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Hiccup took off rather hastily; Astrid followed shortly afterwards, still smiling, and Heather weighed up whether a wave or a rude gesture would amuse them more before settling on a wave.
They really were adorable, whether Astrid disliked the word or not. And having seen them fight – having caused the fight, or at least having been a pretty major factor to judge by Astrid’s early reaction to her – it was good to see the way that they looked at each other, the way that they made each other look. She even behaved herself enough to have quickly stopped using Hiccup as a distraction when she was sparring with Astrid, no matter how effective a strategy it was.
“Are you all right?” said Elsa softly, as Astrid wheeled away into the snow.
Perhaps she should have said that she was fine to walk by herself, and that Elsa should fly home with the others. There was something of a selfishness about it, she supposed, but she did hope that speaking to Elsa, and hearing Elsa’s voice, might keep away the darkness circling her own thoughts.
She turned, trying to keep her smile in place, to Elsa. It was still jarring to see someone in short sleeves and bare hands in weather like this, no goosebumps on her arm and her breath not misting in the way that Heather’s was. But the snow glittered in her hair like a crown, and there was a tenderness and a concern to her expression which made it hard to keep the walls in place.
“Something just… came up, this morning,” she settled for. She adjusted her scarf, hoping that it did not look like she was fidgeting.
She might well have been fidgeting.
“I’m sorry that I was late,” she finished.
Elsa tilted her head slightly, stepping closer. Not too close, but enough that she might have been within an arm’s reach. She was one of relatively few in Berk who would do that, Heather had quickly noticed, but it was nice sometimes to have someone who would stand close by. “You are not usually late,” she said. “Are the dragons all right?”
For a moment, Heather contemplated lying, but shook her head. “They’re fine. No breakfast disasters. No, um, I…” she felt her chest beginning to tighten again, and forced herself to keep breathing steadily. She could offer a little of the truth without it being too much, she knew that. Enough to remind herself that she trusted people. “I got a message from Duskhowl, she asked me to come round. It delayed me.”
Her hand trembled, and she knew from the flicker of Elsa’s gaze that it had been spotted.
“Sorry, these gloves aren’t great.” She tucked her hands beneath her armpits again, and wasn’t sure whether having her arms crossed made her feel more protected, or more vulnerable to the tightness in her chest.
Elsa sidestepped, turned towards the path back to Berk. “We should walk,” she said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any spare to offer. I’m not sure…” her words trailed off, then she turned back and extended her hands towards Heather. “It should keep the cold out, at least. Will you let me try something?”
Not quite sure where this was going, Heather offered her hands in return. The only thing that she could think of was that Elsa had plans to use her magic, and the thought made Heather’s heart jump. It was still amazing to see; she had been watching Elsa’s hands far more than she had been watching the visitor that Hiccup had been escorting.
Dragons, she had seen before. Not often, true, but they were something that she had seen, that everything had seen. But seeing Elsa and her magic still made Heather feel as if she were walking in the lines of a legend.
Elsa took Heather’s hands, gently sweeping her fingers around to all but cradle Heather’s. Her hands trembled again for a moment, and she hoped that it would look like it was the cold, that it would not be clear just how it took her breath away to have her hands taken like that. For a moment, Heather looked up to Elsa’s face, scanned it while her concentration was elsewhere. Her features were almost ceramic-fine in the early light, lashes pale over her blue, blue eyes, and Heather tore her gaze away again before it got creepy and just in time to see light spark between their hands.
She snatched in her breath, but kept her hands still. The light swelled and spread across the outside of Heather’s gloves, wrapping up around and onto the backs of her hands so that she had to squint to even see, and then it faded away again to leave just a glittering sweep of ice in its place.
It looked like fabric. Elsa drew her hands away again, fingertips brushing down Heather’s palm and the lengths of her fingers, and Heather caught her looking up with a hopeful, slightly worried, expression.
“Is it all right?” she said.
