The Tricking of Freya Read online

  He stood up straight, the tip of the cigarette glowing bright for a moment as he inhaled. "Ever smoke an Icelandic cigarette?"

  I shook my head. Mama, of course, had forbidden me to smoke. But Mama was far away, and Saemundur was holding the cigarette out to me. I took it tentatively between my fingers and raised it to my lips.

  "Not like that!"

  I cringed; Saemundur had that smirk on his face, the same as when he'd been watching me recite Olafur's poem at the dinner party. But he spoke kindly, confidentially. "We hold cigarettes differently here." He came over to the rock where I sat, curving his arm around me and showing me how to pinch the cigarette between finger and thumb. I felt the ropy muscle of his arm graze my back through the worn denim of his jacket. Then he moved away and sat across from me again. I inhaled a tiny puff, then blew it out. Pleased, I offered the cigarette back to Saemundur, but he wouldn't take it.

  "Not so fast! We smoke it in a special way here too. Instead of blowing the smoke right out, you hold it inside for a while. For as long as you can."

  I tried once, twice, three times, each time coughing, the last time managing to hold in some of the smoke.

  "I don't think I like cigarettes," I said, handing it back to him.

  "Oh, I think you'll like it. Just wait a few minutes."

  I didn't know what he was thinking. I certainly wasn't planning to try it again in a few minutes. Or ever. But it didn't matter. The sun was streaming through a hole in the clouds, lighting up the droplets of waterfall spray in Saemundur's hair. A halo of mist for his dark head. His eyes were closed and his face looked unbelievably beautiful to me. The most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He opened his eyes.

  "How are you doing?"

  Doing? I had to think about that. I must have thought a long time because Saemundur stood up. "We better get back."

  I began following him south along the top edge of the chasm, hypnotized by the sway of his arms and his loping stride. I stumbled on a stone that seemed to appear out of nowhere. As I righted myself, I felt oddly dizzy.

  "Be careful!" Saemundur called over his shoulder. "The earth is splitting open under your feet! He was laughing, teasing me again.

  "I mean it," he shouted over the wind. "Right here, right along this very chasm, one tectonic plate meets another." He stopped walking and waited for me to catch up. "You know what the tectonic plates are?"

  I nodded vaguely.

  "Think of the earth like an egg with its shell cracked. We're standing on one of those cracks. Right here is where the North American Plate meets the Eurasian Plate. Right through the middle of Iceland. And underneath, lava rises up and pushes the two plates apart. That's what causes earthquakes in California. California is on the opposite side of the North American Plate. Iceland is pushing California into the ocean."

  I shook my head doubtfully.

  "You think I'm teasing you? No, no, this is the truth. According to my brother anyway, and he's a geologist you know, studying at one of the great universities in your country." He peered down the edge of the chasm. "Of course the settlers didn't know that when they chose this spot for the Althing, but they recognized its special energy. Can you feel it?"

  I could: a something that surged through the chasm and up my legs and out the top of my head. An almost-dizziness, except instead of spinning, the landscape seemed to be opening up on itself, over and over. The rifts and chasms of Thingvellir folded and unfolded in ribbons of rock. I watched the last of the clouds push past us and suddenly the sun was shining through again, glinting the river, lighting this great crack in the earth. I was trembling. Or was it the ground? Either the earth is quaking, I thought, or I am. That thought seemed funny, extremely funny, and scary at the same time. I stood fast, laughing and trembling, while Saemundur loped ahead.

  "Come on!" he yelled. "They're waiting."

  I looked down the chasm and in the distance saw Birdie back at the Law Rock, waving to us, arms crisscrossing in the air above her head. I thought of the day Mama and I first set foot on the platform at Winnipeg Station and Birdie came running through the crowd scissoring her arms through the air in her lilac dress. It struck me then, how big Birdie was, not only in size but in her being. Everything large: her wave, her gestures, her laughter, her ideas, her desires. And me? I felt bigger too suddenly, perched on the tip of a great rift, an edge of the earth itself. The earth isn't flat, I thought, but it does have edges. It occurred to me then, that I could fling myself off the edge of the earth and into the Drowning Pool. It was not something I thought I would do, yet I could imagine it: diving into the Drowning Pool and rescuing the sodden spirits of all the women wrongly drowned. I don't know how long I stood there. A moment now seemed hours long.

