The Tricking of Freya

by Christina Sunley

  "Me," Saemundur said, "I prefer true outlaws. Like Grettir. Surviving for years outside of civilization, in the wilds of Iceland. Doing battle with monstrous ghosts."

  "Were they real?"

  "The outlaws were. I don't know about the ghosts."

  "How do you know?"

  "I've seen evidence. There are some lava caves near here where outlaws used to live. You can see the bones of the sheep they stole from nearby farms littering the cave floor."

  "Lava caves?"

  "Long tubes of lava. Filled with stalagmites and stalactites. Some are shining with ice."

  "You've been inside?"

  "Sure I have. I'll take you there."

  I thought he was teasing hut he wasn't. And he did.

  17

  Our last evening at the summerhouse Ulfur sat down at the dinner table with a cup of coffee and opened Birdie's Word Meadow. "I'm beginning my final review of Ingibjorg's manuscript," he announced. "Tomorrow morning Ingibjorg and I will be discussing the work. Perhaps, Saemundur, you will take Freya out touring for a few hours?"

  "In other words, scram," said Birdie, in a burst of nervous laughter. "Beat it, make yourselves scarce!" .

  Oh, she was in high spirits. You see, Cousin, your mother expected nothing but the best from Ulfur's review of her work. Still, there was a particular edge to her energy that I hadn't seen before. I was practically as nervous as Birdie. Word Meadow, her life's work, to meet the eyes of the world at last!

  "I'm on the verge of great things," she confided to me on the way out to the jeep. "Greatness, even." Since she couldn't bear to sit in the summerhouse while Ulfur read her manuscript, she'd decided the three of us would venture out for another clandestine jeep driving lesson.

  "Lava," Birdie said, the moment she got behind the wheel. "I want to try a lava field."

  I was surprised Saemundur agreed to it. But the evening sky had cleared-it was blue, Cousin, bright brilliant blue-and the sun was truly, fully shining. A blue sky at night makes anything seem possible. And Birdie had mastered all the basics, proven herself an agile driver. She could ford a stream, maneuver up and down steep rocky slides that could hardly be called roads. I guess Saemundur felt she was ready.

  I don't know where he took us, exactly. There is no scarcity of lava fields in the vicinity of Thingvellir Lake. Wherever it was, I do remember Saemundur explaining that the lava was thousands of years old, worn down and smoothed over. Hardly as sharp and craggy as the sites of more recent eruptions, like Laki or Heimaey. The rock was blackened, humped, and rutted, and driving it was akin to maneuvering an obstacle course on a foreign planet. Saemundur insisted on demonstrating first. "If you crash this jeep, Ingibjorg, I'll have to take the blame, and I don't know what my father might do. Disown me, maybe. Might not be a bad thing, I suppose."

  I was nearly as nervous as Saemundur when Birdie took the wheel. I had visions of the jeep tipping over backwards, turning somersaults, spinning off the edge of a lava hillock. But Birdie was focused, surprisingly so, given that Ulfur was reviewing her precious Word Meadow at that very moment. She guided the jeep slowly over the first bumps of lava, then eased it along a slanting rut. For me as a passenger it was nerve-racking, but not nearly as nerve-racking as being stuck in the summerhouse with Birdie while Ulfur read her manuscript. In contrast it was nearly fun.

  "Am I ready for Askja?" Birdie asked Saemundur after an hour. I thought she was joking, but he took her seriously.

  "The drive to Askja is much more difficult than this."

  "Are you saying I couldn't do it?"

  "Oh, I would never say that. You seem capable of anything."

  "Indeed I am." Birdie laughed. And indeed she was. She turned the jeep toward the road that led to the summerhouse, but in the end could not resist one last, sharp crevice.

  "I wouldn't try it," Saemundur warned.

  Birdie ignored him and eased the jeep over a rubble-strewn slope and down into a deep gulley. I noticed everything seemed darker. Had the sun finally set? I craned my head out the window and saw bulky clouds rapidly filling the sky overhead. A crack of thunder, and then rain was falling in hard sheets that clattered against the jeep's metal armor.

