Beautiful Wreck (17 page)

He spoke of them all. Of Sjofn, who directs peoples’ hearts to love. Lofn, who clears the way for impossible unions, and Var who hears the oaths that men and women make in the privacy of their beds and hearts and bowers in the woods. He spoke of Snotra, the one who knows the ways to live by, some of which bear great importance to men. Hár gave an example, “Don’t wake your man up early for spring cleaning when he’s been drinking the night before.” This drew muffled agreement from the men, who raised cups as quietly as they could, so as not to wake the drifting children.

“And you may remember Saga,” Hár said. “The fairest of face. Frigg likes her the least, because every night Frigg’s old husband Odin goes to visit Saga in her shining castle under the waves, and they drink together. She gives him the water of time in a golden cup.” He coughed and waved his own cup for more ale. “They sit by the banks of a cold river and she shows him the past and the future.”

“Now, Frigg is above all sorts of jealousy,” he continued. “And she doesn’t mind if Saga pours drink for her husband every so often.” He pulled his bushy brows into a serious V. “But night after night is too much for an old man to be spending with a maid.”

His scratchy voice cast a hush over the room. I started to listen just to its sound, its cadence and waves of deep and shallow tones. I tried to imagine the “old man” with a young maid in his arms. He was comfortable with his own things: axes, knives, horses, walls. So far beyond the need and reach of a woman. It seemed he might brush emotion away like a fly. Had he ever yearned for someone? I tried to conjure up an image of him with one woman, let alone the three he’d had.

Had they loved him? Had one of them wanted him so desperately she watched his mouth, watched the way he walked? His eyes?

With long and vigorous will, the children stayed awake. Even though the light through the hole in the roof and the small windows had finally begun to dim, they were still restless. Bouncing with the remnants of summer excitement, even after several handmaidens’ names and faces and stories had passed by. And so Hár asked them if they knew what an apple was.

“Já, they are like a hard berry,” Ranka said in a sure voice, and Hár laughed.

“A little, já. They are fruits, and they are bigger around than a berry and come only from your great grandparents’ home. Now put your head down, and I’ll tell you something about them.”

She lay her head on her mother’s lap and stared at him, waiting to absorb every bit of a tale she must have heard dozens of times before.

“Well now, Idunn is the maid who has something the gods need very much, já? She tends the garden where special apples grow that keep the gods young. All the greatest of them, Odin and Thor and everyone, come to her garden and kneel down before her and ask if they can eat her apples.”

He smiled at someone, in the darkening room, and it was a smile like a wink. Perhaps for the men, who laughed and softly smacked their cups together.

Hár told a long story of Idunn being duped by Loki and taken into “a certain forest,” gesturing with his head to mean Hvítmörk. Loki said Idunn would find some apples there that she liked just as well as her own. But a villain came in the form of a great bird and locked her up in his pantry for weeks and months.

“Now the gods began to grow gray without Idunn around.” At this, he pulled his own beard and there were giggles in the darkening night. “And so they held a Thing to talk about it …”
An assembly.

Lotta felt dreamy in my arms, a sturdy girl, a warm chunk of life snuggling into me. Her breathing slowed, became more regular, and it made me sleepy too. The wall felt welcoming and cool behind my back, and I gave into it and gazed off into the long room. The darkness had finally taken the house.

Heirik was there, and it stole my breath when I noticed him. He didn’t always stay for these family moments, for the stories and long hours of talking or walking after evening meal. He was a delicious surprise, at the other end of the room, sitting outside my own sleeping alcove. One knee bent, he rested his foot right on the bench where I would stop later and remove my shoes for the night.

Something in his hands glinted, a small knife. He was carving something. Intent on it, he kept his head down but he nodded absently, perhaps in agreement with something in the story, a subconscious gesture. His hair was sparked with the light of the hearth.

I no longer knew what Hár was saying.

Heirik raised his head just then and caught me looking, and I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t deny for a second that I’d been watching him. I was fifteen years old in my heart, sinking deeper into an uncontrollable, delicious crush. Would he understand what my face must be revealing? He watched me back, and for a moment neither of us drew apart.

“Nei!” There was a delighted outburst from the older kids, and Lotta and I were roused.

“She does not fit through the window!” Ranka said with authority, and Kit pushed her daughter’s head back down into her lap. Lotta blinked and tried to answer “nei” through drowsy pink lips.

“No more questions, Da,” Dalla warned, and Hár laughed.

“You’re right, Idunn did not fit,” he continued. “And so what did Loki do? He turned her into a nut, and flew off with her in his beak, as fast as he could bring her home.”

I murmured soft words back to Lotta—“Be still, Little Hazelnut”—until she burrowed again into my dress and cloak.