Heather blinked. Her hands felt warmer, certainly, but the gloves hadn’t really been that bad to begin with and she was not sure whether the warmth was just from letting Elsa touch her hands. But then she carefully curled her fingers and stretched them out again, the ice shifting and shimmering across her knuckles, and she smiled despite everything that happened that day, a breathless half-laugh escaping her.
“It’s beautiful. I knew you could make mail, but…”
“I suppose it is like mail but… smaller.” Elsa shrugged. “I thought if it were small enough, it could keep the wind out.”
“There’s certainly no drafts,” Heather said, the words blurting out, but she was glad that she did when Elsa smiled. She ran the tips of one fingers across the palm of the other hand. “It’s… amazing.”
“They are not permanent,” said Elsa, as if that was something that needed apologising for. “But it should help until you get home.”
Home, sure. Home was a boat, and the open waves, and her father singing deliberately off-tune to make her mother feign annoyance and Heather laugh. But she knew what Elsa meant. “Well, I’ve got two dragons to warm them against, now.”
That made Elsa smile, which frankly was better than thinking about going back to the empty house. Heather managed a somewhat more true smile in return, and when Elsa tilted her head towards the path she nodded in agreement.
It was easier walking back than it had been walking out. Walking out – and she would have been running had it not been for the dangerously icy path – she had been stuck in a fight with herself over whether she should be staying with her father, even though he had fallen asleep again, or whether she should be going to help Hiccup and the others as she had promised. She had to uphold her promises to them, to make herself useful somehow, to begin to pay back the huge debt that she had built up to them. Even now, she felt the urge to walk faster, to get back in case Duskhowl needed her again.
She swallowed back both the thoughts and the nausea that rose in her throat at the reminder of how her father had been.
“I didn’t know that you were telling Camicazi about your magic,” said Heather, before the nagging in her head could grow too intense. “Until you did, I mean. Hiccup said that she was a chief’s daughter, from another island?”
She saw the way that Elsa squared her shoulders, and wondered if it had been the wrong thing to say. Even after two moons and more, she was not always sure how Elsa would react to mentions of her magic.
“Yes,” Elsa said, though. “She is. She said that the Bog Burglars will likely wish to fight alongside Berk against Dagur. If that is the case… then they need to know about my magic.”
“Oh, I’m sorry…” the tone of the words, the edge in her voice, made it clear that the choice had not been entirely easy for her. But Elsa shook her head.
“No. It was… not so bad.”
Heather had seen the response, and frowned. Camicazi had grabbed Hiccup’s knife, and Elsa had not flinched at it. She could only think that it was worse than her own reaction, which had at least been limited to falling on her backside. “You were brave, in front of it,” she offered.
“She was surprised.” Elsa shook her head, and raised a hand to let light glimmer on her fingertips. “That is all. She calmed down again, she did not attack me.”
It had looked to Heather like it had come rather too close to it, but she was not very well going to say that aloud. Again, she had to bite down on her curiosity about Elsa’s past, not wanting to pry too hard and knowing that her first instinct would be to do so. That it was not acceptable to follow her curiosity as far as it wished.
“She’s gone now, at least.”
Elsa nodded. “And she had agreed to tell her mother, and nobody else.”
“And we managed to retrieve Snotlout’s stuffed yak,” Heather added, hoping for some levity.
It worked, and Elsa smiled. “I am sure that everyone will be glad to have their things back.”
“Your magic is stunning,” said Heather. She could not stop the words from leaving her lips, too tired and too aching, remembering the feeling in her chest as the light rolled over her hands. Remembering the light on Elsa’s face, and her smile, as she had drawn ice through the air to fill the gaps in the roof. She had seemed to glow herself. “To watch.”
Elsa stopped in her tracks, turning to look at Heather in something that might have been amazement. Heather could almost feel the touch of the gaze on her skin, as if Elsa were searching for something there.
