28
Little Ainikki
On the day following Louhi’s feast, we were sent to the meadow to gather the last of the hay. All morning long in the thick and hazy air, we worked along the meadow side where the forest runs. We were strung out in pairs, one to pitch and one to bundle.
I had hardly slept. Eystein’s killing left us all shaken. As I sweated and choked in the hay, throwing forkfuls of it up to the rick where young Bengt sat drowsing, my eyes burned with tiredness, and my limbs were as heavy as my heart.
I was bending for another forkful when something, a stone or a clod of earth, struck me on the back. In a flash of anger I spun around, thinking it was some stupid joke of Bengt’s, ready to kill him—my temper was that worn—but his fright on seeing the pitchfork upraised in my hands seemed genuine, and I faltered.
“Bengt, the, uh, handle is coming loose,” I stammered to cover my confusion, “go ask for another fork, will you?”
He looked at me strangely, but jumped down from the rick and disappeared among the haymows.
When he had gone, I glanced around, puzzled at seeing no one nearby who could have thrown at me. I shrugged and sat down in the straw to steal a minute’s rest.
“Viikinki! Viikinki, over here!”
Without bothering to wonder who called me or why, I ran toward a nearby stand of trees from where the voice seemed to come.
She crouched in a hollow just beyond the tree line, hidden by a screen of pine boughs. I recognized the corn-colored hair in its long plait and the angular jaw, swollen where Joukahainen had hit her.
“Viikinki, at last!” She reached out a small hand and pulled me down beside her. Through the skin of her fingertips I felt her fear—like a hare hiding from the fox: quivering, alert, ready to streak away at the first rustling of a leaf.
“Ainikki? What are you doing here?”
“Please—just listen—there isn’t much time.” Her words tumbled out in such a breathless rush that I was lost at once and shook my head.
“Yes, yes, slower, I’ll try.” She took a deep breath and began again, pronouncing the words carefully. “Joukahainen is hunting. Louhi is still asleep. She came back late from—from where you saw her go last night. Yes, I know about it. I slipped out the gate early this morning. I’ve been circling the fields for an hour looking for you. Last night I heard you speak our language. And the other outlander, the one who shakes, says you have a dozen brave men.”
“I have one fewer than I had yesterday,” I replied grimly.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why? It’s nothing to do with you.”
“No, you’re wrong. I don’t know where to start. You know I’m the sister of Lemminkainen the Rover. You know I was taken from Kalevala, and—oh, Viikinki, it’s a beautiful land. Sunny. Not like this awful place. Here we are so near the Dark River of Tuonela, where Death’s Ugly Daughter washes the clothes—it makes me shiver.”
I half smiled, “People put Death’s country in many places.”
“Look around you—can you doubt Death’s iron fingertips touch us here? He lives only a few days’ walk to the north. Lemminkainen could show you, he went to the land of the dead and came back to tell of it.”
“I’d like to meet this brother of yours.”
“But you will! You will meet him. And together you and he will kill and kill—until this graveyard of Pohjola is more heaped with dead than ever it was before, and Kalevala has the sampo again.” Cold hate glittered in her eyes.
“The sampo!”
She must have read my face for she lowered her gaze at once. “I don’t know what you saw, or what they told you…”
“You tell me. Tell me everything.”
“Not to an outlander. I can’t—”
“Then you’ve gone to some trouble for nothing, my girl,” I said, quickly standing up.
“No, please, don’t…” She screwed up her face with thinking. “All right, I must trust you. Listen then. The Kalevalans were rich once, because we possessed a … a secret thing. It’s very old, very powerful. We called it sampo. That was before I was born. In those days, Kalevala and Pohjola were friends, and the people visited each other often, until one day Louhi stole our sampo from us. I can’t say how, for the old’uns don’t talk about it. I think because it makes them look like fools. But she never means to let it go, for it’s her source of strength, and she keeps it buried in that hill yonder, ‘bolted with nine bolts, locked with ten locks, and its root sunk nine fathoms in the ground.’ At least, that’s what Ilmarinen the Smith says. Our sampo, buried like a corpse in a tomb.”
