The Voyage of Freydis

by Tamara Goranson

  “May the gods go with you, Freydis,” Logatha says quietly.

  “Stay indoors today, sister,” I reply as I step outside. A whoosh of cold air stings my face as I lean down and begin to strap on my snowshoes and adjust the ties. “Look at the lacy path the ice god prepared for me.”

  “She never rests,” Logatha chuckles softly before she throws me another worried smile.

  “I’ll be all right,” I say, glancing up. Logatha’s eyes soften when she sees me staring at her pregnant bump. When I stand, I rub my mittened hands together to generate some extra warmth. “Please get some rest,” I say through the layers that are already frosting up around my nose and mouth. “May the gods take care of you both. Please look after Little Bump.”

  Shivering, she nods. Then she shoos me off as the wind whips through the yard, eddying under the byre’s overhang.

  I make my way to the end of the longhouse but it is hard going through the snow. Just before I disappear around the corner, I turn around. Logatha is still standing in the open door with her furs wrapped tightly around her gaunt frame. When she sees me, she turns and smiles. Then she lifts her hand and waves.

  Helgi is humming in the byre as he pitches apart the frozen hay. For a moment I stand and listen, and then I turn away. At the gate, a crow swoops down and begins to caw as if to encourage me to leave.

  I begin to move, reveling in the sound of the ice crackling underfoot as my snowshoes break through the top layer of snow and then sink. The sun is bright but I press forwards across the fields, glancing up at the blue sky before skirting across the frozen river, feeling only a soothing peace.

  By mid-morning, I have checked all the traps and killed only one rabbit. After that I can’t seem to find any signs of life, but I push myself to keep ploughing through the heavy snow, making my way slowly east, keeping an eye out for any signs of movement in the white. When I stop to adjust my furs, I spot a frozen cobweb on a branch, twinkling and sparkling in the sun, and it occurs to me that I am all alone in the middle of a vast and quiet wilderness.

  I whistle like a guillemot and hear the lonely trill come back to me in a hollow echo, loud and discordant. There is a surge of panic and then I fall dejectedly into the snow. My eyes are watering. The world is a blur of white on white. I think of the dangers of the land: the hidden tree wells; the rocks and streams; the sudden drop-offs; the risk of frostbite if I get too cold. It takes a long time to get up again.

  When the blinding sun tricks my mind into seeing an animal that isn’t there, a curse slips out and the noise disturbs the peace of some lone bird that rises with a noisy squawk. Eventually I drag myself into a cluster of black spruce trees where I narrowly miss getting buried by a shower of snow that slips off the branches at the top. All of a sudden, there is movement in my periphery.

  At the far end of the clearing, two majestic deer are slowly picking their way through the snow. When I see them, I immediately think of Logatha in her pregnant state and thank Skaði for the gift. Then I think of Finnbogi, Helgi, Snorri, and all the rest. Groa, Grelod, and Asta too. I can almost taste the venison roasting on the fire.

  Keeping the deer in sight, I carefully draw out an arrow, nocking it into place and setting the groove of my first three fingers around the bowstring to create a hook. Then I raise my arm and draw the bowstring back with practiced ease. Just as I touch the string to the centre of my nose, the stag’s ears begin to twitch and it turns its head. I breathe in icy air, feeling the bite, the sting of the freezing cold. An instant later I release the shot.

  Behind me there is a whizzing hiss. The twang of another huntsman’s bow. In a daze I see a shaft lined with feathers come shooting past, and for a moment I am too shocked to move. When I turn around, three hunters dressed in sealskin furs that are tinted a rosy red are standing directly in front of me. Their fur-clad forms are so bulky that they block out the sun.

  “By the gods, you stole my kill!”

  One of the hunters throws back his hood and stares at me audaciously. With a staggering jolt, I see my mistake. The hoodless one is covered in red ochre paint with a tattoo scrolling down his cheek.

  “What do you want?” I shout, my voice so shrill that another clump of snow on the tree beside me slithers down. The hoodless one devours me as he stares me down. I feel my brow crinkling. He looks familiar. There is a sudden rush of heat, and Leif’s voice pings into my thoughts. His baritone is as dry as the brown, dusty autumn leaves:

  These skraelings are a vicious lot, a band of thieves.

