Erik vs. Everything

by Christina Uss

  She linked arms with Brunhilde, and they walked back over to the picnic blanket, where the boys were already digging in. Erik followed behind.

  “I suppose if he refuses these tests, I can label this particular enemy as both allodoxaphobia and enissophobia,” Brunhilde said as they joined the picnic. Erik began to sigh with relief but immediately changed it to a cough when she frowned at him. He put the rocks he’d collected on the edges of the picnic blanket and got a plate.

  Brunhilde helped herself to a scoop of potatoes and added, “At least we can move on to Erik’s fear of noodling.”

  “Huh? I’m afraid of something called noodling?” Erik asked with his mouth full of roll.

  Hrolf explained, “Oh yeah, eh? That is what the locals call the way we fish. If you catch fish by sticking your hand in a hole and pulling out whatever bites onto you, they call it noodling.”

  Erik swallowed. “Why don’t you use fishing poles? I mean, if you catch fish with a hook on a line, then the only thing getting bitten is the worm. Your way, you are guaranteed to get bitten by something, and it could be really big and really angry.”

  “Yes!” yelled Hrolf. “Really big! Whoo!” He tried to high-five Erik.

  “No, see, Hrolf, getting bitten by a big, angry thing is bad because it hurts. Pain is not a good thing,” Erik tried to explain.

  “So you are afraid of pain.” Brunhilde licked a morsel of potato off her finger and pulled The Big Book of Fear out of her bookbag. “That one is in the very first chapter here. It is named . . . algophobia.” She made some changes to the Venn diagram. She erased two question marks and added another circle that encompassed the shark-fish and the bleeding arm and came close to overlapping the SCIUROPHOBIA circle. She labeled the new circle ALGOPHOBIA (FEAR OF PAIN).

  Erik pinched his bread roll as he watched Brunhilde write. He said, “That’s not a phobia. It’s normal human stuff. Pain is supposed to be your body’s way of letting you know you should stop the thing you’re doing and go somewhere safer.”

  Hrolf said, “But if you go somewhere safer, there’s no fish there. Then you end up starving without any hope of catching anything. That’s not smart.” He forked up some fish and scratched his rune sketch, which today said BIGGER.

  Uncle Bjorn chimed in. “Pain isn’t a problem, Erik, it’s just something that happens when you bleed. Like Thor sends the thunder after the lightning. Besides, when you are bleeding and fishing at the same time, more big fish will come over because of the blood in the water, and that’s a good thing,” he finished confidently.

  “Sure!” agreed Ragnar. “A feeding frenzy. It’s the best!”

  “What?” Erik said. “Bleeding is not the best!” He put down his half-eaten roll, his appetite gone.

  “It’s not a big deal—not if it helps you catch a week’s worth of fish in one go,” Ragnar assured him. “It’s something to be very proud of. And wounds heal.” He showed Erik the scars he had up and down his hands and arms. “Look at this. That’s a lot of dinners. There’s nothing to fear about a good meal caught for your family.”

  “Eating dinner is very Viking,” Hrolf said. “Isn’t that in the Lore?”

  Erik shook his head. “Will somebody listen to me? Being afraid of blood and pain is not a phobia. It’s, like, basic survival instinct. The less you bleed, the more likely you are to stay alive,” he said.

  Brunhilde drew another circle with an angry-looking heart pumping out spurts of angry-looking blood and wrote HEMOPHOBIA (FEAR OF BLOOD).

  Erik knew as deeply as he’d ever known anything that he must stay miles away from any tests his sisters and cousins might want to run to evaluate how much blood and what kind of pain he was afraid of. He grabbed Brunhilde’s sparkly pen and leaned over his sister’s notebook to scrawl right over the top of the two new circles, NOT PHOBIAS, COMMON SENSE, DO NOT TEST.

  Brunhilde gave him a warning grunt. He meekly gave the pen back.

  Allyson tossed her hair. “Blood is, you know, bad for clothes,” she agreed. “It’s very staining. Is the fear of blood like a fear of ruining your best outfits? I mean, if you were wearing a white dress, or maybe a pair of pale suede boots, blood would spell the end of them. Erik, I totes understand you.”

  “I don’t think you do, Allyson. First off, I don’t wear white dresses.”

  At that moment, over near the bicycle practice ramps, one wild-haired kid ended up skidding off his bike into some gravel. He yelled, “Ow!” and one of the older riders brought over a small first aid kit.

