“Your god didn’t save you,” Brandr interjected with an anger I didn’t fully understand. “We did. If we hadn’t heard you crying, you’d be frozen to death by now.”
Snorri’s face darkened. “You had nothing to do with it, Gunnarsson. The skraeling found me. If you’d come to me, I would’ve told you to shove your compassion up your arse where it belongs.”
“Then you’d be dead for sure,” I snapped. “Enough of this, you fools. Has there not been enough fighting today?”
The men settled into an uneasy silence.
“Snorri, let me see your hands.”
Even in the dim light I could see the ice-white skin of his fingertips. I scraped a fistful of snow from the ground and began to work it into his flesh.
“Ow!”
“That’s the life coming back. It’s good that it hurts. If it didn’t, you’d lose them.”
Snorri gritted his teeth and nodded. “Thank you,” he finally whispered.
“Why’re you bothering?” Brandr asked me, his voice tight.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re saving his hands. For what? Do you think there’s a future for him here?”
“He saved me from Ingharr once. I promised him that if he didn’t try to kill you, I’d let him live.”
“So now you think he’ll stay with us, is that it? You’ll take him back to your people? We’ll all be one smiling family?”
“I don’t want to go with you,” Snorri protested. “I just want to go home.”
“Home?” Brandr barked. “Didn’t you see the boat leave, boy? They took off without you. No one missed you. No one noticed you were gone.”
“Muirenn will notice.”
“Muirenn!” Brandr laughed. “Indeed… except she’s dead.”
“Christ help me.” Snorri squeezed his eyes shut and began to pray under his breath. I didn’t catch all his words, for he spoke quickly and low—these were words he’d said many times before. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”
A look of distaste crossed Brandr’s face. For all that he no longer worshiped the Aesir himself, he still disdained this god of sheep. “You see now why the boy can’t stay?”
I finally understood his anger. “The gods exist only where there are people to worship them,” I murmured. “If Snorri stays here…” I sucked in a breath. “What are these Christians really like?” I had to know. Perhaps their god could live among us without destroying everything I held dear.
“The tentacles from Rome spread out across all the world like those of a hungry squid.” Brandr curled his lip. “Ravenous. Insatiable.”
Snorri wasn’t even listening; his frozen hands still clutched in my own, he rocked in place, murmuring his prayer.
“On Írland,” Brandr went on, “it started as just one priest, they say, and within a generation, all the island had forgotten their old gods of Moon and Sun and turned to the Christ. I have yet to travel anywhere where he has not taken hold. Even in Greenland, Snorri is far from the only Christian. Erik the Red’s own wife built a stone church, and already all their thralls and half the freemen pray with her. Trust me, if Snorri had not been afraid for his life, he would’ve preached his faith to every man on board. Their desert god tells them to spread the word, and they won’t stop until the entire world bows before him.”
“Is this true?” I shook Snorri’s slowly warming hands, dragging his attention back to me. “You want everyone to share your god?”
He sniffled before he answered. “It’s our duty to spread the gospel. You can only go to heaven if you accept Christ, and mine is a loving faith. We only want what’s best.”
“My own gods are dead—my people will turn to yours instead,” “Once the Christ has a toehold here we will never shake him loose,” I said with a groan.
“And what’s so wrong with that?”
I peered into the boy’s pinched face. “Do you believe the animals have a spirit?”
Snorri shook his head.
“Do you believe that all my ancestors watch me, protect me—that they live still in the stars?”
“Not exactly…”
“That they live again in the bodies of the newly born? I carry my father’s spirit inside me. Does your faith understand that?”
“No. They—well—all your ancestors didn’t know Christ. They’d be in hell.”
Brandr laughed shortly, a sound more of disgust than of humor. “Galinn came to Vinland to save his gods from people like you, and yet he gave his life trying to defend the Christians in Leifsbudir. That’s more than you did for them. Now he is gone and you are here.” He turned to me. “I can’t let my brother’s death have been in vain.”
