The Wolf in the Whale

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

“Where am I going to go?” he asked, some spark of his old humor returning. “Just make sure you’re back before first light.” He didn’t need to remind me what horrors the false dawn held. “You will return to me,” he added softly. More a decree than a question.

  “As the Sun follows the heralding stars,” I vowed. This was one promise I meant to keep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The Norse had bound my wrists and feet for me, unwittingly readying me for my journey.

  I twisted the chains together, bending low so my nose pressed against my knees. My whispered trance song hummed against my lips.

  I could feel Brandr’s presence beside me, but I forced myself to block out his warmth, his smell. To spread my awareness into the other world that had denied me for so long.

  The moment I began, I knew it would work. Power built within me, a tingling warmth that dotted my forehead with sweat even in the frozen confines of our cell. The song died on my lips but continued unabated in my mind, as if Sila Itself had taken up the chant.

  I was an angakkuq once more. Iron chains meant nothing now.

  Exhaling loudly, I pushed away my human shell as a whale tosses water from its blowhole. With no vent in our cell for me to fly through on a raven’s wings, I inhaled the spirit of a lemming.

  My hands contracted; my fingernails grew into long winter claws. My cheeks itched from sprouted whiskers. Fur and fat warmed me as my flimsy woolen dress never could.

  Through beady eyes, I looked up at my mortal body in all its enormity. It hunched against the hull, spiritless and still. Brandr sat motionless an arm’s length away. While he strained to see me in the dark, my lemming sight could make out every familiar contour of his face. He clutched his arms about his knees, and only his shoulders moved with the rapid rise and fall of his breath. I wished I could do something to reassure him, but without angakkuq powers of his own, he couldn’t even see my spirit lemming. I knew he would sit that way until I returned.

  I scurried on silent spirit paws across the wooden floor and through the crack beneath the door. The tattooed guard stood whetting a small iron knife. Snorri crouched beside him, his face gray and drawn in the moonlight. He rolled a spear between his palms, his eyes fixed on its spinning point as if imagining drilling it through Brandr’s heart.

  Humans couldn’t see me in my spirit form, but animals had keener sight. I scampered across the hold, dodging the hooves of panicked sheep, up and over the side of the boat and down onto the frozen sea. I listened for the whispered hush of owl wings with my tiny ears. If my lemming body died on a spirit journey, I’d never awake from my trance—and then I’d be no help to anyone.

  Out of sight of the knarrs, I released the lemming’s soul with one breath and assumed the raven’s with the next. The bird spirit felt clean and sharp in my nostrils, like winter air after the first snow.

  My tiny paws grew longer. For a moment, I almost tripped over impossibly long front toes until they spread into the webbing of a bird’s wings. Black feathers cloaked my flesh.

  I was aloft.

  Only the stars greeted me. To my relief, a raft of clouds shielded me from the Moon’s glaring eye. Sanna might be persuaded to listen to my pleas—Taqqiq never would. If I entered his domain, he would only strip me of my magic once again.

  With a rush of wind and wing, another bird swooped to join me. Its rainbow eye glinted in the darkness. Loki. I had not been deaf to Muirenn’s message. I had known I’d find him cloaked in raven feathers like my own. A cunning bird for a cunning god.

  He began a slow, circling descent to a jagged dark lead in the ice. I followed, my bird’s heart pattering as swiftly as raindrops beating the ground.

  I breathed out slowly through my beak and inhaled my own spirit with the sharp sea air. Human once again, I stood dressed only in a cape of black feathers, the ice burning against my bare feet. The Trickster settled onto the ground, pacing for a moment on his bird legs. I blinked; when I looked again, Loki stood before me in his silver robes and bronze breastplate. He scanned the ice impatiently. “Where is she?”

  “Now that I’m in Sanna’s realm, she won’t take long to hunt me down.”

  “Good. Then we’ll go back and get your lover and your cousin. Sanna will drown the Greenlanders. Then you can go home.”

  Home. Puja and Ujaguk tending the oil lamps. Millik picking crowberries. Tapsi and Saartok smiling at each other. If my plan failed, all of that would disappear. I’d seen what Vikings did to helpless villages. “Muirenn spoke of being taken from her home,” I ventured.