  "Freya!" Saemundur called again. Suddenly my feet were in motion, I was sprinting toward him, faster, it seemed, than I'd ever run before. "They're here!" I yelled over the rasping wind.

  "Who?"

  "All of them. The drowned women. I can't see them exactly, but I know they're here." Any moment Saemundur might start laughing at me. Smirking at the very least. Instead he just nodded his head.

  I know," he said. I know."

  And then we both started laughing. Couldn't stop. "Really," he gasped. "Have you really never gotten high before? I thought all American teenagers get high."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "High. Stoned."

  "I don't get high." But as soon as I said it I understood that's what I was. The Icelandic cigarette!

  "Don't tell me you've never heard of marijuana!"

  It was all a trick, he'd never meant to be nice to me, not for a moment. I turned away.

  "Don't be mad," he pleaded. He put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. "And whatever you do, don't tell my father. He'll have me put away for sure.

  "Put away where?"

  "In a home for bad boys. Or a crazy hospital. Who knows?"

  "Maybe the Drowning Pool." As I walked off in a stiff-legged stride to where Ulfur and Birdie were waiting at the Law Rock, I could hear Saemundur's laughter echoing along the length of the Almannagja chasm. Or was that the wind? Or maybe laughter and wind were now one and the same thing. Another crazy thought. Was it still my thought, I wondered, if I thought it while I was high? I shook my head, as if I could shake all the stoned ideas right out of it, but instead they kept piling up, one on top of the other. Would Birdie be able to tell? As we four walked back to the car, I decided the best thing to do was to say nothing. That, at least, would not seem too out of the ordinary.

  On the drive home Birdie sat up front with Saemundur. He was telling her about the geology of Thingvellir, how his brother the geologist had taken him to volcanoes all over Iceland. Even to Askja.

  "I would like to go to Askja," Birdie said.

  "Not Askja," Ulfur corrected from the backseat. "Nobody goes there but hard-core scientists. Too difficult. There are so many other volcanoes to see. Hekla is a good one. We'll drive you to Hekla."

  "I want to see Askja," Birdie repeated. "Askja is the beginning of everything for me. If Askja hadn't erupted, my father's family would never have left Iceland. I never would have been born."

  "Just as easily they could have stayed," Ulfur countered. "Many people did. And if they'd remained, your father and mother could have met right there in the East of Iceland, on Pall's farm."

  "Still, I'd like to go. Askja's eruption cast a shadow over my father, he told me the story so many times. And if it weren't for Askja, the emigration never would have occurred. There would have been no Nev,, Iceland in Canada."

  "Well, that's one theory anyway. Blame it all on the volcano. But there were other conditions as well. Freezes. Poverty. Sheep plagues. People were already starting to abandon the homeland, even before Askja erupted."

  "What's your point?" I could hear an edge in Birdie's voice.

  "My point is that some people stayed anyway. Despite all those terrible conditions. Others decided to leave. That's all."
r />   "And you think the strong ones stayed and the weak ones left?"

  "It could be. Or maybe the other way around."

  "Well, nothing can change the fact that my father's people left because of that volcano and the incredible havoc it wreaked. And I would like to set eyes on it just once in my life. I consider it," she concluded dramatically, "my point of origin. Practically the place of my birth."

  Was that a strange thing to say, I wondered, or was I still high?

  "Maybe Saemundur can drive us to Askja," Birdie continued. "While we're in the East."

  Was Saemundur coming with us to the East to look for Olafur's letters? I guessed he had to, since Ulfur didn't trust him at home. But the thought made my heart sink. And leap. Sink, leap. Sinkleap sinkleap sinkleap ran through my head like a song. I guessed I was still high.

  "I don't think that's a good idea, Ingibjorg. You'll have to take my word for it. It's too difficult a trip. Through lava wastes and deserts. No real roads to speak of. Isn't that true, Saemundur?"

