As Mira kept her senses sharp, studying the dynamics between King Arik and his men, considering which person was to let down the king, she grew closer with Fyrrah. This was because Fyrrah also watched people with care.

The girl was very religious and seemed to know everything there was to know about the gods, occasionally putting the king’s men in their places when debates arose, like the time she proved it was a gold fish, not a red fish that Tova caught in the tale of Köller the Eager or the time she corrected Gunmer—one of the men who often recited ballads—about Clem, the boatbuilder of the gods, and Valla’s ship.

“If it were made of silverwood, it would have been burnt when Yorunn boarded, just like Torleif’s ship. It must be wood from the heart tree.”

Gunmer grunted in displeasure when the men around him began to take Fyrrah’s side in the argument.

“It does make sense.”

“Yes... Fyrrah is correct, I am thinking.”

Fyrrah raised her thin, pointed brows in playful victory. “Good luck rhyming that with sisterhood.”

But beyond the well of knowledge the girl seemed to have, there was a sense of the world she often expressed that changed how Mira looked at everything around her. Fyrrah believed that every moment in life had a purpose and that the gods were always speaking—if one could not hear them, it was because they weren’t listening well enough. She told Mira that if she ever found herself confused about what to do next, she would sit and listen, and the gods would tell her.

“That’s how I knew I was to love Rowan,” Fyrrah said. “They told me the night of the autumn equinox. They said, look for the person who needs the most healing. When I saw him, I knew what they meant. That’s where Egil comes in, you see. You will be tod only the smallest piece of the whole. Go to this place. Pay attention. Only if you listen to the first piece will you see the second.”

Fyrrah was indeed always paying attention, and often her observations shocked Mira with their poignancy and weight. Sometimes she knew things about people that they had never spoken of or implied. The shopkeeper with grey along the sides of his beard that smiled at them as they passed was actually very sad and alone. Yuvir, the man in their party who worked the hardest, was sick and might not live to see another raid. King Arik saw big possibilities, things that no one else could see, but because of this, he’d had his heart broken many times.

“He fears each time he reveals an ambition because he always loses someone when he does. People cannot follow a man if they do not believe the place they are going to is real.”

Mira began to watch, too, the way that Fyrrah did—looking for hints of dishonesty in posture, exploring the reflections of behaviour.

Fyrrah explained that most people have an ideal in their minds of what a person is and should be. Often they act out this ideal even though, in truth, the reason they consider it to be better than other ways of being is that they are not the thing they are pretending to be; it is the one thing they are not, and so they covet it and practice it and try to convince themselves they are this thing. Fyrrah said people were very good at convincing themselves they were something that they were not. She explained that the most confident man in any group was often the most insecure at heart. The loudest person tended to be overcompensating for their inner need to be quiet, for all the times they didn’t speak as a child and wished that they had.

At first, Mira thought it was all nonsense, but she’d spent enough time with Arik by this point to have heard him spout foolish fairy-ideas and defend them and draw Mira’s attention to examples of their truth until she had to admit that the man was right. She followed Fyrrah’s directions and watched the king’s party looking for the things Fyrrah described and found that the girl was right.

“What do you know about me?” Mira said playfully one breezy afternoon as she and Fyrrah sat near a small hearth, plucking soër petals off their silver stems. Fell had taken Halvar into the nearby woods on a walk, and, at first, Mira had wanted to go with him, but Fyrrah begged her to remain behind.

“These blossoms are rare back home; they provide aid with sleep and soothe swelling caused by bad thoughts. I should like to save as many as I can.”

Mira agreed, and the two had spent nearly a full day together collecting delicate silver bells that pushed their way out of jagged cliffsides and waved in the breeze. As they worked, they mused about the king’s men and Rowan and the effects spring air had on the lungs and heart.

When their fingers were frozen and all the vessels they had filled, they sat by the hearth and began extracting the parts Fyrrah needed to brew teas and craft potions.

Jorn was there as well, kneeling by the flame and feeding it sweet-smelling sapwood. The scent of the wood burning mixed with the delicious fragrance of herb-caked rabbit that sat on a pike atop it and the herbaceous aroma of the flowers made for a dreamy and uplifting mood.

Perhaps the fresh, airy mood was the reason Mira felt ready to ask about how Fyrrah perceived her. It was something she often wondered about but had shied away from, fearing an uncomfortable response.

Jorn smirked. “I also would like to know what you see when you look at the lady Mira.”

Mira’s heart was warmed by his use of lady. The title wasn’t something she ever told him about, but he must have noticed that Arik and Rowan used the foreign term and so had taken it upon himself to apply it to her as well.

Fyrrah smiled. “There is a lot to be said about you. But maybe, what is most prudent today is to talk about how you see yourself. You feel like you have two paths and that each will lead you somewhere different. But you are wrong. You have many, many paths, and they all lead to the same place.”

Jorn seemed to like Fyrrah’s answer a lot more than Mira did. “This is a wondrous way of wording it,” he said.

Mira felt like Fyrrah had purposefully avoided the question by giving an answer that was vague and could mean whatever Mira wanted it to.

Fyrrah was also the only person who managed to explain the meaning of skael. Every time the word had come up in conversation, Mira asked about it, but the answers she received did not help her understand. People often gave her examples:

“It is like when I found you in the south. If you had not held your instrument, I would not have come to you. And if you had not played the song you chose, you would not be in the Norsernlind,” Fell said when she asked him.

Dania’s answer from moons ago had been different. “Hald, Layf, and Illa. They are my skael.”

Mira thought that skael had something to do with love because of these examples, but when she had asked Myret, the woman’s answer implied it was not. “It is the path of your life. The good, but far more importantly, the bad.”

As the party rode higher about the sea along winding mountain pathways, skael came up again, and Fyrrah explained. “The gods have chosen everything for you. They do this before you are born. They choose the parents you are born to, the things that happen to you, the people you will meet… each and every moment. They have already chosen the exact day and way you will die.”

Mira frowned. “But surely, I choose between things and change what will happen?”

The girl shook her head. “You only think you choose. This is Egil tricking you. The gods have designed you so that you will make only the choices they have planned for you.”

Mira’s mind struggled to accept the concept; no such idea existed on the Isle.

Foolishness, she thought. I can change my own course.

The wind wove through the riders and carts, sending the pink-haired grass that grew in tufts along the gravelly paths waving in a frenzy. It felt very much like the entire mountainside was in motion, giggling at Mira’s private thoughts.

This is what you think? the wind seemed to be saying amid the wild laughter.