Frost (19 page)

When Afi had said his cousin Baldur would pick us up at the airport, I had thought that was his name, not a description. Turned out it was both. The guy looked like Afi, except Afi had a shock of white hair, whereas this guy was as bald as his name suggested. Except for the wired eyebrows and tufts growing out of his ears, that is. I supposed if you’d lost a whole head of hair, you’d be inclined to preserve it elsewhere. I liked his eyes, a blue so aqua they splashed. He was tall, like Afi, but stockier, with a belly that suggested a healthy appetite. Afi and Baldur hugged and slapped backs like a couple of linebackers. Then it was my turn for a hug. Baldur embraced me and said, “Aye, she’s an Icelander, all right.” Which I supposed was good, because his eyes twinkled as he said it. They jabbered away in Icelandic. I didn’t catch a word. Then again, there were only about five that I knew. And I didn’t think now was the occasion for “the toilet, please,” or the “I’m not hungry, thank you,” that I’d expressly learned. The idea of unwittingly chowing down on sheep’s head or fermented shark meat still had me freaked.

For a pretty big guy, Baldur drove a little munchkin car. I scrambled into the backseat, holding my suitcase on my lap, trunks and hatchbacks apparently being another example of the U.S. super-size-me culture. It was the last day of March, technically spring, but there were still patches of snow on the ground. What struck me the most were the cloud-capped mountains hovering over us and the volcanic island’s lack of trees. Minnesota had spoiled me for trees.

Baldur pulled out of the tiny airport’s parking lot and headed north. “So, Katla,” he said in pretty darn good English, “welcome home.”

My breath caught inwardly with the word “home.” I hadn’t known how to describe it, but as soon as we had landed here in Akureyri, I’d had the oddest sensation of
déjà vu,
which I knew from my French grandmother translated literally as
already seen.
Here, in Iceland, I had the feeling that I’d
already been.
Except I hadn’t; my international travel consisted of Cancun, Vancouver, and Paris.

“Akureyri,” Baldur said, “is considered the capital of northern Iceland and is at the base of the Eyjafjörður.”

I’d studied the maps before leaving, but a pastel drawing could never do this justice. The Eyjafjörður was a long, fingerlike inlet, a fjord, that cut deep into the coast of Iceland off the Atlantic Ocean, offering a protective harbor for a centuries-old fishing industry.

“The first Vikings arrived here in the year 890,” Baldur said. “And Akureyri has been a market town ever since. There is even reference to the old section, Oddeyri, in the Sagas.”

Impressive, sure, but didn’t explain why it felt familiar to me. I knew for a fact the Sagas were not in my bookcase at home, nor did I think too many movies had been set in the area. Baldur explained we were on the Drottningarbraut, the road skirting the west side of the fjord and heading north into town. To my right, the inky-blue waters of the fjord were visible. Soon, scattered buildings came into view, and then the town itself. The architecture was typically Scandinavian, with scattered, brightly painted wooden buildings of canary yellow, electric blue, or whitewashed with metal roofs of leaf green and brick red. And it was larger than I expected: a bustling town with many shops, restaurants, and businesses.

As if on cue, Baldur slammed his hand to the steering wheel. “Aye. Traffic,” he said.

The “traffic” consisted of five vehicles in front of us at a red light. Seriously? The guy wouldn’t last a minute on the 405 in LA. Baldur did not live in Akureyri, which, with a population of 17,000, was far too “crowded.” He lived in the much smaller town of Hafmeyjafjörður, thirty miles farther north along the fjord. My eyes soon said good-bye to the vibrant Akureyri and to daylight itself. It really had been a long journey, and as much as I was fascinated by my ancestral land, I was blotto. The last thing I remembered was laying my head back against the window, with towering mountains to my left and the glassy blue fjord to my right.

The next thing I knew, we were rolling to a stop in front of a small white house. I blinked my eyes several times. How long had I been asleep? How far had we gone? Thirty miles, I’d been told, about forty minutes, but surely it should take a lot longer than that to get to the end of the earth. Besides the white house, set on a hill overlooking the fjord, there was nothing else around.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Baldur’s house,” Afi replied.

“Where is everybody?” I was groggy and confused.

“My wife, Vigdis, should be home,” Baldur said.

“No, I mean the town. Afi’s hometown, where is it?”

“Ah,” Baldur said. “It’s back down the road a ways.” He climbed out of the driver’s side and pulled the seat forward. “Vigdis and I like the peace and quiet.”

As if living on a slab of volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean wasn’t enough solitude. And I had thought Norse Falls was remote. What did they do for a gallon of milk?

Baldur hoisted first my suitcase and then me out of the minuscule backseat. I popped out like a stubborn cork, not my most graceful move, but after more than twenty-four hours of transport, I was happy to be on solid ground — even if it was a cliff house above an icy Atlantic fjord.

Vigdis soon joined us in front of the home. She was short with dark hair, a round face, and shiny brown eyes. She pulled Afi and then me into hugs; they probably didn’t get many visitors out here, certainly not family from the U.S., anyway. I supposed the occasion called for an embrace, though I was sure my ribs would be sore. The woman was one serious bone cruncher.

Vigdis took my hand and led me into the house like a toddler. Normally, I would bristle at such disregard for personal boundaries, but something about Vigdis’s high, round cheeks and gummy smile had me suspending rules. That and an exhaustion level exceeding EPA guidelines: without sleep, I was a walking zombie. She led us up the path to the front door. The house was one story with an arched red door and a green corrugated roof. To one side of the path was a small detached garage, and to the other, old stone steps that descended downhill and toward the rocky shoreline.

