The Tricking of Freya (31 page)

Living without light, the fish of caves became not only blind but eyeless. A
month later, I lay sprawled on my futon on the floor watching a nature special about evolution. Pale lumpy fish swam across the screen. It took a few
millennia of living in caves, the voice-over explained, for the fish to lose
their eyeballs completely. The narrator had a crisp, almost British clip to his
voice. Their eyes outlived their usefulness. Now all that remain are vestigial
bumps.

Then the phone rang, and the proper male voice on the other end
sounded so strangely like the narrator's I became confused.

"Stefan who?" I demanded.

"Your uncle Stefan, that's who!"

Can you blame me? I hadn't spoken to him since Mama's funeral eight
years earlier. Since then our only contact had been cards exchanged at
Christmas. I knew he disapproved of me, of my refusal to visit Sigga in Gimli.
And now here he was on the phone, with his old-fashioned Icelandic Canadian accent. It sounded foreign to me, it had been so long since I'd heard those faintly rolling r's. He wanted to know if I had received the invitation to
Sigga's birthday celebration.

I had.

And would I be attending?

A long international silence. I could hear the coins clicking in my head.
Then Stefan cleared his throat, the sound traveling across the phone line as
a pillowy harumph.

"I can't get away from work. It's impossibly busy."

"Then just come for the weekend. The party is on a Saturday night."

He had me there.

"Freya, Sigga's not going to live much longer."

"Is she ill?"

"Quite healthy actually. Physically, anyway. But not many live beyond a
hundred. Though there was Runa Black, she made it to a hundred and
eight." He paused, and I heard the spark of a match, then the thin draw he
took from his pipe. He used to let me climb on his lap and hold the flame
over the bowl, then blow it out. "The point is, Freya, you never know what
can happen."

"Believe me," I said. I took out a cigarette, lit a match of my own. "It's
not that I don't want to see her. It's just that ... well, honestly, I can't afford
it. The airfare and all."

Liar. I wanted him to say it. But he was silent. Sucking his pipe. "All
right then, Freya. I thought that might be it." He didn't sound angry, or
even disappointed. Just relieved. As if he hadn't really wanted me to come
but promised Sigga he'd try. He hung up. Happy birthday, Amma, I whispered into the dial tone.

And that was the end of it-until a round-trip ticket to Winnipeg arrived
in my mailbox a week later. The fish dreams began that same night. Even
awake, in the darkroom with the safelight turned off, they swam through my
mind, blind and eyeless.

What, you ask, did I so fear? A host of ghosts awaiting me in Gimli: Birdie,
Mama, and my long-lost phantom self, worst of all. How could I face that girl
who had devoted her childhood summers to the writing, reading, memorizing of poetry? Who had promised her auntie she would be the next poet in a line
that skated all the way back to Iceland, to the Viking poet Egil Skallagrimsson? How could I tell that girl I'd turned my back on words?

And there would be the living to contend with: Sigga, Stefan, Vera. Even
if they'd managed to forgive me the crimes of my past (sending my mother
into a coma and ruining her for light, and life; absconding to Iceland with
Birdie and allowing her to climb, then plummet from the brink of madness;
dropping out of college after my mother's sudden death, and never returning; and finally, and still, turning my back on my grandmother, my only living
relative)what would they think of my life now? My grimy, chemicalinfused existence seemed hardly worthy of the granddaughter of the Great
Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands.

But my worst fear of returning to Gimli was of coming unglued. My
bones could turn to origami wings again.

The plane ticket Stefan sent rendered all my excuses moot. If I didn't go
now, I could never look myself in the mirror again. I would go. I steeled myself, icier than ever. And then one morning the day before departure it
occurred to me as I rode the lurching, screeching subway to work, gripping
the pole for balance though it would have been impossible to fall, wedged as
I was on all sides by the anonymous press of strangers, that maybe it was the
not-going back that was holding me back. The darkroom job, the basement
apartment: those were supposed to have been temporary measures, a way to
step off the spinning globe after my mother died and regain my footing. Instead the temporary holding pattern had gradually shifted into permanent
status, a rock-solid inertia.

