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“I give up,” said Gobber. He ran a hand across his forehead and looked at Astrid as he leant against the wall. “She wants to wash her own clothes, she can do it. Will you go with her to the stream?”
Frankly, Astrid did not particularly want to leave her seat beside Hiccup’s bed. He was asleep again, as if sleep itself would smooth the bruises and cuts from his skin, and each time he woke up he seemed to be doing better. She just wanted to make sure that the trend continued.
But there were shadows beneath Gobber’s eyes, as bad as Stoick’s, and he seemed to have gained new lines in the last few days. There were injuries hidden beneath his clothes as well, worse than the smaller burns and cuts on Astrid’s arms, but he had shrugged and said that he knew perfectly well how to handle broken ribs, and that was to leave them to themselves.
“I’ll stay with him,” Gobber added.
It was enough. Astrid put down the piece of antler that she had been carving on the table beside Hiccup’s bed and rose to her feet with a sigh. “Sure. It shouldn’t be that long. Stoick will be back soon, right?”
“Aye. The tide will be against him soon. Not much more time to send out the boats.”
His voice was soft, not laced with anger as Stoick’s still was sometimes even now. Part of Astrid thought that she should be there, to see the ships taking their sailors home, but she could not bring herself to. Not while Hiccup still fought his injuries, while others did. They could not count the losses yet, and it felt wrong to start mourning.
“Well, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Not like Elsa likes to leave the house for long.”
Astrid picked up her axe in passing and slung it across her back as she left the room, trotting lightly down the stairs. Whenever Elsa left the house, she was escorted: usually by Stoick or Gobber, but Astrid found herself doing it from time to time as well. Armed guard, perhaps. Astrid wasn’t sure whether it was more like a noble’s guard or a criminal’s.
“Elsa?” she called, as she reached the bottom and picked up her cloak from by the door. “Do you want to go out?”
Elsa had a little more difficulty understanding Gobber than she did anyone else, so far. Apart from the twins, but that was more to do with them being the twins than it was the accent and strange words that Gobber came out with. All the same, Astrid had taken within less than a day to using short, simple sentences, and had been met with fewer wary silences in return.
She wanted to say that she still wasn’t sure of the girl – or woman, perhaps, given that she had no idea how old Elsa was. Sometimes Elsa seemed young, all wide eyes and pale hair, flinching when she heard shouting outside. When the smoke and fire had still been clearing from the Red Death, and Hiccup had seemed lost in the flames, Elsa had fallen to her knees on the bloody sand with the ice on her skin fading in an instant. Astrid had snatched a cloak from the ground to wrap around her, not even looking to see whose it was, as much as anything else to give her hands something to do, her feet some path to tread, so that she was not knocked to the ground in turn. For a moment, she had seemed more a child than anyone else on Dragon Island that day.
But Astrid had seen the look in Elsa’s eye when she had been fighting, eyes hard and jaw set with a spear of ice in her hand, and that had not been the look of a child. She wasn’t sure yet what to call it, but it was definitely not a child.
Elsa was so hard to get a hold of that Astrid wished, honestly wished, that she would still have some warrior’s instinct that made her feel cautious around her. That having seen the spear of ice, the way that she had weakened the bars of a cell, the way that she had stood beside a Night Fury and not felt a hint of fear, it might still have seemed that Elsa was dangerous.
It was almost embarrassing how quickly she’d come around, she supposed. All that it had really taken was hearing her speak in Northur and seeing her interact with Hiccup – stupid, genius, infuriating Hiccup with his brain full of absurdities ever since they were children – and Astrid had felt that fear of other, of outsider, backing down.
In the end, she had sent Fishlegs and his sisters on a mission around the village to scrounge up second-hand clothes that were good enough to wear, rather than sending to rags. His family were well-enough liked, and unlike the twins or Snotlout they had a good chance of bringing back something reasonable. Elsa had looked at first like the clothes were going to bite her, then didn’t seem to understand that she didn’t have to take them all. But they had managed to explain it in the end.
“Elsa?” she called again, looking more directly at the curtain across what had been Hiccup’s workshop. The first night, Elsa had not slept, sitting on the floor of Hiccup’s room beside Toothless while Gothi and the others fussed around. At least, that was how Gobber told it; Astrid had been with her parents at the time. But before the next sunset, she had been moved into Hiccup’s workshop, with enough blankets to make a serviceable sleeping roll. Having seen the campsite she had been using before, it was a start.
“I am here.” Elsa pushed open the curtain and stepped out, a soft basket gathered tightly to her chest. She looked flighty still, and the long-sleeved tunic and long skirt she was wearing were both too big for her, but at a distance she might have passed for a Viking. Astrid wondered if she still had height to grow. “Yes. Please. To wash my clothes.”
