by James Comins
Chapter Eight
Another Visit
or, There is Puffin?
Solemnly they went back into the inn’s restaurant. The nice lady who ran the inn took them into a tidy brown walk-in cupboard and sprayed them with a glass atomizer full of aerosol chemicals and wiped their sleeves and arms and hair clean of grease. Thanking her, they went back out, all clean somehow.
Talvi still sat with his wife in the wooden booth, sipping coffee with one hand and bracing his long, skinny pipe in the other. A spiral of smoke trailed up from the narrow bowl. Kaldi sat across from him.
In her ramblings, Brugda had said Kaldi and Talvi had the same father. Maybe this made them brothers? Lenna wondered. And was Brugda their mother? She didn’t feel like asking yet. She wondered why they hadn’t ever called Brugda “Mother,” and never talked about their father, either, whoever he was. But then again, Talvi was gloomy and quiet and hardly ever talked at all, while Kaldi mostly made up funny stories for the girls. Neither of them ever really talked about themselves. They were just Kaldi and Talvi, the cook and the handyman.
Kaldi pushed his gold-embroidered green sleeve up his arm and patted the bench in the booth, and the girls scooted beside him. He had a smile, but it was not a smile of happiness.
“I wish you hadn’t seen Brugda when she’s like this,” he said.
“Why?”
“She goes through these times. When she’s troubled, she wants to hide.”
“Why?”
Kaldi focused on Lenna’s eyes. “She wishes she was different. Young again. She wishes she hadn't chosen some things. She’s unhappy with who she is, and she won’t change. We want her to let go of the past, but she loves the past so much. So, so much.” He took his gold-rimmed octagonal glasses off and kneaded his forehead with a knuckle.
This was uncomfortable. Kaldi was supposed to be happy and funny. His job was to make things better. Instead, he was making Brugda seem more complicated.
“When do we leave for Reykjavik?” Lenna said, trying to change the subject.
Kaldi deflated. “I have never understood girls. I talk about feelings and you talk about things.” Aitta chuckled as Kaldi huffed awkwardly. “Brugda thinks the city may be dangerous for us, so we’ll travel to Höfn and hire a daedelus to cross the ocean to Kells, where this Mo Bagohn woman lives.”
“Then we’ll lose the empress!” said Binnan Darnan indignantly. “We’ll have to leave him behind. He won’t like the daedelus. Couldn’t we just take a boat to Ireland instead?”
“It would take days instead of hours,” said Kaldi.
“Perhaps the empress will wait for us,” said Talvi gently. Aitta nodded at this and dimple-smiled in the irritating way she had.
“Who knows how long we’ll be gone?” the black-haired girl grumbled. “Someone will steal him!” She looked down. “The empress is my friend.”
“We’ll find somewhere for it to stay,” Talvi soothed. “That’s what we can do.”
“Okay.” Binnan Darnan sounded suspicious. “But nobody better hurt my empress.”
“I’ll find a good person to look after it. I promise.” Talvi put his pipe to his lips and sucked smelly smoke. For a moment, no one said anything. They listened to the low rumble of other voices in the restaurant.
“What will Ireland be like?” Lenna asked Kaldi.
“Green,” he answered. “Warmer, this time of year. The people will probably be very nice, but they won’t speak Islenska.”
“Then ...”
“English, of course.”
“Hm.” Lenna was unimpressed. English was complicated, and the words were long, and there were letters that weren’t supposed to be there, and there were entire words that weren’t male or female, but were just things. That was highly suspect.
“Why don’t you and Binnan Darnan spend the day practicing your English?” suggested Talvi. “We’ll leave for Höfn in the morning.”
So she and Binnan Darnan walked into the village of Nupsstaður and sat on the edge of a slowly rotating ice fountain, beneath a spreading sparkle of poised crystalline ice, talking in English about angels and churches and dreams. English was such a nuisance.
“Are you certain she was not a dream at all?” Binnan Darnan said in the blurty choppy words.
“When I slept again, she was the old dream without Brugda. He is ugliest of languages.” Lenna growled like a tiger: rrrr. “She was a working. A new type of spell.”
“Show me.” Binnan Darnan had an intense expression. The tiny girl’s dark brown eyes were dim beneath the liar’s halo that surrounded her, keeping the noon light out of her face.
