The Wolf in the Whale

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “We have others.”

  “Why do you want to sleep over there? It’s going to get cold, kid. It’ll be warmer if we sleep near each other.”

  That was precisely my fear. In a storm like this, he was likely to huddle close. I hadn’t forgotten Kiasik’s swellings. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Brandr’s.

  “The qarmaq is deep; its walls are thick.” I sounded more confident than I felt. “We’ll be completely safe.”

  “No one is ever completely safe,” Brandr huffed. “Galinn used to say that.” As usual, his jaw tightened when he spoke his brother’s name. “He’d tell me to remember Baldur and Loki.”

  “Who’re they?”

  “Gods, like Thor.”

  Thor I remembered. Brandr spoke of him often—the red-haired Thunderer, who wielded a war hammer. Many Norse, he said, wore little versions of this hammer around their necks, just as I wore my amulet pouch.

  Brandr was no angakkuq, but he told stories like one. Confident and clear, as if he’d seen it all unfold with his own eyes. “Baldur was one of Thor’s brothers,” he began. “The youngest, handsomest, and kindest of the gods. And Loki… He’s hard to describe. A trickster. A shapeshifter. Born a Jotun—a Frost Giant—in the icy realm of Jotunheim, but raised by Odin and his wife among the Aesir. He can turn himself into a gadfly, or an old woman, or a young man. Sometimes he’s merely a mischief-maker, cutting off the long golden hair of beautiful goddesses. But he’s got a dark side, too.”

  Brandr settled back onto our makeshift sleeping platform, propping his head on his crossed arms. His relaxed pose didn’t fool me. His fingers threaded together, his knuckles white. For some reason, this was a story it hurt to tell.

  “Baldur’s mother, the goddess Frigg,” he began, “received a prophecy that her beloved son would die. So she traveled the earth, demanding that every stone and beast and man and tree—everything living and not—swear an oath not to hurt him. They all agreed, and it became a game of sorts among the Aesir, tossing boulders and shooting arrows at beautiful Baldur, watching them bounce off his impenetrable skin, harmless as goose down.”

  “That sounds like a mean game.”

  “Mean games are what being a Norseman is all about.” Brandr snorted a humorless laugh. “Loki transformed himself into an old woman and went to gossip with Frigg. ‘Did you really get everything in the world to swear not to hurt your son?’ And Frigg admitted that, no, she hadn’t spoken to mistletoe. It was a small plant, young and green, too weak to harm a god. So Loki, of course, plucked a sprig of mistletoe, shaped it into an arrow, and handed it to Baldur’s blind brother, Hod, saying, ‘Join in! Throw this!’ And Hod did.

  “The mistletoe pierced Baldur’s heart. The beautiful god was dead. As punishment, the Aesir imprisoned Loki deep beneath the earth, binding his limbs with the entrails of his own son. They placed a serpent above him, with its venom dripping on his skull for eternity.”

  “What had Baldur done?” I asked. “Why did Loki want him dead?”

  “Baldur hadn’t done anything. Innocents die all the time.” Bitterness hardened his voice. “There’s nothing we can do to save them. That’s the point.”

  He closed his eyes, clearly unwilling to answer any further questions. To him the story was over, its meaning clear. But I knew better. Stories are ever changing, just like the gods. Assuming you understand either is a grave mistake. I’d seen the wolf-riding Valkyries crossing the water in Brandr’s nightmares. I’d seen Odin and Thor in my own visions. It seemed to me that Brandr’s gods were powerful ones. They’d already appeared in both our lives, even if we hadn’t realized it. And I had no doubt they’d appear again.

  During a break in the storm the next day, I crawled outside to clear the snow from our smoke hole. The drifts had grown as high as my chest. The sky was low and gray; Sila was not done with us yet.

  Even once the weather cleared, we would make little progress across such ground without a sled. I waded through the snow toward the nearest stand of trees and began to haul on the nearest sapling.

  “We have enough firewood already,” Brandr called from where he huddled in the entrance tunnel, watching me.

  “It’s not for burning. It’s for building. I’m making us a sled.”

