feel obligated to choose her family.

In truth, it was an idea that she’d been toying with for some time. Dania stopped taking veerslhung over a moon before, and she urged Mira to do the same.

“Think! They would be the same age. They could play together. It would be the sweetest of all things that could happen.”

Dania was not wrong. Mira liked the idea of a child. When they went for walks in the late morning, she would carry Layf and found great comfort in the feeling of him in her arms—the weight and warmth of him—the way he rested his chubby cheek against her collarbone and twisted his fingers tightly around her sleeve.

Fell also hinted at his feelings on the subject. Even though he and Mira could speak fluently with words by this point, sometimes he still spoke to her with his expression. Whenever Dania brought her boys over, Fell told them scary stories using strange voices to represent different monsters. He would act out the creatures’ gestures as the boys shrieked at the heroes in the story.

“Don’t go into the cave!” they cried. “Don’t go! Please, please, please!”

Fell would look up to Mira as he played with the children, and his raised eyebrows would say, this is nice, don’t you think?

It was beyond nice.

Mira had been daydreaming about what her child would look like for days, trying to imagine how Fell had appeared when he was little. She’d been playing with her veerslhung dates, not brave enough to commit to giving it up entirely but leaving a little space for chance. She would take it every four and a half days, then every five days, then six.

After Egil’s children had come, she knew she must act, or she would continue to suffer. Mira developed her brilliant plan with ease, only she struggled when it came to acting on it. She’d spoken of her thoughts to Dania time and time again, and finally, the girl grew cross with her. She suggested Mira visit Myret to speak about her dilemma. “We’ve talked it to death. There is nothing more I can add.”

It seemed like Myret was expecting her—she laughed when Mira arrived—and when Mira stepped with care so as not to knock over the casting bones, she said, “Fear not, child. I have moved them. They will not bother you where they are.”

Mira took a seat, not knowing how to begin.

“You wish to speak of what the son of Egil said?” Myret prompted.

Mira shook her head, and Myret cackled. “Truly? I would love to. The gods keep trying to speak to you, but you will not listen, so they speak to others about you. They will become louder and louder until they are heard.”

“Dania said I should come to you with my question.”

“And what question is that?”

“I am thinking… of a child.”

A wise smile spread across the woman’s face. “You would like to be a mother?”

“I do not know.”

The woman laughed. “Then you should wait. There will be time later when your answer is certain.” Myret began to mix herbs into the pot that was boiling over the fire. Mira knew by the sharp, bitter smell of it that the woman was preparing veerslhung. Mira hadn’t taken it in seven days—not since before Egil’s children had come.

She wanted to tell Myret to stop, but even then, she was not brave enough. Myret sensed her struggle. “Tell me about children in your country,” she said.

It had been a perfect question, for it brought a secret worry to the surface. “Where I come from, a child born outside of marriage—you do not have this in the North, but it is a promise—”

“I have heard of it,” Myret said.

“Children born outside of this promise are seen as bad luck, a terrible omen. People are cruel to them.”

“And you are worried this is correct?” Myret said. “That such a child would bring you misfortune?”

Mira shook her head, but as she did, she realized this was part of the truth. Most of her beliefs from home had been discarded like bones after a meal, but this one stayed, wound tightly into her heart and stomach. She knew it was a foolish idea. Hald and Layf were both bastards, and there was not one drop of terribleness within either of them. “I know it is not a true thing, but maybe I do believe this… a little.”

Myret smiled and began crushing leaves as she spoke. “I have not been to your country, so I cannot speak of the forces at work there. I can tell you I have seen many women become mothers in my time, and most feel blessed, but some do feel cursed. I do not think either of these feelings comes from the child. It is the mother’s mind and heart that makes the difference—how she feels about her child’s father, how much she expects from herself as a mother, how many friends she has that can hold the child so her arms can rest. And whether she is pleased with herself and her life or if there are many things she wishes for that she has not yet had—”

“Everything I ever wanted I have,” Mira said. “And many wonderful things I had not thought to want, I also have.”

Myret packed her pipe and breathed in the scented smoke. “May I tell you what I think?”

Mira nodded.

“It is maybe too beneath the surface. To pull it forward might sting.”

Again Mira nodded.

“I think you have come to me today wanting me to make this choice for you. You want permission or denial. I think you want this because you have never chosen things for yourself, and so you do not know how.”

Mira was stunned and angry and hurt all at once. The truth of Myret’s words snaked into her ribs and squeezed her organs. Having everything laid out in front of her made her despise herself.

“Besides...” Myret laughed. “This is not truly a choice you can make. Your skael is already set. I have seen many women try for years and be given no children. And I have seen women do everything they can think of to avoid a child and end up with many. You make your choice, and then the gods will make theirs.”

Mira stayed with Myret for most of the day. They spoke of many things, some having to do with children, but others unrelated. Mira learned that as a younger woman, Myret had tried to have a child for eight years. Her skael did not allow it, and the man she once loved was with another now. He had four children with his new woman.

Myret asked questions about Mira’s mother and her childhood and was horrified to learn that on the Isle, women thought feeding their children with their body to be lowly and disgusting.

“How do babies eat?”

“A poorer woman comes and feeds them.”

Myret asked if this was how Mira was fed, and Mira said it was.

Myret was also bothered by the idea that children on the Isle slept alone in a closed room away from their parents at night. She said in the North, it was common for children to sleep in their parents’ beds, and only when a child had grown and wanted to be on their own was a bed made for them. Myret said this usually happened when the child was somewhere between nine and fifteen, but some children did it younger, and some waited longer.

