It gets easier

Chapter 7 / I'm sorry

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Tulla had left along with the rest of the wedding party, and it was time for Gudrid and Thorfinn to start living a normal life as husband and wife. As normal as they could be anyways.

He told her that he wanted her to be comfortable, so he would sleep on the floor, just with a couple of furs underneath him. He did wake her up when his nightmares began, and the first couple of nights he had gone out to the stable right afterwards, before she could stop him, feeling too guilty to stay by her side.

He did the same thing when he came home from England when he was seventeen, but then his mother had begun sleeping next to him, cuddling him and holding him in place so he didn't leave. They eventually became used to it; even the children just slept through it.

He had forgotten the guilt of waking them up like that, but he remembered it clearly now that he was with Gudrid. She never let him know that it bothered her, though.

And that was how the first week passed.

They were getting more comfortable around each other as they grew used to their shared space, but there was a lingering sadness, something that wouldn't easily go away.

Helga noticed it too, and one day she asked Gudrid if she would help her with the laundry.

"Uh, yes, of course." Gudrid sputtered and sat down next to her mother-in-law. "But I'm really not very good at it..."

"Don't worry about that; you can help me with the children's clothes; they don't mind if they're wrinkled or have a few stains."

"Right," Gudrid nodded and took the clothes she was handed. Helga always had a warm smile on her face and an even greater kindness in her eyes. It was like she had told Thorfinn from the beginning; Gudrid really thought of Helga as a very kind woman. She felt at ease around her.

"How are you adjusting to life here, Gudrid?" Helga, after a few moments of quiet, did not look up from her work. Gudrid was concentrating and barely heard her, but she looked up, blinking a few times, and answered.

"Good, I mean, Iceland isn't that much different from Greenland. Actually, the weather is a little milder here, from what I've seen until now."

"Yes, I see; that's good. But what about you and Thorfinn? Are you getting along well?"

"Yes," she answered, "I'd say we get along, even if we're not very close yet. I'm still getting used to, you know, being married again," she shrugged a bit awkwardly.

"I understand." Helga nodded and paused. "My marriage to Thorfinn's and Ylva's father was arranged as well, so I can understand what you must feel."

"Thorfinn's father?..." Gudrid muttered to herself. Leif had mentioned him shortly when he let her know that she was to be married to Thorfinn. He said that he had died long ago. It was the first time she had heard anyone from the family mention him, and she realized that she had no idea what role he played in making them all who they are today. "Were you unhappy then?"

"In the beginning, just for a short while," she nodded slowly, but then made sure to make it clear, "a very short while."

"What changed?"

"Nothing truly changed." Helga chuckled, and when Gudrid looked in her eyes, she looked far away, and she looked in love just by thinking about him. Her chest tightened a little at that, also feeling sorry for her; after all, she had loved, and then she had lost him.

"So... you in love with him then?"

"I did eventually fall in love, yes. We both came to love each other very much, and truthfully, we forgot that it wasn't us that had chosen each other," she said, giving words to the love that she still held for him, even though he was long gone. "I am not telling you this to try and make you fall in love with my son; I am merely telling you that things can get easier. It can all change for the better very quickly; you just need to be ready for it."

Even in a short amount of time, things had already changed for the better. Gudrid wasn't sure she could ever learn to be as content as her mother-in-law had seemed to become in her marriage. Gudrid would always, to an extent, feel trapped here, but yes, it was better, and she knew that it would probably become better still. Maybe one day she would forget about her dreams, and she could be happy here, though the thought made her feel empty inside.


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Thorfinn groaned, dusting off his gloved hands. They were covered by the soot from the fire in the forge.

The other men had been after him the last couple of days, asking about his marriage, so Thorfinn worked even harder than normally to be kept busy by something except their nagging questions.

He was trodding through the snow on his way back when he saw his wife standing with an empty bucket by her feet. He couldn't see her face, but he knew that she was just standing there looking at the waves.

He watched her for a while, wondering if she would notice him, but she didn't, so he walked closer.

"You always look at the water. Why is that? Do you miss Tulla?"

Gudrid turned with a gasp, having not noticed Thorfinn's approach from behind. He had a sad look on his face, sure that Gudrid was missing those on the other side of the ocean that separated Iceland and Greenland, but that was not it, at least not entirely.

"I do, of course, but that's not why. I just like the ocean; it calms me. I like to imagine what's beyond it, beyond Iceland and Greenland."

