The Tricking of Freya

Christina Sunley

St. Martin's Press
New York

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. THE TRICKING OF FREYA. Copyright © 2009 by Christina Sunley. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. Portions of this novel appeared, in different form, in The Icelandic Canadian. Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to reprint the following: "I dreamt a dream" from Icelandic-Canadian Memory Lore, :Magnus Einarsson, Gatineau, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1992 pp: 39-40 © Canadian Museum of Civilization. "I have seen the cat sing" from Icelandic-Canadian Memory Lore, Magnus Einarsson, Gatineau, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1992 p: 95 © Canadian Museum of Civilization. xv\vw.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sunley, Christina. The tricking of Freya / Christina Sunley. 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37877-6 ISBN-10: 0-312-37877-7 1. Family secrets Fiction. 2. Icelanders Manitoba Fiction. 3. Grandparent and child Fiction. 4. Immigrants-Canada-Fiction. 5. Iceland Social life and customs Fiction. 1. Title. PS3619.U5636T75 2009 813'.6 dc22 2008035455 First Edition: March 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of
my mother, Edith Bjornson, who told me about Our People,
and my father, Robert Sunley, who always believed

You want a bit of Birdie?

Try this, a June afternoon, early 1970s, on the beach at Gimli: Birdie in
a skirted turquoise swimsuit and cat-eye sunglasses, lounging legs crossed
at the ankles on her aluminum chaise. Just past forty and still glamorous,
on her good days. Not a movie star but a kind of star you don't have a name
for. You're just past eight and far from glamorous. Birdie compares you,
kindly, to an egret as you stride the beach, your legs long and skinny as
stilts, your wispy white-blond hair tufting in the wind, your eyes a blue so
light they startle.

"See?" Birdie is dangling something in her hand, something small and
glistening, jewel-like. You've played this game before. She's going to throw it
and you're going to catch it. By mouth. You stand a few feet from the edge
of the blanket, bare toes clenching sand, arms swinging restlessly at your
sides. Your eyes fix on the prize.

One ... Birdie teases. "Two .

"Come on!" you shriek.

"Three!" Birdie tosses the thing in the air. It's a single mandarin orange segment, straight from the tin. You're a dog, no, a seal, a trained dolphin leaping
up, snapping your jaw, swallowing the slippery minnow whole. Orange syrup
dribbles down your chin. You smack your lips in citrus triumph.

Birdie claps and laughs, claps and laughs. "Bravo, elskan! Bravo!" Elskan means love in Icelandic. Like honey or dear. Birdie always calls you elskan.
Then tosses you another mandarin fish.

Gimli is Icelandic for heaven. Except this Gimli isn't in heaven or even Iceland, but on Lake Winnipeg. Manitoba, Canada. Birdie lives in Gimli with
your amnia Sigga. Arnrna means grandmother, afi means grandfather. Your
afi was a hundred and one years old when you were born except he was already dead. Some words are Icelandic and some are English. Mama is the
same in both. Your mama and Birdie share a mother so they're sisters. You
don't have a sister or a brother or a father you remember.

Every year from your eighth on, you and your mother take the train from
Windsor, Connecticut, to Grand Central to Winnipeg to spend the summer
on the lake at Gimli. With Your People. In an old white farmhouse with songyellow trim and book-lined walls. The house is called Oddi-in Iceland even
houses have names, and some in Gimli do too-after a place where famous
writers lived, like Saemundur the Learned, a wizard who rode the back of the
devil disguised as a seal. And Snorri Sturluson, esteemed historian and saga
scribe, was raised at Oddi too. He's one of your ancestors.

Birdie says writers run in the family, all the way back to Iceland, to the
greatest Viking poet, Egil Skallagrimsson. You descend from him.

And your grandfather's uncle, the famous farmer-poet Pall.

And of course your grandfather Olafur.

"And you?"

"And me," Birdie admits.

Me too? you want to ask but don't. The ancestor-poets race through your
mind in a line, crossing frozen ocean, one after the other, words flying off
their heels in a spray of ice, skating all the way back to Iceland, Egil and
Snorri and Pall, your grandfather Olafur, who died before you were born,
your Auntie Birdie.

"Why not Mama too?"

"It's something you're born with. Your mother can sing and play the piano,
embroider and knit, a very talented woman in her way. But she's no poet."

"Does she want to be?"

"Hardly."

You can't imagine not wanting it. Words live inside you, rearranging themselves in your mind like building blocks. A shy fly. A pig's wig. This before you can spell or even write. When words are pure sound. Plants at a
dance. A lonely bonely. Strings of words to make your mother laugh. But it
is Birdie who says, You have an ear. A tongue.