  “See?” Erik pointed at him. “That kid would agree with me. Blood and pain are not what people want out of daily life.”

  “Silence!” Brunhilde thundered. She looked over at the cyclists. “Those bicycle people over there can help clarify this. Shall we?” She got up and began walking over to the moaning kid with the bloody leg. Erik knew her question was an order rather than an invitation, so he joined her. Better talking to an injured cyclist than ending up in the lake covered in fish bites.

  The boy who fell off his bike had soft brown eyes and a poof of wiry hair so large it was sticking out of the vents in his bike helmet. He looked about Erik’s age. He was lying on the grass while a young man worked on brushing small rocks out of his wound with a moist piece of cotton. Near the grass where they knelt was a small hand-lettered sign taped to a fence post: LAKE PARK MOUNTAIN BIKE ALL-STARS TEAM (EVERYONE WELCOME).

  “Fuzz,” the young man said, “see if you can tap into that daredevil spirit, but keep holding on to the handlebars the whole time, dude-a-roni.”

  “I know, I know,” groaned Fuzz. “Ride the bike, don’t let it ride you.” He looked over the young man’s shoulder at Brunhilde and Erik. “Uh, hi?”

  The young man turned around to see who the kid he called Fuzz was greeting. “Hey, there, newbies, come to join the practice? Helmets are mandatory. We have some extras over there, plus kneepads and elbow pads.”

  “Thank you for the invitation,” Brunhilde said, “but we are here to settle a disagreement.” She addressed the boy, “Bleeding bicyclist, my brother believes most people actively avoid pain and bleeding because it is human nature. The rest of our family thinks feeling upset about pain and bleeding is the telltale sign of a phobia. What is your opinion?”

  The boy Fuzz winced slightly as the man who had rinsed his wound and dried it was now securing a very large Band-Aid over the area. “Uhhhh . . . are you asking me if I am afraid of hurting myself and bleeding?”

  Brunhilde nodded. “Yes. Is it normal to you?”

  Fuzz pushed himself upright and tested out his leg. He grimaced slightly but then smiled at his first aid helper. “It’s good, Coach Gary. I’ll get back on for my next turn.” He looked at Brunhilde and Erik. “I don’t like getting hurt during practice, but I like trying new moves. The first thing Coach told us when we joined was that we could get hurt, but the better we listen and follow the rules, the less that will happen. I mean, I usually end up getting hurt just walking around my house and stuff. My ma says I get my clumsiness from her side of the family. So . . . I guess I don’t want to end up bloody, but I’m not gonna let it stop me from having fun.”

  Coach Gary put away the bandages and ointment in his red first aid pack. “Pretty much not a practice goes by without somebody eating a little dirt or getting a few scratches,” he admitted. “That’s why we wear safety equipment, and my first priority is teaching everyone how to prevent serious harm. But no matter how many Band-Aids we have to use, we call it a good day if we’re smiling at the end of it!” He did a complicated handshake with Fuzz and told him to get back in the line of kids who were continuing to pedal through the obstacle course.

  The young coach offered his hand to Erik to shake. “I’m Gary Tischer, the leader of this gang. It’s a multiage mountain bike team, just started this year. Most of these kids have never ridden before, so we’re getting into the basics.” He gave Erik a calculating look. “Say, are you around fourth or fifth grade? We’ve got
room in the nine-to-eleven-year-old category if you want to get in line behind Fuzz.”

  “Yeah!” Fuzz grinned as he lifted his bandaged leg over his bike frame. “We’re going to do speed drills next. They’re my favorite! By the way, I’m Fuzz. My mom hates when I tell people that, because she thinks Fahid is a perfectly good name, but I can’t help that I’m a fuzzy kind of guy.”

  Erik was at a loss for words. He knew how to ride a bike. But this was an organized sports team, and those never worked out well for him, so of course he should say no. Still, there was something about the way Fuzz was smiling and offering him the helmet, like it was a golden ticket to a happy place.

  “Huh,” he said.

  Brunhilde narrowed her eyes at him. “Pardon us for a moment, please,” she said to Coach Gary and Fuzz. She pulled him to the side.