I am the destroyer of my world. I could deny it no longer. We could never survive if we traded our multitude of spirits for one god of deserts and death. Just as I was man and woman, just as the fanged aarluk was wolf and whale, my people could not be contained in a single god.
I dropped Snorri’s hands.
Brandr’s voice was hard. “You should’ve let him die, and his Christ with him.”
Snorri’s gaze swung from Brandr to me. He slunk back against the iglu wall like a trapped animal, tucking his fingers beneath his own armpits for warmth.
“There has been so much death,” I said. “So much blood. Snorri survived—perhaps his god saved him, perhaps one of mine, or one of yours. But he lived.”
“I just—I just want to go home.”
“You have a choice, Omat,” Brandr said darkly. “Either we kill him now, or we let him live. But if he lives, he cannot stay here. You said yourself—he’ll bring his god to your shores.”
“I could make a boat, maybe,” Snorri interjected. “Could try to sail home.”
“You’d never make it,” Brandr snorted. “On your own? It would take a real Viking to make it all the way to Greenland without help. You certainly can’t.”
“So—I die here at your hands—or I die at sea by my own? Are those my choices?”
Huddled there in his cloak, the boy looked younger than ever. A deep shiver coursed through me.
“Rest now, Snorri. It’s not a choice any of us can make right now.”
He tried to keep his eyes open a little longer, but exhaustion soon overcame his fear.
We sat there, watching him sleep, for a long while. Sometimes his jaw would clench and his brow furrow. Beneath thin eyelids, his gaze twitched back and forth, scanning the dream world for his enemies. For Brandr.
I looked to my friend. His face had softened.
“You couldn’t really kill him,” I said finally. “You’re not Freydis.”
“Nor am I my gentle brother. I would rather Snorri die than watch you lose everything you’ve fought so hard to save.”
“You gave up the berserker rage for a reason, Brandr. You don’t kill children anymore. And I will not do it, either.”
With a low moan, he dropped his head into his hands. His fingers threaded through his orange hair as if he’d pull it out.
“Why do you really want him gone?” I asked.
“He’s a fatherless boy… because of me.” His voice was calm, but his shoulders trembled. I put a hand on his arm; he pulled me into his grasp and buried his face in my neck to hide from the world. “I thought I could find forgiveness in your arms. I thought all my debts were paid. But not for this—not for killing Snorri’s father.”
I could only hold him, too afraid of what I might say to dare speak.
“You know what I’ll have to do…” He pressed his cheek against mine. “If we can’t kill him, and we can’t let him stay here, then…” His tears ran down my cheeks, where they mingled with my own. “That’s why I hate him.”
I could not protest. After all that I’d destroyed, it seemed only right that I should sacrifice the one thing I had left. Now Brandr would leave me, too, and I could not ask him to stay.
“You have to take him home,” I whispered. “You could build a boat and help him sail it.
” He nodded, silent. “Follow the islands back the way you came. And when you returned to Greenland, he would be safe, and you would have paid recompense for the death of his father. That’s how your Althing works, yes? Debts must be paid.” Again he nodded. I knew he didn’t trust himself to speak. “And you would keep the Christ from our shores. For that, we would be grateful.” I straightened so I might look in his eyes. “I will sing such songs of you… My family will never forget what you’ve done.”
I tried to smile, to hearten him, but my lips shuddered of their own accord, and I found myself close to tears instead. “Besides, you wouldn’t have been happy traveling from one patch of ice to the next—you who’ve seen deserts and geysers and volcanoes. You told me once you didn’t want to settle down with a wife and a homestead, remember? Just imagine, after you take Snorri home, you can go anywhere you want.” The Greenlanders wouldn’t welcome Brandr back, not after the tales Freydis would tell of his role in the Ragnarok, but I had no doubt he’d find a way to survive. He always had.
