Seven Endless Forests

PRAISE FOR THE BONELESS MERCIES

‘Fierce and glorious, this story of outcast girls defying fate

utterly bewitched me. Tucholke is a gorgeous writer.’

LAINI TAYLOR,

New York Times bestselling author of Strange the Dreamer

‘Its every page hints at a deeper magic at work; it contains a

whole world and all its myths and histories within its skin.’

MELISSA ALBERT,

New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood

‘Ruthless and lyrical, heart-warming and blood-chilling, and

beautifully redolent of ancient tales and history. It will sing to

a new generation of heroes.’

SAMANTHA SHANNON,

New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Season

‘I fell in love with the stunning novel from the very first page.

Fierce and unforgettable, with gorgeous prose and a fantastic

premise that more than delivers. Easily one of my favourite

YA novels of 2018.’

KATHERINE WEBBER,

Author of Wing Jones and Only Love Can Break Your Heart

To all those who seek a quest

THE WOLVES

ONE

The Gothi nuns will not travel to remote places, so when the snow sickness sweeps through the forgotten mountain hamlet, or the secluded steading, or the lonely, isolated Hall, we burn our own.

We bury our own.

_______________

We thought we were safe, another dark winter behind us. The festival of Ostara had come and gone. Spring had arrived, jade-green buds, emerald-green grass, bright blue skies.

Our steading was in the Middlelands, remote and quiet, far from any sea, far from any major town, far from any jarls with their Great Halls and shifting laws. Here, in the region of Cloven Tell, the soft green Ranger Hills rippled across our horizon, and cold, clear lakes marked our landscape like sparkling jewels.

My sister, Morgunn, and I had spent our childhood running wild and free, without a thought to the world beyond the hills—it was no more real to us than the stories of the Green Women of Elshland or the tales of Frey and the giant Logafell. We were isolated. We were happy.

Aslaug, our cook, used to tell me I had too much happiness in me. She said only witches and Fremish wolf-priests were truly happy, because they cast spells and drank poison, because they made pacts with the gods in pursuit of their own joy.

I’d heard of these magic pacts from the sagas and the songs. I’ve never stolen an infant, or tricked a jarl into marriage, or slain a sleeping Elver, or burned a village. I’ve never taken to the air, floating across the night sky, fingers cupping the stars. I’ve never made all the children of Vorseland scream, as one, in the middle of the night. Yet I’ve been happy. Happy as a witch. Happy as a wolf.

I’d shrugged off Aslaug’s warnings as I’d shrugged off the warnings of Elna, our pretty, apple-cheeked servant, who used to say that the moon was the eye of a great dragon and that one day he would look down and see us and burn our world to ash.

Now Elna was burning to ash, her body on the pile in the east field.

The snow sickness struck a few Middleland villages each winter. It would blow in with a storm and stay as long as the white flakes fell from the sky. It would start with sweating and a fever and end in death. Some people lived, and most people died, and only the gods knew why.

Snow had come in the night and turned the world white again.

At supper, my mother began to shake and sweat until she fell from the bench and lay writhing in pain on the floor beside the hearth fire. The servants began to scream. They knew that only the snow sickness could do this, only the snow sickness could take down such a strong Vorse woman.

I dragged my mother to her bed and awoke at dawn to find her dead in my arms.

The servants died in the night as well. I carried their bodies to the field and set them on fire, gray smoke floating up past the trees.

Gray.

Gray was the color of the winter sky. It was the color of a pair of cooing mourning doves, my father’s beard, and the thick wool tunic my mother used to wear on feast days.

Gray was the color of Viggo’s eyes.

And now gray was the color of death.

I took a half-empty jug of Vite from a table near the main doors of the Hall and drank. I wiped my hand across my mouth and took another sip.

I had two more bodies to see to, and these I would not burn.

I dug two graves by the rowan trees until blisters wept across my palms, stinging, bleeding. I straightened, pressed my hands to my aching lower back and then to my heart.

My heart pushed back. I was alive.

Blood from my palms seeped into the front of my tunic. I wiped my hands on my leather leggings and picked up my shovel. I needed to finish this task before the morning’s sorrow could sear itself so deeply into my mind that it would be the only thing I would ever think about. The only thing I would ever remember.

I returned to the Hall, propped open the main doors with two large stones, and then walked slowly to her chamber. My mother had been six feet tall, sinewy, broad-shouldered, made of muscle and steel. I pulled her body out of the bed, strong limbs woven between furs, fingers in tangled hair. Panting, muscles straining, I carried her past the central hearth, past the long feast table, out of the building, into the fresh air.

