The Tricking of Freya (9 page)

"Far from the madding crowds," she said. The crowds didn't seem mad
to me, but I said nothing. I didn't want to wreck her mood; I'd seen by then
what Birdie's moods could do. Birdie spread a plaid blanket on the sand,
then held a towel around me while I changed into my blue checkered
swimsuit. I thought of it then, for just an instant: my sailor cap. Birdie forgot my sailor cap.

Birdie lay down on the blanket and pulled a book out of her bag. "Go
play, sweetie," she said. Instead I sat on the sand. Playing, like spinning,
didn't feel right somehow. As if I wasn't a kid anymore.

"All right then," Birdie said. "How about a swim?"

I shook my head.

"Okay, scowly face, I'll go by myself." She stood up and slipped out of
her jacket. Underneath she wore a two-piece bathing suit. I'd wanted a twopiece suit, but Mama said it wasn't proper attire. Then Birdie was off, kicking sand in a spray behind her, and without even stopping to test the
temperature with her toe like my mother always did, she rushed straight in
and dove her whole body under, headfirst. She disappeared for a long time.
I got worried and ran down to the water's edge. Finally she popped up, far
far out, and waved at me. I felt silly standing by myself on the shore, so I
waded in a bit. The water felt like a slippery new skin covering my feet and
legs. I gasped when it reached my crotch, then waded deeper until it licked
my armpits. I held my arms in the air and shivered. Large white clouds
hung in the sky and I thought of Birdie's dream, of Mama being trampled
under the puff of sheep. I looked for Birdie, but she was gone, under.

"Birdie!" I screamed. A few seconds later she shot up behind me, shaking the water off her shoulders like a dog. "Do you like to float?"

"I'm not good at floating. I sink."

"Well if a giant like me can float I'm sure a little elf like you can too." She
placed her hands on my back and told me to lean backwards. The beach
dropped away, then blue sky, clouds, and sun tilted into view. The sun
burned a yellow hole in my eyes, so I squinted them shut. Birdie held me
with one hand at the base of my spine and one between my shoulders. I let
myself rest solidly in her hands, the water lapping over my midriff. "Think
air," Birdie said, and it worked, I started floating on my own, off her hands,
for just a few seconds. The sun felt hot on my body and I seemed to be drift ing, like it wasn't Birdie's hands anymore but the water itself bearing me up.
Brightly colored shapes floated into my mind: fragments of broken cups.
Mama curled into a comma on the water's surface. I snapped open my eyes
and tried to stand, my legs churned frantically for the lake bottom, but I
couldn't find it. Was I over my head? Then Birdie caught me by the waist
and set me upright.

"You said you'd hold me!"

"I was right here," Birdie insisted. "I'm right here."

For lunch we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into triangles and
slurped orange juice from a red thermos. "Soon," Birdie predicted, "you'll
be floating like a boat and swimming like a fish. Did you know Freyja was
the daughter of a sea god?"

The Freyja comment caught me off guard. My father had been an accountant, not a sea god, so I knew she wasn't talking about me. "Freyja who?"

"Freyja who? Freyja who?" Birdie spat a mouthful of orange juice onto
the sand. She put her sandwich down and turned her full attention to me.
"The goddess Freyja, that's who! The goddess Freyja has no last name.
Hasn't Anna told you anything about your namesake?"

I felt the same as when I'd admitted that I'd never eaten ponnukokur, as
if I'd gotten my mother in a kind of trouble I couldn't quite fathom. "I know
about Freyja. I just got confused is all."

"What, exactly, do you know about Freyja?"

It felt like a test and I couldn't think of anything. What had my mother
told me? Freyja is a goddess. Gods and goddesses are powerful and people
pray to them. I'd always imagined Freyja like Supergirl, flying over Iceland
in a red-and-blue cape, tiny people far below on their knees gazing up at
her, hands clasped in prayer. "She was super," I said.

"She was super all right!" Birdie seemed pleased. "Let me tell you a few
things about Freyja. Would you like that?"

