The Wolf in the Whale

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “You had a sister? Or a wife?”

  I shook my head. “No wife. A sister who was my father’s sister. Puja, like I told you.”

  He was silent for a long moment, staring at the flames. Then he spoke the words I dreaded.

  “You couldn’t tell the story like that if you hadn’t seen it happen.”

  I wiped the moisture from my eyes before it could spill over and said lightly, “You’re not the only one who knows how to tell a good tale. Of course I never witnessed the Moon rape the Sun. Even I’m not that powerful.”

  “That’s not…” He stopped himself with a glance at my face.

  “Besides,” I continued, hoping to change the topic, “it’s you who have seen such things, not I.”

  “What do you mean?” Brandr’s voice was low now, careful.

  “All those villages you conquered, those shores you pillaged, did you never rape a woman?” My dream of the screaming woman in the stone hut came flooding back to me. I hadn’t wanted to know its ending, but now the question had been asked. I couldn’t take it back.

  Brandr shifted his weight and snapped another stick in his hands before tossing it onto the flames. If he didn’t stop soon, the blizzard outside would bring a welcome respite from the heat. Yet I knew it wasn’t the fire that beaded his brow with sweat.

  “The Vikings take women as they take gold or cloth or horses,” he said warily.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Among your people, isn’t it common practice? You’re just a boy, but you’re old enough to take a woman. Did you never force one?”

  “A wife should lie with her own husband if he asks. Men loan their wives to other men, too, but if they’re smart, they always ask the women’s consent.”

  “You didn’t answer the question, either.”

  “No, Brandr. I never forced a woman. Never.” Something in my tone made him look at me sharply.

  “Have you ever lain with a woman, Omat?”

  I cleared my throat and picked up the length of string, twisting it once more around my fingers, blindly forming the figure of a raven. “No. Nor will I.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not like other men. I sometimes feel… Perhaps you’re like Loki the Shapeshifter, who lies with men and women?”

  “Your trickster god? No, I’m no trickster.”

  He relaxed perceptibly. “A man who lets himself be taken by another man is cowardly. No Viking allows it willingly.”

  “Maybe they should. If they coupled with each other, they wouldn’t rape women every time they anchor their boat.”

  “We don’t… every time.”

  “But I know you have,” I said finally, losing my patience.

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen it, Brandr. That vision I had in the painted woman’s hut… it wasn’t the only time I saw your past. I dream your memories night after night. A woman with light eyes and dark hair, not much older than I. A village perched on a cliff, houses made of stone and moss.”

  “Stop it.”

  “The other men held her down—”

  “I said stop.” His hands balled. I thought surely he would strike me.

  “She was screaming, Brandr. She had no spear, no knife to defend herself with.”

  “I was just a boy,” he whispered.

  “Was that the only time, then?”

  He bowed his head but did not speak.

  “How many times, then? You have numbers for everything. Can you count that high? Or do you wish you were an ignorant skraeling so you could just say ‘many’ and have done with it?”

  “That’s what Vikings do,” he growled. “If I hadn’t, I would’ve been laughed off the boat. Taken for a weakling, or a shapeshifter… womanish. No one ever questioned the way we did things.”

  “The women you raped?” Before I knew what I did, I rose to my feet. “Did we not question it?”

  His head snapped up. Only then did I realize what I’d said. Looking back, I think I picked the fight on purpose.

  He focused on my face, my beardless jaw, my stocky form cloaked beneath my heavy parka. I closed my eyes, as if that would somehow hide me from his sight.

  “Omat.”

  I clenched my jaw tight and crossed my arms across my chest. If I spoke, I’d cry. Womanish, indeed.

  “Say that again.”

  I could only shake my head. I felt White Paw’s nose nuzzle my elbow reassuringly—but hers was not the touch I wanted.

  “Open your eyes.”

  I took a deep, shuddering breath and did as he asked. He stood across the fire from me now, the top of his head brushing the ceiling, his arms crossed in an echo of my own.