Thorfinn looked at her as she looked back at the ocean, watching as the setting sun sent ripples of golden light through the water.

"Did you... want to travel?" He asked her carefully, recognizing that longing in her.

She had looked towards the ocean and talked about a dream that first evening they spoke, but she had said that it no longer mattered, so she never told him what it was. Maybe he could guess because he had done the same thing as a child, looking at the water and wondering what was beyond it. For him, it had been Vinland, but for Gudrid, it was perhaps all of it. The entire world, however long it spanned.

"Yes." She admitted it with a deep sigh, lowering her head. "Stupid Leif... it was because he told me stories as a kid. He drew this map in the sand, telling us what the lands were called and how they were there, and I just... I wanted to go there so badly. I could never stop thinking about it."

Her grumbling and insulting of Leif brought some lightheartedness into the conversation, and Thorfinn smiled.

"You too, huh?" He mumbled, not expecting himself to begin talking about his own dreams, which had long since been killed by the hatred he let grow in inside of him.

"Yeah. Wait, me too?" She turned back to him with a confused look on her face. "Who else?"

"Me..."

"You?!" He shouted louder than she had intended. "But you seem so content here."

"Well, I am, but I wasn't always. I wanted to see the world too, and... I did." He swallowed a lump in his throat but hid his discomfort well. "I left Iceland for many years. That's why I'm so content with staying now, because I have a lot of years to make up for."

She stared at him, her eyes wide, and she stared for such a long time that Thorfinn felt the need to avert his gaze.

"I thought you had spent your entire life here, but you- you left, huh? Where did you go?" She asked, suddenly breaking out in a smile—one more lively than Thorfinn had yet to see on her face. "Did you travel with Leif?"

If she knew why...

He shook his head, not so much as an answer to her last question as it was a way to rid himself of the memories of what he had done and how she might react if, or rather, when, she learned about it.

"No, no, I didn't travel with Leif; I- well, I went to a lot of places, I think."

"You think?" She repeated the odd wording incredulously. How could he not be certain?

Thorfinn simply hadn't bothered to keep track of where he and Askeladd's band went all those years. As long as he had Askeladd in his sight, that had been enough.

"Yes, it was-..." he began to count on his fingers. "I traveled all over Denmark and England too, and then I spent a little time in France, Norway, Sweden, and... Wales too. I might have passed through other countries briefly, but it wasn't something important enough to remind myself of."

He looked from his fingers and back to her, catching her looking at him in a way she never had before, and he felt his chest feel a bit lighter, for a single moment completely forgetting what he had been doing in those lands.

"Will you tell me about it?" She asked, and he could hear excitement in her voice.

He blinked and then scratched his neck, being reminded of it all again. If he told her anything, he would have to be careful.

"What do you want to know?"

"All of it, you must have a lot of stories. What's it like, the people, the language, the food, the trees?"

"Trees?"

She realized her slip-up and blushed a little, realizing her slip-up. "I like trees. There's barely any on Greenland and Iceland, and if there is, they're so small."

He smiled. He was just a child back then, and in such a state of mind as he was, he didn't really appreciate the nature around him, but he understood what she meant.

"The trees are big. I've been in forests that had no sunlight because the trees were blocking it out with your crowns."

"That actually sounds a little scary, but I would love to-" she quickly cut herself off. She would love to see it for herself one day.

Thorfinn knew what she meant and frowned even while Gudrid tried to continue. She continued to talk about the things she thought would be interesting, and she gave hints to things she would have liked to see or experience for herself. It was the first time she opened up like that to him, but it made him very sad.

"Gudrid."

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry that you can't be there."

She just looked at him for a few moments, then she looked back at the ocean. "Me too, but I'll be fine," she said quietly and carefully. "I'll be okay. I'll get used to this."

She looked down at his hands when she saw him pull off his dirty glove. She could see he had been working hard; that was something she respected. Then, without saying a word, he raised his hand to her face, and she froze.

She was frozen for a few moments before she realized what he was doing. Without realizing it, Gudrid had silently begun to cry. It was just a few tears running down her face, but Thorfinn still wiped them away.

She was stunned, but she didn't move away. It was a second after that that Thorfinn retracted his hand. "Uh, that's- s- sorry! I'm sorry."

She continued to stare at him for a moment longer before she finally averted her eyes and shook her head.

"Don't be," she told him, raising her own hand to wipe the remaining tears away. "Like I said, it's okay," she told him, and she smiled as she could feel, deep within herself, that she was starting to believe it.