  “Are you considering being part of this group? It might be a very good strategy.” She looked over the gathering of boys and girls. They were laughing together, trying to balance on their bikes with both feet on the pedals and then falling over in the grass in slow motion. “There appears to be a wealth of opportunities for embarrassment, failure, and bloody injuries. I bet we could get them to criticize you after every practice. Also, if I am not mistaken, I see a squirrel nest in that tree right there.”

  Erik had been half-listening until the word squirrel, at which point he shook his head emphatically. “N-n-n-n-no thanks,” he stuttered to Fuzz and backed away. “I don’t think it’s my kind of thing.”

  Brunhilde grunted and said, “Thank you for talking to us, Fuzz of the Bloody Leg and Coach Gary of the First Aid Kit. May you have an afternoon with as much or as little pain as you see fit.” She and Erik returned to the picnic blanket.

  * * *

  Erik watched the rest of the family splashing around in the lake. Sally sat in his lap. He’d clued in to the fact that offering to watch the triplets was like a get-out-of-jail-free card: no one would ask him to do any other task if he was taking care of all three babies. Sven and Siegmund were napping, so currently he had to make sure Sally didn’t wiggle-crawl off by herself. Brunhilde had frowned when he wouldn’t try noodling, but even she could not argue with him handling full triplet diaper duty.

  “Fish, like, on!” Allyson yelled. He saw Allyson waving one wet hand with a bass glorped onto it. Aunt Hilda high-fived her other hand. Ragnar kept sticking his legs under a mini island of branches and debris and kicking his feet out of the water, punting scaly things over to Hrolf and Uncle Bjorn. Brunhilde was stuffing perch in her pockets. Erik watched their splashing and wished there was a smaller gap between so many of the things his family liked to do and the things he felt comfortable doing.

  Erik felt Sally’s gums grab his arm and yelped. The little girl started sucking on his forearm like he was a tasty teething toy. She could down a bottle quicker than either of her brothers, and now he knew why—she had some powerful suction. He let her slurp away for a little while until he started to worry she might actually flay the top layer of his skin right off. It wasn’t easy to get a finger between her lips and his arm to break the seal, but eventually he popped her mouth free, leaving a big red-and-pink welt.

  Sally and Erik regarded the welt together. It looked a lot like Brunhilde’s drawing of the angry-looking heart pumping out spurts of angry-looking blood for hemophobia. It also looked uncannily like the Old Norse rune for DISASTER.

  “What are you doing, Sally, trying to give me a rune tattoo?” he asked her. “It’s like the whole family is in on this together. Doesn’t anyone else see that AVOIDING STUFF is a good plan?”

  Sally replied by grunting, leaning forward, and slurping some more.

  Nine

  Dragon Breathing

  When the biggest tree needs felling, take it one chop at a time.

  —The Lore

  Allyson was up early the next day, frying a pan filled with a half dozen eggs, four shredded potatoes, and six slices of bacon as Erik and his cousins wandered in to the kitchen.

  “Yum,” said Hrolf. “I’ll take a plate of that.”

  “Then you’ll have to cook some yourself,” she said primly, sliding the entire contents of the pan into a big bowl. “This is for me. It’s cheer competition day, and I need to keep my energy up.”

  Aunt Hilda and Uncle Bjorn joined them. Aunt Hilda told the boys to round up some more food from the larder and gather the morning’s eggs from their chickens so everyone could have a big breakfast. She then sat at the table with a sigh and began reminiscing. “We had something like cheer camp back in Norway, you know. It was called the Svalbard Skrik. I won two years in a row,” she said.

  “Oh yeah, eh, when I met her, your mother’s voice could peel the bark off an ironwood tree,” Uncle Bjorn agreed, and sipped his mug of coffee. Hilda blushed, and they held hands, smiling at each other.

  Erik watched Allyson continue to shovel down her mound of food. When she was nearly done, Brunhilde slid into the chair next to Erik. Her eyes were tired.

  “You had better eat a good breakfast too, Erik,” she said. “Ragnar and I were up late discussing how to begin the War on Fear. He enjoys planning battle strategies almost as much as I do.” She looked at Allyson and scowled. “What is that on your arm?”

  Allyson glanced down as she shoveled in her last big mouthful. “Mm-hmm, like it?” she asked indistinctly. She’d given herself a temporary tattoo of a bunny labeled SWEET PRINCESS, and below it she had sketched the rune for CONQUER.

  “Conquer is my rune,” growled Brunhilde.

