We left them sitting at the table, Ulfur and Birdie, facing each other, the
breakfast dishes cleared, the manuscript between them.
Good luck, Word Meadow. My last thought before heading out the door.
Saemundur and me up front together in the jeep. That was a first. In the
backseat a cloth knapsack with our lunches. At the gate Saemundur
stopped and I jumped out, swinging the gate open, then tying it shut again.
See? I'm no princess. I half-skipped to the jeep, but just as I reached for the
door to climb back in, the jeep jerked forward, then sputtered to a stop. I
raced to catch up, reached for the door again and the jeep lurched forward again. This time it didn't stop. I stood in disbelief as Saemundur disappeared down the dirt road in a cloud of dust. He was leaving me! He had
no intention of taking me anywhere! I was ditched. Dust and tears stung
my eyes. Where could I go? Not back to the summerhouse. Not while
Birdie and Ulfur were holding their all-important discussion. Forget them
all. I would walk by myself to Thingvellir Lake. And I wasn't coming back
either. Let them come look for me.
By the time I'd crossed the road, the jeep had turned around and was
skidding to a stop beside me. Saemundur laughing, his wide mouth clownmocking. I kept walking.
"Hop in, Freya!
"It was only a joke!
"You are so serious, you know that? You are the most serious girl I have
ever met." He was driving along beside me. I wouldn't look at him. Only at
my sneakered feet treading gravel and to the left of my feet the wheels of
the jeep.
Whap! Saemundur had stopped the jeep just ahead of me and opened
the passenger door. Just in time for me to walk into it.
"I'm sorry, Freya. I didn't mean it. Just a joke. And not a good one. But
come on. We have to get going now."
"I don't want to go to Hveragerdi," I said. But I climbed in anyway.
"That's fine," Saemundur said. "Because we're not going there."
"We're not?"
"No. Though I'd better tell you something about the greenhouses, in
case my father quizzes us when we return. He doesn't trust me, you know.
And why should he?"
That was a lot for me to take in. Not only had Saemundur lied to his father and Birdie but now I would have to lie too? "Where are we going then?"
"You don't remember?"
"Remember what?"
"What I told you."
He was teasing me again. It was too complicated, this being alone with
a boy.
"The lava caves, silly. Remember, I told you I would take you there."
"But why did you lie to your father?"
"Because I can. And it's fun. And because he wouldn't let us go. He
thinks it's too far a drive."
"Is it?"
"If you take the long way it is. Not if you take the shortcut through the
glacier pass. It's called Kaldidalur. Cold Valley. It's the high road between
Thingvellir and Husafell. He thinks it's dangerous."
"Why?"
"Snow."
"In August?"
"Oh yes, sometimes they have to close it. But I've driven it many times.
It's spectacular. You'll see."
And I did. Saemundur drove fast, twice as fast as when Ulfur was in the
car, as fast it seemed as anyone could go on a surface that was nothing like
what I knew as road. Once we hit a rock and the jeep bounced off it, careening sideways. In a flash Saemundur guided the wheel straight with his
long wiry arms, then grinned.
"You're not scared, are you? I can slow down if you want."
"I'm not scared." It was the truth. I didn't want him to slow down. If anything scared me it was how unscared I was. Dozens of glacial rivers and
streamlets scissored back and forth across the road, but I'd become used to
fording them. Marna! I thought as Saemundur barreled the jeep through a
particularly deep stream. Mama, look me now!
Recklessness arose in me. No one knows where I am. Not Mama, of
course, or Sigga. Not Birdie or Ulfur either. For the first time in my life, no
one on the entire planet could say where I was. And I liked it. Oh, how I
liked it!
I mark that moment as the beginning of my adolescence.
It began to rain. We passed Egilsafangi, the grasslands where travelers can
rest their horses. And a cone-shaped tuff mountain called Fanntofell,
Home of Giants. The rain turned freezing as we climbed higher toward the
glaciers. Only once did we stop on our mad drive to the lava caves, at a
cairn where travelers back when travelers came by foot or on horsebackwere expected to compose a verse and leave it inside a sheep's leg bone for
the next traveler to find. We climbed out of the jeep. The cairn was twice as
tall as Saemundur, the land around it rubble. Stones and nothing growing.
As we circled the cairn, sleet turned to snow. I stuck my tongue out to
catch some flakes.
"Is that an American thing? Eating snow?"
"Every day," I joked back. "We lick our freezers inside out."
