by Ben Galley
Eyja tried not to scowl. “But uncle Almaerk liked fishing. I don’t like learning to be a priestess.”
“He never liked fishing, Eyja.” All trace of good humor was gone from her father’s face. “He seldom complained, and certainly not in front of you, but he never took to it the way I did, never learned to love the net and line. And yet,” her father sighed and looked out over the fjord, now dark under the emerging stars, “and yet he was a fisherman until the day he died. Because he could provide for his family. Because it was better than working another man’s land for scraps and bad silver.” Rikulf turned is attention to his daughter once more. “Do you see, now, my daughter, do you understand?”
Eyja nodded. Questions pulsed through her but she held her tongue.
“Come,” Rikulf said, scooping her up in his strong arms like a small child, “time to put your mother’s soup in your belly.”
The pig’s blood gushed hot over Eyja’s hand, the sharp blade drenched in crimson. The animal trembled on unsteady legs, its life flowing from its throat. Eyja stood aside as her assistants stepped in to capture blood in a bowl and keep the pig on its feet until the ceremony was complete.
Eyja closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of burnt ravenspur, waiting for the smell to fill her senses, to call forth the presence of Frigg. Footsteps alerted her to the presence of Linhild at her side. The girl placed three fingers on Eyja’s elbow, as she had been taught, and brought the bowl of blood to rest on Eyja’s waiting hand. Using the first two fingers of her right hand, Eyja dipped into the blood, still warm, still full of life, and then, her eyes closed to the bright day, drew her fingers down each side of her jaw, then down her throat until she came to her collarbone. There she paused, letting her skin mix with the pig’s blood, feeling her heart beat.
When she opened her eyes, her gaze fell upon the young woman. Slender, pale, one hand resting on her swollen belly, Eyja’s age. Eyja beckoned her forward and, dipping her fingers in the pig’s blood once more, drew the mark of Frigg’s protection on her left cheek.
“The goddess is pleased with your sacrifice,” Eyja said. The young woman allowed herself to smile. “Your son will grow strong and healthy. He will bring honor to his family.”
The young woman dipped her head in respect. “You have our thanks, priestess.”
Eyja waited until the young woman left the grove, then turned to the pig’s carcass. Linhild and the other apprentices were already preparing it for dismemberment and dissection. Eyja watched the children go about their task, wondering if she had ever looked that assured at their age. One of the children approached and gestured to the bowl Eyja still held.
“I’ll dispose of it, Tjorvi,” Eyja said. The boy nodded, his pale hair falling across his face. “Fix your hair, Tjorvi,” Eyja added. “You know Ljotolf will look for an excuse to punish you.” The boy hastily brushed back the loose strands, fingers suddenly nervous at Eyja’s invocation of the old priest. Eyja let herself smile. “Relax.” Tjorvi smiled back. A tentative, shy thing. “He’s not here. And I will not speak of it.” The boy’s smile grew, then vanished as Linhild called him over to help with the pig. The children left the grove, leaving Eyja alone with the pig’s blood.
She walked to the edge of the grove and, careful to pour in a steady stream that would not splatter on her robe, began to walk the uneven circle the birch trees made, emptying the bowl as she went. When she had completed the circuit, she cast her gaze up to the sky and took a deep breath, taking in the scents. Drying leaves. Distant smoke. Ravenspur, faint and ashy. And death. The smells of Eyja’s life.
“Accept this offering, Allfather,” Eyja murmured. “It is freely given. May it honor you. May it please you.” Eyja closed her eyes. “And may it return to be one with the earth, with the body of Ymir.” Ljotolf would have had her whipped for those words. A priest of Odin did not invoke the giant Ymir, did not dare utter such treason against the Allfather. But Eyja remembered the story her mother had taught her long ago. She remembered that before Odin, before the gods ruled in Asgard and watched over the nine realms, there was Ymir, the father of giants, and it was his mighty corpse, slain by Odin and his brothers, that formed the very earth she walked upon. The mountains, the forests, the rivers, everything was shaped from Ymir. And so Eyja honored the giant. Always in secret, always to herself, and never in place of Odin, but never forgotten.
