by Wendy Delsol
In them?
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“When I touched them, back at the festival, I had a vision. Though it was brief, it stuck with me. I knew I had to hold them again, but I didn’t dare in front of my mother.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say my mother is a businesswoman, not necessarily a rune reader. And no more a gypsy than she is the queen of Denmark.”
“So the reading was fake?”
“No, because I wasn’t translating. She doesn’t speak English; I could have been reciting Shakespeare for all she knew.”
Jinky hardly looked the type to quote Shakespeare. Anyway, I didn’t think sonnets would be much help right now. Jack was missing, and she had seen something in the runes.
“So, then, you’re a true reader? What did you call it?”
“An erilaz. And yes. But the ability comes from my father’s side of the family. My grandmother is Sami, one of the nomadic peoples.”
“You mean, like, from Lapland?” So maybe I remembered a thing or two from that world cultures class, besides the international fashion capitals.
“They prefer Sami,” Jinky said with a sneer as if I had offended her, her grandmother, and a long line of ancestors.
“I’m sorry. Look, someone important to me is missing. I only just learned about it tonight. Earlier, your reading meant nothing to me, but now —”
“A loss,” Jinky said.
“Yes.”
“So my reading was accurate. This is not good. Not good at all.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. She didn’t even know Jack, so her reaction had to be based on something else.
“Is there something more I should know?” I asked.
“When I held the stones the second time, I felt —”
“What?”
“Fehu, the loss symbol, was so strong it throbbed in my hand. And I sensed —” She hesitated.
“Just tell me.”
“A great loss, maybe even catastrophic. Crazy as that sounds.”
I hadn’t expected that. And was not much liking the word crazy these days.
“Listen,” Jinky said. “This is beyond my abilities. With your family connection to the selurmanna, with the power of your runes and the intensity of the reading . . . only my grandmother can help us.”
Great. A bigger gun was being called in. And if Jack missing and the threat of a “great loss” already put me beyond the average erilaz’s capabilities, what would she think about the whole Stork thing? My secrecy vows precluded me from telling her, but how much would that up the ante?
Jinky pulled a cell phone from her pocket, punched in a series of keys, yakked in Icelandic, and snapped the phone shut. “I can take you to my grandmother. Let’s go.”
“What — now? I can’t just go. I need to tell my afi, or at least leave a note.”
“There’s no time,” Jinky said.
“But I’m not even dressed.” I gestured with open arms to my flimsy white nightie flapping from beneath my parka.
“You’re fine,” Jinky said, starting back toward shore. “Anyway, wait till you see my grandmother.”
Jinky turned and jogged over the breakers. I had no choice but to follow as she scrambled up the path. Jinky hardly looked like an athlete, but the girl could run. As much as I wanted to blame my by-comparison slow-mo on my UGGs, she was wearing heavy black boots. Engineered for hugging a muffler, or stompin’ a mosh pit, but not for a footrace. At the top of the trail to Vigdis and Baldur’s place, she turned in the other direction, cutting across a field and heading for the road. I clomped after her for Jack, and Jack alone.
Soon, thankfully, Jinky slowed. From under a pile of branches, she uncovered a motorcycle, which explained the boots, but hardly the fishnets, or the dog collar. She stood it upright and with a practiced move swung over the seat and down onto the kick start. It roared to life, and I understood then why she’d kept it down the road from the house.
“Get on,” she shouted above the engine.
“What about helmets?” I asked.
Jinky glared at me. “Now,” she shouted, revving the engine as a warning.
With a shake of my head, I climbed on behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and hoping that her road skills were better than her people skills.
They weren’t. As I should have guessed, she drove the same way she dressed: with abandon and no regard for rules. I had only been on a motorcycle once, and that was technically a dirt bike. If Jinky was older than me, it wasn’t by much, yet she drove like a stuntman — woman, rather — head down and leaning into curves. My job, I figured, was to hang on for dear life and scream anytime we were airborne, which was more than once. I was so scared, I forgot to feel cold. We were headed toward the sea away from Hafmeyjafjörður and along the fjord on the main access road. I don’t think we saw another vehicle; it was the middle of the night, but this was probably a lonely patch of road at high noon. Coming to a tiny village, Jinky slowed and turned right and down a small street. We were approaching a marina with ten or so fishing boats anchored for the night. She parked the motorcycle alongside a beat-up truck and cut the engine.