I kept talking, trying to convince us both that this was the right decision. “Perhaps you can go back to Rome, with its sweet grapes, and—”
“Omat,” Brandr interrupted. “Do you really think I would ever want to leave you?” A mixture of fear and disbelief hardened his brow.
I took a few shallow breaths before I managed a “No.”
“If I go”—he traced the constellation of marks on my cheeks—“I go because it’s the only way.”
“You will stay until summer,” I said when I could trust my voice once more. “The ice broke last night beneath Taqqiq’s tides and Thor’s hammer, but it’s still deep winter. It will freeze again. You’ll have to wait many moons before the ocean is open enough to sail.”
Silently I counted. One—the Moon of the Sun’s Rising. Two—the Moon for Bleaching Skins. Three—Seal Birthing Moon. Four—the Moon When Rivers Flow. Five—the Moon When Animals Give Birth. Six—Egg Gathering Moon.
Six moons before one small boat could pass safely east. Six moons—I had known Brandr hardly that long, and yet the last six moons seemed a lifetime.
The next six would seem as fleeting as breath.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Without my wolfdogs to lead the way, the journey to our winter camp seemed longer than ever before.
I missed their prancing and playing, missed the wagging tails and lolling tongues. I had sacrificed them to protect my world, but now there was little left to protect. True, animals still roamed the tundra. Hare and lemming darted from our path. A falcon soared overhead. But these were animals of flesh alone: animals to warm our bodies with meat and fur and feathers, but with no guiding spirit to warm our hearts.
Long before I reached our camp, I learned of my family through their footprints. Tapsi had big feet; his prints were easy to recognize. And the shuffling step beside the indentations of a harpoon point must be Ququk, grown older and more frail. Millik’s gait was short, her prints shallow. Saartok’s footsteps, too, were easy to spot, although she must have gained weight rather than lost it, for her prints were deeper than they should have been. Finally I found the one set of tracks I most wanted to see.
I knelt in the snow, heedless of the cold seeping through my makeshift woolen trousers, and traced the outline of each familiar boot with my finger. I knew this step.
Puja lived.
A day later, I spotted the familiar humps of qarmait on the horizon. I began to run, ignoring the protests of Brandr and Snorri, both too slow to keep up with me.
The camp’s dogs howled; grief clutched at my heart. How I missed my wolfdogs! But joy quickly replaced mourning as a familiar figure crawled from the nearest tunnel and stood with one hand raised against the glare, peering out suspiciously.
“Anaana!”
The woman I called Mother stumbled toward me across the snow. She opened her arms wide and clutched me to her. I could feel Puja’s ribs even through her parka. I buried my face in her shoulder, inhaling the familiar smell of her—soot and sweat and seal.
She stroked my hair with her fur mitten and whispered against my cheek. “You’re home now. You will not leave again.” Unspoken, but understood: an apology. She would never again watch me dragged away.
Finally she pulled back to ask, “Kiasik?”
“I tried. So hard.” I finally released the tears I had not yet shed for him. “We were almost home.”
Puja pulled her hood low, hiding her face in mourning. The others gathered around, all the familiar faces, thinner than before but no less dear: Tapsi and Saartok, Ququk and Ujaguk, Niquvana and Millik. They joined in Puja’s lamentation, a long, low cry of grief followed by silence.
And then—an unexpected gurgle. Saartok turned to show me the tiny face peeking from her hood.
“Alianait!” I exclaimed, brushing away my tears.
“He was born a moon past,” Saartok said proudly. “Tapsi has been hunting to keep us fed.”
She smiled at her husband, who blushed in response and stroked his son’s downy hair. So my cousin had not lost his gentleness, only his fear. With Kiasik and me gone, it seemed Tapsi had finally become a man.
“Our son has not yet been named,” he told me. “We were waiting for an angakkuq…”
“Kiasik,” I said firmly. “He is Kiasik.”
The baby gurgled with delight and pounded his fists against his mother’s shoulder. I knew I had chosen rightly. Already the child showed his namesake’s spirit. Puja smiled faintly through her tears. Her son lived again.