Lenna shook no. “The angel was so, so dangery, Binnan Darnan. Know you don’t!”
“Don’t what?” she answered.
“He is stupidest of all languages that ever are! You don’t know how dangery the angel is!” Lenna started kicking the side of the fountain. “He’s stupidest stupidest! RrrrrRR!”
“In Islenska, then.”
“It’s dangerous!” Lenna shrieked.
“I’ll be here,” said Binnan Darnan. “You’ll be safe with me.”
“Brugda said other people can’t see the kind of magic that I can do. Maybe you’ll only see me collapse onto the ground. Then what will you do? I thought it took ten minutes to talk to the angels, but it was days. And there’s another thing. I’m not certain I should say it, but ...”
“Yes?” said Binnan Darnan.
“I made a deal with them. Before I knew the angels were dangerous.”
“Yes?” she said again.
Lenna looked away and spoke rapidly. “I let the dark angel look out from Brugda’s eyes, and in exchange, the angel showed me how to know lies and liars.”
“You can do this now?” said Binnan Darnan sharply. “You can see lies?”
Lenna looked down through the haze of darkness. “Lies are ... a different flavor, and liars have a shiny black halo around their heads. The woman with the baby had a liar’s halo, as if something tore the lights out around her. I’m worried. I think I did something terrible to Brugda.”
The little girl leaned against a fistful of her hair. “Why don’t you tell her?” she said.
Lenna stared. “Of course I can’t tell her. Absolutely I can’t tell. She would never forgive me.”
“Maybe she can fix it with magic,” said Binnan Darnan.
“What if she can’t? What if it’s forever? What if she’s always watched? Don’t you remember the cloud?”
“Yes, Lenna. Of course.” She folded her arms lacily.
“She was so, so afraid. Now she’ll be more afraid. Isn’t this true?” asked Lenna.
A crinkle of ice melted above her and broke like bells on the stone fountain rim. They both flinched. Binnan Darnan looked hard at her. “You’re the one who knows when things are true.”
“It’s true for certain.”
Binnan Darnan stretched her lace opera gloves. “Can I ask you something, Lenna?”
“Mm-hm.” Lenna brushed her wet-straw-colored hair behind an ear.
“Do I have a shiny black halo around me?”
“No, Binnan Darnan,” said Lenna, skritching the stone fountain with her fingernail. “I believe you’ve always told me the truth.”
The darkness around Lenna grew even deeper.
Binnan Darnan wiggled her foot and gulped a breath, then let it out again. “Do you want to explore the village with me?” she asked, looking up.
“I tried exploring already. Remember? That’s why we’re not in Höfn yet.”
“Hmp.” The little girl looked away, itching the lace that clung to her arms. She smiled snarlily. “Then I’ll just go by myself.” Binnan Darnan stood and walked toward an alley in the ring of tall silver townhouses, crossing her arms smugly.
“But but but.”
“Tell them I’ll be at the inn by bedtime,” Binnan Darnan called back.
“Don’t do things just to hurt me!” shouted Lenna. “You’re
being mean!”
Binnan Darnan’s mouth dropped open. “You got to go exploring, and you got into super trouble. But I won’t.” She walked on, head up, extra slow.
Boiling angry, Lenna ran back to the inn and stomped upstairs to her room. She unlocked the door with a tap of an inscribed key crystal that Kaldi had given her the day before. It was barely past noon, but she dove under the covers and thought furious thoughts about Binnan Darnan and Brugda and stupid everybody.
Seconds passed. Minutes slowly passed. More minutes passed. She sank deeper into her biting biting mind, coming up with new things she would’ve liked to say to rotten old Binnan Darnan. She hadn’t been nearly mean enough. Definitely not. She could have said she was the boss and Binnan Darnan couldn’t go, or she could have said that she would go exploring after all, or that she didn’t associate with little servant girls, or that she’d had better adventures already, or ...
She brought a skinny pillow into her hidden bed-world and stuck her head inside the red pillowcase, pushing her nose into the snuffly white pillow, where she could cry a little without anyone ever finding out. Hours passed in sullen misery, surrounded by blood-colored sheets. She folded the top of the bedclothes over her head, her hot angry face hidden and cowering, her legs curled up in the depths of the bed. The flat red nest was a wrinkly fortress keeping the world out. She waited for the next day to arrive. Kaldi knocked for lunch, then dinner, and asked where Binnan Darnan was. Lenna informed him she would not be having dinner, thank you, and added exactly how she felt about that little crystal servant.