  “What?” I demanded. White Paw swung her head from me to Brandr and back again, panting all the while. “Stop that,” I snapped at her. She settled down at my feet obediently, still following us with her eyes. Sweet One padded in from the entrance tunnel, headed for Brandr. I stopped her with a curt hand signal.

  The wolfdogs’ antics had not distracted him. “You said you were a boy.” His gaze remained steadily on mine, his chin lowered as he looked down at me.

  “I never said that.”

  “That’s true. You said you were a man, a great hunter full grown, if I remember correctly. An even greater lie.”

  “I never lied! I was born with a man’s spirit. I’ve tried to explain that to you. My grandfather raised me as a—”

  “Enough! You’re a woman! The skraeling man I killed had a mustache. Your brother—if he was indeed your brother and that, too, wasn’t a lie—had one, too. I assumed you were just too young. But now…” He reached across the fire and grabbed my chin in his hand, tilting my face toward his with bruising fingers. “I’m such an idiot,” he spat, releasing me. “You reminded me so much of Galinn I was willing to believe any lie you told.”

  “I am both man and woman,” I insisted weakly, but he wasn’t listening anymore.

  “You have a woman’s breasts, no? That’s why I’ve never seen you naked, even in the heat. Why I’ve never seen you take a piss since that first day.” He groaned and sank back down to his knees. “I trusted you. Why did you lie?”

  “How can you ask me that?” I nearly shouted the words. “After all you’ve done. After all I’ve seen.”

  White Paw whimpered in the ensuing silence.

  “That story,” Brandr said finally. “That was you. With the Moon.” With his head bent, I couldn’t see his eyes.

  I sat down before him, wanting to meet his gaze. I wouldn’t run in fear. I wouldn’t lie. I would tell him everything. “I’m no Sun Woman, but yes, I’ve been forced, and yes, the Moon and I have met before. He sent a man to take my body, and with my dignity he took my powers. I was a powerful seer, an angakkuq. I could speak with the spirits of the animals. Taqqiq took all that away from me.”

  He sighed deeply. “Galinn claimed to speak to the gods. I never understood him, either. Even when I know you’re telling the truth, you speak in mysteries.”

  “You’re the mystery, Norseman. You touch a wolfdog with so much tenderness. And I remember you with your brother. How you held him. But with those women…”

  “The berserker rage comes on us. The red haze, Thor’s gift.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to me. “I barely knew what I did.”

  I grabbed his chin and forced him to meet my eyes, just as he had done to me a moment before. “I know what it is to be a tool of the spirits. They hone us, use us, and throw us away. But we always know what we do.” His bearded jaw flinched beneath my fingers, but he did not pull away.

  I released him. I sat with my legs tucked beneath me as a woman would. Waiting.

  His eyes traveled over my face, my neck, my hands, as if his shock had finally melted away and he saw me—truly saw me—for the first time.

  Only then did I slowly draw my outer parka over my head and lay it aside. I pulled my arms inside my atigi and reached for the cloth binding my chest. The knot had grow
n stiff with sweat—only the thought of having to ask for help gave me enough strength to undo it. Still holding his gaze, I worked it open with trembling hands, then dropped the remnant of his blue cloak to the ground before slipping my arms back through the sleeves.

  My breath came easier. My atigi hung differently, the curve of my breasts clearly visible against the thin caribou hide.

  I had imagined this moment for a long time. Dreaded it. Longed for it. I had hoped he’d look at me with respect and perhaps—though I could barely admit it to myself—desire. I had feared he’d look at me with loathing and disgust instead.

  His face remained stony, as if he couldn’t allow himself any emotion at all. His eyes, however, burned. Hunger, I thought. But before I could unravel my own response—No. Terror.

  Then his expression simply collapsed.

  A dancer pulling off a carven mask to reveal the tortured human face beneath. He tried to duck his head again, to hide his shame.

  “Look at me.” Not a request. A command.