  "It's true that it's difficult," Saemundur agreed. "You have to have a jeep and know how to drive it, how to cross glacial rivers and ride over humps of lava."

  "Exactly!" Ulfur seemed pleased that Saemundur had taken his side.

  "But," Saemundur continued, "it can be done. It can certainly be done."

  "Well, not by us it won't. Besides, it takes a whole day to drive there, another to drive back. Ingibjorg, you must believe me when I tell you there are better, more important things to do with your time in the East."

  Birdie said nothing. It must have been in that moment that she made up her mind. Of course, that's just one more thing I can never know.

  After dinner that evening, when Ulfur sat reading Birdie's Word Meadow at the kitchen table, Birdie asked Saemundur if he'd take her for a ride in the jeep. Saemundur leapt up and grabbed the keys from the kitchen counter without even waiting for his father's permission. What about me? Was I invited too? It was nearly ten o'clock, my usual bedtime, but it seemed strange to sleep with the sun still high in the sky. So I followed them outside, and nobody said no. The sky was a strange light turquoise color, and I could see a herd of wild horses grazing by the lakeshore. As soon as we'd driven out of sight of the summerhouse, Birdie asked Saemundur to teach her to drive the jeep.

  "It's something I've always wanted to learn," she explained. Which struck me as odd. No one drove jeeps in Gimli. Not that I'd ever seen. But Saemundur didn't think it was a strange request, or at least he didn't say so. He just pulled over so he and Birdie could switch places. And that's the way it went, every evening after dinner during the Summerhouse Days. Birdie was an apt pupil, barreling down rutted dirt roads with remarkable aplomb. After a few sessions she wanted to learn to drive across a river.

  "Without a bridge?" I asked, incredulous.

  "There aren't many bridges in the interior," Saemundur explained. "Bridges just get washed away, or are never built in the first place. It's easy enough to drive through the river instead. You just try to judge the most shallow spot, which is often where the river runs widest."

  I held my breath as Birdie sat behind the wheel at the edge of a rushing stream. What if we got stuck? We were over an hour from the summerhouse and nobody was anywhere near. No one but horses and sheep, horses and sheep. But Birdie managed it, she maneuvered the wheels of the jeep along the rocky bottom and across to the other side, where she crowed in triumph.

  I should have noticed then the peculiar shine in Birdie's eyes, the mania spurring her along, infusing her with extraordinary acuity and physical strength. But I was too caught up in the moment, and I found myself cheering along with Birdie and Saemundur, the three of us whooping into the sunny night air. We never mentioned the jeep lessons to Ulfur. It was our secret, Birdie said, and we each kept it. Saemundur because it was an act, however small, however meaningless, against his father. Me, because I always kept Birdie's secrets. It was my way of proving my loyalty. And Birdie, well, her reasons would be revealed soon enough.

  The morning after our visit to Thingvellir I woke before Birdie. She'd been unable to sleep most of the night-the light she claimed, fooling with her brain-and I'd woken up several times to see her fiddling with the curtains or trying to create a darkened tent out of her bedspread. Now, finally, she'd achieved unconsciousness, tangled in a heap of blankets, and I tiptoed quietly out of the room and into the kitchen. Out the small window above the sink I could see two volcanic craters poking above the surface of Thingvellir Lake. The earth is splitting open. Had I liked being high? I couldn't decide. Suddenly I was aware of Saemundur, leaning in the doorway, cupping a mug of coffee in his long-fingered hands. It was our first moment alone since he'd gotten me stoned at Almannagja.

  "Would you care for coffee?" he asked. "Special Icelandic coffee?"

  I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and scowled at him. "You tricked me."

  "Loki's my middle name."

  "It is?"

  He laughed. "You don't know who Loki is?"

  "Of course I do. Loki is the trickster god."

  "So there you go." And there I went. He handed me a cup of coffee-my first ever-and smiled his clown-wide smile. I found myself smiling back, half infuriated, half charmed. The coffee tasted horrid-bitter, but I drank it anyway. It didn't matter how much Saemundur teased me in the days that followed, I never stayed mad long and I always went back for more. The teasing, of course, was flirting, but I didn't know that then. I didn't have a name for it; I'd never had a crush before.

