The Mercies

Grief cannot feed you, though it fills you.

This story is about people, and how they lived; before why and how they died became what defined them.

But now she knows she was foolish to believe that evil existed only out there. It was here, among them, walking on two legs, passing judgement with a human tongue.

I remember once when runes gave you comfort, when sailors came to my father to cast bones and tell them of their time to come. They are a language, Maren. Just because you do not speak it doesn't make it devilry.

Many of them seem past caring what is true or not, only desperate for some reason, some order to the rearrangement of their lives, even if it is brought about by a lie.

It is written, and once written, things aren’t easily forgotten.

It is knowing that all your joy is bound up in another, and to be parted from it would be to live without light for the rest of your days.

…she has taken to wearing her faith like armour, wielding her piousness like a blade.

…she isn’t sure a life spent here is worthy of the label of living.

At night, the grief is harder to manage.

God provides,” says Toril, though the ache in Maren’s arms tells her it was not God but they who brought this catch home.

This is no place for a child. He needs air, he needs trees, he needs people who will not look at him as though he is something broken, or half made.

The day is impossibly bright: the sort of crystalline clarity that comes when winter still sits in the air. They have already entered at the narrow mouth of the fjord, and the cliffs rise sheerly either side, a clean hundred feet, the black rock raked with lines of lighter grey. The sea is green and glitters with chips of ice, and as soon as the wind bites at her face and brings up its blood, chilling her lungs, she feels better than she has since she left home. ‘They are magnificent, are they not?’ ‘They are,’ she breathes, and is embarrassed by the keenness in her voice. ‘Though you must have seen mightier, captain?’ ‘I take each sight for itself alone, Mistress Cornet.

She may never spend another season in this house. Would she miss it, or only the people inside it?

Again Maren feels that reach from inside her, a third, ghostly arm stretching out to seize hold of Ursa, as though she were drowning and found a raft among wreckage.

At night she’d press her hands to the places she’d felt the warmth, fingers cold bars across her hips and numb enough not to be hers.

This story is about people, and how they lived; before how and why they died became what defined them.

Handsome man, as these Scots often seem to be…

This is your land?' 'No.' The girl's tone was firm as her gaze. 'We only lived here.