  Loki nodded. “Yes, she was born in Írland, an island far from the Vikings. They came to her village, killed her babe, and took her as a thrall. Then, when she learned to worship the Aesir as her own, she prayed to me to release her from her misery.” He smiled at the memory. “Few turn to the Trickster, you know. They prefer brutal Thor, or wise Odin, or even weak Frey. And women pray to Frigg the Mother or Freya the Beautiful. But Muirenn prayed to me—an outsider among the Aesir just as she was an outsider among the Norse. I answered her prayers.”

  “You helped her escape?”

  “No. I let her finally die.” He sounded proud. “Her body became mine.”

  “What the Norse did to Muirenn’s land… they’ll do to mine.”

  “Not if we kill them first.”

  “No. That’s not enough. The Vikings dream of conquest. Brandr warned me: even if this expedition never returns to Greenland, other Norse will remember Leif’s tales. Like Freydis, they’ll dream of grapes and grain too tempting to resist.”

  Loki narrowed his eyes. “What’s your plan, Inuk?”

  I was suddenly sure of the path I must choose. “We don’t want all the Norse to die. We need at least some of them to live. Don’t sink their ships—just set them free. We need them to go back to Greenland with dreams not of furs and forests, but of demons and giants. Nightmares so terrible that no Viking will ever venture this way again.”

  Muirenn’s crooked smile crept across his face—or perhaps she’d borne Loki’s smile all this time. “Ah, child. You always take the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

  “This can work, Loki. We’ll need help, but we can do it.”

  He laughed. “Then summon Sanna! Let us begin!”

  I hadn’t expected him to agree so readily. “Wait—we must be careful. She won’t help unless we give her something she desperately wants.”

  Loki raised one perfect eyebrow. “You’re about to tell me what that is.”

  I looked around the ice, wary of listening spirits, and bent close to whisper my plan.

  When I finished, Loki’s eyes glowed brighter, and he clapped his hands in childish delight. “A trick worthy of the Trickster. Yes, yes, bring her up!”

  “Quiet!” I hissed. “Like the seal, she hears the hunter before he approaches. We must not scare her off.”

  I cast an uneasy glance at the dark sea. When I turned back to Loki, he’d already obeyed my instructions: the Shapeshifter had transformed once more.

  I caught my breath and looked away, unable to bear the gaze of the new man standing before me. I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt the sting of frozen tears upon my cheek. I wouldn’t look at him again until I had to.

  Drawing a deep breath, I began the chant in the secret tongue:

  Sea Mother, Great Woman down there!

  Come, come, Spirit of the Deep,

  One of your earth dwellers

  Calls upon you.

  Come, Spirit of the Deep!

  My voice sounded small amid the vast emptiness of the frozen sea, the silence broken only by the faint plash of water along the edges of the lead. “Forgive me if I have angered you in the past,” I begged. “Come up from the ocean. Return to the air.”

  Loki grumbled when the ocean remained still and empty. “Perhaps I chose wrong. You’re not as powerful as I—”

  We both spun toward the sound of a plosive inhalation—the noise a whale makes when surfacing. I
resisted the temptation to run away, to hide. I could only hope that Sanna would let me speak before she snatched me from the ice and dragged me down to her watery lair.

  A girl huddled a few paces away, where before there had been only frozen ocean. Younger than I. A long cloak of seal fur puddled about her feet. Her black hair streamed across the ice until the ends disappeared into the open lead as if rooting her to the ocean floor. She looked up through the blowing strands of her hair and blinked, blinded by weak starlight. Her nostrils dilated as she drew in great hollow breaths, remembering once again the taste of air, and when she spoke it was in the language of the sea—whistles and moans, clicks and barks, like the creatures she ruled over. Yet I understood every word.

  In my mind, her voice sounded like that of a child just waking, whispery and hesitant, almost petulant. “Why do you call me from my warm sea berth? It’s cold up here.” She rubbed her eyes with fingerless palms.

  I planted my feet firmly. “I am Omat, child of Omat.”

  She blinked once. Twice. Then she began to laugh, the sound like rippling bubbles. “I have felt you above the ice for days, but I hardly recognized you in those foolish clothes!” She rose on spindly white legs and tottered to the edge of the open water. “Come, consort,” she called down into the slice of ocean. “Look at the gift the Moon has given to us!”

