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shapeless. The definition of the word itself and no more.
    Then the chief’s voice was there. Outside the curtain.

    He sat on the bench right outside and talked about a tool—a word for earth cutter . Another man spoke about how many, how sharp. The chief talked about how many walls, how far. Men’s thoughts and calculations. I sensed the heaviness of his body, so close I could feel the bench move when his hips shifted. I could have touched him, if I’d stretched out my arm.
    Old Norse words were often round and thick, spoken with the cadence of a lullaby. Voices layered upon one another around the heartstone, phrases rising like questions. Then barks of joy pierced the softness. Clipped tones of irritation. No other language had its range, its ragged roughness and yet its capacity for melody and intimate murmurs.
    I thought I’d immersed myself in this language. But I’d been playing at it. My god, I was hearing the real thing. I closed my eyes and drank in the chief’s voice. Hoarse like gravel sometimes, very grave, but something about it was good.
    Feeling the solid weight of his body on that bench, I wanted things. I wanted to see the gestures that went with the words, to see peoples’ faces when they spoke. I wanted to go to the bathroom, wash my hair, eat. And I wanted to look at the chief again. I remembered every line and detail of his face from the sea. The high forehead, black waves of hair and dark angled brows, knifelike cheekbones, wolfish eyes. I raised my hand to lightly brush the curtain that divided us. I wondered what he was named.

    The men left the house, and even through the curtain I could feel the sigh of readjustment in the way the women talked.
    I sat up and stretched as best I could in the cramped space, and I seized with pain, a thousand needles and aches and pinches. I leaned into the wooden wall and groaned. My fingers tapped on my arm out of habit, but I wasn’t surprised nothing happened, nothing at all.
    I lay my head against the wood and felt its scratchy surface snag my hair. I had no more ideas. I was just here.
    “She needs to get out.” A woman was speaking. She said “the bath,” and something like “it will ease her.” The voice was soft but slightly hoarse, like the scratchy mane I’d clutched last night. A tiny lisp, no more than a push behind esses, so small that no one but me might notice. A formation of the mouth.
    Someone drew the curtain aside and let in the light of a nearby torch and a strangling wave of smoke. Sun reached through a hole in the roof, enough so I could see her clearly. She placed her hand, slim and bony, palm down against the bench near my feet, and she looked at me with pale eyes. Quiet, but not hesitant.
    She was younger than me, maybe by several years. It was hard to tell, because of the light, and because of her hair, both childish and severe. It was pulled tight in two French braids that gripped her head like talons. They made her angular features stand out, accentuated in the lamp light. Nose straight and prominent, high cheekbones, chin like a point. But her lips were full and rounded, a soft mouth for such a sharp face.
    After a moment, she moved her hand farther into the alcove, as if gentling an animal in a cage. It was easy to let her come all the way in. She folded herself like a wading bird, all arms and legs. It was simple to let her sit with her knees drawn up just a few feet away.
    “I am Betta,” she told me. The rich, smoky voice I’d heard outside the curtains now came from those lips, a sensual surprise. She smiled, and her teeth were just a little too big for her mouth. Somehow it softened everything, gawky and charming.
    I smiled too, and breathed in a rush of smoke. The air burned going down. I croaked hello. Mutual intelligibility, I thought. If people who speak different versions of a language can equally understand each other.
    She focused on my mouth, eyes intent and curious, and I wondered if she’d never seen