The Tricking of Freya (24 page)

Who knows what time it was when we finally circled the top of
Thingvellir Lake and parked the rattling jeep in front of the summerhouse?
We were late, but how late I couldn't guess. It was still light, but that's not saying much. We sat in the jeep a few more minutes, avoiding the inevitable. The house looked so tiny, perched in its island of tall grasses. I was
hoping for one last kiss, but Saemundur seemed nervous.

"I wonder how it went," I ventured.

"Good or bad, they're waiting for us."

"I guess they are."

"We could have left sooner."

"We could have."

"They'll be mad."

I nodded. "In English it's both angry and crazy."

"What is?"

"The word mad. The way vitlaus means stupid or crazy. Mad means either angry or crazy. Or both."

We walked from the jeep to the summerhouse with our secrets thick between us. I could see Ulfur through the window, still sitting at the table.
His head was in his hands. Then Birdie opened the door to greet us, mad in
every meaning of the word.

Must I continue? Can't we please linger in the ice cave? In my delicious
first kiss soft as fox pelt, in the swoon of pure velvet cave-black darkness?
Me, I've been attempting to return there ever since. Yes, my darkroom job.
It soothes me. It's how I stop the world when the mere spin of this planet
makes me dizzy. I switch off the red safelight and there is nothing but that
utter-black-of-the-universe cave-dark night. Remember the mythical Ginnungagap: no sand no sea no surging waves, no earth no heaven, nothing
but the yawning gap? I've got it, anytime.

I find myself wanting to protect you, Cousin, from what comes next. Prepare you, at the very least. And so I ask: What do you know of manic depression? Nothing, I hope, if that's not too much to ask. Mood disorders are
wickedly heritable. Suicide too runs in families. But let's assume for the moment and against the odds that you're untouched. These days the doctors
call Birdie's malady bipolar disorder. But why settle for psychiatry's static
nomenclature of an illness that is itself a shape-shifter, manifest in multiple
and torturous forms? In the spirit of our ancestor poets, I could easily spin a
thousand kennings for this disease: word bubbler, speech rocket, gabber,
charmer, pun spawner, brain champagne, ecstasy's consort, giddy fix, midnight
sun, sleep thief, marvelous party, big spender, synapse leaper, delusion peddler,
rager, grudge holder, thrower of fits, ringleader, god maker, eternal flame. And: brain glacier, tongue freezer, hope snuffer, sob story, shut in, doom spell, stun
gun, death wish, wrist slasher, pocket of stones.

Melter of wings.

Okay, I'll quit stalling. Here we go:

Birdie opened the summerhouse door screaming mad. True, we were a
pair of lying teenagers drunk as sheep returning hours late from a reckless
jaunt. Enough to make any normal adult angry. And maybe Saemundur
caught hell for it later. I'll never know. But Birdie? She didn't care if I'd seen
the ingenious thermal-powered greenhouses of Hveragerdi. There was no
time for that. The Wolf was on the loose.

Yes, you heard me. The Wolf is on the loose! That's what your mother
screamed when she met us at the door, maddened and looming large.
Berserk, I thought. She's gone berserk. It was a word Birdie herself had
taught me, from the Old Norse berserkr, a pagan warrior who fought with
maniacal, inhuman frenzy. I froze in terror. Saemundur gave me a horrified
glance, then fled into the house. Birdie swooped, caught me by the shoulders, and hiss-whispered in my ear: Ulfur has betrayed us!

And so unfolded the most god-awful of Birdie's god-awful scenes. We
were leaving, Birdie informed me, blocking my entrance into the summerhouse. Our suitcases were packed and in the trunk of Ulfur's car.

"Where are we going?"

"Back to Gimli."

"Gimli? What about our trip to the East, what about Olafur's letters?"

"What about you shut up and get in the car?"

Birdie's words could slap your face and leave it stinging sure as any
hand. In the backseat of Ulfur's car, I sat next to Birdie silently crying. Help
me, Saemundur. But all I could see was the back of his head. Ulfur drove.

"Leave us at Thingvellir," Birdie commanded. "We'll take the bus back to
Reykjavik."