"Then you will be right at home here in Iceland."
Every direction I turned my head was another glacier. I saw more glaciers
in one morning than most people see their entire lives. Saemundur knew
them all by name, like old friends. The white tops of the glaciers melded
into the white underbelly of the freezing sky. And everywhere the ground
was just stones. Nothing could gram here, I thought. Then I looked down and
saw the tiniest flower possible sprouted among the rubble, pink petals
tipped with ice. Land of fire and ice: if you have heard anything of Iceland,
Cousin, it is probably that phrase. Hackneyed but utterly apt. According to
Saemundur-and I was never sure when to believe him volcanoes lurked
under many of the glaciers. When such a volcano erupted, well, there was
fire-and-ice havoc to be reckoned with.
I left myself an invisible message in the beinakerling: Return to this
place.
Hours.
I don't know.
Maybe three or even five. We had no watches. There was no sun or
moon. No stars.
Surtr is the giant who set the world ablaze. Hellir means cave. Surts-
hellir was the name of our cave.
He took my hand in the cave. Saemundur. Eye-moon-lure.
One flashlight between us. We walked we stood we crouched we knelt we
crawled on our bellies, we lay on our backs gazing up. We walked more.
"You know where you're going." I tried not to make it a question.
"I've been here a million times."
"You know the way out?"
"Of course!"
"You won't ... leave me?"
"You don't trust me, do you?"
Trust him? After he duped me into getting stoned? After he lied so artfully to Ulfur and Birdie? After he left me in the dust outside the summerhouse? Of course I trusted him. Or rather, I trusted myself to him. The way
metal trusts magnet. Trust in these cases is not something you do. It's something that happens to you. I let him take my hand. I let him lead me through
the lightless caverns.
Stalagmites grow up, stalactites hang down. Saemundur showed me a
pair that nearly kissed, the down-flung tip of one grazing the up-thrust tip
of the other. Only an icicle's breath between them.
Away from his father, Saemundur knew things. How the crater
Jokulkrokur had cascaded molten lava between the glaciers Langjokull and
Eiriksjokull all the way down to the river Hvita, forming the lava field called
Hallmundarhraun, riddled with caves. Outlaws lived here, back in the tenth
century. See the stone-built walls. And animal bones.
Sitting side by side on Saemundur's slicker, leaning against rough cave wall. Swirls of lava you could stroke with your hand. Saemundur switched
off the flashlight, introducing me for the first time in my life to pure dark.
Utter-black-of-the-universe dark. Soul dark, heart dark, mind dark. Left
with nothing but your breath. We sat in the dark breathing. Then Saemundur said, "This is real Iceland. The Iceland that existed before we humans arrived and that will be here long after we're gone. My father says if I
love the land so much I should go to university, study geology like my
brother. But you don't learn earth from books. When I was little I wanted to
be an aevyntyramadur."
Adventurer.
"But now I think I should be a guide. Take people to these places. Deep
into caves, onto glaciers, through hot lava fields."
"You'd be good at that."
"And what are you good at?"
Darkness. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Well then, what do you like to do?"
More darkness. "Write."
"What?"
"Write."
"No, I heard you the first time. I mean, what do you write? Poems? Stories?"
"Different things." I sounded like an idiot to myself.
"Then you should do it. Be a famous writer like your grandfather Olafur.
Freya, Amerikuskald!"
He was teasing again. Me, a poet? Like Olafur, like Birdie? "Do you
think he liked it?"
Saemundur knew exactly what I was talking about, had followed my invisible train of thought. "I doubt it. I doubt it very much."
A rush of anger, defensiveness. "How can you say that? You've never
even read it. Birdie is a brilliant writer!"
"Undoubtedly. But my father is not a brilliant reader. Oh sure, the old
stuff, he can read that. He loves that. But anything after World War I? My
father's old school. He believes poetry should rhyme, like your grandfather's work. Traditional nineteenth-century stuff. And I don't imagine Birdie's poetry is very traditional, is it?"
"No. It doesn't rhyme, she's told me that much. I've never read any of it
though. She keeps her Word Meadow very secret. But it's beautiful, I know
it is."
"You don't have to convince me. It's my father who will need convincing."
"Why did he offer to read it then, if he doesn't like anything written after
World War I?"
"Oh, he won't admit to it. Doesn't want to look old-fashioned, out of
step. So he reads modern work, then condemns it."