  “And who’s going to pull it? Or can you conjure horses from the air as you conjure geese?”

  “The wolfdogs, of course.”

  “Why not?” he said with a laugh. “They say Freya rides in a chariot pulled by kittens.”

  I didn’t know what he meant by a chariot—much less kittens—but for once I didn’t ask. I was too busy sawing at the tree trunk with my slate knife. Soon we had two straight lengths of wood for runners. I had little experience shaping the stuff—we usually built with bone and antler—and Brandr knew how to carve only small figures and tools. We tried anyway. We didn’t make much progress; when the wind picked up, Brandr shivered so badly he could barely hold the knife.

  “How did you survive with that pitiful cloak in Leifsbudir last winter?” I asked, looking up from my work when I heard him drop the knife into the snow again.

  “I barely left the longhouse. No sane Greenlander really does. We mostly stay indoors until spring.” Picking up the sharp metal knife, he scraped angrily at the wood.

  “Don’t take out your frustration on my runner. We don’t have any antler, so if we can’t make the wood work, we don’t have any other good options. Unless you want to lash together the bodies of frozen fish and glaze them with ice.”

  Brandr chuckled, then groaned. “I’m too cold to even laugh.”

  “Why would you laugh? It’s not a joke.”

  “Frozen fish?”

  “Ataata always said his own father used either that or whale jaws. I don’t think you want to go out and hunt a whale, do you?”

  “Hunt a whale?” he asked, his eyes wide.

  I laughed at his shock. “Now I am teasing you. We can’t very well bring down a whale without a boat.”

  “Your people hunt whales?” he asked again. “I saw the carcass at your camp, but I assumed it washed ashore.”

  “My own family doesn’t hunt them,” I admitted. “But some do.” I regretted bringing it up. Issuk’s face flashed before me, cruel in life, desperate in death.

  Brandr looked at me as if I were a stranger. “Norsemen avoid whales whenever they can. Even a Viking longboat is no match for one. Dogs pulling sleds—especially dogs like yours—that I might believe. But hunting whales with nothing but skin boats and crude knives? That’s absurd.”

  “You don’t think that a people without your precious iron and steel could accomplish such a feat?”

  “No, I don’t,” he insisted. “I’ve seen many things in my travels, but never that.”

  “For one so worldly, you’re occasionally very stupid.” I’d meant to tease him, but the cold made us both short-tempered, and I spat my words.

  He leaned toward me like a sled dog itching for a fight. Then the deep crease between his brows relaxed, and he began to laugh. “So, Omat of the fearsome whale hunters, tell me how you bring down a creature so mighty.”

  I felt myself relax in response. “We have a wide boat, an umiaq, and a harpoon with a toggle head,” I began, picking up my tools and returning to work. I told him all the details of the chase, the kill. It felt good to be a storyteller again.

  The Sun set as I finished the tale, sapping all trace of warmth from the air. Brandr began to slap his hands once more against his thighs and stamp his feet. Frost clogged his beard and whitened his eyebrows. Worse yet, as his sweat froze, ice glazed his entire tunic. Finally I put away my tools. “I’m going to make you a parka from one of the sleeping furs.”

  “There’s no need,” he protested through chattering teeth. “Really.”

  “Remember what I said about stupidity?”

  He nodded, his cheeks reddening.

  I turned to crawl inside the qarmaq.

  “How do you know how to make clothing a
nyway? Our women do all our sewing.”

  I lied smoothly. “A hunter must know how to make his own clothes. It’s not so hard.”

  After so long, I’d nearly forgotten to worry that he might learn the truth about my body. Now a chill sweat beaded the valley between my breasts, as if to remind me of my foolishness.

  No matter my teasing, Brandr wasn’t stupid. This was the first time he’d wondered at my womanly skills—but it wouldn’t be the last.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  When night fell, and the storm began again in earnest, I started making Brandr’s parka. I selected the only caribou pelt we had—the one I’d carried away as a sleeping fur from Issuk’s camp. I’d have to use other furs for the arms and hood, but at least his torso would be warm.

