Astrid watched the crowd from afar, mingling and celebrating with Sigmund and Magnhild on the green beside the goat pen and the barn. When her mother had come home from her talks with Ranog a week ago, her father had wasted no time before he visited the black smith. The chain Leif had made for Sigmund was gold. Magnhild had slipped it over his head tenderly, but Astrid couldn’t help thinking it was a brand. The delicate chain links glittered in the light of the bonfire, burning as the sun set. The celebration would go long into the night. She watched her brother dancing with his woman as their father and their uncle played their strings. The accompanying clapping and drumming floated to her hidden perch in the shadows.

               A man peeled away from the crowd, meandering towards the house where she stood under the eaves. She trailed him with her eyes. In the fading daylight, she couldn’t make out his features until he was within earshot of her call. “Lodvik,” she said.

               Her cousin was approaching his 20^th year. There were at least four women trying to chain him, but none of their mothers approved. Though he was handsome and kind, he was also a braggart, and had an incredible temper. Admittedly, some of the women who wanted him were young, but there was at least one that would have been an acceptable age. It was not the one whom he had put a child in.

               Lodvik started, looking for a moment like he would run from her, but then smiled warmly at her, placing a hand over his thudding heart. “Astrid,” he said, laughing to himself. “I thought you were a Bairn.”

               “I am a Bairn,” Astrid said smoothly.

               “Yes. I meant one of the other Bairns,” Lodvik said, waving a hand as if to dismiss his silliness. “Why aren’t you at the party?” he asked, moving a few steps towards her.

               Her eyes went to the bonfire, now burning fully against the rapidly darkening sky. “Don’t feel too cheery tonight,” she said, thinking of her strange conversation with the Skuld, and the equally as strange conversation with Ama about boys. She watched as her mother ushered Ulfarr, Josurr and Asmund away from the dancing.

               “Me either,” Lodvik sighed.

               “Because of Eylaug?” she asked, a dare. Lodvik screwed up his face in a grimace. “What’s that look for?”

               “I suppose you know all about Eylaug,” Lodvik said.

               “I know what Ama told me. That you put a babe in her belly. That she is trying to be a mother so she won’t be a Bairn.”

               “What?!” Lodvik’s outburst was nearly a roar, but her mother was approaching with the children, so he stifled it.

               “Goodnight, Madir,” Astrid said as they came forward slowly. Her mother was eyeing the two of them, watching their expressions. Astrid put on a sweet smile, though she was feeling cross. “Did you have fun?” she asked her brothers.

               Ulfarr shrugged and Josurr merely looked at the dirt, but Asmund’s eyes were bright. “The chain that Magnhild put around Sigmund was so lovely! Don’t you think so, Astrid?”

               Lodvik stiffened, and Ulfarr and Josurr tried, but failed, to hide their surprise. “Being chained isn’t…”Lodvik started, but at Asmund’s perfectly innocent expression, he dropped the end of what he was going to say. “Bah!” he said instead. “I suppose it was a lovely trinket.”

               “A lovely shackle,” Ulfarr said.

               “Hush!” their mother said, giving the three boys a push forward into the house. “Go on to bed. Stop dismissing the things you don’t understand.” She pushed past Astrid and Lodvik, the boys going before her into the doorway.

               “I wonder where he got that idea?” Lodvik asked. He sounded amused. Pleased, almost.

               “From Aelric and my father,” she said. She eyed him suspiciously, like he was snake. “Maybe from you, too.”

               “I never put ideas like that into his head!” he replied, wagging a finger in her face.

               Astrid took hold of his hand, pushing it slowly down and away from her. “Don’t do that,” she instructed.

               Lodvik paled. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s just…Eylaug…”

               “Why did you do it?” she asked, crossing her arms and giving him a baleful stare.  

               “She made me!” he yelled. His cheeks were growing hot; she could see the color even in the dark.

               “She made you?” Her words dripped with her skepticism.

               “She took me to that… that place! She said the wild magic was thick there. Said it could make boys!” Astrid raised her eyebrow. “What was I supposed to do?! I thought she was like you! I thought she had gone to the Skuld and asked!”

               He was too loud. The boys and her mother would hear. “Walk with me,” she said, before she quickly trotted away, heading towards the street. She heard his exasperated sigh, and then some muttering, and then his footsteps as he trailed after her. She moved more slowly, waiting for him to catch her, then walked side by side with him down the dirt road towards the rows of houses that sat empty, separating her family’s farm from the main residences of Soledge.

