Chapter 205: A Year Ago

Chapter 205: Chapter 205: A Year Ago

I washed my hands in a basin near the door and felt the sting of broken blisters. Tuva came in a few minutes later, accepted a bowl from someone, and shouldered up beside me against the wall.

"Marta is only giving us three days of seed and a list of what she’ll accept in trade," she said. "She also said if we waste it she’ll put us on the road by the next first light herself."

"I’d like to see her try." I replied.

"No you wouldn’t." She gave me a stern look.

She was right. I ate.

---

On the third morning a man walked in from the west road with a pack on his back and a limp that didn’t slow him much.

He was lean, weathered, somewhere near thirty, with a hunter’s eyes and a coat patched in too many places to count. He stopped at the edge of the cleared ground and looked at the turned earth, the partial hall, the forge smoke, and us.

"This still Hedvik?" he asked.

Bjorn, hammer in hand, squinted at him. "What’s left of it. You lost?"

"Not if this is Hedvik." The man eased the pack down. "I go by the name Einar Solvik. I used to run the high trails east of here before the place emptied out. And I heard smoke was rising again. Thought I’d see if that was true or just another rumour that died on the road."

Marta had appeared as if summoned by the sound of a new voice. "Well, Einar, I’m sorry to tell you this but unfortunately we’re not a charity hall."

"I didn’t come here to ask for charity." Einar’s gaze found the creek, the slopes, the gap in the hall roof. "I can hunt. I can track. I can tell you which of those north pines will take a winter load and which will split the first time you ask them to. If that’s worth a corner and a share of the pot, I’ll stay a while. If it isn’t, I’ll keep walking.".

I glanced at Tuva. She gave the smallest nod.

"Alright here’s what we’re going to do. You would have a corner and a share," I said. "And you show Bjorn the pines before you put your feet up."

Einar’s mouth moved. "Mm fair enough to me. Thank you."

He spent the afternoon on the north slope with Bjorn and came down with a chalked map of trees and a short list of which paths needed cutting before anyone dragged timber.

By evening he was at the hall fire with a bowl, answering the children’s questions about wolves he’d seen on the high trails with the patience of a man who had spent a lot of time alone and had not entirely forgotten how to be around people.

Tuva watched him over the rim of her cup. "Useful."

"Useful," I agreed.

"You’re collecting them." She replied.

"I’m not turning away hands that know the ground. We need all the help we can get." I shot back.

She bumped her knee against mine under the table. "Just don’t forget that you’re allowed to sleep. You’re always awake like a watch dog."

"I’ll sleep when the hall has a full roof." I answered her.

"You’ll sleep when I say so, or you’ll fall off a beam and I’ll leave you there." Tuva smirked.

I almost smiled into the stew.

---

The first real argument of the settlement hit on the fourth day.

A woman named Sofie Strøm, who held one of the better-patched houses near the creek, decided the lower strip planting threatened a run-off path her family had used since before the raids. She said it in the open yard, loud enough for everyone to stop working.

Marta snapped back that run-off paths didn’t feed anyone. Sofie said Marta had been counting bags so long she’d forgotten what the land actually did when it rained. Voices rose. A couple of the men shifted like they might pick a side with their shoulders.

I put the stake I was holding into the dirt and walked over.

"Show me," I said.

Sofie blinked. "What."

"The run-off path. Show me where it goes when it rains hard."

She took me to the edge of the strip and drew it in the air with her hand—slope, cut, the place where water had always found the creek without drowning the upper plots. She wasn’t wrong. The angle of our new rows would push melt-water sideways into her wall if the spring came heavy.

Marta arrived mid-explanation, jaw set. "We need the ground."

"We need the ground not to take her house with it," I said. "We bend the last three rows upslope and dig a cut on the edge. Same seed. Different line. The water keeps its old road."

Sofie stared at me. Marta stared at the dirt. Einar, who had been listening from the hall path, made a low sound that might have been approval.

"That’s extra dig," Marta said.

"It’s extra dig or a drowned house and a woman who has every right to hate us for it." I picked the stake back up. "I’ll dig it. Tuva will dig it. Anyone who wants the strip to work past the first thaw can dig it. Sofie doesn’t lose her wall because we were in a hurry."

For a moment nobody moved. Then Bjorn set his hammer down and came to get a shovel without being asked. Einar followed. Two of the older boys drifted in. Sofie stood with her arms wrapped around herself and watched the line change as if she still didn’t trust the shape of the offer.

By the time the light started to fail we had a cut and a bent row and a stretch of muscle ache that felt earned. Marta didn’t apologize. She also didn’t restart the argument. Sofie brought water up from the creek for the people who’d dug and didn’t make a speech about it.

Tuva leaned on her shovel beside me and wiped her face with her sleeve. "You’re getting good at this."

"At digging?"

"At not making everything a fight you have to win with your shoulders." She nodded toward Sofie’s house. "That would’ve gone differently a year ago."

"A year ago I wouldn’t have been here."

"Exactly."

---

Night settled earlier in the bowl than it did on open ground. Fires showed in the doorways. The partial hall held its usual mix of quiet talk and children’s residual energy. I sat on the beam pile with my back against the standing wall and cleaned mud from under my nails with a knife tip.

Einar paused on his way past. "You going to name this place something else when the roof closes?"

"It has a name."

"Hedvik’s a name for what it was. Places that come back sometimes want a different word." He shrugged. "Not my business. Just an old habit—watching what people call the ground they decide to keep."

He moved on. I sat with the knife idle in my hand and looked at the dark shape of the settlement—the forge glow, the hall’s incomplete mouth, the lower strip we had forced into something that might feed someone by spring.

Tuva found me there after the children had been put down. She sat on the beam beside me without asking and stole the knife to clean her own nails.

"Marta thinks the east ridge family will wait," she said. "Sofie’s talking to them tomorrow. If the cut holds in the next rain, they might not leave."

"Good."

"Bjorn wants you on the north pines at first light."

"Also good."

She handed the knife back. Our fingers touched. The contact stayed simple. Above us the sky was clear and hard with stars. Somewhere out on the west road a wolf called once and wasn’t answered.

"You’re staying," Tuva said. Not a question.

"I’m staying."

"Even if the roof takes all winter."

"Even then."

She leaned her head against my shoulder for a moment, solid and quiet, then straightened when a figure appeared at the hall door and waved a hand toward us.

It was the boy from the beam count. He came down the path at a careful run, stopped in front of the pile, and held out a flat piece of wood with charcoal marks on it.

"Bjorn said to give you this," he said. "It’s the eight pines. He marked the path. He said if you get lost he isn’t coming looking until after breakfast."

I took the wood. The marks were clean. The path was real.

"Tell Bjorn I’ll be there before he finishes his first cup."

The boy grinned, sudden and bright, and ran back toward the light.

I turned the marked board in my hands. Tuva watched the hall door swing shut behind the boy.

"First light," she said.

"First light."

We sat on the timber pile a while longer with the cold creeping into our boots and the settlement breathing around us—imperfect, unfinished, and still there when the dark was complete.