Snowfall overnight was common here on the island of Ivethay. It was the afternoon sun that surprised Svanhild. It gleamed on the white evergreens, bent and twisted by their burden, and made diamonds of the frozen droplets studding the elms. The temperature froze the snow; each step echoed its crunch throughout the forest. Svanhild stopped fifty feet from her tree of choice; she drew a breath and turned around with another short set of crunches. The girl drew back her axe, steadied her aim, and released. It bit into the elm just a few inches above the browned handprint that had been her target.
"Skreyja, skreyja," she grunted to herself. The child pricked her thumb on the knife at her belt. She extended her hand down and out backward; her thumb left an arc of red in its wake. Svanhild took another breath. As she began moving her hand upward, the axe disappeared from the tree. It grew from the red arc, blade-first, until Svanhild's hand was able to grasp the haft as her arm moved upward. Svanhild followed the smooth motion up to ready the weapon for another throw. She steadied herself—and then a sound of tortured foxes split the frozen air. Svanhild twisted. She'd readied the axe for defense, but the sight that met her eyes almost dropped the weapon from her numb fingers.
It was an oval: red-black, irregular, and held open by hands of blood that shivered and shook. It was only a few paces away from her, and there was no room for the man who next stepped through.
Svanhild stumbled back and away from him; the frozen crust snagged at her fur boots. Spatters of blood from this—oval—stained her fur clothes. The man's clothing—thin, unsuitable, but in colors Svanhild had never seen on any animal—were impeccable. He crossed his arms over his chest to hide his own shivering. He cast his green eyes around them at the pines and elms. He lowered his gaze, but did not meet Svanhild's wide, panicked eyes. He studied her clothes, and her axe. He parted his red, red lips to speak. Svanhild shook her head; maybe it was the roar of the portal behind him, but she did not understand. "What?" she demanded. The stranger frowned; his eyes glanced over her face again, but did not meet hers. "Vestenmannavnjar?" he finally said amidst the gibberish he spewed next.
"Yes," she said. "Vesten." The man laughed without mirth.
"Ah, Vesten," he said. "Curse your Vendel League and your guilder, or I would not need this awful tongue." Svanhild canted her head.
"It's not my Vendel League," she said. "But if you have a problem with your tongue..." She slapped the knife at her belt as she hefted her axe. The stranger stepped back with the stride of an offended bird.
"What manner of child and family are you?"
"No family," Svanhild said. "No one, nowhere. I am my own." The man barked a laugh sharp enough to skew his powdered wig.
"No one belongs to himself. We are family, or I couldn't reach you this way." He gestured behind himself with a gloved hand. Svanhild glanced at the oval.
"What is it?" she asked. He began to turn, and then seemed to remember her axe.
"It's... a portail," he said. "A door. You know doors?" Svanhild stared at him.
"I know doors," she said. "But I know of no doors that scream like this." The man deigned to fold his face into a grimace for just a moment.
"Well, this one in particular is a blessure." His eyes fell to the blood coating Svanhild’s fingers and the haft of her axe. "You don't have to do that, you see," he said. "Shedding blood to no purpose. You can let le monde pick up the burden. It can take it better than we." She stared around him at the world-wound.
"Can you close it?" she asked.
"Yes." He shrugged. "I will, if you like, when we go back." The axe rose again.
"Back?" Svanhild said. The man stared at the bridge of Svanhild's nose.
"Yes," he said. "There is some merit in leaving a major mark like you in—the middle of nowhere, here, but it would be better for both of us if you were somewhere a little less... isolated." He reached forward as she slashed down with the axe; the man drew back.
"I. Will not go anywhere," Svanhild said. The man's hand rested briefly at the rapier at his side.
"I must inform you that I am a licensed duelist. I have defended my own honor and that of many of L'Empereur’s subjects." Svanhild considered this. The child gestured at the frozen world around them.
"I live here," she said.
