Waking tamped down on her temples with heavy weight. She groaned, disoriented and sat up. The window above the foot of her bed, squared into the slanted ceiling, was shining with dingy new shafts of sunlight. She had not slept soundly, always just on the skirts of deep sleep, and that was the worst.
She could smell fresh cakes downstairs and the scent cleared her brain a bit. She stood and dressed in her usual gear and knotted her free hair into a braid. She wondered if the boy was awake now, but when she opened her door and looked downward upon the tiny house, she saw a steaming basket of tea cakes upon the breakfast table, but an empty kitchen.
The boy was still curled in the alcove beneath the stairs; she could see his long-fingered hands peeking from beneath the blankets.
What young boy in his right mind would sleep through Valka's aromatic cooking of tea cakes? She fisted one, taking a huge bite.
She surveyed the boy's sleeping form, knees curled up under his chin. He couldn't be much older than her, she thought. She stepped closer.
He'd moved during the night, and looked immensely more comfortable and much less like a dead creature just laying there with his head lolling at its own will. She wondered if he'd woken from unconsciousness yet, just sleeping now.
At the thought, as if he'd sensed it, the boy moved.
She stepped back.
With resilience not of a waking Viking, he tossed his furs aside and sat up. His movements were slow and confused in this unfamiliar place and position. His eyes were still closed, and she could see his nose quirking and wrinkling at the new smells around him. Finally, when he did open his eyes, Astrid couldn't hide her gasp.
They were beautiful. The wildest, most intense shade of green she'd never seen. She did not get much time to think on which season of grass they took the shade of—spring or summer—when he locked his gaze to hers.
His lips curled and his teeth parted into a low snarl that made her spine run with pin-pricks.
Her cake tumbled from her hand, bouncing along the floor leaving a trail of crumbs.
She edged away, reaching behind her to find the end of the breakfast table and scooting around it. She wouldn't let herself be cornered. Hands first, he slipped from his cot to the floor, slithering like a reptile, towards her.
"Stop it," she warned, reaching along the surface for a knife. She found no such protection.
He was too close now, sliding up before her on his knuckles and knees. She winced, and slammed her own knee to his face, hard, once she could get a good angle.
He mewed and caught the splurt of blood with his hands when it burst from his nose.
"Get away from me or you'll get worse," she threatened, glaring down at the unsound creature.
Before she could make her next move, he countered her attack and reached up with gnarled fingernails to swipe at the exposed skin on her forearm. She hissed, mirroring his defensive sound this time, and backing up. Her hand clamped over the wound, feeling the expected sticky wetness stain her fingers.
He lunged and she twisted, dodging him. He tried to coral her to the corner. Confused and bewildered by his movements that were so strangely unhuman, she could not easily predict the next step. She could spring for the axe that hung by the door, and leave her back unprotected in the process. He was too quick and too unpredictable to be allowed the chance.
She moved for the doorway anyways, a better outlet for their shouts and screams if it came to that. But while she retreated, her hand still wrapped over her skin where he'd cut her, his eyes fell to the liquid oozing between her digits.
She watched the rim of his irises grow thinner, and her instincts twitched.
He looked up at her face, making an unsettling cooing noise in his throat that confused her all the more. His scowl had relaxed to something near a grin, or more like wonder. The noise changed again, and she could almost liken it to the purr of a cat.
"What are you..?" she said.
He flattened his palms to her, showing the streaks of red that had settled into the creases of his hands. A gruesome mask of his blood covered his chin. She tried to twist her gaze away from him.
He shuffled, inching himself closer. He understood that she did not want him near. His hands reached for her arm. She'd moved her hand, and the bloodied gashes were exposed now, burning under the rush of fresh air. They weren't too deep, but angry red all the same. He brushed his fingers just under the scratches, and she flinched away, but when she looked back to him he still looked stunned.
His mouth was open slightly, and she could see the row of flat teeth that lined his mouth. At least that part of him was human. He didn't have rows of razor teeth, though he made the strangest of sounds, like an animal, and she doubted he spoke at all.
"Do you speak?" she asked, staring down at his still filthy face. "Do you understand what you've done?" She pointed with her free hand at her arm, and he seemed to become excited, thinking she was catching on to why he was so intent on staring at the three slashes. He shuffled again and cooed brightly. He showed his palms to her again.
Now she understood. He was trying to tell her. They were the same. She was the first creature that looked like him that he'd met. Now his intrigue made sense.
The door creaked open and Valka's heavy boots and heavy gait thudded against the floorboards. "Oh, he's awake. Oh! What've you done now?" she exclaimed, circling them, hands on her hips.
The boy crouched away, cowering. He didn't seem to be threatened by this woman, like he had been by Astrid. But rather feared her. She didn't seem to be deterred and bent down to grip his chin. The boy mewed helplessly but didn't twist away. "You've hit him, did you?" She clucked her tongue in Astrid's direction, looking over the boy's face. "Well, its not broken. You're just fine."