"That's unnecessary, Ingibjorg. I'll drive you to Keflavik."

The airport in the black lava field.

"Thingvellir, I'm warning you," Birdie snarled. "Or we'll get out of this
car right now!"

You would have thought Ulfur was threatening us. And I guess in
Birdie's mind he was. The Wolf is on the loose!

The Wolf looked at his watch, said something about our catching the six
o'clock bus, the last one of the day. How grim he looked, not in the least
wolfish. No longer brimming with self-importance but depleted and exhausted. For all I knew Birdie had been railing at him for hours, the entire
time Saemundur and I were gallivanting across glacial passes and crawling
through lava caves. With words alone Birdie could grind a person into mute
surrender. I'd seen her do it many times, to Mama and Stefan, even Sigga.
Me. And now Ulfur, all the way across the ocean. Why had I expected
Birdie to behave in Iceland, when she never could back in Gimli? What was
my mother thinking, letting Birdie take me to a foreign country? Marna!
And even more than my mother I wanted Sigga to appear and take charge.
To say, Enough of this nonsense, Ingibjorg! Shape up or ship out. But we
were far beyond Sigga's reach, far beyond anything. I felt only dread as I
saw Thingvellir's rocky plains swing into sight. How desolate it seemed to
me. Godforsaken, my mother would have said. And suddenly it was over. I
was standing alone with Birdie in the Thingvellir parking lot watching Ulfur's tiny car putter off. Holding my cherry red suitcase. Shivering in mean
wind. A speck of misery on that vast tectonic plain.

How could Ulfur have abandoned us there? you ask. Did he not see how
dangerous Birdie had become? I suppose he believed that we were as Birdie
said returning immediately to Gimli, and that was the best outcome he
could have wished for all concerned.

Just before Ulfur drove away, Saemundur rolled down his window and
called my name. I ran to the car and he grabbed my hand, pulled me close,
and whispered, "Be careful, Freya min."

Freya mine. True, they all called me that-Mama, Birdie, Sigga, Stefan
even. But from Saemundur's lips it sounded altogether different.

"What did he say to you?" Birdie demanded.

"Nothing."

"Liar!" That's when she grabbed me by the shoulders, started shaking
me, accused me of being in cahoots with Ulfur and Saemundur. Her hair
came loose from her scarf. "Why did he give you his jacket?"

I looked down at myself in surprise. In all the chaos, I'd forgotten I was
wearing it, forgotten to return it to Saemundur. The jeans jacket with the
European patches. "He said good-bye. That's all, I swear."

She let go of me. I sat down on my suitcase to wait for the bus, staring up
at the stony wall of Almannagja, then down to the Law Rock at its base,
where a group of tourists stood listening to a tour guide. The wind picked up
and I huddled on my suitcase, long skinny arms wrapped around long skinny
legs, chin pressed to bony knees. Iceland was wearing me down with its earstinging eye-tearing hair-tangling wind, its sideways rains, slushing sleets,
August snows. Gloomy glacier-smothered mountains, bleak volcanic deserts.
So we were running back to flat little Gimli? Fine with me. I'd be happy to
spend the last few weeks of my summer lazing on the hot muggy kid-crowded
beach swatting blackflies. The old mundane routines seemed suddenly enticing. The prospect of escorting Mama to Betel, wasting a morning watching
old ladies knit and old men play chess seemed fine, just fine. Shelving books
for Sigga in the Gimli library? Nothing better. And Birdie? Birdie could go to
hell. I imagined Birdie dropping into the fiery mouth of the volcano Hekla as
it was painted on the antique map at Ulfur's house.

And then the bus came gliding down the long curving road into Thingvellir. I leapt off my suitcase, stood jumping lightly foot to foot in the freezing
wind. The tourists made their way from the Law Rock to the parking lot,
where they huddled in a group, bracing themselves against the wind. There
were ten or twelve of them, and I watched impatiently while they climbed
on the bus ahead of us. I wanted to board but I had to wait for Birdie. She
had the money. Finally the last tourist climbed on.

