Free Beautiful Wreck by Larissa Brown

two men turned my way, and I could see the chief’s flaxen eyes. The family’s unspoken dread seemed reflected there. But why?
    He seemed hard and ungraceful today, and I felt like it was because of me. I wondered what he was deciding about me, what he might do.
    The flowers were childish, and I untangled them from my hair.
    Only ten days I’d been here, certainly no more than two weeks. I needed to give myself a lot more time than that, months or maybe even years, I thought. I needed to give everyone here a lot more time.
    Betta came tripping down the hill to land beside me, breathless. “Ginn, you are still here.”
    “Já,” I said, surprised at how often she seemed to read my thoughts. “I’m still here. Look!” I patted the dog, depositing crumpled yellow flowers on his back. “I think he likes me.”
    Betta shielded her eyes from the low sun, looking away toward the men and the farm. “Já,” she said absently. “Já, I know he does.”
    Since I had no memory, Hildur took a good deal of the spinning time to lecture me.
    Now, she talked about winter. She explained that while everything that happened inside the threshold of the house was her domain, in winter the line was blurred. Men brought work—from bits of char cloth to entire animals—inside. It was a messy, wet and cold time, and I could see that she was uneasy with the thought of it coming. As she talked about last year’s waist-high snow, I pictured the threshold of the house, the actual line in the dirt, as a neat little handhold in a swirling wilderness. A charm against the uncontrollable frontier.
    In reality, she told me, a woman could shear a sheep if she had to. A man could mend a shirt or cook a meal. I would rake windrows in the fields just two months from now. “We keep each other alive, já?” Of course. I found I could very easily imagine Kit’s husband Arn, or even the chief himself cooking. I was sure there were limits, though. There had to be. For one, I could not picture a single one of the males of this family learning to use a drop spindle. I envied them with a great sigh.
    Watching the wool endlessly become thread, I absorbed Hildur’s conclusion. One overriding law. Always, inside or outside any house on the farm, the chief was as the gods. I was to do whatever he told me to do. He didn’t often step into Hildur’s way, but when he did, she let him. His orders were above question.
    All the women had become quiet. Even while their spindles twirled, each was looking into the distance, or inside themselves, seeing their chieftain. There was that unease that came with any talk of him, an apprehension so vague I couldn’t name it even enough to ask. I pictured the contemplative young man, his resolute mouth, honey eyes. What was it that they feared?
    I closed my own eyes and saw a dark cloud and white lightning, an afterimage of the line of thread I was making. I must have looked scared. “He isn’t always terrible, Child,” said Kit. “Nei.”
    “He’s not, nei,” Dalla agreed, her sisters nodding. Svana assured me he would never hurt anyone, that he wouldn’t even touch any woman. That it was okay, I’d be safe.
    They were all completely unconvincing.
    At least Betta didn’t try to dissemble. She sat silent and intent. Hildur made tisking sounds, her face severe.
    Thoughts and impressions jumbled together. He seemed off-putting, já, cold and a little frightening. But something in his voice made me respond with a still and open heart. “He doesn’t seem terrible at all to me,” I said finally.
    Every voice faded, and they all gaped at me. Ranka listened with big eyes, and it reminded me of how she reacted when I suggested the chief was her father. She had dropped the comb into the bath and gone still.
    “Ranka,” I asked. “Why are you afraid of him?”
    The little girl stared like she was trapped, and I was sorry I’d asked.
    “You see what he is, já?,” Hildur answered in something close to a low hiss.