  As I worked, Brandr huddled close to the small fire inside our qarmaq, trying to get warm.

  “I need to know how big to make it,” I said, eyeing his looming frame. “There are no men as big as you among my people. Although”—I looked down at my torso—“they’re not all as short as I.”

  “Thank the gods,” he said with a smile. “If they were, I can’t imagine how small your women must be. They’d be like little dwarves I might step on by accident.”

  I scowled to hide my rising discomfort. “Give me your shirt. I’ll use it to get the size right.”

  “I just got warm!”

  “Would you like your nice new parka to be so small you can’t get into it?”

  He grunted and pulled off his cloak and tunic, then yanked his sweat-soaked shirt over his head. In all our time together, I’d never seen his bare chest. Perhaps he’d just followed my example—I’d certainly never stripped in front of him. The braided tattoo around his wrist ran the entire length of his arm, twisting across the muscles of his bicep before ending in the head of a beast, its jaws open as if to taste the meat of his shoulder. The same curling orange hair that covered his arms and legs spread across his chest, then tapered into a thin trail to his navel, widening again into longer, soft waves just above the waistline of his pants.

  He tossed his shirt across the qarmaq to me, though I was too distracted to catch it. The damp cloth struck me in the face, bringing with it his familiar scent. He laughed as I snatched it off my head. I thrust a sleeping fur in his direction, wanting him to cover himself completely.

  He draped the pelt around his broad shoulders. We’d taken the hide from one of the wide-antlered animals in the forest—a moose, Brandr said. The same long-legged beast had provided all the sinew I would need for sewing.

  He sighed, drawing the moose pelt close to his cheeks. “Will my new parka be as warm as this?”

  I finally laughed as I lay his shirt over the caribou hide. Using his sharp knife, I cut the skin to a slightly larger size. How Puja would’ve loved to use such a tool! “I’m not that good at making clothes. My little sister, Puja, though, could make a parka so warm you could spend all day on an ice block near a fishing hole, and feel as if you were curled in a sunbeam on a summer’s day.”

  “You have a sister?” Brandr asked. I’d never spoken much of my family, and I knew he was curious.

  “She was the sister of my father.”

  “You mean your aunt.”

  “Yes, but as I am my father, then she is my sister.”

  “How are you your father?”

  “He was also Omat.”

  “Oh. I’m Brandr Gunnarsson, because my father was Gunnar. And they named me Brandr after my dead uncle, hoping that by having his name, I’d have his bravery.”

  “Yes, like that, but not just the name. When I was a baby, my grandfather saw that I carried my father’s soul—I am my father. Whose soul do you carry?”

  “Only my own, I hope.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said, biting off a length of sinew. “Unless you’re one of the undead, who have no soul?”

  “I hope not!”

  “As do I. It’d be a great waste of the meat I’ve been feeding you all these moons.”

  “The Christians think the soul is immortal, too. When the body dies, the soul goes to live with their Christ in a place they call heaven. But I think I prefer your idea of the afterlife: that our spirits play among the stars, and then they’re reborn into someone else. The mystics in Greenland teach that if we die in battle, we go to Valhalla, the hall of the gods, to fight every day and die gloriously, just to be reborn the next morning and do it all over again.”

  I huffed as I threaded Uimaitok’s bone needle and began sewing the pieces of hide together. “That sounds worst of all. To fight and die and fight and die. What kind of reward is that?”

  He shook his head slowly, suddenly somber. “To be a warrior is the most glorious thing a Norseman can be. To be a Viking, traveling the world and conquering lands.”

  I looked up from my work. His eyes were distant in the firelight. “I thought you traded, not conquered.”

  “A bit of both,” he said quietly. “The first time I left home, I was just a boy, very young, not yet ten. I went with some traders to Northway, and when a Viking crew needed a boy to tend to their horses, I decided to go with them rather than return to Greenland. We sailed to Englaland first, where there was a Viking settlement. The town wasn’t so different from the villages in Northway, with women and children and farmers. But beyond the town lived people unlike any I’d ever seen. They were very short. When they went into battle, they painted their faces blue. Quite fearsome, I assure you, despite their height. Much like you.”