"Come on!" I called to Birdie, grabbing my suitcase. "The bus isn't going
to wait all day."

"We're not taking the bus," Birdie said.

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. We're not taking the bus." And to prove her point
Birdie waved to the driver, to indicate he could leave without us.

I considered it. At that moment I definitely considered severing my fate
from Birdie's. Climbing on the bus and leaving her behind to carry out
alone whatever awful scheme she'd concocted. Why didn't I? I had no
money, and more important, I had no concept yet of my own autonomy. I
was a child still, dependent on adults to move me from place to place. And
Birdie was watching me as I wavered on the edge of betrayal.

"Freya!" she called. It was a warning and a plea. Or so I heard it. I was both afraid of her and afraid for her. The bus pulled away and I stared at
Birdie in disbelief.

"Why?" I was angry and I didn't care if Birdie knew it. "Why did we sit
here freezing waiting for a bus we're not even going to take?"

"You thought we were waiting for the bus?" Birdie laughed. "Oh no. We
are waiting for the Wolf to clear the area."

"But that was the last bus! How will we get to the airport?"

"The airport?"

"Gimli!" I shouted into the wind, and the wind blew it back in my face.

Birdie studied me. An hour earlier she'd been a rage-monster; now she
was glacier-cool, mountain-steady. "We're not going back to Gimli, elskan."

I began to cry. Not the hot stunned tears I'd cried back at the summerhouse. No, this time I wailed. I howled into the wind. I fell to my knees and
sobbed. Manua! I cried. My dear befuddled gray-haired plain-Jane gentle
loving Mama who was afraid to fly. I want Mama! I cried so hard my teeth
chattered and I began to hyperventilate.

And suddenly Birdie was back, the old Birdie who comforted me from
nightmares was putting an arm around my shoulder, soothing me until my
teeth stopped chattering and my shoulders quit heaving and I began to
breathe slow and normal breaths again. Then she knelt beside me on the
gravelly pavement and took both my hands in hers.

"Dear Freya," she began. Her voice was calm, no hint of agitation. "I
should have explained to you sooner. I forget you aren't a child anymore,
you're nearly grown up, you can understand things. I'm going to confide in
you the truth of our situation. We're in danger."

"We are?"

"The important thing is to act quickly." She took my hand and we began
walking with our suitcases, following the road the bus had taken out of the
park. I didn't ask where we were going. I was too numb. We crossed the
bridge over the river Oxara, passing the cheerful white Thingvellir church
and its graveyard of moss-encrusted iron crosses. On the other side of the
bridge, Birdie glanced around, as if to make sure no one was watching us
there was no one, Cousin, no one anywhere! and then clutching my hand
she pulled me off the roadside and we began following a trail that circled
the lake.

On and on we walked, no longer hand in hand-the trail was too
narrow-but single file, me struggling to keep up with Birdie's frenzied
strides. Sometimes the ground was nothing more than rock split into chasms
brimming with the clearest water I'd ever seen, orange and blue stones
gleaming in the depths. White and yellow wildflowers spiked the tall grasses,
purple ones grew on the pebbled banks of twisting streams. White puffs of
milkweed bloomed like the heads of miniature grazing sheep. In some places
the earth was so thick with moss it felt like sponge beneath my feet. The wind
picked up, the wind died down. The lake lay like glass, then frothed into
whitecaps, then calmed itself again. I noted these things without finding
them beautiful. Beyond it all the vast Thingvellir plain surrounded, overwhelmed us. I felt we were nowhere. Thingvellir may be the big Somewhere
in Iceland. But there's nothing there. No towns, no houses. Only mountains
looming in the distance. A single road, and we weren't on it.

Even if I couldn't see it, even if the sky was still a bright light gray, I
could feel night beginning its fall. The twittering and shrilling of birds
turned to silence, and still we walked, and while we walked, Birdie got talky
again. Explaining, justifying, blaming, scheming. Shouting things at me
over her shoulder and above the wind. Establishing the germ of delusion
that in the coming days would mutate in countless directions, forming plots
and subplots and archplots, holy synchronicities, malevolent coincidences.