“Well, I don’t think Gobber actually wears the hook while he’s washing,” said Astrid. “But if you want to,” she waved to the clothes. “It’s all right. You got soap and a washboard?”
Elsa nodded.
“Come on, then. I’ll show you a good place.”
She held the door open for Elsa as she exited, casting a wary eye over the other houses nearby. There were always people standing or sitting on the stoops of their houses at the moment, even when patches of rain had come through. Watching to see if the chief’s son still lived.
Watching to see what would happen with the dragons.
For now, though, there didn’t seem to be any response, even at the sight of the wildling girl half of Berk was still muttering about. Astrid closed the door behind them again and turned her steps in the appropriate direction, trusting Elsa to follow her.
“I guess you usually wash your own clothes,” she said, as they wove down the village towards the treeline.
Once again, Elsa nodded, clutching her basket a little tighter to her chest. Her cheeks stayed pink as well, even once they had left the warm of Hiccup’s house and returned to the cool air and mizzle outside.
“Soap’ll probably be better,” she added.
Once again, Elsa did not seem at all inclined to make conversation, though, and Astrid let it drop. She certainly couldn’t blame her for being reticent in a situation like this, and was sometimes only surprised that Elsa was not carrying a knife at all times.
Laundry was a strange thing to get hung up on, though, Astrid had to say. It had become quickly apparent that Elsa would eat whatever was put in front of her, no matter where it came from or how stale or occasionally dubious-smelling it was. She was amazed with any item of clothing she was given, had seemed overwhelmed by the sleeping roll and chair that had been given to her, and though she was always watching, always listening, she did not seem inclined to intervene in anything. Until, apparently, laundry. Maybe the clothes were just that important to her.
Or maybe, Astrid realised so sharply that she could have clipped herself around the ear, there was another reason.
“Hang on,” she said to Elsa, “let me get something from my house.”
Most of the time, your sex wasn’t relevant on Berk. Everyone needed to do heavy work, and everyone’s lives took much the same paths. Anyone could go to sea or to war, and anyone could compete in the annual Thawfest Games or the Regatta every other year. But there were some facts of life that were inescapable wherever you lived, and wildling or not, Astrid doubted that Elsa was immune.
She led Elsa round to the back door of her house, the one which entered her room directly, and gestured for her to wait in the doorway. Grabbing a scruffy satchel off its hook on the wall, Astrid quickly grabbed what she had come for, slung it over her shoulder, and returned to where Elsa was still watching with a faint look of confusion.
“You are good?” said Elsa cautiously.
This time, it was Astrid who nodded, as she closed the door firmly behind her. “Yes, I’m good. Come on, this way.”
The only time that she had seen Elsa relax, even minutely, was when they had been in that place that she and the Night Fury had apparently been living. It might have been the place itself, or it might have been the fact that it had only been Astrid with her; Astrid was not sure yet. But at the very least, she wasn’t going to have this conversation in the middle of the town.
It was not all that far to the most-used stream for laundry, but the last few days had probably driven it from just about everyone’s minds and it was deserted as they got there. One of the advantages was the large boulders that lay close to the shore, giving a stretch that was shielded from view and therefore offered a little more privacy if anyone felt the need for it when it came to washing their underclothes. Astrid hopped on top of one of them, found a comfortable enough spot that didn’t coincide with a puddle, and set her satchel beside her.
Perhaps it would have been a better idea to bring that piece of antler with her.
“You… do not have to watch,” said Elsa. “I am good.”
Anyone from Berk, Astrid might have decided to tease, but she could not bring herself to do so with Elsa. “You just need to wash the blood out, right?” she said bluntly, folding one leg beneath her.
Elsa looked round sharply, blushing darker than ever. Her eyes went wide, and she looked at Astrid in something close to horror before looking away again, moving her mouth but apparently unable to find words.
“Trust me, I understand. Plenty of us have been there,” Astrid added. It didn’t do anything, though, to smooth out the look of outright humiliation on Elsa’s face, and she let her flippant tone and the harsh set of her shoulders both soften. Elsa wasn’t from Berk, she had to remind herself. If she hadn’t misunderstood, it was more than that; Elsa had been alone for a very long time. “About half of us, I guess, sooner or later. If you just tell Gobber that you want to wash some personal things… he’ll probably understand.”
Stoick almost certainly would, but even having never been married Gobber would probably understand why a woman might want to wash some of her own things, given a hint in that direction. Although his worry over Hiccup might make him less liable to get it right now.
Unlooping the satchel from her shoulder, Astrid slid it down the rock to land at Elsa’s feet. “Some clean cloths, if you’d rather. Five or six should be enough to see you through, just wash them daily.”