Maybe I needed to be shaken up, loosen my grip on that underground
pole. Maybe the visit to Gimli would not so much derail my life as re-rail it
in a new direction.

Of course, I didn't know about you yet, Cousin, you who have become
my confidant, inquisitor, and holy grail. My conceit.

But I had an inkling of something, an obsolete eye.

And so Freya returned to Gimli.

The goddess Freyja? Lusty mistress of fertility and birth, sage adviser to
the lovelorn, deity of crops and wombs? She who cruised the heavens in her
cat-drawn chariot, flew to other worlds wrapped in a cloak of enchanted
feathers? Freyja the mother of all seers who instructed Odin himself in the
divine art of divination? Back in Gimli? The same Gimli the gods built as
their new home after the coming of Ragnarok, when the Fenris Wolf swallowed the sun, and the serpent Garmr that circles the earth, tail in mouth,
rose up from the ocean in a tidal wave of terror? And the earth sank in the
sea, and cast down from heaven were the hot stars, and the sky itself was
scorched with fire? And then the earth rose up from the waters, fair and
green, and the gods built a new home brighter than sunlight, thatched with
pure gold, and named this shining palace Gimli? That Gimli?

No, not that Gimli, and not that Freyja either. Merely me, a lowly mortal in a rental car slinking into town under cover of night after a sixteenyear, self-imposed exile. Stefan had called before I left and offered to pick
me up at the airport, sounded miffed when I'd refused. I couldn't bear to
trouble him, I explained, and for once I spoke the truth. I felt undeserving
of that Gimli-sweet kindness. Underneath it, I believed that Stefan, like
Sigga, like my mother, like Vera and anyone else who held an opinion on the
matter, blamed me for Birdie's suicide.

No, no one had ever said as much. They didn't have to. It was obvious.
True, the Iceland escapade had been Birdie's idea, her master plan, but I'd
gone along every step of the way. If I had been a different kind of child
more timid, more responsible, less impulsive-I might have dug my heels
in when Birdie intercepted me in the midst of that Islendingadagurinn parade, insisted on a proper send-off by my mother. But Birdie knew me,
knew that I was prone to fancy and enthusiasm, that I would fly without
thinking at the first invitation.

I also declined Stefan's offer of a place to stay for the weekend. "You've already been far too generous," I told him. I meant not only the plane ticket but
the care he'd given Sigga over the years. Care I should have given her myself.

Instead I reserved a cheap car, booked a room at the Viking Lakeside
Motel. A hideout and a getaway vehicle, should I need to escape on short
notice. The rental office at the airport was out of economy cars when I arrived and "upgraded" me to a luxury van, a ten-seater, same price. Black no
less, a rented hearse, plenty of room for all my ghosts if they could manage
to sit upright. I headed north on Highway 9 at dusk, hands trembling.
Smoked five cigarettes. Hands trembling still. It was the prairie, unnervingly flat. In the city I'm propped up, secure in my thicket of buildings and
bodies. Out there, there was nothing vertical to hold me. Just the black
stripe of the road ahead. Flattened fields to the left, shimmery glimpses of
Lake Winnipeg to the right. My old lake!

The sun dropped and it became truly dark. Not the muted city darkness
I've become accustomed to-dim subway tunnels, basement apartment
but the deep black of a starless country night on a road without streetlights
and only the rare brief shine of an oncoming car. As I neared the turnoff for
Gimli, twin strands of longing and dread wound inside me: speed on, turn
back. On. Back. Or maybe ... out, into the lake. No one would ever know. I
hadn't told my darkroom pal, Frank, about the trip, or our boss, Klaus. I'd left
on a Friday afternoon, would be back to work on Monday morning. That way
I could erase, if I needed to, the entire trip. Like the rest of my life, before I'd
reinvented myself in New York, it might simply never have happened.

