Two

Iza changes into a clean undyed shift made and tends to the fire at the center hearth of the longhouse. She is very cold, the type of chill that pebbles her skin and leaves her shivering half the night, even bundled beneath furs. Her restless sleep means that she is aware of when her father returns to their home, his grumbling audible as the uneven floorboards croak under his weight; the clank of his sword against the wall inexplicably makes her flinch. She screws her eyes shut tight and tries to keep her mind from wandering to the egg hidden in the shadows only a few inches away.

Iza is still unable to find rest long after her father has gone to sleep. It is the cold – that pervasive chill she feels all the way to her bones – that keeps her awake. That is what she tells herself. Only the strange cold, as she should not feel as if she hasn't had the warmth of fire for ages. It is the springtime months, the sun having long-since thawed the snow and ice from the fjords. Iza had not felt this cold even during the long sunless winter.

She does not understand it. Had Thor's strike forever altered her in more ways than one? Even now, she can feel the new way the skin of her chest stretches over her bones. A scar and a preeminent chill – those are the prizes Iza will claim for her hubris. She should have listened to the Chieftain and fought the dragons with everyone else.

She should have – but she did not. And now she must suffer the consequences.

The scant sleep Iza manages is broken by the dawn. She rises groggily, teeth chattering and her collarbone aching something fierce. Hazarding a glance at the opposite side of the longhouse to make sure her father is still asleep, Iza hastens to prepare for the day, running a wooden comb through her hair and donning the warmest wool dress she has. She makes sure the egg is covered by her bedding, then double checks just to be safe before she leaves her home. Pausing outside the door, she dips her hand into the rain barrel to wash her face.

Then, with a determined set to her jaw, she sets off to the lower village, intent to do her duty.

Iza has never been beyond her village, but she assumes that other places the Vikings travel to are the same – everyone has a duty to perform. Some are loggers, some are hunters or fishermen, and some farm; there is the blacksmith and the coppersmith and the builders who can fix anything; there are those who cure the meat and those who turn pelts into clothing; there are those who raise the sheep and those who shear the sheep and those who weave wool into fabric; there are even a few who teach Odin's runes to the children alongside how to fight with any number of forged weapons. Iza loves her village with the kind of devotion that only the Chieftain can match – but she has always been unsure if the village returns her love.

Iza is not as useful as others. She has strange ideas and stranger interests. When it came time for her peers to select a training weapon, all the others fought over the longsword while Iza thoughtfully selected a simple bow. When it came time for her peers to begin their trades, Iza once again set herself apart from her seers as she pled for the village elders to allow her archive their stories. While skeptical, the elders were hesitant to refuse the Chieftain's daughter, and soon Iza's days became filled with the Edda of her people. She even began cataloging the dragons the village fought, assigning the beast names and tracking the kind of dragonbreath they possess. Eventually, her duties expanded to handling the money of the village, as she had learned mathematics and had a knack for applying her knowledge. And while Iza thinks that her duties are meaningful, she knows there is no comparison for those who are able to actually provide for the village.

And so after each dragon battle, Iza makes sure to rise early and survey the village, assigning funds where necessary and lending any hand she can to mending what damage the dragons had wrought. It is the least she can do – the very least, if she believes what some villagers have to say.

Plenty of villagers think her entitled, but the truth of the matter is that Iza is unskilled. Her aim with an arrow is clean, but she cannot bring herself to hunt the animals in her forest. She cannot swim, so she cannot be a fisher. She does not have the strength to be a logger or a smithy. Her attempts at farming and cooking are laughable, and her fingers are far too clumsy with a bone needle to mend even the smallest of tears. All she truly has to offer is her ability to read and write and do arithmetic. Sometimes, privately, Iza reflects that she doesn't seem to fit all that well with Vikings.

She is simply not like them.

Which is fine – she has learned to live with it – but she feels no less an outsider for her acceptance of this fact.

