Beautiful Wreck (55 page)

“Já,” Magnus said softly, as though he could see my thoughts forming. But he didn’t really know what I’d been asking myself. He was just gathering up the many threads, and deep fears and questions we’d talked about, into that one lovely expression. Perhaps as an explanation for everything—the way the seasons turned, and the stars around Frigg’s distaff—he added, “Well, the chief suffers the ástarœði.” The
fury of love
.

Magnus tossed this to me like a hand tool, as though it were as casual and obvious as a length of rope or small blade. Heirik loved me. With a desperate heat.

Cold swirled in to the stable and around us, everywhere, and I saw the truth. In a beat of my heart, it didn’t matter how cruel or dangerous he was. Heirik and I shared something I had wanted forever. He knew me, and he loved me.

I brought my hand up to the side of my face, pressing my fingers to the slick scar there.

I sat too close, já. Far too close to his fire. Every time I thought of him, the hem of my dress seemed to catch in it, and the flames leapt to life and traveled over and through me. Heirik’s fire devoured everything, my clothes and hands, my braids, my eyes and spirit, with a delicious light that didn’t hurt at all.

He wouldn’t give me to Egil. He wouldn’t. He loved me.

“Woman,” Magnus said. “My feet are cold. Come into the house.”

The house spilled over with a growing reek of bodies and old ale. And the smell of two sour-milky babes I took into our bed, so they wouldn’t have to join their parents and sleep next to cows. Women crammed into sleeping alcoves and men slumbered propped against walls, whole families living with our sheep, just to be here for this celebration. This joyous time, so close to the gods that Odin, Freya, Freyr seemed separated from us only by a thin veil of wool, gauzy as my shift. And yet entirely absent in my heart.

I wanted Betta, but she was always busy, mostly helping her Da. Bjarn tended a steady stream of men who’d been dislocated, cut, crushed and punched senseless in small fights that sprung up all over the yard, all through the week. He removed more than one sore tooth, too, from men and women who’d been waiting for Jul to see him. Betta, emphatically silent, bent her head to change bandages and bring ale and honey and herbs and water.

A flock of women ate meals together, and so Betta blended in. In fact, most times she dissolved into the background of the house. She avoided talking privately with me. It stung my heart, the way she was always asleep before I turned in, as if she planned it. Or she waited until I was asleep before coming into the bed herself. In the morning, I’d find her covers rumpled.

Brynhild was a distraction. She was fawned over and chatted at, with plans for a big wedding, until her bright red hair and bold laughter became a symbol of midsummer—the heat and sun seeming like a far country that we all believed we would someday reach. Magnus watched her with fascination and longing, afraid to speak, and I laughed fondly inside, thinking about his life with this spirited woman. I liked her after a while—the bold and sensible way she pushed most of the attention away. She kindly but firmly let everyone know she was not the blushing sort of bride-to-be.

But she was only of momentary interest. What I wanted was my best friend.

The party went on for over a week, becoming louder and more boisterous the drunker everyone got. It was hot and crowded, and I started to loathe even the new and fascinating voices. Moments after Betta cared for the sick and broken men, they would be drinking together again, laughing. Their gestures and sounds—such a sensual treat at first—became inescapable and overloud. Every few hours, my body and mind would spasm like a trapped animal, and I would stand abruptly and press my hands into my skirt to try not to growl. Sometimes, I’d go to the back mudroom and put on snowshoes and tramp around the house.

I counted my steps along the back of the house, a habit now, and laughed as I fell and sunk into deep swells of whiteness. I smiled as I counted, because the total was coming out so different than my summer number. My steps were fewer in the knee deep snow, clumsy with the bulk of wooden nets tied to my feet.

I rounded the curve of the pantry and ahead of me was Heirik’s room. The outside shell of it. I groped along and half walked, half lunged for it, and I placed my hand hard against the place where he probably sat right now on his bed.

He was so seldom seen, after the party’s first night. I missed his laugh and stolen touches over our game board. Missed the everyday moments from before this endless festival.

He came out a few times and got uncharacteristically drunk in the snow with a few of the men.

I wondered if he even bathed, and thought probably not, with so many people in our house and yard, the bath clogged with them night and day. Maybe he washed in the snow, in the woods, alone. Maybe he stole away to the cave. I imagined him drawing up scalding water in his cupped palms, pictured the slick curves of his body where it ran off him in runnels and turned to steam.

Here in reality, I leaned my cheek against the cold wall. Skeletal fingers of frosted, brown grass scraped my face, gently.

There were more little ones—raucous adults, too—who needed the songs and long stories that would fill up our dreams and let us sleep. Very late at night, after even the near-constant feasting and drinking and fighting died down, the clanks of ale cups became softer, the mood of the party more contemplative. Children would come together and sit on the floor, parents all around, and Hár would lean in and tell a story.

Tonight, he told of an explorer and raider named Hundr Blacktooth, “for he was truly that ugly.” I smiled. Hundr meant dog, a singular insult to a Viking man, though I liked the actual dogs I’d met.