  “The Moon did not send me,” I insisted. “I have come of my own free will. And as a sign of my good faith, I have brought you a gift.” I gestured for Loki to come forward. Sanna blinked once more, screwing up her delicate face as she peered toward him.

  The man reached out a hand to her. She drew a sharp breath. “Omat…”

  Only then did I allow myself to gaze upon the Shapeshifter’s new form.

  He stood only a little taller than I. That was my first surprise. I’d always imagined my father a tall man. But this Omat was far broader than I, and muscles thickened his outstretched arm. He wore the parka my mother had made for him, dark caribou fur with patches of speckled feathers at the shoulders. His thick hair, chopped low across his forehead, just brushed his dense, indrawn eyebrows. All this I could accept. What I found hard to grasp was that my father was younger than I.

  Sanna placed her mutilated, fingerless hand in his. “A fine gift, indeed.” My father’s eyes whirled in rainbow colors. Sanna stepped closer, her gaze trapped in his—and then stopped short.

  Her head jerked backward as a hand emerged from the black water, clutching at her long hair.

  I thought surely she’d be pulled into the sea, but despite her frail appearance, the Sea Mother stood firm while a large man used her hair to haul himself from the deep.

  His name hissed through my teeth. “Issuk.”

  His flesh was corpse pale; his black eyes now glowed faintly red. He stood naked before me, brows drawn low, arms tensed and ready to strike. “Omat the little girl and Omat the little man.” His dark lips did not smile. “Has the Moon finally caught you both?”

  I glanced up at the forbidding white orb that crept from its cloak of clouds to set Issuk’s pale skin aglow. “We should forget old grudges, old prophecies devoid of sense,” I said, though I wanted more than anything to kill him all over again. “I would ask your help, not your enmity. A new people have come to our land. They already murdered your wives, your children. Two of their great wooden boats now wait at our shore—but more will come. And when they do”—I turned to the Sea Mother—“seal and caribou, spirit and Inuk… all will fall beneath their iron blades.”

  Sanna shrank back, drawing her dark sealskin cloak tight about her slim shoulders. “Evil child with an evil spirit! The Moon Man warned me that you would be the end of our world. You have flouted the aglirutiit! You have brought these strangers!”

  “No! Taqqiq would have you blame me. But he divides us only to protect his own power. You need not fear me.” I took a bold step closer to her. “My grandfather taught me your story. He told me how the bird-man came with glowing eyes and lured you away from your family. Did he not rape you? As the Moon raped the Sun? I, too, have been abandoned by my family, left in the power of a man without mercy. I, too, have found power in my solitude.” From the corner of my eye I saw Issuk tense, but I forged ahead. Sanna was listening now—really listening—for the first time. “Like you, I am woman and more than woman. I have felt a woman’s pain, but I have hunted like a man. Who else has lived both lives? That scares Taqqiq, don’t you see? But you need not be afraid of me, Sea Mother. I seek to stand with you. You can summon the animals of the deep. They will fight beside us like avenging spirits, so fierce the Norse will never want to return. Then, this very night, you will break the ice that holds them fast, and they will flee. They will not come back.”

  Loki might not have understood our words, but he seemed to follow the gist of our conversation. He bent to whisper in my ear, “Tell her to lift you to the Moon. She cannot break the ice without his tides to help.”

  I ignored the god’s demand. “Issuk is Taqqiq’s grandson,” I said to Sanna instead. “Send him to the Moon to ask his help in our quest.”

  Sanna glanced fearfully at Issuk. “If he leaves, I will be so lonely.”

  “How can you be alone with the seals and whales to comfort you?” I asked quickly. “You who rule the vast ocean deep, who grant life and succor to all earth dwellers—you have the love of us all. You are never alone.”

  A faint smile fluttered across her lips. She stood a little straighter.

  “Besides,” I continued, “I have brought you my father, whom once you loved. Remember how you held him close to your breast so he might warm your heart amid the frozen sea? Issuk owes his loyalty to the Moon, but Omat will be yours entirely.”