“But what is it, Ainikki? What does it do? And why does it need poor Eystein’s juices?”
“Stop shouting, they’ll hear you! I don’t know. I told you I’ve never even seen it. But it was a good thing, Viikinki, when it was ours. How could it not be? Imagine a mill, which no hand turns, that grinds out grain on one side, salt on the second side, and silver on the third, all day long: a bushel of each every day! The old’uns say it’s like that.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“It’s true. Long, long ago a blacksmith, who was a great magician as well, pumped his bellows for three days and three nights, and when he looked into the heart of his forge, there was the sampo being born. Into the making of it went the tip of a swan’s feather, the milk of a farrow cow, an ear of barley, and the fleece of a summer ewe.” She counted these items off on her fingers, as though reciting something carefully learned. “Compared to its value, gold pieces are playthings, and silver pieces are jingling bells. That’s how the old’uns tell it, and that’s all I know. For years and years we’ve tried to get it back, but this wall that she has built around it mocks us. Even Lemminkainen failed, though he slew her husband—and for that, they have laid this trap for him and baited it with me.”
I seized upon her thought, feeling my pulse quicken. “And if your brother were to try again—and we opened the gate for him?”
“Yes, Viikinki!” Her face was eager. “Could you do it?”
“Hel’s High Hall! Yes—if we have to fight them with our teeth. How soon can you find your people?”
“Oh, no, not me,” she said quickly. “It’s you who must go to Kalevala. If they miss me an hour from now, they’ll know exactly where I’ve gone. But you? Why should you run south and not some other direction? And being only a slave of no importance, they won’t chase you far.”
I doubted that, remembering what they had done to Kraki, but I let it go.
“And if you can find my brother, you know our tongue well enough to tell him what he must do. And Viikinki,” she looked at me steadily, “how else will you and your friends ever escape from here?”
Once again, Kammo’s cold breath tickled my neck. “I’m no forester, Ainikki.”
“I will teach you, Viikinki—everything. I know all the forest’s secrets. And I will ask Ukko, who talks through the sky, to watch over you. He always does what I ask him. Will you go?”
“Of course I will.”
She clasped my hand in both of hers and touched it to her lips—and in that instant an arrow of desire shot through me. My sex stirred like an old forgotten friend, and I realized with a shock that I hadn’t wanted a woman in weeks. Suddenly, I ached for this one.
“Ainikki, pretty one…” With my heart in my throat I wound one hand in her plait and lay the other on her small breast. “I want you.” She stiffened and twisted her head away when I tried to kiss her. “Let me … I want you.” I pushed her down and fell on her, burying my face in her hair, clawing her skirt up, forcing my knee between her legs while her heart pounded against my chest. “Ainikki, don’t fight.” But she kept squirming and trying with all her strength to push me away until suddenly all my desire turned to fury. “I will have you.” I got my trousers down and pressed hard against her thigh. “Ach! Damn you!” She sank her teeth in my neck, held me by the hair, and raked her fingernails down my cheek. As I threw up my hands to g
uard my eyes, she wriggled away.
We knelt on the ground, both of us trembling and panting. Her teeth were bared, two flaming spots burned in her cheeks. My desire seeped away. I fumbled with my trousers to cover myself.
Her voice was choked with anger. “I am a warrior’s sister—not your whore!”
“And no virgin, either,” I shot back scornfully. “Not anymore.”
“You throw that at me? Then you deserve to be Joukahainen’s slave. You’re no better than he.”
“You let him have you. Must I have less because I can’t chop off your head?”
“Let him!” She covered her face with one hand, clenched the other in a small white fist and struck her thigh.
And it wasn’t even the words she spoke, but some little thing—that helpless fist perhaps, or the sudden catching of her breath against a sob—some small thing, over in an instant. But it pierced me to the bones. In that instant, I began to love her.
“Ainikki, don’t,” I stammered. “I wouldn’t hurt you, not you. It isn’t me, it’s this place that has scraped me down to the bones and left me rough.” I reached for her clumsily, held her, smoothing her hair while sobs shook her. “Don’t cry—don’t cry.”
