Page 111 of North Is the Night
“Can I ask another question?”
“Ask me any question, wife. I will answer.”
I reach for the tart again. “You know, you may call me ‘Aina.’”
“I prefer ‘wife.’”
I sigh, taking another bite of the berry tart. Across the table, Tuoni seems oddly at ease sitting in this silence, while I feel like I have a hive of bees buzzing inside me. As the raven, he listened to me prattle on for hours every night. It should be easier to speak to him, now that he can respond. But what could I say that a god would possibly want to hear? He sits there, black-bearded and fearsome, a complete mystery to me.
“What do you like, my lord?”
He’s still looking at me. He hasn’t stopped since I pulled him from the tree. He never stopped as the raven either. “What?”
“You can’t possibly do the duties of a king at all hours of the day and night,” I stammer on like a nervous fool. “So... what do you do with all your time?”
He narrows his eyes, the motion crinkling the jagged scar on his cheek. “Why do you ask such a question?”
“Because I seek to know you, my lord. Do you like cloudberries, for instance?” I gesture to the little plate of them sitting on the table. “Not everyone likes berries. It’s the seeds, I think.”
He glances at the small dish of berries by his hand. “I like cloudberries.”
“And?” I smile in encouragement. “What else, my lord?”
“Are we still talking of my food preferences?”
“Why not?” I say with a nervous laugh. “Do you prefer to hunt, forage, or fish?”
“Hunt.”
“I like to forage,” I offer. “Alone in the woods, the feel of the sun on my skin, the search for rare herbs and flowers, the thrill when I find that which evades me. It’s how I prefer to hunt.”
“You should never be alone in the woods,” he warns. “And foraging isn’t hunting.”
“It is to me,” I reply. “It’s far superior to a hunt. Nothing bleeds when you forage. Nothing dies.”
He holds my gaze, missing nothing of my meaning. “I like to read.”
I lean forward, genuinely curious. “You can read, my lord?”
His head tilts in confusion. “Of course I can read.”
“Who taught you?”
He considers with a frown. “You know, I have no idea. Perhaps I’ve always known.”
“And do your daughters read?”
“Of course. Everyone can read,” he says dismissively.
“By ‘everyone,’ I assume you mean gods. Certainly you can’t mean mere mortals.”
Understanding dawns on him and he sighs, setting his cup aside. “You can’t read.”
“I’m hardly alone, my lord. Only the priests for the foreign god can read.”
“Well, if you’d like, I can teach you,” he offers.
My breath catches. “You would teach me to read?”