“You’ve brought us tidings of both grief and joy, Older Brother,” she said.
“And more than that,” Ququk interjected, his voice filled with alarm as he pointed out across the snow.
Brandr and Snorri approached.
“Ia’a…” Tapsi stepped protectively in front of his wife and child. “Have you brought giants in your trail?”
“No, it’s all right,” I said quickly. “They’re friends.”
My family stood tense and afraid as the Norsemen joined us.
Snorri shifted from foot to foot, prepared to flee in case these new skraelings decided to attack. Brandr’s face split into a wide grin, and he moved closer to me.
“This man is Brandr,” I explained.
My friend cocked his head at the sound of his name.
“He is…” How could I describe him to my family? How would they understand?
Brandr knew enough of our tongue to understand my struggle. His smile only broadened. “How do you say husband?” he asked in Norse.
I swallowed. “Uik.” For so long, I’d dreaded the word. I had fought too long for my man’s spirit to give it up easily now—even for Brandr.
“Ui… gijaa… nga,” Brandr said firmly, his meaning clear despite his halting Inuit speech. I am Omat’s husband.
Shouts of amazement, confusion, pleasure, and disbelief echoed around us. I waited for him to step in front of me as Tapsi had done for Saartok, or to put an arm around me, claiming me as his own. I wasn’t sure what I would do if he did, but I cast him a warning glare. I did not intend to spend my days tending the lamp or sewing his boots or—
He took a small step backward, his eyes never leaving mine. He stood just behind my shoulder like a hunting companion ready to help reel in a seal from the hidden deep.
I remembered the song he’d played for Sweet One that first morning he awoke in my tent. Listening, I’d felt like a longspur flying over a valley of bright flowers. Now his gaze alone could lift my wings. And for all I worried about where my flight would take me, I could not bring myself to come back to earth.
Long into the night, I told the story of my journey. Some of it seemed unimaginable, even to me—perhaps because I had lived with Brandr so long. But my people never questioned the reality of other worlds. They gasped, to be sure, but they believed every word.
Little Kiasik lay fast asleep against Saartok’s breast, and even the adults grew weary in the warmth of the crowded qarm
aq by the time the story was over. One by one, they left for their own homes, until only the Norsemen and Puja remained. Then, to my surprise, my milk-mother stood and spoke to Snorri.
I translated. “She wants you to visit the other families with her.”
Snorri opened his mouth to protest, then shot Brandr a quick look and changed his mind.
“You don’t need to leave,” I insisted weakly.
Puja scowled at me—the familiar expression only made me smile.
She and Snorri crawled from the qarmaq.
With only the howl of the wind outside to disturb the silence, Brandr and I were finally alone. We stared at each other for a long moment.
“I don’t know what kind of husband you’ll be,” I finally blurted out. “You won’t even be here for more than a few more moons—”
“Do you need me to stay and hunt for you?”
I snorted.
“Exactly. I’m not an Inuit husband to keep you fed. Nor am I a Norse husband, who would bring you jewels and thralls and fight for your honor. You don’t need anyone to do those things. You’ve been hunting for me, protecting me, fighting for me, since we first met.”
“True. So what kind of husband are you, then?”
“I am your mate, Omat,” he said simply, taking my hand in his.
He kissed me then, long and slow. There was no guard at the door to disturb us, no sunrise to bring our doom, only a very long night ahead. We knew each other’s stories now, knew to be gentle, knew how to banish memory with kisses. His lips moved along my jaw, my neck, my collarbone.
“Take off these useless rags,” I groaned finally. “I’d rather be naked than ever wear them again.”
Brandr laughed, his grin bright in the lamplight. I remembered our first night together; he’d grimaced with pain as I dressed his wounds. I grabbed his face between my hands, my voice catching with desperation. “I would have you always laughing.”
The Wolf in the Whale Page 47