“What if the mist didn’t matter? What if the wolves are all that mattered, Hodor?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You’re right. We need to go. Now.”
We raced to our home.
Hodor was faster. He always had been. He ran, plunging his heavy feet into the soil, kicking mud onto my dress and face, but I didn’t care.
When we made it back, Hodor ran into our house like a man possessed. I caught myself on the door frame and peered inside, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. Mother turned to us, already reaching for the knife on her belt, easing her hand away when she saw it was only us.
Gunnar was busy cleaning the bowls and spoons from breakfast, while Ingrid and Solvi’s aprons were covered in flour as they helped Mother knead thick knots of dough.
Mother wiped her flour-covered hands on a rag. “What is it, Hodor? You look like you’ve seen a spirit.”
They were fine. Everything was. Father stomped up the trail behind me. “You found him,” he said to me, giving Hodor a harsh glare. “Warriors don’t abandon their work… or their families.”
Hodor scrubbed a hand over his short beard and shot me a glance that said he was grateful the rest of his dream hadn’t come true. He met our father’s unflinching stare. “I didn’t abandon anyone. I am here now, and I’ll see that my work is done early.”
Father huffed as if he didn’t believe him.
“Where is Tor?” Solvi asked innocently, wiping a flour-covered hand over her brow, leaving white streaks in the wake of her fingers.
“Dead,” Hodor answered coldly, still staring our father down. “Just as I dreamt. I found him in the place where I dreamt he’d be.”
“Yet here we stand and breathe. It was only a dream,” Father grunted, staring at Hodor in an open challenge. He stretched his arms out and turned a slow circle. “Where are the wolves you are so frightened of? Wolves that run atop water, you said. Isn’t that right?”
Hodor pushed past me and stomped toward the fjord. He watched it for a long while, as if he expected the massive wolf pack he dreamed of to race across the water’s surface at any moment. Only today, there was no mist. It was calm and bright. The sky was blue and you could see clearly across the water’s surface to the horizon.
Eventually, he abandoned his thoughts, turned, and walked toward the animal pens. It was his duty to slaughter the animals Father had chosen.
I braided Hodor’s freshly washed, still damp hair as he sat on a boulder, staring out at the water, crisp and calm. The sun burned in the western sky behind the mountains. Soon, the peaks’ shadows would be cast over the land. The village gradually became noisy as our clansmen milled about, drinking ale and preparing for the night’s feast and festivities.
Hodor had dressed in his best dark blue kyrtill and the brown trousers Mother had sewn for him. He’d grown taller during the summer and his other pant legs only stretched to the middle of his calves.
I was dressed almost to match, but wearing Mother’s clothes. I had nothing but underdresses and apron dresses to go over them and couldn’t fight well in those. They were too binding, and being constricted, even a little, could mean the difference between victory and defeat. Mother wore men’s clothes when she raided, and she lent me a pair of dark grey trousers and a white tunic that was fitted at the waist.
A nervous feeling filled my stomach as I thought about sparring with Mother. I wondered if Hodor felt the same but was afraid to ask. “Was there more to your dream?”
“I told you everything about it this morning,” he answered in a clipped tone, refusing to look at me as he stared broodily over the tranquil waters.
“Everything?”
He craned his head to the sky, clasping his hands behind it and letting out a long exhale. There was more, just as I thought.
“Tell me.”
I thought that speaking it aloud might help him get it out of his mind, to share the burden instead of keeping it to himself like he was wont to do.
He resembled a younger version of Father with a short beard, long blond hair, and muscular build. He wasn’t as tall as Father, but Hodor was just as sturdy and his reflexes were much quicker.
He folded his legs, perched his arms on his knees, and turned to stare at me. “You’re the only one who cares.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant I was the only one who cared about the dream or about him, but both were true. Father and Mother cared carefully, the way some did when they’d experienced loss and couldn’t allow their feelings to swell again to the point that another blow might crush them completely. Father would say he didn’t want his son to die a coward’s death. He would say that as long as he died bravely, he would be proud. That Odin, too, would be proud. He would say little else.
Somewhere deep inside, he does care, I thought. He wouldn’t have sent me after Hodor if he didn’t.
Mother was somewhat different. She couldn’t stifle her love as easily. I remembered the fear in her eyes just this morning. She couldn’t afford to let her worry escape the well she’d built to contain it. Feed fear, and you will create a monster you’ll never be able to contain, she’d say.
Hodor’s jaw muscle worked until he found his words. “It was so cold, I saw my breath plume before me. I looked out over the fjord, staring into it because it was shrouded in a thick mist. Almost… like it wasn’t from this world. And from that mist poured a ferocious wolf pack, led by a snarling brown wolf. They cut through the fog like a warm knife through butter and came for us all. They were giants, shifting between wolf and man, ready for battle. They’d worked themselves into a frenzy, completely berserker by the time their boots hit the shore. No one stood a chance. I remember watching as one clamped down on the Iverson boy and shook him until his body went limp in its massive jaws.” He held his hands out to show me how big the creatures were.
“It was strange, because although I was running from the mountain, it felt like I was here, on the shore as well, as if two of me were watching it unfold…” he said in a faraway voice, his eyes unfocused as they stared out at the water.
“You grabbed Ingrid and Solvi, one under each arm, and screamed for Gunnar to run. You made it to the house…” I waited, my heart in my throat. “When I made it to you, when I finally reached the house…” His voice was anguished when he said, “Solvi and Gunnar… they were lying on the ground in front of the house, dead. Father and Mother tried to fight the pack, but they were too weak.” He lifted his head and locked eyes with me. “You got to them first. I’m not sure where you came from, but there was a shadow around you. You were terrifying and precise and brutal. You fought the brown wolf that led them here, courageous and beautiful, until his paw caught you unawares and swept your feet out from under you. He tore into your side and you bled out on the shore.”