The Tricking of Freya

by Christina Sunley

  "Did he go to jail?"

  "They didn't have jails in those days. If you committed a crime, you paid your victim or his family money for it. And if it was a really bad crime, you got exiled to the interior of the island, to wander the lava fields and glaciers, and battle trolls and ghosts. But Egil was too young to be exiled."

  "So what happened to him?"

  "Absolutely nothing. His mother was proud of him, in fact. She said he had the makings of a real Viking."

  I thought about Egil a lot in the days that followed. Especially at night while I was trying to stay awake so I wouldn't fall into a coma. Why did Egil brag about killing someone? Why was his mother proud? My own mother, I was certain, would not be proud of me. If she lived. And if she died? Maybe I wouldn't get sent to jail after all. Maybe instead I would be banished to the lava fields of Iceland, left to the mercy of gruesome trolls and raging ghosts.

  On the third night Uncle Stefan came over with a whole whitefish, harborfresh, mashed potatoes, and green beans. It was the first real food I'd eaten since Mama's accident.

  Birdie looked awful. She wasn't wearing any makeup. Her skin was pale, her eyes were red. "Haggard," she said, as she sat down at the dinner table. "I look haggard. An old hag."

  "Nonsense," Uncle Stefan protested.

  But Birdie ignored him. "I had one of my dreams," she said. "The night before it happened."

  "Before what happened?"

  Birdie looked at Stefan as if he were an idiot. "Before Anna fell. I dreamt that I was back on our old farm, and I was standing outside in the sheep pen-

  "But you didn't have sheep on the farm, Ingibjorg. Only cows."

  "I know that! It's a dream, Stefan. So then who drives up but Anna. She opens the door to the car and steps out, and at the same moment, I open the door to the sheep pen. Then all the sheep come rushing out and trample her."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "There's no why in dreams, Freya." She turned hack to Stefan. "So?"

  "So what?"

  "So, you have to admit, even a skeptic like yourself. That was a prophetic dream."

  "You know what your father would have said about it, Ingibjorg? Draum- s ro !"

  "What's draumskrok?" I asked. It was a hard word to pronounce with a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  "Dream nonsense," Stefan explained.

  Birdie left the table in a huff.

  Stefan and I cleared the dishes, then I sat with him in the parlor while he smoked his pipe. I thought maybe he was waiting for Birdie to come back downstairs, but he seemed content enough to sit there with me, side by side on the moss green couch. He asked if I would like to light his pipe, and then if I would blow out the match.

  "You must be worried, elskan, about your mother."

  I nodded, too choked to speak.

  "I think she'll come out of this just fine." He draped his long arm around my shoulders and gave a squeeze. Even though he was skinny, his body felt solid, something I could lean against. I wondered if that's what a father might feel like.

  That night I woke screaming in my sleep. A sheep was biting at my ankles with its rubbery black lips. Birdie heard me cry out and came to me from the next room. "A sheep dream?" she asked. I must have spoken in my sleep. I nodded.

  "Oh, those sheep dreams can be awful. I know. But think about it, baby. Those sheep never hurt a soul."

  During the week my mother was in the hospital, I woke at least once a night with bad dreams. I dreamt Amma Sigga fell out of my maple tree. I dreamt the ambulance men were piling broken cups onto stretchers and racing them out the door. If I woke screaming, Birdie would soon appear at my bedside. "I'm gonna wash that dream right out of your head," she'd sing, and scrub my scalp with her fingers like she was giving me a shampoo.

  One night I dreamt that my mother was curled in a ball floating on the lake. I didn't call out. I woke up silent. I went across the hall to Birdie's room. She wasn't typing, for once. She was sitting on her bed, looking out the window. I stood next to her. We could see the full moon above the lake, its reflection floating on the surface. Birdie was crying. I knew why without asking.

  "It's not your fault," I said, stroking her lank blond hair. "It was that fylgja."

  As each day passed that Mama didn't wake up, Birdie sank further into gloom. The house smelled close, days of dishes heaped in the sink. I'd been wearing the same clothes every day. I had no clean underwear. Who needs underwear? Gloom-Birdie said. I hadn't had a bath. I'd eaten no vegetables. Mama would not be happy. But Mama didn't know. Mama was sleeping.