I would. I lay on my stomach, my pale skinny legs parallel to Birdie's
long tan ones. When it got too hot we drifted down to the water and Birdie
held me while I floated, but I never stopped listening, not for a moment. In
those hours I forgot all about my crime.

"Freyja's father," Birdie began, "was none other than the sea god Njord, master of wind and waves. Her mother was the earth goddess Nerthus, and
her brother was the fertility god Freyr."

"But what was Freyja the goddess of?" I asked. I was sitting up now, legs
crossed Indian style on the edge of the blanket, sun hot on my shoulders
while I funneled sand from one hand to another like an hourglass.

"Freyja," Birdie proclaimed, "was the goddess of many things. First of
all, she was the goddess of love, it was Freyja people turned to for matters of
the heart, and she was the goddess too of birth, often invoked when women
went into labor. Freyja was also the goddess of magic, able to see into the
future. It was Freyja who taught Odin himself the art of prophecy. Although gods and goddesses were not the only ones who had this power. A
few humans did too, mostly women, and such a women was called a volva.
The volva sat on a high platform, dressed in cat-skin clothing, because it
was believed that cats would escort her to other worlds. The volva would
close her eyes, her head would sway, sometimes she would wave her hands,
or her magical staff the word volva means wand-bearer-and then she was
on her way, traveling to other worlds, to consult with the spirits and then return to her audience with news of the future. And who do you think it was
that a volva would turn to for inspiration and guidance?"

"Frey] a?"

"Indeed. And not only was Freyja a seer extraordinaire, she was a shapeshifter as well. She could turn herself into a bird and travel great distances,
into other worlds, wearing a cloak of falcon feathers. She rode around
heaven in a chariot pulled by wild cats, and on her neck she wore the Brising necklace, which everyone was always trying to steal from her because
of its great power. Oh, some giant or other was always trying to carry her
off, but Freyja called the shots when it came to men."

Birdie paused for a breath. I knew that behind her cat-eye sunglasses
her eyes were large and spinning. "The trickster god Loki accused Freyja of
sleeping with various elves and gods, including her brother, Freyr. And on
the cusp of the conversion to Christianity a rogue Christian poet in Iceland
referred to Freyja as a wild pig in heat, a she-goat bitch roaming the countryside. A blatant attempt to denigrate the fertility cults, which had a lot of
staying power, let me tell you! Long after the so-called loyal followers of
Thor and Odin traded them in for the one God almighty, pockets of Freyja worshipers continued on in sacred groves, until the Christians started calling them witches and their cats familiars, claiming they used their magic not
only to predict harm but to cause it. Oh, blasphemy! But so it goes, when
one religion gets taken over by the next, one god substituted for another.
Fickle we are, fickle fickle fickle!"

By this time I was completely lost. Fickle denigrate blasphemy rogue
bitch. It seemed Birdie had forgotten I was only seven, forgotten I was even
there. Had Birdie said that Freyja was a witch? Witches were bad and I
didn't want to be named after one. I lay down again, pressing my face into
the sandy beach blanket, but out of the corner of my eye I watched Birdie
talking, her hands gesturing in the air, her voice high-pitched and excited,
the words so fast and strange I couldn't understand them at all anymore
and soon they were swallowed up into a strange seashell roar deep in my
eardrums. A cloud eased itself over the sun and I felt a shiver travel up between my shoulder blades. I sat up and my teeth began chattering, slamming jackhammers so loud it broke Birdie out of her trance.

"Baby, are you cold? How can you be cold?"

"I'm hot."

Birdie took off her sunglasses and stared at me. Her eyes were all pupil,
holes of black with only a tiny perimeter of blue. "Oh my God," she said.
"You're a lobster."