“And only this morning ...”
“Shut up!” Lenna yelled through the door frame.
“I’ll save a piece of puffin for you.”
“There is puffin?”
Puffin. Joukka Pelata had asked Kaldi to serve it once. Roasts on a big platter under a dome. The bright birds were a common sight but harder to catch than a runaway piglet. Every year men went out to the islands with long nets, spooking the big-nosed waterfowl and swooping to catch them as they took off. The meat was very expensive. Kaldi had made the fancy fancy meal only that one time, for a very special guest, a man in a broad hat and robe that Momma had introduced Lenna to. He had carried a big tusk like a walrus tooth with him. In retrospect, he was probably some sort of magician, and Lady Joukka Pelata had treated him as if he was a visiting prince. They had even brought Binnan Darnan in from the barn to meet him. He hadn’t given his name, but Momma seemed to know him very well, and held him in high esteem.
Kaldi had sent the homestead-dragon out days earlier with boys from a neighboring farm to catch puffins and bring them back for him to cook. The smell of the birds had filled the house, buttery and wild-scented. Kaldi had called it a “taste of Iceland.” Ha, such a joke. They had eaten it never, before then.
It had been amazing. The puffin.
Lenna lay in bed, staring at the door and smelling what she hoped was merely the scent of au gratin potatoes and not the delicious, buttery, juicy birds. Binnan Darnan was so rotten. Everything was.
In time, she fell asleep.
Another knock. She mmmfed awake. Stars were visible through the half-open wooden shutters. “I’m sleeping!” she called. But the knock only repeated. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” called Aitta.
“Oh.” Hm. “What do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
She threw aside the covers, feeling that snuggly feeling of escaping bed when you plan on returning. She opened the door, standing in her slip.
Aitta was shorter than her husband, but then, Talvi was particularly tall. Her hair was shiny black with bleach-frosted tips, sticking out stylishly in short hedgehog prongs that could probably slice through a hat. She had exchanged her glittering blue nightdress for a onesie-jumper with pastel squares, orange and pink and purple, framed with black lines. She always dressed extra stylish, as if she planned on going to a Hollywood movie premier. Her blue eyes were dark with mascara. There was a fuzzy gray halo around her head.
“Lenna, Binnan Darnan came by earlier and told me you weren’t truthful with Kaldi. She told me some troubling things.”
“Binnan Darnan told you what I said?” She couldn’t believe it. That lying fink. How could she just blurt everything out?
“You made an evil bargain, Lenna. Have you heard of Faust?” Aitta’s stylish dark bangs hung over her forehead in a swoosh, making her small Icelandic eyes look ominous.
Faust? Lenna shook her head.
“When you make a bargain with angels, you must always choose the angel of good. But you didn’t, did you?” Aitta was angry, upset, disappointed in her. Those weren’t feelings that Lenna wanted to look at right now. She wanted to be alone in a place where she could be angry at Binnan Darnan. “You chose a bad bargain,” Aitta went on, “and someday the devils will come for you. They will take you to a world worse than any you could imagine. This is what always happens.”
Lenna had to lie. She had to lie to get away from those feelings.
“You believe I talked to angels just because I said this to Binnan Darnan? It was a dream, Aitta. I was asleep. If you believe otherwise then you’re gullible. And anyway I know for certain that Binnan Darnan is a fibber.”
She gasped and covered her mouth. Aitta had an unpleasant, satisfied look that didn’t suit her.
“A gift from the Bad Old Man? Has it helped you reach heaven so far? Has it given you happiness?” She leaned in further, too close. “Well?”
“What should I do?” said Lenna, who really, really didn’t want to deal with this right now.
“Come with me to the church. We’ll face the angels together.”
“Now?” She looked out the window at the depths of the Icelandic spring darkness. “So late?”
“Now. We cannot lose time. Your soul is at stake. It can be taken from you more easily the longer you wait.”
Uneasily, she pull her green dress over her slip, secured the yellow sash, changed her mind and took the sash and stupid Binnan Darnan’s woven crystal off. Finally she let Aitta take her hand. Tiptoe, tiptoe they left the hotel, easing the squeaking door shut. The crisp frost outside was cerulean blue etched across the cotton, skrinking as Lenna’s boots broke through the frozen surface. Along the broad, flat plain they walked. The empress snuffed and wiggled on the snowy field, adjusting itself in its sleep. For a sudden moment it dug into the frozen ground with all of its legs and pushed: a dream of running.