  Time passed slowly. I wandered the house, into the bedroom Mama had shared with Sigga. I opened her dresser drawers and took out each item-the simple cotton blouses, the knee-high stockings-and refolded them clumsily. I climbed into her bed and discovered underneath the pillow her nightgown with the embroidery across the chest. If her nightgown was here, then what was she wearing in the hospital? I wrapped the gown around Foxy so I could sleep with it at night. Tracing the embroidery with my fingers, I wondered if the doctors were trying hard enough to wake Mama up. Couldn't someone let loose a super scream into Mama's ear? Or jump up and down on her bed? Mama's best friend, Vera, told me on the phone that God would be the one to wake Mama up. I imagined him with his great white beard and a megaphone: TIME TO WAKE UP! TIME TO WAKE UP!

  How could Mama eat and drink if she was sleeping all the time? Was she dreaming? Was she lonely? Did she miss me in her sleep?

  "Mama tucks me in every night," I instructed Birdie. "Mama sings me the church songs. Mama tells me to brush my teeth."

  "Mama does this," Birdie mimicked. "Mama does that."

  Through the gaps in the lace curtains I caught sparkling glimpses of day. Sometimes Birdie got sick of my moping and ordered me to play in the yard. I'd stand on the lawn remembering like a dream teaching myself to spin back home in Connecticut. I couldn't imagine it anymore, whirling myself around, or even climbing a tree. My legs and arms felt heavy, my feet dragged when I walked. I lay down on my stomach and pressed my face into the grass. If Mama woke up again, would she still love me?

  On the sixth day after my cartwheel, at 7:38 p.m., Mama woke up.

  "Why did she wake up at night," I wanted to know, "instead of in the morning?"

  Birdie stared at me in disbelief. "It doesn't matter when, silly. She woke up! She woke up!"

  Birdie grabbed me by the hand and pulled me through the house. "Anna's awake!" she chanted. Anna's awake!" I sang it too, but I couldn't bring myself to call my mother Anna. So Birdie sang "Anna's awake" and I sang "Mama's awake" at the same time. We ended up on the green couch, gasping for air. Then I ran to the front door. No sign. I sat down on the stoop. It was nearly nine o'clock, and the sunset still glowed behind the trees. I turned my head back and forth, up the street then down. Not a single car in motion, or person. Gimli was tucked in for the night.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Waiting for Mama."

  It turned out Mama wasn't coming home that night, or the next night either. She would check out of the hospital tomorrow, then stay at Vera's for a few days while she regained her strength. But Sigga-Sigga would be home tomorrow night.

  "And look at you. Pale as a ghost." For the first time since Mama's accident Birdie opened all the curtains in the house, and the windows. "Air," she proclaimed. "Air, and light, and water. Tomorrow we're going to the beach."

  The lake was blue as the glass ink bottle Birdie kept on her windowsill, sheening with light, and so big you couldn't see the other side of it. It seemed more ocean than lake. The beach ran as far as I could see in either direction, wide and flat and filled with people. Family after family packed together on the sand. I could hear the high-pitched shrieks of kids and gulls.

  "The mob has descended," Birdie proclaimed. "Summer's here, and all the city folk swarm to the lake at Gimli like lemmings to the sea. Welcome to Gimli, home of the gods, your place in the sun! You don't see them up here in winter, when the lake is covered with ic
e and the wind'll bite your nose right off." But she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she seemed happy again, fluttering down the beach in her floral jacket like a wild pink kite. We took off our shoes and the sand felt warm and rough on the skin of my virgin soles. I carried my sneakers with the laces tied together, twirling them in my hand. Birdie wove in and out among the people on their blankets, kids racing back and forth, women in swimsuits lying on beach chairs. I followed in her wake, struggling to keep up. Sometimes she waved a hand here or there, but she never stopped to chat. Finally she picked out a spot at the far end of the beach.

  "Far from the madding crowds," she said. The crowds didn't seem mad to me, but I said nothing. I didn't want to wreck her mood; I'd seen by then what Birdie's moods could do. Birdie spread a plaid blanket on the sand, then held a towel around me while I changed into my blue checkered swimsuit. I thought of it then, for just an instant: my sailor cap. Birdie forgot my sailor cap.

  Birdie lay down on the blanket and pulled a book out of her bag. "Go play, sweetie," she said. Instead I sat on the sand. Playing, like spinning, didn't feel right somehow. As if I wasn't a kid anymore.