And that is why, as she surveys the village, she is careful to note all damages on a scrap of hide with a nub of charcoal and be as generous with compensation as she can. She talks with the villagers to hear their concerns and tries to ease their minds; she makes herself useful, holding children to assist harried mothers or crawling into tight spaces that broad men cannot fit into to make simple repairs. She makes sure to check over the docks and the boats bobbing in the fjord and then reassures the fishermen that the village stores are full enough that they can afford a day away from the water. She sees to it that the smiths have coal for their forges and that bakers have wood for their stone ovens. And then she treks out to the three farmlands in the village, handing out copper coins to farmers who lost livestock to the dragons and checking on the progress of cage repairs.

All the while, she dutifully ignores how she is so cold that she begins to ache.

Iza has never felt so cold in all her life. Not even that winter when she was a child and got lost in the woods during a snowstorm, only to be found in a hollowed tree by Edvard and other hunters, has she ever been so cold. Her fingers are numb and although she is already very pale, she is sure that she has lost all her color.

This cold – it feels like death.

And right as she begins to feel weakest – slow and dumb as she staggers back up that terribly tall hilltop where her home is – she is struck by a sudden jolt of panic. The urgency to return home comes out of nowhere and makes her stumble in her tracks.

Why does she need to go home?

Obviously, with her duties done, she was going home anyway, hopefully to sit before the fire and warm herself from this dreadful chill. But now – she needs to go home. Home. Home. Home – home where the egg is so cold and alone and afraid and –

"Izabela!"

Large, blade-scarred hands catch her beneath her arms as she tilts alongside gravity. Had she been falling? She hadn't even realized it. The hands are gentle in their grip and warm enough that they burn her skin through her thick dress. She looks up dazedly and then rears back in shock – though a tiny part of her is not surprised in the least that Edvard shows up once again when she is at her worst.

"Is she all right?"

Iza recognizes the voice of Emebor Branson, another hunter and son on the family who had taken Edvard in when he was a babe. She supposes if they were together then Emmet and Edvard must have just finished their own survey of the village – this time looking for any traces of loitering dragons.

She wonders if they found the dragon mother Iza burned last night.

"I do not know," Edvard answers, glancing back at Emmet. "She seems ill."

"She should be at home," Emmet says bluntly. "Do you need help?"

"She is a feather," Edvard replies and, much to Iza's astonishment, he shifts to lift her into her arms as if she indeed does weigh as much as a feather. "I will take her to the Chieftain's house. When I return, we will continue our search."

"Take your time."

Iza cannot see Emmet from her vantage point, but she can see the stormy scowl that graces Edvard's sharp-boned face. "I will return shortly," Edvard grits out, and then stomps up the hill as if he isn't carrying a woman in his arms.

No longer quite as stunned, Iza begins struggling against his hold. This cold, the heat of his body is almost painful and her heart is behaving strangely in her chest. "Put me down," she commands through chittering teeth.

"No."

"Edvard –"

"Hush," he says, then then proceeds to ignore her all the way up the hill.

The nerve of this man! If Iza were feeling any better – well, she certainly would do something to remove herself from his arms! But as it is, her shivering is violent and even with his heat seeping into one side of her body, she is beginning to feel sluggish.

Iza has always heard that it is a bad thing to feel both cold and slow. Nothing good ever comes after.

"The Chieftain is not home?"

Iza glances up at Edvard and then at their surroundings. They are inside Iza's longhouse. When did that happen? She shakes her head, confused by the disapproving tone in Edvard's voice, and says, "He is rarely home after dragon battle. He will be with the other elders in the Great Hall, trying to plan a raid against the dragons…"

A useless raid against the dragons, if anyone would think to ask Iza. But they never do.

"I see," Edvard mutters. He is careful when he sets her down in front of the fire, placing her gently on the floor and then moving away; he collects a deerskin to drape over her shoulders and logs of wood to feed the hearth. The silence between them is as odd as his actions.

Iza does not understand it. She does not understand him.

As soon as he seems satisfied with the height of yellow-orange flames licking against the stone hearth, Edvard becomes aloof again, saying nothing as he retreats from her home. She is briefly frustrated by her own curiosity about him – because it is a fools dream to think about Edvard in any way other than being a peer – before even that is consumed by the cold slowly freezing over her mind.