Hár told us that Hundr was beloved by his loyal men, and he sailed with them to the glorious places of the world. Here Hár might as well have been describing the moon, having never been, as far as I knew, anywhere but Iceland. He told of many wonders, nonetheless. They went to the end of the known world, Hundr’s crew, where they traded for slippery cloth spun by insects and drink that could make a man fly. They went across the far sea, to a coast with white sand and cunning little shells of sea creatures that could fit in your hand. “And to Norway. Where there are cows as big as horses, and grass as tall as your old uncle.” He hovered one hand above his own head, and the kids laughed.

Hundr was an honorable and brave man, Hár said, and his ship bore him faithfully. “Its lines were sleek, seams well sealed, and its sail great enough to fill the sky.” He’d had many adventures and battles in that boat, and so Hár detoured to tell the children about them, taking as much time as possible to put every one of them to sleep. We held the little ones and rocked them in the smoky den. Hár met each of their wide open eyes with a steely gaze, commanding them to sleep and dream. I started to sway with tiredness myself, and I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

A pair of fearsome birds lived in the ravens’ nest atop Hundr’s mast. One day the birds returned from roaming the sky, and their cries were loud and wingbeats mighty. Hundr took up his sword to defend himself and his men.

Hár continued, “One of the ravens croaked at Hundr as he swiped with his sword, ‘Come follow. You will see.’ And a great eel rose alongside the ship. It swam to the prow and it drew the ship’s dragon, who was very hungry after a dozen years at sea. And so Hundr came to an unknown land with trees as white as snow and sand as black as the chief’s beard.” The children didn’t laugh this time, and I thought they must be rapt and a little scared. I thought of Heirik’s beard, and how dark the sand was on that beach, where I arrived.

“Do you know what Hundr found there?”

There were a couple guesses, and a boy called out “a smelly troll.” Áki, a little boy of about three, added “A troll!” as though it was his original idea. Hár laughed with the sudden delight that sometimes exploded from him. “Nei,” he told us. “He found a beautiful woman.”

There were great groans from the boys.

“This is a good story, já” Hár defended. “Because she was no ordinary woman.” Kit made an indignant sound, and I opened my eyes to see Hár laughing silently.

“Her hair was spun of copper,” he continued, “her skin aglow like a midnight snowfield. And her eyes were of the most fertile farm, the exact green of grass waving in the sun.”

The children’s mouths hung open in concentration. Áki picked his nose.

Hár went on to describe how the woman led Hundr through the trees and to a sunlit, yellow clearing where there stood a strong house. The house was for him, but he would have to stay and clear the land and farm, leaving his men to sail his ship without him. While Hundr very much liked the beautiful woman, and went so far as to kiss her—which was as glorious as entering Valhalla—he said no to the house and farm. “Because he had a stupid idea.” Hár faltered, started again. “He had this idea that things would be best if he returned to the sea.”

He gathered himself fully and went on. “That night, Hundr slept on the deck of his ship where it sat on the sand, and he was sore and tossed and turned. And he was visited by one of his mad ravens. The bird woke him with a beat of its great, black wing. And then it spoke to him. In dönsk tunga, já?” The
Danish tongue
.

The bird told Hundr that she was the goddess Lofn, in raven form. It made me think of
loaf
and
oven
, the English words blending into a sound that was yeasty and plush. I began to slide into familiar, sensual bread dreams.

“The goddess of unions of the heart and body,” Hár explained, and his low and resonant voice drew me back. “Lofn told Hundr he should stay and farm the land. That if he did, an endless green valley would be his and his daughters’ and granddaughters’. But he drew his sword and chased the bird off the boat a second time.”

I opened my eyes with a start and found I’d missed some piece of the story. Some oaf among Hundr’s men had accidentally set fire to his ship, and it had burned until it was a black hunk on the sand. Hundr saw the raven wheeling overhead and understood, in a moment of clarity, that the fire-setter’s great stupidity was topped only by his own. I turned to look around the smoky shadows, and saw that Áki lay with soft abandon, asleep on his father’s lap. Wetness glinted at the corners of his pillowy mouth.

Lofn had done what she always did, the thing that was her special skill, her superpower. She had removed all obstacles—including Hundr’s ship and even his own stubbornness—so that he could have a union with the beautiful woman.

Hundr wanted the woman then, and he worried it might be too late, so he ran and crashed through the deep, dark woods to the farmhouse in the yellow clearing, where it was suddenly daytime. The woman stepped lightly from the door in a delicate dress, a single braid falling over her shoulder. Her form was finer than the curve of his ship.

Hár paused, and for a second his eyes rose to look deep into the dark of the house. It was as though he saw the ethereal woman in the flesh, her dress cool and white, a bare foot stepping from her farmhouse door. He shook it off, but his voice was a little broken.

“Hundr knelt before her and bent his head, holding not the sword of a raider but the ax of a farmer.” Hár leaned forward with his elbows on his knees to almost whisper the greatest part of the story to the children who remained awake. “And the woman was revealed as Lofn herself, who had spied Hundr on his boat and wanted him for her own, no matter that he was ugly as a boar.” The girls all gasped and the boys shook their heads and said nei. One of them tossed a little chunk of dirt at Hár’s feet in protest, and the old man gave him a look of steel, making the boy sink back onto his bench.