  Don’t worry, brother. They won’t take my spoils so easily.

  Striking my breast, I let out a furious battle cry and lose my hood. When my tangled, frosty red hair comes tumbling out, curls and all, the Red Men gasp. Their eyes grow wide. They point at me excitedly.

  Keeping one eye on the men, I begin to move towards the deer carcass that lies half-hidden in a bank of snow. There is sweat running down my neck and back, and I find that I am holding my breath without even realizing it. From this distance the stag looks big and my spirit soars. The shot was clean. My arrow must have killed it almost instantly. Unless…

  I suck in frost. What if my shot went wide? I spin around. What if it was the skraeling’s arrow that took out the deer?

  The shrill squawk from a bird flying overhead rings out. Even from this distance, I can see the markings on the Red Men’s faces. The black. The red. It makes them look formidable. In that moment, Logatha’s ghost touches my shoulder and locks my bones.

  You should leave, Freydis. The deer meat is not worth the risk. These Skraelings are a pack of wolves who will kill you for the treasure that your bow and arrow netted. It was a good shot. A fine shot.

  I steel my nerves and clench my jaw. In a frenzy I rip my furs open and start pounding on my chest, wailing and shrieking as my curls tumble into my face. The Red Men look up. Their eyes grow wide. Instantly, two of them flee into the woods, but the hoodless one stands his ground. His body stills.

  “Stand back,” I yell as I shake my mane to hold him off. He seems surprised that I am a woman, but he doesn’t move. Tilting my chin into the sky, I release the loudest scream I’ve managed yet – a shrill, high-pitched screech, an ear-splitting wail that echoes up and down the valley floor. The skraeling jumps. His gaping mouth is soundless.

  “Get away,” I hiss as he looks past me to the fallen deer lying in the snowbank. Keeping his eyes fixed on my prize, he slowly begins to move towards me on a set of snowshoes just like mine. He follows my tracks through the snow so gracefully that he reminds me of a swaying silver birch.

  Against my better judgement I let him approach as dissonant sounds begin to slither off his tongue, rolling and building to a peak. The noise marks this place, this no-man’s land. It is like he is praying for the fallen deer, honoring it with some strange ritualistic song.

  As soon as the hoodless one reaches the animal, he squats beside it to close its eyes. There is such a gentleness about him that I can’t make sense of him. Mesmerized, I get caught up listening to the sounds spilling from his mouth, the bubble of them flowing out like the sound of a river washing over rocks.

  It dawns on me that it is growing late, that I must work fast to skin out the deer before I lose the sun. Cautiously, I leave the Red Man to himself, but I am vigilant and unnerved to have him in my space, watching me intently, treating me as though I am to be revered. Working quickly, my attention split between the Red Man and the deer, I cut into the belly of the deer and expose the flesh and fat as the steam rises, pluming in the frigid air.

  When I am halfway done, I step back and see the gore in the blood-splattered snow: the gristle, the meat, the bone, and the flesh. The red on white. I see it all and miss spotting the hoodless one get up. When he helps himself to a chunk of my de-boned meat, I curse myself. If Finnbogi were here, he would chastise me for letting this red-faced rat steal from me. He would tell me that I’ve lost my edge, that the trickster god just won the game.

  The
hunter moves past the chopped-up carcass, past the shanks of bloody meat sticking out of the mucked-up snow. Warily I watch as he circles around me. I grip my knife. I could kill him now and be done with it, but something urges me to let him live. The Red Man who courts dead deer is a curiosity in this unfamiliar place where the animal’s spirit seems to linger mystically. Hesitantly I resume my work.

  Just as I am beginning to cut the pelt free of the legs, I hear a noise. When I glance up, there is a sleek black raven with a powerful bill soaring high as it catches wind currents. Its blue-black feathered wings with their iridescent sheen catch the light as dusk descends. Suddenly, it soars into an updraft and then it falls, gliding and tilting its wings as it croaks out a loud, irreverent call.

  For a moment I just stop and stare. When I finally lower my head, the skraeling is staring at me with his eyes as grey as slate. I know those eyes. Those piercing eyes. I search my mind, upturning ghosts before a sudden memory sparks. Oh, curse his bones! Red Raven smiles.