  "We better get home," Saemundur urged.

  But there was no way forward. Birdie had dumped the jeep into a dead end. Sheer rock wall loomed in front of us, with no room to turn around.

  "Disaster," Saemundur said. "Let me take the wheel."

  "Let me try," Birdie pleaded. "Please. I have to learn." I was surprised by how desperate she sounded.

  "Take it slow then."

  Birdie shifted into reverse, then pushed steadily on the accelerator, but the jeep resisted going upslope.

  "Harder."

  Now the wheels began to spin. The engine made a grinding sound.

  "Cut it."

  She gunned harder.

  "I said cut it now."

  The jeep sputtered still and we sat for a moment listening to the rain. There was no way out. I envisioned us abandoning the jeep, tramping through the sodden lava field at midnight, announcing to Ulfur we'd dumped his precious jeep in a lava pit.

  "I'll check into things." Saemundur opened his door, but Birdie put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back in.

  "Let Freya do it," Birdie said.

  "Freya?" Saemundur was incredulous.

  "Yes, Freya," Birdie insisted. "She has to learn how to do these things."

  Let me tell you, Cousin, I had no inclination to climb out of the jeep and go poking around the wheels in the pouring rain. That had always been Saemundur's role when the jeep got stuck, and I'd been happy to let him do it. Now, for some reason, Birdie was determined to put me to the test. Afraid of looking like an American princess in front of Saemundur, I complied. Even in the rain it was easy enough to see what had gone wrong. Our drive down the slope had loosened a mini landslide, and rubble had piled up thick behind the wheels. I felt important as I reported this information to Birdie.

  "Then clear it," was all she said.

  "I'll do it," Saemundur offered.

  "Freya," Birdie insisted. She wanted to see what I was capable of, and I was as driven as ever to try to please her. Back in Connecticut I was known as being strong for a girl. Why shouldn't I be able to clear some rubble?

  It's one of my sharpest memories from the trip: crouched behind the jeep, picking up stones and throwing them to the side, kick-pushing with my foot the heavy ones, soaked through but triumphant when Birdie finally maneuvered the jeep back up to solid ground again. I scrambled up the slope and climbed in.

  "That's my girl," Birdie said.

  My teeth chattered wildly the whole drive home.

  Who slept well that night?

  Not Birdie, awaiting Ulfur's morning verdict on her life's work. Not Ulfur, dreading the delivery, as I now know he must have been. And certainly not me, for reasons unrelated to Word Meadow. For reasons known as Saemundur. I had not forgotten that in the morning he and I would be on our own. It was Birdie's big moment; she wanted no teenagers, sulking or otherwise, to sully it. So we would make ourselves scarce. We would scram. And then? I had never been alone with a boy before. What exactly I expected I don't remember, if I even knew at the time. Something. I expected Something. And that something made it impossible to sleep. Below me on the bottom bunk Birdie sat, journal propped on her knees, scribbling the interminable night into dawn.

  Saemundur seemed unusually hress that morning, as Birdie commented, lively and in good spirits.

  "I need to be hress," Saemundur replied. "Today I am going to be the leid- sogumadur."

  "What's a leidsogumadur?" I asked.

  "Road-story-man. A tour guide for the American Princess."

  He was making fun of me again. Was that how the day would be? I swirled cream into my bowl of skyr, slowly and not once looking up.

  Birdie laughed. "And where will you take our princess?"

  "Yes," Ulfur prompted. "What is your itinerary, Son?"
r />   "Hveragerdi. To see the thermal greenhouses."

  I sucked a spoonful of skyr into my mouth with a sour burst. I'd forgotten to sugar it. Hveragerdi. I felt vaguely disappointed. Greenhouses, thermal or otherwise, did not appeal to my teenage imagination.

  "Be back by noon," Ulfur warned. "One o'clock at the latest. We need to pack up."

  It was our last Summerhouse Day. We would spend a day or so back in Reykjavik, then head east with Ulfur to try to track down Olafur's lost letters.

  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, mi
nd 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."