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At thirteen the first kiss.
Sigurd’s doing, out of a dare, to prove a point. He teases her after, not because she had picked a girl, but because of the girl she had picked. “All elbows and knees, Eivor, boney like the fingers of an old seeress. You need softness, curves!”
Eivor looks away, shrugs. “I like her,” she says.
What she doesn’t say is: she looks like the wildflowers that used to grow near the longhouse in Heillboer. What she doesn’t say is: her smile reminds me a little of my mother. What she doesn’t say is: she is lonely just like me.
At fourteen comes sex, that maybe is love making or maybe is just learning. The girl is a summer sky, the first flower of spring, the snow on the top of Fannaraki. She likes touching her, she likes the sounds her touches make her do. She likes how she calls her name—Eivor, Eivor, Eivor, like beads falling on a wooden floor—and her breasts that fill her hands, her skin, her taste sweet and yet briny, how warm and wet she is around her fingers. Her short lived kisses on her neck, as seeds of small blessings.
It lasts two months. The girl leaves her for someone else. A boy, that is. It doesn’t feel as much as winter, like poets maybe would say, but autumn. After all, Eivor isn’t under the impression that the girl was in love with her, or her with the girl. But she liked her very much, and that much is true.
Her heart breaks for the first time at seventeen. Which, maybe, it’s not exactly true. She has been the carrier of an irremediably broken heart since she was eight, after all. So, at seventeen, for the first time, Eivor discovers that a broken heart can break some more.
Wolf-kissed, this girl calls her. Teller of Tales, Raven Poet, The Sad One. And she sings of people living and people dying, of battles to come and places that were. She sees things, she hears whispers.
“Mother says she lacks light,” Valka warns her.
“Stay away from her,” she cautions.
But Eivor can’t. For reasons knotted like ropes left too long unattended, reasons not as simple as her seeing things and hearing whispers, too. So, she keeps to herself: I like her darkness. I like her hands pulling me in the shadows. I like her kissing me like I am a secret. I like her body on mine, mine on hers. I like my mouth between her legs, her dark eyes looking at me as I eat her, her fingers leaving ribbons of pain on my skin. I like her forgiving and forgetful dusk.
She dies, this girl, of a sickness that consumes her body quickly. Valka says she just followed the words she alone could hear, the things she alone could see. Maybe it’s true. The darkness feels lonelier nonetheless.
Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. She grows, the anger too. Years don’t erase but multiply, it appears. Still. Wherever they go, Sigurd commands the attention, but Eivor turns heads. Possibly it’s her easy worn confidence and an unprocessed charisma. She is not unassuming by any measure, though. Reckless, most say. Doesn’t think, others say. Heartless, some say. Two truths, one lie.
Here, in this span of three years, Sigurd’s intended is mentioned two or three times, not so much as a person but mostly as a concept—and not a welcomed one at that, if you listen to Sigurd. Eivor wonders what is so wrong with this woman to make him so discontent with her.
On the subject of wrong women, the wife of one of the local men looks at her with an interest that grows by the day and—Eivor is willing to bet on it—even more by the night. Short-lived glances, quick and embarrassed. One or two inquires. (“Is she…?”, “Is she not…?”). Caught staring at Eivor kissing another woman. The list of this woman’s slips is starting to grow. Not that Eivor believes, anyway, that to her she represents something else than a novelty to consider, something to fight boredom with. Simple curiosity. But she likes inquisitive minds and she is more than willing to satisfy this one.
Inside the longhouse the fires keep the warm in and the lengthy winter out in pools of light and lightless corners. And since Eivor likes the poetry of it, here she stands in the beloved darkness, as the married woman’s feet brush the blurry line between what is illuminated and what it is not. “I’ve heard you asked about me.”
Not a question, but it still requires an answer. The woman provides it somewhat unwillingly. “I did.”
She doesn’t appear coy, but her fingers tell a different story. So, Eivor offers her a hand. As much as she enjoys a game, she likes clear rules. And this is a game that is played in the darkness and in the shadows. Light has no part in it, the woman must know that.
Hesitation comes to stay. The woman’s face is a small temptation to hold, cheeks red as apples ready for the picking, lips parted in equal amount of surprise and desire. Should I or should I not. Should you or should you not?
Her fingers land in Eivor’s offered hand. She picks the shadows.
