the other side. She swayed back and forth on her heels, then slumped over onto the floor. I heard a loud sigh, and the flames went out—not just the hearth fire, but all the braziers as well.
I walked forward and stared down at the dead wolf. Her blood began to pool near my feet, inching toward me. I watched it grow closer and closer, until it caressed the tips of my boots, a red-black shadow kissing my toes.
“Torvi?”
I looked up from the blood. “Yes?”
“Leave.”
I nodded. I turned and walked down the hall, through the front doors, and cleaned my boots in the snow.
My mother burned the wolf beside the carcass of a dead sheep out in the east field. I stood nearby and watched the flames until the girl crumbled into ash.
The Fremish priests burn, the same as the rest of us Vorse, fire, ash, soot, dust.
* * *
I saw smoke again a few days later, a gray-black cloud about fifteen miles to the north. I didn’t mention it to Gyda or Morgunn.
We shared Viggo’s one bed in the loft or slept on sheepskin rugs in front of the hearth. We didn’t talk about Uther or the wolves. We spent our days gathering food from the hills—wild celery and garlic, dill, amber cloudberries, pale-orange oak mushrooms. We spent our nights drinking and singing. Gyda was hardworking and focused when needed, but mostly she preferred drinking and jesting around the fire to anything else. She was cut from the same cloth as my sister in this way, and I adored it.
The druid was starting to fill the hole left in me after the snow sickness—she had Mother’s strength, Aslaug’s cheerfulness, Viggo’s depth, and Morgunn’s love of all things loud and boisterous.
I returned to the Hall during the day and brought the chickens to the cottage, carrying them two at a time, one under each arm, until we had all eight. They roamed freely and roosted on the roof after dark. So we had fresh eggs to go with the dried sausage, as well as early carrots from Viggo’s garden.
“Show me how to do your magic,” Morgunn demanded of Gyda one night after we’d all had too much Vite and sung too many of the old songs.
The druid swallowed a swig of liquor and flashed a mischievous grin, her eyes full of fun and fire. “No. Never.”
“Is it like the Stregas?” Morgunn opened her eyes wide and bent her hands into claws. “Do you gut pigs and weave your fingers through their innards? Do you bathe in blood and run shrieking through the night, screaming prophecies and making dirty Pig Witch love under the moon?”
Morgunn’s words were starting to slur. My sister was lively and helpful during the day, when the sun was high, but when it grew dark, she started drinking. And she drank until she collapsed into sleep.
It worried me, but not as much as what she would do when the Vite ran out.
Gyda chuckled at Morgunn’s gruesome depiction of Strega magic, which only encouraged my sister to continue her gory descriptions until the two of them were helpless with laughter.
Gyda finally held up a hand. “The truth is, I despise senseless killing, even of pigs. The Stregas are an ancient sect, and they are feared prophets and sorcerers. But I abhor the lot of them. They worship the Boar god Arcana—he is one of the old gods, from the time of the giants, when Vorseland was nothing but darkness and ice. Arcana is vengeful and secretive, and the Stregas’ magic is violent, unpredictable, and unbalanced.”
I nodded. “I also dislike killing animals. My mother called me soft for it. She said it was a weakness. She called it un-Vorse.”
Gyda and I exchanged a look.
Morgunn shrugged. “I don’t mind killing things. Chopping off chicken heads or slitting sheep throats is more interesting than pulling weeds in the garden or washing soiled tunics.”
“You would make an excellent Pig Witch, then, Morgunn.” Gyda rose and picked up Viggo’s pipe from the shelf. “May I use this, Torvi?”
I nodded. “There’s a pouch of dried kettle-leaf hanging in the corner. It was soaked in apple liquor before drying, and it smells like autumn. It was Viggo’s favorite.”
She filled the bowl of the pipe, lit it with a piece of coal, and breathed in deeply.
“You’ve done this before,” I said.
“Yes.” She grinned at me as she held the short stem cupped in one hand, her right side leaning against the wall. Soft rings of smoke flowed