  "All right then," Birdie said. "How about a swim?"

  I shook my head.

  "Okay, scowly face, I'll go by myself." She stood up and slipped out of her jacket. Underneath she wore a two-piece bathing suit. I'd wanted a twopiece suit, but Mama said it wasn't proper attire. Then Birdie was off, kicking sand in a spray behind her, and without even stopping to test the temperature with her toe like my mother always did, she rushed straight in and dove her whole body under, headfirst. She disappeared for a long time. I got worried and ran down to the water's edge. Finally she popped up, far far out, and waved at me. I felt silly standing by myself on the shore, so I waded in a bit. The water felt like a slippery new skin covering my feet and legs. I gasped when it reached my crotch, then waded deeper until it licked my armpits. I held my arms in the air and shivered. Large white clouds hung in the sky and I thought of Birdie's dream, of Mama being trampled under the puff of sheep. I looked for Birdie, but she was gone, under.

  "Birdie!" I screamed. A few seconds later she shot up behind me, shaking the water off her shoulders like a dog. "Do you like to float?"

  "I'm not good at floating. I sink."

  "Well if a giant like me can float I'm sure a little elf like you can too." She placed her hands on my back and told me to lean backwards. The beach dropped away, then blue sky, clouds, and sun tilted into view. The sun burned a yellow hole in my eyes, so I squinted them shut. Birdie held me with one hand at the base of my spine and one between my shoulders. I let myself rest solidly in her hands, the water lapping over my midriff. "Think air," Birdie said, and it worked, I started floating on my own, off her hands, for just a few seconds. The sun felt hot on my body and I seemed to be drift ing, like it wasn't Birdie's hands anymore but the water itself bearing me up. Brightly colored shapes floated into my mind: fragments of broken cups. Mama curled into a comma on the water's surface. I snapped open my eyes and tried to stand, my legs churned frantically for the lake bottom, but I couldn't find it. Was I over my head? Then Birdie caught me by the waist and set me upright.

  "You said you'd hold me!"

  "I was right here," Birdie insisted. "I'm right here."

  For lunch we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into triangles and slurped orange juice from a red thermos. "Soon," Birdie predicted, "you'll be floating like a boat and swimming like a fish. Did you know Freyja was the daughter of a sea god?"

  The Freyja comment caught me off guard. My father had been an accountant, not a sea god, so I knew she wasn't talking about me. "Freyja who?"

  "Freyja who? Freyja who?" Birdie spat a mouthful of orange juice onto the sand. She put her sandwich down and turned her full attention to me. "The goddess Freyja, that's who! The goddess Freyja has no last name. Hasn't Anna told you anything about your namesake?"

  I felt the same as when I'd admitted that I'd never eaten ponnukokur, as if I'd gotten my mother in a kind of trouble I couldn't quite fathom. "I know about Freyja. I just got confused is all."

  "What, exactly, do you know about Freyja?"

  It felt like a test and I couldn't think of anything. What had my mother told me? Freyja is a goddess. Gods and goddesses are powerful and people pray to them. I'd always imagined Freyja like Supergirl, flying over Iceland in a red-and-blue cape, tiny people far below on their knees gazing up at her, hands clasped in prayer. "She was super," I said.

  "She was super all right!" Birdie seemed pleased. "Let me tell you a few things about Freyja. Would you like that?"

  I would. I lay on my stomach, my pale skinny legs parallel to Birdie's long tan ones. When it got too hot we drifted down to the water and Birdie held me while I floated, but I never stopped listening, not for a moment. In those hours I forgot all about my crime.

  "Freyja's father," Birdie began, "was none other than the sea god Njord, master of wind and waves. Her mother was the earth goddess Nerthus, and her brother was the fertility god Freyr."

  "But what was Freyja the goddess of?" I asked. I was sitting up now, legs crossed Indian style on the edge of the blanket, sun hot on my shoulders while I funneled sand from one hand to another like an hourglass.

  "Freyja," Birdie proclaimed, "was the goddess of many things. First of all, she was the goddess of love, it was Freyja people turned to for matters of the heart, and she was the goddess too of birth, often invoked when women went into labor. Freyja was also the goddess of magic, able to see into the future. It was Freyja who taught Odin himself the art of prophecy. Although gods and goddesses were not the only ones who had this power. A few humans did too, mostly women, and such a women was called a volva. The volva sat on a high platform, dressed in cat-skin clothing, because it was believed that cats would escort her to other worlds. The volva would close her eyes, her head would sway, sometimes she would wave her hands, or her magical staff the word volva means wand-bearer-and then she was on her way, traveling to other worlds, to consult with the spirits and then return to her audience with news of the future. And who do you think it was that a volva would turn to for inspiration and guidance?"