“Sorry,” said Heather, again. She reached up to adjust the scarf around her hair, where her temples felt like they were tightening. “That was…”
“Something is wrong,” Elsa said, and made it sound like a statement and not a question. It was like a knife between the layers of her armour, and even thinking the words made Heather’s stomach jolt again as the image came too close to the truth. She flinched, looked away, then made a wordless squeaking sound as Elsa took her hand and held it firmly. “Heather. What is it? Perhaps we can help.”
She was shaking her head before she even found words for a proper answer. That morning had made it all too clear that there was nobody who could help, sometimes. “It’s not like that…”
Elsa squeezed her hand, and the grasp might as well have been around her chest for how it caught her breath. Her eyes seemed to reach into Heather’s thoughts, and no small part of Heather wanted to hide from the earnestness of her gaze.
“I’m not going to worry you or Hiccup with this,” she said. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“You would be surprised how good at listening Hiccup is,” said Elsa, still so earnest. It was hard to remember sometimes that she was as much older than Heather as Heather was older than Hiccup or Astrid. “He helps.”
“I’m not going to go and beg Hiccup for help just because my father had a bad morning,” said Heather. But her voice cracked, and she was half-laughing with tears in her eyes at the same time because she felt so helpless about it all. Her vision blurred, her next breath had something of a sob about it, and when Elsa took gentle hold of her shoulders she felt tears start to run down her cheeks. She closed her eyes, trying to stop the tears, and felt Elsa step closer as the angle of the touch on her arms changed. She was shaking, too badly for it to be from the cold, and tried desperately to stop herself crying. She could not go and give in to weakness now.
“I’m sorry,” said Elsa again, more softly and more hurriedly. “I did not mean to upset you. But if it is this bad, you must talk, please–”
How were there words for it, though? The way that her father had seemed to not recognise his own voice, the way that he had begged to know what had happened, the way he kept asking for her mother over and over again until his voice cracked around the name. Heather squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, but a sob escaped her, and she felt Elsa pause, perhaps hesitate, before pulling her into a hug instead.
She clung in return, without even thinking. Elsa was cool to the touch, but it was not the warmth that she had been missing, just the feeling of arms wrapping around her and someone standing close. Her cheek came to rest against Elsa’s hair, and not her shoulder, and she felt the bite of the snowflakes against her bare cheek as her scarf was pushed back again. But most of all she could feel Elsa’s arms around her, hands on her back, pinning both of Heather’s arms awkwardly to her sides so that her hands were sort of wrapped around Elsa’s hips.
Tears were dripping down her face, into Elsa’s hair, and she knew that she was shaking, but she tried desperately not to sob aloud. If it was silent then it was not real, she tried to somehow tell herself, and she knew that she was grasping for some sort of line that she had not yet crossed even as she thought of it.
“Please,” said Elsa, more quietly and against her cheek. “Let us help. Let me help.”
“You can’t,” said Heather, voice thick. She wanted to keep clinging on, but also knew that she really had to wipe her nose or she would be dripping snot into Elsa’s hair as well and that was really just a step too far. Reluctantly, she disentangled herself from Elsa’s arms so that she could wipe her nose on the back of her sleeve, instead.
“Heather–”
“No, you,” she laughed bitterly, “you can’t. That’s all there is. My father needed me this morning. He didn’t recognise Duskhowl, wouldn’t believe what she was saying. It was only me that he would respond to.” And even then, there had been a terrible moment, a heartbeat too long, before he had recognised her.
It hadn’t even been her that he was asking for. He had just been calling for Malva, again and again, his voice already so hoarse that it sounded as if he had been screaming it for hours. But Heather had been all that there was to answer him, to try to handle his frightened babble of questions, the same handful over and over until it had been as if she were locked in another of the nightmares which kept her awake at night.
“But he did respond?” said Elsa.
“Eventually.” She managed to nod, but it felt brittle. “He just wouldn’t stop,” he breath hitched, and gods, no, she had told herself enough times not to cry. “Stop asking for her.” Another gulp. Anger at herself rose in her chest; here she stood, choking and hiccoughing like some crying child.
