Tara Runeweaver's Arc

Chapter 10 of 19

Tara left the old woman's house with the cord coiled in her palm. By the stone bench outside, she stopped and spread it flat. The braid reversed itself mid-weave, blue turning under gold, gold turning into red, the pattern looping back on itself. She could not tell which end was the start. Wearing it wrong before the hall would shame Bjorn's mother and Bjorn both. The horn would call them in soon. She sat on the cold stone and watched the cord instead of touching it. She counted the color shifts. Three reversals. Three words his mother had spoken to him at the hearth. Tara understood then it was not a knot to solve. It was a question being asked of her. She went back and knocked. The old woman opened a small metal tin on her lap, hinged lid lifted, faded initial catching the firelight. Inside lay other cords, each finished, each worn smooth. "I do not know how to wear it," Tara said. The old woman nodded once, as if this was the right answer. She took the cord, looped it twice around Tara's left wrist, and tied the ends against the pulse. "Open palm only," she said. "Never closed. That is what you are to him." Tara walked into the hall with her hand turned up at her side. Bjorn saw the cord at her wrist and the way she carried it. He crossed to her without hurry and set his palm beneath hers, lifting, not gripping. The warriors saw. His mother, behind her, saw. Nothing was said. The cord had been read correctly, and the shape of the thing between them had a name now, even if no one had spoken it.