  Warily I watch him shake the frozen tingles from his feet. When he snowshoes closer, I am so on edge that I startle when he leans in to help de-bone the deer.

  “The kill is mine,” I mutter, worrying that I am about to be lured into some kind of trap. He flicks a glance up at me before turning back to his work.

  In silence we tear the meat from the sinew, the fat, and the cartilage until there are splotches of blood everywhere – on my sealskin hides and on the polar-bear fleece that lines my hood, on my hands and in my hair. Taking up a handful of snow in my bloodied hands, I begin scrubbing at the stains while Red Raven cups his mouth and whistles low.

  There is a ripple of unease that shoots through me. I twist around. In the ice-blue shadows of a fast-approaching winter dusk, his friends suddenly appear at the edge of the clearing, dragging an empty sled behind them.

  Red Raven hacks out a greeting. The words sound harsh and I pull back. He glances at me uneasily and I hate that his eyes look kind. Skraelings aren’t supposed to have a smile like that – the one he throws at me, the one he uses when he eyes my hair.

  As soon as I start to back away, he tries to stop me with his hand.

  “Don’t touch me,” I say, pulling back as if I’m stung. He turns to his friends and waves his hand, beckoning them closer. Sturdily built, he is a stocky man with straight, broad shoulders and muscular thighs with a strong jaw and smooth, acorn-colored skin sporting a sheen of red. He has a commanding presence about him, but something in the way he looks pulls me into him like sticky tree-sap.

  When his friends spot me they stop and stare, and their eyes look scared, but Red Raven seems unperturbed. He talks to them and grins again with his perfect teeth. Then he points to the chunks of meat before he turns his gaze onto me and points to my hair.

  My thoughts tunnel into imagined horrors and dangers that I could face – situations in which I can’t fight to save myself, situations in which I am tortured while I am still alive. I am rendered helpless by my thoughts as I stare at the dried blood underneath my nails. The temperature is dropping quickly. My fingers and toes feel frozen stiff.

  Beside me Red Raven raises his bloodied knife that he has used to help debone the meat and I jump back, shivering, but he doesn’t see. When he motions to his friend to lean down and help him finish the task of pulling out the heart, it crosses my mind that I could try to kill them all, but I hold back. I am too malnourished, too fatigued.

  When Red Raven finishes cleaning off his knife, he finds my eyes before he jabs himself fiercely in the chest. “Achak,” he grunts in a deep baritone.

  Tongue-tied, I say nothing. Now that the work is done, it would be easy enough for them to steal my meat and slit my throat and leave me bleeding in the snow. They wouldn’t have to know my name.

  “It’s time to go,” I say. Achak tilts his head and looks at me strangely.

  I try to tell them that the meat is mine, but one of them points towards the setting sun. I have lost all track of time since entering into this strange dance, this saga with a group of strange skraeling men. When I glance towards the sky, I can feel my skin tingling. Soon we will lose the light.

  Achak jerks his chin towards his friends. Through gestures I discern that he wants me to follow them.

  “Neinn,” I say. “I must return to Leifsbidur.”

  The name triggers recognition in the Red Men’s eyes. I watch as they confer amongst themselves. Another surge of panic bubbles up.

  “Leifsbidur,” I repeat. “It is my home.” The Red Men stop their chatter and look at me.

  “Leifsbidur,” Achak repeats in an accent so thick it is hard for me to decipher the chopped-up sounds. He points behind me to my snowshoe tracks as I gulp in the freezing cold that stings my lungs and exhale a puff of dragon air.

  “I need to carry the meat shanks back to my people,” I say, gesturing fiercely at the bloody piles as the sun slowly slips behind the hills.

  One of Achak’s companions jerks his chin at the silver moon on the rise. In the process, his red fox-fur hood falls off his head, revealing a head of luscious obsidian-black hair that reaches past his shoulders.

  I have lost precious moments trying to communicate with these red-faced huntsmen whom I don’t trust. These skraeling men. These carrions who pick my life apart. Achak releases another string of words as I go to hoist my pack on my back. When I turn around, his body blocks my path.

  “Let me pass,” I say angrily. He doesn’t move. He merely points and I follow his finger. It is now too dark to see the trail. My panic swells.