“I’m sorry.” Elsa stroked her hair, just over the curve of her ear, and another shudder ran through Heather.
She blinked, but it just seemed to dislodge more tears, and she brushed them away angrily. It didn’t seem to be enough. “It’s not you,” she said, breathlessly. “There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing that…” the words caught in her throat.
The world was still swimming. She could feel the words welling up in her throat, taste them on the back of her tongue. Over the years, she had become so good at controlling what she said, and how she said it, knowing that a single word or smile or tilt of the head could give more meaning than a thousand droned speeches. But she envied the openness and the honesty of so much of Berk, the way that she could read in the faces of others what they meant and felt, and the way that their words seemed so often to match what they felt.
She was so used to her words not matching what she felt.
It had become so easy – no, not easy, but reflexive, because it was still easier to put on the mask of smiles and jokes than it was to allow people to see her like this. But Elsa had slid beneath her armour in so few words and was still looking worried, but not patronising, not angry.
“I had to tell him that she was dead,” she said, finally. “I had to tell him again, and it’s the second time, because he forgot.”
She knew that it was because of the blood that he had lost, that it had done harm to his mind. But it did not make it any easier to understand how he could forget that his wife was dead – not in the way that sometimes Heather would find herself going through her day without thinking about it, and it would sneak up out of nowhere and hit her with a bodily force, but truly forget. And his grief and anger and horror had been just as bad all over again, and she prayed to any gods that would listen that he did not remember both waves of grief because she was not sure how he would be able to bear it.
She remembered all too clearly how it had felt to see Dagur’s blade slide through her mother’s chest. How the scream that ripped through her had hurt in her throat and clenched in her gut, how every string in her heart had screamed, as if the world was crumbling down around her. And her father had seen it too, with his hands battered wrecks and blood streaming, but Dagur’s knife had taken it away and now he had needed to find out, twice more, that she was gone.
It was somehow worse to tell her father than it had been to see her mother’s death. Something about the normality of the day, and the way that she had to fight to keep her words calm and clear, made it more wrong. As if the despair that filled his eyes was more out of place, more wrong, and she knew in her bones that it was her words that had wronged him.
The cold air stung on her lips and in her throat, but if she breathed hard then it was easier not to sob, and she clung to that even if she could not cling to Elsa. The next thing that she knew, Elsa’s hands were moving, one held palm-up and the other circling around it, and in a ripple of magic a square of cloth formed on her hand, the same as the gloves that covered Heather’s own, draping delicately over her fingers.
Elsa held it up, and when Heather did not move, could not move, reached to stroke the tears gently from her cheeks. Despite the biting cold of the weather, her ice was a far more pleasant touch, barely cool and skin-smooth against her cheekbones.
“It is not permanent,” she said again, and Heather wondered whether she meant the pain, or the handkerchief, or both.
It would change, she knew. Not mend, but change, at least, until it no longer felt like a stone in her chest around which her lungs could not breathe and against which her heart ached to beat. But still, some days she wished that she could cut out the stone, because at least the pain of split skin or broken bone would be less than the weight of it. “I… I have to do this.”
Her father needed her. She needed to somehow find a way to support them both; even if he was coming back, if he remembered her and spoke in clear sentences now, it was clear that he would not be able to work again. His neck had been the priority, and Gothi and Duskhowl had put his hands back together as best they could but they were still stiff, and slow, and she did not know what it was that made them tremble but tremble they did. He would never make an instrument again, nor play one, and his voice had gone hoarse and his memory cracked. And part of her hoped that he did not know all that he had lost.
“Hiccup will help you,” said Elsa, and before Heather knew it was she was laughing again, cold and bitter and choked, because gods Elsa had so much faith in the boy. And yes, he had put vikings on dragonback and found magic in the wilderness, but he was still just a boy sometimes. “No, Heather, do not laugh–”
She tried to draw it in. “I’m sorry, I know, I just…” she shook her head. “This isn’t something he can help with. He’s helped me more than I deserve already.”