Once inside the home, Vigdis pulled kitchen chairs out for Afi and me around the long, battered farm table. Even with the short nap in the car, the travel, compounded by the time difference, was pulling me, like an undertow, out to sea. It was two in the afternoon on a clear, bright, although chilly, day, yet my body was telling me differently. Vigdis set out coffee and a platter of meats and cheeses, but I had no appetite.

Finally, she punched her fists down on her thick waist and said, pointing at me, “This one needs a bed.”

The bed, though only a twin, looked like a cocoon of feathery softness. Still wearing my travel clothes, I fell upon the tiny guest room’s mattress, grateful for the beauty of a down-stuffed duvet and central heating. I remembered how Jack had said he was a little jealous of our vacationer’s itinerary and comforts-of-home stay. Home. It made me think about my mom and Jack. My mom I could picture, remote in hand or fanned-open book poised atop her ever-growing tummy. But Jack. It bothered me that I had no visual on where he was or what he was doing. If my sleep-deprived mind had the facts straight, he’d arrived yesterday in Daneborg and had set out today by dogsled for the Klarksberg Research Station. It rankled me even more that we’d parted on such confusing terms. Was he mad at me? Was he not speaking to me? I pulled the lavender-scented duvet to my chest and surrendered to a much-deserved nap.

I woke to the eeriest sound ever. Nothing. Never before had I been so aware of absolute silence. And it was dark — the kind of dark you could put on a scale and weigh. I sat up, thinking that it had to be the middle of the night. I was still in my travel clothes, so I must have slept through the afternoon, dinner, the evening, and — by the looks of it — midnight. For several moments I remained still, assembling the jigsaw of recent memories. I was in the guest room of Baldur and Vigdis’s cottage by the sea, in Hafmeyjafjörður, Iceland — Afi’s hometown. So, that was the where. I just needed to figure out the when. My toes located the fleece lining of my UGGs, and my outstretched hands found the desk chair over which my parka had been thrown. The central heating I’d been grateful for a few hours ago had been turned way down. I snuggled into the warmth of my jacket and slowly paced off the few steps to the bedroom door. It opened with the tiniest of creaks, and I stepped into the small hallway and toward the kitchen. From the large above-sink window, a shaft of moonlight illuminated the battered table and four simple wooden chairs. A digital clock on the stove showed the time as 3:47. Mystery solved: everyone was obviously in bed.

I stood in the kitchen, looking out the window. The moon was a huge metallic ball. Were we closer to it this far north? My mathematician mom would have buried me with formulas about the earth, its axis, and rotation, but, honestly, it had never appeared so accessible to me before, had never appeared so enticing. Like in the movies, I heard music and assumed my mind was inventing a sound track to intensify the moment. Soon, I realized I really was hearing music. But from where? Everyone was asleep. Besides, the melody was odd, both eerie and compelling. It seemed to be coming from outside. Under the sink, next to a plastic bottle of dish soap, I found a flashlight. I clicked it on, brushing its light across the empty room. In a kind of dream state, I walked the few steps to the kitchen door, silently lifted the latch, and followed the old stone steps down the hill and under the silvery light of that giant orb.

The steps were about a thousand years old: cracked and overgrown with weeds. The path wound its way down the hill, skirting brush and bushes and a few forlorn trees. Strangely, I didn’t feel the cold, though my labored breathing hung like tinsel in the night air. Everything stilled as if yielding to the plaintive song. Even the waters I knew were at the bottom of the hill seemed at rest. The steps came around a series of large boulders, and I found myself on a stone-filled beach. Had I awakened the sleeping fjord? It roared to life with an urgent press of waters upon the rocks, quelling even the music. A plunk of water, like a stone being dropped, drew my attention down to the shoreline, and I swept my flashlight over the area. Were this LA, or even Minnesota, my hackles would be up, but this was Iceland. Did they even have bad guys? Or bears? Or anything scarier than Björk’s fashion sense? I walked closer to the shore. I heard a big splash, and I directed my small beam of light toward the sound that rippled with an echolike reverberation until it morphed into something like laughter, an almost girlish giggle. Then I saw the flash of a tail. It looked like a big fish — as big as me.

Holy crap!
I dropped the flashlight and gasped. What the hell was that? I bent down over one of the giant boulders at the shore and peered into the water. What had I seen? What on earth had been there? I clumsily stooped to retrieve my light. By the time I stood up again, whatever it was was gone. And whatever trancelike state I had been in was gone with it.

The cold suddenly bit into me. My gloveless fingers went numb, and I had to draw the flashlight up and into my sleeve so as to shelter my aching hands from the whip of the wind. I scurried up the stone steps, eased the kitchen door open, and tiptoed through the house and back into the comfort of my small guest room. Still in my original travel clothes, I once again lowered myself into the safety of the down-filled duvet. I’d probably heard the wind whistling over the waves. I’d probably seen a dolphin, or a seal, or just a big ol’ ocean fish. Dolphins had funny vocalizations, didn’t they? Ones that were laugh like. More likely, I was still groggy from travel and allowing my imagination to get the best of me. For a very long time, I lay awake purposely thinking of other things.
I hope Mom is OK. Has Jack been thinking of me?
I listened for sounds of life in the house. I needed a shower, and I was starving and wanted breakfast. I just hoped it wasn’t fermented shark meat — or fish of any kind, for that matter.

Finally, I heard sounds from the kitchen and, more importantly, smells: coffee and sausage. My stomach barked at me from neglect. I wasn’t quite sure, given the time difference, but my rudimentary calculation tallied more than twenty-four hours since my last meal. I picked a brush through my matted-to-face hair and contemplated putting on a new shirt, but the promise of food was just too tempting. I walked quickly down the hallway, only slowing my pace at the kitchen archway. I didn’t want to appear ravenous, though I was.