  I can’t return to Leifsbidur. I won’t be able to find my way back home. By Óðinn’s beard, I’ll freeze to death!

  My body shudders as I begin to cough. The hacking brings up a thick mucus phlegm laced with blood. Suddenly I realize that I am burning up. There is sweat beading on my brow. Achak studies me carefully. I look away.

  “I must return to Leifsbidur,” I repeat. A headache pounds. Just then, another throat itch bursts into a wretched cough.

  The skraelings surround me, attempting to cut me off. Achak’s cry echoes across the clearing and I shake my head, trying to dislodge the fog and piercing pain. Another cough moves up from my chest and my shoulders shudder violently.

  “You can’t take my meat,” I cough, spluttering uncontrollably.

  Achak’s brow furrows as the winter sky turns indigo-blue and amethyst and the stars peek out; the opal moon rises, casting silver moonbeams on the white snow. With a stubborn sniff, I toss my hair back and start packing up.

  The meat is mine. No skraeling will rob me. Neinn. Not today.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A lone wolf howls

  Achak shouts at one of the Red Men and he presses forwards through the snow, moving in the direction of the sled. Along the way, he stoops to pick up a shank of meat lying frozen in the snow and I let out a startled yelp. On instinct, I run at him, heedless of the risks.

  The other Red Man draws out his skinning knife and points it at me which stops me cold. I feel a desperation swishing through me, eddying into a whirlpool of fear.

  “Back away,” I shout indignantly. “Twice I’ve let you skraelings take the fruits of my labour. I’ll not let that happen anymore.”

  Knife Man is crouching low over the bloodied chunks of meat. When he stands with his knife in hand, my skin prickles and my knees go weak. Locking eyes on him, I picture his weapon sinking deep into my flesh. Then I see him flensing the skin off my bones. On instinct, I charge without any thought of the consequences. He is caught off guard, and I knock his weapon into the snow.

  He is stronger than I thought. Instead of toppling, he pushes hard. Startled, I lose my balance and begin to fall. In the chaos, one of my snowshoes strikes my standing leg. With arms rotating wildly, I try to prevent the fall, but I land with a whoosh in a bank of snow.

  Rotating and wrenching muscles, another cough slips out. My natural instinct is to dig in with my feet and thrust forwards, but my
snowshoes don’t allow for this. Fear fuels my anger and I roll over and get stuck, thrashing wildly as I churn up snow.

  Knife Man turns away from me, leaving me to dig my way free on my own. Eventually I struggle up, only to see two of the Red Men scurrying off with my catch, their snowshoes swishing through the snow.

  “You thieves!” I yell. The cry breaks into another cough that cracks the peace and echoes through the frosty air. The winter night is cold and clear. In the moonlight, one of the skraelings leans forwards and tugs the heavy sled over a mound of snow. The sled jerks forwards and I clench my fists.

  You red-faced dog!

  In a panic, I stare at the moon’s lambent light casting jagged shadows across the patch of blood-splattered snow where Achak stands. He calls to the others. Then he turns and looks at me. Behind his frame, the ring of conical pine trees rises out of a bank of snow in black silhouettes. Achak points and says something I can’t understand, but I recognize that I have no choice. I must follow him into the bush or lose the meat. By the gods, I am done being used by forceful men! I am done tolerating these skraeling games.

  Miserably, I trudge behind him into the white, but my throat is raw, my whole body aches, my temples throb, and my muscles shake. Doggedly I resist the urge to just sit down and fall asleep and freeze to death. Instead, I force my frozen feet to lift up my snowshoes one by one and continue forth, shuffling through the endless banks of snow in the bitter cold.

  Far off in the distance a lone wolf begins to howl. Its mournful, unearthly cry originates from the crest of the shadowed hills and echoes through the valley, shattering the stillness with a jolt. As soon as the call fades away and the next one comes, I scuttle quickly through the snow.

  When Achak sees me struggling to break a path, he doubles back to wait for me while his companions disappear behind two black tree-sentinels that guard the entrance to the woods. In the darkness, Achak’s eyes – two orbs of light – illuminate his entire face. Just then, we hear another doleful cry, an unnerving wolf song that slips into silence as quickly as it came.