Sitting directly before a fire does not make her warm again.

Instead, impossibly, Iza feels colder than before. Fear curls through her chest – she is so cold and alone and afraid and where is Modir –

Where is mother?

Dead. Missing. Mother has been gone since Iza was born, vanished in the night as the Chieftain slept. None in the village talk about her, though Iza has heard passing whispers that her own beauty might have rivaled the woman who birthed her. The Chieftain never mentions her. Even Iza does not spare her mother a second thought.

So why would she be thinking of her mother now?

Unless –

Iza turns her stiff neck, violent shivers wracking her slender frame, and looks through the wooden shutters partitioning her room from the rest of the longhouse. An unbelievable thought passes through her mind. It is not Iza thinking about her mother – it is the egg.

Surely not.

But –

Iza cannot help but remember the sheer heat of the dragon mother last night, the warmth of her body even as she lay dying – warm enough to rival the heat of a fire. It only makes sense that a baby dragon trapped in the stone of an egg would need a source for warmth, though it does not explain why Iza is feeling so cold.

Still, some buried fortitude has her crawling away from the fire and into her room. She unearths the dragon egg – ice-cold to the touch, leaving a hollow feeling in Iza's stomach. Iza frowns, hefting the dragon egg into her lap, then hugging her arms and the deerskin around the egg. At first, the cold is worse, sharper and icier than before – but then Iza's shivers begin to subside.

And a terrifying notion blooms in Iza's head.

"Oh, Frigg, have you bid me to replace the mother of a dragon?" Iza whispers, casting her head down toward the earth. What does this mean for Iza? She is already strange enough – but mothering a dragon is almost perverse. Wrong. Treasonous. "I do not know what to do."

Except that she does – perhaps out of instinct or perhaps because the baby dragon is somehow communicating the idea, Iza knows that she must get the egg warm. She will not be part of snuffing out an innocent life, dragon or not. A mere egg is no threat to her. And Iza has never been cruel.

Iza shuffles slowly over to the fire, bringing herself as close to the flames as she dares, the egg cradled in her lap – still cold, but not as frigid as before. Iza holds the egg and feels a sense of contentment, though she is unsure if it is truly her or the egg relishing the heat. Both, maybe.

Iza lowers her gaze to the egg, tracing her fingers over the speckled greyish stone with in solemnity.

She needs a plan.

A/N: Ooooooh, mystical dragon connection...pretty much expected for dragon stories!

Daily life for Vikings is, from what I can tell, kind of a mystery to us all. What did they eat? What did they grow? What were their livestock? Did they even have ovens? Well, who the eff knows, but some excavations of Viking sites do reveal what might have been a stone oven or something like an oven and considering most ancient civilizations managed some form of bread, I'm standing by the Viking Bakers mentioned in this chapter. Fight me.

The Norse mythical figure mentioned this chapter is Frigg, who is not Thor's mother but who is a magician who weaves a tapestry that basically tells the future (or something). She's also associated with motherhood, given that she's married to All-Father Odin. Some scholars argue that Frigg and Freya are actually the same person and someone just fucked up the spelling, but others determine that they're different figures who just happen to basically do the same thing in all the myths. Make up your own mind about it, I guess. It's barely even relevant to the story at all.

What is relevant? Mentioned in this story was the Edda - if you've done even the most basic browsing of Norse mythology, then you know that the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda are the source of basically all anybody knows about the legends associated with Nordic paganism. Am I laughing at history by having Izabela work on her own Edda? Yes. Yes, I am. I'm also shamelessly ignoring the fact that the Vikings didn't write down anything, but if they did, How To Train Your Dragon probably got it wrong because they definitely wouldn't have used parchment. Animal hide, on the other hand...But then, I'm only shooting for the barest minimum of historical accuracy. Which brings me to slaves - definitely a thing that happened with the Vikings and definitely something that will be mentioned again in this story. I also feel compelled to mention that it makes sense for Izabela to be handling finances, since Vikings thought math was witchcraft and thusly let the women handle the money. Vikings were pretty cool like that.

As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.

~ Rae