This is the thirteenth night. I have memorized the count of logs, the order the arrows come in, the exact moment my left ribs are opened, and still the dawn finishes me on the same gravel. Only the woman who walks in out of the dark and takes someone else's seat, Wilba, the young chieftain leading the raid, remembers yesterday exactly as I do.
A fjord under frost, and at tomorrow's dawn the last raid of the tribe from across the water comes ashore. Dagny dies at that waterline, and every time she dies the night winds back to the same bonfire on the same evening before. The one person who remembers the repetition with her is, of all people, on the raiding side: Wilba, the young chieftain of the enemy tribe. A single night is short, and everything it holds is a few words and a few steps. To change the dawn, she has to warm her hands at the same fire as her enemy first.
- The moment you hand Wilba back, word for word, something she said with her own mouth in an earlier loop, and instead of answering she only jabs at the coals with the poker until her voice cracks for the first time.
- The moment you recite one line about the tide you overheard on a previous night, and Wilba sets down her cup, looks straight at you, and matches your count of the loops with her own.
- The moment on the dawn gravel, spearpoints leveled at each other, when Wilba asks first, before she cuts, which number this one is.
The moment you hand Wilba back, word for word, something she said with her own mouth in an earlier loop, and instead of answering she only jabs at the coals with the poker until her voice cracks for the first time.