When I looked back up, Heirik was carving again. Like drinking the sweetest honey ale, I took him in, the easy way he sat against the wall, how close he was to my bed. I watched him with half-closed eyes, a secret gaze in the dim light. He’d forgotten about me, absorbed in what he was making. One of his hands went to his hair, to tuck a piece behind his ear.

I pressed my hand to Lotta’s sleepy, blond head. I would be still, too. This was a good place. She was entirely asleep, as deep in her dreams as I was in mine.

WALLS

I approached the stables and called for Drifa, and she leaned her chin on the turf wall and sniffed in my direction. So curious. Gentle and small but full of lust for running. Her hair was fuzzy, like a baby’s, her mane a lot like mine, pale and long and so straight it was almost stiff.

She came around the wall and nosed at my chest. Her dark tail brushed the white tops of her feet, so delicate, like she’d stepped in snow.

We would ride today to the boundary walls, to see the farm. Heirik, Hár and the boys would check and confer on repairs. Betta was to show me the places where we gathered dyestuffs, fungi, flowers for mouthwash and medicine and tea.

I was delighted to get away from the house. Drifa was, too. She pawed lightly at my boot, ready to go.

The walls surrounding the homefield were thick and sturdy, built to protect the most precious crops, the tallest grass, the barley and oats. They were built of sod bricks stacked on a base of stones, about my height. And thick, maybe over three feet deep.

In testament to the walls’ effectiveness, a goat chewed on moss that grew on the outside. It stood in my path, a creature I recognized from a child’s games and pictures on a screen. I’d seen the goats here from a distance. I hadn’t expected the stink, the indifference. It fixed me with a complex gaze, somehow uninterested and challenging at once. It never stopped chewing to comment or move out of my way. Its eyes were alien, the pupils two pulsating horizontal bars that mesmerized me and reminded me of how little I knew. So little about this world, where this creature with foreign eyes would sustain my body in the darkness of polar nights to come.

A hushed rippling sound lulled me, and my thoughts began to drift.

The high, dense grass of the homefield moved in the breeze like the glossy manes of a thousand horses. That grass was so tall, it could close over me without a trace. I knew how that would feel, to be gone, inside. And here I was then, watching from the interior of the tenth century.

I wondered what it looked like to Jeff, what he saw when I disappeared from the lab. Was my body still with him and Morgan in the twenty-second century? Maybe it seemed like I was in a coma and she was holding my hand right now, telling me bedtime stories about a Viking farm gilded with sunlight. Or had I completely disappeared into the tall grass? Was my body gone too, time closed behind me in a neat wave?

I thought of Morgan back there, in her studio with its laughably neat fireplace. The memory was fainter, tinier every time, like we waved across an ever widening valley. My only friend, but not a good one. Could I recall something she liked? Clasps and awls and arm rings were all I could come up with. The color of metal.

Betta favored the ochres and apricots she could draw from her lichens.

I flicked at the stirrups with my outstretched toes, and my legs felt lean and strong. Riding without a saddle—the way Heirik always did—would be a dream. I thought maybe I could do it. I could learn, and then we could ride together that way, the chief and I. I would be beautiful and sure beside him—the two of us and our horses walking the farm. Heirik and I quietly sharing thoughts of work and home. Or running with fearless joy. Drifa and I would race him and Vakr, my red skirt flying as we crashed through bright streams. I imagined catching him, Heirik laughing, bringing my arms up around him, my hand finding the back of his neck, fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him close.

“Tell me your dream, Woman.” Betta’s horse bumped Drifa’s behind.

I blushed and sputtered. The daydream was vivid in my blood. I couldn’t think of a lie, and so I stared, guilty.

Betta smiled slyly, her teeth hidden. “It’s true then,” she said, excitement and satisfaction contained under her cool exterior.

Oh.
She could tell. My stomach twisted and sank.

Thoughts came fast and sharp as beaks. Betta knew about my crush. I was so infatuated, I’d forgotten to care whether anyone else could see. And she could. Obviously. Every moment I’d felt dreamy or dumbstruck came back to me in a flood, wondering, Did she see then? Or then? Who else could tell? Everyone? Right now, Heirik might be pretending he didn’t notice, just to spare me embarrassment. Oh, gods, I felt sick. I cast my eyes around to find him. Riding ahead of us, the chief was implacable. I couldn’t tell.

My whole insides cringed, and I wished I could become the smallest dot in the landscape.

“Never mind, Woman,” Betta said evenly. “No one else can see.”

Desperate hope surged in me. “Are you sure?”

“They are blind,” she told me. “They see only what they already know.” She reassured me, but there was something unsettled in her voice. Preoccupied and very unlike her.