Near the river steps a group of children chased a hoop between market legs until a woman clipped the nearest ear and pointed them back toward the dens.
Someone sold thin beer in clay cups. Someone else had a board of bone buttons and horn combs.
Freja made me stop at a woman selling smoked fish wrapped in leaf and bought two without asking if I liked fish. I liked fish.
"This is the part where you stop walking like you're late for a shelf," Freja said.
"I'm always late for a shelf."
"Then be late for the river instead."
We stood at the low wall above the water. The current was clear and fast over dark stone. Across the valley the treeline held last night's mist in long strips.
I could smell cold moss and the faint iron of the water. For a stretch of minutes I was not a reader with a question in the margins.
I was a woman with bread in her hand and fish oil on her fingers and a settlement at her back that had decided, for one morning, to let her exist without a task.