The church door was silent. Just inside the entrance, Aitta clapped twice, and instead of pitch dark, a warm glow came from a clot of orange poles spun together like teepee supports. Lenna asked what the glowing thing was.
“A lamp,” Aitta said unhelpfully. “Anyway. Bring the angels back. We’ll see what we can do.”
Lenna pursed her lips. “Why don’t you do it? One of them belongs here anyway, yes? So ask for him,” she said.
Aitta stood near the little painted-blue table of the altar and held Lenna’s reluctant hand. Tracing a big cross on the surface with a finger, she said, “Behold. Satan hath desired to have us, that he may sift us like wheat. Ye are they which have continued with us in our temptations. We go unto you from the dead, and will repent. For what are we advantaged, if we gain the whole world, but lose ourselves? So come in your glory, and in your Father’s, ye holy angels!”
The strange glowing crystal lamp in the corner stood, divided in two and stepped as if through snow with its four legs, altering as it went, becoming four shrouded footprints billowing.
“They know you, Ljos,” the smiling angel hissed. “Aren’t they wonderful. Will you sing to them?”
“They know you, Indaell,” the angel of light gloamed. “I’ll sell your voice to the dark places. For it I’ll buy you a tomb in the desert of Dudael, under the sharp rocks.”
Once again, with a sudden rush like the torrent of a shattering glacier, they drew flaming swords, which swam helplessly together, struck and collapsed into bright po
wder. Through the open door, Lenna saw the dawn burst. The stream of light bent like a speeding sundial.
“I command time to stop,” she said.
Like a running spider the light froze in place. Neither Aitta beside her nor the angels stopped, however.
Aitta glanced her way, then faced the two strange angels.
“By the name of the Four Letters, by the three great forces of good, by all light I bind thee, Indaell of all darkness,” she said. “You may not, O dark angel, take this child with you to the place of perdition, the low place, the place of peril below all else! Release her and return alone to Hell!”
Indaell’s head spun on his cowled neck around his nose. His head was upside-down. His sinister grin was a slim red frown where the eyes should be. Ponderously he leaned in until he was inches from Aitta’s determined expression. For a moment they remained.
Suddenly the angel’s eyes flew open. “Wwwwwwoogie woogie woogie!”
Aitta collapsed backwards in a heap. Indaell’s mouth laughed from his forehead. Lenna blinked, and his head was right-side-up.
Ljos turned, turned. “You are childish, brother. More childish than children of men.”
“I could teach them secrets that would make them adults of men,” hissed Indaell, his little eyes going narrow again.
Lenna put her hands on the altar. “I command you to trade me back Brugda’s eyes for the ability to see lies and liars.”
Aitta, still blundered on her back, nodded.
Smiling Indaell twisted gangily to face her. “You’ll trade her eyes? She’ll be blind,” he whispered. “I’ll tear them out and keep them in the folds of my robe.”
“No!” Lenna shouted.
“The girl is no lawyer,” Aitta told him. “She asks--no, she commands--that you reverse the only deal you’ve made with her.” She nodded to Lenna.
“I command you to reverse the only deal you’ve made with me.”
Indaell laughed like a lunatic hyena. Across the small room, beside the gingerbreaded wooden partition, Ljos grimaced.
“You fail to understand, and I may not teach such secrets,” the angel of light said.
Indaell stared nastily. “I can teach her the secrets.”
“Ljos?” Lenna was very small and worried. She kept her hands on the altar, as if it might rise up against her.
Led by his eyes, the angel of light turned his head to her and waited.
“What should I do, Ljos?” she asked.
The question lay upon the air. The angel stood majestic, his back straight as a soldier’s, his gray-beige cowl like a Corinthian column. Ljos closed his eyes, slow, slow as if in pain.
“Go with those who will take you. Learn what is well to learn. Live with your new curse. And hate my brother.” The words seemed to flow out, wash over her, one or two at a time, like the tolling of a long row of faraway bells.
“That’s not helpful,” fell from Lenna’s mouth as she thought it.
Indaell snickered. “Help yourself,” he said, and the angels faded.