Be Still the Water

by Karen Emilson

  praise for

  BE STILL THE WATER

  “I loved the language, the vivid descriptions, the occasional bursts of wisdom, and the compelling characters. Karen Emilson has won my interest in her work and she skillfully establishes herself as an expert in the historical fiction genre.”

  —Arya Fomonyuy, Readers’ Favorite

  “This is a book that everyone of Icelandic descent should read. They will find people like themselves and their friends in these pages . . . however, this is not a novel just for the Icelandic ethnic community. The characters come to life, their stories, while ethnic and Canadian, are universal. We follow Asta in her quest to find her sister but we also follow the lives of the many characters who make up the community as they search out both opportunity and love in a new land.”

  —W.D. Valgardson, author of The Girl with the Botticelli Face

  “Karen Emilson’s style is unique and the writing exquisite . . . characters like Asta are unforgettable and readers will so naturally feel drawn to her world. Apart from the beautiful prose and the absorbing plot, the author has a powerful gift for humor.”

  —Divine Zape, Readers’ Favorite

  “Emilson deals with that most mysterious of crossroads, life to death, with humour, and she allows mystery and the story itself to carry us there.”

  —Michael Kenyon, author of The Beautiful Children

  Be Still the Water is a simple but beautiful and intricate story about family, a reflection on love, life, tragedy, friendship and death. With its realistic storyline, it has the charm to make any reader wonder whether this is fiction at all, along with its unforgettable characters.

  —Lit Amri, Readers’ Favorite

  also by Karen Emilson

  Narrative Non-Fiction

  Where Children Run

  When Memories Remain

  Non-Fiction

  Just a Matter of Time

  BE STILL

  THE WATER

  Karen Emilson

  Be Still the Water

  Copyright © Karen Emilson 2016

  Perpetual Books

  Box 918

  Grunthal, Manitoba

  R0A 0R0 Canada

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer

  who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover and book design by Ninth and May Design Co.

  Author photo by Kate Pentrelli.

  Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens Printing.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Emilson, Karen, 1963-

  Be Still the Water / Karen Emilson

  I. Title

  ISBN 978-0-9681242-5-3

  For Laurie

  pronunciation

  Icelanders have traditionally used a patronymic naming system, whereby a child’s last name is derived from his or her father’s first name, together with an affixation of -són or -dóttir. Ella Leifursdóttir is therefore literally translated as Ella Leifur’s daughter. Because of this system, blood members of an Icelandic family may have different surnames.

  Most who immigrated to Canada during the 1900s, adopted the use of family names and eventually the spelling of many names were Canadianized. For ease of reading, the accents have been removed from names in this story, however, there is a peppering of Icelandic words. Accents and Icelandic characters are included in written correspondence and occasionally during introductions.

  Here are a few pronunciation hints:

  á as in ow in owl

  é as the ye in yet

  í as the ee in seen

  ó as the o in note

  ö as in u in fur

  ú as the oo in moon

  ý as in the ee in seen

  æ as in the i in wife

  ð as in th in feather

  ei as in the ay in way

  j as in y in yes

  CHAPTER ONE

  Where good men go, that is God’s way.

  —Tryggvi Emilson

  Palliative care room, Lundi hospital

  June 10, 1980

  I have watched old people die, and young ones, too. Most endings are the same so I’d be foolish to expect my passing will be much different.

  They call me forgetful, eccentric. But never a fool. I am an old woman who has seen many things. Moving me to the palliative care room at the end of the hall underlines that I have little time left. When I stop taking in fluids it will take two days, maybe three.

  Oh Freyja, where are you? Not knowing your fate has tormented me for nearly seventy years. Before I go, I will make good on my promise to find you.

  How will I do that you ask? Quite simple. By travelling to the past.

  Before you pooh-pooh the possibility—call me a crazy old loon—remember, I almost died once and it taught me something useful. Here, we will try it together: lie back, close your eyes, and let your mind soften. Focus on the blank space. Let yourself fall into it, that mysterious place between heaven and earth where all the answers lie to the questions hidden deep in your heart. Don’t be afraid, your soul will return. As I said, I’ve done this before.

  Time to relax and enjoy as a purposeful wind takes me now, back to 1906 and a place not far from here, nestled in the poplars under a giant oak, the place I still call home. Eikheimar.

  * * *

  “I had a sister once.”

  These are the first words I remember Stefan Frimann saying to us. We were racing along the shoreline with you riding on his back, choking him as you hung on, spurring your heels into his thighs like he was a pony. Stefan was our first friend in our new home. We met him on the boat that brought our family from Chief’s Point to the Kristjansson homestead a week earlier. One year younger than our brother Leifur, who would soon turn fifteen, Stefan was shorter but gave an impression of power. He twisted the brim of his cap to one side when he spoke and always seemed impulsively interested in everything that was going on. Father said Stefan must have a bit more Irish blood in him than the rest of us because of all the freckles and the hint of red in his wiry air. He was the first boy to cause my insides to stir in that exciting way that makes girls do silly things.