She lunged before he freed his sword from its scabbard; the man leaped back, twisted around to fall away from the portal instead of into it, and continued the motion aside. He managed to tear his rapier free of its sheath. The Montaigne turned to face Svanhild. He took a few slow, measured steps back to put space between them. Svanhild's eyes flicked back behind him; in her moment of distraction, the man lunged. Svanhild ducked down under the thrust; she came up to strike the stranger upward on the chin with the butt of her axe haft. He spat blood from his tongue or a broken tooth in her face. The force of the blow made him stagger back—and then he fell over the short cliff behind him. A sound like tortured foxes rang out over the muffled waves. Svanhild dropped to the blood-spattered ground to peer over the edge. He was gone. Another red-black portal swirled down below.
He said he could close them. Svanhild stood before the portal here on the land. It hurt to look directly into its bloody depths. Now she heard whispers, like modulated cat cries. Svanhild gritted her teeth. She reached out; the portal's shivering worsened as her hand drew closer. Svanhild's fingers brushed one of the blood hands pinning open the wound; Svanhild jumped as it twisted to intertwine its fingers with hers. Warmth. Tepid, burning, warmth. Svanhild grimaced. She tightened her fingers; the blood hand did likewise. Tighter and tighter, until a juicy pop and a flare of red in her vision was a blood vessel giving out. The hand collapsed into a wave of shapeless red at the same time. Svanhild drew back to take a few gasping breaths.
Only... twelve more. Each drew another measure of blood from Svanhild's nose or mouth or eyes. Each one dripped another measure of crimson onto her boots or clothes or face. It all froze into red crystals on her furs and her skin.
The fourth-to-last was hardier than the others so far, and Svanhild grunted as she gripped. This was the last at the bottom; she wasn't sure how she was going to reach the other three far over her head. One of Svanhild's fingers bent; the snap of its breaking was lost in the snap as the hand gave out and the portal slammed closed. The last three hands cut off; they fell as shapeless spatter into the deep crater the blood had already left in the snow.
One whimper escaped from between Svanhild's creaking teeth. She cradled her hand to her chest as she stooped to pick up her axe. The child forced her feet to take her to the edge of the cliff. She stared down at the screaming portal. Svanhild let the haft of her axe slip through the fingers of her good hand until she held the weapon by its head.
The flare across her vision was black this time, but a red stream trickled down her arm. How much blood did it take to open a door? It couldn't be more than it took to close one. Svanhild closed her eyes. She let herself topple forward off of the cliff in more of a swoon than a dive. She struck the stranger's portal in a flop that stung her belly and her wounded hand; she began to fall into—through—it. The screaming cut off once her head dipped below the wound's surface; it became whispers, in languages she knew but shouldn't, offering riches, offering safety, offering to make the pain stop, if Svanhild would just open her eyes.
She lashed out like a drowning man; her axe arced up, out of the portal, and down. Svanhild directed as much of her panicked swimming as she could into striking out with her weapon. She could not breath, she could hear too well, and she dared not open her eyes. Her movements slowed; she wasn't going anywhere through this portal, but it wasn't letting her go. Her limbs grew heavy with something like hypothermia. Svanhild reached with one last slow thrust—and then she was falling freely again. The water, the blood-stained, icy water, was so close. Svanhild carved an arc with her bleeding arm. No screaming here, except her own.
Svanhild fell through the newest portal, and tumbled out of the other end beside the elm tree. Svanhild stared up at her own handprint and the fresh axe bites above it. She twisted enough to ensure that there was no wound, no door, behind her. Then Svanhild crumpled against the tree.
The child felt an eternity pass before she was able to make her limbs move. By then, blood glued her to the ground and the tree, She pried herself free and struggled to her feet. Svanhild began staggering away, and then she paused. She made her wooden legs carry her back to the elm tree, where she picked up a basket half full of greens. Svanhild managed a few more steps before she paused again. She stooped to pick up the stranger’s wig; t plopped wetly when she dropped it into her basket. She left crimson footsteps on the snow. No one spoke about the bloody spectre; there was no one here to speak.
