Still half asleep, Maude reached out, but her fingertips only grazed the furs she lay on that had long since been cooled from abandonment. Herrick had risen without her. Had she overslept? Her heart started to race in her chest as she bolted straight up, looking around the shared sleeping space in the cabin. Though she and Herrick had drawn a privacy curtain around them, Maude could still hear the soft snores and deep breathing of others who were still lost to their dreams.
Light trickled in through the cracks between the wooden logs that built this cabin, so it must have been later in the morning than she realized. Wrapping one hand around her throat, Maude slowed her breathing until she no longer felt her heart was trying to outrun her body. Rubbing the remaining sleep from her eyes,she turned to put her feet on the cold floorboards and stand from the low cot she and Herrick had wordlessly agreed to share.
Though things between her and Herrick remained unresolved, their interactions strained by the mistrust and betrayal that they each felt, she still needed to know that he was okay.
As she reached down to grab her shirt from on top of her pack, Maude felt the soft, bell-like shape of dozens of tiny flowers. She pulled the sprig of heather from where it lay atop her clothing, a soft smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Of course, the beast left her flowers like she was some summer maiden. She should have rolled her eyes, but instead, Maude felt a foreign fluttering settle in her stomach as her chest worked harder to catch her breath.
Shaking herself from whatever was taking hold of her, Maude stood and donned her shirt, but not before she tucked the spring of heather into one of the thick braids of her long hair. Pushing past the heavy tapestry that separated the front of the cabin from the sleeping quarters, she found her father sitting on one of the cushions with a bowl of porridge in his hands. Lush blueberries and strawberries the size of her thumbnail were mixed into the hot breakfast, the smell of brown sugar and cinnamon wrapping a warm hand around her heart for a moment before melancholy settled in her chest.
"Now I know where my mother got her sweet tooth from," Maude said in a way of greeting Aeric as she spooned some porridge into her bowl. "She used to load up on sugar and berries when she ate this. I never understood why she insisted on this breakfast when we had so much else available to eat."
Her father chuckled, the sound both loving and sad. "Sylvi had a weakness for summer berries. Have you ever had the wild strawberries that grow in the north during the summer months?"
Maude shook her head, so Aeric extended his bowl to her and gestured for her to take some of the smaller strawberries. Warily, Maude raised a berry to her lips and prepared for the sour burn that usually accompanied small fruits if picked too soon. Instead, when the wild strawberry touched her tongue, a sugary sweetness exploded across her taste buds. It reminded her of the hard candy she and Bryn sneaked duringthe summer solstices from their childhood, but the longer she chewed, the more natural it tasted.
The taste wrangled something deep in her soul, thegalderthat lived there thrumming to life. Choosing to run with the instinct she didn't know she possessed, Maude reached an internal hand towards the strings that glittered within her mind's eye before plucking the pulsating green and brown thread from the bundle. Instead of the destructive sparks she had spent her life controlling, life burst within her very cells as she pulled hergalderto the surface.
She thought about the wild berries, the feeling of summer on her tongue, and sunshine on her skin as she gripped hergaldertighter. The floorboards beneath the cushions they sat on creaked as small vines sprouted between the cracks in a circle around Maude. The longer they grew, the darker they became. When the large leaves began to sprout, their dark veins became visible in the morning light as they continued to grow rapidly. Maude spied the bundle of berries beneath them, starting to grow before her eyes. The small green and white berries quickly turned into a deep ruby that made her mouth fill with saliva.
"Well done,minn måne," her father said softly, his voice holding the awe that Maude felt in it.
She tentatively reached out with her shaking fingers and plucked a strawberry from the vine in front of her. When she popped it into her mouth, she expected it to taste as horrible as she must be on the inside. She thought that since she had grown the berries, her darkness would be latched onto them. Instead, she found the berries to be just as sweet, if not a little smokier than berries ought to be.
Chest tightening for a moment before she became breathless, Maude drank in the idea that she could create something so pure, so untouched by the worst parts of her. Her throat thickened as her eyes began to burn.
"It seems you have inherited my Elven affinities forgalder," Aeric continued. "You'll have to train with all the elements now that you know you can control them."
As quickly as Maude had been able to grasp at the newgalder, it slipped from her fingers and disappeared within herself. She sucked in a shocked breath, feeling like she got the wind knocked out of her with how fast it had retreated from hercontrol. It was easier to wrangle the different elements when she was fighting; her mind focused on one task rather than in the quieter moments when her anxieties crept in to darken her mind.
"I lost it already," Maude huffed as she tried to catch her breath. "I can't always reach it. The only other times I've been able to use it was when we were escaping Logi, and I cracked the earth beneath my hands. I passed out, though, and don't remember what happened after that initial contact with the earthgalder. It felt more… instinctive somehow. I wasn't in control, my desperation to protect my friends took over."
She started to shovel more of her breakfast into her mouth, the strain from using so muchgalderalready weighing on her. She had entirely new limits she needed to learn, and it seemed earth was not her strongest element. Her father spoke again as she ate the rest of her food.
"Like any muscle that needs to be exercised to build strength,galderneeds just as much practice," he mused. "Like with humans, it will till react to your emotion and feed off its heightened state, but being part Elven means you have more control over yourgalderthan your emotion does. I can help you if you'd like, or perhaps one of your friends?"
Maude heard the quiet request her father was making, the real one beneath the offer of training. Her instinct to push away anyone willing to help her surged in her, but she forced herself to swallow that initial rejection.
This is a second chance, Herrick had said to her, and he was right—the bastard.
"I would like that," Maude said quietly, avoiding her father's eye as she spoke.
When he didn't answer right away, Maude thought she had said the wrong thing, so she looked at him. What she found could have brought her to tears if she didn't have such a tight grip on herself at the moment. Aeric was looking at her like she was the beginning and ending of his world, his silver eyes glittering with hope as he nodded quickly. The only other person to have looked at her like that, with such unconditional love, was her mother.
"How did you know that my mother was yourhjartpar?" Maude asked, the question falling from her lips unfiltered as she thought about a life she had missed out on where both her parents were alive and in love.
Her father was silent for a moment before he answered slowly.
"We didn't exactly meet under the greatest of circumstances," he said with a smile. "It took a long time for us to trust each other. Your mother struggled with it more than I did, but she had lived in a different world than I had. It wasn't until we started meeting regularly in that clearing that the pull between us became tangible and living. She knew before I did, but Sylvi was always very observant of those around her. A natural chameleon; she could blend into any crowd if she wished, and when it came to the people she loved, there was no hiding what one felt or thought around her."
Maude smiled as she listened to Aeric speak about her mother so fondly. Even decades after he had last seen her, he still spoke if her with such loving words.
"Once I realized what a stubborn fool I was being, I invited Sylvi to Nida where we finally secured the bond in front of a seer in the temples hidden in the mountains," he explained as he started to unbutton the top of his tunic before removing the gloves he wore.
Extending his bared left hand to Maude, he flipped his palm down so she could see the thin line of golden runes that flowed together so seamlessly that they appeared as an uninterrupted thread of ink. It circled around his fourth finger before extending over the top of his hand, up his arm, and over his chest until it merged with the fatemark over his heart. The gold outlined the tattoo ofYggdrasil— the same as her own.
Around his fatemark, the runes from his fate telling gave her a glimpse of what he was destined for. Starting in the order they would have been pulled, she spied the runesgebo,tiwaz, anduruz, but the last two were hidden by the linen of his tunic.
Her eyes traced over the gold ink that complimented his bronze skin, the pigment she had inherited from him, as she marveled over the beauty of their commitment to each other.
