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The ban was lifted. The ban on international travel for non-immunes was lifted. Ages ago.
Reynir tries not to let it rattle him. He tries! Really! And he does a decent job of it, maybe, he hopes, but he does have to assure Mom that he’s really alright as he heads upstairs to bed after supper, and the new truth seems to have carved itself into his entire worldview. Like the ground itself shifted under his feet when he heard.
He looks out his bedroom window. The lights of Brúardalur glow warmly, little wispy clouds scud across the moon, the hilltops look like sheep sleeping in a big dark pile, and the ban on non-immunes traveling was lifted ages ago.
The next morning, he wakes up suddenly in the pre-dawn hours - why, he’s not sure; it’s not like he ever dreams, so it couldn’t have been that - with a single thought blooming in his brain: I could leave.
He could leave. For the first time in his entire life, he could leave.
It would have to be in secret, of course. His parents would never in a million years let him go if he told them his plans. Then again, Bjarni’s always telling him to ask forgiveness instead of permission, and Reynir knows exactly when his parents sleep every night and wake every morning. Sneaking out won’t be hard.
Planning something like this under his parents’ noses is a little harder, but it’s almost an obligation now. Both to his burning curiosity and to his past self, the wide-eyed child who gasped at his siblings’ tales and fantasized about every single one for days afterward. Thankfully, he’s had decades to learn to nod, smile, and pretend there isn’t a yearning wanderlust trying to drag him out and away.
During the day, out with the sheep, he runs through timetables in his mind: when to wake up and quit the ruse, distances to walk, the schedule of the twice-daily coach to Reykjavík. In the mornings and evenings, doing household chores, he carefully sneaks travel-friendly food from the pantry and root cellar, spare toiletries from the bathroom, writing supplies from the cupboard (in case he hits a language barrier in another country). At night, he sews a travel bag by moonlight out of a stolen length of last year’s homespun, sets aside a good outfit, and lets thoughts of sea voyages whirl in his head until he falls asleep.
On the appointed day, he wakes before dawn, after a short night plagued with restless jitters. He dresses quickly and quietly, slips down the stairs, leaves the note he wrote last night on the kitchen table (with a silent apology for worrying his parents), and just like that, he’s out the door.
Freedom is dizzying, he decides. Wild and freezing, in the gathering winter and the rising dawn, heartbeat like thunder and breaths like ice. He pauses for a moment on the hilltop, looks at the huge black sky and the faintest hint of Reykjavík lights in the distance, and has to stifle an untamed laugh before it wakes the whole town.
And then he runs down the other side of the hilltop, full sprint. Flying. The bag thumps against his hip with every stride, keeping pace with the ecstatic drumbeat of his thoughts: I’m going, I’m going, I’m going away, I’m going to see the city, I’m going to see the world!
He makes it to the coach stop early, a good half-hour before sunrise, sky still brightening into hopeful pink. This is as far as he’s ever been - never graze the sheep further than you can walk in the space of a twilight, his parents always say, and the coach stop is a bit outside that radius. He remembers being here when he was eight, seeing Ólafur off for his first sea job. Now, he doesn’t have to sit on Mom’s lap or hold tight to her hand. Now, he doesn’t have to ask where the places on the signs are - he can just go there himself.
He doesn’t recognize the coachman - another strange thrill, to see a total stranger. The coachman takes Reynir’s fare (almost half of his allowance since the end of harvest season, saved for a rainy day), and then he spends the whole morning enjoying the bumpy novelty of the ride, the views out the window of different hills and different sheep and even the ocean far away. Far away, but getting closer with every passing minute.
Reynir gets off the coach in Reykjavík and the first thing he notices is that everything is huge.
So many streets. So many people. Most of the buildings climb three or four or even more stories into the sky. The city’s even bigger if you count the buildings left abandoned shortly after year 0, during the Great Famine.
And the ocean…
Reynir buys some sort of mild sausage wrapped in fluffy pastry dough for lunch and walks toward the docks. He saw the ocean for the first time up on the cliff road overlooking the city, but that was one thing. Being close to it, seeing the massive seawall with its barbed wire and watchtowers, peeking past people and their boats to catch a glimpse of that vast, blue, utterly flat expanse - he needs to catch a boat soon. Somewhere. Reykjavík is huge and exciting and this might be the most fun he’s ever had in his life, but he aches to strike out over those waves and see what’s on the other side.
Dad used to tell Reynir a story, passed down from when he was little, growing up with Grandpa Ragnar in the very same farmhouse Reynir just escaped from. “Until I was about eleven,” Dad said, “my father always told me that the world was small, a little island haven crafted by the gods for mortals to live in. He said the ocean really didn’t have an end, that you could sail forever and ever and never reach land again, unless you happened to sail right around the planet and end up on the other coast of Iceland. I never knew any better until Helga started going to school with some mages from Norway, and even then… No other place ever felt real to me than right where I was. Where I am now. The gods have blessed this land for us, and we’re alive and prosperous thanks to that. Why should I need anything else?”