  We all competed for his attention, including Leifur, who would rather be off with Stefan hunting partridge or following a deer trail through the bush, not wasting time with his giggling sisters.

  As you slid off Stefan’s back and started kicking sand against his legs, he grabbed your hands and began swinging you around. At first, you screamed, demanding that he let you go, but soon you were laughing as your long skirt swirled around and around as Stefan’s heels dug into the sand.

  “Asta,” A voice called out to me.

  I looked back toward the barn to see Finn running toward us. He’d just finished slopping the pigs and was anxious to join in the fun. Pale as the underbelly of a fish, Finn was all joints and bone. Do you remember Finn Kristjansson? He lived here on this point of land with his parents, the people who were kind enough to take our family in that summer. We’d only known Finn for a week but already had overheard Mother whisper that he was brilliant. In the world we were born into—despite the Viking myths—intelligence is valued over brawn.

  “I’m done,” Finn said, lips parting to show a set of large, gleaming teeth. “Now what shall we do?”

  Stefan and Leifur would have preferred Finn not be included, even though they didn’t say it, but this was his
home and he so desperately wanted to be their friend.

  “There is a spot where we can dig.” Finn pointed up the beach. “The Indians had a camp there and I found an arrowhead once.”

  Dizzy by then, Stefan’s one foot crossed over the other and he landed on his back with you crashing onto his chest. He lay panting, gently holding you as you flung sand in his face. Then he squinted up at the rest of us.

  “I know,” he said. “Let’s go to Ghost Island.”

  Hovering above them, my soul watches the scene play out again. Finn sat at the back of the twenty-foot skiff holding the tiller while Stefan hoisted the sail. Leifur and I couldn’t see Ghost Island as we set out, but they assured us it wasn’t far away. As the boat skimmed across the water, seagulls hung noisily overhead and, believing we were fishermen, dipped occasionally to probe us with hungry eyes, expecting us to lift a net.

  “I despise them,” Freyja shouted over the thrumming of wind and sail, “I saw them rip a baby rabbit in half once and gobble it up.”

  Had it been Signy, our older sister, sitting beside Stefan, I would have been cross-eyed with jealousy but it didn’t bother me in the least that all his attention was on sweet little Freyja who sat possessively with her hip pressed up against his, admiring his every move.

  “They are a nuisance all right,” he said, searching the boat for something to throw at the birds.

  I might as well admit the only reason I begged Leifur to go along that day was because of Stefan. We left without telling Signy, knowing she would have declared out loud that our father, or ‘Pabbi’ as we called him, would have forbidden it. Our parents had left by steamship a half hour earlier to go to the Lake Manitoba Narrows store, so the boys were in charge. For years afterwards I regretted going and to this day still believe that if it wasn’t for boys, girls would seldom get themselves into trouble.

  “Gulls are useful scavengers,” Finn said as he adjusted the rudder, peering beyond the mast in the direction of the island. “They keep the shoreline clean of dead fish and the mice under control.”

  “Yes, but they still shit on our heads,” Leifur said.

  “Then wear a hat,” Finn said, so seriously that it struck Freyja’s funny bone and she started giggling with such infectious glee that we all, including Finn, laughed harder than the words deserved.

  Eight-year-old Freyja looked nothing like the rest of us. One evening she’d carried the Eaton’s catalogue to Mother’s lap, and said: “Look. Me, Freyja.” Her slender finger pointed excitedly across a page of porcelain dolls that looked much like her except that Freyja’s hair could never be tamed. It grew wildly out in a fine mass of wild, white curls.

  When someone met her for the first time, they would stop and stare, mesmerized. I would see their eyes soften as she danced around, telling stories that evolved from her make-believe world in such a clear, sweet, high-pitched voice.

  Once you came to know her, you’d see her determination. She could coerce others into doing whatever she wanted and soon they’d believe her ideas were their own. Few could resist when Freyja reached out her delicate hand. They’d allow themselves to be dragged to see a nest of mewling kittens, and would pause to wait as she picked wildflowers.

  As the boat skimmed across the water, Leifur and I dug our heels into the floorboards, leaning against the direction it was heeling, as Stefan had shown us, neither of us willing to admit we were afraid. We’d never been in a sailboat before.

  “We’re going to tip,” Freyja cried, grabbing Stefan’s arm.

  “I have only put her over once, when I was first learning,” Stefan chuckled. Leifur looked relieved and seeing that Finn was perfectly at ease helped calm my nerves.

  “We set our nets here at freeze-up,” Finn said, pointing to a narrow peninsula of rock and sand they named Gull Reef. A few naked trees angled up from the scrubby underbrush, every limb a perch for resting gulls. They, along with other water birds—cormorants and loons—nested here by the thousands.

  We’d heard that Indians from the nearby reservation taught the first Icelandic settlers how to fish under the ice and, because of that, those pioneers survived their first harsh winter. Starvation and servitude were things our forebears understood. The desire for independence is why so many of us immigrated to America. We chose to live where we could farm and fish because that is what we knew and, like so many immigrants, chose the wilderness because it would afford us the opportunity someday to own property, a privilege denied us in our homeland.