  In the days that followed we toured the countryside with Ulfur and Saemundur, and wherever we went, wherever we met anyone, we were greeted like minor celebrities: the daughter and granddaughter of Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands.

  "We have no movie stars," Ulfur explained, the first time a total stranger began reciting my grandfather's poetry from memory for us outside a gas station.

  "That's because we don't make any movies." Saemundur grinned.

  "True enough," his father conceded. "But I also mean we don't have celebrities, not the way America does. The closest we come is our writers. Our writers are our stars. And by that I mean, those who shine above this nation most brightly."

  I was beginning to understand that it was not only my odd little family back in Gimli who revered writing and writers; it was a national trait of the Icelanders. Everywhere you go in Iceland is a plaque or statue dedicated to a writer. "And yet," Ulfur continued. "Writing is not reserved for the elite. Every Icelandic family has a versifier or two, and many people write books of their own. In fact, Iceland publishes more books per capita than any country in the world, and has the highest literacy rate."

  "But now we have television," Saemundur countered. "Maybe people will quit reading so much."

  "Maybe," Ulfur conceded. I saw no signs of it while I was there. Many people, on learning who we were, recited Olafur's poetry to us, not only scholarly friends of Ulfur's, but ordinary people, like the farmer on the road to the Gullfoss waterfall. We stopped the jeep to help him lift a dead sheep from the road, and in return, he invited us for coffee and recited from memory several of Olafur's most well-known poems. It made me feel special, and Birdie, of course, thrilled at the attention. Oh, she was in high spirits, lively and energetic and full of good feeling toward everyone. Especially me. I was speaking Icelandic all the time, and bit by bit as we rattled through the Icelandic countryside in the jeep I dropped my veneer of shyness and reserve. Birdie approved, and I basked in her approval.

  With Birdie and Ulfur and Saemundur as my guides, I was shown marvel upon marvel. I remember running with Saemundur through the spray of the massive Gullfoss waterfall, a rainbow shimmering above our heads.

  "Bifrost. The bridge to heaven," Saemundur said. "That's what the rain bow was called in the old days."

  I decided he wasn't teasing. It made too much sense. Standing on the brink of thundering falls under a rainbow with Saemundur was surely as close to heaven as I'd ever come.

 
It seemed no place in Iceland-no farm, rock, hill, stream, glacier, or volcano-lacked its own particular legend. I was haunted by our visit to Barnafoss-Children's Falls where two children, left home on a Sunday morning while the family was at church, disobeyed their mother's orders and played on the stone bridge that crossed the nearby waterfalls. When the family returned home, the children were gone.

  "Were they ever found?"

  "Not alive," Ulfur answered.

  Even the lava had stories to tell. One day we drove past a stretch of mosscovered lava rocks. "The Taking-of-Christianity Lava Field," Ulfur explained. "Nearly a thousand years ago, when the Icelanders were debating whether to adopt Christianity or not, a volcano erupted and the lava destroyed the farm of a practicing Christian. Proof, the pagans declared, that Christianity was a bad bet. But wasn't the pagans' own headquarters, Thingvellir itself, covered in lava? The pagans lost the vote at the Althing."

  And of course we visited Reykholt, the estate of the great Snorri Sturluson, who had been raised as a child at Oddi.

  "The same Snorri who wrote down the Norse myths?"

  "Good memory," Birdie answered. "But he was a politician as well."

  "In cahoots with the Norwegian crown!" Saemundur added. "Was it not because of Snorri that Iceland lost its independence for six centuries?"

  "Son," Ulfur corrected him. "You know it's much more complicated than that. Snorri alone cannot take the blame. The Icelandic Commonwealth came to an end because the Norwegian crown was more powerful. Snorri, if you remember, was assassinated by order of the king."

  "Right here at this very spot," added Birdie. We were standing on the lip of the hot springs where Snorri had been killed. A cool mist drifted down on us from the sky; gentle hot steam rose up from the pool. I sucked the air deep in my lungs and expelled it, imagining it merging with the vapors rising from Snorri's grisly murder scene.