It was the sunrise that woke me my first day back in Gimli. Not the early,
gentling light I remembered from Birdie's lakeside sunrise but the balled yellow fist of the thing itself. Smack in the eye. I'd forgotten to pull the
shades the night before, or change out of my plane-rumpled clothes. I'd just
checked directly into the Viking Lakeside Motel, plunked on the bed without turning back the skimpy covers, and crashed into a sleep black and flat
as the night I'd driven through. And then I was suddenly, brutally, wide
awake, blinking and squinting, burrowing under the covers and yanking the
musty motel pillow over my face, defending myself like any subterranean
creature from rude solar assault. Of course, it was only our ordinary star,
making its daily rounds. I'd forgotten how bright the sun can get: even after
I squeezed my eyes shut its brassy imprint remained, a penny-size hole persisting in my mind as I dozed back to sleep. A pretty sight I must have
made, all six feet of me sprawled diagonally across the single bed, arms
flopped off one side, feet dangling off the other, torso tangled in the dingy
top sheet. A hard knot crunched between my brows.

I did not want to go back there; I had a long day ahead of me. We'll let
me sleep.

And while I sleep, will you allow me to tell you, dear Cousin, about The
Tricking of Gylfi? It's one of the old Norse myths documented by our esteemed ancestor Snorri Sturluson and recounted to me as a bedtime story
by our very own Birdie.

King Gylfi was the ruler of what is now called Sweden. During Gylfi's
rule, a new race of people came wandering into the northern lands. The
Norse called them the Aesir, believing them to be of Asian origin, and they
were awed by the Aesir's gifts and prowess. But after being badly tricked by
one of the Aesir-likely the goddess Freyja in disguise-Gylfi decided to
travel to Asgard, the Aesir's legendary headquarters, to discover for himself
the source of their great powers.

Before departing on his quest Gylfi prepared himself a disguise, because
a people as clever as the Aesir would never reveal their most prized secrets
to a king as powerful as Gylfi. So Gylfi shed his royal robes and donned the
cloak of a vagrant, calling himself Gangleri, which is just another name for
wanderer.

Were the Aesir fooled by Gylfi's disguise, even for a moment? They were
not. Well skilled in the art of prophecy, they saw Gylfi coming a long way
off. When "Gangleri" arrived in Asgard, the Aesir were ready for him. In place of their ordinary dwellings they conjured out of thin air a vast hall,
brilliantly shingled with the shields of warriors. The hall was higher than
any Gylfi had ever seen, so high he could scarcely see the top of it.

Awaiting Gylfi inside was none other than Odin himself, disguised as
not one but three rulers seated in a three-tiered throne, calling themselves
High, Just-as-High, and Third. High wasted no time. He told Gylfi he was
welcome to food and drink, like anyone else in the great hall. But had he
further business there?

Gylfi did: he wished to find out if there was anyone learned in the hall.

The three kings stared at him a moment in shocked silence. Learned, indeed! Gylfi knew full well that any ruler would take such a request as a
challenge to his honor, and these three proved no exception. High was especially offended by Gylfi's comment and warned him that he would not escape the hall alive unless he could prove himself the more learned. "Stand
out in front while you ask: he who tells shall sit."

And so began their famous contest of wits. Through it Gylfi hoped to
learn all the secrets of the Aesir-and as long as he won in the end, he
would be able to return home a more powerful man himself. If not, well
then, he would die. Such were the rules of the game.

Gylfi took his place standing in front of the throne and started with an
easy enough question. If the Aesir did not know the answer to this then
surely they knew nothing at all.

"Who is the highest and most ancient of all gods?"

"All-Father," answered Third, not missing a beat.

Gylfi decided to try a harder line of questioning. "But what was the beginning? How did things start? And what was there before?"

High spoke down to Gylfi from the highest throne, recounting the beginning of the world, the great nothing of Ginnungagap, the cluelessness of
sun and moon, the homeless stars.