  “I can’t.” His shoulders heaved like those of a man who has run beside a sled all day, never sitting, never resting, always slipping on the ice beneath his feet.

  “You must.”

  We knelt facing each other, both still clothed, yet I felt that we sat naked, revealed. In opening myself to him, I’d somehow ripped him open at the same time. It scared me, but it scared him more.

  I do not know how long the silence lasted. Long enough for his fear of keeping silent to finally outweigh his fear of speaking.

  “To be berserk,” he began, “is to be drunk without dizziness. To feel your skin swell and heat—as if lightning, not blood, crackles through your veins. It is a drive more fierce than hunger or thirst or sex.” His voice grew thick. “But you’re right. We know what we do. I knew what I did.”

  His entire body tensed, and I knew it took all his strength to meet the accusation in my eyes. “You asked how many. There were three.” The words tumbled forth. “The first they forced upon me when I was little more than a child. The second time, I told myself she enjoyed it. The third—” The story halted suddenly, like a waterfall after the first hard freeze.

  I would not speak. I would not make this easy for him.

  “The third stared into my eyes the whole time. From the beginning until the end. She didn’t scream or weep, just stared. And I knew I was doing something terrible, and she knew I knew. When I was done, I stepped away from her. The battle was raging outside her hut. Flames. Screams. But I held out my hand to help her stand.” He shook his head slowly. “I thought… I don’t know. I thought if I could save her, then maybe I wasn’t a monster. She lunged for my dagger instead. Pulled it from its sheath, quick as a snake, and plunged it into her own breast.” He clenched his fingers together. “Thor’s gift—Thor’s curse—drained away. I stood there for a long time, staring at the dead woman who stared back at me.”

  Brandr blinked back the tears that lined his lower lashes, and I knew he saw the woman’s gaze in my own.

  “I wondered if I should pull the dagger from her breast and thrust it in my own. I still wonder that, sometimes. It would’ve been better, in so many ways, if I had.”

  I knew what he wanted me to say. That I was glad he had lived to come into my life. That I would not have survived this journey without him. It was all true. But I said none of it.

  “I closed her staring eyes. I left the dagger in her breast. And I vowed that I would never again accept Thor’s gift. Whatever terrible choices I made would be fully my own—I would let no god’s red haze ease my way. I went home. Back to Greenland. To my brother. If there was anything good left inside me, I knew that Galinn would find it.”

  “And did he?” I asked after a long silence.

  He shook his head mutely, as if a single spoken word would shatter whatever meager defenses were left to him. He had never wept in front of me. He did not want to now.

  I felt no pity. I wanted him to shatter. Only then could we, perhaps, begin to put the pieces back together again.

  “You must tell me, Brandr.” I needed to skin him like a whale until only bone and blood remained. “Tell me what happened to your brother.”

  “It is not a fit tale for a warrior.”

  “Do you think I care about that? Do you think I’ve behaved in every way befitting a hunter of my people? I use both ulu and man’s knife. I break more aglirutiit than I obey. You and I are both beyond others’ understanding.”

  “I dishonored my brother’s memory. Is that what you want to hear?” he begged. “I fled Leifsbudir with little more than the clothes on my back. I knew I’d never make it back to Greenland—knew I’d die alone, starving, rotting from my wounds. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I’d never see Valhalla if I didn’t die gloriously in battle. Besides, you were right—I don’t want to fight and die and fight again. I just want to rest.” His voice caught. I would not comfort him. I would not forgive. He went on, quieter now, wrapping his arms around his knees. “A thousand times I thought of leaving you. Sometimes I think I stayed with you as a punishment. Every day we travel, we draw closer and closer to Leifsbudir. I’ve been waking every morning terrified that today will be the day when we finally find them… or they find us. And then what would they do to me? What would I do? Run? Fight? Surrender? And worst of all”—he cradled his forehead in his palms—“what would I tell you?”

  I did not understand. Even then, I didn’t realize what I meant to him.

  He took another hollow breath before he went on. “I thought Galinn could find whatever good was left in me. But he didn’t. You did.” His whole body tensed. “And now, when I tell you what happened, you will leave me.”