  Sanna took a step toward Loki-in-Omat. She raised one thin arm; her sealskin cloak slipped down her shoulder, revealing one small, high breast topped with a dark nipple. Not unlike my own.

  Loki grabbed Sanna’s hand before she could back away. He raised her palm to his lips and kissed it. She frowned at first, confused by the gesture, and I silently cursed the god for not knowing our customs, but then, to my surprise, Sanna smiled. And then she blushed.

  “Issuk, go to your grandfather,” she commanded. “Tell the Moon his tides are needed.”

  “Don’t trust this woman,” Issuk growled. “She seeks her revenge—”

  “Quiet!” Sanna roared. The ice shifted and groaned in response. “You are my consort, not my master. You will do as I demand.”

  “The Moon will not like it—” Issuk began.

  Sanna reached swiftly into the open water and twisted her arms into the dripping ropes of black seaweed. With a strength that belied her slender limbs and fingerless hands, she dragged the fronds onto the ice. Then, like Freydis with her thread, Sanna worked her magic on the kelp, slinging it swiftly around Issuk’s throat.

  “I told you to be quiet,” she said, calmer now, as Issuk pulled desperately at the choking fronds, his breath coming in ragged gasps. She let him suffer a little longer. “Will you go now? Or must I put the seaweed down your throat instead of just around it?” Issuk choked an assent, eyes wide and watering. “Good.” Sanna pulled one end of the seaweed with a quick yank—it slid easily from his body and back into the water.

  Issuk bent double, gasping. He glared at me, at Sanna, at the man who had taken his place. He turned his eyes skyward, eyes that now blazed as red as fresh-flowing blood.

  In an instant, his nose elongated to grotesque proportions, his arms grew dark feathers, and his strong legs wizened to scaly bird feet. In a rush of wind, he was gone. Above us only his red eyes remained, burning like stars amid the black. Then they, too, disappeared.

  “I thought I had killed him,” I said softly. “Yet still he shadows my path.”

  Sanna merely smiled. “That which is dead can always come back. Men live in many worlds at once. So do gods. Surely you understand that now.”

  I looked at her more closely. Her form remained unchanged, and yet her eyes
were older, her face grave and filled with ancient power. The shivering, petulant girl had vanished with Issuk. In her place stood the Great Woman.

  “You, Omat,” she said, speaking to my father. “Go below—I will meet you there when I return, and we will once more warm each other in the deep.”

  She raised her arms to him, her gesture unmistakable. Loki-in-Omat shot me a wide-eyed glance. He had no desire to be dragged beneath the ice by a needy goddess. Yet if he revealed his true form, surely Sanna would refuse to help us.

  “I beg your patience, Sea Mother,” I said, thinking quickly. “But I need my father for a little longer.”

  Sanna frowned. “You gave him to me.”

  “He must stay in the world above until the Norse are gone. But then he will return to you.” Sanna’s scowl only deepened. “He told me that life among the stars was cold compared to life at your side,” I added. “He dreams only of holding you again.”

  The words came easily to me, an echo of Brandr’s confession right before he kissed me for the first time: I dreamed only of this. It felt wrong to use them now as a lie, but they melted Sanna’s heart as easily as they had mine.

  The Sea Mother’s face softened. Loki dared to step forward and press another kiss upon the back of her pitiful hand.

  “I have waited for you a long time, Omat,” she said wistfully. “Perhaps I can wait a little longer.” She turned to me. “So, what else do you need of me, daughter?”

  No one had ever called me daughter before. I had been son, grandson, brother. Now a new name, one I was surprised to find myself liking. “You must call the animal spirits to you. Together we will bring Freydis’s nightmare to life upon the frozen sea.”

  Sanna raised her eyebrows in acquiescence. “It will be done.”

  “But hurry. We must be at the ships before Malina’s rays touch the sky. I have a promise to keep.” I’d already been gone too long. Brandr would be nearly mad with worry.

  But Sanna reached out to stop me. “Your promise is not mine, daughter. I cannot bring the animals with such speed.” She glanced up at the arching stars. “Let the Sun reach once more for the horizon. Let the false dawn come and go. Then, when the night sky is once more bright with the spirits of your ancestors—then the animals will arrive.”