Hardly anyone was left on the beach. The last families were packing up,
trudging back to their cottages. I couldn't walk; sand rubbing against the
burned soles of my feet made me scream. So Birdie carried me piggyback,
trading the beach bag back and forth between hands. "We forgot my sailor
cap," I whispered in her ear. "Mama makes me wear my cap. Mama doesn't let
me stay in the sun long. Mama puts lotion on me so I don't burn. Mama-"

"Enough Mama," Birdie snapped. "Mama isn't here. You're stuck with
Birdie now, okay? And next time maybe you could think of telling me these
things first? Because I don't know you, Freya. I've only known you a week.
So help me out here. Don't keep secrets." Her words had sharp edges, like
broken pieces of china and glass. I wanted to plug my ears but I couldn't
because I had to hold on. I gripped the silver chain around Birdie's neck.
Freyja had worn a necklace too. The Brising necklace.

"Let go," Birdie demanded as we climbed up the stairs to the front door
of the house. "You're choking me!" Sigga's car was back in the driveway.
Even though Birdie admitted nothing, I knew she was scared of what Sigga
would do when she saw me. Where my chest pressed against Birdie's back
I could feel her body trembling against mine.

Sigga dunked me in a tub full of water so cold I shrieked. I tried to squirm
out, but she held me down, one broad wrinkled hand covering half my
skinny chest. My chest and stomach were the only white parts. The rest of
my skin was as red as a brand-new pair of Keds. "We have to break the
fever, elskan," Sigga said calmly. I stopped resisting then and lay my head
back in an icy float. Think air. Then I was standing on the bath mat while
she blotted me gently dry. She took Noxzema from the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. The jar was blue like the glass of the lake and the cream inside was white as cloud. She slathered it onto my body with long strokes
until the fumes of menthol seared my nostrils.

Once during the night I woke to the sound of Birdie and Sigga arguing in
hushed Icelandic whispers outside my door. The only word I understood was
my name, repeated over and over. Then I heard a clatter of footsteps on the
stairs, a slam of the front door, a few revs of the engine on her old VW Beetle, and Birdie was gone. When Sigga opened the door to my room I pretended to be asleep, but all night long I lay awake waiting for the sound of
Birdie's footsteps on the stairs. Instead she arrived at dawn outside my window trailing a cloak of feathers. She gathered me up in her arms, still naked
and covered in white cream, and flew me out the window and over the lake,
holding me in front of her like an offering. Yet she seemed not even to be
touching me, her palms barely making contact with my back, and then we
were floating, up and away into the lightening sky, the feathers of her cloak
soothing the burned surface of my skin.

The next morning Birdie was gone still. The sun shone onto her empty bed,
unmade from the day before. Birdie didn't believe in the daily making of
beds. But her desk she had cleared before she left. All the piles of paper
her Word Meadow-gone. Maybe she'd packed it into her suitcase. I stood
in front of her full-length mirror in my nightie. Red face, neck, arms, legs
against white cotton, a burning hot, striped candy cane. I heard a noise
downstairs and my heart leapt-maybe Birdie had never left? Maybe she'd
spent the night on the couch. But it was only Sigga alone in the kitchen
making breakfast. The stove glistened silver, the sink gleamed white again,
the cups and dishes that Birdie had piled up were now returned to their
proper places.

"Good morning, elskan." The morning seemed anything but good. Behind her round glasses, Sigga's gray-blue eyes seemed like snowballs, hardpacked and icy. She set a bowl of oatmeal onto the table for me, thick with
raisins and topped in brown sugar and cream. I leaned over to take a bite
and yelped: the rising steam stung my sunburned cheeks. I began to cry.

"Whatever is the matter?" Sigga asked.

"Where did Birdie go?"

Sigga was silent a moment, lips taut. "Birdie took a little vacation."

Wasn't Gimli already a vacation? Why would Birdie need to go anywhere else? I suspected Sigga of not telling me the truth. Was that the same as lying? Or maybe it was more like a game of pretend, a game I could
play along with. "When is she coming back from her vacation?"

"Any day now." For an instant Sigga's eyes softened and I could see the
blue of them again. But I wasn't hungry. Birdie had taken my appetite on
vacation. I swirled my oatmeal with a spoon while Sigga stood at the sink
scrubbing the pot.