“My cousin will take us the rest of the way,” she said, swinging down from the bike.
I followed suit, looking around for the “cousin,” or any sign of life.
Jinky took off down a rickety old dock, her hands shrugged deep into the pockets of her leather jacket. Again, I had no choice but to follow. At the far end of the dark pier, the hum of a motor sounded.
“The rest of the way is by boat?” I asked, struggling to keep up. Not that I wasn’t thankful to have survived the first leg of our trip, but no one had warned me of a harbor cruise.
“Yep.”
“Where are we going? Not to Lapland, I hope.”
“Not Lapland,” Jinky said with a condescending tone. “Iceland. Just not the mainland.”
Mainland? It was already an island.
“What does that mean?” But Jinky didn’t answer me. She strolled ahead to what I could now make out was our destination. A guy was waving a lantern at us from the deck of an old fishing boat, circa Moby-Dick. Within moments, I followed Jinky aboard the trawler, no pleasure boat for sure. The deck was littered with nets and lines and gear, and I almost fell over a bucket of fish heads. Old fish heads, judging by the smell. Eeew. I didn’t want a ride on that boat any more than I wanted to get on the motorcycle. And a look at our captain, even in the dark, didn’t help. He was short, wiry, and bearded, with a stocking cap pulled down practically to his small, dark eyes. And he was smoking. Enough said.
“Katla, this is my cousin, Hinrik,” Jinky said. It was the first time she’d used my name. Odd that she’d called me Katla. I was sure I’d introduced myself as Kat; I always did.
Hinrik grunted a hello to me and then fired off a round of Icelandic at Jinky. It needed no translation. He wasn’t happy to be there, either. By my count, that made three of us.
Hinrik went silently about the business of getting the boat ready. I had a thousand questions for Jinky and was internally sorting them by urgency. For a moment’s peace, I went to the bow of the boat, where the headlight lit a shaft of water.
Hinrik called something out. I watched as Jinky performed a series of first-mate tasks with a practiced hand. She untied the lines securing us to the dock, hopped onto the departing boat at the last possible moment, and stored the ropes into a tidy shipshape spool. So the girl could read ancient runes, handle a Harley, and knew her way around a poop deck — big whoop. She still had the fashion sense of a vampire and as much personality as a zombie.
After that, Jinky disappeared below deck; I was not about to join her no matter how many questions I had for this unlikely companion of mine. Without Dramamine or a sick bag, I was an eyes-on-the-horizon sailing type. For the rest of the trip, I clutched the underside of the hard, wooden bow bench with the wind whipping my face and shooting my hair all around me like kite tail
s. I was freezing and shivering so hard I could hear the marrow crystallizing in my bones.
A hundred years later, as the sun burst over the horizon like a giant smashed pumpkin, land came into view. Jinky and Hinrik set about their mooring duties, while I scouted the scene. And I thought Vigdis and Baldur lived in a remote location. This was seriously out there. I found myself looking at a spit of shorn rock smaller than Disney’s Tom Sawyer Island. Hinrik pulled the boat alongside a warped and collapsing dock. I hopped off and onto the rickety square of planks. Jinky was right behind me, but to my surprise, Hinrik and his floating bucket of fish guts immediately began pulling away.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“Fishing.”
Well, duh, I supposed. But what about us?
“He’s coming back, right?” I asked.
Jinky didn’t reply. Hello? It’s a fair question.
I was about to say as much when something in the water caught my eye. Black heads bobbed in the surf, their shiny eyes watching me. Seals. I pointed, intending to call Jinky’s attention to our visitors, but she had already taken off. As usual, I ended up chasing after her. We hoofed it up a steep slope to . . . nowhere and nothing, by the looks of it. Soon, though, a tiny house came into view. It was roundish and made of stone, as if nothing more than a natural heave or knob of the island itself.