  Allyson finished and cleared her place. “Well, I’m feeling conquery today, Bru! You don’t own all the conquering!” She tossed her hair from side to side and flounced out of the kitchen to go get changed.

  Ragnar looked at his own arm. “You are lucky, Brunhilde. You found your rune early. I just don’t know what to do.” He showed them that he had changed his tattoo from SMASH back to CRUSH. “Crush . . . or smash? Smash . . . or crush? It’s so hard to be me.”

  Brunhilde grunted and turned back to Erik. “Since you are resisting any more tests and reconnaissance, I believe it is time to move on to the next phase: the initial skirmish. We have enough information to prepare for your first battle today.”

  Erik’s mouth had been watering over the idea of a big plate of bacony goodness, but now it went dry. “What do you mean by prepare for battle?” he asked. After he said it, his stomach felt like it was considering climbing out of his belly button and skittering off somewhere to hide. Was Brunhilde going to try opening him up to locate where his fears began and pluck them out? Was Ragnar going to try brain surgery with a battle-axe?

  Brunhilde yawned and then began working her way around a plate of bread and honey. “Things are more complicated than I had originally thought. While we can now see that your enemies are predictable, you appear to have no active defense against them. And the things Ragnar and I know about defensive moves in hand-to-hand combat do not apply here.”

  “Yeah, but do my defensive moves smash things more? Or crush them more?” Ragnar interjected. “Hey . . . is crush-smash a word?”

  Brunhilde ignored him. “Fighting invisible things like feelings, well, that demands a whole new way of thinking. The last chapter in The Big Book of Fear offered some ideas. So did The Art of War. But it took a fair amount of puzzling out.” She yawned again, showing a mouthful of half-chewed bread. “I will show you.”

  And after they ate (Erik managed to nibble on a couple slices of bacon; the smell of crisp, smoky bacon can usually tempt even the unhappiest stomach), she did.

  In the playroom, Brunhilde and Ragnar had laid out a large piece of paper on top of a coffee table and drawn a landscape labeled ERIK VS. EVERYTHING. Brunhilde had used some of Hrolf’s tin soldiers and army men and a few of the triplets’ toys and stuffed animals to represent Erik’s various fears. She had also borrowed carved pieces from Uncle Bjorn’s personal Hnefatafl set, an archaic Norse game known as Fist Chess.

&nbs
p; “Whoa.” Erik examined the landscape. Brunhilde had obviously put a lot of work into it. Seeing his fears laid out systematically like this was impressive. For instance, in the Foothills of Embarrassment, she had a phalanx of twenty fighters with a toy bus, and in the blue-construction-paper Sea of Squirrels, she’d set a battleship mounted by a giant stuffed squirrel with a butter knife taped to its paws. It was like a game board for a demented version of Mouse Trap.

  Hrolf started rolling a tank through the Plains of Failure toward the Castle of Criticism. Ragnar pretended to counterattack the tank with a platoon of soldiers operating the Cannon of Piano Lessons.

  “What’s that?” Erik asked. He pointed to the top of an overturned brown measuring cup.

  “That’s us,” Brunhilde answered.

  Atop the measuring cup she had placed a small walnut surrounded by four painted figurines from the Hnefatafl set. One figurine was a helmeted Valkyrie, two were fur-clad barbarians holding enormous swords, and one was a princess in a flowing gown with a fencing saber.

  “What’s the little walnut for?” Erik asked.

  “You’re the walnut,” said Ragnar. He pointed to the bigger barbarian. “That’s me, of course. We’re up on the high ground because that’s all we have going for us right now. Our one advantage is that we can see the enemies around us.”

  “Why am I a walnut?” Erik asked. He was the smallest, least-impressive looking item on the whole board.

  “Because you would taste good cooked in pancakes?” Ragnar guessed. “Ask your sister, she figured that one out.”

  Brunhilde rubbed her forehead. “I thought about this a lot last night. I have been taking notes on every fear we have tested. I have watched your reactions so carefully. And while it is disheartening that you never fight back as most Sheepflatteners would, you also manage to . . . survive.” She looked into his eyes. “Nine years of fighting all this”—she swept her hand to indicate the whole board—“and you are still here. You must have a thick shell. And since you are a member of this family, I know that inside that shell must be the nutmeat of greatness, which, once planted in the proper soil, will burst forth and grow into a mighty tree—”