A house. Her parents’ boat, and some of their things. Things that he did not even know the meaning of, whether it was the Moonless Night seeds that might just earn her a living, or her mother’s favourite dress still rolled and packed carefully, that Heather would never admit she had held and cried against, buried in the scent of an old perfume. A pardon she never expected, and her father’s life and care.
“You’ve helped me more than I deserve already,” she added, thinking of the ice against his neck, bright blue in places and stained red-black in others.
Elsa bit her lip, brows furrowing. “I took a lot from Berk, before I could give back,” she said, words slow and careful. That strange accent that she had seemed stronger, an accent that Heather could not place and which was not even like her sister’s. “From Hiccup. When he found me…”
There was pain in her voice, and for all that Heather had sometimes wanted to know more, she was not about to force that pain through Elsa. “You don’t have to say,” she said.
“You asked, once, why Anna and I spoke different languages,” said Elsa, as if she had not heard. She looked deeply into Heather’s eyes. “Anna comes from Arendelle. I did once, too.”
“Arendelle?” she echoed.
Elsa nodded. “The gods of Arendelle, the Silver Priests, they do not accept magic. When I was a child, they found out about me, and I was sent away from Arendelle. Into the Wildlands.”
Heather snatched in her breath. She had heard bits and pieces of the Wildlands in the time that she had been in Berk, had put together that Hiccup’s work to make peace with them this winter was something that had been unheard of before. But deeper than that ran the fact that Elsa had said child, and Heather wondered with a horror just how young she had been.
Though at least it explained what she had said to Camicazi about Arendelle’s gods.
“The Wildlands do not accept magic either,” Elsa continued. “When they found out, I had to run from them. For some years I was alone before Hiccup found me. He taught me Northur, brought me food, clothes. After the Red Death, I was brought to Berk, and he spoke up when there were those who did not want me here. He brought me back to my sister.”
It made so much sense, of so many pieces. Like a legend of its own.
“That is why I offer my magic to Berk. I thought that I could never repay what Hiccup had done for me, but…”
For a moment, words seemed to fail her. Elsa looked down, then took Heather’s hands again, this time slower and more careful than before. It took Heather a moment to realise that Elsa was looking over the icy gloves she had made.
“But he is not like that,” said Elsa, finally. When she looked back up, they were so close that Heather found herself scanning the faint freckles on her cheeks, the different brilliant shades of her eyes. “He does not count debts. He is a good man, and he only wants to help. You, me, Anna. It is not debts for him, it is making better the world.”
“I’ll try,” Heather said.
She did not mean it. She knew before she even spoke the words that she did not mean it, and was only saying it for the way that it made Elsa half-smile, her expression relaxing and her hands softening in Heather’s. Heather was not sure whether she should feel guilty for so flatly lying, especially after Elsa had offered her such honesty.
But it still hurt too much. There was still the stone in her chest, and lying to Elsa just to see her look relieved was better than trying to dig through all of the jagged mess.
“We should get back to Berk before I make you keep these in place too long,” she added, squeezing Elsa’s fingers. She meant the gloves, and only realised after the words had left her mouth that it might sound like something else. Just in time for Elsa’s cheeks to turn pink as she looked down at their hands as well, and then let go and step back again. “I think I’ve got some spare leather to patch the gloves up.”
Among her mother’s things, perhaps. Beside the boots which fit her well enough and which, unlike her current ones, did not have a hole. But just as she could not bring herself to put on her mother’s boots, so she knew that she would not be able to use the fabric of her clothes or the leather of her things. It was going to be hard enough to bring herself to plant the Moonless Night flowers in which her parents had invested their gold, though she knew that she would need to in order to pay for her father’s care, and for anything else they might need, come spring.