  “Though we don’t need to paint our faces blue. It wouldn’t scare the animals. More likely they’d laugh at us.”

  “Do you never war with other men?”

  The old painted woman’s memories—dead children, the growling of dogs—came unbidden. I shook my head and continued with my sewing, easing the needle through the thick hide, keeping my stitches small and tight so no air might seep through. “Not in my lifetime,” I said carefully. “Tell me more of the blue men.”

  “Every few months, they attacked our town.”

  “What had you done to them?”

  “I was a child. I had done nothing,” he said sharply, suddenly busying himself with his sleeping fur.

  I let the silence linger for a moment. “You don’t need to talk about it.”

  Brandr laughed shortly. “And yet, with you, I know I will. Seems there’s nothing I won’t tell you, Omat.”

  My cheeks heated, as they often did when he said my name rather than calling me “kid.” If he noticed, he made no mention.

  “It’s like the other world doesn’t exist here,” he continued. “Only you and I. There are no consequences to anything I say or do. No one to judge me for my past or expect anything from my future.”

  “I do expect something,” I retorted. “I expect you to stop limping and learn how to hunt and sew so I don’t have to be the only one keeping us warm and fed. I’m not going to serve you like a wife forever!” I blushed even more when I realized what I’d said.

  Brandr threw back his head and guffawed so hard that Sweet One looked up and yipped. White Paw and Floppy Eared yowled in answer from the entrance tunnel.

  “I’m not sure how it works among your people, but among the Norse, you’d make a poor wife indeed! Not to mention a very ugly one!”

  He was right, of course. I had no tattoos, no woman’s walk, no braided hair—nor did I want them. His words still stung.

  “What?” He grinned. “Did I offend you? You’re just as touchy as a woman sometimes.” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Perhaps you would make a decent wife.”

  I dropped the half-sewn parka as if urchin spines had sprung from the fur.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with exaggerated contrition. “Please, O great and valiant hunter, please don’t stop making me that parka! I promise never, ever to imply that you resemble a woman in any way.” He rose to his knees, the sleeping fur sliding away from his body. “And if I do, I promise to say you’d make an extremely beautiful one.�
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  “I won’t say the same about you,” I managed. “Your nose is too big and your beard is too thick. You look like a dog. And not a beautiful wolfdog—an ugly dog.”

  “At least I have a beard.” He was smiling still.

  “I should throw you out into the cold right now.”

  “I’m afraid, O mighty and most brave of hunters, that despite your great skill, you still couldn’t do that. I’m quite heavy, you know, and you’re quite a little man.”

  I lunged across the qarmaq, latching my arms around his neck and pinning him to the ground in my best wrestling hold. He whooped in surprise, sputtering through his laughter. “You attack a lame man!”

  “I’m throwing you out!” I tried to drag him across the qarmaq by his shoulders. But Brandr was right—he was quite heavy. Somehow, as we struggled, I wound up straddling his bare waist, pinning his arms to the ground with my face inches from his. His eyes shone as blue as a flame’s heart. For an instant, he ceased to struggle and simply stared at me. A look of understanding flashed across his face.

  I rolled off him as if burnt.

  We sat in a silence as taut as an angakkuq’s drum and just as loud.

  “It’s no challenge to fight an injured man,” I said finally, trying to ignore the sudden pressure in my chest. “But even if you weren’t injured, no Norseman could ever defeat an Inuk in a wrestling match.”

  I watched him sit up, his bare chest glinting with sweat. He made no response to my pitiful attempt at humor. In the space of a heartbeat, we’d moved beyond the teasing that had always bound us together while keeping us just far enough apart. He put his head in his hands, rubbing his face hard. “Omat.” The word sounded heavy on his tongue. “You remind me so much of Galinn.”

  The look that had passed between us—one I’d taken for recognition of my woman’s body—was only one of brotherly affection. I should’ve felt relieved. Instead, the strip of blue cloth binding my breasts had never felt so tight.

  “Galinn always wanted to hear stories about my travels,” Brandr went on, his voice catching. “Just like you.”