After a time she ceased to weep, but still hid her face.
“Little Ainikki, how old are you?”
“Fourteen summers,” she whispered. “Why do you ask me?”
“Because you are the bravest girl I know.”
“I’m not. I’m frightened all the day long.”
“I am too. Only fools are fearless here. Dry your eyes now and look at me—please.”
“Are we still—still allies even though I wouldn’t—?”
“To the last drop of my blood.”
With that she looked up, touched her fingertips gently to my bleeding cheek and tried to smile a little. “We mustn’t waste it, then.”
I kissed her forehead and vowed to myself, I will marry you or die for you, one or the other. “When do I start for Kalevala?” I asked—sounding braver than I felt.
“Oh, not yet. There’s so much still to tell you. I have to go now. They’ll be looking for me. I’ll find you again—tomorrow, if I can.”
She rose and glided away as silent as a shadow, hardly stirring the leaves under her feet. At the edge of the trees she turned back. “Viikinki,” she said shyly, “What is your name?”
I told her.
This time she laughed and wrinkled up her nose. “What a funny name.”
Young Bengt was leaning against the hayrick when I came back, looking petulant, with a pitchfork in either hand.
“Nothing’s the matter with this’un. Here, what’s happened to you, then?”
“Went to shit and fell into a thorn bush.”
“What, head first? Ha, ha!”
Bengt was so entertained by this that he laughed over it all day long, stopping every so often to say, “Head first?” and setting himself off again.
I decided for the time being to say nothing about Ainikki to anyone.
†
I didn’t see her the next day or the day after that. Joukahainen had returned from the hunt with a prize of elk and deer, and the house-slaves, among whom she was made to work, were kept busy scouring the hall and making beer and butter for another feast.
Meantime, the Headsman lounged about the farm. He seemed never to be out of sight and his eye missed nothing—especially nothing Ainikki did. He handled her openly when he felt like it and struck her when she didn’t please him, took her into the sauna with him every evening, and, Hrapp told me, slept with her at night.
I hardly slept at all for thinking about it.
†
At last, when nearly a week had passed, Hrapp and I were again summoned to the hall to wait on Louhi while she dined, and this time we were brought to her table straightaway. As before, Joukahainen was at her side—her hand rested on his knee—and behind them stood Ainikki, looking thin and sick. One of her eyes was blackened.
They’re driving her to her death! I thought. I forced myself to look past her as though she were nothing to me.
We waited in silence to be noticed.
“Hullu,” Louhi said, scarcely looking at him, “have you a new story for me?”
Hrapp shuffled his feet but said nothing.
“I thought not, you crazy man, you fool.” She laughed at him—“chee, chee, chee”—a sound like the chattering of a rat. “But Viikinki, you have a new one for old Louhi, haven’t you? Hai! You’re a good’un, Viikinki, old Louhi likes you. And Hullu, you listen, eh? And learn something. Make a place at the bench for Hullu, there.”
Hrapp, his whole body quaking, squeezed himself onto a corner of the bench and glared at me with dumb hatred.
The Mistress of Pohjola gave me a gap-toothed smile, folded her hands in her lap, and cocked her head.
Forcing my mind to the task, I gave them the saga of Ragnar Hairy-Breeks: telling first how he came by his name when his wife made him trousers of fur, coated with pitch and sand to protect him from the fiery breath of a dragon. And following that with other deeds of that ancient king. I ended with his death, when, bent with age, he was hurled by his enemies into a snake pit, and there, to his everlasting fame, sang his death-song as long as the breath was in him. I sang a verse of Ragnar’s song in the Norse language—quite movingly, if I say so myself—and received the applause of the whole table.
“Viikinki.” It was Joukahainen who spoke, gazing at me over the rim of his ale cup. “What an interesting story. What an apt story.”
“Master?”
“The snake pit, I mean. It has put me in mind of something. Do you suppose there really lived a man so brave as could sing in a place like that—and as beautifully as you sang just now?”
