Beautiful Wreck by Larissa Brown

was clunky and smudged a nondescript and dirty white, she looked fair and delicate to me. After a minute or two, I lifted my eyes to see what was going by.
    “Let your body move with her steps,” Magnus shouted from across an expanse of grass that had grown between us. I’d ridden farther than I thought.
    A memory came to me, of pushing my way through a crowd at the very edge of the city. I ducked past people with parasols and bayonets, went too far and got lost, alone inside the multitude. And then I broke through to the ocean. The spasm of fear was brief, and then I was overcome with the water’s immensity and motion—like a moving glacier. Buildings and streets ran right off the edge and into the water, but I could see out over it, and it felt good. Good to look that far. Good to ride Geirdis.
    I looked over at the boy who leaned against the stable wall, his arms crossed over an honest-to-God Viking Age tunic, iron knives and fire striker hanging from his belt, blond hair cropped at his chin. This was farther than I ever expected to go, truly.
    I smiled at him, and just then Gerdi dropped her head to chew at the grass and my smile turned to a gasp. Magnus laughed like his father Har, a bark of amusement. Then he settled on smiling a little sideways just like his cousin, the chief. It was darling on his young face.
    “You are riding her now.” He walked toward me. “But not telling her where you want to go.” He began talking about using the reins gently to draw her to look in the direction I chose. To go right, I pulled in a little of the rein on the right and let a little go on the left.
    I closed my eyes and listened to Magnus’s voice shift and lurch, sometimes break, then unexpectedly dip into deep water. Just fourteen. The hint of a smooth voice like the chief’s underneath. I thought about how melting and fluid Heirik’s was, and how it too would continue to change as he got older. It would acquire the sandpaper of age like Har’s.
    All three men sounded unlike anyone I knew in the future. Their very thoughts were formed of a different ether. Their minds and tongues and bodies used words that were built entirely differently. A mix of Norse and emerging Icelandic. It seemed, suddenly, like a system of sounds custom made for this family, this moment in time.
    “Thank you,” I told Magnus. “This is …” I searched for a word for fun and didn’t find one. “Sæll,” I said. Something like happy-making .
    That was it. There was a summer stillness. The only things to hear were Gerdi’s sniffles and Magnus’s instruction. I liked the animal scent of the horse’s hair and the frank green of the midday grass. I felt something very simple and unhurried. Plain happiness.

FALLS
    It was possible that Geirdis was the oldest horse in Iceland. Reserved for children, or amnesiacs like me, she was steady and slow and placidly disinterested in anything but grass and blossoms to chew. Indifferent to the world beyond her pink, flaring nostrils and square teeth.
    But she would be like a winged dream to me, if I could just ride her without fear.
    I planned to practice a little every day. The morning after Magnus taught me, I got up early and tiptoed to the mudroom. My head no longer ached every morning without coffee, but I was still fuzzy from sleep and I knocked a great weight of cloaks off their hooks and into a heap. I picked each one up, shook it and folded it again and again and again into a rectangle, a perfect envelope. I folded a half dozen cloaks and laid them on top of one another. It was a blessed relief to do something well. I pressed down on the top of the pile, and it was springy. Something palpably good I’d done, a neat stack on a bench.
    I glanced around for something more to straighten before I faced the horse, and beside me stood the door to the chief’s room. I’d forgotten he slept so close. I wondered if he heard me out here crashing around and folding. Wondered if I’d woken him from his