  “You have already told me the worst thing you could possibly tell me. I am still sitting here.” I did not admit that I had almost left. When he told me of the woman with the dagger in her heart, I had imagined taking my wolfdogs and my new sled and leaving, storm or no. He would likely die without my help, and he would deserve it. Yet hadn’t I killed Onerk with my sinew cord—playing with a man’s life as thoughtlessly as the spirits might play with mine? Hadn’t my own family slaughtered the dwarf men and stolen their women? My beloved grandfather had known the story—and hidden it from me.

  “Good or bad—just tell me the truth, Brandr. Whatever the consequences.”

  His fingers twisted through his long orange hair, pulling it taut against his scalp. “I have buried the truth so deep I’m not sure I even know what it is anymore. I see it in my dreams every night, but each time it warps a little more, the nightmare grown at once more vivid and more obscure. How can I find the words for that?”

  Silently I reached for my pack. From the very bottom, I drew out the small skin bag and the bark container I’d stolen from the painted woman’s hut. He watched me take a long swallow of the stinging liquid.

  I held out the bag to him. I knew what I was asking of him. It was one thing to tell me his story. Another to let me crawl inside his brain and see it for myself.

  He took the bag from my fingers and drained the last of the liquid.

  I tossed the dried flowers into the fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I don’t like the hollows beneath Galinn’s cheeks. He eats enough, his wounds are healed, but the strife in our hall eats away at him.

  “We should compromise with Freydis, before this comes to blows,” my brother begs Finnbogi. I’ve rarely heard him so desperate. “Speak sense to her at the Althing tomorrow.”

  “Freydis Eriksdottir cannot be bargained with,” the Icelander shoots back. “She says she wants to borrow our knarr for her own cargo. Steal it more likely. Just like she stole the good longhouse when we arrived and forced us to build out here in the woods. You saw how she raged when I told her she couldn’t have my ship. She’s a greedy kunta who wants to be as famous as her brother Leif.”

  “We know why she’s truly angry,” I say. “She told you not to bring any Christians on your crew.”


  Finnbogi snorts. “You try finding an entire crew in Iceland with no Christ worshipers! They spread like the plague. She either accepts my crew or she mans my oars.”

  “The ambatts don’t row, and you brought them,” Galinn says.

  “The ambatts don’t count,” the Icelander retorts.

  I glance to the corner of the hall, where the five thrall women sit beside a lamp, combing each other’s hair, sewing, preparing our next meager meal. Even from here, I can see the small metal crosses Agata and Jeanne wear around their necks.

  “You should never have brought them,” I tell the captain.

  “Just because you don’t sleep with them, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.”

  “They speak about the Christ to everyone who’ll listen,” I insist.

  Next to me, Galinn tenses. He doesn’t hate the Christians as Freydis does, but I know they make him uncomfortable.

  “Already two more of your men have converted,” I continue. “Freydis thinks her Greenlanders will be next.” I lean forward, whispering fiercely. “Her own husband sleeps with Agata every chance he gets.”

  Finnbogi rises from the bench and braces his fists on his hips. “Next time you lead an expedition to an uninhabited wilderness, Brandr Gunnarsson, you can bring only men. Let them fuck each other or the sheep. See how that works out for you.”

  “It wouldn’t be sheep,” I murmur as he strides away. It would be whatever women crossed our paths. I think of the last woman I took, at her staring eyes and bloody breast.

  “Are you all right, Brother?” Galinn lays a hand on my arm.

  I have never told him about the women I hurt. He thinks I am good and kind for never taking one of the ambatts for myself. Let him keep thinking that.

  “No. I’m not all right. When Freydis came here to ask about borrowing the Icelanders’ knarr, did you see the way she looked around our hall? I’ve seen that look before in the eyes of a Viking captain when he pulls up to shore. He wonders how much resistance the village will give him when he burns it to the ground and steals their gold and women for himself.”