Something much more enticing had me bounding up the hill. In a clearing near the cottage roared a large fire. The boat ride had left me so cold I was still shaking. The promise of heat was a welcome relief. Drawing near, I noticed that the area containing the fire was ringed by a circle of very large stones. There was also a tiny structure, a domed tent of sorts, covered in animal skins. I was so cold and so glad to be off that boat that I skipped like some garland-bearing maypoler.
The moment, though, I crossed over the stone ring, I felt a familiar sensation. As if falling from a mountaintop, air whooshed past my ears like a 747, and then everything went black.
I came to lying on the hard, cold ground with Jinky and some old woman standing over me.
They spoke in Icelandic, though I was so disoriented that they could just as easily have been talking backwards or sideways, for that matter. And my mind was keeling with the memory of another experience of a single step that had felt like a fall through the looking glass. That time I’d woken up to Wade. Needless to say, I was suspicious, and more than a little weirded out.
Jinky extended her hand, an encouraging sign, but I was still operating on a code-red threat level.
“My grandmother welcomes you to her stone circle and says she knows now, after such a graceful landing, that you are truly one of the special among us.”
I rose to my feet without help, brushing dirt from the hem of my nightie. “She could have just asked,” I said.
Jinky, I discovered, did have the facial muscles required to smile. Who knew?
“I have told her of your rune reading,” Jinky said. “She tells me she had sensed a disturbance in the energies of this power place. She has prepared the spirit breath for you.”
That didn’t sound good. And if you asked me, the situation didn’t look good, either. As forewarned, Jinky’s grandmother was a sight to behold. She was about four foot ten, tops. Her arrow-straight silver hair hung loose over her shoulders. She wore a colorful striped knit cap, a large fringed and patterned woolen shawl knotted at her throat, a belted royal-blue knee-length woolen tunic, and knee-high bristled fur boots. The boots were to die for, as I suspected some local furry critter had. She definitely had the look of someone who threw around words like “spirit breath.”
“The what?” I asked.
The old woman rattled off a long directive. Jinky nodded and said, “Don’t be afraid. My grandmother only wants to help. As a shaman, she can guide you, but she warns you: once through, the journey is your own.”
Which was no help at all. Seriously. Once through? Through what? Shaman-granny then approached me, lifting my right hand and facing it skyward. She ran her hand along my palm. I was reminded, eerily, of the way Jack’s grandmother had done this very same thing. Especially, as she, too, ran her finger into the inlet between my thumb and pointer. She said something to Jinky, who nodded her head and stepped away.
“Did you read something in my palm?” I asked the old lady. She looked at me blankly and dropped my hand. And then she also walked away.
Huh? Jack’s grandmother had mentioned the “power of three,” when she had done her palm-reading. A little translation might have been nice.
Instead, Jinky and her grandmother started doing — of all things — yard work. With shovels, they removed large hot rocks from the center of the fire, carried them to the small tentlike dome, and dropped them inside. This continued until there must have been a good-size pile of rocks in the tent. All the while I was warming myself by the fire; heat, glorious heat, I couldn’t get enough of it. Minutes later, they dropped their shovels. From her pocket, Jinky’s grandmother pulled a small bundle of dried branches, which she lit by dipping into the fire. She and Jinky walked over to the entrance of the low tent and started — huh? — removing their clothes. Jinky went down to her panties and a black tank over a black bra. She at least had a figure one wouldn’t mind exposing. Shaman-granny, on the other hand, didn’t. I was relieved when she stopped at a bone-colored slip, but, still, it was a little TMI for my tastes. They both turned and looked at me.
“What?”
“To enter the savusauna, you must remove your layers.” Jinky looked at me impatiently.
I wasn’t budging from my spot by the fire. I looked down. Under my parka there were only my nightgown and underwear. Besides, I was good where I was, thanks, anyway.
“You’re insulting my grandmother,” Jinky said. “Take your coat and boots off. Now.”