After completing the ritual, Eyja cleansed her hands in the fjord and returned home. She ate a simple meal alone, as she had each evening for two years, brought in a load of firewood for the morning, and checked the meat drying in her small shed, a larger version of the old lean-to that had fallen down the spring after her father’s death. Then, smiling to herself, she slipped into the dark autumn night and made her way between cottages until at last she knocked quietly on the door of the large house adjacent to the blacksmith’s forge.
When no response came, Eyja turned to the forge and peered past the still-glowing embers.
“Kolli?”
She kept her voice low as she ducked under the roof of the forge.
“Kolli, are you there?”
A rustle answered her and Eyja pushed deeper into the forge, one hand on the knife at her belt.
“It’s me. It’s Eyja.”
The rustle intensified and Eyja shrank back for the span of a heartbeat, fearing a thief, until the sound of poorly muffled laughter broke the silence and brought her courage surging back. A girl’s laughter. Followed by the desperate plea for silence by another voice. A boy’s voice. Kollfinn Fjarvoldsson’s voice.
She found them entangled behind a hanging pelt, all pale sweat-dampened skin and long limbs. The girl, cheeks flushed with excitement rather than shame, did not bother to cover herself, but Eyja had eyes only for Kolli, who scrambled to disengage and pull a nearby blanket over himself.
“Eyja,” Kollfinn choked out.
“What are you hiding from me, Kollfinn?” Eyja said, finding her voice. Her heart raced, her lungs seemed to tremble, but she would not falter. She mustered every shred of scorn she possessed. “I know what you have down there. It’s not worth hiding.” Kollfinn tried to get to his feet but Eyja’s knife was out in a flash, the point aiming for the tender place below his left ear. “You know I know how to use this.” Kollfinn stayed on his hand and knees as Eyja looked to the girl at last. There was little chance the knife would scare her. The long-limbed girl had been training with shield and sword for nearly as long as Eyja had been apprenticed to Ljotolf and the gods. “Leave, Gunnleif.”
Gunnleif, unafraid, her laughter replaced by defiance, held Eyja’s gaze for a long moment. The knife handle in Eyja’s hand grew slick with sweat and she fought the urge to run.
“Go,” Eyja said, desperately clinging to the fierce anger she could hear in her voice, “or I will ask Frigg to curse the place between your legs.”
At last Gunnleif, without a glance at Kolli, rose. She lingered, gazing down at Eyja, as though to make certain Eyja was fully aware of her height, the fluid beauty of her dark hair, the fullness of her breasts, the gentle curve of her hips. Then, with all the grace of a fox, Gunnleif turned, retrieved her discarded dress, and walked into the night.
“You.” Eyja rounded on Kollfinn. “Up.” When Kolli hesitated, Eyja let the edge of the knife drift perilously close to his throat. He scrambled to rise, his blue-eyed gaze darting over Eyja’s shoulder in search of an escape. “Look at me, Kolli,” Eyja said. At last he met her gaze.
“If you cut me, Ljotolf will hear of it.”
Something like a laugh bubbled in Eyja’s throat. “You do not even mean to apologize?”
Kolli straightened his shoulders. “Why should I?”
The laugh turned bitter on Eyja’s tongue. “Do the things you whispered in my ear mean nothing to you? Are the promises you made to me worth less than the scales on a fish?”
Kolli had the
sense to look uncomfortable. “I should not have said such things. I did not know my own mind.”
“Do not lie to me, Kolli. You knew your mind from the moment you first kissed me. You knew your mind well enough when you gasped my name, when your skin burned with need for me.” Eyja’s cheeks grew warm at the memory. The heat she felt was reflected in Kolli’s face. “When I rode you under the midnight sun on the long day of summer.”
Silence and desire hung heavy between them. Eyja could feel her heart beat in her stomach. She had lowered the knife, though she could not remember when.
“Eyja,” Kolli breathed, stepping forward, reaching for her hand.