The Hall smelled of thick smoke—sour, acrid sickness and sweet, rotting death. The air outside smelled of sun and wet earth. It smelled of life.

I glanced toward the five rowan trees in the northeast corner of our estate.

Mother was Elsh. She would go in the ground, not the fire.

The bright sun had melted most of the snow, and my boots were soaked through. Sweat blurred my vision, and my bones ached with my mother’s weight.

I set her in the first grave and picked up the shovel. The hole filled slowly.

Now . . .

Viggo.

I’d found the shepherd collapsed outside the Hall at dawn, his tunic covered in blood.

His body should have been in the east field, burning alongside Aslaug and Elna and Ivar the field hand and old Haftor the woodcutter.

The shepherd wasn’t Elsh, but I would bury him by my mother all the same.

I tossed the first shovel of half-frozen dirt onto Viggo’s body. It fell on his hair, a black clump that would never be washed clean.

I dropped to my knees and howled like wolves on the hunt, crying to the moon.

I yelled my voice into dust . . . and then I rose to my feet and finished burying him.

I knew it was selfish to keep Viggo here with me on the steading, to not burn him in the way of the Vorse. But then, the living are selfish.

When it was done, I threw the shovel into the snow between two of the rowan trees. Let it rust. I would never use it again.

I wasn’t full Vorse, and I didn’t believe that life was simply a long journey toward a good death. All the same, Viggo had been more than a shepherd, more than my lover, more than a wise, quiet Vorselander who ran across the Ranger Hills with the strength and grace of a young god.

He’d had the heart of a hero, noble, wise, and brave. He deserved a hero’s life and a hero’s death. Instead, he died alone, in the night, a victim of a passing plague.

I would not let the same fate claim me. If I had a speck of heroism in my heart, then I would find it. I would honor it. I would sacrifice for it.

A memory surfaced. I was a child, ten or eleven, out in the hills with my mother, collecting green winterberries by moonlight for Elsh frost-brew. We stumbled upon a white arctic bear—it came roaring out of a nearby cave, jaws wide, teeth the size of my fist, white fur stained with old blood.

I hid behind my mother and shook with fear. She leaned over slowly, eyes on the bear, and pulled a knife from its sheath on her right calf.

"Fortune favors brave women, she said. We rise up, while the meek women cower." She ran forward and sank her dagger into the bear’s throat.

She slept under that bear’s snow-white hide for years. It still lay on her empty bed. Each time she caught me looking at it, she reminded me that I had cowered while she killed the bear, that I had flinched when she took its life. It didn’t matter to her that I’d only been a child.

You have a soft heart, she’d say whenever I hesitated to wring a hen’s neck or slit a lamb’s throat. It wasn’t a compliment. You take too much after your father, Torvi. Your sister is the true Vorse.

I wiped my bleeding palms on the front of my tunic, and then I walked to the cold, fast-moving stream that wove through our farm, down from the Ranger Hills. I tore off my tunic and boots and underclothes—there was no one to see, no one to care. I slid my naked body into the water, feet slipping over stones, limbs pressing into the silky current. I let it wash away all the blood, all the dirt, all the death. I let it cleanse me of my old life.

When I climbed out of the water, I was numb with cold. I ran to the line of laundry strung behind the Hall, near the vegetable garden. Elna never had a chance to gather the clothing before the storm hit. I beat the blood back into my thighs with my palms, and then I grabbed a large wool cloth, wrapped it around myself, and went inside.

I crossed the Hall, leaving a trail of wet footprints. I walked down the east corridor, stopped at the second door, and knocked.

The door opened slowly. Is it over?

I nodded, and my sister grabbed me. Her face pressed into my shoulder, and her fingers clenched my tunic at the waist, squeezing the cloth into her fists.

TWO

Aslaug used to say that all great tales begin with a journey and a quest.

She would lower her voice and whisper stories of Vorseland and the world beyond our steading. She told me of the Jade Fells, a wild, secretive people who lived in the Skal Mountains. They slept during the day and roamed the night like wolves, drinking blood and eating the hearts of their dead.

She told me of the wolf-priests of Frem and the Relic Hunters of Finnmark and the hedge-fighters and Butcher Bards of Elshland.

She told me of the evil Pig Witches, of the mysterious Drakes, of the Bone Women and the Whistlers and the Gothi nuns.

Each winter, her rich voice blended with the sound of the crackling wood in the hearth fire as she recounted the tragedy of the Child Wizards and the Moss Witch Massacre of the Western Hills.