Louhi shot him a questioning look, which he acknowledged by raising his cup again with an easy gesture and toasting her. I began to feel a prickling down my back.
“Do you remember, Mistress,” he purred, “how once we put the hullu in a pit—and not a snake pit, either, for who could have thought of such a thing? The song he sang wasn’t the least bit tuneful. These viikingit puzzle me, for they are all so brave in their own mouths, but when you put them to the test….”
“Skinny Man,” she replied—this was her love-name for him—“what is in your mind?”
His eyelids in their deep recesses almost closed. “The hullu, it so happens, Mistress, has a story to tell you. He told it to me yesterday. Unlike his others, it is a true one. Hullu, tell the Mistress your story.”
Hrapp twitched, rolled his eyes, and made gargling sounds in his throat. No intelligible words came forth, but he raised a shaking finger and pointed it straight at me.
“The hullu,” Joukahainen said smoothly, “seems to be having one of his fits. I can recite his story for him. It concerns our new friend here. It seems he is planning to betray us to the bandit, Lemminkainen.” He was on his feet suddenly, his voice ringing down the length of the hall. “Seize him!”
A half dozen of his warriors leapt from their places and laid hold of me, twisting my arms behind my back and forcing my head down until I felt my neck would snap.
“No!” Louhi flew at her lover, her shriveled face contorted in anger. “The hullu’s only jealous because I delight in this one. His story is all lies.”
“No, Mistress, I don’t think so. Anyway, you’ll take no such risks as long as I defend you.”
“Skinny Man, my handsome young lynx…” Now suddenly she was all softness, taking his arm and drawing him down to her on the bench, simpering in her little girl’s voice.
“You do care for me. Lucky woman that I am to have such a defender! But I am vexed when we quarrel. Please, lovely Skinny Man, don’t kill my storyteller.” One taloned hand stroked his shoulder while the other touched his lips—which twitched and curled as though an insect were walking on them. It was suddenly obvious that he loathed her.
“It is not my intention to kill him,” the Headsm
an replied. “Only to lock him up until the bandit is in our hands. To put him in that same pit where we put the hullu—for a few days only.”
Louhi pouted. “But then he will shake like the hullu when he comes out. I don’t want two shakers.”
“Oh, not this brave young fellow—and so fortified with poetry?” The Headsman could scarcely disguise his smile.
Louhi looked doubtful. “If you think so. But he is not to be beaten, I won’t have it—and no snakes.”
“Certainly not,” Joukahainen murmured, touching his forehead. At his signal I was jerked to my feet.
Hrapp had betrayed me after all. He had run out of hope that I could save him. Now in his crazed mind I was simply the hated rival, out to steal the pitiful crumbs of his existence. And this was his revenge. He must have wormed our plan out of Ainikki. And what new tortures would Joukahainen invent for her now? I stole a glance at her. She stood white-lipped and still as a post, seeming to see nothing.
“Take him out,” ordered the Headsman.
As they turned me around, Louhi piped encouragingly, “Remember, Viikinki, Hairy-Breeks’ brave song…”
The last face I saw was Hrapp’s, contorted with malice. I promised myself to kill him, if I lived long enough.
†
I lay in pitch darkness on a putrid bed of refuse, slimy with decay and crawling with life, in a space no wider than my outstretched arms nor higher than my head. My foot touched the sticky carcass of some dead animal. This was the abandoned well, now a trash pit, inside its sagging well-house, where once they had buried Hrapp; a grave now, covered by a wooden lid weighted with a stone.
Insects swarmed over me, running up my shirt and pants’ legs. A rat’s tail brushed my face. I flung myself away, striking out in a frenzy, feeling the scream come up in my throat. How long had Hrapp held out before he began to quake? Was he listening for my screams now? I ground my teeth and fought it down. “You’ll wait long, damn you!”
Squatting against the wall, I hugged my knees and began to rock back and forth, back and forth—slower and slower, until I sank at last into a drifting mindlessness.
Odin’s Child Page 33