Eyja lurched out of his reach. “I am no longer yours to touch, Kolli.”
And yet when Kolli’s fingers brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, when his other hand slid against her ribs, Eyja did not wish to move away.
“I want only you, Eyja.”
Eyja felt the threat of tears and she took refuge in the knife once more. With a steady hand, she raised it, slowly, to Kolli’s bare chest. “Then tell me why. I will know if you lie.”
Kolli’s hands lingered for a moment, but then he dropped them to his sides and took a step away from Eyja and the knife.
“Because you and I cannot be joined in sight of the gods. Because my father will not allow it.”
“Why?”
Kolli swallowed. His skin was prickled with the cold, Eyja could see. “Because you are the daughter of a fisherman and your father left you nothing when he died.”
Eyja trembled with rage. “My father put food on your table, Kolli. Do not forget that. Could you have eaten the steel scraps from your father’s forge?” Kolli opened his mouth to speak, but Eyja rushed on. “My father was a good man who provided for this village for years.”
“And yet he left you without silver, without anything to bring to a new home.”
Eyja went still. “That’s your father talking, Kolli. I will try not to hold it against you.”
“They may be my father’s words, Eyja, but there is truth in them,” Kolli said, “more truth than you know.”
Eyja frowned. “What do you mean?”
Kolli took another step back and put his hands up, palms out. “I meant nothing, Eyja. My words were careless.”
Eyja advanced on Kolli, knife ready to strike. “You are lying. Tell me what it is I do not know.”
Kolli looked from Eyja’s face to the knife and back again. “Will you put the knife away?” When Eyja did not move, Kolli took a deep breath. “Your father paid Ljotolf a great deal of silver to keep you on as his apprentice. That is why he left you with nothing when he died.”
“My father paid the god-sum when I was twelve, the same as any other apprentice.”
Kolli shook his head. “No, Eyja. I’m sorry. After Ljotolf dismissed you that spring, your father convinced him to take you back by offering to pay the god-sum twice a year, every year, until you became a priestess in your own right.”
Blood pounded in Eyja’s ears. The hand holding the knife shook.
“Had he lived, he would still be paying Ljotolf,” Kolli went on. His voice was quiet now, riddled with guilt. “What do you have left? Two years? Three?”
“Four,” Eyja murmured, unable to look away from Kolli’s face though she longed to look at anything other than the pity in the blue depths of his eyes. When his hand came up to take the knife from her trembling fingers, she did not resist.
“That is why Ljotolf continues to be so hard on you, why he never gives you a moment of peace or even the slightest praise. He knows he will never get the silver he feels he is owed.” Kolli stepped close to Eyja and returned the knife to its sheathe on her belt, a strangely intimate gesture. But, though his hands lingered close to her skin, he refrained from touching her, and Eyja was grateful.
“Will you forgive me, Eyja? I will defy my father, if that is your wish.”
Eyja blinked, suddenly once more aware of Kolli’s nakedness, suddenly remembering the sight of Gunnleif in his arms.
“I forgive you, Kolli,” Eyja said. The relief on his face at her words burrowed into her gut as she went on. “But do not defy your father for me. I am no longer yours.” She turned her back and walked from the forge before the hurt in his eyes could change her mind, before he could speak arrows that would pierce her resolve. Only once she was under the cold, dark sky and standing at the edge of the silent, black fjord did she allow herself to breathe, and there, under the Allfather’s stars and above Ymir’s bones, a great knot of grief and hatred tethered itself to every fiber of her being. But not for Kolli, no.
Eyja prayed. First to Odin, Allfather. She asked for wisdom. She asked for strength.
But it was to Ymir she spoke last. And though she did not ask the long-dead giant for anything she could name, she felt something she had never felt when speaking to those who dwell in Asgard. She felt heard.
For three nights, Eyja hardly slept. By day she performed her duties as a priestess, making offerings to Njord for calm seas, to Sif for a bountiful harvest, to Nanna for peace, and even to silent Vidar for vengeance. She bent her head to Ljotolf and kept her face still, glad the old priest could not see the face of her heart.
