Page 117 of What Blooms in Barren Lands
One bright October morning, not long afterwards, found me back in the northernmost reach of the mountains, alongside the GR20 route. Einar and I had left behind the valley regions that were home to leafy trees and bushes, the abundant foliage glowing soft orange in the autumnal sun. We were now making our way across the peaks, connected by a bare, rocky ridge that was lined by low shrubbery. We had no other reason to be there but our shared love for these rough, inhospitable lands and the common memories they held for us.
“Can you slow down?” I gasped for breath, my throat burning slightly with the thin, cold mountain air. “We’re in no hurry, are we?”
Einar strode across the path’s jagged surface with the agility of a mountain goat. But my own feet kept slipping on the scree, and I was constantly hindered by being obliged to hold to the rocks’ edges for balance.
“The sooner we get there, the better,” he replied a little curtly and without bothering to turn around to answer.
“Is this not supposed to be a holiday?” I protested.
It still felt strange, the concept of ‘going on a holiday’, of doing something just for the fun of it. Yet that was precisely what Einar had suggested to me a few days prior.
“Let’s take a break from everything,” he said one morning, completely out of the blue. “Let’s go back to Ascu and hike the GR20 north from there. You never got to see it properly, without worrying about archers and furies and settlements. Let me take you just for the beauty of it this time.”
Though surprised, I voiced no objections, and not a week later, the notoriously demanding GR20 trek took my breath away not only with its punishing strenuousness but also with the views it offered of misty, rocky peaks soaring towards the skies like the jutting teeth of a prehistoric giant.
The day before had been a happy one. We had spent the night in the deserted Ascu, playing a very adult version of hide and seek turned into a chase. Despite waking up sore and sleep-deprived, we hiked side by side the next day, chatting about anything from my favourite Ancient Rome-inspired fantasy reads to Einar’s childhood memories of his father’s best friend, their neighbour Gunnar. Einar helped me over the more challenging passages, his hands holding me safe and steady, and he reduced his own pace to match mine. Unlike the present-day Einar, who marched ever ahead of me, his shoulders tense and his mood increasingly brooding.
Just as I had resolved to confront him about this overnight change of his disposition, his least favourite topic of conversation in the world, he came to a halt a few metres ahead of me near a tilting rock formation with the GR20 route’s red and white mark on it.
“Oooh, I recognise this place!” I exclaimed as I finally caught up to him. “There’s that rock heart here, isn’t there?”
Narrowing my eyes, I scanned our surroundings. And there it was: a perfectly shaped platform of grass and shrubbery cleaved into the rocks below to our left. It looked as if a heart-shaped stamp had been pressed into the side of the volcanic mountain when it was still freshly warm and pliable like wax.
When we were last there, accompanied by the archers, I pointed it out to Einar, and he stopped me at once, letting our group pass us by so that we could share a private moment.
“If you weren’t such a grouch today, I’d suggest a kiss.”
Einar’s laughter came out as nothing but a brief, nervous scoff. Hair that had been bleached by the sun to a fairer shade than the usual fell to his eyes as he examined his shoes.
“Well, maybe let me first explain to you what my private business with Santini was about the other day.”
A nervous blush bloomed in his cheeks.
“You see, it occurred to me as we sat there with the bastard that with the re-establishment of the state—well, such as it is—the institution of marriage will be reintroduced as well ...”
“Oh?” I frowned, not comprehending his words until a heartbeat later when I repeated in a different tone entirely. “Ooohh!”
“You have to understand, given Santini’s questionable legitimacy and the state the world is in, it wouldn’t be a very formal marriage. Chances are, it would never be acknowledged in Iceland or any other country. But I don’t think that matters much.”
With a deep breath, Einar looked up, and his clear blue eyes met mine. I became acutely aware of my heart fluttering as if a small hummingbird was trapped inside me, beating its wings against my ribcage.
“What matters to me is that finally I have the chance to pay a debt I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Einar,” I said and touched his arm tentatively.
“Yes, I do,” he countered with a resolute hardening of the jaw that I recognised as a tell-tale sign of there being no point in arguing with him about it. “I owe you the option to say no to me, free of obligations towards your friends and unburdened by any threats from me.”
Despite being high up in the mountains, there was almost no wind, and the cool air was peacefully calm and still.
“Einar ...” I opened my mouth to reassure him, but he spoke over me with the determination of a bulldozer with faulty brakes.
“And I owe it to myself to believe you’ll say yes even when I give you the option to say no.”
He took another breath, shifting his weight uncomfortably.
“I’ll never not think about the day we met. At first, I assumed your beauty was the most exceptional thing about you. And that only caught my attention, but it didn’t intrigue me. To think that I nearly walked away! But then you played the music, I turned back around, and there you were! The realyou.” His voice lingered on the word, and I shivered despite feeling suddenly very warm. “And you were shooting those infected like you were born to kill, and you danced in between the shots to make a show of it—for me—and you looked over your shoulder to make sure I was watching ... From that moment on, you were to me what a shiny diamond necklace is to a magpie. Ihad tohave you then. I would have never let you leave. I would have doneanythingto make you mine, things I can only hope you can’t even imagine.”
The words gushed out of him like water from a burst dam until he was forced to take a breath.