"He doesn't speak," Astrid said, unmoving.
"I feared that," the woman responded, as if she'd been predicting it.
She released him and he stumbled back on his heels, teetering for the corner. Astrid watched as he lifted a palm to his mouth and drew his tongue across it, licking himself clean.
"He's disgusting," she spat, glaring down upon him.
"He isn't one of our kind," Valka answered, neither refuting nor approving her observation.
He drug a ruddy hand through his hair, and Astrid cringed. Valka was already at the water pump, filing the great washtub they used to bathe. At the noise of rushing water, the boy perked up, but only long enough to monitor that neither of them were paying any attention to him and going back to his licking.
A large square of their goat's milk soap was plopped into the water, fizzing slightly, the surface of the water growing whiteish with thin bubbles. Without pretense, Valka marched over to grab his arm, hauling him upwards. He didn't have time to process the quick motion for several seconds, and then began howling in protest.
"Up with you, and into the tub, you messy pup." She was already stripping him of his ratty tunic. Beneath the bunched fabric, he screeched as if he were being burned. Astrid busied herself with finally having her breakfast peacefully, munching her cake without a plate, and snatching a plump apple from their fruit basket. She heard the definite plop that indicated he'd been thrust into the water. The boy's screams were garbled now with the sounds of drowning. She heard water splashing and Valka's soft reprimands. No longer able to take the noise, she ventured out.
The sheep were at her feet instantly, bleating and baaing as they nipped the toes of her boots. She bent down to pat them.
"Good morning, you fat pigs. Which one of you shall we eat tonight?" It was menacing but teasing, and she couldn't help but laugh to herself about it, streaking her fingers through the thick rows of curls on Louie's head. Valka insisted on naming all their livestock; Astrid thought it ridiculous, but appeased her. The old sheep bellowed up to her, as if volunteering itself and Astrid laughed again.
"Outside of the pen, no telling what you'll dig up. We've just planted the field, and I won't have you destroying it. Get back inside." She kicked, stirring up puffs of dirt and rock, frightening the flock towards the gate of their wide pen. It was built on a shallow hill with plenty of room for them to roam and plenty of grass.
Even outside, she could still hear the screeches inside the house. She sank her teeth into her apple with purpose.
She hated him. He was disgusting and strange and a complete intrusion. It was not that she did not appreciate other children being brought into Valka's home. She had been four when the twins arrived, and grown up with them. Other children had been brought in here and there, always leaving. But he was different. He did not belong. He was so strange, and so unhuman. Like…like a dragon. Her stomach churned and burned at the thought.
That was it. The realization hit her like it must've hit him earlier that they were similar beings.
He was a dragon. Or rather, thought he was. Had he grown up with them? Did he live with the beasts?
Astrid disliked the beasts to the core. Anger and violence bred fear, and she wouldn't deny the thought that she was at least a bit apprehensive. It all had to do with her parents' murder. And what she'd seen. Valka's views were milder than hers, and the subject was sensitive whenever they tried to dicuss it. But Astrid knew them to be mean, vicious creatures, and if this boy knew them, he could be no exception. By the way he'd sprung on her from the start, she knew.
There was no room for him here, not uncivilized as he was. They were better off to set him off on a raft back out into the ocean he'd washed in on.
The noise in the house had quieted after a few more minutes. She had forgotten her axe in her hurry to leave, and when she went back inside to fetch it for her morning work out, Valka was drying her hands on a cloth, and the boy was wrapped in a thick fur, sitting by the fire pit. His hair was slick and darker auburn, almost crimson. His skin was clean, his bright eye shining under the firelight as he watched the flames.
He looked dazed and shell-shocked, his mouth agape. A high-pitched hiccup bubbled form his lungs and his shoulders hitched.
Valka glanced over her shoulder at the girl, tossing down her towel. "Swallowed more of the water than he bathed in, he did." A grin tweaked her lips and made Astrid's own lips curl downward. "Though, its just as well. He's all clean now." She patted the boy's head as she passed. His shoulders trembled again with a new bout of bubbly breaths.
"Maybe we should call him Hiccup, then," she said offhandedly, apathetically, unhooking her axe from its spot on the wall.
"Wonderful idea, dear!' Valka said brightly, and Astrid turned with eyebrows raised.
"I was kidding. We're not going to name him, are we?"
"Why not? We don't know his name, and we haven't any way of figuring it out if he won't or doesn't speak. And if he's going to stay, we'll want to have something to know him by. After all, everybody has a name, don't they?" She drew a carved comb through his hair, and the boy didn't protest anymore.
Had she actually tamed him enough to make him comfortable enough to be touched?
She wanted to shout and protest and tell Valka just how absolutely outrageous this was. More harebrained than any of her other schemes she'd been a part of and been tolerant of all these years.
"I'm going out," she declared, thumping her axe once in finality against the floor before lifting it again and marching outside.