Still smarting from her tone, I dropped my belongings onto the pile with theirs. I then crouched and followed them into the diminutive animal-skin tent. It was too low to stand in, so the three of us crawled to positions around the mound of stones set into a shallow hole in the center of the space. Jinky, the last one in, lowered a flap of stretched hides, plunging us into a warm and airless enclosure. As far as I could tell, the hot rocks were the only form of heat, but, man, they were kicking out some serious BTUs. Following Jinky’s lead, I sat cross-legged facing the stones. Shaman-granny began to speak. She held out the smoking bundle of twigs and waved it around her head and over her shoulders. The sickly-sweet smoke soon filled the space, and I coughed into my fist. Jinky shot me a look.
What? I wasn’t allowed to breathe?
The smoking bundle was passed to Jinky, who swept it back and forth across her chest and even around her head, as her grandmother had. “We pass the smudge wand,” Jinky said, “to cleanse the space and to purify our bodies and minds.”
She passed me the wand. I copied their movements, not wanting to get in any more trouble. I had to wonder, though —“cleanse” and “purify”? The smoke was getting in my eyes; they were starting to water.
Shaman-granny took the bundle from me and placed it at her feet. Next she pulled a bucket to her side and spooned a ladleful of water onto the rocks. The water sizzled, venting a steamy mist into the small space. It got even hotter.
The old woman spoke in a chanting rhythm; both she and Jinky lowered their heads. I did, too. Man, that Jinky had me nervous as a chicken near a bowl of batter and a hot frying pan. More water was poured onto the rocks, emitting a hiss like a hot skillet. “We give thanks,” Jinky translated, “to the womb of Mother Earth for this safe space, to the grandfather rocks for their wisdom, to the animals for their skins, and to the plants for their medicines.”
Medicines, my foot. If anything, I was feeling worse. More water was poured onto the rocks; it got hotter still. I understood now why we had stripped down.
Shaman-granny talked some more, it was hard to follow. First off, I didn’t understand a word. Furthermore, it was getting so foggy in the tent I really
couldn’t see straight. And lastly, it was so dang hot I was getting sleepy.
“The spirit breath surrounds you,” Jinky said. “The first cycle of your vision quest will be a return to the past, to the source of loss. By way of travel, you will employ an ancestral gift. Are you ready?”
Hardly. My eyelids were so heavy they could have anchored Hinrik’s boat. Had I even wanted to reply, I wouldn’t have been able to. Though my legs could still feel the scratchy square of mat underneath them, I felt myself soaring away.
Flying. It felt great. And how had I — bird girl — never experienced this before? I felt the air roll over my feathers. Feathers! They were a dappled brown, and my wingspan was huge. Score. Once I stopped admiring myself, I took in the view: a bird’s-eye perspective. I couldn’t believe how crisp and scoped everything was, even though all I saw was an endless terrain of snow-covered hills and ridges. My chest filled with a puff of cold air as something below caught my eye. I dipped into a dive, thrilling at the rush of speed. Soon, a team of barking dogs pulling a sled came into view. All at once, the novelty of the experience fell away and I was left clutching only fear. I flew closer, recognizing the forms of Brigid and Jack on the sled.
Jack. From above he looked small. I dove even lower, now kiting above the yapping dogs, who did not welcome my surveillance. Contrary to my storybook images, this was no fancy carriage-style sledge. It was really no more than a rickety wooden platform atop two long and curved toboggan-style runners. A simple bench and backrest afforded a crude seat, upon which Jack was huddled. Behind that, Brigid stood upon the footboards with her hands on the driving handlebar. Their gear was tied in tarp-covered bundles in front of Jack, who, by the way he was cowering and cupping his left hand over his right, I’d have guessed was cold, but that couldn’t be. And if not cold, then he had to be shaking from fear. It wasn’t like him. Panic and a protective instinct tore through me. I had to do something, but what? I remembered that Jinky had described this cycle of the vision quest as “a return to the past, to the source of loss.” Was it too late? Was what I was viewing a done deal, a fait accompli?