The first kiss in not a kiss. It’s a brushing of the upper lip, a drop of honey with the promise of more. The woman’s breath catches and flutters. Eivor smiles somewhat cocky, even if the woman can’t see it. The second kiss is a kiss. She pulls the woman in, one hand around her waist, the other travels up until her thumb can feel the starting curve of her breast, an incipit of softness. There is no more catching of breath, just an eager string of hums, a more, more, now, now, here, here. So Eivor gives her more, now, here.
The third kiss is the beginning of a trail around her neck and collarbone, through the wool and linen layers of the dress, Eivor’s hands finding their way under the skirts and over the skin. Handfuls of fabric lifted, the woman holding to it like you would hold to the only thing that still anchors you to reality. An only half drowned moan fills the dark when Eivor’s fingers run up her leg and find her wet. Her hand moves slowly. Deliberately. Teasing. Caressing.
“Tell me what you want,” she whispers.
Fingers close around Eivor’s wrist. “Fuck. Me.”
And so she does, quickly and a bit roughly, her mouth pressed on Eivor' shoulder, her noises seeping into her skin. More. And more. And more.
Surprise comes when the woman abruptly stops her, pushes her hand away. “That’s enough,” she says. The skirts fall back in place, she steps back into the light. The only sign of something different in her otherwise unflustered appearance is in her flushed cheeks, and a ‘thank you’ that almost comes as an afterthought. She avoids eye contact, she leaves. Eivor stays a little longer in the shadows, where curiosity—apparently—goes to live and die.
At twenty-two spring arrives with broad strokes of green and blue. Spring also comes with Randvi, the unknown song from the North, the concept who suddenly is a very real person, the woman who seems to have misplaced her smile.
She stands out—what with her red hair and simply for not being a Raven—and it’s clear she doesn’t like it. But she is pretty, she must be used to catching people’s eyes and attention. They talk few times, of and about inconsequential things really, Eivor’s attempt to make up for her brother’s clear lack of interest. Then, one day.
Then, one day, a blunt question comes out. “Are you sad,” Eivor asks, “because you are marrying or are you sad just because you are?”
The lily of the valley Randvi is twirling stills. “I’m not sad,” she lies.
Eivor doesn’t correct her. Doesn’t say, “I see you”. Doesn’t say, “It shows, you know, in the words you keep for yourself, in the things you hold back.” Doesn’t say, “You can trust me with your sadness, if you want.” Doesn’t say. She finds instead a windflower and offers it to her. Mother told her once they symbolize grace. It seems appropriate. Randvi, first of the evening stars and last of the morning ones, threaded with a thousand hopes.
She marries Sigurd, two days later, a circlet in her hair made of wildflowers and a smile that stops just before her eyes. Clouds roll in and roll out, the day gives away to the evening and bonfires and songs. Sigurd disappears.
And Eivor waits, wonders, questions herself—a stem of heather fallen from Randvi’s circlet caught in her fingers. And before it’s too late, before there is no more music, no more celebrations, no more excuses, she threads her way through the feast and to her, catches her hand, a smile and half a laugh, “dance with me,” she says (not offered with a question mark, but still very much a question and a hope that she says yes).
Randvi looks surprised. Randvi looks like she is going to say no. Randvi is about to say just as much.
And yet. Eivor raises her hand, the heather stem still pinched between her fingers. “You lost this,” she says tucking it behind her ear. “Dance with me, lose some more.”
There is a blush hiding in Randvi’s face, the tips of her fingers touching the small flowers, something of a smile blooming on her lips. “If you wish,” she says.
And Eivor wishes. Things to be different. To be less angry. To be more constant. Randvi to be happy. This night to pass, but this moment to be endless. Randvi’s smiles and words and laughs just for her. A kiss.
But obviously no. You don’t say these things out loud. You simply don’t. So. “I do wish,” she simply replies.
In the middle of other people dancing, heather and lilies of the valley and cottongrass and buttercups all fall from Randvi’s circlet down to the ground. She doesn’t quite laugh, but something close to it. It’s Eivor’ small offering that remains where she has placed it, obstinate, refuses to fall, as a promise of something that doesn’t have a name just yet.
(What Randvi hides: she likes how smiles seem to dot Eivor’s every other thought, every other word. What Randvi hides: there is a loneliness she recognizes in Eivor, which she is familiar with because it feels akin to her own. What Randvi hides: the flower behind her ear, and how soon it becomes one of her most treasured possessions.)
(She wishes, too.)