There’s a tale in the storybooks about a woman whose work was always undone in the night by angry pixies, so each morning, she had to start fresh while knowing she’d never finish. It’s a sort of morality play, I think, emphasizing the value of hard work, but even as a little girl, I wondered why the woman didn’t simply apologize to the pixies and see if that made any difference.
Ceasing my ruminations, I explore onward. From the gallery, more hallways lead to multiple towers, each housing a different sort of room—one for gaming, another for embroidery, and the other two appear to have been used for more . . . intimate purposes. There are state rooms as well, appointed in old-fashioned style. The heavy, sumptuous fabrics would sell for a hefty price, even now. Precious gems spill out of jewel boxes, cast aside like mere baubles.
I find no trace of the mysterious Njål.
Keeping to the pattern, he visits me once a day, offering a few words, and then he vanishes, maybe into the forbidden portion of the citadel. I don’t want to be curious because of how the story goes about the cat, but the longer I live here in relative peace, the more I wonder about Njål’s secrets. I still haven’t gotten a single glimpse of him, but I force myself to seal away that interest. Surely it’s not good for me to care too much.
The long silences give me far too much time to fret about my family, however. I wonder if Tillie and Millie are eating enough, if my stepmother is warmer to them without me there to witness it. She’s a strange woman, my stepmother, frosty and pragmatic to a fault. I always thought sheer loneliness must have driven my father to her, and perhaps that’s something else I can blame myself for, because if I had been better or brighter or more somehow, maybe—
No. There’s no point to any of this. The past lies beyond an unbreakable glass wall, so we can see what we’ve done but not change it. Sometimes I think it would be easier to live without memory, so that each day feels brand new and each discovery comes for the first time. I suppose it would be difficult as well, as you would have to learn everything from the beginning, and there’s a limit to what one can master in a single day. Yes, I ought not to wish for that and just carry my memories—of my family and Owen—like a weary old woman hauling water from the well.
I’ve sorted all the usable scraps of broken furniture, turning the refuse into firewood and kindling for the winter that never ends. The rest of the keep is frigid to the point that I shiver when I leave the kitchen fire, but returning to my domain there always fills me with a sense of relief. Not quite homecoming, not yet, but I like how the copper-bottomed pots shine, all hung in orderly precision, and I’ve organized the herbs to my own specifications, so it’s a good feeling to find even a small trace of my presence lasting here, in such an inhospitable place. Sighing, I wish we had a goat because I could do so much more with milk. Right now, my meals are sparse, created from the supplies that haven’t spoiled, mostly dried beans and salted fish. My meals, not Njål’s, as he still prefers to dine alone, though only the gods know what he’s eating.
Before Njål speaks, I sense him watching me. It no longer startles me when his voice sounds nearby. “What has you so pensive?”
“Just wishing for better supplies.”
“I can do nothing for you,” he says, as if I expect him to produce a kitchen garden and livestock out of the frozen courtyard.
This place had a buttery, though, and a stable, plus I saw signs that they once kept bees in the far garden. Now everything is empty and frozen, lifeless apart from those unnerving ice statues. My imagination isn’t quite powerful enough to conjure what Bitterburn must have been like before, but I catch echoes, almost as if the keep wants me to remember memories that are not my own.
“Who asked you to?” I snap. “You inquired as to my thoughts. I answered. That’s all.”
“You’ve remarkable brass to scold the monster lurking in the dark.”
“If you’re a monster, I’m a dragon,” I mutter.
He’s done nothing to harm me or even mildly alarm me. My first few nights I wished I could lock the door to my little room behind the kitchen hearth or barricade it somehow, and I lay awake listening for any sign that he would come to ravish me, but there was never the faintest sense that he was nearby. I only get that feeling just before he speaks, generally in the brightest part of the day, though the sky above never lightens fully as it does in the village. At best it’s a pale and ominous gray, looming like a threat.
“Then you should melt the ice and devour me. I’ve lived this way long enough and I would welcome the end.” There is no levity in his deep voice.
A pang quivers through me. I remember how I felt when I came here—lonely, exhausted, and ready for the terminus of my life. My heart aches as I realize that Njål shares the feeling. I know nothing of him, but the idea of him ceasing to be? I cannot like it.
Yet maybe it would be better for the village, and our crops would grow again. Perhaps the endless winter is spreading from here like a magical sickness, and it explains why our growing season has become shorter over the years.
I surprise myself by admitting, “I felt that way too.”
“Is that why you came to me? Hoping for an end.”
“You could say that,” I answer quietly.
“It does explain a great deal. This is not a place one enters if any hope remains. In truth, I’m surprised the keep allowed you to. Others who have tried . . .”
“The statues.” I repress a shiver at the realization that I could have ended up as an ice sculpture. Questions peck away at me like greedy ravens. Do the frozen ones retain any awareness? That would truly be hell, locked in your own mind for eternity, able to perceive the world but not scream your pain and loneliness. Whatever foul magic afflicts this place, it’s truly diabolic.
“Indeed. It seems that this place recognized you as another lost soul, not one who came to plunder or conquer. Your family truly does not expect you to return?”
“I have said twice that I have nowhere else to go. Why must you force me to admit such a sad thing a third time?”
He surprises me by saying, “I’m sorry. It’s hard to believe that you prefer to be here. Please consider Bitterburn your home, so long as you respect the boundaries I’ve drawn.”
A peculiar warmth fills me. Not even my own father used the word “home” after my mother died. It was either drunken demands for me to sing or angry shouts that I wasn’t working fast enough.
“Thank you.”
“It’s nothing to thank me for, more of an exile. But I’ve come to be grateful for the sound of your voice. It’s been a lifetime since I spoke to anyone else.”
Some part of me suspects that he means it more literally than I can imagine. I don’t inquire, however, because I intuit that asking personal questions is the quickest way to drive him off, and like Njål, I have come to treasure the sound of his voice. We are not meant to live alone, in total silence. In the middle of the night, I huddle into my blankets and wish it didn’t feel as if I have pitched my camp in someone’s tomb.
“I enjoy your visits,” I say then. “I wish you came to the kitchen more often.”
“Do you?” He sounds astonished, as if it has never occurred to him that I would want his company.