But by night, Eyja hunted. Not the deep forests and hidden valleys. Not for pelts and meat. No, the fjord was her hunting ground and the fish her prey.
Each night she took her father’s old boat out upon the dark, rippling field of waves and each night she fished in silence, filling her small boat to the brim, her fingers growing numb in the cold air, her only companions the bats swooping low at twilight and the first birds calling from the quiet shores before dawn.
She kept whatever caught on her line. Trout, bass, and eel. Char, perch, and pike. Even flat, ugly fish from the muddy bottom close to shore. She pulled up crabs and lobster in her nets. She wrestled a giant sunfish over the gunnel and killed it with her father’s hammer.
By the time the sun rose after the third night, Eyja had filled three old barrels with her catch. And by the time the sun began to set that evening, the stench from the barrels made Eyja gag, and she fought to breathe as she, eyes watering, rolled each barrel with painstaking care lest she falter and they spill open, across the village to Ljotolf’s sturdy house.
She did not go unwatched. More and more faces turned her way as she returned to Ljotolf’s house a second and then a third time. She spoke not a word, and not a word of assistance was offered, not until Kolli emerged from his father’s forge and followed her.
“Eyja.”
Eyja kept moving, her arms straining to push the third barrel into place. She was covered in mud over her ankles and sweat trickled down her neck.
“Eyja.” She could hear the worry in Kolli’s voice, but behind it lay reproach.
With a grunt, she shoved the barrel next to the other two and straightened, turning to face Kollfinn. “This is no concern of yours, Kolli.”
“He will hurt you.”
Eyja fought the urge to look over her shoulder toward the forest behind Ljotolf’s house. The priest would emerge at nightfall after a day of solitude. She had time, but not if she hesitated.
“Help me, Kolli, or watch. I care not. But do not think to tell me what is best for me.”
He watched, of course. They all did, as Eyja dressed the priest’s house in the guts of fish.
One by one she slit the speckled, striped bodies open and pulled forth tiny organs. One by one she smeared them on Ljotolf’s door, leaving the scales to shimmer amid the gore, or threw them up onto the turf roof. The eels were the best of all, full of slime and rancid meat. These she placed like a woven mat, side by side, leading to the door, waiting to the trod upon.
She emptied the first barrel in near darkness, the only light that of the torches and lanterns brought by the villagers who watched with silent, grim faces. Eyja,
her back aching, her fingers bloodied by her own knife, did not stop to survey her work, but pried open the other two barrels. These she turned on end, spilling forth the rotting contents, slick and silver, like a great heaving creature, to rest in heaps in front of Ljotolf’s house.
Eyja’s stomach revolted at last and, dropping to her hands and knees in exhaustion, she emptied her gut.
When she came to her feet, it was Ljotolf’s face that greeted her. His hood was down, his whole face cast in the dancing torchlight. The old malice was there, as it always had been, and yet Eyja could see fear in the way his gaze darted over her handiwork, in the way his hands, usually so sure, gripped the loose folds of his robe.
“What have you done?” Ljotolf hissed, his voice so quiet only Eyja could hear. “Always have you been a disgrace to the gods, and now,” Ljotolf’s voice grew louder and he gestured wildly to the stinking piles of fish, “now you defile what is sacred.” The priest advanced on Eyja, who held her ground. “You are worthless, worse than a rat.” He raised his hand and Eyja let the blow fall. The force of his palm against her cheek rocked her off balance and she stumbled to the side, gasping against the pain. When she regained her feet, she forced herself to look Ljotolf in the eye.
“Tell them, Ljotolf. Tell them what you have done.”
The priest pressed his lips together.
“Tell them how you stole from my father for years, how you grew rich off his fears and desperation.” Eyja stepped forward until she was close enough to see the wrinkles around Ljotolf’s eyes and the cracks in his dry lips. “Tell them how you broke Odin Allfather’s contract and demanded the godsum again and again, bleeding my family dry.”
