Brenna continued to puzzle me. Her rapid shifts from joy to despair tugged at my heart. Clearly her bright, chirpy exterior hid a well of pain, and she was quite practiced at hiding it.
But she didn’t have to.
Given what she’d told us, she’d clearly experienced some dramatic losses in her short life. Her entire family, her village, her home—she’d left them all behind to live a life free from her chieftain’s control. We may not know the full story, but we could certainly sympathize with her struggle.
Particularly me. I knew better than most what it felt like to have your family ripped apart, and she knew that.
I wanted her to open up to me, but part of me didn’t blame her for withholding. I was never good at drawing people out, as Leif or Signe could do. I stayed within the confines of my own mind, so I was not a great example of opening up to another person. And since sharing first was usually what led to someone else being willing to share, it was rare that anyone opened up to me.
Brenna was full of secrets… I was under no delusion that her sad history was the only one.
There was precious little she’d told us compared to the amount she already knew of our plans.
As we set about coating the ship in tallow to seal it completely, I considered how I might delve deeper into the mystery of this woman I’d allowed in my home. Soren and I would leave for Ravndal in two days, and I needed to feel confident that she would protect my sisters and be here when I returned. We’d be planning the summer raids, and I had to know I could leave for weeks at a time and things would be fine here while I was gone.
I knew Signe was astute, and she would tell me if something felt off. What worried me is that I could be gone long enough for things to fall completely into shambles while she had no way to contact me.
Signe, if she weren’t broken, could handle things on her own. Even though she preferred to pose with Father’s sword to threaten unwanted visitors, she was actually quite good with our mother’s weapon that currently collected dust on the wall. I think she left it there out of mourning… since her injury, she hadn’t been able to fight with it.
Her fall had happened during our last raid the previous summer, just before autumn, and while it appeared to get better for a while, her leg was rapidly getting worse. I hoped having Brenna here would help her stay off it and perhaps heal again, but unfortunately she’d spent her days helping me get caught up on my work instead.
Guilt flooded my chest; Brenna shouldn’t be here helping me tallow this ship. She should be helping Signe with the household duties. She appeared to have knowledge of shipbuilding, as she had done well running the oxen and the plow, and that was why I hadn’t argued. Someone who had the skills, let alone the strength, was valuable. Particularly when that person expected no pay for the work. We needed the fields planted so we’d have stores for winter, and we needed the ship finished so I could finally earn my place in front of the Jarl.
Gritting my teeth, I focused on spreading the warm liquid tallow over the boards. There was nothing for it. We needed her here now more. But once the ship was finished, Brenna was going to be attached to Signe’s hip. I would make sure they both understood that before I left.
I couldn’t allow Signe to suffer any more. Some way or another, I would get her proper help, and that started with the Jarl.
*
Brenna
*
We finished the first coat on the ship before dusk, and Soren bid farewell with a few stern commands on how to keep the tallow for the second coat tomorrow. Leif lingered behind, fixing me with dreamy smiles while he dawdled, until Soren’s shout sent him running.
Bjorn and I had our work cut out for us, first cleaning ourselves of the greasy tallow and then our clothing. With his help to wring, I was able to scrub most of the fat from the fabric without too much struggle.
Once again, Bjorn carried Signe to her seat at the table and we ate in a peaceful silence.
Signe put up a stern front, but she was pale, exhausted, and looked far older than her thirteen years. It had shocked me when Bjorn told me the actual ages of his siblings… Astrid I wasn’t too far off, but Yrsa and especially Signe I had believed to be much older than they actually were. It saddened me to see these girls who’d grown up far too quickly when their parents died.
In Signe’s case, I knew it wasn’t all the weight of responsibility. After dinner Bjorn went out to the barn and I insisted she let me examine her foot. What I saw wasn’t good. The purple areas were spreading and darkening. Honestly, it was a miracle she hadn’t lost it already. I carefully restored her stocking and met Signe’s hopeless eyes.
“I still have the runestones, but I think they stopped working,” she whispered.
“Runestones?”
“The healer in the village gave them to me to heal my leg. She told me to keep them with me at all times and the magic would heal me.”
She withdrew a small woven bag from her pocket and handed it to me. Inside were a handful of ivory pieces—I assumed bone—with runes carved on one side of each piece.
Oh Signe.
“Signe… magic can only do so much to help these kinds of injuries. You understand that, right?”
She nodded, eyes cast downward, but didn’t speak.
I racked my brain for details on what I remembered about viking-era medicine. “Was Bjorn, or your father, ever wounded in battle?”
Signe’s eyes rose to my face. “Yes, many times.”
“What kinds of injuries?”
“Cuts mostly, some small and some deep.”
“And the deep ones, did your mother have to treat them?”
“Yes. She used a blade heated over the fire to stop the bleeding, then coated them with honey and wrapped them in cloth. She showed me how to do it so I’d be prepared…” she sighed, then added in a lower voice, “to care for my husband.”
I knew why this memory was so difficult for her. As beautiful, and clever, and capable as she was, the likelihood that a man would want a hobbled wife was very low. Vikings expected their women to fight. To defend their homestead while they were gone. A girl who couldn’t walk was not an ideal wife.
“So,” I encouraged, “you understand that there are some injuries that need help to heal. Have you thought about what I told you? If I can move your bones back into place and we can encourage them to heal by keeping you off your foot, there’s a very good chance you’ll heal properly. You could walk without a crutch in weeks, Signe. With much less pain, at any rate.”
Silent tears tracked down Signe’s porcelain cheeks. She collected the runestones and packed them away in their pouch, then restored them to her pocket. “I… I’m afraid it will make it worse,” she admitted. “If we try, and then I lose my foot completely, things will be worse.”
“Signe, you’re already about to lose your foot,” I said as gently as I was able. “It’s very close and I’m not absolutely certain we can save it. But I know we need to act quickly to still have a chance. I know it’s scary, but… I guess the best thing I can tell you is that it can’t get much worse, but it could be so much better.”
Her body shuddered with quiet sobs, and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders in comfort. She was strong, but she was still just a thirteen-year-old girl facing the genuine possibility of losing her foot. Where I’d sympathized with her before, now my heart lurched with empathetic pain.
The sound of heavy footsteps outside the door broke the spell; Signe brushed her cheeks roughly and eased her leg off my lap.
Bjorn strode in, pausing when he felt the heaviness of the atmosphere. “Is everything… okay?”
“Yes,” I smiled as brightly as I could. “Just discussing how I can help Signe stay off her foot tomorrow.”
Bjorn lifted a single eyebrow, gazing between us with a dubious expression, but eventually he shrugged. “Okay, I think that’s best. We should be fine without you tomorrow, Brenna. Perhaps you can also help Yrsa finish planting the vegetable garden?”
“Absolutely.” I stood, making a show of stretching and yawning, before I crossed the room and settled onto my own bed-couch platform. “Goodnight, Bjorn. Goodnight Signe, Yrsa, and Astrid.” The little one was already asleep in her nest of pillows beside Signe, but the others rumbled their goodnights. As I waited for sleep to take them so I could sneak out to my armor, I concentrated on how I could convince Signe to let me set her broken ankle.
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