"That's not very fair."
"I agree. He should just stick with the Dark Ages, where he belongs. The
Prime Minister of Sheepskin Manuscripts! And your vitlaus modern aunt.
Quite a pair!"
Vitlaus. Witless. Meaning: one, stupid; two, wrong; three, crazy. I knew
which meaning he meant. I'd heard it said of Birdie before, back in Gimli.
Birdie said it herself.
"Don't say that, okay?"
"You shouldn't be so afraid of her."
"I'm not. It's just that ... you have to stay on Birdie's good side."
"Why? You're always trying to please her. She makes you perform in
front of company like a pet poodle."
"She makes a lot of enemies. I don't want to be her enemy.'
"But you're just a little girl."
"I'm older than you think."
"Thirteen, right?"
"Yes, but ... I take care of my mother."
"What's wrong with her? Is she sick?"
"She had an accident."
"A car accident?"
A cartwheel accident. "Sometimes it's more like I'm the mother."
"Why didn't she come to Iceland?"
"She's afraid to fly."
"How sad for her."
"Where's your mother? Do you miss her?"
"She's in Spain. And no. I'm too busy hating her. Leaving me here with
him." He reached into the pocket of his jeans jacket and pulled out a small
bottle. A flask. Took a swig and passed it to me. "Try this."
"What is it?"
"Brennivin. Black Death."
The first sip I spat out. The second I swallowed. "I nearly killed her
once." And a third. And a fourth. "I didn't mean to. I did something. Something that ... scared her. And she fainted and fell and hit her head and
went into a ... What's the word in Icelandic? For someone who is sleeping
and can't wake up?"
"Daudada?"
Daudi, death. Da, trance.
"For six days. It made her ... different."
"Different how?"
"She gets dizzy, loses her balance. Walks with a cane. Her hair turned
white. She looks like a grandmother."
"What did you do?"
"At first I felt terrible. But I learned how to take care of her. I make sure
she has her sunglasses and her cane-"
"No, I mean, what did you do to make her fall?"
A fifth swallow, a sixth. "I don't know."
"You don't know what you did?"
"I don't know it in Icelandic."
"Describe it."
"It's stupid. A trick, something little kids do. American kids. Maybe Icelandic kids don't even do it."
"Do what?"
"You put your hands on the ground and spin your legs through the air.
Like a wheel."
"You were spinning like a wheel and this scared your mother?"
"Don't laugh. It's not funny."
"I'm sorry."
Seven eight nine. "I crashed into a cabinet made of glass. Mama thought
I was hurt. She saw me lying in the glass. And she fainted. Almost never
woke up."
My voice had turned hoarse, my throat strangled with sadness. My tears
fortunately invisible. I'd told it. I waited for what he might say.
"Take the last sip." Pressing the bottle to my mouth. I felt the cold glass
against my lips and shivered. Then the burn of Brennivin. "Here, put this
on." His blue jeans jacket with the bright patches. Now I was inside it,
smelling his smell.
"I want to show you something."
Ishellir: ice cave. Blue-white ice. Ice-floors ice-walls ice-ceilings. Ice fingers dripping down from the top of the cave, ice candles growing up. A curving ice chamber. A place you could slide into. Brennivin makes you slidey.
Luckily Saemundur caught me. I felt something on my lips again. Not bottle.
Lips soft as fox pelt. And then his tongue melting into mine. Nothing
like ice.
We kissed so long the tears dried on my cheeks.
I gashed my hand on a stalagmite scrambling out of the cave.
"Sauddrukkinn!" Saemundur teased.
"Sheep drinking?"
"Drunk as sheep. Let me see." Shone the flashlight on my wounded
palm. Kissed it.
In the jeep on the ride back to the summerhouse, drinking coffee from an
Esso station, Saemundur filled me in on everything I'd need to know about
the greenhouses at Hveragerdi, the place we hadn't seen that day. In case
we got quizzed. "The main thing is to act suitably impressed at the great
technological ingenuity of the Icelanders. Harnessing our mighty geothermal power for prosperity. My father loves that stuff." He took a long sip of
coffee from the cup, maneuvering the jeep's wheel one-handed. We were
speeding through the glaciers again, not even stopping at the bone cairn.
The view from the jeep was dreary white: white glaciers, white sky, and
nothing but rubble for miles around. Not every girl's idea of the perfect vacation. But I was happy, Cousin. I was in thirteen-year-old heaven.