  "Frey] a?"

  "Indeed. And not only was Freyja a seer extraordinaire, she was a shapeshifter as well. She could turn herself into a bird and travel great distances, into other worlds, wearing a cloak of falcon feathers. She rode around heaven in a chariot pulled by wild cats, and on her neck she wore the Brising necklace, which everyone was always trying to steal from her because of its great power. Oh, some giant or other was always trying to carry her off, but Freyja called the shots when it came to men."

  Birdie paused for a breath. I knew that behind her cat-eye sunglasses her eyes were large and spinning. "The trickster god Loki accused Freyja of sleeping with various elves and gods, including her brother, Freyr. And on the cusp of the conversion to Christianity a rogue Christian poet in Iceland referred to Freyja as a wild pig in heat, a she-goat bitch roaming the countryside. A blatant attempt to denigrate the fertility cults, which had a lot of staying power, let me tell you! Long after the so-called loyal followers of Thor and Odin traded them in for the one God almighty, pockets of Freyja worshipers continued on in sacred groves, until the Christians started calling them witches and their cats familiars, claiming they used their magic not only to predict harm but to cause it. Oh, blasphemy! But so it goes, when one religion gets taken over by the next, one god substituted for another. Fickle we are, fickle fickle fickle!"

  By this time I was completely lost. Fickle denigrate blasphemy rogue bitch. It seemed Birdie had forgotten I was only seven, forgotten I was even there. Had Birdie said that Freyja was a witch? Witches were bad and I didn't want to be named after one. I lay down again, pressing my face into the sandy beach blanket, but out of the corner of my eye I watched Birdie talking, her hands gesturing in the air, her voice high-pitched and excited, the words so fast and strange I couldn't understand them at all anymore and soon
they were swallowed up into a strange seashell roar deep in my eardrums. A cloud eased itself over the sun and I felt a shiver travel up between my shoulder blades. I sat up and my teeth began chattering, slamming jackhammers so loud it broke Birdie out of her trance.

  "Baby, are you cold? How can you be cold?"

  "I'm hot."

  Birdie took off her sunglasses and stared at me. Her eyes were all pupil, holes of black with only a tiny perimeter of blue. "Oh my God," she said. "You're a lobster."

  Hardly anyone was left on the beach. The last families were packing up, trudging back to their cottages. I couldn't walk; sand rubbing against the burned soles of my feet made me scream. So Birdie carried me piggyback, trading the beach bag back and forth between hands. "We forgot my sailor cap," I whispered in her ear. "Mama makes me wear my cap. Mama doesn't let me stay in the sun long. Mama puts lotion on me so I don't burn. Mama-"

  "Enough Mama," Birdie snapped. "Mama isn't here. You're stuck with Birdie now, okay? And next time maybe you could think of telling me these things first? Because I don't know you, Freya. I've only known you a week. So help me out here. Don't keep secrets." Her words had sharp edges, like broken pieces of china and glass. I wanted to plug my ears but I couldn't because I had to hold on. I gripped the silver chain around Birdie's neck. Freyja had worn a necklace too. The Brising necklace.

  "Let go," Birdie demanded as we climbed up the stairs to the front door of the house. "You're choking me!" Sigga's car was back in the driveway. Even though Birdie admitted nothing, I knew she was scared of what Sigga would do when she saw me. Where my chest pressed against Birdie's back I could feel her body trembling against mine.

  Sigga dunked me in a tub full of water so cold I shrieked. I tried to squirm out, but she held me down, one broad wrinkled hand covering half my skinny chest. My chest and stomach were the only white parts. The rest of my skin was as red as a brand-new pair of Keds. "We have to break the fever, elskan," Sigga said calmly. I stopped resisting then and lay my head back in an icy float. Think air. Then I was standing on the bath mat while she blotted me gently dry. She took Noxzema from the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. The jar was blue like the glass of the lake and the cream inside was white as cloud. She slathered it onto my body with long strokes until the fumes of menthol seared my nostrils.