Mira could remember being afraid at night as a child and wanting to be with her parents, only she knew her mother would send her back to her own chamber. She would creep along the dark hallways imagining ghosts or witches following her until she reached Dayne’s room. He was never angry to be woken and would tell her stories about knights and fair maidens until she fell asleep. Always he would promise that if any terror befell her, he would steal their father’s sword and rescue her.

They spoke of Dayne and how he was the person Mira missed most. And how Mira worried for him now that she was gone.

“The important things he only told me,” she said. “He has no one now he can speak truly with.”

Often Myret would say, “That makes sense,” with a knowing look in her sharp eyes.

Mira asked her what she meant, and she explained how one’s childhood echoes throughout their life.

Mira had been taught not to disagree with a man, and she was then taken captive by one. Many in town commented when Mira was first brought to shore how little she cried and how little she fought to get home. Myret thought this came from what Mira was taught as a child.

Myret explained that she often watched sotern brought to Gittenurg closely, as their eyes were used to seeing the world another way, and because of this, they were best at finding problems in the Northern approach to life, better than any born in the country. She asked Mira if there were flaws she saw.

“It is filthy, and people do not wash themselves well,” Mira said though she did not find it so bothersome anymore.

Myret also said that almost all sotern have somewhat the same story. Again and again, she’d seen and heard people brought to the North against their will. Usually, they were freed within a year or two, and only once had she heard of someone wanting to return home. She explained that soter often took up the axe and shield and raided in the spring among the Northmen. Usually, it was planned so they did not need to fight against the town they were born to, though many said they would have no problem with this.

“Why do you think this is?” Mira said.

Myret shrugged. “Their answers are always different when I ask, but there must be something in the North that all people need. Why do you think?”

Mira’s answer came without any thought. “Freedom.”

“Sotern are not free.”

“Not as free as the Northerners,” Mira said. “But more free than where they came from.”

Mira listed off all the things she was not allowed to do back home. She told Myret of Loric and how marriage agreements were made and how she was expected never to speak unless a man or her mother had spoken to her. And, of course, how she was never to show her feelings to anyone.

“Fell was right then?” Myret said. “You were a prisoner there?”

Mira shook her head, but in her heart, she wasn’t sure. She thought about the time Dayne spoke of the calculations that were done when her suitors came. She thought about Egil’s tall son asking her price.

“I wonder if you were taught to fear women as a child,” Myret said.

“Of course not.”

“You were afraid of me.”

“I thought you were a witch; this is different than being a woman.”

“But only women can be this thing, this wee-ch, yes?”

It was a fair point. Why was it that men could not be witches? Could spells only be cast by women?

“Did you fear your mother as a child?”

She did, but she did not want to say so. Mira could feel tears pressing against the back of her eyes. She had not allowed herself to think about it, but seeing Dania play with her children and soothe them made her painfully jealous. Why didn’t Mira’s mother do these things with her?

“I have scratched a wound,” Myret said.

Mira nodded. She frowned as hard as she could to keep herself from crying. But Myret kept asking questions about her mother, and eventually, she did cry. There were many things she had not thought about—things she’d forgotten. Or maybe not forgotten entirely, but things she let pass through her mind so rarely they didn’t seem to exist anymore. She told Myret a story from when she was nine. She’d had a dream that Elfrith fell off her horse and broke her arm. Mira was bothered to have seen Elfrith in pain and was unfocused during her harp lessons. Her mother asked what was wrong, and she relayed the dream.

“It was only a dream,” her mother said. “Elfrith is well.”

But that afternoon, Elfrith fell off her horse and broke her arm.

Mira’s mother was horrified. She dragged Mira to the sanctuary, and the maid put leeches on Mira to suck the evil out. One was even put on her tongue because the maid said a demon must be living inside her mouth. How else could Mira have spoken a curse on Elfrith?

Mira cried and tried to run away from the maid with the leeches, she kicked and screamed, but her mother held her and said that Mira would go to the dark place below the ground and be tortured forever if she did not let them remove the evil.

Once Mira had thought of the story, she could not put it away again.

“This is a deep wound,” Myret said. “This will take many years to heal, maybe a full lifetime. It causes you pain?”

Mira shook her head. “I do not think of it anymore.”

“This is maybe a solution that will not work forever,” Myret warned with raised eyebrows. “Pain is good at finding its way out.”

Mira tried not to hear the woman’s words, tried to forget everything she’d just remembered, choosing instead to stare at the lacing on her boot. The leather strap was fraying at the end, and Mira wondered if she should cut it, so the tip looked smooth once more. Before Mira could lie and insist that she wasn’t troubled, Fell appeared at the tent opening. He seemed surprised to see Mira.

“I will wait,” he said, and then he left.

Mira was confused, but Myret explained. “He wishes to speak to me alone, as you are now. This has been a long conversation; likely, many are waiting. I wish to continue speaking about this another day.”

Myret offered Mira a bowl of veerslhung. The wooden vessel sat in the woman’s stained blue fingers, waiting.

Asking.

Mira knew she did not want it. How could she go home having remembered what it was like? A cool breeze twisted through the many trinkets and bones dangling from the ceiling. A melody of chimes and rattles whispered to Mira, Are you brave?

I want to be, she answered in her mind.

It felt like the wind was giggling, a specific type of Northern laugh—the laugh you make when you know something someone else does not.

Mira left, having not taken the veerslhung.