Elsa picked up the satchel cautiously, still clutching at the basket. “Thank you,” she said.
“The cold water’s a good idea, though,” said Astrid, with a wave to the stream. “Rather than the tubs. Hot water would just set blood.”
“You talk about… this? In Berk?”
“Well, not in public. But among women.” Astrid shrugged. “Sure. You need to learn it some way. Someone told you about this, right?”
“A woman in the wildlands,” said Elsa. “When I was in the Village.” There was a definite sense of title when she said the word, something that Astrid could find half the shape of but was not sure that she had the right to ask about just yet. “It was years past, though.”
“How old were you? I mean, I guess, how old are you?” Astrid crossed her legs as Elsa, with a shy look around, finally set down her basket and started tucking up her skirt into her belt. She was barefoot, Astrid realised, her feet dirty and ankles scarred, but with no fresh cuts or burns.
“Now?” Elsa glanced up and waited for Astrid’s nod. “Now, I am eighteen years. When… it started,” she said carefully, “I was eleven years.”
“Huh.” Young, but not unthinkable. If anything, Astrid was more surprised to hear that Elsa was eighteen; she was still skinny, barely Astrid’s height, and seemed almost painfully shy. Then again, perhaps that was more not being a Viking, or more the life that she had lived. Eleven had been when Hiccup said she had been sent out on her own, as well. Astrid shrugged. “I was just thirteen,” she offered, and was only somewhat surprised by the flicker on Elsa’s face, gratitude unless Astrid was reading things wholly incorrectly. “It’s not too much hassle. There’s this thing you can do with rolled-up wool as well, but…” she waved to the satchel. “Those are easier to understand. I guess you used something similar in the Wildlands.”
Once again, Elsa shrugged awkwardly. “In the Wildlands, it,” she paused for words again, and Astrid let her. “It did not happen much.”
How thin she was, again. Astrid’s mother had told her that in hungry years the bleeding was likely to stop for a while, and that such should not be confused with pregnancy. “Yeah, that happens,” she said. “Can be a good break. Can be annoying, if you don’t know when it’s going to start again.”
She drew her axe round onto her lap and let her hands follow the familiar lines of the handle, the edges of the leather and the metal carvings, even those rounded where the axe had been used so many times. It was comforting to run her thumb over them, even if she could still see the marked notches from Dragon Island. The bite of the bones had jarred her arm when she had cut the neck of one of the hatchlings – hatchlings, as large as houses and with fire already spewing from their throats – that had been there. But this axe had saved her still.
And Hiccup had been the one to sharpen it last. She wished that he would be able to be the next one to sharpen it, as well, but no matter how quickly he recovered he was not going to be standing unaided any time soon.
It was the splash of water that drew her attention back down again, as Elsa knelt down and started her washing. She still kept her back to Astrid, but Astrid did not begrudge her that, and turned away a little as well so that she could keep an eye on the path back towards the village.
Strange, to think of a wilding doing something so mundane. Then again, it was strange to think of a wildling needing to be given clothes, or to eat, or struggling with words because they were still learning your tongue. Astrid glanced back to Elsa, and wondered whether it had really been anything other than the magic which had made Berk believe that the wildlings were not human.
Magic was pretty big, sure. But from what Elsa had said, what Hiccup had said, not many of them even had magic. And without the magic, what could they even be?
Astrid turned over the axe in her hands, and thought of the difference between the things on Dragon Island and the Nadder on whose back she had flown. Stormfly. The name had come out so impulsively, from the feeling of the thunderclouds oppressive above her and the fearlessness with which the Nadder had flown. With open wounds on her neck from the last time that they had met, the Nadder had looked at Astrid without a hint of fear.
With his body still battered by the Red Death, Hiccup had reached out for the Night Fury, the thing that he called Toothless despite the obvious evidence to the contrary.
Her nail flicked at the notch in the axe. At least blades were what they appeared to be.
She kept her eyes on the path to the village, one ear on Elsa at her back, and tugged her cloak closer to her neck to keep out the damp air. She could feel the shape of the world starting to change, like something in the air, something that Hiccup had created that was swelling on the horizon like the sun just about to break into dawn, and she wasn't wholly sure that she liked or disliked it yet. There was just too much to it to be sure. But she could worry about that later, she decided, once Hiccup was up and around enough to participate in it, instead of managing only brief conversations before he had to rest again.
It was strange, though. For all that Hiccup could talk about wildlings being human, and dragons not being what they thought, for all that he could give voice to his ideas and theories and wild gestures... strange that it was common blood that made Elsa seem human most of all.