Page 47 of A Light So Blinding
He started placing the straps over his shoulders and waist, readying himself to carry her across the mountain once again. “I am not the same man I was when I left. The people of Trollveggen remember Dag the Destroyer’s son. They knew me as who I once was, not the man I am now.”
“Why is that a bad thing? Don’t you want to go back to who you were before all this happened to you?”
He gave her an unimpressed look. “Do you believe that I could?”
She supposed that made sense. After ten years in the labyrinth, he must have changed in permanent ways. It made her mind stray to her sister. Rose had experienced so much of that darkness as well. If Astrid’s experience had only scratched the surface, then her sister was likely feeling the same way Bjorn was.
“I guess not,” she said as he finished making the strange saddle that he carried her with. Astrid got into it, helping him as best she could by leveraging herself on his shoulder and decidedly not being distracted by that big hand gripping her leg. “Why don’t you tell me who you are now? Maybe that will help you settle into the idea of returning.”
He snorted. “No one there wants to hear what I went through.”
“Friends stay friends even through hardships. Relationships aren’t easy, after all, but we all stay together no matter how hard it gets. That’s just what it’s like being a good friend.”
He headed out, picking careful and intentional steps along the peak of this mountain range. “They don’t want to hear what I’ve been through, or what I’ve done.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
Astrid thought about the implication there. Perhaps he had done something horrible that would make her fear him. But she had heard much of it. She’d seen him kill countless people now, and she knew he was dangerous. However he’d been kind to her. He’d been soft with her.
“I think I do want to hear it,” she murmured. “Maybe not what you went through there, but the things that make you who you are. You said your father was like you? A berserker?”
“Yes. My father was cursed with rage as well.” He jolted her up, shifting her a little higher on his back.
At first, Astrid thought he’d done it because he wanted her to stop talking. But then she realized he’d just slid her higher up his back so he could hear her better. Now she was speaking right into his ear, rather than the flat of his back.
This man. She never would understand how every action of his was so intentional.
“Your father sounds like a terrifying man,” she finally said.
“He was. But my mother is soft. She is a smoke breather, as I said. She sees the future and always knew that mine would be difficult. She begged my father to help change the path I was on, but Dag was never a man interested in changing the future. He saw it as already set in stone and therefore, something that should never be tampered with.”
“So he was the one who wanted you to be like him.”
“Indeed. And my mother always wanted a better life for me.” Bjorn shrugged again. “Unfortunately, she was never given that choice. My father took me far away from her when they started arguing, and I haven’t seen her in many, many years.”
“Even longer than you were in the labyrinth?”
His long sigh answered before his words. “Yes. Longer than that.”
Astrid wondered what it was like to grow up without a mother. It must have been hard with a father he was terrified of. But then she had to ask, “You said we were going to the other side of the mountain, where there are more witches and people like me. Does that include your mother?”
“It may. I do not know if she still lives.”
That was oddly terrifying. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to think about that. Meeting his mother was a bit forward, especially considering they were bound and wanted to unbind themselves.
It was like he could feel her nerves. “What has you all twisted?”
“Well, won’t your mother think a certain way about me wanting to break our bond?”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “Bright one, if you think my mother hasn’t already seen that in the smoke, then you do not understand what I mean when I say she sees the future. The woman knows more than either of us about the coming days. She knows I’m coming, if she’s still alive.”
Eerie. Astrid wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Her power had always just been in manipulating others, and it felt like a rather strong power the longer she’d had it. But to see thefuture?
A power like that would need to be studied for ages to come. And he made it sound like there were many smoke breathers outthere. As though it wasn’t odd at all for a troll woman to be able to do that.
“If your mother can see the future, why couldn’t she just predict every attack upon your people? Shouldn’t their skills make it easier for them to know when the trolls were going to... I don’t know. I guess how to win battles and fight wars?”