I’ve never felt like that, Reynir thinks as he lets a veritable horde of cats lick sausage juice and crumbs off his fingers (he got up to seven before a couple identical tabbies showed up and made him lose count). There is something out there. It’s real. And I’m going to find it.
He wanders onto the docks proper, searching for anything that might be a schedule or a list of today’s departures. It actually takes a couple passes of the bulletin board in question for him to realize what it is, because there’s only one departure listed: a ship called the Túnfiskurinn , headed for Bornholm.
Well. Guess he’s going to Bornholm, then. He would have preferred some choice in the matter, but Bornholm is so far south, all the way in Denmark! Are there palm trees? Does it get warm enough down there that the snow melts off the sandy beaches, even in the winter? He hopes so. Now that would be a tale to one-up Hildur and Ólafur with.
It takes some quality youngest-sibling wheedling and a promise to wash some untold amount of dishes, but the Túnfiskurinn 's quartermaster lets him aboard.
He expects the trip to be a lot more glamorous than it turns out. The work is…work. The ocean rocks the boat much more than he thought was possible, leaving bruises on his shins and hip bones as the floor tilts suddenly and sends him crashing into tables and bulkheads. He gets his sea legs within a couple days, though.
What gets him down isn’t the toppling over furniture, or the occasional brief bouts of seasickness, or the endless mountains of dishes to wash and potatoes to peel. What gets him down is the news that they’re not stopping in Bornholm after all, not properly. No license to let people ashore. They’ll just be dropping their stupid crates at a pickup point in the harbor and moving on. And the ocean all looks the same when there’s no land in sight, and the stiff salty wind stings his eyes and lips if he stays too long on deck.
Don’t get him wrong, he’s still thrilled to be here. But, maybe, he just might also be frustrated, alone, nearly broke, not to mention far from home for the first time in his life.
Reynir spends a depressing few days in the hold. Washing dishes. Peeling potatoes. Peeling carrots. Washing more dishes. Lying in his little corner of the cargo bay, peeling even more potatoes and wishing there was some way for him to see Denmark after all—
The personnel door slides open with a creak, echoing a deeper rumble from the belly of the ship. Is the ship…stopping? Are they at Bornholm already? Yes, that must be it - a couple deckhands are talking about unloading two crates, these ones right here, going and getting a trolley to get them on deck and into the drop boats…
And just like that, another thought takes root in Reynir’s brain and blooms there, into a big, insane, wonderful idea.
They’re only letting cargo off in Bornholm. But what if I was the cargo?
He has to move, fast. As quickly and as stealthily as he can, he dashes over to one of the crates, unlatches it, and flips open the lid. It’s filled with cans of tuna fish, right up to the top. This will make noise, but hopefully no one’s close enough to the cargo bay to notice - Reynir scoops armfuls of tuna cans out of the crate, just enough that he can curl up on top of the remainder and yank the lid of the crate back down over his face.
And he waits. Not long, but it feels like forever. He can’t see and can barely move, so of course his mind makes up the difference, thought after thought racing past as he forces himself not to giggle at his own ingenuity.
I’m finally going to Denmark! I’m so smart! Hope no one needed those other tuna cans… Better remember to wait until the Bornholm dock crew picks me up and leaves me on land, then I can come out. I bet there are tons of palm trees, and they look like regular trees but with big hand-shaped leaves. Will I get to learn Danish? Will I get to walk on a sandy beach, or visit a history museum, or - no, Reynir, no tapping your foot! Gotta be silent, which means staying still.
The noises outside shift. He feels his box jostled and lifted into the air with a double grunt of effort, then plunked on top of something wooden - the trolley. Loud shaky wheels, the creaking sway of a cargo elevator, voices shouting, tow harpoons firing, seagulls, distant breakers, what might be a raven’s croak - he’s really in Bornholm harbor, then! Ravens are land birds.
His crate jostles some more, squeaks its corners against the rubber sides of a drop boat, gets lowered into the water and then pulled, slowly, by harpoon-rope toward the shore. Reynir realizes he’s repeating in his head, over and over to the rhythm of the rolling waves, the First Rule. Like a prayer, almost.
Stand still. Stay silent. Stand still. Stay silent. Stand still. Stay silent.
It’s another one of those blooming thoughts, the sudden lightning-bolt ones he’s been getting lately that take root and won’t let go. He needs to remember this: stand still, stay silent. He’s certain of it.
But why? Sure, he should avoid getting discovered in this crate, but he’s just going to another safe island. No beasts, trolls, or giants to encounter. It’s not like Bornholm is the Silent World.
Reynir sits still and stays silent anyway, listening to the sea. The raven croaks again, much closer this time, as if it’s circling over the drop boat.