               “Where are we going?” he asked.

               “Away from where they can hear your temper,” she said. She had crossed her arms. The wild magic was moving. She itched to catch it.

               “I don’t understand why you’re angry,” Lodvik said. She gave him a withering sneer. “Look, a woman came to me and said she could use the wild magic to make a boy. What was I supposed to do, Astrid? Say no?”

               “She’s fifteen, Lodvik!” Astrid countered, knowing this should have been enough of an argument.

               But it only inflamed him. “I know!” he yelled, throwing his hands up. He stopped, placed his hands on his hips and stared up at the stars. She could feel him calming, his slow steady breaths bringing his racing heart to a level pace. “I know,” he said again, quietly. “But you and the Bairns tell us to do all sorts of things that none of us would think of on our own.”

               “She’s not a Bairn…” she tried to argue.

               “I didn’t know!” he said. “I didn’t!” She heard the truth in his words, felt the crystal ring of them through the threads of the wild magic. “I had no idea what to think. She could have been called. She could have been doing it because of what someone else told her to do.” His eyes had gone wide. “You witches are unpredictable!”

               “I am not a witch,” she spat.

               He recovered quickly, ignoring her anger, and the wild magic that danced between them as she began to let it fill her. “Well maybe not,” he said. “But you’re an iron rod, Astrid, beating us all into submission. Not giving any of us a choice!”

               “You have plenty of choice, Lodvik. There are always too many women and girls…”

               “What if I don’t want a woman, Astrid?” he asked. “Huh? Do you think of that?” She drew back from him, confused about what he was saying. “What if I don’t want my whole life to be about being chained and trying to make boys?”

               The spirits stirred and she heard the same voice from before calling to her. Protect the boys! The arguing had grown worse. She shook her head, dismissing the hissing calls. “Nobody says you have to have a woman, Lodvik,” she said.

               “You know that’s not true. You know Freya would haul me off to whatever woman would have me if she knew I could make boys.” His anger was crisp, tart, fresh.

               “You can make boys too?” she asked. He nodded, casting his eyes to the ground. “Who told you?”

               “Ama,” he said heavily. “Eylaug made me ask her to read the runes.”

               Astrid’s palms itched, the stones calling to be cast. “Let me do a reading for you Lodvik,” she asked, hiding her urgency from him.

               “What?” he asked. “No.”

               “Please?” she pressed.

               He shrugged, then crossed his arms again, nodding his consent.

               Astrid drew the rune stones from the pouch one by one until they were all heavy in her hand. She called to the wild magic, and it filled her, transformed her into a vessel for its power. She was only mildly aware of her hair flying about her, and her robes rippling as she pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. She cast the stones to the dirt. She smelled the burning, saw the flash of fire through her closed eyelids. She opened her eyes to view the casting. The hole. The cloud. The man. The ring.

               She nearly hissed as the spirits chattered to her. He can make them, but he won’t. She raised her eyes to him, and he knew from her expression that the reading was not favorable. She was hesitating, anticipating the questions he might ask, but she was taking too long. She felt his anxiety brewing.

               “What do they say?” he asked, and she could taste his fear.

               “You can make boys, Lodvik,” she said. “But you won’t.”

               “I won’t?” he asked. He frowned and his fear boiled to anger. “What do you mean I won’t? Is something going to happen to me?”

               “I don’t know, Lodvik,” she answered truthfully.

               “What about Eylaug? What about the baby in her belly? Is it not a boy?” he asked.

               “The runes don’t lie,” she offered, feeling small under his wrath.

               “Well…will the baby die, then? Will Eylaug? Come on, Astrid, that can’t be all to the reading!”

               “I’m sorry, Lodvik,” she said, but he interrupted.

               “Or maybe I’ll try and I’ll only make girls? That happens too, right? You say to a man ‘you can make boys’, but then he never does.”

               “I don’t know, Lodvik!” she yelled at him. He quieted, the fear slithering back into him at her ire. “I don’t know,” she said again, more tenderly.

               “Then what good are you?” he asked. It was unfair, but she didn’t argue with him. She watched him walk down the hill alone, his back as stiff as a rod, his footsteps as heavy as iron.