She still had not been able to bring herself to talk to Phlegma, although she had agreed with Hiccup that she would. As if, by holding out a little longer, she might think of some other way to make ends meet.
Not that it mattered, almost. It was her mother who had been able to grow plants; her father had no green fingers at all, and they had teased him for it. The Moonless Night had been her mother’s idea, her mother’s investment, her mother’s plan. There was no reason to keep the seeds, but she could not bring herself to plant them or to sell them.
Most of the walk was in silence, and though she could not push away the thoughts still nagging at the edges of her mind at least she was no longer crying. She hoped that the cold air would at least help to hide the redness of her eyes as well. Heather pulled up her scarf to cover her hair again, even though she couldn’t help but think that the cold in her bones had nothing to do with the weather at all.
As they reached the edge of the village, she could feel her foot getting damp and going numb from the seeping snow again, and grimaced to herself. The next thing that she knew, she was slipping, and Elsa grabbed her arm at the exact moment that she managed to get her balance again.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. A glance over told her that Elsa was wearing boots so light that they were hardly boots at all, and certainly should not have been suitable for rain or snow. But, again, it was Elsa. Even Heather was starting to become used to seeing her comfortable in the cold now, although everyone else seemed far more used to it by now. ”Still getting used to Berk’s weather, I think.”
“The north of the island, and the west, are colder,” said Elsa. “And they have more rain. The east is more sheltered. But Berk is…” she gave a wry smile. “I have noticed that they seem to take the weather in their stride.”
“I’m used to being a little further south,” she admitted. “But, well, there are more dragons here to warm your hands on.”
“Terrible Terrors make for good warming pans,” Elsa said.
“I’m not sure Gronckles would work so well, if you wanted to keep your bed intact.”
Elsa rested her hand on Heather’s arm, and she found herself fighting not to lean into it once again. Then Elsa’s other arm came up as well, and for the second time in not all that long at all Heather found herself wrapped into a cool, gentle hug. This time, Heather was able to wrap her arms around Elsa in return, rather than stand with them awkwardly at her sides, and did her best not to squeeze too tightly and make Elsa uncomfortable.
“Thank you,” said Heather softly as she drew back. And she meant it, even if she had lied through her teeth about asking Hiccup for more help. He had already given her a house, two dragons, a task to busy herself with. She could not bring herself to ask for more. “I think I can get home from here intact.”
“You’re sure?” there was a teasing note, but Heather did not think it was wholly meant as a joke.
“I can handle any rogue Snotlouts if I run into them. I’ll be fine. You go see if Hiccup has managed to get back, or whether he and Astrid have got distracted again.”
“Probably not on dragonback,” Elsa said, and Heather had to admit that she had a point. At least, in Hiccup’s case, both due to him needing to work Toothless’s tail and because he did seem to pay more attention to the dragon than to anybody else in his vicinity.
She stepped away, and smiled, even if it was the thing she felt least like doing. It was easier when the people around did not look at her in that pitying way, or make too many offers of help that she did not want to accept and only make her indebtedness worse. At least seeing Elsa smile back made it feel a bit more real.
She was halfway across the village when the ice faded from over her gloves, and the cold air crept in again. Whatever of a smile she might have managed to summon faded, and she glanced around to be sure that the snow was thick enough to hide her. Only when she had assured herself that it was did she turn towards Duskhowl’s house instead, in case her father was awake again, needed her again. If Duskhowl sent her away, she would return to the work that Hiccup had given her, or finally bring herself to talk to Phlegma, but she had to put her father first.
He was all that she had left, even if all that she had was pieces and shadows.
She steeled herself to return to the house, and hoped that her tears did not show on her face or in the set of her lips. Her father needed her, and she did not have the strength to be weak in front of others and face their kind words and their pity. And she folded up the morning and placed it away inside, where she did not have to struggle with the complications of it all.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, to the snow and Elsa on the far side of it, and wrapped her cloak more tightly around her as she turned her steps away.