She expected to see a tall, tall silhouette standing in the clearing outside their cabin when she made it home, but there was nothing. No one inside; the fire hadn't been banked. Svanhild swayed. If the stranger had hurt her mother, if he had—
"Hildi!" Svanhild jumped, turned, and toppled into her mother's arms; the basket thudded to the dirt floor. "Hildi, you're coated in—this is blood. Is this your blood? What happened?" Svanhild struggled to make out the words in her mother's brassy rumble.
"I... some mine. Some his. Some... no one's."
"His?" Her mother began to draw back, but Svanhild sagged. "His? Hildi, I sent you to find herbs for your lesson. This is—what is this? What man?" Her mother lowered Svanhild to the floor. Svanhild faded in and out to the sound of her mother pouring water. She came back to the sharp scent of ointments and the burn of them against her skin. "What man, Hildi?" Her mother's tone suggested it wasn't the first time she'd asked.
"'S... Montaigne. Made these... wounds." She squeaked as her mother flexed her broken finger. "Blood doors. Said I was his fam'ly, but—I don't have none, yes?"
"Any," her mother corrected. Her massive hands sought out the sore places on Svanhild's skin and placed poultices with care. "If he was able to come to you like that, he must have been. Was he very old?"
"Mn, no," Svanhild said. "Older than me, yes? But not a lot, even though his hair was white." She gestured feebly at the basket, where the bloodstained hair laid like a dead thing.
"I suppose you have at least one brother," her mother said. "Someone who shares your blood," the woman amended at Svanhild's indignant grunt. "If we'd gone twelve years without interference, I thought there might not be any blood sorcerers in your family. Did you kill him? Or did you leave him for the cold?" Svanhild sighed.
"No, he w-went back. Mother!" Svanhild cringed at her own yelp, but she held her hand to her chest. She stared up at her mother's face. "Mother?" The woman blinked back to herself. She swept her hair from her face.
"I'm sorry. But now that someone has taken the risk of coming so far... now that they know what lies at the other end of the tie, I don't think they'll stop. He'll come back, or others." Svanhild stared up at her.
"I wish I killed him." Her mother inclined her head.
"All we can do is live with our mistakes," she said.
"But, if they come to Ivethay—I'm not the only one,” Svanhild said. “Am I? You said to be careful. That a lot of the Giantess' foundlings—" Her mother intertwined their fingers.
"Yes. If they come back for you, these people may find the others. But this is your home just as much as it is the other children's. We can move deeper into the forest. Or move like the Giantess from village to village. Or, or we can help her find foundlings on the coast before the elements get them." Svanhild shook her head harder with every word.
"No," she said. "If I stay here, I will hear the screams of wounds in every fox and cat. I—I can't. I can't do that. And if they know who else is here?" Svanhild forced herself to sit upright. "No." Her eyes scanned nothing. "I will go. I will... fix this. These wounds, I can close them. I can keep them from our island." She met her mother's eyes and forced a smile. "What is they call it out in the mainland? A trade name. I am old enough for a trade name. I will leave 'Svanhild' safe here, with you. Someone else will go. And because she goes, she will have a home to come back to."
They sat in silence for a long time. Her mother rose. She returned from the other room with a small palm-sized shard of glass. No, a mirror.
"Oh." Her mother knelt and held it like an offering before her. Svanhild peered into it. Her sclera were a deep red that threw off the color of her eyes, but Svanhild recognized the Montaigne's green in her own. The mousy brown he'd hidden under the wig was still stuck to her face and neck in places; her nose and fleshy cheekbones were hers—or, perhaps, belonged to another unknown kinsman. At least the scars were Vesten. Svanhild pulled her eyes up to meet her mother's gaze.
"S-so," the woman said. "Svanhild stays with me. Who is this?"
It took the girl eight years, two children, and a failed betrothal to answer that question. Almost a decade later, Svanhild stayed behind and [name] left for wider Vestenmannavnjar on TheShip'sName. She stared at the snowy, wooded island until its black dot faded on the sunset horizon.
"I love you," she said to her mother, her island, and herself.
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