On a clear night near the end of the dark months, she went out to the stone alone.
The wyrm lay curled as it had lain all her life, head on forelegs, wings drawn close, and the snow beaded on its scales and ran away. In the starlight it might have been carved there. Steam rose white from the seams around its base and drifted across the yard, and when she laid her hand on its side it was warm as a hearthstone.
She felt the thread behind her breastbone. It did not pull. It only rested, a weight she would carry now until she died, or until it passed to Kari, or until someone in Varmdal found a better bargain than the one Hervor had made.
Somewhere in there, under all the little fires, it was dreaming the boathouse. She was sure of it. If she pressed her hand flatter and let the door swing open, she thought she might even see it again — gray light through the planking, a man's ruined hands in hers — the way she had seen her mother's fingers in her hair. She stood a long time with her palm on the scales, not opening the door.
Then she took out the tally stick.
Along one side were the runes for what the wyrm had taken: *voice. horse. braid. birth.* The small nameless notches for the summer afternoons. The deep last cut for Midwinter. She turned the stick over to the smooth side, and drew her knife, and by starlight began to carve the other kind of rune — the ones for things she did not have but had been told. *Braid: Thorhalla's telling.* *Kari's birth: Kari's telling.* And last, carefully, so the cuts would last:
*Boathouse. His telling. Ask again in spring.*
Behind her, the hall door creaked. Kari came out in his cloak with his dog at his heels and stood beside her at the stone, looking at the sleeping wyrm.
"Will it be me someday?" he said. "When you're old?"
"Not while I'm alive."
"And after?"
The wyrm breathed, slow and deep, in its sleep. Far up the valley, toward the pass and Grimsfjord, the snow lay unbroken under the stars.
Eydis put the stick back in her belt.
"After," she said, "we'll see what kind of people we've become."