Bracelet of Bones Read Free

wrestling free. But what she meant was: “Never let me go.”
    “Go on, then, Solva,” her father told her.
    Up on the high ground behind her farm, Solveig leaned against a silver birch as slender as she was, and she stared at the fjord, nothing but silver glitter as it snaked its waynorth, nothing but orange flame as it wound south and west toward the setting sun.
    There were flames up on the hillside too, the flame leaves of the sumac that had already scented autumn. In the springy moss around her, Solveig found plenty of blueberries. Most she dropped into the leather pouch attached to her belt, but some she chewed until her tongue and lips were as blue as a changeling’s.
    “That’s what you are,” her stepmother, Asta, sometimes told her, with her mouth full of nails. “A changeling. Your watchful eyes, one gray, one violet. And they’re too wide apart. You’re not young, you’re not old.”
    Solveig sighed.
    When she pressed one ear to the mossy rock, Solveig could hear it grumbling, as far off as her first memories.
    She wasn’t afraid. But she knew something must be happening, maybe down in the dripping caves, home of the greedy dwarfs and their smithies, and maybe much farther, nine days’ ride through freezing mist and darkness, in the world where the dead live.
    But when she lay flat as a plank and pressed her other ear to the rock, the earth was slumbering again. Solveig could hear nothing but her own soft breathing and a mosquito whining.
    Then she lay back and linked her fingers behind her head. She thought about Stiklestad and how her father was haunted by the battle and always would be and what runes she should carve on the shoulder blade she had found. She watched the bleeding sun slide downinto the water. She shivered and wrapped herself in her sheepskin—the skin of one-eyed Tangl.
    Night rode across the sky, and the rime that dropped from her stallion’s mane stiffened Solveig’s sheepskin. The hoarfrost stiffened her limbs too.
    Waking in the middle of the night, she lay and wondered at the thousands and thousands of stars.
    I know I’m up here on our hillside, she thought, but it’s so strange; I feel as if I’m in every other place as well and here in this time but in every other time too.
    Closing her eyes again, Solveig dreamed the story her father had once told her about the bride who vanished on her wedding day. Solveig was the bride, and she had wandered a little way away from the wedding feast and danced with the fairies, supposing they were guests. And then she drank their wine . . .
    When Solveig returned to the feast, everything looked different. The farm of her bridegroom’s family had disappeared, and there was no sound of singing or fiddling or laughter.
    Then she met an old woman, sitting outside her cottage, and the old woman took one look at her and screeched, “I know who you are. The bride! The bride of my great-great-grandfather’s brother.”
    With that, Solveig—the bride who came back—dropped down dead. She dissolved into a heap of dust.
    When Solveig woke, it was broad daylight. She stood up and stamped like a colt to be sure she was still flesh andblood and bone. Then she swung her arms, rubbed the stars out of her eyes, and yawned.
    Gazing down, she saw her own farm was still there, all right: the hearth smoke was rising right through the turf roof as usual. Both cows lowed as soon as she greeted them. And Kalf, chopping wood in the yard, ignored her as usual.
    Solveig found her stepmother in the little dairy. After her dream, Solveig was even quite pleased to see her.
    “Good morning and good morning!” she caroled.
    Asta looked up. “Good for nothing,” she grunted.
    Solveig frowned.
    “Your father’s gone.” Asta smacked her wooden scoop against the side of the churn, and its slender stem snapped. “Now look what you’ve made me do.”
    “Gone where?” asked Solveig.
    “Hel, for all I care.”
    “Trondheim, you mean?”
    “They came for