  When it came time to decide whether to settle on Lake Manitoba or in New Iceland (the larger settlement 100 miles east on Lake Winnipeg), Pabbi was ready to flip a coin, that is until he spent a day fishing on Lake Manitoba. He returned home from the frozen lake that night excited as we’d ever seen him—holding up a large pickerel in each hand—his mind set. Access to abundant fishing grounds meant we’d always have plenty to eat and a commodity to trade.

  And now, June couldn’t have offered us a gentler day to travel the lake. The sun was high, the occasional wispy cloud passed overhead. The southwest breeze, soft and warm, carrying the slight scent of waterweeds and fish, was distinct and so pleasing. It has been said that once the essence of the lake is breathed in, it finds its way into a person’s soul. That perfect June day it found its way inside me.

  Ghost Island appeared from nowhere on the port side.

  “There is a cabin at the north end,” Stefan said, trimming the sail. “I will take you to the graves on the island, too, if you want.”

  I wasn’t sure if we’d heard him correctly, given the wind and hum of the center board as it cut through the water.

  “Drowned fishermen,” he added. “The Indians believe there is a cavern beneath the lake where spirits live. If fishermen become too greedy, it angers the spirits, and a storm will suddenly come up, the ice will break, and the fish will jump back into the water.”

  Freyja’s eyes grew wide. Leifur and I looked at each other but didn’t say a word.

  “Nonsense,” Finn said, still holding the tiller steady. “You sound like my Langamma. She tried to scare us with the old stories until Mother told her to stop.”

  We had a grandmother too, but our Amma had other ways of making us behave.

  Stefan twisted his cap and grinned, motioning for Finn to start steering toward the island.

  “Father didn’t believe it either, not until he was lost in a snowstorm after his best day of fishing ever,” he said. “On the ice just north of the island he saw something, a half-man, half-beast, standing five yards in front of him. He blinked and it disappeared. Since then he always throws back a large fish from every net, just in case.”

  Shivers worked their way up my spine. We’d heard many old stories too, back in the communal home where Mother’s family gathered in the baðstofa every evening. Huddled under wool blankets, we listened to old Uncle Ásgeir who stood bent under candlelight reciting from memory ancient myths that had been repeated for thousands of years. I’d assumed that we’d left the huldufólk, fylgjur and Gryla—those hidden people and frightful spirits—back in Iceland.

  “There is no scientific proof,” Finn said. “My father does not believe any of it and neither do I.”

  The island grew and soon loomed beside us. Towering trees ran in a wide strip down the center of it, surrounded by a wide belt of sand.

  As Finn steered the boat to land, the bulk of the island stole our wind so the sail began flapping noisily. Stefan let the lines go and began pulling it down. Looking into the water, I saw the lake bottom rise up, and within minutes the keel scraped against mossy rocks. Stefan jumped out and pulled the bow up onto the sand so we could scramble out.

  “The cabin is this way,” he said, waving his arm for us to follow.

  The boys ran ahead while Freyja and I struggled to keep up, following a trail that wound into the trees. Being in the bush was an unsettling ex
perience for us. There was nothing like it in Iceland. There, we were accustomed to wide open spaces, rock, and ocean. And since arriving in Canada five years earlier, we’d only lived in the distant town of Lundi. I felt uncertain as the trees closed in around us. It was dark and the air cool. Birds chirped, insects buzzed, and leaves in the undergrowth rustled as voles and mice skittered underneath. There was a terrible stench of a carcass rotting somewhere.

  “Asta, pick me up,” Freyja said, tugging at my arm. She quickly wrapped her legs around my waist, tucking her face into my neck. “I don’t like it here,” she quivered. “There are trolls.”

  “No,” I said to her. “They do not like it here in Manitoba. It is too cold.”

  I fought to keep the uncertainty out of my voice. I could still see old Uncle Ásgeir standing over us, eyes wild as he warned against creatures of the invisible world that hid in the trees and burrowed under rocks by the streams.

  “Wait for us,” I hollered, but the boys kept on so I ran to catch up.

  The shanty was difficult to see as the weathered boards blended in with the oaks. Stefan pulled open the door and we followed him inside. I was surprised by how little there was. A stove, wooden table, and two chairs on a musty dirt floor, six beds built bunk-style along the walls, covered by worn feather ticks. There were no windows, so the only light that came in was through the door behind us.

  “We were lost on the ice during a storm once,” Stefan said. “Good thing this place was here. We made a fire and stayed the night.”

  Soon we were back on the beach at the foot of a lighthouse on the north end of the island facing The Narrows, the channel where the south and north basin of Lake Manitoba met. In the distance there was a small steamship but I couldn’t tell what direction it was traveling. I hoped it was not our parents already on their way home.

  Leifur picked up wide, flat stones as we traversed the beach and threw them sidearm into the lake, counting the number of times each bounced across the surface. Broad shouldered and capable, our brother seldom drew attention to himself and didn’t seem to mind that our older sister often overshadowed him. Sometimes though, when I looked into those hazel eyes of his, I recognized a stirring. There was more going on inside Leifur than we girls ever realized.