She told me the stories of the Thirteen Crones—a fellowship of cunning female jarls who ruled Vorseland when Aslaug’s grandmother was a child.

She told me all the tales, both ancient and modern. She told me of the first Witch War, and the second, which was called the Salt and Marsh War. She told me how, on a warm summer night during a rainstorm, the Cut-Queen and her army of Pig Witches attacked the Sea Witches of the Merrows in a great battle of magic and blood. The Salt and Marsh Witch War raged across Vorseland for years. The Cut-Queen would die in battle, and peace would return for a handful of seasons, but there was always another resurrection, always another battle.

Finally, after the Battle of the Hawk and Hummingbird, the green-cloaked Sea Witches defeated the brown-cloaked Cut-Queen and her followers. They captured the queen, and this time the Sea Witches beheaded her, boiled her body down to the bone, and crushed her bones into dust. She did not rise again.

Juniper, the Sea Witch queen, took her women back to the famous Scorch Trees in the Merrows, and the second Vorse Witch War came to an end.

I would press my cheek to Aslaug’s neck as she spoke and breathe in the smell of leather and wool and straw. I would tell her that I wanted to be a Sea Witch like Juniper when I grew older. I would tell her that I wanted to fight wolf-priests and go on quests and find adventure and cross an Endless Forest. I would tell her I wanted to win a jarldom, like one of the Thirteen Crones.

You can do anything you set your mind to, little Torvi, she’d say. Unlike my mother, Aslaug believed I was capable of great things.

Her stories had thrilled me as a child, made my blood sing. I would shiver, despite being near the fire, and Aslaug would wrap me in her strong arms and tell me of the Boneless Mercies— women who had roamed Vorseland for centuries, killing the old and the sick and then finally dying themselves, forgotten, poor, and alone. On and on and on, until a young Boneless Mercy named Frey pursued glory and found a monster.

Bards in Great Halls everywhere sang of Frey and her companions—Aslaug said she knew a dozen or so Frey songs, and there were at least a dozen more.

My favorite stories were always about Frey. Her fight with the last Vorseland giant Logafell in a cave under the Skal Mountains. Her cunning and bravery during the second Witch War. Her travels with the Aradia Witches through the Sand Sea. Her time roaming the Green Wild Forest with Indigo and the Quicks.

Will there ever be another Vorse hero like Frey? I’d ask Aslaug, not for the first time.

Yes, she’d whisper. When we need her, she will come.

_______________

Morgunn and I sat on a thick wool rug in the main room of the Hall, near the central hearth. We were eating a simple supper of bread and aged cheese.

Outside, a spring thunderstorm howled unhindered across our stretch of green Ranger Hills.

I used my thumb to pick up crumbs from my wooden plate, my elbow touching my sister’s. The two of us were alone on a thousand-acre farm. We hadn’t seen another living soul in four weeks.

I hadn’t been to Trow since the snow sickness, though it was only ten miles to the north. I’d watched smoke rising from that direction a dozen times over the last several days.

Before he died, Viggo told me that a pack of marauding Fremish wolf-priests was moving through Vorseland. The wolf-priests did this every few years, but never had they stayed so long or burned so many hamlets.

I was at the Evil Stepmother Tavern in Trow last night, Torvi, and I spoke to some neighboring shepherds.

I was wrapped in Viggo’s arms, my chest pressed into his, and his low voice vibrated through my body when he spoke.

Those flame-hungry wolf-priests set a village on fire thirty miles from here. They’ve left the Borders and are moving through Cloven Tell.

Should we be worried? I thought they burned only a few villages, never isolated farms. One came to the Hall a few months ago, but Mother quickly took care of her.

Viggo sighed and moved his hands over my hips. I don’t think so. The other shepherds at the tavern informed me that Jarl Meath had hired bands of Quicks to roam the Middlelands, slaying wolves. He paused. Usually the wolf-priests are too high on yew berry poison to do much more than set a few fires before the Quicks drive them back south. But I gather that one of their leaders is more tenacious than in previous years, less poison-addled, more ambitious. I’ll keep an eye out for them from the hills—your farm is hidden from the main road, and all should be well. Just be ready to flee the Hall if needed.

I nodded, my lips sliding against his skin. Stop worrying, shepherd. You’ve got a naked girl in your bed. Do something about it.

He turned me over and kissed me from my chin to my ankles. Cold skin and warm lips and beating hearts. I forgot about wolves and fires and the rest of the world.

Two days later, Viggo was dead.

I sat up and threw another log onto the hearth fire. Morgunn inched closer to the flames. She was fourteen, four years younger than me and shorter by five inches. We had the same dark, curly hair, but she had a small, short nose and round cheeks, whereas my nose was long and straight, and my chin as pointed as my ears, like an Elver. Morgunn was short and soft, and I was tall and strong.

My sister’s eyes were an odd shade of indigo like my own. Our irises shone violet in moonlight, a trait we’d inherited from our father.

Morgunn’s eyes looked innocent still, in a way I knew mine no longer did.

We shared the work now. We cooked and cleaned and fed the animals and scrubbed our clothes clean in the stream. We were surviving. More than surviving.

We slept when we wanted, ate when we wanted, and no one from the outside world bothered us. So far.

Torvi?

Yes?

You’re worried. I can see it in your eyes. It’s the smoke, isn’t it.

I knew Morgunn had seen the smoke rising from the north. We hadn’t spoken of it, but it was there, a dark thread of fear stretching between us. Yes, I replied. Jarl Meath hired Quicks to hunt the wolf-priests this year, but I’ve never seen them burn so close to our farm. I’ve heard them howl at night. It carries far across the hills, on the high winds.

Morgunn wrapped her arms around her knees, moved her bare feet closer to the fire. The Quicks will drive them out. And when the smoke stops, we can go into Trow again and get news.

The Quicks were skilled archers who roamed the Seven Endless Forests of Vorseland. It was said that they were indifferent to all politics, religion, and law. They were known to be fierce hunters during the day, but genial, carefree rogues at night beside the fire. They despised the wolf-priests for bringing fire and death to their peaceful woods, and they killed the Fremish beasts as swiftly and quietly as they killed deer, quick arrows shot into dark wolf hearts.

I moved closer to my sister. Aslaug once told me that the Quicks were blessed by the gods and brought luck to any place they roamed. Our farm will be safe, Morgunn. No one will find us.

My sister nodded and then ate her last piece of cheese slowly, savoring it. We savored all our food now. Our storeroom had been low after the long winter, and now it was near empty.

I wished our mother were still alive.

And Aslaug.

And Viggo.

You need a quest, Torvi, he whispered to me once after we lay together in his bed, still shaking with love. You need to travel, to roam, to see new things, new people. It’s in your blood, in your breath, in your bones. You can’t stay here with me forever. He looked at me for a long moment, his hands moving across the small of my back. I’m happy here in these hills. I’m content. But you need to pursue something larger than yourself. I can smell it on you—you smell of risk and adventure. You smell of dark forests, of gloomy caves, of exotic spices, of danger, of battle, of sacrifice, of hard-won victory.

I wove my fingers into his. You can’t possibly smell all of this on me, Viggo.

He kissed my forehead and smiled. I do. Your skin smells of the open road. He paused. You have buried a part of yourself, perhaps from fear, and perhaps from love, but it’s there. You hunger for something more. You’re starving for want of it. And if you refuse to seek it out, it will come to you instead. There’s no hiding from life, just as there is no hiding from death.

I pushed back the furs and moved into a sitting position. As a child, I used to say I wanted to be a witch when I grew up, or a warrior like Frey, or a jarl like the Thirteen Crones. Aslaug would laugh and stroke my hair, but my mother would shake her head and tell me I was destined to marry one of the Tather boys.

I raised my gaze to Viggo’s. She believes that my sister, Morgunn, has the capacity for greatness, that she has the courage and determination that I lack. Morgunn is a natural leader and true Vorse, and the only thing I’m good for is marrying.

Viggo put his palm to my cheek and stroked my face with his thumb. She is wrong, Torvi.

She is not a woman who is often wrong, I said softly. I am lazy and pleasure-loving. I enjoy peace and quiet and safety. I dislike killing animals. Morgunn has always been more daring, more reckless, more bold. She was killing chickens nearly as soon as she could walk. My mother had a little ax made just for her to cut their necks.

You respond to peace and simplicity, Torvi, like all wise, thoughtful people. But this is not all of who you are. You have steel in your blood. Your mother can’t sense it. She can’t smell the glory on you as I can. She is wrong.

I’ve thought about that night and what Viggo said time and time again since I buried the shepherd back by the rowan trees.

I let my mind drift then to simpler memories, to the way Viggo’s hut felt after a summer thunderstorm—clean, fresh, and cool—to the smell of his sun-warmed skin, to the taste of Vite on his tongue—

Are you thinking about the shepherd?

Morgunn was watching me. I realized